diff --git "a/dataset.json" "b/dataset.json"
--- "a/dataset.json"
+++ "b/dataset.json"
@@ -1,41 +1,3 @@
-[
-    {
-        "text": "HALO THE FALL OF REACH Eric Nylund\n\nA Del ReyBook THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP  NEW YORK For Syne Mitchell. She watched my six, patched me up, and provided transportation to my DZ everyday no soldier could ever ask for better support in the field . . . or a better wife. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Singled out for conspicuous merit and bravery under fire are the following personnel:\n Eric S. Trautmann went far above and beyond the call of duty providing background material, editing, reality checks, and a constant supply of caffeine and encouragement.\n\nBungie for making a superb game, and in particular: Jason Jones, Alex Seropian, John Howard, and Lorraine McLees.\n The brilliant tactical unit at Microsoft's Franchise Development Group: Nancy Figatner, Brannon Boren, and Doug Zartman.\n\nMicrosoft's User Experience fireteam: Keith Cirillo, Jo Tyo, and Matt Whiting. The troopers at Ballantine/Del Rey: Caron Harris, David Stevenson, Steve Palmer, Crystal Velasquez and special thanks to Steve Saffel. PROLOGUE\n0500 Hours, February 12, 2535 (Military Calendar) / Lambda Serpentis System, Jericho VII Theaterof Operations\n\"Contact. All teams stand by: enemy contact, my position.\"The Chief knew there were probably more than a hundred of themmotion sensors were off the scale. He wanted to see them for himself, though; his training made that lesson clear: \"Machines break. Eyes don't.\"\nThe four Spartans that composed Blue Team covered his back, standing absolutely silent and immobile in their MJOLNIR combat armor. Someone had once commented that they looked like Greek war gods in the armor . . . but his Spartans were far more effective and ruthless than Homer's gods had ever been. He snaked the fiber-optic probe up and over the three-meter-high stone ridge. When it was in place, the Chief linked it to his helmet's heads-up display. On the other side he saw a valley with eroded rock walls and a river meandering through it . . . and camped along the banks as far as he could see were Grunts. The Covenant used these stocky aliens as cannon fodder. They stood a meter tall and wore armored environment suits that replicated the atmosphere of their frozen homeworld. They reminded the Chief of biped dogs, not only in appearance, but because their speecheven with the new translation softwarewas an odd combination of high-pitched squeaks, guttural barks, and growls. They were about as smart as dogs, too. But what they lacked in brainpower, they made up for in sheer tenacity. He had seen them hurl themselves at their enemies until the ground was piled high with their corpses . . . and their opponents had depleted their ammunition. These Grunts were unusually well armed: needlers, plasma pistols, and there were four stationary plasma cannons. Those could be a problem. One other problem: there were easily a thousand of them.This operation had to go off without a hitch. Blue Team's mission was to draw out the Covenant rear guard and let Red Team slip through in the confusion. Red Team would then plant a HAVOK tactical nuke. When the next Covenant ship landed, dropped its shields, and started to unload its troops, they'd get a thirty-megaton surprise. The Chief detached the optics and took a step back from the rock wall. He passed the tactical information along to his team over a secure COM channel.\n\"Four of us,\" Blue-Two whispered over the link. \"And a thousand of them? Piss-poor odds for the little guys.\"\n\"Blue-Two,\" the Chief said, \"I want you up with those Jackhammer launchers. Take out the cannons and soften the rest of them. Blue-Three and Five, you follow me upwe're on crowd control. Blue-Four: you get the welcome mat ready. Understood?\"\nFour blue lights winked on his heads-up display as his team acknowledged the orders.\"On my mark.\" The Chief crouched and readied himself. \"Mark!\"\nBlue-Two leaped gracefully atop the ridgethree meters straight up. There was no sound as the half ton of MJOLNIR armor and Spartan landed on the limestone. She hefted one launcher and ran along the ridgeshe was the fastest Spartan on the Chief's team. He was confident those Grunts wouldn't be able to track her for the three seconds she'd be exposed. In quick succession, Blue-Two emptied both of the Jackhammer's tubes, dropped one launcher, and then fired the other rockets just as fast. The shells streaked into the Grunts' formation and detonated. One of the stationary guns flipped over, engulfed in the blast, and the gunner was flung to the ground. She ditched the launcher, jumped downrolled onceand was back on her feet, running at top speed to the fallback point. The Chief, Blue-Three, and Blue-Five leaped to the top of the ridge. The Chief switched to infrared to cut through the clouds of dust and propellant exhaust just in time to see the second salvo of Jackhammers strike their targets. Two consecutive blossoms of flash, fire, and thunder decimated the front ranks of the Grunt guards, and most importantly, turned the last of the plasma cannons into smoldering wreckage. The Chief and the others opened fire with their MA5B assault riflesa full automatic spray of fifteen rounds per second. Armor-piercing bullets tore into the aliens, breaching their environment suits and sparking the methane tanks they carried. Gouts of flame traced wild arcs as the wounded Grunts ran in confusion and pain. Finally the Grunts realized what was happeningand where this attack was coming from. They regrouped and chargeden masse . An earthquake vibration coursed through the ground and shook the porous stone beneath the Chief's boots. The three Spartans exhausted their AP clips and then, in unison, switched to shredder rounds. They fired into the tide of creatures as they surged forward. Line after line of them dropped. Scores more just trampled their fallen comrades. Explosive needles bounced off the Chief's armor, detonating as they hit the ground. He saw the flash of a plasma boltside steppedand heard the air crackle where he had stood a split second before.\n\"Inbound Covenant air support,\"Blue-Four reported over the COM link.\"ETA is two minutes, Chief.\"\"Roger that,\" he said. \"Blue-Three and -Five: maintain fire for five seconds, then fall back. Mark!\"Their status lights winked once, acknowledging his order. The Grunts were three meters from the wall. The Chief tossed two grenades. He, Blue-Three, and Blue Five stepped backward off the ridge, landed, spun, and ran. Two dull thumps reverberated though the ground. The squeals and barks of the incoming Grunts, however, drowned out the noise of the exploding grenades. The Chief and his team sprinted up the half-kilometer sandstone slope in thirty-two seconds flat. The hill ended abruptlya sheer drop of two hundred meters straight into the ocean. Blue-Four's voice crackled over the COM channel:\"Welcome mat is laid out, Chief. Ready when you are.\"\nThe Grunts looked like a living carpet of steel-blue skin, claws, and chrome weapons. Some ran on all fours up the slope. They barked and howled, baying for the Spartans' blood.\n\"Roll out the carpet,\" the Chief told Blue-Four.The hill explodedplumes of pulverized sandstone and fire and smoke hurtled skyward. The Spartans had buried a spiderweb pattern of Lotus antitank mines earlier that morning. Sand and bits of metal pinged off of the Chief's helmet.The Chief and his team opened fire again, picking off the remaining Grunts that were still alive and struggling to stand.His motion detector flashed a warning. There were incoming projectiles high at two o'clockvelocities at over a hundred kilometers per hour. Five Covenant Banshee fliers appeared over the ridge.\n\"New contacts. All teams, open fire!\" he barked. The Spartans, without hesitation, fired on the alien fliers. Bullet hits pinged from the fliers' chitinous armorit would take a very lucky shot to take out the antigrav pods on the end of the craft's stubby meter-long \"wings.\"\nThe fire got the aliens' attention, however. Lances of fire slashed from the Banshees' gunports.The Chief dove and rolled to his feet. Sandstone exploded where he had stood only an instant before. Globules of molten glass sprayed the Spartans. The Banshees screamed over their headsthen banked sharply for another pass.\n\"Blue-Three, Blue-Five: Theta Maneuver,\" the Chief called out.Blue-Three and -Five gave him the thumbs-up signal. They regrouped at the edge of the cliff and clipped onto the steel cables that dangled down the length of the rock wall.\n\"Did you set up the fougasses with fire or shrapnel?\" the Chief asked.\"Both,\" Blue-Three replied.\"Good.\" The Chief grabbed the detonators. \"Cover me.\"\nThe fougasses were never meant to take down flying targets; the Spartans had put them there to mop up the Grunts. In the field, though, you had to improvise. Another tenet of their training: adapt or die. The Banshees formed into a \"flying V\" and swooped toward them, almost brushing the ground.The Spartans opened fire. Bolts of superheated plasma from the Banshees punctuated the air. The Chief dodged to the right, then to the left; he ducked. Their aim was getting better.The Banshees were one hundred meters away, then fifty meters. Their plasma weapons might recycle fast enough to get another shot . . . and at this range, the Chief wouldn't be dodging. The Spartans jumped backward off the cliffguns still blazing. The Chief jumped, too, and hit the detonators. The ten fougasseseach a steel barrel filled with napalm and spent AP and shredder casingshad been buried a few meters from the edge of the cliff, their mouths angled up at thirty degrees. When the grenades at the bottom of the barrels exploded, it made one hell of a barbecue out of anything that got in their way. The Spartans slammed into the side of the cliffthe steel cables they were attached to twanged taut.A wave of heat and pressure washed over them. A heartbeat later five flaming Banshees hurtled over their heads, leaving thick trails of black smoke as they arced into the water. They splashed down, then vanished beneath the emerald waves. The Spartans hung there a moment, waiting and watching with their assault rifles trained on the water. No survivors surfaced. They rappelled down to the beach and rendezvoused with Blue-Two and -Four.\n\"Red Team reports mission objective achieved, Chief,\" Blue-Two said. \"They send their compliments.\"\"It's hardly going to balance the scales,\" Blue-Three muttered, and kicked the sand. \"Not like those Grunts when they slaughtered the 105th Drop Jet Platoon. They should suffer just as much as those guys did.\"\nThe Chief had nothing to say to that. It wasn't his job to make things sufferhe was just here to win battles. Whatever it took.\n\"Blue-Two,\" the Chief said. \"Get me an uplink.\"\"Aye aye.\" She patched him into the SATCOM system.\"Mission accomplished, Captain de Blanc,\" the Chief reported. \"Enemy neutralized.\"\n\"Excellent news,\"the Captain said. He sighed, and added,\"But we're pulling you out, Chief.\"\n\"We're just getting warmed up down here, sir.\"\"Well, it's a different story up here. Move out for pickup ASAP.\"\n\"Understood, sir.\" The Chief killed the uplink. He told his team, \"The party's over, Spartans. Dust-off in fifteen.\"\nThey jogged double-quick up the ten kilometers of the beach, and returned to their dropshipa Pelican, scuffed and dented from three days' hard fighting. They boarded and the ship's engines whined to life. Blue-Two took off her helmet and scratched the stubble of her brown hair. \"It's a shame to leave this place,\" she said, and leaned against the porthole. \"There are so few left.\"\nThe Chief stood by her and glanced out as they lifted into the airthere were wide rolling plains of palmgrass, the green expanse of ocean, a wispy band of clouds in the sky, and setting red suns.\n\"There will be other places to fight for,\" he said.\n\"Will there?\" she whispered. The Pelican ascended rapidly through the atmosphere, the sky darkened, and soon only stars surrounded them. In orbit, there were dozens of frigates, destroyers, and two massive carriers. Every ship had carbon scoring and holes peppering their hulls. They were all maneuvering to break orbit. They docked in the port bay of the UNSC destroyerResolute . Despite being surrounded by two meters of titanium-A battle plate and an array of modern weapons, the Chief preferred to have his feet on the ground, with real gravity, and real atmosphere to breathea place where he was in control, and where his life wasn't held in the hands of anonymous pilots. A ship just wasn't home. The battlefield was. The Chief rode the elevator to the bridge to make his report, taking advantage of the momentary respite to read Red Team's after-action report in his display. As predicted, the Spartans of Red, Blue, and Green Teamsaugmenting three divisions of battle-hardened UNSC Marineshad stalled a Covenant ground advance. Casualty figures were still coming in, buton the ground, at leastthe alien forces had been completely stonewalled. A moment later the lift doors parted, and he stepped on the rubberized deck. He snapped a crisp salute to Captain de Blanc. \"Sir. Reporting as ordered.\"The junior bridge officers took a step back from the Chief. They weren't used to seeing a Spartan in full MJOLNIR armor up closemost line troops had never even seen a Spartan. The ghostly iridescent green of the armor plates and the matte black layers underneath made him look part gladiator, part machine. Or perhaps to the bridge crew, he looked as alien as the Covenant. The view screens showed stars and Jerico VII's four silver moons. At extreme range, a small constellation of stars drifted closer. The Captain waved the Chief closer as he stared at that cluster of starsthe rest of the battlegroup. \"It's happening again.\"\n\"Request permission to remain on the bridge, sir,\" the Chief said. \"I . . . want to see it this time, sir.\"The Captain hung his head, looking weary. He glanced at the Master Chief with haunted eyes. \"Very well, Chief. After all you've been through to save Jericho Seven, we owe you that. We're only thirty million kilometers out-system, though, not half as far as I'd like to be.\" He turned to the NAV Officer. \"Bearing one two zero. Prepare our exit vector.\"\nHe turned to face the Chief. \"We'll stay to watch . . . but if those bastards so much as twitch in our direction, we're jumping the hell out of here.\"\n\"Understood, sir. Thank you.\"Resolute's engines rumbled and the ship moved off.Three dozen Covenant shipsbig ones, destroyers and cruiserswinked into view in the system. They were sleek, looking more like sharks than starcraft. Their lateral lines brightened with plasmathen discharged and rained fire down upon Jericho VII. The Chief watched for an hour and didn't move a muscle. The planet's lakes, rivers, and oceans vaporized. By tomorrow, the atmosphere would boil away, too. Fields and forests were glassy smooth and glowing red-hot in patches. Where there had once been a paradise, only hell remained.\n\"Make ready to jump clear of the system,\" the Captain ordered. The Chief continued to watch, his face grim.There had been ten years of thisthe vast network of human colonies whittled down to a handful of strongholds by a merciless, implacable enemy. The Chief had killed the enemy on the groundshot them, stabbed them, and broken them with his own two hands. On the ground, the Spartansalways won. The problem was, the Spartans couldn't take their fight into space. Every minor victory on the ground turned into a major defeat in orbit. Soon there would be no more colonies, no human settlementsand nowhere left to run. SECTION I REVEILLE\n CHAPTER ONE0430 Hours, August 17, 2517 (Military Calendar) / Slipstream space  unknown coordinates near Eridanus Star System Lieutenant Junior Grade Jacob Keyes awoke. Dull red light filled his blurry vision and he choked on the slime in his lungs and throat.\n\"Sit up, Lieutenant Keyes,\" a disembodied male voice said. \"Sit. Take a deep breath and cough, sir. You need to clear the bronchial surfactant.\"\nLieutenant Keyes pushed himself up, peeling his back off the formfitting gel bed. Wisps of fog overflowed from the cryogenic tube as he clumsily climbed out. He sat on a nearby bench, tried to inhale, and doubled over, coughing until a long string of clear fluid flowed from his open mouth. He sat up and drew his first full breath in two weeks. He tasted his lips and almost gagged. The cryo inhalant was specially designed to be regurgitated and swallowed, replacing nutrients lost in the deep sleep. No matter how they changed the formula, though, it always tasted like lime-flavored mucus.\n\"Status, Toran? Are we under attack?\"\"Negative, sir,\" the ship's AI replied. \"Status normal. We will enter normal space near the Eridanus System in forty-five minutes.\"\nLieutenant Keyes coughed again. \"Good. Thank you, Toran.\"\n\"You're welcome, Lieutenant.\"\nEridanus was on the border of the Outer Colonies. It was just far enough off the beaten path for pirates to be lurking . . . waiting to capture a diplomatic shuttle like theHan . This ship wouldn't last long in a space action. Theyshould have an escort. He didn't understand why they had been sent alonebut Junior Lieutenants didn't question orders. Especially when those orders came from FLEETCOM HQ on planet Reach. Wake-up protocols dictated that he inspect the rest of the crew to make sure no one had run into problems reviving. He looked around the sleep chamber: rows of stainless steel lockers and showers, a medical pod for emergency resuscitations, and forty cryogenic tubesall empty except the one to his left. The other person on theHan was the civilian specialist, Dr. Halsey. Keyes had been ordered to protect her at all costs, pilot this ship, and generally stay the hell out of her way. They might as well have asked him to hold her hand. This wasn't a military mission; it was baby-sitting. Someone at Fleet Command must have him on their blacklist. The cover of Dr. Halsey's tube hummed open. Mist rippled out as she sat up, coughing. Her pale skin made her look like a ghost in the fog. Matted locks of dark hair clung to her neck. She didn't look much older than him, and she was lovelynot beautiful, but definitely a striking woman. For a civilian, anyway. Her blue eyes fixed upon the Lieutenant and she looked him over. \"We must be near Eridanus,\" she said.Lieutenant Keyes almost saluted reflectively, but checked the motion. \"Yes, Doctor.\" His face reddened and he looked away from her slender body. He had drilled in cryogenic recovery a dozen times at the Academy. He'd seen his fellow officers naked beforemen and women. But Dr. Halsey was a civilian. He didn't know what protocols applied. Lieutenant Keyes got up and went to her. \"Can I help you\"She swung her legs out of the tube and climbed out. \"I'm fine, Lieutenant. Get cleaned up and dressed.\"\nShe brushed past him and strode to the showers. \"Hurry. We have important work to do.\"\nLieutenant Keyes stood straighter. \"Aye, aye, Ma'am.\"\nWith that brief encounter, their roles and the rules of conduct crystallized. Civilian or notlike it or not Lieutenant Keyes understood that Dr. Halsey was in charge.\n The bridge of theHan had an abundance of space for a vessel of its size. That is, it had all the maneuvering room of a walk-in closet. A freshly showered, shaved, and uniformed Lieutenant Keyes pulled himself into the room and sealed the pressure door behind him. Every surface of the bridge was covered with monitors and screens. The wall on his left was a single large semicurved view screen, dark for the moment because there was nothing in the visible spectrum to see in Slipspace.Behind him was theHan 's spinning center section, containing the mess, the rec room, and the sleep chambers. There was no gravity on the bridge, however. The diplomatic shuttle had been designed for the comfort of its passengers, not the crew. It didn't seem to bother Dr. Halsey. Strapped into the navigator's couch, she wore a white jumpsuit that matched her pale skin, and had tied her dark hair into a simple, elegant knot. Her fingers danced across four keypads, tapping in commands.\n\"Welcome, Lieutenant,\" she said without looking up. \"Please have a seat at the communication station and monitor the channels when we enter normal space. If there's so much as a squeak on nonstandard frequencies, I want to know instantly.\"\nHe drifted to the communication station and strapped himself down.\"Toran?\" she asked.\"Awaiting your orders, Dr. Halsey,\" the ship AI replied.\n\"Give me astrogation maps of the system.\"\n\"Online, Dr. Halsey.\"\"Are there any planets currently aligned with our entry trajectory and Eridanus Two? I want to pick up a gravitational boost so we can move in-system ASAP.\"\n\"Calculating now, Doctor Hal\"\n\"And can we have some music? Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto Number Three, I think.\"\"Understood Doctor\"\"And start a preburn warm-up cycle for the fusion engines.\"\n\"Yes, Doc\"\n\"And stop spinning theHan 's central carousel section. We may need the power.\"\"Working . . . \"\nShe eased back. The music started and she sighed. \"Thank you, Toran.\"\"You're welcome, Dr. Halsey. Entering normal space in five minutes, plus or minus three minutes.\"\nLieutenant Keyes shot the doctor an admiring glance. He was impressedfew people could put a shipboard AI through its paces so rigorously as to cause a detectable pause. She turned to face him. \"Yes, Lieutenant? You have a question?\"\nHe composed himself and pulled his uniform jacket taut. \"I was curious about our mission, ma'am. I assume we are to reconnoiter something in this system, but why send a shuttle, rather than a prowler or a corvette? And why just the two of us?\"\nShe blinked and smiled. \"A fairly accurate assumption and analysis, Lieutenant. Thisis a reconnaissance mission . . . of sorts. We are here to observe a child. The first of many, I hope.\"\n\"A child?\"\n\"A six-year-old male, to be precise.\" She waved her hand. \"It may help if you think of this purely as a UNSC-funded physiological study.\" Every trace of a smile evaporated from her lips. \"Which is precisely what you are to tell anyone who asks. Is that understood, Lieutenant?\"\n\"Yes, Doctor.\"Keyes frowned, retrieved his grandfather's pipe from his pocket, and turned it end over end. He couldn't smoke the thingigniting a combustible on the flight deck was against every major regulation on a UNSC space vehiclebut sometimes he just fiddled with it or chewed on the tip, which helped him think. He stuck it back into his pocket, and decided to push the issue and find out more.\n\"With all due respect, Dr. Halsey, this sector of space is dangerous.\"\nWith a sudden deceleration, they entered normal space. The main view screen flickered and a million stars snapped into focus. TheHan dove toward a cloud-swirled gas giant dead ahead.\n\"Stand by for burn,\" Dr. Halsey announced. \"On my mark, Toran.\"Lieutenant Keyes tightened his harness.\n\"Three . . . two . . . one.Mark. \"\nThe ship rumbled and sped faster toward the gas giant. The pull of the harness increased around the Lieutenant's chest, making breathing difficult. They accelerated for sixty-seven seconds . . . the storms of the gas giant grew larger on the view screenthen theHan arced up and away from its surface. Eridanus drifted into the center of the screen and filled the bridge with warm orange light.\n\"Gravity boost complete,\" Toran chimed. \"ETA to Eridanus is forty-two minutes, three seconds.\"\n\"Well done,\" Dr. Halsey said. She unlocked her harness and floated free, stretching. \"I hate cryo sleep,\"\nshe said. \"It leaves one so cramped.\"\n\"As I was saying before, Doctor, this system is dangerous\"She gracefully spun to face him, halting her momentum with a hand on the bulkhead. \"Oh yes, I know how dangerous this system is. It has a colorful history: rebel insurrection in 2494, beaten down by the UNSC two years later at the cost of four destroyers.\" She thought a moment, then added, \"I don't believe the Office of Naval Intelligence ever found their base in the asteroid field. And since there have been organized raids and scattered pirate activity nearby, one might concludeas ONI clearly hasthat the remnants of the original rebel faction are still active. Is that that what you were worried about?\"\n\"Yes,\" the Lieutenant replied. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, but he refused to be cowed by the doctorby acivilian . \"I need hardly remind you that it's my job to worry about our security.\"\nShe knew more than he did, much more, about the Eridanus Systemand she obviously had contacts in the intelligence community. Keyes had never seen an ONI spookto the best of his knowledge anyway. Mainline Navy personnel had elevated such agents to near-mythological status. Whatever else he thought of Dr. Halsey, he would assume from now on that she knew what she was doing. Dr. Halsey stretched once more and then strapped herself back onto the navigation couch. \"Speaking of pirates,\" she said with her back now to him, \"weren't you supposed to be monitoring communication channels for illegal signals? Just in case someone takes undue interest in a lone, unescorted, diplomatic shuttle?\"\nLieutenant Keyes cursed himself for his momentary lapse and snapped to. He scanned all frequencies and had Toran cross-check their authentication codes.\n\"All signals verified,\" he reported. \"No pirate transmissions detected.\"\"Continue to monitor them, please.\"\nAn awkward thirty minutes passed. Dr. Halsey was content to read reports on the navigational screens, and kept her back to him. Lieutenant Keyes finally cleared his throat. \"May I speak candidly, Doctor?\"\n\"You don't need my permission,\" she said. \"By all means, speak candidly, Lieutenant. You've been doing a fine job so far.\"\nUnder normal circumstances, among normal officers, that last remark would have been insubordination or worse, a rebuke. But he let it pass. Normal military protocols seemed to have been jettisoned on this flight.\n\"You said we were here to observe a child.\" He shook his head dubiously. \"If this is a cover for real military intelligence work, then, to tell the truth, there are better-qualified officers for this mission. I graduated from UNSC OCS only seven weeks ago. My orders had me rotated to theMagellan . Those orders were rescinded, ma'am.\"\nShe turned and scrutinized him with icy blue eyes. \"Go on, Lieutenant.\"\nHe reached for his pipe, but then checked the motion. She would probably think it a silly habit.\n\"If this is an intel op,\" he said, \"then . . . then I don't understand why I'm here at all.\"She leaned forward. \"Then, Lieutenant, I shall be equally candid.\"\nSomething deep inside Lieutenant Keyes told him he would regret hearing whatever Dr. Halsey had to say. He ignored the feeling. He wanted to know the truth.\n\"Go ahead, Doctor.\"Her slight smile returned. \"You are here because Vice Admiral Stanforth, head of Section Three of UNSC Military Intelligence Division, refused to lend me this shuttle without at least one UNSC officer aboardeven though he knows damn well that I can pilot this bucket by myself. So I picked one UNSC officer. You.\" She tapped her lower lip thoughtfully and added, \"You see, I've read your file, Lieutenant. All of it.\"\n\"I don't know\"\n\"Youdo know what I'm talking about.\" She rolled her eyes. \"You don't lie well. Don't insult me by trying again.\"\nLieutenant Keyes swallowed. \"Then why me?Especially if you've seen my record?\"\"I chose you preciselybecause of your recordbecause of the incident in your second year at OCS. Fourteen ensigns killed. You were wounded and spent two months in rehabilitation. Plasma burns are particularly painful, I understand.\"\nHe rubbed his hands together. \"Yes.\"\n\"The Lieutenant responsible was your CO on that training mission. You refused to testify against him despite overwhelming evidence and the testimony of his fellow officers . . . and friends.\"\n\"Yes.\"\"They told the board of review the secret the Lieutenant had entrusted to you allthat he was going to test his new theory to make Slipspace jumps more accurate. He was wrong, and you all paid for his eagerness and poor mathematics.\"\nLieutenant Keyes studied his hands and had the feeling of falling inward. Dr. Halsey's voice sounded distant. \"Yes.\"\n\"Despite continuing pressure, you never testified. They threatened to demote you, charge you with insubordination and refusing a direct ordereven discharge you from the Navy.\n\"Your fellow officer candidates testified, though. The review board had all the evidence they needed to court-martial your CO. They put you on report and dropped all further disciplinary actions.\"\nHe said nothing. His head hung low.\n\"That is why you are here, Lieutenantbecause you have an ability that is exceedingly rare in the military. You can keep a secret.\" She drew in a long breath and added, \"You may have to keep many secrets after this mission is over.\"\nHe glanced up. There was a strange look in her eyes. Pity? That caught him off guard and he looked away again. But he felt better than he had since OCS. Someone trusted him again.\n\"I think,\" she said, \"that you would rather be on theMagellan . Fighting and dying on the frontier.\"\"No, I\" He caught the lie as he said it, stopped, then corrected himself. \"Yes. The UNSC needs every man and woman patrolling the Outer Colonies. Between the raiders and insurrections, it's a wonder it all hasn't fallen apart.\"\n\"Indeed, Lieutenant, ever since we left Earth's gravity, well, we've been fighting one another for every cubic centimeter of vacuumfrom Mars to the Jovian Moons to the Hydra System Massacres and on to the hundred brushfire wars in the Outer Colonies. It has always been on the brink of falling apart. That's why we're here.\"\n\"To observe one child,\" he said. \"What difference could a child make?\"\nOne of her eyebrows arched. \"This child could be more useful to the UNSC than a fleet of destroyers, a thousand Junior Grade Lieutenantsor evenme . In the end, the child may be the only thing that makesany difference.\"\n\"Approaching Eridanus Two,\" Toran informed them.\"Plot an atmospheric vector for the Luxor spaceport,\" Dr. Halsey ordered. \"Lieutenant Keyes, make ready to land.\"\nCHAPTER TWO\n1130 Hours, August 17, 2517 (Military Calendar) /\nEridanus Star System, Eridanus 2, Elysium City The orange sun cast a fiery glow on the playground of Elysium City Primary Education Facility No. 119. Dr. Halsey and Lieutenant Keyes stood in the semishade of a canvas awning and watched children as they screamed and chased one another and climbed on steel lattices and skimmed gravballs across the repulsor courts. Lieutenant Keyes looked extremely uncomfortable in civilian clothes. He wore a loose gray suit, a white shirt, and no tie. Dr. Halsey found his sudden awkwardness charming. When he had complained the clothes were too loose and sloppy, she had almost laughed. He was pure military to the core. Even out of uniform, the Lieutenant stood rigid, as if he were at perpetual attention. \"It's nice here,\" she said. \"This colony doesn't know how good they've got it. Rural lifestyle. No pollution. No crowding. Climate-controlled weather.\"\nThe Lieutenant grunted an acknowledgment as he tried to smooth the wrinkles out of his silk jacket.\n\"Relax,\" she said. \"We're supposed to be parents inspecting the school for our little girl.\" She slipped her arm through his, and although she would have thought such a feat impossible, the Lieutenant stood even straighter. She sighed and pulled away from him, opened her purse, and retrieved a palm-sized pad. She adjusted the brim of her wide straw hat to shade the pad from the noon glare. With a tap of her finger, she accessed and scanned the file she had assembled of their subject. Number 117 had all the genetic markers she had flagged in her original studyhe was as close to a perfect subject for her purposes as science could determine. But Dr. Halsey knew it would take more than theoretical perfection to make this project work. People were more than the sum of their genes. There were environmental factors, mutations, learned ethics, and a hundred other factors that could make this candidate unacceptable. The picture in the file showed a typical six-year-old male. He had tousled brown hair and a sly grin that revealed a gap between his front teeth. A few freckles were speckled across his checks. Goodshe could match the patterns to confirm his identity.\n\"Our subject.\" As she angled the pad toward the Lieutenant so he could see the boy, Dr. Halsey noticed that the picture was four months old. Didn't ONI realize how fast these children changed? Sloppy. She made a note to request updated pictures on a regular basis until phase three started.\n\"Is that him?\" the Lieutenant whispered. Dr. Halsey looked up. The Lieutenant nodded to a grassy hill at the end of the playground. The crest of that hill was bare dirt, scuffed clean of all vegetation. A dozen boys pushed and shoved one anothergrabbed, tackled, rolled down the slope, and then got up, ran back, and started the process over.\n\"King of the hill,\" Dr. Halsey remarked.One boy stood on the crest. He blocked, pushed, and strong-armed all the other children. Dr. Halsey pointed her data pad at him and recorded this incident for later study. She zoomed in on the subject to get a better look. This boy smiled and showed the same small gap between his front teeth. A split-second freeze frame and she matched his freckles to the picture on file.\n\"That's our boy.\"He was taller than the other children by a full head, andif his performance in the game was any indicatorstronger as well. Another boy grabbed him from behind in a headlock. Number 117 peeled the boy off, andwith a laughtossed him down the hillside like a toy. Dr. Halsey had expected a specimen of perfect physical proportions and stunning intellect. True, the subject was strong and fast, but he was also dirty and rude. Then again, unrealistic and subjective perceptions had to be confronted in these field studies. What did she really expect? He was a six-year-old boyfull of life and unchecked emotion and as predictable as the wind. Three boys ganged up on him. Two grabbed his legs and one threw his arms around his chest. They all tumbled down the hill. Number 117 kicked and punched and bit his attackers until they let go and ran away to a safe distance. He rose and tore back up the hill, bumping another boy and shouting that he was king.\n\"He seems,\" the Lieutenant started, \"um, very animated.\"\n\"Yes,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"We may be able to use this one.\"She glanced up and down the playground. The only adult was helping a girl get to her feet after falling down and scraping her elbow; she marched her towards the nurse's office.\n\"Stay here and watch me, Lieutenant,\" she said, and passed him the data pad. \"I'm going to have a closer look.\"\nThe Lieutenant started to say something, but Dr. Halsey walked away, then half jogged across the painted lines of hopscotch squares on the playground. A breeze caught her sundress and she had to clutch the hem with one hand, grabbing the brim of her straw hat with the other. She slowed to a trot and halted four meters from the base of the hill. The children stopped and turned.\"You're in trouble,\" one boy said, and pushed Number 117.He shoved the boy back and then looked Dr. Halsey squarely in the eyes. The other children looked away; some wore embarrassed smirks, and a few slowly backed off. Her subject, however, stood there defiantly. He was either confident she wasn't going to punish himor he simply wasn't afraid. She saw that he had a bruise on his cheek, the knees of his pants were torn, and his lip was cracked. Dr. Halsey took three steps closer. Several of the children took three involuntary steps backward.\"Can I speak with you, please?\" she asked, and continued to stare at her subject. He finally broke eye contact, shrugged, and then lumbered down the hill. The other children giggled and made tsking sounds; one tossed a pebble at him. Number 117 ignored them. Dr. Halsey led him to the edge of the nearby sandpit and stopped.\"What's your name?\" she asked.\"I'm John,\" he said. The boy held out his hand. Dr. Halsey didn't expect physical contact. The subject's father must have taught him the ritual, or the boy was highly imitative. She shook his hand and was surprised by the strength in his miniscule grip. \"It's very nice to meet you.\"\nShe knelt so she was at his level. \"I wanted to ask you what you were doing?\"\"Winning,\" he said. Dr. Halsey smiled. He was unafraid of her . . . and she doubted that he'd have any trouble pushing her off the hill, either.\n\"You like games,\" she said. \"So do I.\"\nHe sighed. \"Yeah, but they made me play chess last week. That got boring. It's too easy to win.\" He took a quick breath. \"Orcan we play gravball? They don't let me play gravball anymore, but maybe if you tell them it's okay?\"\n\"I have a different game I want you to try,\" she told him. \"Look.\" She reached into her purse and brought out a metal disk. She turned it over and it gleamed in the sun. \"People used coins like this for currency a long time ago, when Earth was the only planet we lived on.\"\nHis eyes fixed on the object. He reached for it. Dr. Halsey moved it away, continuing to flip it between her thumb and index finger. \"Each side is different. Do you see? One has the face of a man with long hair. The other side has a bird, called an eagle, and it's holding\"\n\"Arrows,\" John said.\"Yes. Good.\" His eyesight must be exceptional to see such detail so far away. \"We'll use this coin in our game. If you win you can keep it.\"\nJohn tore his gaze from the coin and looked at her again, squinted, then said, \"Okay. I always win, though. That's why they won't let me play gravball anymore.\"\n\"I'm sure you do.\"\"What's the game?\"\"It's very simple. I toss the coin like this.\" She flicked her wrist, snapped her thumb, and the coin arced, spinning into the air, and landed in the sand. \"Next time, though, before it lands, I want you to tell me if it will fall with the face of the man showing or with the eagle holding the arrows.\"\n\"I got it.\" John tensed, bent his knees, and then his eyes seemed to lose their focus on her and the coin. Dr. Halsey picked up the quarter. \"Ready?\"John gave a slight nod. She tossed it, making sure there was plenty of spin. John's eyes watched it with that strange distant gaze. He tracked it as it went up, and then down toward the groundhis hand snapped out and snatched the quarter out of the air. He held up his closed hand. \"Eagle!\" he shouted.She tentatively reached for his hand and peeled open the tiny fist.The quarter lay in his palm: the eagle shining in the orange sun. Was it possible that he saw which side was up when he grabbed it . . . or more improbably, could have picked which side he wanted? She hoped the Lieutenant had recorded that. She should have told him to keep the data pad trained on her. John retracted his hand. \"I get to keep it, right? That's what you said.\"\"Yes, you can keep it, John.\" She smiled at himthen stopped. She shouldn't have used his name. That was a bad sign. She couldn't afford the luxury ofliking her test subjects. She mentally stepped away from her feelings. She had to maintain a professional distance. She had to . . . because in a few months Number 117 might not be alive.\n\"Can we play again?\"Dr. Halsey stood and took a step back. \"That was the only one I had, I'm afraid. I have to leave now,\"\nshe told him. \"Go back and play with your friends.\"\n\"Thanks.\" He ran back, shouting to the other boys, \"Look!\"\nDr. Halsey strode to the Lieutenant. The sun reflecting off the asphalt felt too hot, and she suddenly didn't want to be outside. She wanted to be back in the ship, where it was cool and dark. She wanted to get off this planet. She stepped under the canvas awning and said to the Lieutenant, \"Tell me you recorded that.\"He handed her the data pad and looked puzzled. \"Yes. What was it all about?'\nDr. Halsey checked the recording and then sent a copy ahead to Toran on theHan for safekeeping.\"We screen these subjects for certain genetic markers,\" she said. \"Strength, agility, even predispositions for aggression and intellect. But we couldn't remote test for everything. We don't test for luck.\"\n\"Luck?\" Lieutenant Keyes asked. \"You believe in luck, Doctor?\"\n\"Of course not,\" she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. \"But we have one hundred and fifty test subjects to consider, and facilities and funding for only half that number. It's a simple mathematical elimination, Lieutenant. That child was one of the lucky oneseither that or he is extraordinarily fast. Either way, he's in.\"\n\"I don't understand,\" Lieutenant Keyes said, and he started fiddling with the pipe he carried in his pocket.\n\"I hope that continues, Lieutenant, \" Dr. Halsey replied quietly. \"For your sake, I hope you never understand what we're doing.\"\nShe looked one last time at Number 117at John. He was having so much fun, running and laughing. For a moment she envied the boy's innocence; hers was long dead. Life or death, lucky or not, she was condemning this boy to a great deal of pain and suffering. But it had to be done. CHAPTER THREE\n2300 Hours September 23, 2517 (Military Calendar ) / Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex,planet Reach Dr. Halsey stood on a platform in the center of the amphitheater. Concentric rings of slate-gray risers surrounded herempty for now. Overhead spotlights focused and reflected off her white lab coat, but she still was cold. She should feel safe here. Reach was one of the UNSC's largest industrial bases, ringed with high-orbit gun batteries, space docks, and a fleet of heavily-armed capital ships. On the planet's surface were Marine and Navy Special Warfare training grounds, OCS schools, and between her underground facilities and the surface were three hundred meters of hardened steel and concrete. The room where she now stood could withstand a direct hit from an 80-megaton nuke. So why did she feel so vulnerable?\nDr. Halsey knew what she had to do. Her duty. It was for the greater good. All humanity would be served . . . even if a tiny handful of them had to suffer for it. Still, when she turned inward and faced her complicity in thisshe was revolted by what she saw. She wished she still had Lieutenant Keyes. He had proven himself a capable assistant during the last month. But he had begun to understand the nature of the projectat least seen the edges of the truth. Dr. Halsey had him reassigned to theMagellan with a commission to full Lieutenant for his troubles.\n\"Are you ready, Doctor?\" a disembodied woman's voice asked.\n\"Almost, Deja.\" Dr. Halsey sighed. \"Please summon Chief Petty Officer Mendez. I'd like you both present when I address them.\"\nDeja's hologram flicked on next to Dr. Halsey. The AI had been specifically created for Dr. Halsey's SPARTAN project. She took the appearance of a Greek goddess: barefoot, wrapped in the toga, motes of light dancing about her luminous white hair. She held a clay tablet in her left hand. Binary cuneiform markings scrolled across the tablet. Dr. Halsey couldn't help but marvel at the AI's chosen form; each AI \"self-assigned\" a holographic appearance, and each was unique. One of the doors at the top of the amphitheater opened and Chief Petty Officer Mendez strode down the stairs. He wore a black dress uniform, his chest awash with silver and gold stars and a rainbow of campaign ribbons. His close-shorn hair had a touch of gray at the temples. He was neither tall nor muscular; he looked so ordinary for a man who had seen so much combat . . . except for his stride. The man moved with a slow grace as if he were walking in half gravity. He paused before Dr. Halsey, awaiting further instructions.\n\"Up here, please,\" she told him, gesturing to the stairs on her right. Mendez mounted the steps of the platform and then stood at ease next to her.\n\"You have read my psychological evaluations?\" Deja asked Dr. Halsey.\"Yes. They were quite thorough,\" she said. \"Thank you.\"\"And?\"\n\"I'm forgoing your recommendations, Deja. I'm going to tell them the truth.\"\nMendez gave a nearly inaudible grunt of approvalone of the most verbose acknowledgments Dr. Halsey had heard from him. As a hand-to-hand combat and physical-training DI, Mendez was the best in the Navy. As a conversationalist, however, he left a great deal to be desired.\n\"The truth has risks,\" Deja cautioned.\n\"So do lies,\" Dr. Halsey replied. \"Any story fabricated to motivate the childrenclaiming their parents were taken and killed by pirates, or by a plague that devastated their planetif they learned the truth later, they would turn against us.\"\n\"It is a legitimate concern,\" conceded Deja, and then she consulted her tablet. \"May I suggest selective neural paralysis? It produces a targeted amnesia\"\n\"A memory loss that may leak into other parts of the brain. No,\" Dr. Halsey said, \"this will be dangerous enough for them even with intact minds.\"\nDr. Halsey clicked on her microphone. \"Bring them in now.\"\n\"Aye aye,\" a voice replied from the speakers in the ceiling.\n\"They'll adapt,\" Dr. Halsey told Deja. \"Or they won't, and they will be untrainable and unsuitable for the project. Either way I just want to get this over with.\"\nFour sets of double doors at the top tier of the amphitheater swung open. Seventy-five children marched ineach accompanied by a handler, a Naval drill instructor in camouflage pattern fatigues. The children had circles of fatigue around their eyes. They had all been collected, rushed here through Slipstream space, and only recently brought out of cryo sleep. The shock of their ordeal must be hitting them hard, Halsey realized. She stifled a pang of regret. When they had been seated in the risers, Dr. Halsey cleared her throat and spoke: \"As per Naval Code\n45812, you are hereby conscripted into the UNSC Special Project, codenamed SPARTAN II.\"\nShe paused; the words stuck in her windpipe. How could they possibly understand this?She barely understood the justifications and ethics behind this program. They looked so confused. A few tried to stand and leave, but their handlers placed firm hands on their shoulders and pushed them back down. Six years old . . . this was too much for them to digest. But she had to make them understand, explain it in simple terms that they could grasp. Dr. Halsey took a tentative step forward. \"You have been called upon to serve,\" she explained. \"You will be trained . . . and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies.\"\nA handful of the children sat up straighter, no longer entirely frightened, but now interested.Dr. Halsey spotted John, subject Number 117, the first boy she had confirmed as a viable candidate. He wrinkled his forehead, confused, but he listened with rapt attention.\n\"This will be hard to understand, but you cannot return to your parents.\"\nThe children stirred. Their handlers kept a firm grip on their shoulders.\"This place will become your home,\" Dr. Halsey said in as soothing a voice as she could muster. \"Your fellow trainees will be your family now. The training will be difficult. There will be a great deal of hardship on the road ahead, but I know you will all make it.\"\nPatriotic words, but they rang hollow in her ears. She had wanted to tell them the truthbut how could she?\nNot all of them would make it. \"Acceptable losses,\" the Office of Naval Intelligence representative had assured her. None of it was acceptable.\"Rest now,\" Dr. Halsey said to them. \"We begin tomorrow.\"\nShe turned to Mendez. \"Have the children . . . the trainees escorted to their barracks. Feed them and put them to bed.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" Mendez said. \"Fall out!\" he shouted. The children roseat the urging of their handlers. John 117 stood, but he kept his gaze on Dr. Halsey and remained stoic. Many of the subjects seemed stunned, a few had trembling lipsbut none of them cried. These were indeed the right children for the project. Dr. Halsey only hoped that she had half their courage when the time came.\n\"Keep them busy tomorrow,\" she told Mendez and Deja. \"Keep them from thinking about what we've just done to them.\"\nSECTION II BOOT\n CHAPTER FOUR0530 Hours, September 24, 2517 (Military Calendar) / Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex,planet Reach\n\"Wake up, trainee!\"\nJohn rolled over in his cot and went back to sleep. He was dimly aware that this wasn't his room, and that there were other people here. A shock jolted himfrom his bare feet to the base of his spine. He yelled in surprise and fell off the cot. He shook off the disorientation from being nearly asleep and got up.\n\"I saidup , boot! You know which wayup is?\"\nA man in a camouflage uniform stood over John. His hair was shorn and gray at his temples. His dark eyes didn't look humantoo big and black and they didn't blink. He held a silver baton in one hand; he flicked it toward John and it sparked. John backed away. He wasn't afraid of anything. Only little kids were afraid . . . but his body instinctively moved as far away from the instrument as possible. Dozens of other men roused the rest of the children. Seventy-four boys and girls screamed and jumped out of their cots.\n\"I am Chief Petty Officer Mendez,\" the uniformed man next to John shouted. \"The rest of these men are your instructors. You will do exactly as we tell you at all times.\"\nMendez pointed to the far end of the cinderblock barracks. \"Showers are aft. You will all wash and then return here to dress.\" He opened a trunk at the foot of John's cot and pulled out a matching set of gray sweats.John leaned closer and saw his name stenciled on the chest: JOHN-117.\n\"No slacking. On the double!\" Mendez tapped John between his shoulder blades with the baton. Lightning surged across John's chest. He sprawled on the cot and gasped for breath.\n\"I mean it! Go Go GO!\"John moved. He couldn't inhalebut he ran anyway, clutching his chest. He managed a ragged breath by the time he got to the showers. The other kids looked scared and disoriented. They all stripped off their nightshirts and stepped onto the conveyor, washed themselves in lukewarm soapy water, then rinsed in an icy cold spray. He ran back to his bunk, got into underwear, thick socks, pulled on the sweats and a pair of combat boots that fit his feet perfectly.\n\"Outside, trainees,\" Mendez announced. \"Triple time . . .march! \"\nJohn and the others stampeded out of the barracks onto a strip of grass.The sun hadn't risen yet, and the edge of the sky was indigo. The grass was wet with dew. There were dozens of rows of barracks, but no one else was up and outside. A pair of jets roared overhead and arced up into the sky. Far away, John heard a metallic crackle. Chief Petty Officer Mendez barked, \"You will make five equal-length rows. Fifteen trainees in each.\"\nHe waited a few seconds as they milled about. \"Straighten those rows. You know how to count to fifteen, trainee? Take three steps back.\"\nJohn stepped into the second row.As he breathed the cold air he began to wake up. He started to remember. They had taken him in the middle of the night. They injected him with something and he slept for a long time. Then the woman who had given him the coin told him he couldn't go back. That he wouldn't see his mother or father\n\"Jumping jacks!\" Mendez shouted. \"Count off to one hundred. Ready, go.\" The officer started the exercise and John followed his lead. One boy refusedfor a split-second. An instructor was on him instantly. The baton whipped into the boy's stomach. The kid doubled over. \"Get with the program, boot,\" the trainer snarled. The boy uncurled and started jumping.John had never done so many jumping jacks in his life. His arms and stomach and legs burned. Sweat trickled down his back.\n\"Ninety-eight99100.\" Mendez paused. He drew in a deep breath. \"Sit-ups!\" He dropped onto the grass. \"Count off to one hundred. No slacking.\"\nJohn threw himself on the ground.\n\"The first crewmen who quits,\" Mendez said, \"gets to run around the compound twiceand then comes back here and does two hundred sit ups. Ready . . . count off! One . . . two . . . three. . . .\"\nDeep squats followed. Then knee bends.John threw up, but that didn't buy him any respite. A trainer descended on him after a few seconds. John rolled back over and continued.\n\"Leg lifts.\" Mendez continued like he was a machine. As if they all were machines.John couldn't go onbut he knew he'd get the baton again if he stopped. He tried; he had to move. His legs trembled and only sluggishly responded.\n\"Rest,\" Mendez finally called. \"Trainers: get the water.\"\nThe trainers wheeled out carts laden with water bottles. John grabbed one and gulped down the liquid. It was warm and slightly salty. He didn't care. It was the best water he'd ever had. He flopped on his back in the grass and panted.The sun was up now. It was warm. He rolled to his knees and let the sweat drip off him like a heavy rain.He slowly got up and glanced at the other children. They crouched on the ground, holding their sides, and no one talked. Their clothes were soaked through with perspiration. John didn't recognize anyone from his school here. So he was alone with strangers. He wondered where his mother was, and what\n\"A good start, trainees,\" Mendez told them. \"Now we run. On your feet!\"The trainers brandished their batons and herded the trainees along. They jogged down a gravel path through the compound, past more cinderblock barracks. The run seemed to go on foreverthey ran alongside a river, over a bridge, then by the edge of a runway where jets took off straight into the air. Once past the runway, Mendez led them on a zigzagging path of stone. John wanted to think about what had happened, how he got here, and what was going to happen next . . . but he couldn't think straight. All he could feel was the blood pounding through him, the ache in his muscles, and hunger. They ran into a courtyard of smooth flagstones. A pole in the center flew the colors of the UNSC, a blue field with stars and Earth in the corner. At the far end of the yard was a building with a scalloped dome and white columns and dozens of wide steps leading to the entrance. The words NAVAL OFFICERS ACADEMY were chiseled into the arch over the entrance. A woman stood on the top step and beckoned to them. She wore a white sheet wrapped around her body. She looked old to John, yet young at the same time. Then he saw the motes of light orbiting her head and knew she was an AI. He had seen them on vids. She wasn't solid, but she was still real.\n\"Excellent work, Chief Petty Officer Mendez,\" she said in a resonant, silk-smooth voice. She turned to the children. \"Welcome. My name is Deja and I will be your teacher. Please come in. Class is about to start.\"\nJohn groaned out loud. Several of the others grumbled, too. She turned and started to walk inside. \"Of course,\" she said, \"if you prefer to skip your lessons, you may continue the morning calisthenics.\"\nJohn double-timed it up the steps.It was cool inside. A tray with crackers and a carton of milk had been laid out for each of them. John nibbled on the dry stale food, then gulped down his milk. John was so tired he wanted to lay his head down on the desk and take a napuntil Deja started to tell them about a battle and how three hundred soldiers fought against thousands of Persian infantry. A holographic countryside appeared in the classroom. The children walked around the miniature mountains and hills and let the edge of the illusionary sea lap at their boots. Toy-sized soldiers marched toward what Deja explained was Thermopylae, a narrow strip of land between steep mountains and the sea. Thousands of soldiers marched toward the three hundred who guarded the pass. The soldiers fought: spears and shields splintered, swords flashed and spilled blood. John couldn't take his eyes off the spectacle.Deja explained that the three hundred were Spartans and they were the best soldiers who had ever lived. They had been trained to fight since they were children. No one could beat them.John watched, fascinated, as the holographic Spartans slaughtered the Persian spearmen. He had eaten his crackers but he was still hungry, so he took the girl's next to him when she wasn't looking, and munched them down as the battle raged on. His stomach still growled and grumbled. When was lunch? Or was it dinnertime already?\nThe Persians broke and ran and the Spartans stood victorious on the field.The children cheered. They wanted to see it again.\"That's all for today,\" Deja said. \"We'll continue tomorrow and I'll show you some wolves. Now it's time for you to go to the playground.\"\n\"Playground?\" John said. That was perfect. He could finally just sit on a swing, relax, and think for a moment. He ran out of the room, as did the other trainees.Chief Petty Officer Mendez and the trainers waited for them outside the classroom.\n\"Time for the playground,\" Mendez said, and waved the children closer. \"It's a short run. Fall in.\"\nThe \"short run\" turned into two miles. And the playground was like nothing John had ever seen. It was a forest of twenty-meter tall wooden poles. Rope cargo nets and bridges stretched between the poles; they swayed, crossed and crisscrossed one another, a maze suspended in the air. There were slide poles and knotted climbing ropes. There were swings and suspended platforms. There were ropes looped through pulleys and tied to baskets that looked sturdy enough to hoist a person.\n\"Trainees,\" Mendez said, \"form three lines.\"The instructors moved in to herd them, but John and the others made three rows without comment or fuss.\n\"The first person in every row will be team number one,\" Mendez said. \"The second person in each row will be team number two . . . and so on. If you do not understand this, speak up now.\"\nNo one spoke.John looked to his right. A boy with sandy hair, green eyes, and darkly tanned skin gave him a weary smile. Stenciled on his sweat top was SAMUEL-034. In the row beyond Samuel was a girl. She was taller than John, and skinny, with a long mane of hair dyed blue. KELLY-087. She didn't look too happy to see him.\n\"Today's game,\" Mendez explained, \"is called 'Ring the Bell.' \" He pointed to the tallest pole on the playground. It stood an additional ten meters above the others and had a steel slide pole next to it. Hung at the very top of that pole was a brass bell.\n\"There are many ways to get to the bell,\" he told them. \"I leave it up to each team to find their own way. When every member of your team has rung the bell, you are to get groundside double time and run back here across this finish line.\"\nMendez took his baton and scratched a straight line in the sand.John raised his hand.Mendez glared at him for a moment with those black unblinking eyes. \"A question, Trainee?\"\n\"What do we win?\"\nMendez cocked one eyebrow and appraised John. \"You win dinner, Number 117. Tonight, dinner is roast turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, brownies, and ice cream.\"\nA murmur of approval swept though the children.\n\"But,\" Mendez added, \"for there to be winners there must be a loser. The last team to finish goes without food.\"\nThey children fell silentand then looked at each other warily.\"Make ready,\" Mendez said.\"I'm Sam,\" the boy whispered to John and the girl on their team. She said, \"I'm Kelly.\"\nJohn just looked at them and said nothing. The girl would slow him down. Too bad. He was hungry and he wasn't about to let them make him lose.\n\"Go!\" Mendez shouted.John ran through the pack of children and scrambled up a cargo net onto a platform. He raced across the bridgejumped onto the next platform, just in time. The bridge flipped and sent five others into the water below. He paused at the rope tied to the large basket. It ran up through a pulley and then back down. He didn't think he was strong enough to pull himself up in it. Instead, he tackled a knotted climbing rope and scrunched his body up. The rope swung wildly around the center pole. John looked down and almost lost his grip. It looked twice as far down as it had looked from the ground. He saw all the others, some climbing, others floundering in the water, getting up and starting over. No one was as close to the bell as he was. He swallowed his fear and kept climbing up. He thought of the ice cream and chocolate brownies and how he was going to win. John got to the top, grabbed the bell, and rang it three times. He then clasped the steel pole and slid all the way to the ground, falling into a pile of cushions. He got up and ran smiling all the way to the Chief Petty Officer. John crossed the finish line and gave a victory cry. \"I was first,\" he said, panting. Mendez nodded and made a check on his clipboard. John watched as the others made it and up rang the bell then raced across the finish line. Kelly and Sam had trouble. They got stuck in a line to get to the bell as everyone bunched up at the end. They finally rang the bell, slid down together . . . but they crossed the finish line last. They glared at John. He shrugged.\n\"Good work, Trainees,\" Mendez said, and he beamed at them all. \"Let's get back to the barracks and chow down.\"\nThe children, covered in mud and leaning on each another, cheered.\"all except team three,\" Mendez said, and looked at Sam, Kelly, and then John.\"But I won,\" John protested. \"I was first.\"\n\"Yes,you were first,\" Mendez explained, \"but your team came in last.\" He then addressed all the children. \"Remember this:you don't win unless your team wins. One person winning at the expense of the group means that you lose.\"\nJohn ran in a stupor all the way back to the barracks. It wasn't fair. He had won. How can you win and still lose?\nHe watched as the others stuffed themselves with turkey, white meat dripping with gravy. They spooned down mountains of vanilla ice cream and left the mess hall with chocolate encrusting the corners of their mouths. John got a liter of water. He drank it, but it didn't have any taste. It did nothing to fill his hunger.He wanted to cry, but he was too tired. He collapsed in his bunk, thinking of ways to get even with Sam and Kelly for messing him upbut he couldn't think. Every muscle and bone ached. John fell asleep as soon as his head hit the flat pillow.\n\nThe next day was the samecalisthenics and running all morning, then class until the afternoon.Today Deja taught them about wolves. The classroom became a holographic meadow, and the children watched seven wolves hunt a moose. The pack worked together, striking wherever the giant beast wasn't facing. It was fascinating and horrifying to watch the wolves track down, and then devour, an animal many times their size. John avoided Sam and Kelly in the classroom. He stole a few extra crackers when no one was looking but they didn't dull his hunger. After class, they ran back to the playground. Today it was different. There were fewer bridges and more complicated rope-and-pulley systems. The pole with the bell was now twenty meters taller than any of the others.\n\"Same teams as yesterday,\" Mendez announced.Sam and Kelly walked up to John. Sam shoved him. John's temper flaredhe wanted to hit Sam in the face, but he was too tired. He'd need all his strength to get to the bell.\n\"You better help us,\" Sam hissed, \"or I'll push you off one of those platforms.\"\"And I'll jump on top of you,\" Kelly added.\n\"Okay,\" John whispered. \"Just try not to slow me down.\"\nJohn examined the course. It was like doing a maze on paper, only this one twisted and turned into and out of the page. Many bridges and rope ladders led to dead ends. He squintedthen found one possible route. He nudged Sam and Kelly then pointed. \"Look,\" he said, \"that basket and rope on the far side. It goes straight to the top. It's a long pull, though.\" He flexed his biceps, uncertain if he could make it in his weakened state.\n\"We can do it,\" Sam said.John glanced at the other teams; they were searching the course as well. \"We'll have to make a quick run for it,\" he said. \"Make sure no one else gets there first.\"\n\"I'm fast,\" Kelly said. \"Real fast.\"\n\"Trainees, get ready,\" Mendez shouted.\"Okay,\" John said. \"You sprint ahead and hold it for us.\"\n\"Go!\"\nKelly shot forward. John had never seen anyone move like her. She ran like the wolves he had seen today; her feet seemed barely to touch the ground. She got to the basket. John and Sam were only halfway there.One boy beat them to the basket. \"Get out,\" he ordered Kelly. \"I'm going up.\"\nSam and John ran up and pushed him back. \"Wait your turn,\" Sam said. John and Sam joined Kelly in the basket. Together they pulled on the rope and raised themselves up. There was a lot of ropefor every three meters they pulled, they only rose one meter. A breeze made the basket sway and bounce into the pole.\n\"Faster,\" John urged. They pulled as one person, six hands working in unison, and accelerated into the sky.They didn't get there first. They were third. Each of them got to ring the bell, thoughKelly, Sam, and John. They slid down the pole. Kelly and Sam waited for John to land, and then together they ran across the finish line. Chief Petty Officer Mendez watched them. He didn't say anything, but John thought he saw a smile flicker across his face. Sam clapped John and Kelly on their backs. \"That was good work,\" Sam said. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, \"We can be friends . . . I mean, if you want. It'd be no big deal.\"\nKelly shrugged and replied, \"Sure.\"\"Okay,\" John said. \"Friends.\"\nCHAPTER FIVE\n0630 Hours, July 12, 2519 (Military Calendar) /\nEpsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Wilderness Training Preserve, planet Reach John held on tight as the dropship accelerated up and over a jagged snowcapped mountain range. The sun peeked over the horizon and washed the white snow with pinks and oranges. The other members of his unit pressed their faces to the windows and watched. Sam sat next to him and looked outside. \"Nice place for a snowball fight.\"\"You'll lose,\" Kelly said. She leaned over John's shoulder to get a better look at the terrain. \"I'm a dead aim with snowballs.\" She scratched the stubble of her shorn hair.\n\"Dead is right,\" John muttered. \"Especially when you load them with rocks.\"\nCPO Mendez stepped from the cockpit into the passenger compartment. The trainees stood and snapped to attention. \"At ease, and sit down.\" The silver at Mendez's temples had grown to a band across the side of his closely shaved hair, but if anything he had gotten stronger and tougher since John had first laid eyes on him two years ago.\n\"Today's mission will be simple for a change.\" Mendez's voice easily penetrated the roar of the dropship's engines. He handed a stack of papers to Kelly. \"Pass these out, Recruit.\"\n\"Sir!\" She saluted smartly and handed one paper to each of the seventy-five children in the squad.\n\"These are portions of maps of the local region. You will be set down by yourselves. You will then navigate to a marked extraction point and we will pick you up there.\"\nJohn turned his map over. It was just one part of a much larger mapno drop or extraction point marked. How was he supposed to navigate without a reference point? But he knew this was part of the mission, to answer that question on his own.\n\"One more thing,\" Mendez said. \"The last trainee to make it to the extraction point will be left behind.\"\nHe glanced out a window. \"And it's a very long walk back.\"\nJohn didn't like it. He wasn't going to lose, but he didn't want anyone else to lose, either. The thought of Kelly or Sam or any of the others marching all the way back made him uneasy . . . if theycould make it all the way back alone over those mountains.\n\"First drop in three minutes,\" Mendez barked. \"Trainee 117, you're up first.\"\n\"Sir! Yes, sir!\" John replied. He glanced out the window and scanned the terrain. There was a ring of jagged mountains, a valley thick with cedars, and a ribbon of silvera river that fed into a lake. John nudged Sam, pointed to the river, then jerked his thumb toward the lake.Sam nodded, then pulled Kelly aside and pointed out the window. Kelly and Sam moved quickly down the line of seated trainees. The ship decelerated. John felt his stomach rise as they dropped toward the ground.\n\"Trainee 117: front and center.\" Mendez stepped to the rear of the compartment as the ship's tail split and a ramp extended. Cold air blasted into the ship. He patted John on the shoulder. \"Watch out for wolves in the forest, 117.\"\n\"Yes, sir!\" John looked over his shoulder at the others. His teammates gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Good, everyone got his message. He ran down the ramp and into the forest. The dropship's engines roared to life and it rose high into the cloudless sky. He zipped up his jacket. He wore only fatigues, boots, and a heavy parkanot exactly the gear he'd pack for a prolonged stay in the wilderness. John started toward one particularly sharp peak he had spotted from the air; the river lay in that direction. He'd follow it downstream and meet the others at the lake. He marched through the woods until he heard the gurgling of a stream. He got close enough to see the direction of the flow, then headed back into the forest. Mendez's exercises often had a twist to themstun mines on the obstacle course, snipers with paint pellet guns during parade drills. And with the Chief up in that dropship, John wasn't about to reveal his position unless he had a good reason. He passed a blueberry bush and took the time to strip it before he moved on. This was the first time in months he had been alone and could just think. He popped a handful of berries into his mouth and chewed.He thought about the place that had been his home, his parents . . . but more and more that seemed like a dream. John knew it wasn't, and that he had once had a different life. But this was the life he wanted. He was a soldier. He had an important job to train for. Mendez said they were the Navy's best and brightest. That they were the only hope for peace. He liked that. Before, he never knew what he would be when he grew up. He never really thought about anything other than watching vids and playingnothing had been a challenge. Now every day was a challenge and a new adventure. John knew more things, thanks to Deja, than he ever thought he could have learned at his old school:\nalgebra and trigonometry, the history of a hundred battles and kings. He could string a trip line, fire a rifle, and treat a chest wound. Mendez had shown him how to be strong . . . not only with his body, but strong with his head, too. He had a family here: Kelly, Sam, and all the others in his squad.The thought of his squadmates brought him back to Mendez's missionone of them was going to be left behind. There had to be a way to get them all home. John decided he wasn't going to leave if he couldn't figure it out. He arrived at the edge of the lake; stood and listened. John heard an owl hooting in the distance. He marched toward the sound. \"Hey, owl,\" he said when he was close. Sam stepped out from behind a tree and grinned. \"That's 'Chief Owl' to you, Trainee.\"\nThey walked around the circumference of the lake, gathering the rest of the children in the squad. John counted them to make sure: sixty-seven.\n\"Let's get the map pieces together,\" Kelly suggested.\"Good idea,\" John said. \"Sam, take three and scout the area. I don't want any of the Chief's surprises sneaking up on us.\"\n\"Right.\" Sam picked Fhajad, James, and Linda and then the four of them took off into the brush. Kelly collected the map pieces and settled in the shade of an ancient cedar tree. \"Some of these don't belong, and some are copies,\" she said, and she laid them out. \"Yes, here's an edge. Got itthis is the lake, the river, and here . . . \" She pointed to a distant patch of green. \"That's got to be the extraction point.\" She shook her head and frowned. \"If the legend on this map is right, it's a full day's hike, though. We better get started.\"\nJohn whistled and a moment later Sam and his scouts returned.\n\"Let's move out,\" John said. No one argued. They fell into line behind Kelly as she navigated. Sam blazed the trail ahead. He had the best eyes and ears. Several times he stopped and signaled everyone to freeze or hidebut it turned out to be just a rabbit or a bird. After several miles of marching, Sam dropped back. He whispered to John, \"This is too easy. It's not like any of the Chief's normal field exercises.\"\nJohn nodded. \"I've been thinking that, too. Just keep your eyes and ears sharp.\"\nThey stopped at noon to stretch and eat berries they had gathered along the trail. Fhajad spoke up. \"I want to know one thing,\" he said. He paused to wipe the sweat off his dark skin.\n\"We're going to get to the extraction point at the same time. So who's getting left behind? We should decide now.\"\n\"Draw straws,\" someone suggested.\n\"No,\" John said, and stood. \"No one's being left behind. We're going to figure a way to getall of us out.\"\n\"How?\" Kelly asked, scratching her head. \"Mendez said\"\"I know what he said. But there's got to be a wayI just haven't thought of one yet. Even if it has to be me that stays behindI'll make sure everyone gets back to the base.\" John started marching again. \"Come on, we're wasting time.\"\nThe others fell in behind him. The shadows of the trees lengthened and melted together and the sun turned the edge of the sky red. Kelly halted and motioned for everyone else to stop. \"We're almost there,\" she whispered.\n\"Me and Sam will scout it out,\" John said. \"Everyone fall out . . . and keep quiet.\"The rest of the children silently followed his orders.John and Sam crept through the underbrush and then hunkered down at the edge of a meadow. The dropship sat in the center of the grassy field; her floodlights illuminated everything for thirty meters. Six men sat on the open launch ramp, smoking cigarettes and passing a canteen between themselves. Sam motioned to drop back. \"You recognize them?\" he whispered.\n\"No. You?\"Sam shook his head. \"They're not in uniform. They don't look like any soldiers I've ever seen. Maybe they're rebels. Maybe they stole the dropship and killed the Chief.\"\n\"No way,\" John said. \"Nothing can kill the Chief. But one thing's for sure: I don't think we can just walk up there and get a free ride back to the base. Let's go back.\"\nThey crept back into the woods and then explained the situation to the others.\n\"What do you want to do?\" Kelly asked him.John wondered why she thought he had an answer. He looked around and saw everyone was watching him, waiting for him to speak. He shifted on his feet. He had to say something.\n\"Okay . . . we don't know who these men are or what they'll do when they see us. So we find out.\"\nThe children nodded, seeming to think this was the right thing to do.\"Here's how,\" John told them. \"First, I'll need a rabbit.\"\"That's me,\" Kelly said, and sprang to her feet. \"I'm the fastest.\"\n\"Good,\" John said. \"You go to the edge of the meadowand then let them see you. I'll go along and hide nearby and watch. In case anything happens to you, I'll report back to the others.\"\nShe nodded.\"Then you lure a few back here. Run right past this spot. Sam, you'll be out in the open, pretending like you've broken your leg.\"\n\"Gotcha,\" Sam said. He walked over to Fhajad and had him scrape his shin with his boot. Blood welled from the wound.\"The rest of you,\" John said, \"wait in the woods in a big circle. If they try to do anything but help Sam . . . \" John made a fist with his right hand and slammed it into his open palm. \"Remember the moose and the wolves?\"\nThey all nodded and grinned. They had seen that lesson many times in Deja's classroom.\n\"Get some rocks,\" John told them. Kelly stripped off her parka, stretched her legs and knees. \"Okay,\" she said, \"let's do this.\"Sam lay down, clutching his leg. \"Ooohit hurts, help me.\"\"Don't overdo it,\" John said, and kicked some dirt on him. \"Or they'll know it's a setup.\"\nJohn and Kelly then crept toward the meadow and halted a few meters form the edge. He whispered to her, \"If you want me to be the rabbit . . . \"\nShe slugged him in the shoulderhard. \"You think I can't do my part?\"\"I take it back,\" he said, rubbing his shoulder. John moved off ten meters to her flank, took cover, and watched. Kelly emerged at the edge of the meadow, stepping into the illumination from the dropship's floodlights.\"Hey!\" she said, and waved her arms over her head. \"Over here. You got any food? I'm starving.\"The men slowly stood and pulled out stun batons. \"There's one,\" John heard them whisper. \"I'll get her. The rest of you stay here and wait for the others.\"\nThe man cautiously approached Kelly, a stun baton held behind his back so she couldn't see it. She stayed put and waited for him to get closer.\n\"Hang on a sec,\" she said. \"I dropped my jacket back there. I'll be right back.\" She turned and ran. The man leaped after her, but she had already vanished into the shadows.\n\"Stop!\"\n\"This will be too easy,\" one of other men said. \"Kids won't know what hit them.\" Another remarked,\n\"Fish in a barrel.\"John had heard enough. He ran after Kelly, but realized that neither he nor the other man had a chance to catch her. He halted when he got close to where Sam lay. The man stopped. He looked around, his eyes not quite adjusted to the dark, then spotted Sam on the ground holding his bloody leg.\n\"Please, help me,\" Sam whimpered. \"It's broken.\"\n\"I got your broken leg right here, kid.\" The man raised his baton.John picked up a rock. He threw it, but missed.The man spun around. \"Who's there?\"\nSam rolled to his feet and darted away. There was a rustling in the forest, then a hail of stones whistled through the trees, pelting the man. Kelly appeared and sidearmed a rock as hard as she couldand hit the man dead center in the forehead.He toppled and slammed into the ground. The other children moved in. \"What do we do with him?\" Sam asked.\n\"It's just an exercise, right?\" Fhajad said. \"He has to be with Mendez.\"John rolled the man over. A trickle of blood snaked from his head into his eye socket.\"You heard him,\" John whispered. \"You saw what he was going to do to Sam. Mendez or our trainers would never do that to us. Ever. He's got no uniform. No insignias. He's not one of us.\"\nJohn kicked the man in the face and then the ribs. The man reflexively curled into a ball. \"Get his baton.\"\nSam grabbed the weapon. He kicked him, too.\"Now we go back and get the others,\" John told them. \"Kelly, you be the rabbit again. Just get them to the edge of the clearing. Duck out, and let us do the rest.\"\nShe nodded and started back to the meadow. The rest of the squad fanned out, collecting rocks along the way. After a minute Kelly stepped onto the grassy field and shouted, \"That guy fell and hit his head. Over here!\"\nThe five remaining men stood and ran toward her. When they were close enough, John whistled. The air suddenly swarmed with stones. The men held up their hands and tried to protect themselves. They dropped and covered their heads. John whistled again and sixty-seven children charged screaming toward the bewildered men. The men got up to defend themselves. They looked stunnedlike they couldn't believe what they were seeing. Sam smashed his baton over a man's head. Fhajad was hit squarely in the face by one man's fist, and he fell. The men were overwhelmed by a wave of flesh, beaten to the ground with fists and stones and boots until they no longer moved. John stood over their bleeding bodies. He was mad. They would have hurt him and his squad. He wanted to kick in their skulls. He took a deep breath and then exhaled. He had better things to do and bigger problems to figure outanger would have to wait.\n\"Want to call Mendez now?\" Sam asked as he pulled Fhajad shakily to his feet.\n\"Not yet,\" John told him. He marched onto the dropship. No one else was on board. John accessed the COM system and opened the mail link. He linked up with Deja. Her face appeared, a scratchy hologram hovering over the terminal.\n\"Good evening, Trainee 117,\" she said. \"Do you have a homework question?\"\"Kind of,\" he replied. \"One of CPO Mendez's assignments.\"\n\"Ah.\" After moment's pause she said, \"Very well.\"\n\"I'm in a Pelican dropship. There's no pilot, but I need to get home. Teach me to fly it, please.\"Deja shook her head. \"You are not rated to fly that craft, Trainee. But Ican help. Do you see the winged icon in the corner of your screen? Tap it three times.\"\nJohn tapped it and a hundred icons and displays filled the screen.\"Touch the green arrows at nine o'clock twice,\" she told him. He did and then the wordsautopilot activated flashed onscreen.\n\"I have control now,\" Deja said. \"I will get you home.\"\n\"Hang on a second,\" John said and ran outside. \"Everyone onboarddouble time!\"The children ran onto the ship.Kelley paused and asked, \"Who's getting left behind?\"\n\"No one,\" John said. \"Just get in.\" He made sure he was the last on the ship, then said, \"Okay, Deja, get out us out of here.\"\nThe dropship's jets roared to life and it rose into the sky.* * *\nJohn stood at attention in Chief Petty Officer Mendez's office. He had never been in here. No one had. A trickle of sweat dripped down his back. The dark wood paneling and the smell of cigar smoke made him feel claustrophobic. Mendez glowered at John as he read the report on his clipboard.The door opened and Dr. Halsey walked in. Mendez stood, gave her a curt nod and then sat back in his padded chair.\n\"Hello, John,\" Dr. Halsey said. She sat across from Mendez, crossed her legs, and then adjusted her gray skirt.\n\"Dr. Halsey,\" John replied instantly. He saluted. None of the other grown-ups called him by his first name, ever. He didn't understand why she did.\n\"Trainee 117,\" Mendez snapped. \"Tell me again why you stole UNSC property . . . and why you attacked the men I had assigned to guard it.\"\nJohn wanted to explain that he was just doing what had to be done. That he was sorry. That he would do anything to make it up. But John knew the Chief hated whiners, almost as much as he hated excuses.\"Sir,\" John said. \"The guards were out of uniform. No insignia. They failed to identify themselves, sir!\"\n\"Hmm,\" Mendez mused over the report again. \"So it seems. And the ship?\"\n\"I took my squad home, sir. I was the last onboardso if anyone should have been left\"\n\"I didn't ask for a passenger list, Crewman.\" His voice softened to a growl and he turned to Dr. Halsey.\n\"What are we going to do with this one?\"\n\"Do?\" She pushed her glasses higher on her nose and examined John. \"I think that's obvious, Chief. Make him a Squad Leader.\"\nCHAPTER SIX\n1130 Hours March 09, 2525 (Military Calendar) /\nEpsilon Eridani System, Office of Naval Intelligence Medical Facility, in orbit around planet Reach\n\"I want that transmission decoded now,\" Dr. Halsey snapped at Deja.\"The encryption scheme is extremely complex,\" replied Deja with a hint of irritation in her normally glass-smooth voice. \"I don't even know why they bothered. Who else but Beta-5 Division even has the resources to use this data?\"\n\"Spare me the banter, Deja. I'm not in the mood. Just concentrate on the decryption.\"\n\"Yes, Doctor.\"\nDr. Halsey paced across the antiseptic white tile of the Observation Room. One side of the room was filled with floor-to-ceiling terminals that monitored the vital signs of the childrentest subjects, she corrected herself. They displayed drug uptake rates and winking green, blue, and red status indicators: EKGs, pulse rates, and a hundred other pieces of medical data. The other side of the observation room overlooked dozens of translucent domes, windows into the surgical bays on the level below. Each bay was a sealed environment, staffed with the best surgeons and biotechnicians that the Office of Naval Intelligence could drum up. The bays had been scrubbed and irradiated and were in the final preparation stages to receive and hold the special biohazardous materials.\n\"Done,\" Deja announced. \"The file awaits your inspection, Doctor.\"\nDr. Halsey stopped her pacing and sat. \"On my glasses, please, Deja.\"Her glasses scanned retinal and brain patterns, and the security barrier of the file lifted. With a blink of her eyes, she opened the file. It read:\nUnited Nations Space Command Priority Transmission 09872H-98\nEncryption Code:RedPublic Key:file /excised access Omega/\nFrom:Admiral Ysionris Jeromi, Chief Medical Officer, UNSC Research Station Hopeful To:Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey M.D., Ph.D., special civilian consultant (civilian Identification Number: 10141-026-SRB4695)\nSubject:Mitigating factors and relative biological risks associated with queried experimental medical procedures. Classification:RESTRICTED (BGX Directive)/start file/\nCatherine, I am afraid further analysis has yielded no viable alternatives to mitigate the risks in your proposed\n\"hypothetical\" experimentation. I have, however, attached the synopsis of my team's findings as well as all relevant case studies. Perhaps you will find them useful. I hope it is a hypothetical study . . . the use of Binobo chimpanzees in your proposal is troublesome. These animals are expensive and rare now since they are no longer bred in captivity. I would hate to see such valuable specimens wasted in some Section Three project. Best, y.j.She winced at the veiled rebuke in the Admiral's communique. He had never approved of her decision to work with the Office of Naval Intelligence, and made his disappointment with his star pupil evident every time she visitedHopeful. It was hard enough to justify the morality of the course she was about to embark upon. Jeromi's disapproval only made her decision more difficult. Dr. Halsey gritted her teeth and returned to the report. Synopsis of chemical/ biological risksWARNING: the following procedures are classified level-3 experimental. Primate test subjects must be cleared through UNSC Quartermaster General Office code: OBF34. Follow gamma code biohazard disposal protocol.\n1. Carbide ceramic ossification:advanced material grafting onto skeletal structures to make bones virtually unbreakable. Recommended coverage not to exceed 3 percent total bone mass because of significant white blood cell necrosis. Specific risk for pre- and near-postpubescent adolescents: skeletal growth spurts may cause irreparable bone pulverization. See attached case studies.\n2.Muscular enhancement injections: protein complex is injected intramuscularly to increase tissue density and decrease lactase recovery time. Risk: 5 percent of test subjects experience a fatal cardiac volume increase.\n3. Catalytic thyroid implant:platinum pellet containing human growth hormone catalyst is implanted in the thyroid to boost growth of skeletal and muscle tissues. Risk: rare instances of elephantiasis. Suppressed sexual drive.\n4. Occipital capillary reversal:submergence and boosted blood vessel flow beneath the rods and cones of subject's retina. Produces a marked visual perception increase. Risk: retinal rejection and detachment. Permanent blindness. See attached autopsy reports.\n5. Superconducting fibrification of neural dendrites:alteration of bioelectrical nerve transduction to shielded electronic transduction. Three hundred percent increase in subject reflexes. Anecdotal evidence of marked increase in intelligence, memory, and creativity. Risk: significant instances of Parkinson's disease and Fletcher's syndrome.\n/end file/\nPressENTER to open linked attachments.Dr. Halsey closed the file. She erased all traces of itsent Deja to track the file pathways all the way back toHopeful and destroy Admiral Jeromi's notes and files relative to this incident. She removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose.\n\"I'm sorry,\" Deja said. \"I, too, had hoped there would be some new process to lower the risks.\"Dr. Halsey sighed. \"I have doubts, Deja. I thought the reasons so compelling when we first started project SPARTAN. Now? I . . . I just don't know.\"\n\"I have been over the ONI projections of Outer Colony stability three times, Doctor. Their conclusion is correct: massive rebellion within twenty years unless drastic military action is taken. And you know the 'drastic military action' the brass would like. The SPARTANS are our only option to avoid overwhelming civilian losses. They will be the perfect pinpoint strike force. They can prevent a civil war.\"\n\"Only if they survive to fulfill that mission,\" Dr. Halsey countered. \"We should delay the procedures. More research needs to be done. We could use the time to work on MJOLNIR. We need time to\"\n\"There is another reason to proceed expeditiously,\" Deja said. \"Although I am loath to bring this to your attention, I must. If the Office of Naval Intelligence detects a delay in their prize project, you will likely be replaced by someone who harbors . . . fewer doubts. And regrettably for the children, most likely someone less qualified.\"\n\"I hate this.\" Dr. Halsey got up and strode to the fire exit. \"And sometimes, Deja, I hate you, too.\" She left the observation room. Mendez was waiting for her in the hallway.\"Walk with me, Chief,\" she said. He followed without a word as they took the stairs to the pre-op wing of the hospital. They entered room 117. John lay in bed and an IV drip was attached to his arm. His head had been shaved and incision vectors had been lasered onto his entire body. Despite these indignities, Dr. Halsey marveled at what a spectacular physical specimen he had grown into. Fourteen years old and he had the body of an eighteen-year-old Olympic athlete, and a mind the equal of any Naval Academy honors graduate. Dr. Halsey forced the best smile she could muster. \"How are you feeling?\"\n\"I'm fine, ma'am,\" John replied groggily. \"The nurse said the sedation would take effect soon. I'm fighting it to see how long I can stay awake.\" His eyelids fluttered. \"It's not easy.\"\nJohn spotted Mendez and he struggled to sit up and salute, but failed. \"I know this is one of the Chief's exercises. But I don't know what the twist is. Can you tell me, Dr. Halsey? Just this time? How do I win?\"\nMendez looked away.Dr. Halsey leaned closer to John as he closed his eyes and started to breathe deeply.\n\"I'll tell you how to win, John,\" she whispered. \"You have to survive.\"\nCHAPTER SEVEN\n0000 Hours March 30, 2525 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSC CarrierAtlas en route to the LambdaSerpentis system\n\"And so we commit the bodies of our fallen brothers to space.\"Mendez solemnly closed his eyes for a moment, the ceremony completed. He pressed a control and the ash canisters moved slowly into the ejection tubes . . . and the void beyond. John stood rigidly at attention. The carrier's missile launch baysnormally cramped, overcrowded, and bustling with activitywere unusually quiet. TheAtlas 's firing deck had been cleared of munitions and crew. Long, unadorned black banners now hung from the bay's overhead gantries.\n\"Honors . . .ten hut !\" Mendez barked. John and the other surviving Spartans saluted in unison.\"Duty,\" Mendez said. \"Honor and self sacrifice. Death does not diminish these qualities in a soldier. We shall remember.\"\nA series of thumps resounded through theAtlas 's hull as the canisters were hurled into space. The view screen flickered and displayed a field of stars. The canisters appeared one by one, quickly falling behind the carrier as it continued on its course. John watched. With each of the stainless-steel cylinders that drifted by, he felt that he was losing a part of himself. It felt like leaving his people behind. Mendez's face might as well been chiseled from stone, for all the emotion it showed. He finished his protracted salute and then said, \"Crewmen, dismissed.\"\nNot everything had been lost. John glanced around the launch chamber; Sam, Kelly, and thirty others still stood at attention in their black dress uniforms. They had made it unharmed through the lastmission wasn't quite the right word. More or less. There were a dozen others, though, who had lived . . . but were no longer soldiers. It hurt John to look at them. Fhajad sat in a wheelchair, shaking uncontrollably. Kirk and Rene were in neutral-buoyancy gel tanks, breathing through respirators; their bones had been so twisted they no longer looked human. There were others, still alive, but with injuries so critical they could not be moved. Orderlies pushed Fhajad and the other injured toward the elevator. John strode toward them and stopped, blocking their path. \"Stand fast, Crewman,\" he demanded.\n\"Where are you taking my men?\"\nThe orderly halted and his eyes widened. He swallowed and then said, \"I, sir . . . I have my orders, sir.\"\"Squad Leader,\" Mendez called out. \"A moment.\"\"Stay,\" John told the orderly, and marched to face Chief Mendez. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\"Let them go,\" Mendez said quietly. \"They can't fight anymore. They don't belong here.\"\nJohn inadvertently glanced at the view screen and the long line of canisters as they shrank in the distance. \"What will happen to my men?\"\n\"The Navy takes care of its own,\" Mendez replied, and lifted his chin a little higher. \"They may no longer be the fastest or the strongest soldiersbut they still have sharp minds. They can still plan missions, analyze data, troubleshoot ops . . .\"\nJohn exhaled a sigh of relief. \"That's all any of us ask for, sir: a chance to serve.\" He turned to face Fhajad and the others. He snapped to attention and saluted. Fhajad managed to raise one shaking arm and return the salute. The orderlies wheeled them away.John looked at what remained of his squad. None of them had moved since the memorial ceremony. They were waiting for their next mission.\n\"Our orders, sir?\" John asked.\n\"Two days full bed rest, Squad Leader. Then microgravity physical therapy aboard theAtlas until you recover from the side effects of your augmentation.\"\nSide effects.John flexed his hand. He was clumsy now. Sometimes he could barely walk without falling. Dr. Halsey had assured him that these \"side effects\" were a good sign. \"Your brain must relearn how to move your body with faster reflexes and stronger muscles,\" she told him. But his eyes hurt, and they bled a little in the morning, too. He had constant headaches. Every bone in his body ached. John didn't understand any of this. He only knew that he had a duty to performand now he feared he wouldn't be able to. \"Is that all, sir?\" he asked Mendez.\n\"No,\" the Chief replied. \"Deja will be running your squad through the dropship pilot simulator as soon as they are up to it. And,\" he added, \"if they are up for the challenge, she wanted to cover some more organic chemistry and complex algebra.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" John replied, \"we're up to the challenge.\"\"Good.\"John continued to stand fast.\n\"Was there something else, Squad Leader?\"\nJohn furrowed his brow, hesitated, and then finally said, \"I was Squad Leader. The last mission was therefore my responsibility . . . and members of my squaddied . What did I do wrong?\"\nMendez stared at John with his impenetrable black eyes. He glanced at the squad, then back to John.\n\"Walk with me.\" He led John to the view screen. He stood and watched as the last of the canisters vanished into the darkness.\n\"A leader must be ready to send the soldiers under his command to their deaths,\" Mendez said without turning to face John. \"You do this because your duty to the UNSC supersedes your duty to yourself or even your crew.\"\nJohn looked away from the view screen. He couldn't look at the emptiness anymore. He didn't want to think of his teammatesfriends who were like brothers and sisters to himforever lost.\n\"It is acceptable,\" Mendez said, \"to spend their lives if necessary.\" He finally turned and meet John's gaze. \"It is not acceptable, however, to waste those lives. Do you understand the difference?\"\n\"I . . . believe I understand, sir,\" John said. \"But which was it on this last mission? Lives spent? Or lives wasted?\"\nMendez turned back toward the blackness of space and didn't answer.\n 0430 Hours, April 22, 2525 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSC CarrierAtlas on patrol in the LambdaSerpentis System John oriented himself as he entered the gym. From the stationary corridor, it was easy to see that this section of theAtlas rotated. The constant acceleration gave the circular walls a semblance of gravity. Unlike the other portions of the carrier, however, this section wasn't cylindrical, but rather a segmented cone. The outer portion was wider and rotated more slowly than the narrower inner portionsimulating gravitational forces from one quarter to two gravities along the length of the gym. There were free weights, punching and speed bags, a boxing ring, and machines to stretch and tone every muscle group. No one else was up this early. He had the place to himself. John started with arm curls. He went to the center section, calibrated at one gee, and picked up a twenty kilogram dumbbell. It felt wrongtoo light. The spin must be off. He set the weights down and picked up a forty-kilogram set. That felt right. For the last three weeks the Spartans had gone through a daily routine of stretching, isometric exercises, light sparring drills, and lots of eating. They were under orders to consume five high-protein meals a day. After every meal they had to report to the ship's medical bay for a series of mineral and vitamin injections. John was looking forward to getting back to Reach and his normal routine. There were only thirty-two soldiers left in his squad. Thirty candidates had \"washed out\" of the Spartan program; they died during the augmentation process. The other dozen, suffering from side effects of the process, had been permanently reassigned within the Office of Naval Intelligence. He missed them all, but he and the others had to go onthey had to recover and prove themselves all over again. John wished Chief Mendez had warned him. He could have prepared. Maybe that was the trick to the last missionto learn to be prepared for anything. He wouldn't let his guard down again. He took a seat at the leg machine, set it to the maximum weightbut it felt too light. He moved to the high-gee end of the gym. Things felt normal again. John worked every machine, then moved to a speed bag, a leather ball attached to the floor and ceiling by a thick elastic band. There were only certain allowed frequencies at which the bag could be hit, or it gyrated chaotically.His fist jabbed forward, cobra-quick, and struck. The speed bag moved, but slowly, like it was underwater . . . far too slowly considering how hard he had hit it. The tension on the line must be turned way down. He twanged the line and it hummed. It was tight. Was everything broken in this room?\nHe pulled a pin from the locking collar on the bench press. John walked to the center section supposedly one gee. He held the pin a meter off the deck and dropped it. It clattered on the deck. It looked as if it had fallen normally . . . but somehow it also looked slow to John.He set the timer on his watch and dropped the pin again. Forty-five-hundredths of a second. One meter in about a half second. He forgot the formula for distance and acceleration, so he ran through the calculus and rederived the equation. He even did the square root. He frowned. He had always struggled with math before.The answer was a gravitational acceleration of nine point eight meters per second squared. One standard gee. So the roomwas rotating correctly.He was out of calibration. His experiment was cut short. Four men entered the gym. They were out of uniform, wearing only shorts and boots. Their heads were cleanly shaven. They were all heavily muscled, lean, and fit. The largest of the four was taller than John. Scars covered one side of his face. John could tell they were Special ForcesOrbital Drop Shock Troopers. The ODSTs had the traditional tattoos burned onto their arms: DROP JET JUMPERS and FEET FIRST INTO HELL.\n\"Helljumpers\"the infamous 105th. John had overheard mess hall chatter about them. They had a reputation for success . . . and for brutality, even against fellow soldiers. John gave them a polite nod. They just brushed past him and started on the high-gravity free weights. The largest ODST lifted the bar of the bench press. He struggled and the bar wavered unsteadily. The iron plates on the right end slid off and fell to the deck. The opposite end of the bar tilted, and he dropped the weight, almost crushing his spotter's foot.Startled by the noise, John jumped up.\n\"What the\" The big ODST stood and glared at the locking collar that had slipped off. \"Someone took the pin.\" He growled and turned to John. John picked up the pin. \"The error was mine,\" he said and stepped forward. \"My apologies.\"\nThe four ODSTs moved as one toward John. The big guy with the scars stood a hand's breadth away from John's nose. \"Why don't you take that pin and shove it, meat?\" he said, grinning. \"Or better yet, maybe I should make you eat it.\" He nodded to his friends. John only knew three ways to react to people. If they were his superior officers, he obeyed them. If they were part of his squad, he helped them. If they were a threat, he neutralized them. So when the men surrounding him moved . . . he hesitated. Not because he was afraid, but because these men could have fallen into any of John's three categories. He didn't know their rank. They were fellow servicemen in the UNSC. But, at the moment, they didn't seem friendly. The two men flanking him grabbed John's biceps. The one behind him tried to slip an arm around his neck. John hunched his shoulders and tucked his chin to his chest so he couldn't be choked. He whipped his right elbow over the hand holding him, pinned it to his side, and then straight punched the man and broke his nose. The other three reacted, tightening their grips and stepping closerbut like the dropped pin, they moved slowly. John ducked and slipped out of the unsuccessful headlock. He spun free, breaking the grasp of the man on his left at the same time.\n\"Stand down!\" A booming voice echoed across the gym.A sergeant stepped into the gym and strode toward them. Unlike Mendez, who was fit and trim and was always serious, this man's stomach bulged over his belt, and he looked bemused. John snapped to attention. The others stood there and continued to glare at John.\n\"Sarge,\" the man with the bleeding nose said. \"We were just\"\"Did I ask you a question?\" the Sergeant barked.\n\"No, Sergeant!\" the man replied. The Sergeant eyed John, then the ODSTs. \"You're all so eager to fight, get in the ring and go to it.\"\n\"Sir!\" John said. He went to the boxing ring, slipped through the ropes, and stood there waiting.This was starting to make sense. It was a mission. John had received orders from a superior officer, and the four men were now targets. The big ODST pushed through the ropes and the others gathered to watch. \"I'm going to rip you to pieces, meat,\" he grunted through clenched teeth. John sprang off his back foot and launched his entire weight behind his first strike. His fist smashed into the man's wide chin. John's left hand followed and impacted on the soldier's jaw. The man's hands came up; John stepped in, pinned one of the man's arms to his chest, and followed through with a hook to his floating ribs. Bones broke. The man staggered back. John took a short step, brought his heel down on the man's knee. Three more punches and the man was against the ropes . . . then he stopped moving, his arm and leg and neck tilted at unnatural angles. The three other men moved. The one with the bloody nose grabbed an iron bar. John didn't need orders this time. Three attackers at oncehe had to take them out before they surrounded him. He might be faster, but he didn't have eyes in the back of his head. The man with the iron bar swung a vicious blow at John's ribs; John sidestepped, grabbed the man's hand, and clamped it to the bar. He twisted the bar and crushed the bones of his attacker's wrist. John snapped a side kick toward the second man, caught him in the groin, crushing the soft organs and breaking his target's pelvis. John pulled the bar freewhipped around and caught the third man in the neck, hitting him so hard the ODST was propelled over the ropes.\n\"At ease, Number 117,\" Chief Petty Officer Mendez barked.John obeyed and dropped the bar. Like the pin, it seemed to take too long for the impromptu weapon to hit the deck. The ODSTs lay crumpled on the ground, either unconscious or dead. Mendez, at the far end of the gym, strode toward the boxing ring. The Sergeant stood with his mouth open. \"Chief Mendez, sir!\" He snapped a crisp salute. \"What are you\n\" He turned to John, his eyes widened, and he murmured, \"He's one ofthem , isn't he?\"\n\"Medics are on their way,\" Mendez said calmly. He stepped closer to the Sergeant. \"There are two intel officers waiting for you in Ops. They'll debrief you . . .\" He stepped back. \"I suggest you report to them immediately.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" the Sergeant said. He almost ran out of the gym. He looked once over his shoulder at John;\nthen he moved even faster.\n\"Your workout is over for today,\" Mendez told John. John saluted and left the ring.A team of medics entered with stretchers and rushed toward the boxing ring.\n\"Permission to speak, sir?\" John said. Mendez nodded.\"Were those men part of a mission? Were they targets or teammates?\"John knew that thishad to be some sort of mission. The Chief had been too close for it to be a coincidence.\n\"You engaged and neutralized a threat,\" Mendez replied. \"That action seems to have answered your question, Squad Leader.\"\nJohn wrinkled his forehead as he thought it through. \"I followed the chain of command,\" he said. \"The Sergeant told me to fight. I was threatened and in imminent danger. But they were still UNSC Special Forces. Fellow soldiers.\"\nMendez lowered his voice. \"Not every mission has simple objectives or comes to a logical conclusion. Your priorities are to follow the orders in your chain of command, and then to preserve your life and the lives of your team. Is that clear?\"\n\"Sir,\" John said. \"Yes, sir.\" He glanced back at the ring. Blood was seeping into the canvas mat. John had an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hit the showers and let the blood rinse off him. He felt strangely sorry for the men he had killed. But he knew his dutythe Chief had even been unusually verbose in order to clarify the matter. Follow orders and keep himself and his team safe. That's all he had to focus on. John didn't give the incident in the gym another thought. CHAPTER EIGHT\n0930 Hours, September 11, 2525 (Military Calendar) / Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, planet Reach Dr. Halsey reclined in Mendez's padded chair. She considered pilfering one of the Sweet William cigars from the box on his desksee why he considered them such a treat. The stench wafting from the box, however, was too overwhelming. How did he stand them?\nThe door opened and CPO Mendez halted in the doorway. \"Ma'am,\" he said, and stood straighter. \"I wasn't informed that you would be visiting today. In fact, I had understood that you were out of the system for another week. I would have made arrangements.\"\n\"I'm sure you would have.\" She folded her hands in her lap. \"Our situation has changed. Where are my Spartans? They are not in their barracks, nor on any of the ranges.\"\nMendez hesitated. \"They can no longer train here, ma'am. We had to find them . . . other facilities.\"\nDr. Halsey stood and smoothed the pleats in her gray skirt. \"Maybe you should explain that statement, Chief.\"\n\"I could,\" he replied, \"but it will be easier to show you.\"\n\"Very well,\" Dr. Halsey said, her curiosity piqued. Mendez escorted her to his personal Warthog parked outside his office. The all-terrain combat vehicle had been refitted; the heavy chain-gun on the back had been removed and replaced with a rack of Argent V missiles. Mendez drove them off the base and onto winding mountain roads. \"Reach was first colonized for its rich titanium deposits,\" Mendez told her. \"There are mines in these mountains thousands of meters deep. The UNSC uses them for storage.\"\n\"I presume you do not have my Spartans taking inventory today, Chief?\"\"No, ma'am. We just need the privacy.\"\nMendez drove the Warthog past a manned guardhouse and into a large tunnel that sloped steeply underground.The road wound down in a spiral, deeper into sold granite. Mendez said, \"Do you remember the Navy's first experiments with powered exoskeletons?\"\n\"I'm not sure I see the connection between this place, my Spartans, and the exoskeleton projects,\" Dr. Halsey replied, frowning, \"but I'll play along a bit further. Yes, I know all about the Mark I prototypes. We had to scrap the concept and redesign battle armor from the ground up for the MJOLNIR project. The Mark Is consumed enormous energy. Either they had to be plugged into a generator or use inefficient broadcast powerneither option is practical on a battlefield.\"\nMendez decelerated slightly as he approached a speed bump. The Warthog's massive tires thudded over the obstacle.\n\"They used the units that weren't scrapped,\" Dr. Halsey continued, \"as dock loaders to move heavy equipment.\" She cocked one eyebrow. \"Or might they have been dumped in a place like this?\"\n\"There are dozens of the suits here.\"\"You haven't putmy Spartans in some of those antiques?\"\n\"No. Their trainers are using them for their own safety,\" Mendez replied. \"When the Spartans recovered from microgravity therapy, they were eager to get back to their routine. However, we experienced some\" He paused, searching for the right word. \" . . . difficulties.\"\nHe glanced at his passenger. His face was grim. \"Their first day back, three trainers were accidentally killed during hand-to-hand combat exercises.\"\nDr. Halsey cocked an eyebrow. \"Then they are faster and stronger than we anticipated?\"\n\"That,\" Mendez replied, \"would be understating the situation.\"\nThe tunnel opened into a large cavern. There were lights scattered on the walls, overhead a hundred meters up on the ceiling, and along the floor, but they did little to dissipate the overwhelming darkness. Mendez parked the Warthog next to a small, prefabricated building. He jumped out and helped Dr. Halsey step from the vehicle. \"This way, please.\" Mendez gestured to the room. \"We'll have a better view from inside.\"\nThe building had three glass walls and several monitors marked MOTION, INFRARED, DOPPLER, and PASSIVE. Mendez pushed a button and the room climbed a track along the wall until they were twenty meters off the floor.Mendez keyed a microphone and spoke: \"Lights.\"\nFloodlights snapped on and illuminated a section of the cavern the size of a football field. In the center stood a concrete bunker. Three men in the primitive Mark I power armor stood on top. Six more stood evenly spaced around the perimeter. A red banner had been planted in the center of the bunker.\n\"Capture the flag?\" Dr. Halsey asked. \"Past all that heavy armor?\"\n\"Yes. The trainers in those exoskeletons can run at thirty-two KPH, lift two tons, and have a thirty millimeter minigun mounted on self-targeting armaturesstun rounds, of course. They're also equipped with the latest motion sensors and IR scopes. And needless to say, their armor is impervious to standard light weapons. It would take two or three platoons of conventional Marines to take that bunker.\"\nMendez spoke again in the microphone, and his voice echoed off the cavern walls: \"Start the drill.\"Sixty seconds ticked by. Nothing happened. One hundred twenty seconds. \"Where are the Spartans?\"\nDr. Halsey asked.\n\"They're here,\" Mendez replied. Dr. Halsey caught a glimpse of motion in the dark: a shadow against shadows, a familiar silhouette.\n\"Kelly?\" she whispered.The trainers turned and fired at the shadow, but it moved with almost supernatural quickness. Even the self-targeting systems couldn't track it. From above, a man free-rappelled down from the girders and gantries overhead. The newcomer landed behind one of the perimeter guards, quiet as a cat. He punched the guard's armor twice, denting the heavy plates, then dropped low and swept the target's legs out from under him. The guard sprawled on the ground. The Spartan attached his rappelling line to the trainer. A moment later the writhing guard shot upward, into the darkness. Two other guards turned to attack.The Spartan dodged, rolled, and melted into the shadows. Dr. Halsey realized the trainer's exoskeleton wasn't being pulled upit was being used as a counterweight.Two more Spartans, dangling from the other end of that rope, dropped unnoticed into the center of the bunker. Dr. Halsey immediately recognized one of them, although he was dressed entirely in black, save his open eye slitsNumber 117. John. John landed, braced, and kicked one guard. The man landed in a heap . . . eight meters away. The other Spartan jumped off the bunker; he flipped end over end, evading the stun rounds that filled the air. He threw himself at the farthest guard and they skidded together into the shadows. The guard's gun strobed once, and then it was dark again. On top of the bunker, John was a blur of slashing motions. A second guard's exosuit erupted in a fountain of hydraulic fluid and then collapsed under the armor's weight. The last guard on the bunker turned to fire at John. Halsey gripped the edge of her chair. \"He's at point blank range! Even stun rounds can kill at that distance!\"\nAs the guard's gun fired, John sidestepped. The stun rounds slashed through the air, a clean miss. John grabbed the weapon's armaturetwistedand with a screech of stressed metal, wrenched it free of the exoskeleton. He fired directly into the man's chest and sent him tumbling off the bunker. The remaining quartet of perimeter guards turned and sprayed the area with suppression fire. A heartbeat later, the lights went out.Mendez cursed and keyed the mike. \"Backups. Hit the backup lights now!\"\nA dozen amber floods flickered to life. Not a Spartan was in sight, but the nine trainers were either unconscious or lay immobile in inert battle armor. The red flag was gone.\"Show me that again,\" Dr. Halsey said unbelievingly. \"You recorded all that, didn't you?\"\n\"Of course.\" Mendez tapped a button but the monitors played backstatic. \"Damn it. They got to the cameras, too,\" he muttered, impressed. \"Every time we find a new place to hide them, they disable the recording devices.\"\nDr. Halsey leaned against the glass wall staring at the carnage below. \"Very well, Chief Mendez, what else do I need to know?\"\"Your Spartans can run at bursts of up to fifty-five KPH,\" he explained. \"Kelly can run a little faster, I think. They will only get quicker as they adjust to the 'alterations' we've made to their bodies. They can lift three times their body weightwhich, I might add, is almost double the norm due to their increased muscle density. And they can virtually see in the dark.\"\nDr. Halsey pondered this new data. \"They should not be performing so well. There must be unexplained synergistic effects brought on by the combined modifications. What are their reaction times?\"\n\"Almost impossible to chart. We estimate it at twenty milliseconds,\" Mendez replied. He shook his head, then added, \"I believe it's significantly faster in combat situations, when their adrenaline is pumping.\"\n\"Any physiological or mental instabilities?\"\"None. They work like no team I've ever seen before. Damn near telepathic, if you ask me. They were dropped in these caves yesterday, and I don't know where they got black suits or the rope that for that maneuver, but I can guarantee they haven't left this room. They improvise and improve and adapt.\n\"And,\" he added, \"theylike it. The tougher the challenge, the harder the fight . . . the better their morale becomes.\"\nDr. Halsey watched as the first trainer stirred and struggled to get out of his inert armor. \"They might as well have been killed,\" she murmured. \"But can the Spartans kill, Chief? Kill on purpose? Are they ready for real combat?\"\nMendez looked away and paused before he spoke. \"Yes. If we ordered them to, they would kill quite efficiently.\" His body stiffened. \"May I ask what 'real combat' you mean, ma'am?\"\nShe clasped her hands and wrung them nervously. \"Something has happened, Chief. Something ONI and the Admiralty never expected. The brass wants to deploy the Spartans. They want to test them in a real combat mission.\"\n\"They're as ready for that as I can make them,\" Mendez said. He narrowed his dark eyes. \"But this is far ahead of your schedule. What happened? I've heard rumors there was some heavy action near Harvest colony.\"\n\"Your rumors are out-of-date, Chief,\" she said, and a chill crept into her voice. \"There's no more fighting at Harvest. Thereis no more Harvest.\"\nDr. Halsey punched the descent button, and the observation room slowly lowered to the floor.\"Get them out of this hole,\" she said crisply. \"I want them ready to muster at 0400. We have a briefing at 0600 tomorrow aboard thePioneer . We're taking them on a mission ONI has been saving for the right crew and the right time. This is it.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" Mendez replied.\n\"Tomorrow we see if all the pain they've been through has been worth it.\"\nCHAPTER NINE\n0605 Hours, September 12, 2525 (Military Calendar) / UNSC DestroyerPioneer , en route to Eridanus System. John and the other Spartans stood at ease.The briefing room aboard the UNSC DestroyerPioneer made him uncomfortable. The holographic projectors at the fore end of the triangular room showed the field of stars visible off the bow of the ship. John wasn't used to seeing so much space; he kept expecting the room to decompress explosively. The stars flickered and faded and the overhead lights warmed. Chief Petty Officer Mendez and Dr. Halsey entered the room. The Spartans snapped to attention.\n\"At ease,\" Mendez said. He clasped his hands behind his back and clenched his jaw muscles. The Chief looked almost . . . nervous. That made John nervous, too. Dr. Halsey walked to the podium. The overhead light reflected off her glasses. \"Good morning, Spartans. I have good news for you. The word has come down. Command has decided to test your unique abilities. You have a new mission: an insurgent base in the Eridanus System.\"\nA star map appeared on the wall and zoomed in to show a warm orange sun ringed with twelve planets.\n\"In 2513, an armed insurrection in this system was suppressed by the UNSC forceOperation: TREBUCHET.\"\nAn intersystem tactical map appeared, and tiny icons representing destroyers and carriers winked on. They engaged a force of a hundred smaller ships. Pinpoints of fire appeared against the dark.\n\"The insurrection was put down,\" Dr. Halsey continued. \"However, elements of the rebel forces escaped and regrouped in the local asteroid belt.\"\nThe map tilted and moved into the circle of debris around the star.\n\"Billions of rocks,\" Dr. Halsey said, \"where they hid from our forces . . . and continue to hide to this day. For some time ONI believed that the rebels were disorganized, and were lacking in leadership. That appears to have changed.\n\"We believe that one of these asteroids has been hollowed out, and that a formidable base has been constructed within. UNSC explorations into the belt have met either with no contact or with an ambush by superior forces.\"\nShe paused, pushed up her glasses, and added, \"The Office of Naval Intelligence has also confirmed that FLEETCOM has discovered a security breach within their organizationa rebel sympathizer leaking information to these forces.\"\nJohn and the other Spartans shifted uneasily. A leak? It was possible. Deja had shown them many historical battles that had been won and lost because of traitors or informants. But it never occurred to him that it could happen in the UNSC. A flat picture flashed over the star map: a middle-aged man with thinning hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and watery gray eyes.\n\"This is their leader,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Colonel Robert Watts. The original photo was taken after Operation: TREBUCHET and has been computer aged.\n\"Your mission is to infiltrate the rebel base, capture Watts, and return himalive and unharmedto UNSC-controlled space. This will deprive the rebels of their new leadership. And it will provide ONI a chance to interrogate Watts and root out traitors within FLEETCOM.\"\nDr. Halsey stepped aside. \"Chief Mendez?\"Mendez exhaled and unclasped his hands. He strode to the podium and cleared his throat. \"This operation will be different from your previous missions. You will be engaging the enemy using live rounds and lethal force. They will be returning the favor. If there is any doubt, any confusionand make no mistake: in combat, there will be confusiontakeno chances. Kill first, ask questions later.\n\"Support on this mission will be limited to the resources and firepower of this destroyer,\" Mendez continued. \"This is to minimize the chance of a leak in the command structure.\"\nMendez walked to the star map. The face of Colonel Watts snapped off and blueprints for a Parabola class freighter appeared.\n\"Although we don't know the location of the rebel base, we believe they receive periodic shipments from Eridanus Two. The independent freighterLaden is due to leave space dock in six hours for a routine recertification of her engines. She is being loaded with enough food and water to supply a small city. Additionally, her captain has been identified as a rebel officer thought to have been killed during Operation: TREBUCHET.\n\"You will slip aboard this freighter and hopefully hitch a ride to the rebel base. Once there, infiltrate the installation, grab Watts, and get off of that rock any way you can.\"\nChief Mendez gazed at them all. \"Questions?\"\n\"Sir,\" John said. \"What are our extraction options?\"\"You have two options: a panic button that will relay a distress signal to a preestablished listening ship. Also, thePioneer will stay on-station . . . briefly. Our window here is thirteen hours.\" He tapped the star map on the edge of the asteroid belt and it glowed with a blue Nav marker. \"I'll leave the extraction choice up to you. But let me point out that this asteroid belt has a circumference of more than a billion kilometers . . . making it impossible to canvass with ONI surveillance craft. If things get hot, you will be on your own.\n\"Any other questions?\"\nThe Spartans sat, silent and immobile.\n\"No? Well, listen up, Recruits,\" Mendez added. \"This time I've told you all the twists that I know of. Be prepared for anything.\" His gaze fixed on John. \"Squad Leader, you are hereby promoted to the rank of Petty Officer Third Class.\"\n\"Sir!\" John snapped to attention.\n\"Assemble your team and equipment. Be ready to muster at 0300. We'll drop you off at the Eridanus Two docks. You're on your own from there.\"\n\"Yes, sir!\" John said.Mendez saluted. He and Dr. Halsey then left the room.John turned to face his teammates. The other Spartans stood at attention. Thirty-threetoo many for this operation. He needed a small team: five or six maximum.\n\"Sam, Kelly, Linda, and Fred, meet me in the weapons locker in ten minutes.\" The other Spartans sighed and their gazed dropped to the deck. \"The rest of you fall out. You'll have the more difficult part of this mission: You'll have to wait here.\"\n The weapons locker of thePioneer had been stocked with a bewildering array of combat equipment. On a table were guns, knives, communication gear, body armor explosives, medical packs, survival gear, portable computers, even a thruster pack for maneuvering in space. More important than the equipment, however, John assessed his team. Sam had recovered from the augmentation faster than any of the other Spartans. He paced impatiently around the crates of grenades. He was the strongest of them all. He stood taller than John by a head. He had grown out his sandy hair to three centimeters. Chief Mendez had warned him that he was going to look like a civilian soon. Kelly, in contrast, had taken the longest to recover. She stood in the corner with her arms crossed over her chest. John had thought she wasn't going to make it. She was still gaunt and her hair had yet to grow back. Her face, however, still had its rough, angular beauty. She scared John a little, too. She was fast before . . . now no one could touch her if she didn't allow it. Fred sat cross-legged on the deck, twirling a razor-edged combat knife in glittering arcs. He always came in second in all the contests. John thought he could have come in first, but he just didn't like the attention. He was neither too short nor too tall. He wasn't overly muscled or slim. His black hair was shot with streaks of silvera feature he hadn't had before the augmentation. If anyone in the group could blend into a crowd, it would be him. Linda was the quietest member of the group. She was pale, had close-cropped red hair, and green eyes. She was a crack shot, an artist with a sniper rifle. Kelly circled the table once, and then selected a pair of grease-stained blue coveralls. Her name had been sloppily embroidered on the chest. \"These our new trainee uniforms?\"\n\"ONI provided them,\" John said. \"They're supposed to match what the crew of theLaden wears.\"Kelly held the coveralls up and frowned. \"They don't give a girl much to work with.\"\n\"Try this on for size.\" Linda held a black body suit up to Kelly's long slender frame. They had used these black suits before. They were form-fitting, lightweight polymer body armor. They could deflect a small-caliber round and had refrigeration/heating units that would mask infrared signatures. The integrated helmet had encryption and communications gear, a heads-up display, and thermal and motion detectors. Sealed tight, the unit had a fifteen-minute reserve of oxygen to let the wearer survive in vacuum. The suits were uncomfortable, and they were tricky to repair in the field. And they always needed repairs.\n\"They're too tight,\" Kelly said. \"It'll limit my range of motion.\"\n\"We wear them for this op,\" John told her. \"There are too many places between here and there with nothing to breathe but vacuum. As for the rest of your equipment, take what you wantbut stay light. Without recon data on this place, we're going to be moving fast . . . or we'll be dead.\"\nThe team started selecting their weapons first.\"Three-ninety caliber?\" Fred asked.\"Yes,\" John replied. \"Everyone take guns that use .390-caliber ammunition so we can share clips if we have to. Except Linda.\"\nLinda gravitated to a matte-black long-barreled riflethe SRS99C-S2 AM. The sniper rifle system had modular sections: scopes, stocks, barrels, even the firing mechanism could be swapped. She quickly stripped the rifle down and reconfigured it. She assembled a flash-and-sound suppression barrel, and then to compensate for the lower muzzle velocity, she increased the ammunition caliber to .450. She ditched all the sights and scopes and settled for an integrated link to her helmet's heads-up display. She pocketed five extended ammunition clips. John also chose an MA2B, a cut-down version of the standard MA5B assault rifle. It was tough and reliable, with electronic targeting and an ammo supply indicator. It also had a recoil-reduction system, and could deliver an impressive fifteen rounds per second. He picked up a knife: twenty-centimeter blade, one serrated edge, nonreflective titanium carbide, and balanced for throwing. John grabbed the panic buttona tiny single-shot emergency beacon. It had two settings. The red setting alerted thePioneer that it had hit the fan, and to come in guns blazing. The green setting merely marked the location of the base for later assault by the UNSC. He took a double handful of ammo clipsthen paused. He set them down and pocketed five. If they got into a firefight where he'd need that much firepower, their mission was over anyway. Everyone took similar equipment, with a few variations. Kelly selected a small computer pad with IR links. She also had their field medical kit. Fred packed a standard-issue lockbreaker.Linda selected three nav marker transmitters, each the size of a tick. The trackers could be adhered to an object and would broadcast that object's location to the Spartans' heads-up displays. Sam hefted two medium-size backpacks\"damage packs.\" They were filled with C-12, enough high explosives to blow through three meters of battleship armor plate.\n\"You have enough of that stuff?\" Kelly asked him wryly.\n\"You think I should take more?\" Sam replied, and smiled. \"Nothing like a little fireworks to celebrate the end of a mission.\"\n\"Everyone ready?\" John asked.Sam's smile disappeared and he slapped an extended clip into his MA2B. \"Ready!\"\nKelly gave him John a thumbs-up. Fred and Linda nodded.\"Then let's go to work.\"\nCHAPTER TEN\n1210 Hours, September 14, 2525 (Military Calendar) / Epsilon Eridani System, Eridanus 2 space dock, civilian Cargo Ship,Laden (registry number F-0980W)\n\"Spartan 117: in position. Next check-in at 0400.\" John clicked off the microphone, encrypted the message, and fed it into his COM relay. He triggered a secure burst transmission to theAthens , the ONI prowler ship on station a few AUs distant. He and his teammates climbed onto the upper girders. In silence, the team rigged a web of support nets so they could rest in relative comfort. Below them lay a hundred thousand liters of black water, and surrounding them, two centimeters of stainless steel. Sam rigged the fill sensor so the reservoir's computer wouldn't let any more water flow into the storage tank. The lights in their helmets cast a pattern of crossing and crisscrossing reflection lines. A perfect hiding spotall according to plan, John thought, and allowed himself a small grin of triumph. The tech specs that ONI had procured on theLaden showed a number of hydroponic pods mounted around the ship's carousel systemthe massive water tanks used gravity feed to irrigate the ship's space-grown crops. Perfect. They had easily slipped past the lone guard in theLaden 's main cargo bay and into the nearly deserted center section. The water tank would mask their thermal signatures, and block any motion sensors. The only risky element entered the picture if the center section stopped spinning . . . things could get very messy inside the tank, very fast. But John doubted that would happen. Kelly set up a tiny microwave relay outside the top hatch. She propped her data pad on her stomach and linked to the ship's network. \"I'm in,\" she reported. \"There's no AI or serious encryption . . . accessing their system now.\" She tapped the pad a few more times and activated the intrusion softwarethe best that ONI could provide. A moment later the pad pulsed to indicate success.\n\"They've got a nav trajectory to the asteroid belt. ETA is ten hours.\"\"Good work,\" John said. \"Team: we'll sleep in shifts.\" Sam, Fred, and Linda snapped off their flashlights.The tank reverberated as theLaden 's engines flared to life. The water tilted as they accelerated away from the orbital docking station. John remembered Eridanus 2vaguely recalled that it once was home. He wondered if his old school, his family, were still there He squelched his curiosity. Speculation made for a fine mental exercise, but the mission came first. He had to stay alertor failing that, grab some sleep so he would be alert when he needed to be. Chief Mendez must have told them a thousand times: \"Rest can be as deadly a weapon as a pistol or grenade.\"\n\"I've got something,\" Kelly whispered, and handed him her data pad.It displayed the cargo manifest for theLaden . John scrolled down the list: water, flour, milk, frozen orange juice, welding rods, superconducting magnets for a fusion reactor . . . no mention of weapons.\n\"I give up,\" he said. \"What am I looking for?\"\n\"I'll give you a hint,\" Kelly replied. \"The Chief smokes them.\"\nJohn flicked back through the list. There: Sweet William cigars. Next to them on the manifest was a crate of champagne, a Beta Centauri vintage. There were fast-chilled New York steaks, and Swiss chocolates. These items were stored in a secure locker. They had the same routing codes.\n\"Luxury items,\" Kelly murmured. \"I bet they're headed straight for a special delivery to Colonel Watts or his officers.\"\n\"Good work,\" John replied. \"We'll tag this stuff and follow it.\"\n\"Won't be that easy,\" Fred said from the darkness. He flicked on his flashlight and peered back at John.\n\"There are a million ways this can go wrong. We're going in without recon. I don't like it.\"\n\"We only have one advantage on this mission,\" John said. \"The rebels have never been infiltrated they'll feel relatively safe and won't be expecting us. But every extra second we stay . . . that's another chance for us to be spotted. We'll follow Kelly's hunch.\"\n\"You questioning orders?\" Sam asked Fred. \"Scared?\" There was a slight hint of challenge in his voice. Fred thought for a moment. \"No,\" he whispered. \"But this is no training mission. Our targets won't be firing stun rounds.\" He sighed. \"I just don't want to fail.\"\n\"We're not going to fail,\" John told him. \"We've accomplished every mission we've been on before.\"That wasn't entirely true: the augmentation mission had wiped out half of the Spartans. They weren't invincible. But John wasn't scared. A little nervous, maybebut he was ready.\n\"Rotate sleep cycles,\" John said. \"Wake me up in four hours.\"\nHe turned over and quickly nodded off to the sound of the sloshing water. He dreamed of gravball and a coin spinning in the air. John caught it and yelled, \"Eagle!\" as he won again. He always won. Kelly nudged John's shoulder and he was instantly awake, hand on his assault rifle.\n\"We're decelerating,\" she whispered, and pointed her light into the water below. The liquid tilted at a twenty-degree inclination.\n\"Lights off,\" John ordered. They were plunged into total darkness. He popped the hatch and snaked the fiber-optic probeattached to his helmetthrough the crack. All clear. They climbed out, then rappelled down the back of the ten-meter-tall tank. They donned their grease stained coveralls and removed their helmets. The black suits looked a little bulky beneath the work clothes, but the disguise would hold up to a cursory inspection. With their weapons and gear in duffel bags, they'd pass as crew . . . from a distance. They crept through a deserted corridor and into the cargo bay. They heard a million tiny metallic pings as gravity settled the ship. TheLaden must be docking to a spinning station or a rotating asteroid. The cargo bay was a huge room, stacked to its ceiling with barrels and crates. There were massive tanks of oil. Automated robot forklifts scurried between rows, checking for items that might have come loose in transit. There was a terrific clang as a docking clamp grabbed the ship.\"Cigars are this way,\" Kelly whispered. She consulted her data pad, then tucked it back into her pocket.They moved out, clinging to the shadows. They stopped every few meters, listened, and made sure their fields of fire were clear. Kelly held up her hand and made a fist. She pointed to the secure hatch on the starboard side of the hold. John signaled Fred and Kelly and motioned them to go forward. Fred used the lockbreaker on the door and it popped open. They entered and closed it behind them. John, Sam, and Linda waited. There was a sudden motion and the Spartans snapped their weapons to firing positions A robot forklift passed down an adjacent aisle.The massive aft doors of the cargo hold parted with a hiss. Light spilled into the hold. A dozen dockworkers dressed in coveralls entered. John gripped his MA2B tighter. One man looked down the aisle where they crouched in the shadows. He stooped, paused John raised his weapon slowly, his hands steady, and sighted on the man's chest. \"Always shoot for center of mass,\" Mendez had barked during weapons training. The man stood, stretched his back, and moved on, whistling quietly to himself. Fred and Kelly returned, and Kelly opened and closed her hand, palm outshe had placed the marker. John grabbed his helmet from his duffel bag and slipped it on. He pinged the navigation marker and saw the blue triangle flash once on his heads-up display. He returned Kelly's thumbs-up and removed the helmet. John stowed his helmet and MA2B and motioned for the rest of the team to do the same. They casually walked out of theLaden 's aft cargo hold and onto the rebel base. The docking bay was hewn from solid rock. The ceiling stretched a kilometer high. Bright lights overhead effectively illuminated the place, looking like tiny suns in the sky. There were hundreds of ships docked within the caverntiny single craft, Mako-class corvettes, cargo freighters, and even a captured UNSC Pelican dropship. Each craft was held by massive cranes that traveled on railroad tracks. The tracks led toward a series of large airlock doors. That's how theLaden must have gotten inside. There were people everywhere: workers and men in crisp white uniforms. John's first instinct was to seek cover. Every one of them was a potential threat. He wished he had his gun in hand.He remained calm and strode among these strangers. He had to set the right example for his team. If his recent encounter with the ODSTs in the gym of theAtlas had been any indication, he knew his team wouldn't interact well with the natives. John made his way past dockworkers and robotic trams full of cargo and vendors selling roasted meat on sticks. He walked toward a set of double doors set in the far rock wall, marked: PUBLIC SHOWERS. He pushed through and didn't look back. The place was almost empty. One man was singing in the shower, and there were two rebel officers undressing near the towel dispensers. John led his team to the most distant corner of the locker room and hunkered down on one of the benches. Linda sat with her back to them, on lookout duty.\n\"So far so good,\" John whispered. \"This will be our fallback position if everything falls apart and we get separated.\"\nSam nodded. \"Okaywe have a lead on how to find the Colonel. Anyone have any ideas how to get off this rock once we grab him? Back into theLaden 's water tank?\"\n\"Too slow,\" Kelly said. \"We've got to assume that when Colonel Watt goes missing, his people are going to look for him.\"\n\"There was a Pelican on the dock,\" John said. \"We'll take it. Now let's figure out how to operate the cranes and airlocks.\"\nSam hefted his pack of explosives. \"I know just the way to politely knock on those airlock doors. Don't worry.\"\nSam tapped his left foot. He only did that when he was eager to move. Fred's hands were clenched into fists; he might be nervous, but he had it under control. Kelly yawned. And Linda sat absolutely still. They were ready. John got his helmet, donned it, and checked the nav marker.\"Bearing 320,\" he said. \"It's on the move.\" He picked up his gear. \"And so are we.\"They left the showers and strode through the dock, past massive drop doors and into a city. This part of the asteroid looked like a canyon carved into the rock; John could barely make out the ceiling far overhead. There were skyscrapers and apartment buildings, factories, and even a small hospital.John ducked into an alley, slipped on his helmet, and pinpointed the blue nav marker. It overlay a cargo tram that silently rolled down the street. There were three armed guards riding in the back. The Spartans followed at a discreet distance. John checked his exit routes. Too many people, and too many unknowns. Were the people here armed?\nWould they all engage if fighting started? A few of the people gave him strange looks.\n\"Spread out,\" he whispered to his team. \"We look like we're on a parade ground.\"Kelly stepped up her pace and pulled ahead. Sam fell behind. Fred and Linda drifted to the right and left.The cargo tram turned and made its way slowly through a crowded street. It stopped at a building. The structure was twelve stories tall, with balconies on every floor. John guessed these were barracks. There were two armed guards in white uniforms at the front entrance. The three men in the tram got out and carried the crate inside. Kelly glanced at John. He nodded, giving her the go-ahead. She approached the two guards, smiling. John knew her smile wasn't friendly. She was smiling because she was finally getting a chance to put her training to the test. Kelly waved to the guard and pulled open the door. He asked her to stop and show her identification.She stepped inside, grabbed his rifle, twisted, and dragged him inside with her.The other guard stepped back and leveled his rifle. John sprang at him from behind, grabbed his neck and snapped it, then dragged his limp body inside. The entry room had cinderblock walls and a steel door with a swipe-card lock. A security camera dangled limply over Kelly's head. The guard she had dragged in lay at her feet. She was already running a cracking program on the lock, using her data pad. John retrieved his MA2B and covered her. Fred and Linda entered and slipped out of their coveralls, then donned their helmets.\n\"Nav marker is moving,\" Linda reported. \"Mark 270, elevation ten meters, twenty . . . thirty-five and holding. I'd say that's the top floor.\"Sam entered, pulled the door shut behind him, and then jammed the lock. \"All clear out there.\"\nThe inner door clicked. \"Door's open,\" Kelly said. John, Kelly, and Sam slipped out of their coveralls as Fred and Linda covered them. John activated the motion and thermal displays in his helmet. The target sight glowed as he raised his MA2B.\n\"Go,\" John said.Kelly pushed open the door. Linda stepped in and to the right. John entered and took the left.Two guards were seated behind the lobby's reception desk. Another man, without a uniform, stood in front of the desk, waiting to be helped; two more uniformed men stood by the elevator. Linda shot the three near the desk. John eliminated the targets by the elevator. Five roundsfive bodies hit the floor.Fred entered and policed the bodies, dragging them behind the counter. Kelly moved to the stairwell, opened the door, and gave the all-clear signal. The elevator pinged and its doors opened. They all wheeled, rifles leveled . . . but the car was empty.John exhaled, then motioned them to take the stairs; Kelly took point. Sam brought up the rear. They silently went up nine double flights of stairs. Kelly halted on an upper landing. She pointed to the interior of the building, then pointed up. John detected faint blurs of heat on the twelfth floor. They'd have to pick a better route, a way in that no one would expect. John opened the door. There was an empty hallway. No targets.He went to the elevator doors and pried them open. Then he turned on his black suit's cooling elements to mask his thermal signature. The others did the same . . . and faded from his thermal imaging display. John and Sam climbed up the elevator cable. John glanced down: a thirty-meter plunge into darkness. He might survive that fall. His bones wouldn't break, but there would be internal damage. And it would certainly compromise their mission. He tightened his grip on the cable and didn't look down again.When they had climbed up the last three floors, they braced themselves in the corners by the closed elevator door. Kelly and Fred snaked up the cable after them. They braced in the far corners to overlap their fields of fire. Linda came up last. She climbed as far as she could, hooked her foot on a cross brace, and hung upside down. John held up three fingers, two, then one, and then he and Sam silently pulled open the elevator doors. There were five guards standing in the room. They wore light body armor and helmets and carried older model HMG-38 rifles. Two of them turned. Kelly, Fred, and Linda opened fire. The walnut paneling behind the guards became pockmarked with bullet holes and was spattered with blood. The team slid inside the room, moving quickly and quietly. Sam policed the guards' weapons.There were two doors. One led to a balcony; the other featured a peephole. Kelly checked the balcony, then whispered over the channel in their helmets: \"This overlooks the alley between buildings. No activity.\"\nJohn checked the nav marker. The blue triangles flashed a position directly behind the other door. Sam and Fred flanked the door. John couldn't get any reading on motion or thermal. The walls were shielded. There were too many unknowns and not enough time. The situation wasn't ideal. They knew there were at least three men insidethe ones who had carried the crate upstairs. And there might be more guards . . . and to complicate the situation, their target had to be taken alive. John kicked the door in. He took in the entire situation at a glance. He was standing on the threshold of a sumptuous apartment. There was a wet bar boasting shelves of amber-filled bottles. A large, round bed dominated the corner, decorated with shimmering silk sheets. Windows on all sides had sheer white curtainsJohn's helmet automatically compensated for the glare. Red carpet covered the floor. The crate with the cigars and champagne sat in the center of the room. It was black and armored, sealed tight against the vacuum of space. There were three men standing behind the armored crate, and one man crouched behind them. Colonel Robert Wattstheir \"package.\"\nJohn didn't have a clear shot. If he missed, he could hit the Colonel.The three men, however, didn't have that problem. They fired. John dove to his left. He caught three rounds in his sideknocking the breath from his body. One bullet penetrated his black suit. He felt it ping off his ribs and pain slashed through him like a red-hot razor. He ignored the wound and rolled to his feet. He had a clear line of fire. He squeezed the trigger oncea three-round burst caught the center guard in the forehead. Sam and Fred wheeled around the door frame, Sam high, Fred low. Their silenced weapons coughed and the remaining pair of guards went down. Watts remained behind the crate. He brandished his pistol. \"Stop!\" he screamed. \"My men are coming. You think I'm alone? You're all dead. Drop your weapons.\"\nJohn crawled to the wet bar and crouched there. He willed the pain inside his stomach to go away. He signaled Sam and Fred and held up two fingers, then pointed the fingers over his head. Sam and Fred fired a burst of rounds over Watts. He ducked. John vaulted over the bar and leaped onto his quarry. He grabbed the pistol and wrenched it out of his hand, breaking the man's index finger and thumb. John snaked his arm around Watts's neck and choked the struggling man into near-unconsciousness. Kelly and Linda entered. Kelly took out a syringe and injected Wattsenough polypseudomorphine to keep him sedated for the better part of a day. Fred fell back to cover the elevator. Sam entered and crouched by the windows, watching the street below for any signs of trouble. Kelly went to John and peeled back his black suit. Her gloves were slick with his blood. \"The bullet is still inside,\" she said, and bit her lower lip. \"There's a lot of internal bleeding. Hang on.\" She dug a tiny bottle from her belt and inserted the nozzle into the bullet hole. \"This might sting a little.\"\nThe self-sealing biofoam filled John's abdominal cavity. It also stung like a hundred ants crawling through his innards. She pulled the bottle out and taped up the hole. \"You're good for a few hours,\" she said, and then gave him a hand up. John felt shaky, but he'd make it. The foam would keep him from bleeding to death and stave off the shock . . . for a while, at least.\n\"Incoming vehicles,\" Sam announced. \"Six men entering the building. Two taking up position outside . . . but just the front.\"\n\"Get our package inside that crate and seal it up,\" John ordered. He left the room, got his duffel, and went to the balcony. He secured a rope and tossed it down twelve stories into the alley. He rappelled down, took a second to scan the alley for threats, then clicked his throat mike oncethe all-clear signal. Kelly snapped a descent rig on the crate and pushed it off the balcony. It zipped down the line and thudded to a halt at the bottom. A moment later the rest of the team glided down the rope.They quickly donned their coveralls. Sam and Fred carried the crate as they entered the adjacent building. They exited on the street a half block down and walked as quickly as they could back to the docks. Dozens of uniformed men ran from the dock toward the city. No one challenged them. They reentered the now-deserted public showers.\"Everyone check your seals,\" John said. \"Sam, you go ring the doorbell. Meet us on the dropship.\"\nSam nodded and sprinted out of the building, both packs of C-12 looped around his shoulder. John took out the panic button. He triggered the green-mode transmission and tossed it into an empty locker. If they didn't make it out, at least the UNSC fleet would know where to find the rebel base.\n\"Your suit is breached,\" Kelly reminded John. \"We better get to the ship now, before Sam sets off his fireworks.\"\nLinda and Fred checked the seals on the crate then carried it out. Kelly took point and John brought up the rear. They boarded the Pelican dropship and John sized up her armamentsdented and charred armor, a pair of old, out-of-date 40mm chain guns. The rocket pods had been removed. Not much of a warhorse. There was a flash of lightning at the far end of the dock. The thunder roiled through the deck, and then through John's stomach. While John watched, a gaping hole materialized in the airlock door amid a cloud of smoke and shattered metal. Black space loomed beyond. With an earsplitting roar, the atmosphere held in the docks abruptly transformed into a hurricane. People, crates, and debris were blasted out of the ragged tear. John pulled himself inside the dropship and prepared to seal the main hatch. He watched as emergency doors descended over the breached airlock. There was a second explosion, and the drop door paused, then fell and clattered to the deck, crushing a light transport vessel underneath. Behind them, large bay doors closed, sealing the docks off from the city. Dozens of workers still on the docks ran for their lives, but didn't make it. Sam sprinted across the deck, perfectly safe inside his sealed black suit. He cycled through the Pelican's emergency airlock.\n\"Back door's open,\" he said with a grin. Kelly fired up the engines. The Pelican lifted, maneuvered through the dock, and then out through the blasted hole and into open space. She pushed the throttle to maximum burn. Behind them, the insurgent base looked like any other rock in the asteroid belt . . . but this rock was venting atmosphere and starting to rotate erratically. After five minutes at full power, Kelly eased the engines back. \"We'll hit the extraction point in two hours,\" she said.\n\"Check on our prisoner,\" John said. Sam popped open the crate. \"The seals held. Watts is still alive and has a steady pulse,\" he said.\"Good,\" John grunted. He winced as the throbbing pain in his side increased.\"Something bothering you?\" Kelly asked. \"How's that biofoam holding up?\"\n\"It's fine,\" he said without even looking at the hole in his side. \"I'll make it.\"\nHe knew he should feel elatedbut instead he just felt tired. Something didn't sit right about the operation. He wondered about all the dead dockworkers and civilians back there. None of them were designated targets. And yet, weren't they all rebels on that asteroid?\nOn the other hand, it was like the Chief saidhe had followed his orders, completed his mission, and gotten his people out alive. What more did he want?John stuffed his doubts deep in the back of his mind.\n\"Nothing's wrong,\" he said, and squeezed Kelly's shoulder. John smiled. \"What could be wrong? We won.\"\nCHAPTER ELEVEN\n0600 Hours, November 2, 2525 (Military Calendar) / Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, planet Reach John wondered who had died. The Spartans had been called to muster in their dress uniforms only once before: funeral detail. The Purple Heart awarded to him after his last mission glistened on his chest. He made sure it was polished to a high sheen. It stood out against the black wool of his dress jacket. Occasionally John would look at it, and make sure it was still there. He sat in the third row of the amphitheater and faced the center platform. The other Spartans sat quietly on the concentric rings of risers. Spotlights flicked on the empty stage. He had been in Reach's secure briefing chamber before. This is where Dr. Halsey had told them they were going to be soldiers. This is where his life had changed and he had been given a purpose. Chief Mendez entered the room and marched to the center platform. He wore his black dress uniform as well. His chest was covered with Silver and Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, the Red Legion of Honor award, and a rainbow of campaign ribbons. He had recently shaved his head. The Spartans rose and stood at attention. Dr. Halsey entered. She looked older to John, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth more pronounced, streaks of gray in her dark hair. But her blue eyes were as sharp as ever. She wore gray slacks, a black shirt, and her glasses hung about her neck on a gold chain.\n\"Admiral on deck,\" Mendez announced.They all snapped straighter.A man ten years Dr. Halsey's senior strode to the stage. His short silver hair looked like a steel helmet. His gait had a strange lope to itwhat crewmen called \"space walk\"from spending too much time in microgravity. He wore a simple, unadorned black dress UNSC uniform. No medals or campaign ribbons. The insignia on the forearm of his jacket, however, was unmistakable: the single gold star of a Rear Admiral.\"At ease, Spartans,\" he said. \"I'm Admiral Stanforth.\"\nThe Spartans took their seats in unison. Dust swirled onstage and collected into a robed figure. Its face was obscured within the shadows of its hood. John could discern no hands at the end of its sleeves.\n\"This is Beowulf,\" Admiral Stanforth said as he gestured to the ghostly creature. Stanforth's voice was calm, but distaste was evident on his face. \"He is our AI attache with the Office of Naval Intelligence.\"\nHe turned away from the AI. \"We have several important issues to cover this morning, so let's get started.\"\nThe lights dimmed. An amber sun appeared in the center of the room with three planets in close orbit.\n\"This is Harvest,\" he said. \"Population of approximately three million. Although on the periphery of UNSC-controlled space, this world is one of our more productive and peaceful colonies.\"\nThe holographic view zoomed in on the surface of the world and showed grasslands and forests and a thousand lakes swarming with schools of fish.\n\"As of military calendar February 3, at 1423 hours, the Harvest orbital platform made long range radar contact with this object.\"\nA blurry outline appeared over the stage. \"Spectroscopic analysis proved inconclusive,\" Admiral Stanforth said. \"The object is constructed of material unknown to us.\"\nA molecular absorption graph appeared on a side screen, spikes and jagged lines indicating the relative proportions of elements. Beowulf raised a cloaked arm and the image darkened. The words CLASSIFIEDEYES ONLY appeared over the blackened data. Admiral Stanforth shot a glare at the AI.\n\"Contact with Harvest,\" he continued, \"was lost shortly thereafter. The Colonial Military Administration sent the scout shipArgo to investigate. That ship arrived in-system on April twentieth, but other than a brief transmission to confirm their exit Slipstream position, no further reports were made.\n\"In response, Fleet Command assembled a battle group to investigate. The group consisted of the destroyerHeracles , commanded by Captain Veredi, as well as the frigatesArabia andVostok . They entered the Harvest System on October seventh and discovered the following.\"\nThe holograph of the planet Harvest changed. The lush fields and rolling hills transformed, morphing into a cratered, barren desert. Thin gray sunlight reflected off a glassy crust. Heat wavered from the surface. Isolated regions glowed red.\n\"This is what was left of the colony.\" The Admiral paused for a moment to stare at the image, and then continued. \"We assume that all inhabitants are lost.\"\nThree million lives lost. John couldn't fathom the raw force it had taken to kill so manyfor a moment he was torn between horror and envy. He glanced at the Purple Heart pinned to his chest and remembered his lost comrades. How did one simple bullet wound compare with so many wasted lives? He was suddenly no longer proud of the decoration.\n\"And this is what theHeracles battlegroup found in orbit,\" Admiral Stanforth told them.The blurry outline that was still visible, hanging in the air, sharpened into crisp focus. It looked smooth and organic, and the hull possessed an odd, opalescent sheenit looked more like the carapace of an exotic insect than the metal hull of a spacecraft. Recessed into the aft section were pods that pulsed with a purple-white glow. The prow of the craft was swollen like the head of a whale. John thought it possessed an odd, predatory beauty.\n\"The unidentified vessel,\" the Admiral said, \"launched an immediate attack against our forces.\"\nBlue flashes strobed from the ship. Red motes of light then appeared along its hull. Bolts of energy coalesced into a fiery smear against the blackness of space. The deadly flashes of light impacted on theArabia , splashed across its hull. Its meter of armor plating instantly boiled away, and a plume of ignited atmosphere burst from the breach in the ship's hull. \"Those were pulse lasers,\" Admiral Stanforth explained, \"andif this record is to be believedsome kind of self-guided, superheated plasma weapon.\"\nTheHeracles andVostok launched salvos of missiles toward the craft. The enemy's lasers shot half before they reached their target. The balance of the missiles impacted, detonated into blossoms of fire . . . that quickly faded. The strange ship shimmered with a semitransparent silver coating, which then vanished.\n\"They also seem to have some reflective energy shield.\" Admiral Stanforth took a deep breath and his features hardened into a mask of grim resolve. \"TheVostok andArabia were lost with all hands. TheHeracles jumped out of the system, but due to the damage she sustained, it took several weeks for Captain Veredi to make it back to Reach.\n\"These weapons and defensive systems are currently beyond our technology. Therefore . . . this craft is of nonhuman origin.\" He paused, then added, \"The product of a race with technology far in advance of our own.\"\nA murmur buzzed through the chamber.\n\"We have, of course, developed a number of first contact scenarios,\" the Admiral continued, \"and Captain Veredi followed our established protocols. We had hoped that contact with a new race would be peaceful. Obviously this was not the casethe alien vessel did not open fire until our task force attempted to initiate communications.\"\nHe paused, considering his words. \"Fragments of the enemy's transmissions were intercepted,\" he continued. \"A few words have been translated. We believe they call themselves 'The Covenant.' However, before opening fire, the alien ship broadcast the following message in the clear.\"\nHe gestured at Beowulf, who nodded. A moment later, a voice thundered from the amphitheater's speakers. John stiffened in his seat when he heard it; the voice from the speakers sounded odd, artificialstrangely calm and formal, but laden with rage and menace.\n\"Your destruction is the will of the Gods . . . and we are their instrument.\"\nJohn was awestruck. He stood.\n\"Yes, Spartan?\" Stanforth said.\"Sir, is this a translation?\"\n\"No,\" the Admiral replied. \"They broadcast this to us in our language. We believe they used some kind of translation system to prepare the message . . . but it means they've been studying us for some time.\"\nJohn took his seat.\"As of November 1, the UNSC has been ordered to full alert,\" Stanforth said. \"Vice Admiral Preston Cole is mobilizing the largest fleet action in human history to retake the Harvest System and confront this new threat. Their transmission made one thing perfectly clear: they're looking for a fight.\"\nOnly years of military discipline kept John rooted to his seatotherwise he would have stood up and asked to volunteer on the spot. He would have given anything to go and fight. This was the threat he and the other Spartans had been training for all their liveshe was certain of it. Not scattered rebels, pirates, or political dissidents.\n\"Because of this UNSC-wide mobilization,\" Admiral Stanforth continued, \"your training schedule will be accelerated to its final phase: Project MJOLNIR.\"\nHe stepped away from the podium and clasped his hands behind his back. \"To that end, I'm afraid I have another unpleasant announcement.\" He turned to the Chief. \"Chief Petty Officer Mendez will be departing us to train the next group of Spartans. Chief?\"\nJohn grabbed the edge of the riser. Chief Mendez had always been there for them, the only constant in the universe. Admiral Stanforth might as well have told him that Epsilon Eridani was leaving the Reach System. The Chief stepped to the podium and clasped its edges.\"Recruits,\" he said, \"soon your training will be complete, and you will graduate to the rank of Petty Officer Second Class in the UNSC. One of the first things you will learn is that change is part of a soldier's life. You will make and lose friends. You will move. This is part of the job.\"\nHe looked to his audience. His dark eyes rested on each one of them. He nodded, seemingly satisfied with what he saw.\n\"The Spartans are the finest group of soldiers I have ever encountered,\" he said. \"It has been a privilege to train you. Never forget what I've tried to teach youduty, honor, and sacrifice for the greater good of humanity are the qualities that make you the best.\"\nHe was silent a moment, searching for more words. But finding none, he stood at attention and saluted.\"Attention,\" John barked. The Spartans rose as one and saluted the Chief.\n\"Dismissed, Spartans,\" Chief Mendez said. \"And good luck.\" He finished his salute. The Spartans snapped down their arms. They hesitated, and then reluctantly filed out of the amphitheater.John stayed behind. He had to talk to Chief Mendez.Dr. Halsey spoke briefly with the Chief and the Admiral, then she and the Admiral left together. Beowulf backed toward the far wall and faded away like a ghost. The Chief gathered his hat, spotted John, and walked to him. He nodded to the hologram of the scorched colony, Harvest, still rotating in the air. \"One final lesson, Petty Officer,\" he said. \"What tactical options do you have when attacking a stronger opponent?\"\n\"Sir!\" John said. \"There are two options. Attack swiftly and with full force at their weakest pointtake them out quickly before they have a chance to respond.\"\n\"Good,\" he said. \"And the other option?\"\n\"Fall back,\" John replied. \"Engage in guerrilla actions or get reinforcements.\"\nThe Chief sighed. \"Those are the correct answers,\" he said, \"but it may not be enough to be correct this time. Sit, please.\"\nJohn sat, and the Chief settled next to him on the riser.\"There's a third option.\" The Chief turned his hat over in his hands. \"An option that others may eventually consider. . . .\"\n\"Sir?\"\n\"Surrender,\" the Chief whispered. \"That, however, is never an option for the likes of you and me. We don't have the luxury of backing down.\" He glanced up at Harvesta glittering ball of glass. \"And I doubt that an enemy like this willlet us surrender.\"\n\"I think I understand, sir.\"\n\"Make sure you do. And make sure you don't let anyone else give up.\" He gazed into the shadows beyond the center platform. \"Project MJOLNIR will make the Spartans into something . . . new. Something I could never forge them into. I can't fully explainthat damned ONI spook is still here listeningjust trust Dr. Halsey.\"\nThe Chief dug into his jacket pocket. \"I was hoping to see you before they shipped me out. I have something for you.\" He set a small metal disk on the riser between them.\n\"When you first came here,\" the Chief said, \"you fought the trainers when they took this away from you broke a few fingers as I recall.\" His chiseled features cracked into a rare smile. John picked up the disk and examined it. It was an ancient silver coin. He flipped it between his fingers.\n\"It has an eagle on one side,\" Mendez said. \"That bird is like youfast and deadly.\"\nJohn closed his fingers around the quarter. \"Thank you, sir.\"He wanted to say that he was strong and fast because the Chief had made him so. He wanted to tell him that he was ready to defend humanity against this new threat. He wanted to say that without the Chief, he would have no purpose, no integrity, and no duty to perform. But John didn't have the words. He just sat there. Mendez stood. \"It has been an honor to serve with you.\" Instead of saluting, he held out his hand. John got to his feet. He took the Chief's hand and they shook. It took a great deal of effortevery instinct screamed at him to salute.\n\"Good-bye,\" Chief Mendez said.He turned briskly on his heel and strode from the room.John never saw him again. CHAPTER TWELVE\n1750 Hours, November 27, 2525 (Military Calendar) / UNSC frigateCommonwealth en route to the UNSC Damascus Materials Testing Facility, planet Chi Ceti 4\nThe view screen in the bunkroom of the UNSC frigateCommonwealth clicked on as the ship entered normal space. Ice particles showered the external camera and gave the distant yellow sun, Chi Ceti, a ghostly ring. John watched and continued to ponder the wordMjolnir as they sped in-system. He had looked it up in the education database. Mjolnir was the hammer used by the Norse god of thunder. Project MJOLNIR had to be some kind of weapon. At least he hoped it was; they neededsomething to fight the Covenant. If it was a weapon, though, why was it here at the Damascus testing facility, on the very edge of UNSC controlled space? He had only even heard of this system twenty-four hours ago. He turned and surveyed the squad. Although this bunkroom had one hundred beds, the Spartans still clustered together, playing cards, polishing boots, reading, exercising. Sam sparred with Kellyalthough she had to slow herself down considerably to give him a chance. John was reminded that he didn't like being on starships. The lack of control was disturbing. If he wasn't stuck in \"the freezer\"the starship's cramped, unpleasant cryo chamberhe was left waiting and wondering what their next mission would be. During the last three weeks the Spartans had handled a variety of minor missions for Dr. Halsey. \"Tying up loose ends,\" she had called it. Putting down rebel factions on Jericho VII. Removing a black-market bazaar near the Roosevelt military base. Each mission had brought them closer to the Chi Ceti System. John had made sure every member of his squad had participated in these missions. They had performed flawlessly. There had been no losses. Chief Mendez would have been proud of them.\n\"Spartan-117,\"Dr. Halsey's voice blared over the loudspeaker.\"Report to the bridge immediately.\"John snapped to attention and keyed the intercom. \"Yes, ma'am!\" He turned to Sam. \"Get everyone ready, in case we're needed. On the double.\"\n\"Affirmative,\" Sam said. \"You heard the Petty Officer. Dog those cards. Get into uniform, soldier!\"John double-timed it to the elevator and punched the code for the bridge. Gravity faded out and then back again as the elevator passed between rotating sections of the ship. The doors parted and he stepped onto the bridge. Every wall had a screen. Some showed stars and the distant red smear of a nebula. Other screens displayed the fusion reactor status and spectrums of microwave broadcasts in the system. A brass railing ringed the center of the bridge, and within sat four Junior Lieutenants at their stations:\nnavigation, weapons, communications, and ship operations. John halted and saluted Captain Wallace, then nodded to Dr. Halsey.Captain Wallace stood with his right arm crooked behind his back. His left arm was missing from the elbow down. John remained saluting until the Captain returned the gesture.\n\"Over here, please,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"I want you to see this.\"\nJohn walked across the rubberized deck and gave his full attention to the screen Dr. Halsey and Captain Wallace were scrutinizing. It displayed deconvoluted radar signals. It looked like tangled yarn to John.\n\"There\" Dr. Halsey pointed to a blip on the screen. \"It's there again.\"\nCaptain Wallace stroked his dark beard, thinking, then said, \"That puts our ghost at eighty million kilometers. Even if it were a ship, it would take a full hour to get within weapons range. And besides\" He waved at the screen. \"it's gone again.\"\n\"May I suggest that we go to battle stations, Captain,\" Dr. Halsey told him.\"I don't see the point,\" he said condescendingly; the Captain was clearly less than pleased about having a civilian on his bridge.\n\"We haven't let this be widely known,\" she said, \"but when the aliens were first detected at Harvest, they appeared at extreme range . . . and then they were suddenly much closer.\"\n\"An intrasystem jump?\" John asked. Dr. Halsey smiled at him. \"Correctly surmised, Spartan.\"\"That's not possible,\" Captain Wallace remarked. \"Slipstream space can't be navigated that accurately.\"\"You meanwe cannot navigate with that kind of accuracy,\" she said. The Captain clenched and unclenched his jaw. He clicked the intercom. \"General quarters: all hands to battle stations. Seal bulkheads. I repeat: all hands, battle stations. This is not a drill. Reactors to ninety percent. Come about to course one two five.\"\nThe bridge lights darkened to a red hue. The deck rumbled beneath John's boots and the entire ship tilted as it changed heading. Pressure doors slammed shut and sealed John on the bridge. TheCommonwealth stabilized on her new heading, and Dr. Halsey crossed her arms. She leaned over and whispered to John, \"We'll be using theCommonwealth 's dropship to go to the testing facility on Chi Ceti Four. We have to get to Project MJOLNIR.\" She turned back and watched the radar screen. \"Beforethey do. So get the others ready.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am.\" John keyed the intercom. \"Sam, muster the squad in Bay Alpha. I want that Pelican loaded and ready for drop in fifteen minutes.\"\n\"We'll have it done in ten,\"Sam replied.\"Faster if those Longsword interceptor pilots get out of our way.\"\nJohn would have given anything to be belowdecks with the others. He felt as if he were being left behind. The radar screen flashed with blobs of eerie green light . . . almost as if the space around theCommonwealth were boiling. The collision alarm sounded.\n\"Brace for impact!\" Captain Wallace said. He laced his arm around the brass railing. John grabbed an emergency handhold on the wall.Something appeared three thousand kilometers off theCommonwealth 's prow. It was a sleek oval with a single seam running along its lateral edge from stem to stern. Tiny lights winked on and off along its hull. A faint purple-tinged glow emitted from the tail. The ship was only a third the size of theCommonwealth .\n\"A Covenant ship,\" Dr. Halsey said, and she involuntarily backed away from the view screens. Captain Wallace scowled. \"COM officer: send a signal to Chi Cetisee if they can send us some reinforcements.\"\"Aye, sir.\"\nBlue flashes flickered along the hull of the alien shipso bright that even filtered through the external camera, they still made John's eyes water. The outer hull of theCommonwealth sizzled and popped. Three screens filled with static.\n\"Pulse lasers!\" the lieutenant at the ops station screamed. \"Communication dish destroyed. Armor in sections three and four at twenty-five percent. Hull breach in section three. Sealing now.\" The Lieutenant swiveled in his seat, sweat beaded on his forehead. \"Ship AI core memory overloaded,\" he said. With the AI offline, the ship could still fire weapons and navigate through Slipstream space, but John knew it would take more time to make jump calculations.\n\"Come to heading zero three zero, declination one eight zero,\" Caption Wallace ordered. \"Arm Archer missile pods A through F. And give me a firing solution.\"\n\"Aye aye,\" the navigation and weapons officers said. \"A through F pods armed.\" They furiously tapped away on their keypads. Seconds ticked by. \"Firing solution ready, sir.\"\n\"Fire.\"\"Pods A through F firing!\"\nTheCommonwealth had twenty-six pods, each loaded with thirty Archer high-explosive missiles. On screen, pods A through F opened, and launched180 plumes of rocket exhaust that traced a path from theCommonwealth to the alien ship. The enemy changed course, rotated so that the top of the ship faced the incoming missiles. It then moved straight up at an alarming speed. The Archer missiles altered their trajectory to track the ship, but half their number streaked past the target, clean misses. The others impacted. Fire covered the skin of the alien ship.\n\"Good work, Lieutenant,\" Captain Wallace said, and he clapped the young officer on the shoulder. Dr. Halsey frowned and stared at the screen. \"No,\" she whispered. \"Wait.\"The fire flared, then dimmed. The skin of the alien ship rippled like heat wavering off a hot road in the summer. It fluttered with a metallic silver sheen, then brilliant whiteand the fire faded, revealing the ship beneath. It was completely undamaged.\n\"Energy shields,\" Dr. Halsey muttered. She tapped her lower lip, thinking. \"Even ships this small have energy shielding.\"\n\"Lieutenant,\" the Captain barked at the nav officer. \"Cut main engines and fire maneuvering thrusters. Rotate and track so that we're pointing at that thing.\"\n\"Aye aye, sir.\"The distant rumbling of theCommonwealth 's main engines dimmed and stopped and she turned about. Her inertia kept the ship speeding toward the testing facilitynow flying backward.\n\"What are you doing, Captain?\" Dr. Halsey asked.\n\"Arm the MAC,\" Captain Wallace told the weapons officer. \"A heavy round.\"John understood: Turning your back to an enemy only gave them an advantage. The MACMagnetic Accelerator Cannonwas theCommonwealth 's main weapon. It fired a super dense ferric tungsten shell. The tremendous mass and velocity of the projectile obliterated most ships on impact. Unlike the Archer missiles, a MAC round was an unguided projectile; the firing solution had to be perfect in order to hit the targetnot an easy thing to do when both ships were moving rapidly.\n\"MAC capacitors charging,\" the weapons officer announced.The Covenant ship turned its side toward theCommonwealth .\"Yes,\" the Captain murmured. \"Give me a bigger target.\"\nPinpoints of blue light glowed and then flared along the alien hull. The tactical view screens on the nose of theCommonwealth went dead.John heard sizzling overheadthen the muffled thumps of explosive decompressions.\n\"More pulse laser hits,\" the ops officer reported. \"Armor in section three through seven down to four centimeters. Navigation dish destroyed. Hull breaches on decks two, five, and nine. We have a leak in the port fuel tanks.\" The Lieutenant's hand shakily danced over the controls. \"Pumping fuel to starboard reverse tanks. Sealing sections.\"\nJohn shifted on his feet. He had to move. Act. Standing hereunable to get to his squad, not doing anythingwas counter to every fiber of his being.\n\"MAC at one hundred percent,\" the weapons officer shouted. \"Ready to fire!\"\n\"Fire!\" Captain Wallace ordered.The lights on the bridge dimmed and theCommonwealth shuddered. The MAC bolt launched through spacea red-hot metal slug moving at thirty thousand meters per second. The Covenant ship's engines flared to life and the ship veered away Too late. The heavy round closed and slammed into the target's prow. The Covenant ship reeled backward through space. Its energy shields shimmered and glowed lightning bright . . . then flickered, dimmed, and went out. The bridge crew let out a victory cheer. Except Dr. Halsey. John watched the view screen as she adjusted the camera controls and zoomed in on the Covenant ship. The vessel's erratic spinning slowed and it came to a stop. The ship's nose was crumpled and atmosphere vented into vacuum. Tiny fires flickered inside. The ship slowly came about and started back toward themgaining speed.\n\"It should have been destroyed,\" she whispered.Tiny red blobs appeared on the hull of the Covenant ship. They glowed and intensified and drifted together, collecting along the lateral line of the craft. Captain Wallace said, \"Make ready another heavy round.\"\n\"Aye aye,\" the weapons officer said. \"Charge at thirty percent. Firing solution online, sir.\"\"No,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Evasive maneuvers, Captain. Now!\"\"I won't have my command second-guessed, ma'am.\" The Captain turned to face her. \"And with respect, Doctor , second-guessed by someone with no combat experience.\" He stiffened and placed his hand behind his back. \"I cannot have you removed from the bridge because the bulkheads are sealed . . . but another outburst like that, Doctor, and Iwill have you gagged.\"\nJohn shot a quick glance to Dr. Halsey. Her face flushedhe couldn't tell from shame or rage.\n\"MAC at fifty percent charge.\"\nThe red light continued to collect along the lateral line of the Covenant ship until it was a solid band. It brightened.\n\"Eighty percent charge.\"\"They're turning, sir,\" the nav officer announced. \"She's coming to starboard.\"\n\"Ninety-five percent chargeone hundred,\" the weapons officer announced.\n\"Send them to Hades, Lieutenant. Fire.\"The lights dimmed again. TheCommonwealth shuddered and a bolt of thunder and fire tore through the blackness. The Covenant ship stood its ground. The bloodred light that had pooled on its lateral line burst forth streaked toward theCommonwealth , passing the MAC round a mere kilometer away. The red light glowed and pulsed almost as if it were liquid; its edges roiled and fluttered. It elongated into a teardrop of ruby light five meters long.\n\"Evasive maneuvers,\" Captain Wallace cried. \"Emergency thrusters to port!\"TheCommonwealth slowly moved out of the trajectory path of the Covenant's energy weapon.The MAC round struck the Covenant vessel amidships. Its shield shimmered and bubbled . . . then disappeared. The MAC round punched through the craft and sent it spinning out of control. The inbound ball of light moved, too. It started tracking the Commonwealth.\n\"Enginesfull power astern,\" the Captain ordered. TheCommonwealth rumbled and slowed.The light should have sped past them; instead, it sharply arced and struck her port amidships.The air filled with a popping and sizzling. TheCommonwealth listed to starboard, then rolled completely over and continued to tumble.\n\"Stabilize,\" the Captain cried. \"Starboard thrusters.\"\n\"Fire reported in sections one through twenty,\" the ops officer said, panic creeping into his voice.\n\"Decks two through seven in section one . . . have melted, sir. They're gone.\"\nIt grew noticeably hotter on the bridge. Sweat beaded on John's back and trickled down his spine. He had never felt so helpless. Were his teammates below decks alive or dead?\n\"All port armor destroyed. Decks two through five in sections three, four, and five, are now out of contact, sir. It's burning through us!\"\nCaptain Wallace stood without saying a word. He stared at their one remaining view screen. Dr. Halsey stepped forward. \"Respectfully, Captain, I suggest that you alert the crew to get on respirator packs. Give them thirty seconds then vent the atmosphere on all decks, except the bridge.\"\nThe COM officer looked to the Captain.\"Do it,\" the Captain said. \"Sound the alert.\"\n\"Deck thirteen destroyed,\" the ops officer announced. \"Fire is getting close the reactor. Hull structure starting to buckle.\"\n\"Vent atmosphere now,\" Captain Wallance ordered.\"Aye aye,\" the ops officer replied.There was the sound of thumping through the hull . . . then nothing.\n\"Fire is dying out,\" the ops officer said. \"Hull temperature coolingstabilizing.\"\n\"What the hell did they hit us with?\" Captain Wallace demanded.\"Plasma,\" Dr. Halsey replied. \"But not any plasma we know . . . they can actually guide its trajectory through space, without any detectable mechanism. Amazing.\"\n\"Captain,\" the navigator said. \"Alien ship is pursuing.\"The Covenant vessela red-rimmed hole punched through its centerturned and started toward theCommonwealth .\n\"How . . . ?\" Captain Wallace said unbelievingly. He quickly regained his wits. \"Ready another MAC heavy round.\"\nThe weapons officer slowly said, \"MAC system destroyed, Captain.\"\n\"We're sitting ducks, then,\" the Captain murmured.Dr. Halsey leaned against the brass railing. \"Not quite. TheCommonwealth carries three nuclear missiles, correct, Captain?\"\n\"A detonation this close would destroy us as well.\"\nShe frowned and cupped her hand to her chin, thinking.\n\"Excuse me, sir,\" John said. \"The alien's tactics thus far have been unnecessarily viciouslike those of an animal. They didn't have to take that second MAC round while they fired at us. But they wanted to position themselves to fire. In my opinion sir, they would stop and engageanything that challenged them.\"\nThe Captain looked to Dr. Halsey. She shrugged and then nodded. \"The Longsword interceptors?\"\nCaptain Wallace turned his back to them and covered his face with his one hand. He sighed, nodded, and clicked on the intercom.\n\"Longsword Squadron Delta, this is the Captain. Get your ships into the black, boys, and engage the enemy ship. I need you to need to buy us some time.\"\n\"Roger that, sir. We're ready to launch. On our way.\"\n\"Turn us around,\" the Captain told the nav officer. \"Give me best speed on a vector toward Chi Ceti Four orbit.\"\n\"Coolant leaks in the reactor, sir,\" the ops officer said. \"We can push the engines to thirty percent. No more.\"\n\"Give me fifty percent,\" he said. He turned to the weapons officer. \"Arm one of our Shiva warheads. Set proximity fuse to one hundred meters.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\nTheCommonwealth spun about. John felt the change in his stomach and he tightened his grip on the railing. The spinning slowed, stopped, then the ship accelerated.\n\"Reactor red-lining,\" the ops officer reported. \"Meltdown in twenty-five seconds.\"Over the speakers, there was a crackle, a hiss of static, then:\"Longsword interceptors engaging the enemy, sir.\"\nOn the remaining aft camera, there were flickers of lightthe cold blue strobes of Covenant energy weapons, and the red-orange fireballs of the Longswords' missiles.\n\"Launch the missile,\" the Captain said.\n\"Meltdown in ten seconds.\"\"Missile away.\"\nA plume of exhaust divided the darkness of space.\n\"Five seconds to meltdown,\" the ops officer said. \"Four, three, two\"\"Shunt drive plasma to space,\" the Captain ordered. \"Cut power to all systems.\"The Covenant ship was silhouetted for a split second by pure whitethen the view screen snapped off. The bridge lights went dead. John could see everything, though. The bridge officers, Dr. Halsey as she clutched onto the railing, and Captain Wallace as he stood and saluted the pilots he had just sent to die. The hull of theCommonwealth rumbled and pinged as the shock wave enveloped them. It grew louder, a subsonic roar that shook John to his bones. The noise seemed to go on forever in the darkness. It faded . . . then it was completely silent.\n\"Power us back up,\" the Captain said. \"Slowly. Give me ten percent from the reactors if we can manage.\"The bridge lights came on, dimly, but they worked.\n\"Report,\" the Captain ordered.\n\"All sensors offline,\" the op officer said. \"Resetting backup computer. Hang on. Scanning now. Lots of debris. It's hot back there. All Longsword interceptors vaporized.\" He looked up, the color drained from his face. \"Covenant ship . . . intact, sir.\"\n\"No,\" the Captain said, and made a fist.\"It's moving off, though,\" the op officer said with a visible sigh of relief. \"Very slowly.\"\"What does it take to destroy one of those things?\" the Captain whispered.\n\"We don't know if our weaponscan destroy them,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"But at least we know we can slow them down.\"\nThe Captain stood straighter. \"Best speed to the Damascus testing facility. We will execute a flyby orbit, and then proceed to a point twenty million kilometers distant to make repairs.\"\n\"Captain?\" Dr. Halsey said. \"A flyby?\"\n\"I have orders to get you to the facility and retrieve whatever Section Three has stowed there, ma'am. As we fly by, a dropship will take you and your\" He glanced at John. \"crew planet side. If the Covenant ship returns, we will be the bait to lure them away.\"\n\"I understand, Captain.\"\"We'll rendezvous in orbit no later than 1900 hours.\"Dr. Halsey turned to John. \"We need to hurry. We don't have much timeand there is a great deal I need to show the Spartans.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" John said. He took a long look at the bridge, and hoped he never had to return. CHAPTER THIRTEEN\n1845 Hours, November 27, 2525 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Damascus Materials Testing Facility, planetChi Ceti 4\nHow far down was the testing facility? John and the other Spartans had been confined to a freight elevator for fifteen minutes, and the entire time it had been rapidly descending into the depths of Chi Ceti 4. The last place John wanted to be was in another confined space.The doors finally slid open, and they emerged in what appeared to be a well-lit hangar. The far end had an obstacle course set up with walls, trenches, dummy targets, and barbed wire. Three technicians and at least a dozen AI figures were busy in the center of the room. John had seen AIs beforeone at a time. Deja had once told the Spartans that there were technical reasons why AIs couldn't be in the same place at the same time, but here were many ghostly figures: a mermaid, a samurai warrior, and one made entirely of bright light with comets trailing in her wake. Dr. Halsey cleared her throat. The technicians turnedthe AIs vanished.John had been so focused on the holograms that he hadn't noticed the forty Plexiglas mannequins set up in rows. On each was a suit of armor. The armor reminded John of the exoskeletons he had seen during training, but much less bulky, more compact. He stepped closer to one and saw that the suit actually had many layers; the outer layer reflected the overhead lights with a faint green-gold iridescence. It covered the groin, outer thighs, knees, shins, chest, shoulders, and forearms. There was a helmet and an integrated power packmuch smaller than standard Marine \"battery sacks.\" Underneath were intermeshed layers of matte-black metal.\n\"Project MJOLNIR,\" Dr. Halsey said. She snapped her fingers and an exploded holographic schematic of the armor appeared next to her.\n\"The armor's shell is a multilayer alloy of remarkable strength. We recently added a refractive coating to disperse incoming energy weapon attacksto counter our new enemies.\" She pointed inside the schematic. \"Each battlesuit also has a gel-filled layer to regulate temperature; this layer can reactively change in density. Against the skin of the operator, there is a moisture-absorbing cloth suit, and biomonitors that constantly adjust the suit's temperature and fit. There's also an onboard computer that interfaces with your standard-issue neural implant.\"\nShe gestured and the schematic collapsed so that it only displayed the outer layers. As the image changed, John glimpsed veinlike microcapillaries, a dense sandwich of optical crystal, a circulating pump, even what looked like a miniature fusion cell in the backpack.\n\"Most importantly,\" Dr. Halsey said, \"the armor's inner structure is composed of a new reactive metal liquid crystal. It is amorphous, yet fractally scales and amplifies force. In simplified terms, the armor doubles the wearer's strength, and enhances the reaction speed of a normal human by a factor of five.\"\nShe waved her hand through the hologram. \"There is one problem, however. This system is so reactive that our previous tests with unaugmented volunteers ended in\" She searched for right word. \"failure.\" She nodded to one of the technicians. A flat video appeared in the air. It showed a Marine officer, a Lieutenant, being fitted with the MJOLNIR armor. \"Power is on,\" someone said from offscreen. \"Move your right arm, please.\"\nThe soldier's arm blurred forward with incredible speed. The Marine's stoic expression collapsed into shock, surprise, and pain as his arm shattered. He convulsedshuddered and screamed. As he jerked in pain John could hear the sounds of bones breaking. The man's own agony-induced spasms were killing him. Halsey waved the video away. \"Normal humans don't have the reaction time or strength required to drive this system,\" she explained. \"You do. Your enhanced musculature and the metal and ceramic layers that have been bonded to your skeletonshould be enough to allow you to harness the armor's power. There has been . . . insufficient computer modeling, however. There will be some risk. You'll have to move very slowly and deliberately until you get a feel for the armor and how it works. It cannot be powered down, nor can the response be scaled back. Do you understand?\"\n\"Yes, Ma'am,\" the Spartans answered.\n\"Questions?\"\nJohn raised his hand. \"When do we get to try them, Doctor?\"\"Right now,\" she said. \"Volunteers?\"Every Spartan raised a hand. Dr. Halsey allowed herself a tiny smile. She surveyed them, and finally, she turned to John.\"You've always been lucky, John,\" she said. \"Let's go.\"\nHe stepped forward. The technicians fitted him as the others watched and the pieces of the MJOLNIR system were assembled around his body. It was like a giant three-dimensional puzzle.\n\"Please breathe normally,\" Dr. Halsey told him, \"but otherwise remain absolutely still.\"\nJohn held himself as motionless as he could. The armor shifted and melded to the contours of his form. It was like a second skin . . . and much lighter than he had thought it would be. It heated, then cooledthen matched the temperature of his body. If he closed his eyes, he wouldn't have known he was encased. They set the helmet over his head. Health monitors, motion sensors, suit status indicators pulsed into life. A targeting reticle flickered on the heads-up display.\n\"Everyone move back,\" Halsey ordered. The Spartansfrom their expressions, they were concerned for him, but still intensely curiouscleared a ring with a radius of three meters around him.\n\"Listen carefully to me, John,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"I just want you to think, and only think, about moving your arm up to chest level. Stay relaxed.\"\nHe willed his arm to move, and his hand and forearm sprang forward to chest level. The slightest motion translated his thought to motion at lightning speed. It had been so fastif he hadn't been attached to his arm, he might have missed that it had happened at all. The Spartans gasped.Sam applauded. Even lightning-fast Kelly seemed impressed.Dr. Halsey slowly coached John through the basics of walking and gradually built up the speed and complexity of his motions. After fifteen minutes he could walk, run, and jump almost without thinking of the difference between suit motion and normal motion.\n\"Petty Officer, run through the obstacle course,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"We will proceed to fit the other Spartans. We don't have a great deal of time left.\"\nJohn snapped a salute without thinking. His hand bounced off his helmet and a dull ache throbbed in his hand. His wrist would be bruised. If his bones hadn't been reinforced, he knew they would have been pulverized.\n\"Carefully, Petty Officer. Very carefully, please.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am!\"\nJohn focused his mind on motion. He leaped over a three-meter-high wall. He punched at concrete targetsshattering them. He threw knives, sinking them up to their hafts into target dummies. He slid under barbed wire as bullets zinged over his head. He stood, and let the rounds deflect off the armor. To his amazement, he actually dodged one or two of the rounds. Soon the other Spartans joined him on the course. Everyone ran awkwardly through the obstacles, though they had no coordination. John expressed his worries to Dr. Halsey. \"It will come to you soon enough. You've already received some subliminal training during your last cryo sleep\" Dr. Halsey told them, \"now all you need is time to get used to the suits.\"\nMore worrisome to John was the realization that they'd have to learn how to work together all over again. Their usual hand signals were too exaggerated nowa slight wave or tremble translated into full-force punches or uncontrolled vibrations. They would have to use the COM channels for the time being. As soon as he thought of this, his suit tagged and monitored the other MJOLNIR suits. Their standard issue UNSC neural chipimplanted in every UNSC soldier at inductionidentified friendly soldiers and displayed them on their helmet HUDs. But this was differentall he had to do was concentrate on them, and a secure COM channel opened. It was extremely efficient. And much to his relief, after drilling for thirty minutes, the Spartans had recovered all of their original group coordination, and more. On one level, John moved the suit and, in return, it moved him. On another level, however, communication with his squad was so easy and natural, he could move and direct them as if they were an extension of his body. Over the hangar's speakers, the Spartans heard Dr. Halsey's voice: \"Spartans, so far so good. If anyone is experiencing difficulties with the suit or its controls, please report in.\"\n\"I think I'm in love,\" Sam replied. \"Ohsorry, ma'am. I didn't think that was an open channel.\"\"Flawless amplification of speed and power,\" Kelly said. \"It's like I've been training in this suit for years.\"\n\"Do we get to keep them?\" John asked.\"You're the only ones who can use them, Petty Officer. Who else could we give them to? We\" A technician handed her a headset. \"One moment, please. Report, Captain.\"\nCaptain Wallace's voice broke over the COM channels.\"We have contact with the Covenant ship, ma'am. Extreme range. Their Slipspace engines must still be damaged. They are moving toward us via normal space.\"\n\"Your repair status?\" she asked.\n\"Long-range communications inoperable. Slipstream generators offline. MAC system destroyed. We have two fusion missiles and twenty Archer missile pods intact. Armor plating is at twenty percent.\" There was a long hiss of static. \"If you need more time . . . I can try and draw them away.\"\n\"No, Captain,\" she replied, and carefully scrutinized John and the other armored Spartans. \"We're going to have to fight them . . . and this time we have to win.\"\nCHAPTER FOURTEEN\n2037 Hours, November 27, 2525 (Military Calendar) /\nIn orbit over Chi Ceti 4\nJohn piloted the Pelican through the exit burn of their orbital path, then sent the ship toward the last known position of theCommonwealth . The frigate had moved ten million kilometers in-system from their rendezvous point. Dr. Halsey sat in the copilot's seat, fidgeting with her space suit. In the aft compartment were the Spartans, the three technicians from the Damascus facility, and a dozen spare MJOLNIR suits. Missing, however, were the AIs John had seen when they had first arrived. All Dr. Halsey had time to do was remove their memory processor cubes. It was a tremendous waste to leave such expensive equipment behind. Dr. Halsey examined the ship's short-range detection gear, then said, \"Captain Wallace may be trying to use Chi Ceti's magnetic field to deflect the Covenant's plasma weapon. Try and catch up, Petty Officer.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am.\" John pushed the engines to 100 percent.\"Covenant ship to port,\" she said, \"three million kilometers and closing on theCommonwealth .\"\nJohn bumped up the magnification onscreen and spotted the ship. The alien vessel's hull was bent at a thirty-degree angle from the impact of the MAC heavy round, but it still moved at almost twice the speed of theCommonwealth .\n\"Doctor,\" John asked, \"does the MJOLNIR armor operate in vacuum?\"\"Of course,\" she replied. \"It was one of our first design considerations. The suit can recycle air for ninety minutes. It's shielded against radiation and EMP as well.\"\nHe then spoke to Sam over his COM link. \"What kind of missiles is this bird carrying?\"\n\"Wait one, sir,\"Sam replied. His voice returned a moment later.\"We have two rocket pods with sixteen HE Anvil-IIs each.\"\n\"I want you to assemble a team and go EVA. Remove those warheads from the wing pods.\"\"I'm on it,\"Sam said. Halsey tried to push her glasses up higher on her noseinstead she bumped up against the faceplate of her suit's helmet. \"May I ask what you have in mind, Squad Leader?\"\nJohn left his COM channel open so the Spartans would hear his reply.\n\"Requesting permission to attack the Covenant ship, ma'am.\"Her blue eyes widened. \"Most certainly not,\" she said. \"If a warship like theCommonwealth couldn't destroy it, a Pelican is certainly no match for them.\"\n\"Not the Pelican, no,\" John agreed. \"But I believe we Spartans are. If we getinside the enemy ship, we can destroy her.\"\nDoctor Halsey considered, tapping her lower lip. \"How will you get onboard?\"\n\"We go EVA and use thruster packs to intercept the Covenant ship as it passes en route to theCommonwealth .\"\nShe shook her head. \"One slight error in your trajectory, and you could miss by kilometers,\" Dr. Halsey remarked. A pause.\n\"I don't miss, ma'am,\" John said.\"They have reflective shields.\"\"True,\" John replied. \"But the ship is damaged. They may have had to lower or reduce shielding in order to conserve powerand if we have to, we can use one of our own warheads to punch a small hole in the barrier.\" He paused, then added, \"There's also a large hole in their hull. Their shield may not cover that space entirely.\"\nDr. Halsey whispered, \"It's a tremendous risk.\"\n\"With respect, ma'am, it's a bigger risk to sit here and do nothing. After they finish with theCommonwealth . . . they'll come for us and we'll have to fight them anyway. Better to strike first.\"\nShe stared off into space, lost in thought.Finally she sighed in resignation. \"Very well. Go.\" She transferred the pilot controls to her station. \"And blow the hell out of them.\"\nJohn climbed into the aft compartment. His Spartans stood at attention. He felt a rush of pride; they were ready to follow him as he leaped literally into the jaws of death.\n\"I've got the warheads,\" Sam said. It was hard to mistake Sam even with his reflective blast shield covering his face. He was the largest Spartaneven more imposing encased in the armor.\n\"Everyone's got one.\" Sam continued as he handed John a metal shell. \"Timers and detonators are already rigged. Stuck on a patch of adhesive polymer; they'll cling to your suit.\"\n\"Spartans,\" John said, \"grab thruster packs and make ready to go EVA. Everyone else\" He motioned to the three technicians. \"get into the forward cabin. If we fail, they'll be coming after the Pelican. Protect Dr. Halsey.\"\nHe moved aft. Kelly handed him a thruster pack and he slipped it on.\n\"Covenant ship approaching,\" Halsey called out. \"I'm pumping out your atmosphere to avoid explosive decompression when I drop the back hatch.\"\n\"We'll only get one shot at this,\" John said to the other Spartans. \"Plot an intercept trajectory and fire your thrusters at max burn. If the target changes course, you'll have to make a best guess correction on the fly. If you make it, we'll regroup outside the hole in their hull. If you misswe'll pick you up after we're done.\"\nHe hesitated, then added, \"And if we don't succeed, then power down your systems and wait for UNSC reinforcements to retrieve you. Live to fight another day. Don't waste your lives.\"\nThere was a moment of silence.\"If anyone has a better plan, speak up now.\"Sam patted John on the back. \"This is a great plan. It'll be easier than Chief Mendez's playground. A bunch of little kids could pull it off.\"\n\"Sure,\" John said. \"Everyone ready?\"\n\"Sir,\" they said. \"We're ready, sir!\"John flipped the safety off and then punched in the code to open the Pelican's tail. The mechanism opened soundlessly in the vacuum. Outside was infinite blackness. He had a feeling of falling through spacebut the vertigo quickly passed. He positioned himself on the edge of the ramp, both hands gripping a safety handle overhead. The Covenant ship was a tiny dot in the center of his helmet's view screen. He plotted a course and fired the thruster pack on maximum burn. Acceleration slammed him into the thruster harness. He knew the others would launch right after him, but he couldn't turn to see them. It occurred to him then that the Covenant ship might identify the Spartans as incoming missilesand their point-defense lasers were too damn accurate. John clicked on the COM channel. \"Doctor, we could use a few decoys if Captain Wallace can spare them.\"\n\"Understood,\"she said. The Covenant vessel grew rapidly in his display. A burst from its engines and it turned slightly.Traveling at one hundred million kilometers an hour, even a minor course correction meant that he could miss by tens of thousands of kilometers. John carefully corrected his vector. The pulse laser on the side of the Covenant ship glowed, built up energy, until they were dazzling neon blue, then dischargedbut not at him. John saw explosions in his peripheral vision. TheCommonwealth had fired a salvo of her Archer missiles. Around him in the dark were puffballs of red-orange detonationsutterly silent. John's velocity now almost matched that of the ship. He eased toward the hulltwenty meters, ten, five . . . and then the Covenant ship started to pull away from him. It was traveling too fast. He tapped his attitude thrusters and pointed himself perpendicular to the hull. The Covenant hull accelerated under him . . . but he was dropping closer. He stretched out his arms. The hull raced past his fingertips a meter away.John's fingers brushed against somethingit felt semiliquid. He could see his hand skimming a near invisible, glassy, shimmering surface: the energy shield. Damn. Their shields were still up. He glanced to either side. The huge hole in their hull was nowhere in sight. He slid over the hull, unable to grab hold of it. No.He refused to accept that he had made it this far, only to fail now.A pulse laser flashed a hundred meters away; his faceplate barely adjusted in time. The flash nearly blinded him. John blinked and then saw a silvery film rush back around the bulbous base of the laser turret. The shield dropped to let the laser fire?\nThe laser started to build up charge again. He would have to act quickly. His timing had to be perfect. If he hit that turret before it fired, he'd bounce off. If he hit the turretas it fired . . . there wouldn't be much left of him. The turret glowed, intensely bright. John set his thrust harness on a maximum burn toward the laser, noting the rapidly dwindling fuel charge. He closed his eyes, saw the blinding flash through his lids, felt the heat on his face, then opened his eyesjust in time to crash and bounce into the hull. The hull plates were smooth, but had grooves and odd, organic crenellationsperfect fingerholds. The difference between his momentum and the ship's nearly pulled his arms out of their sockets. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip. He had made it.John pulled himself along the hull toward the hole theCommonwealth 's MAC round had punched in the ship. Only two other Spartans waited for him there.\n\"What took you so long?\" Sam's voice crackled over the COM channel. The other Spartan lifted her helmet's reflective blast shield. He saw Kelly's face.\n\"I think we're it,\" Kelly said. \"I'm not getting any other responses over the COM channels.\"That meant either the Covenant ship shielded their transmissions . . . or there were no Spartans left to communicate with. John pushed that last thought aside. The hole was ten meters across. Jagged metal teeth pointed inward. John looked over the edge and saw that the MAC heavy round had indeed passed all the way through. He saw tiers of exposed decks, severed conduits, and sheared metal beamsand through the other side, black space and stars. They climbed down. John immediately fell down on the first deck.\"Gravity,\" he said. \"And with nothing spinning on this ship.\"\"Artificial gravity?\" Kelly asked. \"Dr. Halsey would love to see this.\"\nThey continued inward, scaling the metal walls, past alternating layers of gravity and free fall, until they were approximately in the middle of the ship. John paused and saw the stars wheel outside either end of the hole. The Covenant ship must be turning. They were engaging theCommonwealth .\n\"We better hurry.\"\nHe stepped onto an exposed deck, and the gravity settled his stomachgiving him an up-and-down orientation.\n\"Weapons check,\" John told them.They examined their assault rifles. The guns had made the journey intact. John slipped in a clip of armor piercing rounds, noting with pleasure that the suit immediately aligned the sight profile of the gun with his targeting system. He slung the weapon and checked the HE warhead attached to his hip. The timer and detonator looked undamaged. John faced a sealed set of sliding pressure doors. It was smooth and soft to his touch. It could have been made of metal or plastic . . . or could have been alive, for all he knew. He and Sam grabbed either side and pulled, strained, and then the mechanism gave and the doors released. There was a hiss of atmosphere, a dark hallway beyond. They entered in formationcovering each other's blind spots.The ceiling was three meters high. It made John feel small.\n\"You think they need all this space because they're so large?\" Kelly asked.\n\"We'll know soon,\" he told her. They crouched, weapons at the ready, and moved slowly down the corridor, John and Kelly in front. They rounded a corner and stopped at another set of pressure doors. John grabbed the seam.\n\"Hang on,\" Kelly said. She knelt next to a pad with nine buttons. Each button was inscribed with runic alien script. \"These characters are strange, but one of them has to open this.\" She touched one and it lit, then she keyed another. Gas hissed into the corridor. \"At least the pressure is equalized,\" she said. John double-checked sensors. Nothing . . . though the alien metal inside the ship could be blocking the scans.\n\"Try another,\" Sam said. She didand the doors slid apart.The room was inhabited. An alien creature stood a meter and half tall, a biped. Its knobby, scaled skin was a sickly, mottled yellow; purple and yellow fins ran along the crest of its skull and its forearms. Glittering, bulbous eyes protruded from skull-like hollows in the alien's elongated head. The Master Chief had read the UNSC's first contact scenariosthey called for cautious attempts at communication. He couldn't imagine communicating with something like this . . . thing. It reminded him of the carrion birds on Reachvicious and unclean. The creature stood there, frozen for a momentstaring at the human interlopers. Then it screeched and reached for something on its belt, its movements darting and birdlike. The Spartans shouldered their weapons and fired a trio of bursts with pinpoint accuracy. Armor-piercing rounds tore into the creature, shredding its chest and head. It crumpled into a heap without a sound, dead before it hit the deck. Thick blood oozed from the corpse. \"That was easy,\" Sam remarked. He nudged the creature with his boot. \"They sure aren't as tough as their ships.\"\n\"Let's hope it stays that way,\" John replied.\"I'm getting a radiation reading this way,\" Kelly said. She gestured deeper into the vessel. They continued down the corridor and took a side branch. Kelly dropped a NAV marker, and its double blue triangle pulsed once on their heads-up displays. They stopped at another set of pressure doors. Sam and John took up flanking positions to cover her. Kelly punched the same buttons she had punched before and the doors slid apart. Another of the creatures was there. It stood in a circular room with crystalline control panels and a large window. This time, however, the vulture-headed creature didn't scream or look particularly surprised. This one looked angry.The creature held a clawlike device in its handleveled at John. John and Kelly fired. Bullets filled the air and pinged off a silver shimmering barrier in front of the creature. A bolt of blue heat blasted from the claw. The blast was similar to the plasma that had hit theCommonwealth . . . and boiled a third of it away. Sam dove forward and knocked John out of the blast's path; the energy burst caught Sam in the side. The reflective coating of his MJOLNIR armor flared. He fell clutching his side, but still managed to fire his weapon. John and Kelly rolled on their backs and sprayed gunfire at the creature. Bullets peppered the alieneach one bounced and ricocheted off the energy shield.John glanced at his ammo counterhalf gone.\n\"Keep firing,\" he ordered. The alien kept up a stream of answering fireenergy blasts hammered into Sam, who fell to the deck, his weapon empty. John charged forward and slammed his foot into the alien's shield and knocked it out of line. He jammed the barrel of his rifle into the alien's screeching mouth and squeezed the trigger. The armor-piercing rounds punctured the alien and spattered the back wall with blood and bits of bone.John rose and helped Sam up.\n\"I'm okay,\" Sam said, holding his side and grimacing. \"Just a little singed.\" The reflective coating on his armor was blackened.\n\"You sure?\"\nSam waved him away.John paused over the remaining bits of the alien. He spotted a glint of metal, an armguard, and he picked it up. He tapped one of three buttons on the device, but nothing happened. He strapped in onto his forearm. Dr. Halsey might find it useful. They entered the room. The large window was a half-meter thick. It overlooked a large chamber that descended three decks. A cylinder ran the length of the chamber and red light pulsed along its length, like a liquid sloshing back and forth. Under the window, on their side, rested a smooth angled surfaceperhaps a control panel? On its surface were tiny symbols: glowing green dots, bars, and squares.\n\"That's got to be the source of the radiation,\" Kelly said, and pointed to the chamber beyond. \"Their reactor . . . or maybe a weapons system.\"\nAnother alien marched near the cylinder. It spotted John. A silver shimmer appeared around it. It screeched and wobbled in alarm, then scrambled for cover.\n\"Trouble,\" John said.\n\"I've got an idea.\" Sam limped forward. \"Hand me those warheads.\" John did as he asked, so did Kelly.\n\"We shoot out that window, set the timers on the warheads, and toss them down there. That should start the party.\"\n\"Let's do it before they call in reinforcements,\" John said.They turned and fired at the crystal. It crackled, splintered, then shattered.\n\"Toss those warheads,\" Sam said, \"and let's get out of here.\"\nJohn set the timers. \"Three minutes,\" he said. \"That'll give us just enough time to get topside and get away.\"He turned to Sam. \"You'll have to stay and hold them off. That's an order.\"\n\"What are you talking about?\" Kelly said.\n\"Sam knows.\"\nSam nodded. \"I think I can hold them off that long.\" He looked at John and then Kelly. He turned and showed them the burn in the side of his suit. There was a hole the size of his fist, and beneath that, the skin was blackened and cracked. He smiled, but his teeth were gritted in pain.\n\"That's nothing,\" Kelly said. \"We'll get you patched up in no time. Once we get back\" Her mouth slowly dropped open.\n\"Exactly,\" Sam whispered. \"Getting back is going to be a problem for me.\"\n\"The hole.\" John reached out to touch it. \"We don't have any way to seal it.\"\nKelly shook her head.\"If I step off this boat, I'm dead from the decompression,\" Sam said, and shrugged.\n\"No,\" Kelly growled. \"Noeveryone gets out alive. We don't leave teammates behind.\"\n\"He has his orders,\" John told Kelly.\"You've got to leave me,\" Sam said softly to Kelly. \"And don't tell me you'll give me your suit. It took those techs on Damascus fifteen minutes to fit us. I wouldn't even know where to start to unzip this thing.\"\nJohn looked to the deck. The Chief had told him he'd have to send men to their deaths. He didn't tell him it would feel like this.\n\"Don't waste time talking,\" Sam said. \"Our new friends aren't going to wait for us while we figure this out.\" He started the timers. \"There. It's decided.\" A three-minute countdown appeared in the corner of their heads-up displays. \"Nowget going, you two.\"\nJohn clasped Sam's hand and squeezed it.Kelly hesitated, then saluted. John turned and grabbed her arm. \"Come on, Spartan. Don't look back.\"The truth was, it was John who didn't dare look back. If he had, he would have stayed with Sam. Better to die with a friend than leave him behind. But as much as he wanted to fight and die alongside his friend, he had to set an example for the rest of the Spartansand live to fight another day. John and Kelly pushed the pressure doors shut behind them.\n\"Good-bye,\" he whispered. The countdown timer ticked the seconds off inexorably.2:35 . . .They ran down the corridor, popped the seal on the outer doorthe atmosphere vented.\n1:05 . . . They climbed up through the twisted metal canyon that the MAC round had torn through the hull.0:33 . . .\n\"There,\" John said, and pointed to the base of a charged pulse laser. They crawled toward it, waited as the glow built to a lethal charge.\n0:12 . . .They crouched and held onto one another.The laser fired. The heat blistered John's back. They pushed off with all their strength, multiplied through the MJOLNIR armor.\n0:00.The shield parted and they cleared the ship, hurtling into the blackness. The Covenant ship shuddered. Flashes of red appeared inside the holethen a gout of fire rose and ballooned, but curled downward as it hit and rebounded off their own shield. The plasma spread along the length of their vessel. The shield shimmered and rippled silverholding the destructive force inside.Metal glowed and melted. The pulse laser turrets absorbed into the hull. The hull blistered, bubbled, and boiled. The shield finally gavethe ship exploded. Kelly clung to John. A thousand molten fragments hurled past them, cooling from white to orange to red and then disappearing into the dark of the night. Sam's death had shown them that the Covenant were not invincible. They could be beaten. At a high cost, however. John finally understood what the Chief had meantthe difference between a life wasted and a life spent. John also knew that humanity had a fighting chance . . . and he was ready to go to war. SECTION III SIGMA OCTANUS\n CHAPTER FIFTEEN0000 Hours, July 17, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSC Remote Scanning OutpostArchimedes , on the edge of the Sigma Octanus Star System Ensign William Lovell scratched his head, yawned, and sat down at his duty station. The wraparound view screen warmed to his presence.\n\"Good morning, Ensign Lovell,\" the computer said.\"Morning, sexy,\" he said. It had been months since the Ensign had seen a real womanthe cold female voice of the computer was the closest thing he was getting to a date.\n\"Voiceprint match,\" the computer confirmed. \"Please enter password.\"\nHe typed: ThereOncewasAgirlThe Ensign had never taken his duty too seriously. Maybe that's why he only made it through his second year at the Academy. And maybe that's why he had been onArchimedes station for the last year, stuck with third shift. But that suited him fine.\n\"Please reenter password.\"\nHe typed more carefully this time:ThereOnceWasAGirl .After first contact with the Covenant, he had almost been conscripted straight out of school; instead, he had actually volunteered. Admiral Cole had defeated the Covenant at Harvest in 2531. His victory was publicized on every vid and holo throughout the Inner and Outer Colonies and all the way to Earth.That's why Lovell didn't try to dodge the enlistment officers. He had thought he'd watch a few battles from the bridge of a destroyer, fire a few missiles, rack up the victories, and be promoted to Captain within a year. His excellent grades gave him instant admission to OCS on Luna. There was one small detail, however, the UNSC propaganda machine had left out of their broadcasts:\nCole had won only because he outnumbered the Covenant three to one . . . and even then, he had lost two-thirds of his fleet. Ensign Lovell had served on the UNSC frigateGorgon for four years. He had been promoted to First Lieutenant then busted down to Second Lieutenant and finally to Ensign for insubordination and gross incompetence. The only reason they hadn't drummed him out of the service was that the USNC needed every man and woman they could get their hands on. While on theGorgon , he and the rest of Admiral Cole's fleet had sped among the Outer Colonies chasing, and being chased by, the Covenant. After four years' space duty, Lovell had seen a dozen worlds glassed . . . and billions murdered. He had simply broken under the strain. He closed his eyes and remembered. No he hadn't broken; he was just scared of dying like everyone else.\n\"Please keep your eyes open,\" the computer told him. \"Processing retinal scan.\"\nHe had drifted from office work to low-priority assignments and finally landed here a year ago. By that time there were no more Outer Colonies. The Covenant had destroyed them all and were pressing inexorably inward, slowly taking the Inner Colonies. There had been a few isolated victories . . . but he knew it was only a matter of time before the aliens wiped the human race out of existence.\n\"Login complete,\" the computer announced. Ensign Lovell's identity record was displayed on the monitor. In his Academy picture, he looked ten years younger: neatly trimmed jet-black hair, toothy grin, and sparkling green eyes. Today his hair was unkempt and the spark was long gone from his eyes.\n\"Please read General Order 098831A-1 before proceeding.\"The Ensign had memorized this stupid thing. But the computer would track his eye motionsmake sure he read it anyway. He opened the file and it popped on-screen:\nUnited Nations Space Command Emergency Priority Order 098831A-1Encryption Code:Red Public Key:file /first light/\nFrom:UNSC/NAVCOM Fleet H. T. Ward To:ALL UNSC PERSONNELSubject:General Order 098831A-1 (\"The Cole Protocol\")Classification:RESTRICTED (BGX Directive)\nThe Cole Protocol To safeguard the Inner Colonies and Earth, all UNSC vessels or stations must not be captured with intact navigation databases that may lead Covenant forces to human civilian population centers. Ifany Covenant forces are detected:\n1. Activate selective purge of databases on all ship-based and planetary data networks.\n2. Initiate triple-screen check to ensure all data has been erased and all backups neutralized.3. Execute viral data scavengers. (Download from UNSCTTP://EPWW:COLEPROTOCOL/Virtualscav/\nfbr.091)\n4. If retreating from Covenant forces, all ships must enter Slipstream space with randomized vectors NOT directed toward Earth, the Inner Colonies, or any other human population center.\n5. In case of imminent capture by Covenant forces, all UNSC ships MUST self-destruct. Violation of this directive will be considered an act of TREASON, and pursuant to USNC Military Law Articles JAG 845-P and JAG 7556-L, such violations are punishable by life imprisonment or execution.\n/end file/\nPressENTER if you understand these orders. Ensign Lovell pressed ENTER.The UNSC wasn't taking any chances. And after everything he had seen, he didn't blame them. His scanning windows appeared on the view screen, full of spectroscopic tracers and radarand lots of noise. Archimedesstation cycled three probes into and out of Slipstream space. Each probe sent out radar pings and analyzed the spectrum from radio to X rays, then reentered normal space and broadcast the data back to the station. The problem with Slipstream space was that the laws of physics never worked the way they were supposed to. Exact positions, times, velocities, even masses were impossible to measure with any real accuracy. Ships never knew exactly where they were, or exactly where there were going. Every time the probes returned from their two-second journey, they could appear exactly where they had left . . . or three million kilometers distant. Sometimes they never returned at all. Drones had to be sent after the probes before the process could be repeated. Because of this slipperiness in the interdimensional space, UNSC ships traveling between star systems might arrive half a billion kilometers off course. The curious properties of Slipspace also made this assignment a joke. Ensign Lovell was supposed to watch for pirates or black-market runners trying to sneak by . . . and most importantly, for the Covenant. This station had never logged so much as a Covenant probe silhouetteand that was the reason he had specifically requested this dead-end assignment. It was safe. What he did see with regularity were trash dumps from UNSC vessels, clouds of primordial atomic hydrogen, even the occasional comet that had somehow plowed into the Slipstream. Lovell yawned, kicked his feet up onto the control console, and closed his eyes. He nearly fell out of his chair when the COM board contact alert pinged.\n\"Oh no,\" he whispered, fear and shame at his own cowardice forming a cold lump in his belly.Don't let it be the Covenant. Don't let it . . . not here. He quickly activated the controls and traced the contact signal back to the sourceAlpha probe.The probe had detected an incoming mass, a slight arc to its trajectory pulled by the gravity of Sigma Octanus. It was large. A cloud of dust, perhaps? If it was, it would soon distort and scatter. Ensign Lovell sat up straighter in his chair.Beta probe cycled back. The mass was still there and as solid as before. It was the largest reading Ensign Lovell had ever seen: twenty thousand tons. That couldn't be a Covenant shipthey didn't get that big. And the silhouette was a bumpy spherical shape; it didn't match any of the Covenant ships in the database. It had to be a rogue asteroid. He tapped his stylus on the desk. What if it wasn't an asteroid? He'd have to purge the database and enable the self-destruct mechanism for the outpost. But what could the Covenant want way out here?\nGamma probe reappeared. The mass readings were unchanged. Spectroscopic analysis was inconclusive, which was normal for probe reading at this distance. The mass was two hours out at its present velocity. Its projected trajectory was hyperbolica quick swing near the star, and then it would pass invisibly out of the system and be forever gone. He noted that its trajectory bought it close to Sigma Octanus IV . . . which, if the rock were in real space, would be cause for alarm. In Slipspace, however, it could pass \"through\" the planet, and no one would notice. Ensign Lovell relaxed and sent the retrieval drones after the three probes. By the time they got the probes back, though, the mass would be long gone. He stared at the last image on screen. Was it worth sending an immediate report to Sigma Octanus COM? They'd make him send his probes out without a proper recovery, and the probes would likely get lost after that. A supply ship would have to be sent out here to replace them. The station would have to be inspected and recertifiedand he'd receive a thorough lecture on what did and did not constitute a valid emergency. No . . . there was no need to bother anyone over this. The only ones who would be really interested were the high-forehead types at UNSC Astrophysics, and they could review the data at their leisure. He logged the anomaly and attached it to his hourly update.Ensign Lovell kicked up his boots and reclined, once again feeling perfectly safe in his little corner of the universe. CHAPTER SIXTEEN\n0300 Hours, July 17, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSC destroyerIroquois on routine patrol in the Sigma Octanus Star System Commander Jacob Keyes stood on the bridge of theIroquois . He leaned against the brass railing and surveyed the stars in the distance. He wished the circumstances of his first command were more auspicious, but experienced officers were in short supply these days. And he had his orders. He walked around the circular bridge examining the monitors and displays of engine status. He paused at the screens showing the stars fore and aft; he couldn't quite get used to the view of deep space again. The stars were so vivid . . . and here, so different from the stars near Earth. TheIroquois had rolled out of space dock at Reachone of the UNSC's primary naval yardsjust three months ago. They hadn't even installed her AI yet; like good officers, the elaborate artificially intelligent computer systems were also in dangerously short supply. Still,Iroquois was fast, well armored, and armed to the teeth. He couldn't ask for a finer vessel. Unlike the frigates that Commander Keyes had toured on before, theMeriwether Lewis andMidsummer Night , this ship was a destroyer. She was almost as heavy as both those vessels combined, but she was only seven meters longer. Some in the fleet thought the massive ships were unwieldy in combattoo slow and cumbersome. What those critics forgot was that a UNSC destroyer sported two MAC guns, twenty-six oversized Archer missile pods, and three nuclear warheads. Unlike other fleet ships, she carried no single-ship fightersinstead her extra mass came from the nearly two meters of titanium-A battleplate armor that covered her from stem to stern. TheIroquois could dish out and take a tremendous amount of punishment. Someone at the shipyard had appreciated theIroquois for what she was, tootwo long streaks of crimson war paint had been applied to her port and starboard flanks. Strictly nonregulation and it would have to go . . . but secretly, Commander Keyes liked the ornamentation. He sat in the Commander's chair and watched his junior officers at their stations.\n\"Incoming transmissions,\" Lieutenant Dominique reported. \"Status reports from Sigma Octanus Four and also theArchimedes Sensor Outpost.\"\n\"Pipe them through to my monitor,\" Commander Keyes said.Dominique had been one of his students at the Academyhe had transferred to Luna from the Universite del' Astrophysique in Paris after his sister was killed in action. He was short, nimbly athletic, and he rarely cracked a smilehe was always business. Keyes appreciated that. Commander Keyes was less impressed, however, with the rest of his bridge officers. Lieutenant Hikowa manned the weapons console. Her long fingers and slender arms slowly checked the status of the ordnance with all the deliberation of a sleepwalker. Her dark hair was always falling into her eyes, too. Oddly, her record showed that she had survived several battles with the Covenant . . . so perhaps her lack of enthusiasm was merely battle fatigue. Lieutenant Hall stood post at ops. She seemed competent enough. Her uniform was always freshly pressed, her blond hair trimmed exactly at the regulation sixteen centimeters. She had authored seven physics papers on Slipspace communications. The only problem was that she was always smiling, and trying to impress him . . . occasionally by showing up her fellow officers. Keyes disapproved of such displays of ambition. Manning navigation, however, was his most problematic officer: Lieutenant Jaggers. It might have been that navigation was the Commander's strong suit, so anyone else in that position never seemed to be up to par. On the other hand, Lieutenant Jaggers was moody, and when Keyes had come aboard, the man's small hazel eyes seemed glazed. He could have sworn he had caught the man on duty with liquor on his breath, too. He had ordered a blood testthe results were negative.\n\"Orders, sir?\" Jagger asked.\n\"Continue on this heading, Lieutenant. We'll finish our patrol around Sigma Octanus and then accelerate and enter Slipspace.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\"Commander Keyes eased into his seat and detached the tiny monitor from the armrest. He read the hourly report from theArchimedes Sensor Outpost. The log of the large mass was curious. It was too big to be even the largest Covenant carrier . . . yet something was oddly familiar about its shape. He retrieved his pipe from his jacket, lit it, inhaled a puff, and exhaled the fragrant smoke through his nose. Keyes would never even have thought about smoking on the other vessels he had served on, but here . . . well, command had its privileges. He pulled up his files transferred from the Academyseveral theoretical papers that had recently caught his interest. One, he thought, might apply to the outpost's unusual reading. That paper had initially sparked his interest because of its author. He had never forgotten his first assignment with Dr. Catherine Halsey . . . nor the names of any of the children they had observed.He opened the file and read:\nUnited Nations Space Command Astrophysics Journal 034-23-01\nDate:May 097, 2540 (Military Calendar)\nEncryption Code:NonePublic Key:NAAuthor(s):Lieutenant Commander Fhajad 034 (service number [CLASSIFIED]), UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence Subject:Dimensional-Mass Space Compressions in Shaw-Fujikawa (a.k.a. \"Slipstream\") Space. Classification:NA/start file/\nAbstract:The space-bending properties of mass in normal space are well described by Einstein's general relativity. Such distortions however, are complicated by the anomalous quantum gravitational effects in Shaw-Fujikawa (SF) spaces. Using loop-string analysis, it can be shown that a large mass bends space in SF space more than general relativity predicts by an order of magnitude. This bending may explain how several small objects clustered closely together in SF space have been reported erroneously as a single larger mass. PressENTER to continue.Commander Keyes switched back to the silhouette from theArchimedes report. The leading edge almost looked like the bulbous head of a whale. That realization chilled him to the core. He quickly opened the UNSC database of all known Covenant ships. He scanned them until he found the three-dimensional representation of one of their medium-sized warships. He rotated it into three-quarters profile. He overlaid the image on the silhouette, scaled it back a little. It was a perfect match.\n\"Lieutenant Dominique, get FLEETCOM ASAP. Priority Alpha.\"The Lieutenant snapped straight in his chair. \"Yes, sir!\"The bridge officers looked at the Commander then exchanged glances with one another. Commander Keyes brought up a map of the system on his data pad. The silhouette monitored by the outpost was on a direct course for Sigma Octanus IV. That confirmed his theory.\n\"Bring us about to course zero four seven, Lieutenant Jaggers. Lieutenant Hall, push the reactors to one hundred ten percent.\"\n\"Aye, Commander,\" Lieutenant Jaggers replied.\"Reactor running hot, sir,\" Hall reported. \"Now exceeding recommended operational parameters.\"\"ETA?\"\nJaggers calculated, then looked up. \"Forty-three minutes,\" he replied.\n\"Too slow,\" Commander Keyes muttered. \"Reactor to one hundred thirty percent, Lieutenant Hall.\"She hesitated. \"Sir?\"\n\"Do it!\"\n\"Yes, sir!\" She moved as if someone had electrically shocked her.\"FLEETCOM online, sir,\" Lieutenant Dominique said.The weathered face of Admiral Michael Stanforth appeared on the main view screen. Commander Keyes breathed a sigh of relief. Admiral Stanforth had a reputation for being reasonable and intelligent. He'd understand the logic of the situation.\n\"Commander Keyes,\" the Admiral said. \"The old 'Schoolmaster' himself, huh? This is the priority channel, son. This better be an emergency.\"\nCommander Keyes ignored the obvious condescension. He knew many at FLEETCOM thought he deserved to command nothing but a classroomand some probably thought he didn't deserve that.\n\"The Sigma Octanus System is about to come under attack, sir.\"\nAdmiral Stanforth cocked an eyebrow and leaned closer to the screen.\"I'm requesting that all ships in-system rendezvous with theIroquois at Sigma Octanus Four. And any ships in neighboring systems make best speed here.\"\n\"Show me what you've got, Keyes,\" the Admiral said. Commander Keyes displayed the silhouette from the sensor outpost first. \"Covenant ships, sir. Their silhouettes are overlapped. Our probes resolve them as one mass because Slipspace is bent by gravity more easily than normal space.\"\nThe Admiral listened to his analysis, frowning.\"You've fought the Covenant, sir. You known how precisely they can maneuver their ships through the Slipstream. I've seen a dozen alien craft appear in normal space, in perfect formation, not a kilometer apart.\"\n\"Yeah,\" the Admiral muttered. \"I've seen that, too. All right, Keyes, good work. You'll get everything we can send.\"\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n\"You just hang in there, son. Good luck. FLEETCOM out.\"The view screen snapped off.\n\"Sir?\" Lieutenant Hall turned around. \"How many Covenant ships?\"\n\"I'd estimate four medium-tonnage vessels,\" he said. \"The equivalent of our frigates.\"\"FourCovenant ships?\" Lieutenant Jaggers muttered. \"What canwe do?\"\"Do?\" Commander Keyes said. \"Our duty.\"\n\"Begging the Commander's pardon, but there arefour Cov\" Jaggers began to protest. Keyes cut him off with a glare. \"Stow that, mister.\" He paused, weighing his words. \"Sigma Octanus Four has seventeen million citizens, Lieutenant. Are you suggesting that we just stand by and watch the Covenant glass the planet?\"\n\"No, sir.\" His gaze dropped to the deck.\"We will do the best we can,\" Commander Keyes said. \"In the meantime, remove all weapons system locks, order missile crews to readiness, warm up the MAC guns, and remove the safeties from one of our nukes.\"\n\"Yes, sir!\" Lieutenant Hikowa said. An alarm sounded at ops. \"Reactor hysteresis approaching failure levels,\" Lieutenant Hall reported.\n\"Superconducting magnets overloading. Coolant breakdown imminent.\"\n\"Vent primary coolant and pump in the reserve tanks,\" Commander Keyes ordered. \"That will buy us another five minutes.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"Commander Keyes fumbled with his pipe. He didn't bother to light the thing, just chewed on the end. Then he put it away. The nervous habit wasn't setting the right example for his bridge officers. He didn't have the luxury of showing his apprehension. The truth was, he was terrified. Four Covenant ships would be an even match forseven destroyers. The best he could hope for was to get their attention and outrun themhopefully distract them until the fleet got here. Of course . . . those Covenant ships could outrun theIroquois as well.\"Lieutenant Jaggers,\" he said, \"initiate the Cole Protocol. Purge our navigation databases, and then generate an appropriate randomized exit vector from the Sigma Octanus System.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" He fumbled with his controls. He hung his head, steadied his hands, and slowly typed in the commands.\n\"Lieutenant Hall: make preparations to override reactor safeties.\"His junior officers all paused for a second. \"Aye, sir,\" Lieutenant Hall whispered.\"We're receiving a transmission from the system's edge,\" Lieutenant Dominique announced.\n\"FrigatesAlliance andGettysburg are on an inbound vector at maximum speed. ETA . . . one hour.\"\n\"Good,\" Commander Keyes said. That hour might as well be a month. This battle would be over in minutes.He could not fight the enemyhe was severely outgunned. He couldn't outrun them, either. There had to be another option. Hadn't he always told his students that when you were out of options, then you were using the wrong tactics? You had to bend the rules. Shift perspectiveanything to find a way out of a hopeless situation. The black space near Sigma Octanus IV boiled and frothed with motes of green light.\n\"Ships entering normal space,\" Lieutenant Jaggers announced, panic tingeing his voice.Commander Keyes got to his feet.He had been wrong. There weren't four Covenant frigates. A pair of enemy frigates emerged from Slipspace . . . escorting a destroyer and a carrier. His blood ran cold. He had seen battles in which a Covenant destroyer had made Swiss cheese of UNSC ships. Its plasma torpedoes could boil through theIroquois ' two meters of titanium-A battleplate in seconds. Their weapons were light-years ahead of the UNSC's.\n\"Their weapons,\" Commander Keyes muttered under his breath. Yes . . . hedid have a third option.\"Continue at emergency speed,\" he ordered, \"and come about to heading zero three two.\"\nLieutenant Jaggers swiveled in his seat. \"That will put us on collision course with their destroyer, sir.\"\n\"I know,\" Commander Keyes replied. \"In fact, I'm counting on doing just that.\"\nCHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n0320 Hours, July 17, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCIroquois en route to Sigma Octanus IV Commander Keyes stood with his hands behind his back and tried to look calm. Not an easy thing to do when his ship was on a collision course with a Covenant battlegroup. Inside, adrenaline raced through his blood and his pulse pounded. He had to at leastappear in control for his crew. He was asking a lot from them . . . probablyeverything , in fact. His junior officers watched their status monitors; they occasionally glanced nervously at him, but their gazes always drifted back to the center view screen. The Covenant ships looked like toys in the distance. It was dangerous to think of them as harmless, however. One slip, one underestimation of their tremendous firepower, and theIroquois would be destroyed. The alien carrier had three bulbous sections; its swollen center had thirteen launch bays. Commander Keyes had seen hundreds of fighters stream out of them beforefast, accurate, and deadly craft. Normally his ship's AI would handle point defense . . . only this time, there was no AI installed on theIroquois . The alien destroyer was a third again as massive as theIroquois . She bristled with pulse laser turrets, insectlike antennae, and chitinous pods. The carrier and destroyer moved together . . . but not towardIroquois . They slowly drifted in-system toward Sigma Octanus IV. Were they going to ignore him? Glass the planet without even bothering to swat him out of the way first?\nThe Covenant frigates, however, lagged behind. They turned in unison and their sides faced theIroquois preparing for a broadside. Motes of red light appeared and swarmed toward the frigate's lateral lines, building into a solid stripe of hellish illumination.\n\"Detecting high levels of beta particle radiation,\" Lieutenant Dominique said. \"They're getting ready to fire their plasma weapons, Commander.\"\n\"Course correction, sir?\" Lieutenant Jaggers asked. His fingers tapped in a new heading bound out-system.\n\"Stay on course.\" It took all Commander Keyes' concentration to say that matter-of-factly. Lieutenant Jaggers turned and started to speakbut Commander Keyes didn't have time to address his concerns.\n\"Lieutenant Hikowa,\" Commander Keyes said. \"Arm a Shiva missile. Remove all nuclear launch safety locks.\"\n\"Shiva armed. Aye, Commander.\" Lieutenant Hikowa's face was a mask of grim determination.\"Set the fuse on radio transmission code sequence detonation only. Disable proximity fuse. Stand by for a launch pilot program.\"\n\"Sir?\" Lieutenant Hikowa looked confused by his order, but then said, \"Sir! Yes, sir. Making it happen.\"\nThe alien frigates in the center of the view screen no longer looked remotely like toys to Commander Keyes. They looked real and larger every second. The red glow along their sides had become solid bands . . . almost too bright to look directly at. Commander Keyes picked up his data pad and quickly tapped in calculations: velocity, mass, and heading. He wished they had an AI online to double-check his figures. This amounted to no more than an educated guess. How long would it take theIroquois to orbit Sigma Octanus IV? He got a number and cut it by 60 percent, knowing they'd either pick up speed . . . or be dead by the time it mattered.\n\"Lieutenant Hikowa, set the Shiva's course for mark one eight zero. Full burn for twelve seconds.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" she said, tapped in the parameters, and locked them into the system. \"Missile ready, sir.\"\"Sir!\" Lieutenant Jaggers swiveled around and stood. His lips were drawn into a tight thin line. \"That course fires the missile directlyaway from our enemies.\"\n\"I am aware of that, Lieutenant Jaggers. Sit down and await further orders.\"\nLieutenant Jaggers sat. He rubbed his temple with a trembling hand. His other hand balled into a fist. Commander Keyes linked to the NAV system and set a countdown timer on his data pad. Twenty-nine seconds. \"On my mark, Lieutenant Hikowa, launch that nuke . . . and not a moment before.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\" Her slender hand hovered over the control panel. \"MAC guns are still hot, Commander,\" she reminded him.\n\"Divert the energy keeping the capacitors at full charge and route them to the engines,\" Commander Keyes ordered. Lieutenant Hall said, \"Diverting now, sir.\" She exchanged a glance with Lieutenant Hikowa. \"Engines now operating at one hundred fifty percent of rated output. Red line in two minutes.\"\n\"Contact! Contact!\" Lieutenant Dominique shouted. \"Enemy plasma torpedoes away, sir!\"Scarlet lightning erupted from the alien frigatestwin bolts of fire streaked through the darkness. They looked as if they could burn space itself. The torpedoes were on a direct course for theIroquois .\n\"Course correction, sir?\" Lieutenant Jaggers' voice broke with strain. His uniform was soaked with perspiration.\n\"Negative,\" Commander Keyes replied. \"Continue on this heading. Arm all aft Archer missile pods. Rotate launch arcs one eight zero degrees.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\" Lieutenant Hikowa wrinkled her brow, and then she slowly nodded and silently mouthed,\n\" . . . yes.\"\nBoiling red plasma filled half the forward view screen. It was beautiful to watch in an odd waylike a front-row seat at a forest fire. Keyes found himself strangely calm. This would either work or it would not. The odds were long, but he was confident that his actions were the only option to survive this encounter. Lieutenant Dominique turned. \"Collision with plasma in nineteen seconds, sir.\"Jaggers turned from his station. \"Sir! This is suicide! Our armor can't withstand\"Keyes cut him off. \"Mister, man your station or I will have you removed from the bridge.\"\nJaggers looked pleadingly at Hikowa. \"We're going todie , Aki\"\nShe refused to meet his gaze and turned back to her controls. \"You heard the Commander,\" she said quietly. \"Man your post.\"\nJaggers sank into his seat.\"Collision with plasma in seven seconds,\" Lieutenant Hall said. She bit her lower lip.\n\"Lieutenant Jaggers, transfer emergency thruster controls to my station.\"\n\"Yes . . . yes, sir.\"\nThe emergency thrusters were tanks of trihydride tetrazine and hydrogen peroxide. When they mixed, they did so with explosive forceliterally blasting theIroquois onto a new course. The ship had six such tanks strategically placed on hardened points on the hull. Commander Keyes consulted the countdown timer on his data pad. \"Lieutenant Hikowa: fire the nuke.\"\"Shiva away, sir! On courseone eight zero, maximum burn.\"\nPlasma filled the forescreen; the center of the red mass turned blue. Greens and yellows radiated outward, the light frequencies blue-shifting in spectra.\n\"Distance three hundred thousand kilometers,\" Lieutenant Dominique said. \"Collision in two seconds.\"Commander Keyes waited a heartbeat then hit the emergency thrusters to port. A bang resonated through the ship's hullCommander Keyes flew sideways and impacted with the bulkhead. The view screen was full of fire and the bridge was suddenly hot. Commander Keyes stood. He counted the beats of his pounding heart. One, two, threeIf they had been hit by the plasma, there wouldn't be anything to count. They would be dead already.Only one view screen was working now, however. \"Aft camera,\" he said. The twin blots of fire streaked along their trajectories for a moment, then lazily arced, continuing their pursuit of theIroquois . One pulled slightly ahead of its counterpart, so they appeared now like two blazing eyes. Commander Keyes marveled at the aliens' ability to direct that plasma from such a great distance.\n\"Good,\" he murmured to himself. \"Chase us all the way to hell, you bastards.\n\"Track them,\" he ordered Lieutenant Hall.\n\"Aye, sir,\" she said. Her perfectly groomed hair was tousled. \"Plasma increasing velocity. Matching our speed . . . overtaking our velocity now. They will intercept in forty-three seconds.\"\"Forward camera,\" Commander Keyes ordered. The view screen flashed: the image changed to show the two alien frigates turning to face the incomingIroquois head-on. Blue lights flickered along their hullspulse lasers charging. Commander Keyes pulled back the camera angle and saw the alien carrier and the destroyer were still inbound toward Sigma Octanus IV. He read their position off his data pad and quickly performed the necessary calculations.\n\"Course correction,\" he told Lieutenant Jaggers. \"Come about to heading zero zero four point two five. Declination zero zero zero point one eight.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" Jaggers said. \"Zero zero four point two five. Declination zero zero zero point one eight.\"The view screen turned and centered on the enormous Covenant destroyer.\n\"Collision course!\" Lieutenant Hall announced. \"Impact with Covenant destroyer in eight seconds.\"\n\"Stand by for new course correction: declination minus zero zero zero point one zero.\"\"Aye, sir.\" As Jaggers typed he wiped the sweat from his eyes and double-checked his numbers.\n\"Course online. Awaiting your order, sir.\"\n\"Collision with Covenant destroyer in five seconds,\" Hall said. She clutched the edge of her seat. The destroyer grew in the view screen: laser turrets and launch bays, bulbous alien protrusions and flickering blue lights.\n\"Hold this course,\" Commander Keyes said. \"Sound collision alarm. Switch to undercarriage camera now.\"\nKlaxons blared. The view screen snapped off and on and showed black spacethen a flash of the faint purple-blue hull of a Covenant ship. TheIroquois screeched and shuddered as she grazed the prow of the Covenant destroyer. Silver shields flickered onscreenthen the screen filled with static.\n\"Course correction now!\" Commander Keyes shouted.\"Aye, sir.\"\nThere was a brief burn from the thrusters and theIroquois nudged down slightly.\n\"Hull breach!\" Lieutenant Hall said. \"Sealing pressure doors.\"\n\"Aft camera,\" Commander Keyes said. \"Guns: Fire aft Archer missile pods!\"\"Missiles away,\" Lieutenant Hikowa replied.Keyes watched as the first of the plasma torpedoes that had been trailing theIroquois impacted on the prow of the alien destroyer. The ship's shields flared, flickered . . . and vanished. The second bolt hit a moment later. The hull of the alien ship blazed and then turned red-hot, melted, and boiled. Secondary explosions burst through the hull. The Archer missiles streaked toward the wounded Covenant ship, tiny trails of exhaust stretching from theIroquois to the target. They slammed into the gaping wounds in the hull and detonated. Fire and debris burst from the destroyer. A smile spread across Keyes' face as he watched the alien ship burn, list, and slowly plunge into Sigma Octanus IV's gravity well. Without power, the Covenant vessel would burn up in the planet's atmosphere. Commander Keyes flicked on the intercom. \"Brace for emergency thruster maneuver.\"\nHe punched the thruster controlsexplosive force detonated on the starboard side of the ship. TheIroquois nosed toward Sigma Octanus IV.\n\"Course correction, Lieutenant Jaggers,\" he said. \"Bring us into a tight orbit.\"\"Aye, sir.\" He furiously tapped in commands, diverting engine output through attitude thrusters.The hull of theIroquois glowed red as it entered the atmosphere. A cloud of yellow ionization built up around the view screen. Commander Keyes gripped the railing tighter. The view screen cleared and he could see the stars. TheIroquois entered the dark side of the planet.Commander Keyes slumped forward and started breathing again.\"Engine coolant failure, sir,\" Lieutenant Hall said.\n\"Shut the engines down,\" he ordered. \"Emergency vent.\"\n\"Aye, sir. Venting fusion reactor plasma.\"\nTheIroquois was abruptly quiet. No rumble of her engines. And no one said anything until Lieutenant Hikowa stood and said, \"Sir, that was the most brilliant maneuver I have ever seen.\"\nCommander Keyes gave a short laugh. \"You think so, Lieutenant?\"If one of his students had proposed such a maneuver in his tactics class, he would have given them a C+. He would have told them their maneuver was full of bravado and daring . . . but extremely risky, placing the crew in the ship in unnecessary danger.\n\"This isn't over yet. Stay sharp,\" he told them. \"Lieutenant Hikowa what is the charge status of the MAC guns?\"\n\"Capacitors at ninety-five percent, sir, and draining at a rate of three percent per minute.\"\"Ready MAC guns, one heavy round apiece. Arm all forward Archer missile pods.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\"\nTheIroquois broke free of the dark side of Sigma Octanus IV.\"Fire chemical thrusters to break orbit, Lieutenant Hall.\"\"Firing, aye.\"\nThere was a brief rumble. The screen centered on the backsides of the two Covenant frigates they had passed on the way in. The alien ships started to come about; blue flashes flickered along their hulls as their laser turrets charged. Motes of red collected along their lateral lines. They were readying another salvo of plasma torpedoes. There was something there, however, that was too small to see on the view screen: the nuke. Keyes had launched that missile in the opposite directionbut its reverse thrust had not completely overcome their tremendous forward velocity.As theIroquois had screamed over the prow of the destroyer, and as they orbited Sigma Octanus IV, the nuke had drifted closer to the frigates . . . who had fixed their attention solidly on theIroquois . Commander Keyes tapped his data pad and sent the signal to detonate the bomb. There was a flash of white, a crackle of lightning, and the alien ships vanished as a cloud of destruction enveloped them. Waves of the EMP interacted with the magnetic field of Sigma Octanus IVrippled with rainbow borealis. The cloud of vapor expanded and cooled, and faded to yellow, orange, red, then black dust that scattered into space. Both Covenant frigates, however, were still intact. Their shields, however, flickered once . . . then went dead.\n\"Get me firing solutions for the MAC guns, Lieutenant Hikowa. On the double.\"\"Aye, sir. MAC gun capacitors at ninety-three percent. Firing solution online.\"\n\"Fire, Lieutenant Hikowa.\"\nTwo thumps resonated through the hull of theIroquois .\"Lock remaining Archer missile pods on targets and fire.\"\n\"Missiles away, Commander.\"\nTwin thunderbolts and hundreds of missiles streaked toward the two helpless frigates.The MAC rounds tore though themone ship was holed from nose to tail; the other ship was hit on her midline, right near the engines. Internal explosions chained up the length of the ship, bulging the second ship's hull along her length. Archer missiles impacted seconds later, exploding through chunks of hull and armor, tearing the alien ships apart. The frigate that had taken the MAC round in her engines mushroomed, a fireworks bouquet of shrapnel and sparks. The other ship burned, her internal skeletal structure showing now; she turned toward theIroquois but didn't fire a weapon . . . just drifted out of control. Dead in space.\n\"Position of the Covenant carrier, Lieutenant Hall?\"\nLieutenant Hall paused, then reported, \"In polar orbit around Sigma Octanus Four. But she's moving off at considerable speed. Headed out-system, course zero four five.\"\"Alert theAllegiance andGettysburg of her position.\"\nCommander Keyes sighed and slumped back into his chair. They had stopped the Covenant ships from glassing the planetsaved millions of lives. They had done the impossible: taken on four Covenant ships and won. Commander Keyes paused in his self-congratulation. Something was wrong. He had never seen the Covenant run. In every battle he had seen or read about, they stayed to slaughter every last survivor . . . or if they were defeated, they always fought to the last ship.\n\"Check the planet,\" he told Lieutenant Hall. \"Look for anythingdropped weapons, strange transmissions. There's got to be something there.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\"Keyes prayed she wouldn't find anything. At this point he was out of tricks. He couldn't turn theIroquois around and return to Sigma Octanus IV even if he had wanted to. TheIroquois ' engines were down for a long time. They were speeding on an out-system vector at a considerable velocity. And even if they could stopthere was no way to recharge the MAC guns, and no remaining Archer missiles. They were practically dead in space. He pulled out his pipe and steadied his shaking hand.\n\"Sir!\" Lieutenant Hall cried. \"Dropships, sir. The alien carrier deployed thirtycorrection: thirty-four dropships. I have silhouettes descending to the surface. They're on course for Cote d'Azur. A major population center.\"\n\"An invasion,\" Commander Keyes said. \"Get FLEETCOM ASAP. Time to send in the Marines.\"\nCHAPTER EIGHTEEN\n0600 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCIroquois , military staging area in orbit around Sigma Octanus IV Commander Keyes had a sinking feeling that although he had won the battle, it would be the first of many to come in the Sigma Octanus System. He watched the four dozen other UNSC ships orbit the planet: frigates and destroyers, two carriers, and a massive repair and refitting stationmore vessels than Admiral Cole had at his disposal during his four-year-long campaign to save Harvest. Admiral Stanforth had pulled out all the stops. Although Commander Keyes was grateful for the quick and overwhelming response, he wondered why the Admiral had dedicated so many ships to the area. Sigma Octanus wasn't strategically positioned. It had no special resources. True, the UNSC had standing orders to protect civilian lives, but the fleet was spread dangerously thin. Commander Keyes knew there were more valuable systems that needed protection. He pushed these thoughts aside. He was sure Admiral Stanforth had his reasons. Meanwhile the repair and resupply of theIroquois was his top priorityhe didn't want to get caught half ready if the Covenant returned. Or rather,when they returned.It was a curious thing: the aliens dropping their ground forces and then retreating. That was not their usual mode of operation. Commander Keyes suspected this was just an opening move in a game he didn't yet understand. A shadow crossed the fore camera of theIroquois as the repair stationCradle maneuvered closer.Cradle was essentially a large square plate with engines. Large was an understatement; she was over a square kilometer. Three destroyers could be eclipsed by her shadow. The station running at full steam could refit six destroyers, three from her lower surface and three on her upper surface, within a matter of hours. Scaffolds deployed from her surfaces to facilitate repairs. Resupply tubes, hoses, and cargo trams fed into theIroquois . It would take the full attention ofCradle thirty hours to repair theIroquois , however. The aliens had not landed a single serious shot. Nonetheless, theIroquois had almost been destroyed during the execution of what some in the fleet were already calling the \"Keyes Loop.\"Commander Keyes glanced at his data pad and the extensive list of repairs. Fifteen percent of the electronic systems had to be replacedburned out from the EMP when the Shiva missile detonated. TheIroquois ' engines required a full overhaul. Both coolant systems had valves that had been fused from the tremendous heat. Five of the superconducting magnets had to be replaced as well. But most troublesome was the damage to the underside of theIroquois . When they had told Commander Keyes what had happened, he went outside in a Longsword interceptor to personally inspect what he had done to his ship. The underside of theIroquois had been scraped when they passed over the prow of the alien destroyer. He knew there was some damage . . . but was not prepared for what he saw. UNSC destroyers had nearly two meters of titaniuma battleplate on their surfaces. Commander Keyes had abraded throughall of it. He had breached every bottom deck of theIroquois . The jagged serrated edges of the plate curled away from the wound. Men in EVA thruster packs were busy cutting off the damaged sections so new plates could be welded into place. The underside was mirror smooth and perfectly flat. But Keyes knew that the appearance of benign flatness was deceptive. Had the angle of theIroquois been tilted a single degree down, the force of the two ships impacting would have shorn his ship in half. The red war stripes that had been painted on theIroquois ' side looked like bloody slashes. The dockmaster had privately told Commander Keyes that his crew could buff the paint offor even repaint the war stripes, if he wanted. Commander Keyes had politely refused the offer. He wanted them left exactly the way they were. He wanted to be reminded that while everyone had admired what he had doneit had been an act of desperation, not heroism. He wanted to be reminded of how close a brush he had had with death.Commander Keyes returned to theIroquois and marched directly to his quarters. He sat at his antique oak desk and tapped the intercom. \"Lieutenant Dominique, you have the bridge for the next cycle. I am not to be disturbed.\"\n\"Aye, Commander. Understood.\"Commander Keyes loosened his collar and unbuttoned his uniform. He retrieved the seventy-year-old bottle of Scotch that his father had given him from the bottom drawer, and then poured four centimeters into a plastic cup.He had to attend to an even more unpleasant task: what to do about Lieutenant Jaggers. Jaggers had exhibited borderline cowardice, insubordination and come within a hairbreadth of attempted mutiny during the engagement. Keyes could have had him court-martialed. Every reg in the books screamed at him to . . . but he didn't have it in him to send the young man before a board of inquiry. He would instead merely transfer the Lieutenant to a place where he would still do the UNSC some goodperhaps a distant outpost. Was all the blame his? As Commander, it was his responsibility to maintain control, to prevent a crewman from even thinking that mutiny was a possibility. He sighed. Maybe he should have told his crew what he was attempting . . . but there had simply been no time. And certainly, no time for discussion as Jaggers would have wanted. No. The other bridge officers had concerns, but they had followed his orders, as their duty required. As much as Commander Keyes believed in giving people a second chance, this was where he drew the line. To make matters worse, transferring Jaggers would leave a hole in the bridge crew. Commander Keyes accessed the service records ofIroquois ' junior officers. There were several who might qualify for navigation officer. He flipped through their files on his data pad, and then paused. The theoretical paper on mass-space compression was still open, as well as his hastily calculated course corrections. He smiled and archived those notes. He might one day give a lecture on this battle at the Academy. It would be useful to have the original source material. There was also the data from theArchimedes Sensor Outpost. That report had been thoroughly made:\nclean data graphs and a navigational course plotted for the object through Slipstream spacenot an easy task even with an AI. The report even had tags to route it to the astrophysics section of the UNSC. Thoughtful. He looked up the service record of the officer who had filed the report: Ensign William Lovell.Keyes leaned closer. The boy's Career Service Vitae was almost twice as long as his own. He had volunteered and been accepted at Luna Academy. He transferred in his second year, having already received a commission to Ensign for heroism in a training flight that had saved the entire crew. He took duty on the first outbound corvette headed into battle. Three Bronze Stars, a Silver Cluster, and two Purple Hearts, and he had catapulted to a full Lieutenant within three years.Then something went terribly wrong. Lovell's decline in the UNSC had been as rapid as his ascent. Four reports of insubordination and he was busted to Second Lieutenant and transferred twice. An incident with a civilian womanno details in the files, although Commander Keyes wondered if the girl listed in the report, Anna Gerov, was Vice Admiral Gerov's daughter. He had been reassigned to theArchimedes Sensor Outpost, and had been there for the last year, an unheard of length of time in such a remote facility. Commander Keyes reviewed the logs when Lovell had been on duty. They were careful and intelligent. So the boy was still sharp . . . was he hiding?\nThere was a gentle knock on his door.\"Lieutenant Dominique, I said I was not to be disturbed.\"\"Sorry to intrude, son,\" said a muffled voice. The pressure door's wheel turned and Admiral Stanforth stepped inside. \"But I thought I'd just stop by since I was in the neighborhood.\"\nAdmiral Stanforth was much smaller in person than he appeared on-screen. His back was stooped over with age, and his white hair was thinning at the crown. Still, he exuded a reassuring air of authority that Keyes instantly recognized.\n\"Sir!\" Commander Keyes stood at attention, knocking over his chair.\"At ease, son.\" The Admiral looked around his quarters, and his gaze lingered a moment on the framed copy of Lagrange's original manuscript in which he derived his equations of motion. \"You can pour me a few fingers of the whiskey, if you can spare it.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" Keyes fumbled with another plastic cup and poured the Admiral a drink. Stanforth took a sip, then sighed appreciatively. \"Very nice.\"Keyes righted his chair and offered it to the Admiral.He sat down and leaned forward. \"I wanted to congratulate you personally on the miracle you performed here, Keyes.\"\n\"Sir, I don't\"\nStanforth held up a finger. \"Don't interrupt me, son. That was a helluva piece of astrogation you pulled off. People noticed. Not to mention the morale boost it's given to the entire fleet.\" He took another sip of the liquor and exhaled. \"Now, that's the reason we're all here. We need a victory. It's been too damn longus getting whittled to pieces by those alien bastards. So this hasgot to be a win. No matter what it takes.\"\n\"I understand, sir,\" Commander Keyes said. He knew morale had been sagging for years throughout the UNSC. No military, no matter how well trained, could stomach defeat after defeat without it affecting their determination in battles.\n\"How is it going planetside?\"\n\"Right now don't you worry about that.\" Admiral Stanforth eased back in his chair, balancing on two legs. \"General Kits has his troops down there. They've got the surrounding cities evacuated, and they'll be assaulting Cote d'Azur within the hour. They'll paste those aliens faster than you can spit. You just watch.\"\n\"Of course, sir.\" Commander Keyes looked away.\"You got something else to say, boy? Spit it out.\"\n\"Well, sir . . . this isn't the way the Covenant normally operates. Dropping an invasion force and leaving the system? They either slaughter everything or die trying. This is something altogether different.\"\nAdmiral Stanforth waved a dismissive hand. \"You leave trying to figure out what those aliens are thinking to the spooks in ONI, son. Just get theIroquois patched up and fit for duty again. And you let me know if you need anything.\"\nStanforth knocked back the last of his whiskey and stood. \"Got to marshal the fleet. Oh\" He paused.\n\"One more thing.\" He dug into his jacket pocket and retrieved a tiny cardboard box. He set it on the Commander's desk. \"Consider it official. The paperwork will catch up with us soon enough.\"\nCommander Keyes opened the box. Inside were a pair of brass collar insignia: four bars and a single star.\n\"Congratulations,Captain Keyes.\" The Admiral snapped a quick salute, then held out his hand.Keyes managed to grasp and shake the Admiral's hand. The insignia was real. He was stunned. He couldn't say anything.\n\"You've earned it.\" The Admiral started to turn. \"Give me a shout if you need anything.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" Keyes stared at the brass star and stripes a moment longer then finally tore his gaze away.\n\"Admiral . . . there is one thing. I need a replacement navigation officer.\"Admiral Stanforth's relaxed posture stiffened. \"I heard about that. Ugly business when a bridge officer loses their stomach. Well, you just say the candidate's name and I'll make sure you get him . . . as long as you're not pulling him off my ship.\" He smiled. \"Keep up the good work, Captain.\"\n\"Sir!\" Captain Keyes saluted. The Admiral stepped out and closed the door. Keyes practically fell into his chair.He had never dreamed they'd make him a Captain. He turned the brass insignia over in his palm and replayed his conversation with Admiral Stanforth in his mind. He had said, \"Captain Keyes.\" Yes. This was real. The Admiral had also brushed aside his concerns about the Covenant too quickly. Something didn't quite add up. Keyes clicked on the intercom. \"Lieutenant Dominique: track the Admiral's shuttle when he leaves. Let me know which ship he's on.\"\n\"Sir? We had an Admiral aboard? I wasn't informed.\"\"No, Lieutenant, I suspect you weren't. Just track the next outbound shuttle.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\"\nKeyes looked back on his data pad and reread Ensign Lovell's CSV. He couldn't take back what had happened with Jaggersthere could be no second chance for him. But maybe he could somehow balance the books by giving Lovell another chance. He filled out the necessary paperwork for the transfer request. The forms were long and unnecessarily complex. He transmitted the files to UNSC PERSCOM and sent a copy directly to Admiral Stanforth's staff.\n\"Sir?\" Lieutenant Dominique's voice broke over the intercom. \"That shuttle docked with theLeviathan .\"\n\"Put it on-screen.\"\nThe screen over his desk snapped on to camera five, the aft-starboard view. Among the dozens of ships in orbit around Sigma Octanus IV, he easily spotted theLeviathan . She was one of the twenty UNSC cruisers left in the fleet.A cruiser was the most powerful warship ever built by human hands. And Keyes knew they were being slowly pulled out of forward areas and parked in reserve to guard the Inner Colonies. A piece of shadow moved under the great warship, black moving on black. It revealed itself for only an instant in the sunlight, then slithered back into the darkness. It was a prowler. Those stealth ships were used exclusively by Naval Intelligence. A cruiser and an ONI presence here? Now Keyes knew there was more going on here than a simple morale boost. He tried not to think about it. It was best not to go too far when questioning the intentions of one's superior officerespecially when that officer was an Admiral. And especially not when Naval Intelligence was literally lurking in the shadows. Keyes poured himself another three fingers of Scotch, set his head on his deskjust to rest his eyes for a moment. The last few hours had drained him.\n\n\"Sir.\" Dominique's voice over the intercom woke Captain Keyes. \"Incoming fleet-wide transmission on Alpha priority channel.\"\nKeyes sat up and ran his hand over his face. He glanced at the brass clock affixed over his bunkhe had slept for almost six hours. Admiral Stanforth appeared on-screen. \"Listen up, ladies and gentlemen: we've just detected a large number of Covenant ships massing on the edge of the system. We estimate ten ships.\"\nOn-screen the silhouettes of the all-too-familiar Covenant frigates and a destroyer appeared as ghostly radar smears.\n\"We'll remain where we are,\" the Admiral continued. \"There's no need to charge in and have those ugly bastards take a shortcut through Slipspace and undercut us. Make your ships ready for battle. We've got probes gathering more data. I'll update you when we know more. Stanforth out.\"\nThe screen went black.Keyes snapped on the intercom. \"Lieutenant Hall, what is our repair and refit status?\"\n\"Sir,\"she replied.\"Engines are operational, but only with the backup coolant system. We can heat them to fifty percent. Archer and nuclear ordnance resupply is complete. MAC guns are also operational. Repairs to lower decks have just started.\"\"Inform the dockmaster to pull his crew out,\" Captain Keyes said. \"We're leaving theCradle . When we are clear, fire the reactors to fifty percent. Go to battle stations.\"\nCHAPTER NINETEEN\n0600 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nSigma Octanus IV, grid thirteen by twenty-four\n\"Faster!\" Corporal Harland shouted. \"You want to die in the mud, Marine?\"\"Hell no, sir!\" Private Fincher stomped on the accelerator and the Warthog's tires spun in the streambed. They caught, and the vehicle fishtailed through the gravel, across the bank, and onto the sandy shore. Harland strapped himself into the rear of the Warthog, one hand clamped onto the vehicle's massive\n50mm chain-gun. Something moved in the brush behind themHarland fired a sustained burst. The deafening sound from\n\"Old Faithful\" shook the teeth in his head. Ferns, trees, and vines exploded and splintered as the gunfire scythed through the foliage . . . then nothing was moving anymore. Fincher sent the Warthog bouncing along the shore, his head bobbing from side to side as he strained to see through the downpour. \"We're sitting ducks in here, Corporal,\" Fincher yelled. \"We have to get out of this hole and back onto the ridge, sir.\"\nCorporal Harland looked for a way out of this river gorge. \"Walker!\" He shook Private Walker in the passenger seat, but Walker didn't respond. He clutched their last Jackhammer rocket launcher with a death grip, his eyes staring blankly ahead. Walker hadn't said a word since this mission went south. Harland hoped he would snap out of it. He already had one man down. The last thing he needed was for his heavy-weapons specialist to be a brain case. Private Cochran lay at the Corporal's feet, cradling his gut with blood-smeared hands. He'd caught fire during the ambush. The aliens used some kind of projectile weapon that fired long, thin needleswhich exploded seconds after impact. Cochran's insides were meat. Walker and Fincher had filled him up with biofoam and taped him up they even managed to stop the bleedingbut if the man didn't get to a medic soon, he was a goner. They had all almost been goners.The squad had left Firebase Bravo two hours ago. Satellite images showed the way was all clear to their target area. Lieutenant McCasky had even said it was a \"milk run\". They were supposed to set up motion sensors on grid thirteen by twenty-fourjust see what was there and get back. \"A simple snoop job,\" the ell-tee had called it. What no one told McCasky was that the satellites weren't penetrating the rain and jungle canopy of this swampball too well. If the Lieutenant had thought about itlike Corporal Harland was thinking about it nowhe would have figured something was wrong with sending three squads on a \"milk run.\"\nThe squad wasn't green. Corporal Harland and the others had fought the Covenant before. They knew how to kill Gruntswhen they massed by the hundreds, they knew to call in air support. They'd even taken down a few of the Covenant Jackals, the ones with energy shields. You had to flank those guystake them out with snipers. But none of that had prepared them for this mission.They had done all the right things, damn it. The Lieutenant had even gotten their Warthogs five klicks down the streambed before the terrain became too steep and slippery for the all-terrain armored vehicles. He had the men hump the rest of the way in on foot. They moved soft and silent, almost crawling all they way through the slime to the depression they were supposed to check out. When they had gotten to the place, it wasn't just another mud-filled sinkhole. A waterfall splashed into a grotto pool. Arches had been carved into the wall, their edges extremely weathered. There were a few scattered paving stones around the pool . . . and covering those stones were tiny geometric carvings. That's all Corporal Harland got a look at before the Lieutenant ordered him and his team to fall back. He wanted them to set up the motion sensors where they had a clear line of sight to the sky. That's probably why they were still alive.The blast had knocked Harland and his team into the mud. They ran to where they had left the Lieutenant found fused glassy mud, a crater, and a few burning corpses and bits of carbonized skeleton. They saw one other thingan outline in the mist. It was biped, but much larger than any human Harland had ever seen. And oddly, it looked like it was wearing armor reminiscent of medieval plate mail; it even carried a large, strangely shaped metal shield. Harland saw the glow of a regenerating plasma weapon . . . and that's all he needed to see to order a full speed retreat. Harland, Walker, Cochran, and Fincher fell back, runningblindly firing their assault rifles.Covenant Grunts had followed them, peppering the air with those needle guns, mowing down the jungle as the tiny razor shards exploded.Harland and the others stopped and hit the deck, splashing into the thick, red mud, as a Covenant Banshee passed them overhead. When they got back on their feet, Cochran took the round in the stomach. The Grunts had caught up to them. Cochran flinched, his side exploded, and then he crumpled to the ground. He fell into shock so fast he didn't even have time to scream. Harland, Fincher, and Walker hunkered down and returned fire. They killed a dozen of the little bastards, but more kept coming, their barks and growls echoing through the jungle.\n\"Cease fire,\" the Corporal had ordered. He waited a second, then tossed a grenade when the Grunts got closer. Their ears still ringing, they ran, dragging Cochran with them, and not looking back.Somehow they had returned to the Warthog, and gotten the hell out of there . . . or, at least, that's what they were trying to do.\n\"Over there,\" Fincher said, and pointed to a clearing in the trees. \"That's got to lead up to the ridge.\"\n\"Go,\" Harland said.The Warthog slid sideways then raced up the embankment, caught air, and landed on soft jungle loam. Fincher dodged a few trees and ran the Warthog up the slope. They emerged on the ridgeline.\n\"Jesus, that was close,\" Harland said. He ran a muddy hand through his hair, slicking it back. He tapped Fincher on the shoulder. Fincher jumped. \"Private, pull over. Try to raise Firebase Bravo on the narrow band.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Fincher answered in a wavering voice. He glanced at the near-catatonic Private Walker and shook his head. Harland checked on Cochran. Private Cochran's eyes fluttered open, cracking the mud caked onto his face. \"We back yet, Corporal?\"\n\"Almost,\" Harland replied. Cochran's pulse was steady, although his face had, in the last several minutes, drained of color. The wounded man looked like a corpse.Damn it, Harland thought,he's going to bleed out .Harland placed a reassuring hand on Cochran's shoulder. \"Hang in there. We'll patch you up as soon as we get to camp.\"\nThey had dropships at Bravo. Cochran had a chance, albeit a slim one, if they got him back to the combat surgeons at headquartersor better yet, to the Navy docs on the orbiting ships. For a moment Harland was dazzled with visions of clean sheets, hot mealsand a meter of armor between him and the Covenant.\n\"Nothing but static on the link, sir,\" Fincher said, breaking through Harland's reverie.\n\"Maybe the radio got hit,\" Harland muttered. \"You know those explosive needles throw a bunch of microshrapnel. We probably got slivers of that stuff inside us, too.\"\nFincher examined his muscular forearms. \"Great.\"\"Move out,\" Harland said. The tires of the Warthog spun, gripped, and the vehicle moved rapidly along the ridge. The terrain looked familiar. Harland even spotted three sets of Warthog tracksyes, this was the way the Lieutenant had brought them. Ten minutes and they'd be back on base. No more worries. He relaxed, took out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out. He pulled off the safety strip and tapped the end to ignite it. Fincher revved the engine and shot up to the top of the ridgecrossed over, and skidded to halt. If not for the haze, they would have seen everything from this side of the valleythe lush carpet of jungle in the valley, the river meandering through it, and on the far set of hills, a clearing dotted with fixed gun emplacements, razor wire, and pre-fab structures: Firebase Bravo. Their platoon had partially dug into the hillside to minimize the camp's footprint and provide a place where they could safely store their munitions and bunk down. A ring of sensors encircled the camp so nothing could sneak up on them. Radar and motion detectors linked to surface-to-air missile batteries. A road ran along the far ridgethree klicks down that was the coastal city, Cote d'Azur. The sun broke through the haze overhead, and Corporal Harland saw everything had changed.It wasn't fog or haze. Smoke rose in columns from the valley . . . and there was no more jungle. Everything had been burned to the ground. The entire valley was blackened into smoldering charcoal. Glowing red craters honeycombed the hillsides.He fumbled with his binoculars, brought them to his eyes . . . and froze. The hill where the camp had been was goneit had been flattened. Only a mirror surface remained. The sides of the adjacent hills glistened with a cracked glass coating. The air was thick with tiny Covenant fliers in the distance. On the ground, Grunts and Jackals searched for survivors. A few Marines ran for cover . . . there were hundreds of wounded and dead on the ground, helpless, screamingsome of them trying to crawl away.\n\"What have you got, sir?\" Fincher asked. The cigarette fell from Harland's mouth and caught on his shirtbut he didn't take his eyes off the battlefield to brush it away.\n\"There's nothing left,\" he whispered.A shape moved in the valleymuch larger than the other Grunts and Jackals. Its outline was blurry. Harland tried to focus the binoculars on it but couldn't. It was the same thing he had seen at grid thirteen by twenty-four. The Grunts gave it a wide berth. The thing lifted its armits whole arm looked like one big gunand a bolt of plasma struck near the riverbank. Even from this distance, Harland heard the screams of the men who had been hiding there.\n\"Jesus.\" He dropped the binoculars. \"We're bugging out, right now!\" he said. \"Turn this beast around, Fincher.\"\n\"But\"\"They're gone,\" Harland whispered. \"They're all dead.\"\nWalker whimpered and rocked back and forth.\n\"We'll be dead, too, unless you move,\" Harland said. \"We already got lucky once today. Let's not push it.\"\n\"Yeah.\" Fincher reversed the Warthog. \"Yeah, some luck.\"He sped back down the hillside and hopped the Warthog off the embankment and back into the streambed.\n\"Follow the river,\" Harland told him. \"It'll take us all the way to HQ.\"\nA shadow crossed their path. Harland twisted around and saw a pair of stubby-winged Covenant Banshees swooping down after them.\"Move it!\" he screamed at Fincher. Fincher floored the Warthog and plumes of water sprayed in their wake. They bounced over rocks and fishtailed across the stream. Bolts of plasma hit the water next to themexploding into steam. Rock shards pinged off the armored side of the vehicle.\n\"Walker!\" Harland shouted. \"Use those Jackhammers.\"Walker huddled, doubled over in his seat.Harland fired the chain-gun. Tracers cut through the air. The fliers nimbly dodged them. The heavy machine gun was only accurate at reasonably short rangesand not even that with Fincher bouncing the Warthog all over the place.\n\"Walker!\" he cried. \"We are gonna die if you don't get those missiles into the air!\"\nHe would have ordered Fincher to grab the launcherbut he'd have to stop to grab it . . . that, or try to drive with no hands. If the Warthog stopped, they'd be sitting ducks for those fliers. Harland glanced at the riverbanks. They were too steep for the Warthog. They were stuck in the river with no cover.\n\"Walker, do something!\"\nCorporal Harland fired the chain-gun again until his arms went numb. It was no good; the Banshees were too far away, too quick. Another plasma bolt hitdirectly in front of the Warthog. Heat washed over Harland. Blisters pinpricked his back. He screamed but kept shooting. If they hadn't been in water, that plasma would have melted the tires . . . probably would have flash-fried them all. A burst of heat and a plume of smoke erupted next to Harland. For a split second he thought the Covenant gunners had found their markthat he was dead. He screamed incoherently, his thumbs jamming down the chain-gun's trigger buttons. The Banshee he was aiming at flashed, and then became a ball of flame and falling shrapnel.He turned, his breath hitching in his chest. They hadn't been hit. Cochran knelt next to him. One arm clutched his stomach, and the other arm hefted the Jackhammer launcher on his shoulder. He smiled with bloodstained lips and pivoted to track the other flier. Harland ducked, and another missile whooshed directly over his head. Cochran laughed, coughing up blood and foam. Tears of mirth or painHarland couldn't tellstreamed from his eyes. He collapsed backward, and let the smoldering launcher slip from his hand. The second Banshee exploded and spiraled into the jungle.\"Two more klicks,\" Fincher shouted. \"Hang on.\" He cranked the wheel and the Warthog swerved out of the streambed and bounced up the hillside, up and over, and they slid onto a paved road. Harland leaned over and felt Cochran's neck for a pulse. It was there, weak; but he was still alive. Harland glanced at Walker. He hadn't moved, his eyes squeezed shut. Harland's first impulse was to shoot him right then and therethe goddamned, goldbricking, cowardly bastard almost cost them all their lives No. Harland was half amazed he hadn't frozen up, too. HQ was ahead. But Corporal Harland's stomach sank as he saw smoke and flames blazing on the horizon. They passed the first armed checkpoint. The guardhouse and bunkers had been blasted away, and in the mud were thousands of Grunt tracks. Farther back, he saw a circle of sandbags around a house-size chunk of granite. Two Marines waved to them. As they approached in the Warthog, the Marines stood and saluted. Harland jumped off and returned their salute. One of the Marines had a patch over his eye and his head was bandaged. Soot streaked his face. \"Jesus, sir,\" he said. \"It's good to see you guys.\" He approached the Warthog. \"You've got a working radio in that thing?\"\n\"II'm not sure,\" Corporal Harland said. \"Who's in charge here? What happened?\"\"Covenant hit us hard, sir. They had tanks, air supportthousands of those little Grunt guys. They glassed the main barracks. The Command Office. Almost got the munitions bunker.\" He looked away for a moment and his one eye glazed over. \"We pulled it together and fought 'em off, though. That was an hour ago. I think we killed everything. I'm not sure.\"\n\"Who's in charge, Private? I have a critically wounded man. He needs evac, and I have to make my report.\"\nThe Private shook his head. \"I'm sorry, sir. The hospital was the first thing they hit. As far as who's in command . . . I think you're the ranking officer here.\"\n\"Great,\" Harland muttered.\"We've got five guys back there.\" The Private jerked his head toward the columns of smoke and wavering heat in the distance. \"They're in fire-fighting suits to keep from burning up. They're recovering weapons and ammo.\"\n\"Understood,\" Harland said. \"Fincher, try the radio again. See if you can link up to SATCOM. Call in for an evac.\"\n\"Roger that,\" Fincher said. The wounded Private asked Harland, \"Can we get help from Firebase Bravo, sir?\"\"No,\" Harland said. \"They got hit, too. There's Covenant all over the place.\"\nThe Private slumped, bracing himself with his rifle. Fincher handed Harland the radio headset. \"Sir, SATCOM is good. I've got theLeviathan on the horn.\"\"This is Corporal Harland.\" He spoke into the microphone. \"The Covenant has hit Firebase Bravo and Alpha HQ . . . and wiped them out. We've repelled the enemy from Alpha site, but our casualties have been nearly one hundred percent. We have wounded here. We need immediate evac. Say again: we need evac on the double.\"\n\"Roger, Corporal. Your situation is understood. Evac is not possible at this time. We've got problems of our own up here\"There was a burst of static. The voice came back online.\"Help is on the way.\"\nThe channel went dead. Harland looked to Fincher. \"Check the transceiver.\"Fincher ran the diagnostic. \"It's working,\" he said. \"I'm getting a ping from SATCOM.\" He licked his lips. \"The trouble must be on their end.\"\nHarland didn't want to think of what kind of trouble the fleet could be having. He'd seen too many planets glassed from orbit. He didn't want to die herenot like that. He turned to the men in the bunker. \"They said help is on the way. So relax.\" He looked into the sky and whispered, \"They better send a whole regiment down here.\"\nA handful of other Marines returned to the bunker. They had salvaged ammunition, extra rifles, a crate of frag grenades, and a few Jackhammer missiles. Fincher took the Warthog and a few men to see if he could transport the heavier weapons. They filled Cochran with more biofoam and bandaged him up. He slipped into a coma.They hunkered down inside the bunker and waited. They heard explosions at an extreme distance. Walker finally spoke. \"So . . . now what, sir?\"\nHarland didn't turn toward the man. He covered Cochran with another blanket. \"I don't know. Can you fight?\"\n\"I think so.\"\nHe passed Walker a rifle. \"Good. Get up there and stand watch.\" He got out a cigarette, lit it, took a puff, and then handed it to Walker. Walker took it, shakily stood, and went outside.\n\"Sir!\" he said. \"Dropship inbound. One of ours!\"Harland grabbed his signal flares. He ran outside and squinted at the horizon. High on the edge of the darkening sky was a dot, and the unmistakable roar of Pelican engines. He pulled the pin and tossed the smoker onto the ground. A moment later, thick clouds of green smoke roiled into the sky. The dropship turned rapidly and descended toward their location. Harland shielded his eyes. He searched for the rest of the dropships. There was only one.\"Onedropship?\" Walker whispered. \"That's all they sent? Christ, that's not backupthat's a burial detail.\"The Pelican eased toward the ground, spattering mud in a ten-meter radius, then touched down. The launch ramp fell open and a dozen figures marched out. For a moment Harland thought they were the same creatures he had seen earlierarmored and bigger than any human he'd ever laid eyes on. He frozehe couldn't have raised his gun if he had wanted to. They were human, though. The one in the lead stood over two meters tall and looked like he weighed two hundred kilograms. His armor was a strange reflective green alloy, and underneath matte black. Their motions were so fluid and gracefulfast and precise, too. More like robots than flesh and blood. The one that first stepped off the ship strode toward him. Though his armor was devoid of insignia, Harland could see the insignia of a Master Chief Petty Officer in his helmet's HUD.\n\"Master Chief, sir!\" Harland snapped to attention and saluted.\"Corporal,\" it said. \"At ease. Get your men together and we'll get to work.\"\n\"Sir?\" Harland asked. \"I've got a lot of wounded here. What work will we be doing, sir?\"\nThe Master Chief's helmet cocked quizzically to one side. \"We've come to take Sigma Octanus Four back from the Covenant, Corporal,\" he said calmly. \"To do that, we're going to kill every last one of them.\"\nCHAPTER TWENTY\n1800 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nSigma Octanus IV, grid nineteen by thirty-seven The Master Chief surveyed what was left of Camp Alpha. There were only fourteen Marine regulars left balanced against the four hundred men and women who had been slaughtered here. He said to Kelly, \"Post a guard on the dropship, and put three on patrol. Take the rest and secure the LZ.\"\"Yes, sir.\" She turned to face the other Spartans, pointed, made three quick hand gestures, and they dispersed like ghosts. The Master Chief turned to the Corporal. \"Are you in command here, Corporal?\"\nThe man looked around. \"I guess so . . . yes, sir.\"\"As of 0900 Standard Military time, NavSpecWep is assuming control of this operation. All Marine personnel now report through our chain of command. Understand, Corporal?\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\"Now, Corporal, brief me on what happened here.\"Corporal Harland hunkered down and sketched rough maps of the area as he quickly recounted the brutal series of surprise attacks. \"Right heregrid thirteen by twenty-four. That's where they hit us, sir. Something's goin' on there.\"\nThe Master Chief scanned the crude maps, compared them with the area surveys displayed in his HUD, then nodded, satisfied.\n\"Get your wounded inside the Pelican, Corporal,\" he said. \"We'll be dusting off soon. I want you to rotate by thirds on guard duty. The rest of your men should get some sleep. But make no mistakeif the Pelican gets fragged, we'll be staying on Sigma Octanus Four.\"\nThe Corporal paled, then replied, \"Understood, sir.\" He stood slowlythe long day of combat and flight had taken its toll. The Marine saluted, then moved to assemble his team.Inside his sealed helmet, John frowned. These Marines were now under his command . . . and therefore part of his team. They lacked the Spartans' firepower and training, so they had to be protectednot relied upon. He had to make sure they got out in one piece. Another snag in an already dicey mission. The Master Chief opened his COM link: \"Team leaders meet me at the LZ in three minutes.\"\nLights winked on his heads-up displayhis Spartans acknowledging the order. He looked around at the destruction. Thin sunlight reflected dully from the thousands of spent shell casings strewn across the battlefield. Dozens of shattered Warthog chassis bled trails of smoke into the hazy sky. Scores of burned corpses lay in the mud. They'd have to get a burial detail down here later . . . before the Grunts got to the dead.The Master Chief would never question his orders, but he felt a momentary stab of bitterness. Whoever set these camps up without proper reconnaissance, whoever had blindly trusted the satellite transmissions in an enemy-held region, had been a fool. Worse, they had wasted the lives of good soldiers. Green Team's leader jogged in from the south. The Master Chief couldn't see her features through her reflective faceplate, but he could tell without checking his HUD that it was Linda by the way she moved . . . that, and the SRS99C-S2 AM sniper rile with Oracle scope she carried. She carefully looked around, verified that the area was secure, and slung her rifle. She snapped a crisp salute. \"Reporting as ordered, Master Chief.\"\nRed Team leaderJoshuaran in from the east. He saluted. \"Motion detectors, radar, and automated defenses up and running, sir.\"\n\"Good. Let's go over this one more time.\" The Master Chief overlaid a topographic map on their helmets' displays. \"Mission goal one: we need to gather intelligence on Covenant troop disposition and defenses at Cote d'Azur. Mission goal two: if there are no civilian survivors, we are authorized to remote detonate a HAVOK tactical nuclear mine and remove the enemy forces. In the meantime, we will minimize our contact with the enemy.\"\nThey nodded.The Master Chief highlighted the four streams that fed into the river delta near Cote d'Azur. \"We avoid these routes. Banshees patrol them.\" He circled where Firebase Bravo had been. \"We'll avoid this area as wellaccording to the Marine survivors, that area is hot. Grid thirteen by twenty-four also has activity.\"Red Leader, take your squad in along the coast. Stay in the tree line. Green Leader, follow this ridgeline, but keep under cover, too. I'll be taking this route.\" The Master Chief traced a path through a particularly dense section of jungle.\n\"It's 1830 hours now. The city is thirteen kilometers from herethat should take us no more than forty minutes. We'll probably be forced to slow down to avoid enemy patrolsbut we all should be in place no later than 1930 hours.\"\nHe zoomed into a city map of Cote d'Azur. \"Entry points to the city sewer system are\" He highlighted the display with NAV points. \"here, here, and here. Red Team will recon the wharf areas. Green takes the residential section. I'll take Blue Team downtown. Questions?\"\n\"Our communications underground will be limited,\" Linda said. \"How do we check in while keeping our heads down?\"\n\"According to the Colonial Administration Authority's file on Cote d'Azur, the sewer systems here have steel pipes running along the top of the plastic conduits. Tap into those and use ground-return transceivers to check in. We'll have our own private COM line.\"\n\"Roger,\" she said. The Master Chief said, \"As soon as we leave, the dropship dusts off and will move here.\" He indicated a position far to the south of Alpha camp. \"If the Pelican doesn't make it . . . our fallback rendezvous point is here.\" He indicated a point fifty kilometers south. \"ONI's welcoming committee has stashed our emergency SATCOM link and survival gear there.\"\nNo one mentioned that survival gear would be useless when the Covenant glassed the planet.\"Stay sharp,\" John said. \"And come back in one piece. Dismissed.\"\nThey saluted briskly, then sprinted to their tasks. He switched to Blue Team's frequency. \"Time to saddle up, Blue Team,\" he called out. \"RV back at the bunker for orders.\" Three blue lights winked acknowledgement in his display. A moment later, the other three Spartans in his squad trotted into position. \"Reporting as ordered,\" Blue Two announced. The Master Chief quickly filled them in on the mission. \"Blue-Two.\" He nodded to Kelly. \"You're carrying the nuke and medical gear.\"\"Affirmative. Who'll have the detonator, sir?\"\n\"I will,\" he replied. \"Blue-Three.\" He turned to Fred. \"You have the explosives. James, you'll take our extra COM equipment.\"\nThey double-checked their gear: modified MA5B assault rifles, adapted to mount silencers; ten extra clips of ammunition; frag grenades; combat knives; M6D pistolssmall but powerful handguns that fired .450 Magnum loads, sufficient to crack through Grunt armor. In addition to the weapons, there was a single smoke canisterblue smoke to signal for pickup. John would carry that. \"Let's go,\" he said. Blue Team moved out. They quickly entered the jungle, in a simple single-file line with Blue-Four in the lead; James had an instinct for walking point. The line was slightly staggered, with John and Kelly slightly to the left of James. Fred brought up the rear. They moved cautiously. Every hundred yards, James signaled the group to halt while he methodically surveyed the area for any sign of the enemy. The rest of Blue Team crouched, and disappeared into the thick jungle foliage. John checked his HUD; they were one-quarter of the way to the city. The team made good time despite the cautious pace. The MJOLNIR assault armor allowed them to push their way through the thick jungle like it was a stroll through the woods. As the team moved on, the thin mist that permeated the jungle gave way to a hard, pelting rain. The damp ground gradually turned to mud, forcing the team to slow. Blue-Four stopped dead and raised his fistthe signal to halt and freeze. John stopped in his tracks, his rifle raised and sweeping slowly back and forth, searching for any sign of enemy movement. Normally, the Spartans relied on their armor's detection gear to locate enemy troops. But their motion sensors were uselesseverything moved in the jungle. They had to rely on their eyes and ears and the instincts of their point man.\n\"Point to Team Leader: enemy contact.\"James' calm voice crackled across the COM channel.\"Enemy troops within one hundred meters of my position, ten degrees left.\"\nWith exaggerated slowness, Blue-Four indicated the danger area by pointing.\"Affirmative,\" John replied. \"Blue Team: hold position.\"Although the motion trackers were of no use here, thermal proved effective. Through the thick sheets of rain, the Master Chief spotted three cold spots: Grunts in their chilled environmental suits.\n\"Blue Team: enemy contact confirmed.\" He added the enemy position to his HUD. \"Estimated enemy strength, Point?\"\n\"Lead, I make ten, say again, ten Covenant troops. Grunts, sir. They're moving slowly. Double-file formation. They haven't spotted us. Orders?\"\nJohn's orders said to minimize contact with the enemy where possiblethe Spartans were spread too thinly across the battle area to risk a prolonged engagement. But the Grunts were heading right for the Marine bunker . . .\n\"Let's take them out, Blue Team,\" he said. The team of Grunts slogged through the mud. The vaguely simian aliens wore shiny red-trimmed armor. Craggy, purple-black hide was visible beneath the environmental suits. Breath masks provided supercooled methanethe aliens' atmosphere. There were ten of them, moving in two columns and spaced roughly three meters apart. John noted with satisfaction that they seemed boredonly the point man and the pair on rear guard had their plasma rifles at the ready. The rest chattered at each other in a weird combination of high-pitched squeaks and guttural barks. Easy, relaxed targets. Perfect. He gave a series of slow hand signals to the rest of the team; they faded back until they were well away from the Grunts' field of view. The Master Chief opened the squadwide COM channel. \"They're seventy meters from this depression\n\" He keyed a NAV point into the team's topographic display. \"They're heading for the western hill and will probably follow the terrain to the top. We'll fall back now, and take concealed positions along the eastern hill.\n\"Blue-Four, you're our scoutstay near the bottom and let us know when the rear guard passes you. Take them out firstthey seem alert.\n\"Blue-Two, you have overwatch at the top of the hill.\"Blue-Three, back me up. Silenced weapons onlyno explosives, unless things go bad.\"\nHe paused, then gave the order: \"Move out.\"\nThe Spartans crept back along their path and spread out along the hill. Johnin the center of the linereadied his assault rifle. The team was virtually invisible in the thick foliage, and covered by the barrelwide tree trunks of the local flora. One minute ticked by. Then two . . . three . . .Blue-Four's acknowledgment signal blinked twice in John's HUD.Enemy detected. He relaxed his grip on the weapon, waiting There. Twenty meters distant, the Grunt point man moved to the edge of the western hill, just downhill from John's position. The alien paused, his plasma rifle sweeping the areathen moved slowly up the rise. A moment later, the rest of the formation came into view, ten meters behind the point man.Blue-Four's indicator winked again.Now. The Master Chief opened fire, a short, three-round burst. The weapon's muffled cough was inaudible over the sound of jungle rainfall. The trio of armor-piercing rounds slashed through the alien's throat protection, rupturing the environment suit. The Grunt clutched at his neck, emitted a brief, high-pitched gurglethen fell to the mud, dead. A moment later, the Grunt lines came to a clumsy halt, confused.John spotted two strobe flashes, and the pair of Covenant rear guards dropped to the ground.\"Blue-Two to Lead: rear-guard eliminated.\"\n\"Hit them!\" John barked. The four Spartans opened fire in short bursts. In less than a second, four more of the Grunt patrol were down, dead from head shots. The remaining trio of Grunts unslung their plasma rifles, swinging them wildly back and forth, looking for targets and chattering loudly in their strange, barking language. John sighted on the alien closest to him and squeezed the trigger.The alien splashed into the mud, methane bubbling from his shattered breath mask. Another pair of sustained bursts and the last of the Grunts were down.\n* * *\nKelly policed the Grunts' weapons and handed a plasma rifle to each of the team; the Spartans had standing orders to seize Covenant weapons and technology whenever possible. Blue Team fanned out and continued on their way. When they heard Banshees overhead, they hunkered down in the mud, and the fliers passed. Ten more kilometers of rough terrain and then the jungle stopped and fields of rice paddies stretched out before them all the way to Cote d'Azur. Crossing these would be more difficult than the jungle. They donned camouflage cloaks that masked their thermal signatures and crawled through the muck on their stomachs. The Master Chief saw three larger ships hovering over the city. If they were troop transports, they could carry thousands of Covenant soldiers. If they were warships, any direct ground assault against the city would be futile. Either way it was bad news. He made sure his vid and audio mission recorders got a good clear image of the vessels. When they emerged from the mud, they were near the beach on the edge of the city. The Master Chief checked his map readings and made his way to the sewage outlet. The two-meter diameter pipe was sealed with a steel grate. He and Fred easily bent the bars aside and entered. They sloshed through hip-deep muck. The Master Chief didn't like the cramped quarters. Their mobility was restricted by the narrow pipes; worse, they were bunched up and therefore easier to kill with grenades or massed fire. Motion sensors picked up hundreds of targets. The constant downpour from storm drains above made the sensors useless. He followed his electronic map through the maze of pipes. Light filtered in from abovebeams of illumination connected to the manhole-cover vent holes. Every so often something moved and blocked that light. The Spartans moved quickly and quietly through the sludge and halted when they reached their final waypointdirectly under the center of Cote d'Azur's \"downtown.\"With a tiny jerk of his head, the Master Chief informed Blue Team to spread out and keep their eyes peeled. He snaked a fiber-optic probe up through the drain grate at street level and plugged it into his helmet. The yellow light from the sodium vapor lamps washed everything topside in an eerie glow. There were Grunts positioned on the street corners, and the shadow of a Banshee flier circling overhead. The electric cars parked on the street had been overturned, and the waste receptacles had been knocked over or set on fire. Every street-level window was broken. The Master Chief saw no human civilians, alive or otherwise. Blue Team moved up and over a block. The Master Chief checked topside again.There was more activity here: a pack of black-armored Grunts meandered down the streets. Two vulture headed Jackals sat on the corner, squabbling over a hunk of meat. Something else caught his attention, though. There were other aliens on the sidewalkor rather,above the sidewalk. They were roughly man-size creaturesunlike any he had ever encountered. The creatures were vaguely sluglike, with pale, purple-pink skin. Unlike other Covenant forces, they were not bipeds. Instead they had several tentacular appendages sprouting from their thick trunks. They floated a half meter above the ground, as if the odd, pink bladders on their backs kept them aloft. One alien used a slender tentacle to open the hood of a car. It began to disassemble the car's electric engine, moving with startling speed. Within twenty seconds all the parts had been neatly arranged in rows on the pavement. The creature paused, then reassembled the parts with blinding quickness, disassembled and rebuilt it several times into different arrangements. Finally, the creature simply reassembled the car and floated on its way. The Master Chief made sure his mission recorder had gotten that. This was a Covenant race never documented before. He rotated the fiber-optic cable to point down the opposite end of the street. There was more activity another block away. He retracted the probe and moved Blue Team a block farther south. He signaled the team to hold position, then climbed up a short series of metal handholds until he was just below a manhole cover. He cautiously sent the probe topside again, up through the manhole-cover vent.There was a Jackal's hoof directly adjacent to the probe, blocking half of his field of vision. He turned the probe with excruciating slowness, and saw fifty more Jackals milling back and forth. They were concentrated around the building across the street. The building resembled pictures that Deja had shown him years agoit looked like an Athenian temple, with white marble steps and Ionic columns. At the top of the steps were a pair of stationary guns. More bad news. He pulled the probe back and consulted the map. The building was marked as the Cote d'Azur Museum of Natural History. The Covenant had serious firepower herethe stationary guns had commanding fields of fire, making a frontal assault suicidal.Why would they protect a human structure? he wondered. Was it their headquarters?\nThe Master Chief signaled for Blue-Two. He pointed to the accessway that led under the building. He held up two fingers, pointed toward her eyes, and then down the passage, and then slowly balled his hand into a fist. Kelly proceeded very slowly down that passage to scout it out.The Master Chief checked the time. Red and Green Teams were due to report. He had James attach the ground-return transceiver to the pipes overhead.\n\"Green Team, come in.\"\"Roger: Green Team Leader here, sir,\"Linda whispered over the channel.\"We've scouted the residential section.\" There was a pause.\"No survivors . . . just like Draco Three. We're too late.\"\nHe understood. They'd seen it before. The Covenant didn't take prisoners. On Draco III, they had watched via satellite linkup as human survivors were herded together and ripped apart by ravenous Grunts and Jackals. By the time the Spartans had gotten there, there was no one left to rescue. But the victims had been avenged.\n\"Green Team: stand by and prepare to fall back to the RV and secure the area,\" he said.\"Standing by,\"Linda said. He switched to the Red Team COM channel: \"Red Team, report.\"\nJoshua's voice crackled over the link:\"Red Leader, sir. We've got something for ONI. We'vespotted some new type of Covenant race. Little guys that float. They seem to be some sort of explorer or scientist type. They take things apart, then move on, like they're looking for something. They do not, repeat not, appear hostile. Advise that you do not engage. They raise a pretty loud alarm, Blue Lead.\"\n\"You in trouble?\"\n\"Dodged trouble, sir,\"he said.\"But there is one snag.\"\n\"Snag.\" The word was charged with meaning for the Spartans. Getting caught in an ambush or a minefield, a teammate wounded, or aerial bombardmentsthose were all things they had trained for. Snags were things they didn't know how to handle. Complications that no one had planned for.\n\"Go ahead,\" the Master Chief whispered.\"We have survivors. Twenty civilians hid in a cargo ship here. There are several wounded.\"\nThe Master Chief mulled this over. It wasn't his choice to weigh the relative worth of a handful of civilian lives versus the possibility of taking out ten thousand Covenant troops with their nuke. His orders were specific on this point. They could not set up the nuke if there was civilian population at risk.\n\"New mission objective, Red Team Leader,\" the Master Chief said. \"Get those civilians to the recovery point and evac them back to fleet.\" He switched COM channels again, broadcasting to all the teams. \"Green Team Leader, you still online?\"\nA pause, then Linda spoke:\"Roger.\"\n\"Move to the docks and coordinate with Red Teamthey have survivors we need to evac. Green Team leader has strategic control of this mission.\"\n\"Understood,\"she said.\"We're on our way.\"\"Affirmative, sir,\"Joshua said.\"We'll get it done.\"\"Blue Team out.\" The Master Chief disconnected. It was going to be rough for Green and Red Teams. Those civilians would slow them downand if they had to protect them from Covenant patrols, they'd all get noticed. Blue-Two returned. She opened the COM link and reported in. \"There's access to the buildinga ladder and a steel plate welded shut. We can burn through it.\"\nThe Master Chief opened up the team COM channel. \"We're going to assume that Red and Green Teams will remove the civilians from Cote d'Azur. We will proceed as planned.\"He paused, then turned to Blue-Two. \"Break out the nuke and arm it.\"\nCHAPTER TWENTY-ONE\n2120 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCIroquois , military staging area in orbit around Sigma Octanus IV\n\"Ship's status?\" Captain Keyes said as he strode onto the bridge, buttoning his collar. He noticed that the repair stationCradle still obscured their port camera. \"And why aren't we clear of that station yet?\"\n\"Sir, all hands are at battle stations,\" Lieutenant Dominique replied. \"General quarters sounded. Tac data uploaded to your station.\"\nA tactical overview of theIroquois , neighboring vessels, andCradle popped onto Keyes' personal display screen. \"As you can see,\" Lieutenant Dominique continued, \"wedid clear the station, but they are moving on the same outbound vector we are. Admiral Stanforth wants them with the fleet.\"\nCaptain Keyes took his place in his command chair\"the hot seat,\" as it was more colloquially known and reviewed the data. He nodded with satisfaction. \"Looks like the Admiral has something up his sleeve.\" He turned to Lieutenant Hall. \"Engine status, Lieutenant?\"\n\"Engines hot at fifty percent,\" she reported. She straightened to her full height, nearly six feet, and looked Captain Keyes in the eye with something edging near defensiveness. \"Sir, the engines took a real beating in our last engagement. The repairs we've made are . . . well, the best we could do without a complete refit.\"\n\"Understood, Lieutenant,\" Keyes replied calmly. In truth, Keyes was concerned about the engines, too but it would do no good to make Hall more uneasy than necessary. The last thing he needed now was to undermine her confidence.\n\"Gunnery officer?\" Captain Keyes turned to Lieutenant Hikowa. The petite woman bore more resemblance to a porcelain doll than to a combat officer, but Keyes knew her delicate appearance was only skin deep. She had ice water for blood and nerves of steel.\n\"MAC guns charging,\" Lieutenant Hikowa reported. \"Sixty-five percent and climbing at two percent per minute.\"\nEverything on theIroquois had slowed down to a crawl. Engine, weaponseven the unwieldyCradle kept pace with them.Captain Keyes sat up straighter. There was no time to spend on self-recriminations. He would have to do the best he could with what he had. There simply was no other alternative. The lift doors popped open and a young man stepped on deck. He was tall and thin. His dark hair longer than regulations permittedhad been slicked back. He was disarmingly handsome; Keyes noticed the female bridge crew pause to look the newcomer over before returning to their tasks. \"Ensign Lovell reporting for duty, Captain.\" He snapped a sharp salute.\n\"Welcome aboard, Ensign Lovell.\" Captain Keyes returned his salute, surprised that the unkempt officer could demonstrate such crisp adherence to military protocol. \"Man the navigation console, please.\"\nThe bridge officers scrutinized the Ensign. It was highly unusual for such a low-ranking officer to pilot a capital ship. \"Sir?\" Lovell wrinkled his forehead, confused. \"Has there been some mistake, sir?\"\n\"Youare Ensign Michael Lovell? Recently posted on theArchimedes Remote Sensor Outpost?\"\"Yes, sir. They pulled me off that duty so quick that I\"\n\"Then man your station, Ensign.\"\n\"Yes, sir!\"Ensign Lovell sat at the navigation console, took a few seconds to acquaint himself with the controls then reconfigured them more to his liking. A slight smile tugged at the corner of Keyes' mouth. He knew that Lovell had more combat experience than any Lieutenant on the bridge, and was pleased that the Ensign adapted so quickly to unfamiliar surroundings.\n\"Show me the fleet's position and the relative location of the enemy, Ensign,\" Keyes ordered.\"Aye, sir,\" Lovell replied. His hands danced across the controls. A moment later, a system map snapped into place on the main screen. Dozens of small triangular tactical markers showed Admiral Stanforth's fleet massing between Sigma Octanus IV and its moon. It was a sound opening position. Fighting in orbit around Sigma Octanus IV would have trapped them in the gravity welllike fighting with your back to a wall. Keyes studied the displayand frowned. The Admiral had moved the fleet into a tightly packed grid formation. When the Covenant fired their plasma weapons at them, there would be no maneuvering room.The Covenant was moving in-system quickly. Captain Keyes counted twenty radar signatures. He didn't like the odds.\n\"Receiving orders,\" Lieutenant Dominique said. \"Admiral Stanforth wants theIroquois at this location ASAP.\"\nOn the map, a blue triangle pulsed on the corner of the grid formation.\n\"Ensign Lovell, get us there at best speed.\"\"Aye, sir,\" he replied.Captain Keyes fought down a wave of embarrassment; theCradle stardock started to pull ahead of theIroquois . It took up a position directly over the Admiral's phalanx formation. The refit station rotated, presenting its edge to the incoming Covenant fleet to show them the smallest target area.\n\"Rotating and reversing burn,\" Ensign Lovell said. TheIroquois spun about and slowed. \"Thrusters to station keeping. We're locked in position, sir.\"\n\"Very good, Ensign. Lieutenant Hikowa, divert as much power as you need to get those MAC guns charged.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" Hikowa replied. \"Capacitors charging at maximum rate.\"\n\"Captain,\" Lieutenant Dominique said. \"We're receiving an encrypted firing solution and countdown timers from theLeviathan 's AI.\"\n\"Transfer that vector to Lieutenant Hikowa and show me on screen.\"A line appeared on the tactical map, connecting theIroquois to one of the incoming Covenant frigates. The firing timer appeared in the corner: twenty-three seconds.\n\"Now show me the entire fleet's firing solutions, Lieutenant Dominique.\"\nA web of trajectories crossed the map with tiny countdown times next to each. Admiral Stanforth had the fleet exchanging fire with the Covenant like a line of Redcoats and colonial militia in the Revolutionary Wartactics that could best be described as bloody . . . or suicidal. What the hell was the Admiral thinking? Keyes studied the displays, trying to divine a method to his commanding officer's madness . . . then he understood. Risky, butif it workedbrilliant.The fleet's firing countdowns were roughly timed so that the shots would be staggered into two, maybe three, massive salvos. The first salvo wouldhopefullyknock out the Covenant ships' shields. The final salvo was to be the knockout punch. But it could only work once. After that, the UNSC fleet would be destroyed when the remaining Covenant ships returned fire. TheIroquois and the other ships were stationary targets. He appreciated that the Admiral couldn't get too far from Sigma Octanus IV, but with zero momentumand no room to maneuverthere'd be no way to avoid those plasma bolts.\n\"Sound decompression alarms in all nonessential sections, Lieutenant Hall, and then empty them.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" she said, and bit her lower lip.\"Guns: status on the MACs?\" Keyes' eyes were glued to the firing countdown. Twenty seconds . . . fifteen . . . ten . . .\n\"Sir, MAC weapon systems are hot!\" Hikowa announced. \"Removing safeties now.\"\nThe Covenant ships started to rotate slowly in spacealthough their momentum continued to carry them on their inbound trajectory toward the UNSC phalanx. Motes of red light collected along the alien ships' lateral lines. Five seconds.\"Transferring firing control to the computer,\" Lieutenant Hikowa said. She punched a series of firing codes into the computer, then locked down the controls. TheIroquois recoiled and spat twin bolts of thunder toward the enemy. The starboard view screen showed UNSC destroyers and frigates launching their opening salvo. The Covenant fleet fired as well; angry red lances of energy raced though space towards them.\"Time until that plasma impacts?\" Captain Keyes asked Ensign Lovell.\"Twenty-two seconds, sir.\"\nThe vacuum between the two opposing forces filled with a hundred lines of fire and smoldering metal that seemed to tear through the fabric of space. Their trajectories closed on one another, then crossed, and the bolts of fire grew larger on the main screen.Lieutenant Dominique said, \"Receiving a second set of firing solutions and times. Admiral Stanforth on the priority channel, sir.\"\n\"Put him on, holotank two,\" Keyes ordered. Near the main view screen, a small holographic tanknormally reserved for the ship's AIwinked into operation. Admiral Stanforth's ghostly image appeared. \"All ships: hold your positions. Divert all engine power to recharge your guns. We've got something special cooked up.\" His eyes narrowed. \"Do notI repeat, do notunderany circumstance break position or fire before you are ordered to do so. Stanforth out.\"\nThe holographic projection of the Admiral snapped out of existence.\"Orders, sir?\" Ensign Lovell turned in his seat.\"You heard the Admiral, Ensign. Thrusters to station keeping. Lieutenant Hikowa: get those guns recharged on the double.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\"\nKeyes nodded as Hikowa turned back to her task. \"Three seconds until first salvo impact,\" she announced. Keyes turned back to the tac display, concentrating on the MAC rounds that crawled across the screen. The fleet's MAC rounds hammered into the Covenant lines. Shields flickered silver-blue and overloaded as the super-dense projectiles rammed into the formation; several ships were spun out of position by the impact.\n\"Guns?\" he called out. \"Enemy status?\"\n\"Multiple hits on Covenant fleet, sir,\" Hikowa replied. \"Salvo two impact . . . now.\"A handful of the shots were clean misses. Keyes winced; each one of the off-trajectory MAC rounds meant one more enemy ship would survive to return fire. The vast majority, however, slammed into the unshielded alien vessels. The lead Covenant destroyer took a direct hit from a heavy round, which sent the alien ship into a lurching port spin. Keyes saw the destroyer's engines flare as her pilot struggled to regain controljust as a second MAC round struck on the ship's opposite side. For an instant, the Covenant vessel shuddered, held position, then flexed as the hull stresses became too great. The destroyer disintegrated and scattered debris in a wide arc. A second Covenant shipa frigateshuddered under the impact of multiple MAC rounds. It listed to starboard and rammed the next frigate in the enemy formation. Sparks and small explosions flared from the ships as a gray-white plume of vented atmosphere exploded into space. The ships' running lights flickered, then dimmed as the pair of dead spacecraftlocked in a deadly embracetumbled into the heart of the Covenant line. A moment later, the wrecked ships hit a third Covenant frigate, and they exploded, sending tendrils of plasma through space. A dozen of their ships vented atmosphere and fires flickered within their hulls. The fore view screen, however, was now filled with incoming weapons fire.\"Fleet commander on priority channel,\" Dominique announced. \"Audio only.\"\"Patch it through, Lieutenant,\" Keyes ordered. A hiss of static crackled through the communications-system speakers. A moment later, Admiral Stanforth's voice calmly broke through the noise. \"Lead to all ships: hold your positions,\" the Admiral said. \"Make ready to fire. Transfer timers to your computers . . . and hang on to your hats.\"\nA shadow crossed the overhead camera. On the view screen, Captain Keyes watched as theCradle repair station, the plate nearly a kilometer on edge, rotated and started to slide in front of their phalanx formation.\n\"Christ,\" Ensign Lovell whispered, \"they're going to take the hits for us.\"\n\"Dominique, hit the scopes. Are there any lifepods outbound fromCradle ?\" Keyes asked. He already knew the answer.\n\"Sir,\" Dominique answered, his deep voice thick with worry. \"No escape craft have left theCradle .\"All eyes on theIroquois ' bridge were riveted to the screen. Keyes' hands clenched with anger and helplessness. There was nothing to do but watch. The front view screen went black as the station passed in front of them. Pinpoints of red and orange appeared along the back surface, metal vapor venting in plumes.Cradle lurched closer to the fleet, the impact of the plasma torpedoes pushing it back. The station continued to move downward, spreading out the damage. Holes appeared in the surface; the internal lattice of steel girders was exposed and, seconds later, glowed white-hotthen the view screen was clear again.\"Ventral cameras,\" Captain Keyes said. \"Now!\"\nThe view changed as Dominique switched to theIroquois ' belly cameras.Cradle station reappeared. She spun and her entire forward surface was aglow . . . heat spread to the edges, the center liquefied and pulled away.\n\"MAC guns ready to fire in three seconds,\" Lieutenant Hikowa announced, her voice cold and angry.\n\"Targeting lock acquired.\"\nKeyes gripped the arms of the command chair. \"Cradle's crew bought this shot for us, Lieutenant,\"\nCaptain Keyes growled. \"Make it count.\"\nTheIroquois shuddered as the MAC gun fired. On the status display, Keyes watched as the rest of the UNSC fleet fired simultaneously. A twenty-one-gun salute three times over for those on board the station who had given their lives.\n\"All ships: break and attack!\" Admiral Stanforth bellowed. \"Pick your targets and fire at will. Take as many of these bastards out as you can! Stanforth out.\"\nThey had to move before the Covenant plasma weapons recharged.\n\"Give me fifty percent on our engines,\" Captain Keyes ordered, \"and come about to course two eight zero.\"\n\"Aye,\" Ensign Lovell and Lieutenant Hall replied in unison.\n\"Lieutenant Hikowa, release safeties on the Archer missile system.\"\n\"Safeties disengaged, sir.\"TheIroquois moved away at a near-right angle from the phalanx formation. The other UNSC ships scattered at all vectors. One UNSC destroyer, theLancelot , accelerated straight toward the Covenant line. As the UNSC ships scattered, the MAC salvo reached the Covenant ships. The Admiral's firing solutions had targeted the remainder of the Covenant battlegroup's smaller ships. Their shields sparkled, rippled, and then flickered out of existence. Their frigates shattered under the impact of the firepower. Holes ripped through their hulls. Wrecked spacecraft drifted lazily through the battle area. The surprise second salvo had cost the Covenant dearlya dozen enemy ships were out of the fight. That left eight Covenant vesselsdestroyers and cruisers.Pulse lasers and Archer missiles fired, and every ship onscreen accelerated towards one another. Both Covenant and UNSC ships released their single-ship fighters. The tac computer was having trouble tracking everythingKeyes cursed to himself over the lack of a ship AIas the missile fire and plasma discharges strobed in the blackness. Single shipsthe humans' Longsword fighters and the flat, vaguely piscine Covenant fightersdove, and fired, and impacted into warships. Archer missiles left trails of exhaust. Blue pulse lasers scattered inside the clouds of vented propellant and atmosphere, and cast a ghostly blue glow over the scene.\n\"Orders, sir?\" Lovell asked nervously. Captain Keyes pausedsomething felt . . . wrong. The battle was utter chaos, and it was nearly impossible to tell exactly what was happening. Sensor data was thrown off by the constant detonations and the fire of the aliens' energy weapons.\n\"Scan near the planet, Lieutenant Hall,\" Keyes said. \"Ensign Lovell, move us closer to Sigma Octanus Four.\"\n\"Sir?\" Lieutenant Dominique said. \"We're not engaging the Covenant fleet?\"\n\"Negative, Lieutenant.\"\nThe bridge crew paused for a fraction of a secondall except Ensign Lovell, who tapped on the controls and plotted a new course. The bridge crew had all had a taste of being heroes in their last battle, and they wanted more. Captain Keyes knew what that was like . . . and he knew how dangerous it was. He was not about to charge into battle, however, with theIroquois at half power, her structural integrity already compromised, and with no AI to mount a point defense against Covenant single ships. One plasma torpedo to their lower decks would gut them. If he remained where he was and attempted to shoot into the fray, he was just as likely to accidentally hit a friendly ship as a Covenant vessel. No. There were several damaged Covenant ships in the area. He would finish them offmake sure they could not launch any attack on their fleet. There was no glory in the actionbut considering their present condition, glory was of little concern. Survival was. Captain Keyes watched the battle rage in the starboard camera. TheLeviathan took a plasma bolt, and her foredecks burned. One Covenant ship collided with the UNSC frigateFair Weather ; the superstructures of the two craft locked togetherand both ships opened fire at point-blank range. TheFair Weather detonated into a ball of nuclear fire that engulfed the Covenant destroyer. Both ships faded from the tactical display.\n\"Covenant ship detected in orbit around Sigma Octanus Four,\" Lieutenant Hall reported.\n\"Let me see it,\" Keyes said. A small vessel appeared on-screen. It was smaller than the Covenant equivalent of a frigate . . . but definitely larger than one of the aliens' dropships. It was sleek and seemed to waver in and out of the blankness of space. The engine pods were baffled and devoid of the characteristic purple-white glow of Covenant propulsion systems.\n\"They're in a geosynchronous orbit over Cote d'Azur,\" Lieutenant Hall reported. \"Their thrusters are firing microbursts. Precision station keeping, sir, if I were to guess.\"\nLieutenant Dominique interrupted. \"Detected scattering from a narrow-beam transmission on the planet surface, sir. A far-infrared laser.\"\nCaptain Keyes turned toward the main battle on-screen. Was this slaughter just a diversion?\nThe original attack on Sigma Octanus IV had been for the sole purpose of landing ships and invading Cote d'Azur. Once accomplished, their battle group had left. And nowwhatever the Covenant's purpose was groundside, they were sending information to this stealth ship . . . while the rest of their fleet kept the UNSC forces from interfering.\n\"Like hell,\" he muttered.\n\"Ensign Lovell, plot a collision course for that ship.\"\"Aye, sir.\"\"Lieutenant Hall, push the engines as far as you can. I need every bit of speed you can get me.\"\n\"Yes, sir. If we vent primary coolant and use our reserve, I can boost the engine output to sixty-six percent . . . for five minutes.\"\n\"Do it.\"TheIroquois moved sluggishly toward the Covenant ship.\n\"Intercept in twenty seconds,\" Lovell said.\"Lieutenant Hikowa, arm Archer missile pods A through D. Blow that Covenant son of a bitch out of the sky.\"\n\"Archer missile pods armed, sir,\" she replied smoothly. Her hands moved gracefully over the controls.\n\"Firing.\"\nArcher missiles streaked toward the Covenant stealth shipbut as they closed with the target, they started to swerve from side to side, then spun out of control. The spent missiles fell toward the planet. Lieutenant Hikowa cursed quietly in Japanese. \"Missile guidance locks jammed,\" she said. \"Their ECM spoofed the guidance packages, sir.\"\nNo other choice, then,Keyes thought.They can jam our missileslet's see them jam this.\"Run them over, Ensign Lovell,\" Keyes ordered. He licked his lips. \"Aye, sir.\"\n\"Sound collision alarm,\" Captian Keyes said. \"All hands, brace for impact.\"\"She's moving,\" Lovell said.\n\"Keep on her.\"\n\"Course correcting now. Hang on,\" Lovell said.The eight-thousand-tonIroquois slammed into the tiny Covenant ship.On the bridge, they barely felt the impact. The diminutive alien vessel, however, was crushed from the force. Her crippled hull spun toward Sigma Octanus IV.\n\"Damage report!\" Keyes bellowed.\n\"Lower decks 3 through 8 show hull breach, sir,\" Hall called out. \"Internal bulkheads were already closed, and no one was in those areas, per your orders. No systems damage reported.\"\n\"Good. Move to her original position, Ensign Lovell. Lieutenant Dominique, I want that transmission beam intercepted.\"\nThe ventral cameras showed the Covenant ship plunge into the atmosphere. Its shield glowed yellow, then whitethen dissipated as the ship's systems failed. It burst into crimson flame and burned across the horizon, a black plume of smoke trailing in its wake.\n\"TheIroquois is losing altitude,\" Ensign Lovell said. \"We're falling into the planet's atmosphere . . . bringing us about.\" TheIroquois spun 180 degrees. The Ensign concentrated on his displays, then said, \"No good, we need more power. Sir, permission to fire emergency thrusters?\"\n\"Granted.\"\nLovell exploded the aft emergency thrusters and theIroquois jumped. Lovell's eyes were locked on the repeater displays as he fought for every centimeter of maneuvering he could get. Sweat ran down his forehead and soaked his flight suit.\n\"Orbit stabilizingbarely.\" Lovell exhaled with relief, then turned to face Keyes. \"Got it, sir. Thrusters to precision station keeping.\"\n\"Receiving,\" Lieutenant Dominique said, and then paused. \"Receiving . . . something, sir. It must be encrypted.\"\n\"Make sure you're recording, Lieutenant.\"\n\"Affirmative. Recorders active . . . but the codebreaker software can't crack it, sir.\"Captain Keyes turned back to the tac displays, half expecting to see a Covenant ship in firing position. There wasn't much left of either the Covenant or UNSC fleets. Dozens of ships drifted in space, billowing atmosphere and burning. The rest moved slowly. A few flickered with fire. Scattered explosions dotted the black. One undamaged Covenant destroyer turned, however, and left the battlefield. It came about and headed straight for theIroquois .\n\"Uh-oh,\" Lovell muttered.\"Lieutenant Hall, get me theLeviathan priority Alpha channel,\" Keyes ordered.\n\"Yes, sir,\" she said. Admiral Stanforth's image appeared in the holotank. His forehead had a gash across it, and blood trickled into his eyes. He wiped it away with a shaking hand, his eyes blazing with anger. \"Keyes? Where the hell isIroquois ?\"\"Sir,Iroquois is in geosynchronous orbit over Cote d'Azur. We've destroyed a Covenant stealth ship and are in the process of intercepting a secure transmission from the planet.\"\nThe Admiral stared at him a moment unbelievingly, then nodded as if this made sense to him. \"Proceed.\"\n\"We have a Covenant destroyer leaving the battle . . . bearing down on us. I think the reason for the Covenant's invasion may be in this coded transmission. And they don't want us to know, sir.\"\n\"Understood, son. Hang on. The Cavalry's on its way.\"On the aft screen, the remaining eight UNSC ships broke their attacks and turned toward the incoming destroyer. Three MAC guns fired and impacted on the Covenant vessel. Its shields only lapsed for a split second; it took a round through her nose . . . but it continued toward theIroquois at flank speed.\n\"Transmission ended, sir,\" Lieutenant Dominique announced. \"Cut off in midpacket. The signal was terminated at the source.\"\n\"Damn.\" Captain Keyes considered staying and trying to reacquire that signalbut only for a moment. He decide to take what they had and run with it. \"Ensign Lovell, get us the hell out of here.\"\n\"Sir!\" Lieutenant Hall said. \"Look.\"The Covenant destroyer was changing course . . . along with the rest of the surviving Covenant vessels. They were scattering, and accelerating out of the system.\n\"They're running,\" Lieutenant Hikowa said, her normal iron calm replaced by astonishment. Within minutes, the Covenant ships accelerated and vanished into Slipstream space. Captain Keyes looked aft and counted only seven UNSC ships intact, with the balance of the fleet destroyed or disabled. He sat in his command chair. \"Ensign Lovell, take us back the way we came. Make ready to take on wounded. Repressurize all uncompromised decks.\"\n\"Jesus,\" Lieutenant Hall said. \"I think we actually . . . won that one.\"\n\"Yes, Lieutenant. We won,\" Keyes replied.But Captain Keyes wondered exactly what they had won. The Covenant had come to this system for a reasonand he had a sinking feeling that they may have gotten what they had come for. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO\n2010 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nSigma Octanus IV, Cote d'Azur It was time to arm the nuke.The small device held the power to destroy Cote d'Azurwipe the Covenant infection clean off the planet. John carefully removed the bonding strips on the HAVOK tactical nuclear device and attached it to the wall of the sewer. The adhesive on the black half sphere stuck and hardened to the concrete. He slipped the detonator key into a thin slot on the unit's face. There were no external indicators on the device; instead, a tiny screen winked on his heads-up display indicating the nuke was armed. HAVOK ARMED, flashed across his HUD. AWAITING DETONATION SIGNAL. The devicea clean thirty-megaton explosivecould only be detonated by a remote signal . . . a problem here in the sewers. Even the powerful communications package on a starship would be unable to penetrate the steel and concrete overhead. John quickly rigged a ground-return transceiver, placing it on the pipes overhead. He'd have to set up another unit outside to relay the signal underground . . . a hot line that would trigger a nuclear firestorm. Technically, his mission parameters had been fulfilled. Green and Red Teams would have the civilians evacuated soon. They had scouted the region and discovered a new Covenant speciesthe strange floating creature that disassembled and reassembled human machinery, like a scientist or engineer stripping down a device to learn its secrets. He could leave and destroy the Covenant occupation force. Heshould leavethere was an army of Jackals and Gruntsincluding at least a platoon of the black-armored veteranson the streets above. There were three medium Covenant dropships hovering in the air as well. The advance Marine strike forces had been slaughtered, leaving the Spartans no backup. His responsibility now was to make sure his team got out intact. But John's orders had an unusual amount of flexibility . . . and that made him uncomfortable. He had been told to reconnoiter the region and gather intelligence on the Covenant. He was positive there was more to be learned here.Certainly they were up to something in Cote d'Azur's museum. The Covenant had never before been interested in human historyor indeed, in humans or their artifacts of any kind. He had seen a disarmed Jackal fight hand to hand rather than pick up a nearby human assault rifle. And the only thing the Covenant had ever used human buildings for was target practice. So finding out the reason they seized and were protecting the museum definitely qualified as intelligence gathering in his book. Was it worth exposing his team to find out? And if they died, would he be wasting their lives . . . or spending them for something worthwhile?\n\"Master Chief?\" Kelly whispered. \"Our orders, sir?\"He opened Blue Team's COM channel. \"We're going in. Use your silencers. Don't engage the enemy unless absolutely necessary. This place is too hot. We'll just poke our noses insee what they're up to and bug out.\"\nThree acknowledgment lights winked on. The Master Chief knew they implicitly trusted his judgment. He just hoped he was worthy of that trust. The Spartans checked their gear and threaded silencers onto their assault rifles. They slipped silently down a wide side passage of the sewer. A rusty ladder ran up to the ceiling, and a steel plate had been welded in place.\n\"Thermite paste already set up,\" Fred reported.\n\"Burn it.\" The Master Chief stepped to the side and looked away.The thermite sputtered as bright as an electric arc welder, casting harsh shadows into the chamber. When it finished there was a jagged, glowing red circle in the steel. The Master Chief climbed up the ladder and put his back against the platepushed. It popped free with a metallicsnap . He eased the plate down and set it aside. He attached the fiber-optic probe, fed it up through the hole. All clear.He flexed his leg muscles and sent the MJOLNIR armor up through the hole, pulling himself into the next chamber with his left hand. His right hand held the silenced assault rifle as if it were no heavier than a pistol. He braced for incoming enemy fire Nothing happened. He moved forward and surveyed the small room. The stone-walled chamber was dark, and was lined with shelving units. Each unit held jars filled with clear liquid and insect specimens. Boxes and crates were stacked neatly on the floor. Kelly entered next, then Fred and James.\"Picking up motion sensor signals,\"Kelly said over the COM channel.\"Jam them.\"\n\"Done,\"she replied.\"They may have gotten a piece of us, though.\"\n\"Spread out,\" the Master Chief ordered. \"Get ready to jump back into the hole if this gets too hot. Otherwise, initiate the standard distract-and-destroy.\"\nThe clatter of alien hooves on marble echoed behind a door to their right. The Spartans melted into the shadows. The Master Chief crouched behind a crate and unsheathed his combat knife. The door opened and four Jackals stood in the door frame; they held active energy shields in front of themwarping their already ugly vulture faces. The blue-white glow of the energy shield pulsed through the dark chamber.Good, the Master Chief thought.That should play hell with their night vision. The Jackals held plasma pistols at the ready in their free hands; the barrels of the guns moved erratically as the aliens whispered to one another . . . then steadied as, in careful, slow movements, they moved in. The aliens fanned out into a rough \"delta\" formationthe lead Jackal a meter ahead of his compatriots. The group approached the Master Chief's hiding spot. There was a slight noise: the clink of glass bottles on the other side of the room. The Jackals turned . . . and presented their unshielded backs to the Master Chief.He exploded from his hiding place and jammed his blade into the base of the closest Jackal's back. He snapped his right foot out, caught the back of the next Jackal's head, crushing its skull.The remaining aliens spun, glistening energy shields interposed between them and him. There were three coughs from silenced MA5Bs. Alien bloodblack in the harsh blue-white light spattered across the inner surfaces of the energy shields as the silenced rounds found their marks. The Jackals toppled to the ground. The Master Chief policed their plasma pistols and retrieved the shield generators clamped on their forearms. He had standing orders to collect intact specimens of Covenant technology. The Office of Naval Intelligence had not been able to replicate the Covenant's shield technology. But they were getting close. In the meantime, the Spartans would use these.The Master Chief strapped the curved piece of metal to his forearm. He touched one of the two large buttons on the unit and a scintillating film appeared before him. He handed the other shield devices to his teammates. He pressed the second button and the shield collapsed.\n\"Don't use these unless you have to,\" he said. \"The humming and their reflective surfaces might give us away . . . and we don't know how long they last.\"\nHe got three acknowledgment lights. Kelly and Fred took up positions on either side of the open door. She gave him a thumbs-up. Kelly took point and the Spartans moved, single file, up a circular stairwell.She paused a full ten seconds at the doorway to the main floor. She waved them ahead and they emerged on the main level of the museum. The skeleton of a blue whale was suspended over the main foyer. The dead hulk reminded the Master Chief of a Covenant starship. He turned away from the distraction and slowly moved over the black marble tiles. Oddly, there were no more Jackal patrols. There were a hundred Jackals outside guarding the place . . . but none inside. The Master Chief didn't like it. It didn't feel right . . . and Chief Mendez had told him a thousand times to trust his instincts. Was it a trap?The Spartans staggered their line and moved cautiously into the east wing. There were displays of the local flora and fauna: gigantic flowers and fist-sized beetles. But their motion sensors were cold. Fred halted . . . and then, with a quick hand signal, waved John to move up to his position. He stood by a case of pinned butterflies. On the floor, facedown in front of that case, was a Jackal. It was dead, crushed flat. There was an imprint of a large boot where the creature's back had been. Whatever had done this had easily weighed a ton. The Master Chief spotted a few blood-smeared prints leading away from the Jackal . . . and into the west wing. He flipped on his infrared sensors and took a long look aroundno heat sources here or in the nearby rooms. The Master Chief followed the footprints and signaled the team to follow. The west wing held scientific displays. There were static electric generators and quantum field holograms on the walls, a tapestry of darting arrows and wriggling lines. A cloud chamber sat in the corner with subatomic tracers zipping through its misty confinesthe Master Chief noted it was unusually active. This place reminded him of Deja's classroom on Reach. A branch opened to another wing. The word GEOLOGY was carved on the entry arch.Through that arch there was a strong infrared source, a razor-thin line that shot straight up and out of the building. The Master Chief only caught a glimpse of the thinga wink and a blink then it was gone again . . . it was so bright his IR sensors overloaded and automatically shut down. He waved James to take the left side of the arch. He had Kelly and Fred drop back to cover their flanks, and the Master Chief edged to the right of the arch. He sent a fiber-optic probe ahead, bent it slightly, and poked it around the corner.The room contained display cases of mineral specimens. There were sulfur crystals, raw emeralds, and rubies. There was a monolith of unpolished pink quartz in the center of the room, three meters wide and six tall. Off to one side, however, were two creatures. The Master Chief hadn't seen them at firstbecause they were so motionless . . . and so massive. He had no doubt that one of them had crushed the Jackal that had gotten in its way.The Master Chief got scared all the time. He never showed it, though. He usually mentally acknowledged the apprehension, put it aside, and continued . . . just as he'd been trained to do. This time, however, he couldn't easily dismiss the feeling. The two creatures were vaguely man-shaped. They stood two and a half meters tall. It was difficult to make out their features; they were covered from head to toe with a dull blue-gray armor, similar to the hull of a Covenant ship. Blue, orange, and yellow highlights were visible on the few patches of exposed skin the creatures sported. They had slits where their eyes should be. The articulation points looked impregnable. On their left arms they hefted large shields, thick as starship battleplate. Mounted on their right arms were massive, wide-barreled weapons, so large that the arm beneath seemed to blend into the weapon. They moved with slow deliberation. One took a rock from the display case and set it inside a red metal case. It bent over the case while the other turned and touched the control panel of a device that looked like a small pulse laser turret. The laser pointed straight upand out through the shattered glass dome overhead. That had been the source of the infrared radiation. The laser must have intermittently scattered off the dust in the airflashed enough energy into his sensors to burn them out. Something that powerful could beam a message straight out into space. The Master Chief made a slow fistthe signal for his team to freeze. Then, with slow, deliberate movements, he signaled the Spartans to stay alert and get ready. He waved Fred and Kelly forward. Fred crept closer to him. Kelly slid up next to James.The Master Chief then held up two fingers and made a sideways cut, motioning them into the room. Acknowledgment lights winked on. He went in first, sidestepped to the right, with Fred at his side.James and Kelly took the left flank.They opened fire. Armor-piercing rounds pinged off the aliens' body armor. One of them turned and brought its shield in front of itcovering its partner, the red case, and the laser beacon.The Spartan bullets didn't even leave a scratch on the armor. The alien raised its arm slightly and pointed at Kelly and James. A flash of light blinded the Master Chief. There was a deafening explosion and a wave of heat. He blinked for a full three seconds before he recovered his vision. Where Kelly and James had been there was a burning crater that fanned backward . . . nothing but charcoal and ash remained of the Science Chamber behind them. Kelly had moved in time; she crouched five meters deeper into the room, still firing. James was nowhere to be seen. The other massive creature turned to face the Master Chief. He hit the button on the shield generator on his arm and brought it up just in timethe nearest alien's weapon flashed again. The air in front of the Master Chief shimmered and explodedhe flew backward, crashing through the wall, and skidded for ten meters before slamming into the wall of the next room. The Jackal shield generator was white-hot. The Master Chief ripped the melted alien device off and threw it away. Those plasma bolts were like nothing he had seen before. They seemed almost as powerful as the stationary plasma cannons the Jackals used. The Master Chief sprang to his feet and charged back into the chamber.If the aliens' weapons were similar to Covenant plasma guns, they would need to be recharged. He hoped the Spartans had enough time to take those things out. The Master Chief still felt the fearit was stronger than it had been before . . . but his team was still in there. He had to take care of them first before he could indulge in the luxury of feelings. Kelly and Fred circled the creatures, their silenced weapons firing quick bursts. They ran out of ammunition and switched clips. This wasn't working. They couldn't take them out. Maybe a Jackhammer missile at point-blank range would penetrate their armor.The Master Chief's gaze was drawn to the center of the room. He stared for a moment at the monolith of pink quartz. Over the COM channel he ordered, \"Switch to shredder rounds.\" He changed ammunition and then opened fireat the floor underneath the enormous creatures' feet. Kelly and Fred changed rounds and fired, too. Marble tiles shattered and the wood underneath splintered into toothpicks.One of the creatures raised its arm again, preparing to fire.\"Keep shooting,\" John yelled. The floor creaked, buckled, and then fell away; the two massive aliens plunged into the basement below.\n\"Quick,\" the Master Chief said. He slung his rifle and moved to the back of the quartz monolith. \"Push!\"Kelly and Fred leaned their weight against the stone and grunted with effort. The slab moved a tiny bit. James sprinted forward, slammed into the stone, put his shoulder alongside theirs . . . andpushed . His left arm had been burned away from the elbow down, but he didn't even whimper. The monolith moved; it inched toward the hole . . . then tilted and went over. It landed with a dull thud and a crunching noise. The Master Chief peered over the edge. He saw an armored left leg, and on the other side of the stone slab, an arm struggling underneath. The things were still alive. Their motions slowed, but they didn't cease. The red case was balanced precariously on the edge the hole. It teeteredno way to reach it in time. He turned to Kellythe fastest Spartanand yelled: \"Grab it!\"\nThe box felland Kelly leaped. In a single bound, she caught the rock as the case dropped, she tucked, rolled, and got to her feet, the rock safely held in one hand. She handed it to the Master Chief.The rock was a piece of granite and glittered with a few jewel-like inclusions. What was as so special about it? He stuffed it into his ammunition sack and then kicked over the Covenant transmission beacon. Outside, the Master Chief heard the clattering and squawking of the army of Jackals and Grunts.\n\"Let's get out of here, Spartans.\"\nHe threw his arm around James and helped him along. They ran into the basement, making sure to give the pinned giants under the stone a wide berth, then jumped through the storm drain and into the sewers. They jogged thought the muck and didn't stop until they had cleared the drain system and emerged in the rice paddies on the edge of Cote d'Azur. Fred rigged the ground-return relay to the pipes overhead and ran a crude antenna outside. The Master Chief looked back at the city. Banshee fliers circled through the skyscrapers. Spotlights from the hovering Covenant transport ships bathed the streets in blue illumination. The Grunts were going crazy; their barks and screams rose to an impenetrable din. The Spartans moved toward the coast and followed the tree line south. James collapsed twice along the way and then finally slipped into unconsciousness. The Master Chief slung him over him shoulder and carried him. They paused and hid when they heard a patrol of a dozen Grunts. The aliens ran past themthey either didn't see the Spartans, or they didn't care. The animals sprinted as fast as they could back to the city. When they were a click away from the rendezvous point, the Master Chief opened the COM link.\n\"Green Team Leader, we're on your perimeter, and coming in. Signaling with blue smoke.\"\n\"Ready and waiting for you, sir,\"Linda replied.\"Welcome back.\"The Master Chief set off one of his smoke grenades and they marched into the clearing.The Pelican was intact. Corporal Harland and his Marines stood post, and the rescued civilians were safely inside the ship. Blue and Red Teams were hidden in the nearby brush and trees. Linda approached them. She motioned for her team to take James and get him onto the Pelican. \"Sir,\"\nshe said. \"All civilians on board and ready for liftoff.\"The Master Chief wanted to relax, sit down, and close his eyes. But this was often the most dangerous part of any mission . . . those last few steps when you might let down your guard.\n\"Good. Take one more look around the perimeter. Let's make double sure nothing followed us back.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\nCorporal Harland approached and saluted. \"Sir? How did you do it? Those civilians said you got them out of the citypast an army of Covenant, sir. How?\"\nJohn cocked his head quizzically. \"It was our mission, Corporal,\" he said.The Corporal stared at him and then at the other Spartans. \"Yes, sir.\"\nWhen Green Team Leader reported that the perimeter was clear, the last of the Spartans boarded the Pelican. James had regained consciousness. Someone had removed his helmet and propped his head on a folded survival blanket. His eyes watered from the pain, but he managed to salute the Master Chief with his left hand. John gestured at Kelly; she administered a dose of painkiller, and James lapsed into unconsciousness. The Pelican lifted into the air. In the distance, the suns were warming the horizon, and Cote d'Azur was outlined against the dawn. The dropship suddenly accelerated at full speed straight up, and then angled away to the south.\n\"Sir,\"the pilot said over the COM channel.\"We're getting multiple incoming radar contacts . . . about two hundred Banshees inbound.\"\n\"We'll take care of it, Lieutenant,\" John replied. \"Prepare for EMP and shock wave.\"The Master Chief activated his remote radio transceiver. He quickly keyed in the final fail-safe code, then sent the coded burst transmission on its way. A third sun appeared on the horizon. It blotted out the light of the system's stars, then cooledfrom amber to redand darkened the sky with black clouds of dust.\n\"Mission accomplished,\" he said. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE\n0500 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCIroquois , military staging area in orbit around Sigma Octanus IV Captain Keyes leaned against the brass railing on the bridge of theIroquois and surveyed the devastation. The space near Sigma Octanus IV was littered with debris: the dead hulks of Covenant and UNSC ships spun lazily in the vacuum, surrounded by clouds of wreckage: jagged pieces of decimated armor plate, shattered single-ship fuselages, and heat-blackened metal fragments created a million radar targets. The debris field would clutter this system and make for a navigational hazard for the next decade. They had recovered nearly all the bodies from space.Captain Keyes' gaze caught the remnants of theCradle as the blasted space dock spun past. The kilometer-wide plate was now safely locked in a high orbit around the planet. She was slowly being torn apart from her own rotation; girders and metal plates warped and bent as the gravitational stresses on the ship increased. The Covenant plasma weapons had burned through ten decks of super-hard metal and armor like so many layers of tissue paper. Thirty volunteers on the repair station had died piloting the unwieldy craft. Admiral Stanforth had gotten his \"win\" . . . but at a tremendous cost.Keyes brought up the casualty figures and damage estimates on his data pad. He scowled as the data scrolled across his screen. The UNSC had lost more than twenty ships, and those that survived had all suffered heavy damage;\nmost would require months of time-consuming repair at a shipyard. Nearly one thousand people were killed in the battle, and hundreds more were wounded, many critically. Add to that the sixteen hundred Marine casualties on the surfaceand the three hundred thousand civilians murdered in Cote d'Azur at the hands of the Covenant. Some \"win,\" Keyes thought bitterly.Cote d'Azur was now a smoldering craterbut Sigma Octanus IV was still a human-held world. They had saved everyone else on the planet, nearly thirteen million souls. So perhaps it had been worth it. So many lives and deaths had been measured in this battle. Had the balance of the odds tipped slightly against themeverything could have been lost. That was something he had never taught any of his students at the Academyhow much victory depended on luck as well as skill. Captain Keyes saw the last of the Marine dropships returning from the planet surface. They docked with theLeviathan , and then the huge carrier turned and accelerated out of the system.\n\"Sensor sweep complete,\" Lieutenant Dominique reported. \"I think that was the last of the lifeboats we picked up, sir.\"\n\"Let's make certain, Lieutenant,\" Keyes replied. \"One more pass through the system please. Ensign Lovell, plot a course and take us around again.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Lovell wearily replied.The bridge crew was exhausted, physically and emotionally. They had all pulled extended shifts as they searched for survivors. Captain Keyes would rotate shifts after this next pass. As he looked at this crew he noticed that something was different. Lieutenant Hikowa's movements were crisp and determined, as if everything she did now would decide their next battle; it made a startling contrast to her normally lethargic efficiency. Lieutenant Hall's false exuberance had been replaced by genuine confidence. Dominique almost seemed happyhis hands lightly typing a report to FLEET- COM. Even Ensign Lovell, despite his exhaustion, stepped lively. Maybe Admiral Stanforth was right. Maybe the fleet needed this win more than he had realized.They had beaten the Covenant. Although not widely known, there had been only three small engagements in which the UNSC fleet had decisively defeated the Covenant. And not since Admiral Cole had retaken Harvest colony had there been an engagement on this scale. A complete victorya world saved. It would show everyone that winning was possible, that there was hope. But, he mused, was there really? They won because they had gotten luckyand had twice as many ships as the Covenant. And, he suspected, they had beaten the Covenant because the Covenant's real objective hadn't been to win. Naval Intelligence officers had come aboard theIroquois immediately after the battle. They congratulated Captain Keyes on his performance . . . and then copied and purged every single bit of data they had intercepted from the Covenant planetside transmission. Of course, the ONI spooks left without offering any explanation.Keyes toyed with his pipe, replaying the battle in his mind. No. The Covenant had lost because they were really after something else on Sigma Octanus IVand the intercepted message was the key.\n\"Sir,\" Lieutenant Dominique said. \"Incoming orders from FLEETCOM.\"\n\"Put it through to my station, Lieutenant,\" Captain Keyes said as he sat in his command chair. The computer scanned his retina and fingerprints and then decoded the message. He read on the small monitor:\nUnited Nations Space Command Priority Transmission 09872H-98Encryption Code:RedPublic Key:file /lightning-matrix-four/\nFrom:Admiral Michael Stanforth, Commanding Officer, UNSCLeviathan / USNC Sector Three Commander/ (UNSC Service Number: 00834-19223-HS)\nTo:Captain Jacob Keyes, Commanding officer UNSCIroquois / (UNSC Service Number: 01928-19912 JK)\nSubject:ORDERS FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE CONSIDERATION Classification:SECRET (BGX Directive)\n/start file/Keyes,Drop whatever you're doing and head back to the barn. We're both wanted for immediate debriefing by ONI at REACH Headquarters ASAP. Looks like the spooks at Naval Intelligence are up to their normal cloak-and-dagger tricks. Cigars and brandy afterward.Regards, Stanforth\n\"Very well,\" he muttered to himself. \"Lieutenant Dominique: send Admiral Stanforth my compliments. Ensign Lovell, generate a randomized vector as per the Cole Protocol, and make ready to leave system. Take us out for an hour in Slipstream space, then we'll reorient and proceed to the REACH Military Instillation.\"\n\"Aye, sir. Randomized jump vector readyour tracks are covered.\"\n\"Lieutenant Hall: start organizing shore leave for the crew. We're heading back for repairs and some well-deserved R and R.\"\n\"Amen to that,\" Ensign Lovell said.That wasn't technically in his orders, but Captain Keyes would make sure his crew got the rest they deserved. That was the least he could do for them. TheIroquois slowly accelerated on an out-system vector. Captain Keyes took one long last look at Sigma Octanus IV. The battle was over . . . so why did he feel like he was headed into another fight?\n TheIroquois plowed through a haze of titanium dustcondensed from a UNSC battleplate vaporized by Covenant plasma. The fine particles caught the light from Sigma Octanus and sparkled red and orange, making it look like the destroyer sailed through an ocean of blood. When there was time, a HazMat team would sweep the area and clean up. In the meantime, junk ranging in size from microscopic up to thirty-meter sections ofCradle still drifted in the system. One piece of debris in particular floated near theIroquois .It was small, almost indistinguishable from any of a thousand other softball-sized blobs that cluttered radar scopes and polluted thermal sensors. If anyone had been looking close enough, however, they would have seen that this particular piece of metal drifted in the opposite direction from all the other masses nearby. It trailed behind the acceleratingIroquois . . . and edged closer, moving with purpose. When it was close enough, it extended tiny electromagnets that guided it to the baffles at the base of theIroquois ' number-three engine shield. It blended in perfectly with the other vanadium steel components.The object opened a single photo eye and gazed at the stars, collecting data to reference its current position. It would continue to do this for several days. During that time it would slowly build up a charge. When it reached critical energy, a tiny sliver of thallium nitride memory crystal would be ejected at nearly the speed of light, and a minute Slipstream field would generate around it. If its trajectory was perfect, it would intercept a Covenant receiver located at precise coordinates in the alternate space.\n. . . and the tiny automated probe would reveal to the Covenant every place theIroquois had been. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR\n1100 Hours, August 12, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nEpsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, planet Reach, Camp Hathcock The Master Chief steered the Warthog to the fortified gate and ignored the barrel of the chain-gun that was not quite pointed in his direction. The guard on duty, a Marine Corporal, saluted smartly when John handed over his identification card.\n\"Sir! Welcome to Camp Hathcock,\" the Corporal said. \"Follow this road to the inner guardpost and present your credentials there. They'll direct you to the main compound.\"\nJohn nodded. The Warthog's tires crunched on gravel as the massive metal gate swung open. Nestled in the Highland Mountains of Reach's northern continent, Camp Hathcock was a top-level retreat; heads of state, VIPs, and top brass were the facility's normal occupantsthese and a division of veteran, battle-hardened Marines.\n\"Sir, please follow the Blue Road to this point here,\" the Corporal at the inner gate instructed, gesturing at a point on a wall-mounted map, \"and park in the Visitors' Parking area.\"\nMinutes later, the main facility was in sight. John parked the Warthog and strode across the pleasantly familiar compound. He and the other Spartans had covertly made their way up here during their training. John suppressed a smile as he remembered how many times the young Spartans had commandeered food and supplies from the base. He inhaled deeply, smelling pinon pines and sage. He missed this place. He had been away from REACH for far too long. Reach was one of the few places that John considered \"safe\" from the Covenant. There were a hundred ships and twenty Mark V MAC guns on the orbital stations overhead. Those guns were powered by fusion generators, buried deep within REACH. Each Mark V could propel a projectile so massive, and with such velocity, he doubted if even Covenant shields could withstand a single salvo from them. His home would not fall.Tall fences and razor wire encircled the inner compound of Camp Hathcock. The Master Chief stopped at the inner gate and saluted the MP there. The Marine MP looked over the Master Chief in his dress uniform. He snapped to attentionhis mouth dropped open and he stared unblinkingly. \"They're waiting for you, Master Chief, sir. Please go right on in.\"\nThe guard's reaction to the Master Chiefand the medals on his chestwas not uncommon. First word of the Spartans and their accomplishments had spread despite the cloak of secrecy ONI had tried to surround them with. Three years ago the information had gone public at Admiral Stanforth's insistencefor morale purposes. It was hard to mistake the Master Chief for anything other than a Spartan. He stood just over two meters tall and weighed in at 130 kilos of rock-hard muscle and iron-dense bone. There was a special insignia on his uniformed as well: a golden eagle poised with its talons forward ready to strike. The bird clutched a lightning bolt in one talon and three arrows in the other. The Spartan insignia was not the only thing about his dress uniform that called attention to him. Campaign ribbons and medals covered the left side. Chief Mendez would have been proud of him, but John had long ago stopped keeping track of the honors that had been heaped upon him. He didn't like the flashy ornamentation. He and the other Spartans preferred to be inside their MJOLNIR armor. Without it, he felt exposed somehow, like he'd left his quarters without his skin. He had grown used to the enhanced speed and strength, to his thought and actions melding instantaneously. The Master Chief marched into the main building. Outwardly, it had been designed to look like a simple log cabin, albeit a large one. Its inner walls were lined with Titanium-A armor plate, and underground were bunkers and plush conference rooms that extended a hundred meters below the earth and into the mountain of rock. He rode the elevator to Subbasement III. There, he was instructed by the Military Police attendant to wait in the debriefing lounge for the committee to summon him. Corporal Harland sat in the lounge, reading a copy ofSTARS magazine, nervously tapping his foot. He immediately stood and saluted as the Master Chief entered the room.\n\"At ease, Corporal,\" the Master Chief said. He glanced disapprovingly at the thickly padded couches and decided to stand. The Corporal stared at the Master Chief's uniform, nervous. Finally he straightened and said, \"May I ask you a question, sir?\"\nThe Master Chief nodded.\"How do you get to be a Spartan? I mean\" His gaze fell to the floor. \"I mean, if someone wanted to join your outfit. How would they do that?\"\nJoin? The Master Chief pondered the word. How hadhe joined? Dr. Halsey had picked him and the other Spartans twenty-five years ago. It had been an honor . . . but he had never actuallyjoined . In fact, he had never seen any other Spartans other than his class. Once, shortly after he'd \"graduated\" from the training, he had overheard Dr. Halsey mention that Chief Mendez was training another group of Spartans. He had never seen themor the Chief.\n\"You don't join,\" he finally told the Corporal. \"You are selected.\"\n\"I see,\" Corporal Harland said, and wrinkled his brow. \"Well, sir, if anyone ever asks, tell them to sign me up.\"\nThe Military Police attendant appeared. \"Corporal Harland? They're ready for you now.\" A set of double doors opened on the far wall. Harland gave John another salute, and nodded. As the Corporal got up and strode toward the doors, he passed an older man on his way out. He wore the uniform of a UNSC Naval officer, a Captain. John sized the man up quicklypolished shoulder insignia, new material. The man was a newly ordained Captain. John stood at attention and snapped a precision salute. \"Officer on the deck,\" John barked. The Captain paused, and looked John up and down. There was a glint of amusement in his eyes as he returned the salute. \"As you were, Master Chief.\"\nJohn stood at ease. The Captain's nameKeyes, J.was embroidered on the dress-gray tunic. John recognized the name immediately: Captain Keyes, the hero of Sigma Octanus.At least, he thought,one of the surviving heroes. Keyes glanced at the Master Chief's uniform. His eyes lingered on the Spartan insignia, and then on the Master Chief's serial-number tag just under the stripes of his rank emblem. A faint smile appeared on the Captain's face. \"It's good to see you again, Chief.\"\n\"Sir?\" The Master Chief had never met Captain Keyes. He had heard of his tactical brilliance at Sigma Octanus, but he had never met the man face-to-face.\n\"We met a very long time ago. Dr. Halsey and I\" He stopped. \"Hell. I'm not allowed to talk about it.\"\"Of course, sir. I understand.\"The Military Police attendant appeared in the hallway. \"Captain Keyes, you're wanted topside by Admiral Stanforth.\"\nThe Captain nodded to the attendant. \"In a moment,\" he said. He stepped closer to the Master Chief and whispered, \"Be careful in there. The ONI brass are\" He searched for the right word. \"irritated by the end results of our encounter with the Covenant at Sigma Octanus. I'd keep my head down in there.\" He glanced back toward the debriefing-chamber doors.\n\"Irritated, sir?\" John asked, genuinely puzzled. He would have thought the UNSC top brass would be elated by the victory, despite its cost. \"But we won.\"\nCaptain Keyes took a step back and cocked a quizzical eyebrow. \"Didn't Dr. Halsey ever teach you that winning isn't everything, Master Chief?\" He saluted. \"You'll excuse me.\"\nJohn saluted. He was so confused by Captain Keyes' statement that he kept saluting as the Captain walked out of the room. Winningwas everything. How could someone with Captain Keyes' reputation think otherwise?\nThe Master Chief tried to recall if he had ever read anything like that in any military history or philosophy texts. What else was there other than winning? The only other obvious choice was losing . . . and he had long been taught that defeat was an unacceptable alternative. Certainly, Captain Keyes didn't mean that they should havelost at Sigma Octanus?\nUnthinkable.He stood silently for ten minutes mulling this over. Finally the Military Police attendant entered the waiting room. \"They're ready for you now, sir.\"\nThe double doors opened and Corporal Harland came out. The young man's eyes were glazed and he trembled slightly. He looked worse than he had looked when the Master Chief had found him on Sigma Octanus IV. The Master Chief gave a curt nod to the Corporal and then entered the debriefing chamber. The doors closed behind him. His eyes instantly adjusted to the dark room. A large, curved desk dominated the far end of the rectangular room. A domed ceiling curved over his head, cameras, microphone, and speakers positioned like constellations. A spotlight snapped on and tracked the Master Chief as he approached the desk.A dozen men and women in Navy uniforms sat in the shadows. Even with his enhanced eyesight, the Master Chief could barely make out their scowling features and the glistening brass oak leaves and stars through the glare of the overhead light. He stood at attention and saluted. The debriefing panel ignored the Master Chief and spoke among themselves.\n\"The transmission that Keyes intercepted only makes sense translated this way,\" a man in the shadows said. A holotank hummed into operation. Tiny geometric symbols danced in the air above it: squares, triangles, bars, and dots. To the Master Chief, they looked like either Morse code or ancient Aztec hieroglyphics.\"I will concede that point,\" a woman's voice in the darkness replied. \"But translation software comes up empty. It's not a new Covenant dialect that we've discovered.\"\n\"Or a Covenant dialect at all,\" someone else said. Finally one of the officers deigned to notice the Master Chief. \"At ease, soldier,\" he said.The Master Chief let his arm fall. \"Spartan 117, reporting as ordered, sirs.\"\nThere was a pause, then the woman's voice spoke up, \"We would like to congratulate you on your successful mission, Master Chief. You've certainly given us plenty to consider. We would like to pin down a few details of your mission.\"\nThere was something in her voice that made John nervous. Not scared. But it was the same feeling he had going into combat. The same feeling he got when bullets started flying.\n\"Youdo know, Master Chief,\" the first male voice said, \"that not answering truthfullyor omitting any relevant details will lead to a court-martial?\"\nJohn bristled. As if he could ever forget his duty. \"I will answer to the best of my abilities, sir,\" he replied stiffly. The holotank hummed again and images from a Spartan helmet recorder sprang into view. John noted the camera IDit was his own. The images blurred forward, then stopped. A three-dimensional image of the floating creatures he had seen in Cote d'Azur hung in the air, motionless.\n\"Playback, loop bookmarks one through nine, please,\" the woman's voice called out.Instantly, the holographic image animatedthe alien quickly took apart and then reassembled a car's electric motor.\n\"This creature,\" she continued. \"During the mission, did you see any other Covenant speciesGrunts or Jackalsinteract with them?\"\n\"No, ma'am. As far as I could see, they were left alone.\"\n\"And this one,\" she said. The image changed to his firefight with the gigantic armored aliens. \"At any time did you see these things interact with the other Covenant species?\"\n\"No, ma'am\" The Master Chief reconsidered. \"Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. If you could review the recording at time minus two minutes from this frame, please.\"\nThe holo paused and then blurred backward.\n\"There,\" he said. The video played forward as the Master Chief and Fred examined the crushed Jackal in the museum.\n\"That impression in this Jackal's back,\" he said. \"I believe it is the armored alien's bootprint.\"\"What do you mean, son?\" a new man asked. His voice was older and rough.\n\"I can only offer my opinion, sir. I am not a scientist.\"\n\"Offer it, Master Chief,\" the same scratchy voice said. \"I, for one, would be very interested to hear what someone with firsthandexperience has to say . . . for a change.\"\nThere was a rustle of papers in the shadows, then silence.\"Well, sirit looks to me like this Jackal simply got in the larger creature's way. There's no attempt to move it, and no deviation in the path of the following footfalls. It simply walked over the smaller alien.\"\n\"Evidence of a hierarchical caste structure perhaps?\" the old man murmured.\n\"Let's move on,\" the woman again spoke, her voice now laced with irritation.The holo image changed yet again. A stone object appearedthe rock the Master Chief recovered from the museum.\"This stone,\" she said, \"is a typical igneous granite specimen but with an unusual concentration of aluminum oxide inclusionsspecifically rubies. It is a match for the mineral specimens recovered from grid thirteen by twenty-four.\n\"Master Chief,\" she said, \"you recovered this rock\" She paused. \"From an optical scanner. Is that correct?\"\n\"Yes, ma'am. The aliens had placed the rock in a red metallic box. Visible spectrum lasers were scanning the specimen.\"\n\"And the infrared pulse laser transmitter was hooked up to this scanner?\" she asked. \"You are certain?\"\"Absolutely, ma'am. My thermal imagers caught a fraction of the transmission scattered by the ambient dust.\"\nThe woman continued. \"The rock sample is roughly pyramidal. The inclusions in the igneous matrix are unusual in that all possible crystalline morphologies for corundum are present: bipyramidal, prismatic, tabular, and rhombohedral. Scanning from the tip to the base with neutron imagers, we produce the following pattern.\"\nAgain, a series of squares, triangles, bars and dots appeared on the view screensymbols that again reminded John of Aztec writing. Deja had taught the Spartans about the Aztecshow Cortes with superior tactics and technology had nearly obliterated an entire race. Was the same thing happening between the Covenant and humans?\n\"Now, then,\" the first male voice interjected, \"this business with the detonation of a HAVOK tactical nuclear device . . . do you realize that any additional evidence of Covenant activity on Cote d'Azur has been effectively erased? Do you know what opportunities have been lost, soldier?\"\n\"I had extremely specific orders, sir,\" the Master Chief said without hesitating. \"Orders that came directly from NavSpecWep, Section Three.\"\n\"Section Three,\" the woman muttered, \"which is ONI . . . it figures.\"The old man in the darkness chuckled. The faint glow of a cigar tip flared near his voice, then faded.\n\"Are you insinuating, Master Chief,\" the older man said, \"that the destruction of all this 'evidence,' as my colleges would call it, happened becausethey ordered it?\"\nThere was no good answer to that question. Whatever the Master Chief said was sure to irritate someone here.\"No, sir. I am simply stating that the destructionof anything, including any 'evidence'is a direct result of the detonation of a nuclear weapon. In full compliance with my orders. Sir.\"\nThe first man whispered, \"Jesus . . . what do you expect from one of Dr. Halsey's windup toy soldiers?\"\n\"That's quite enough, Colonel!\" the older man snapped. \"This man has earned the right to some courtesy . . . even from you.\"\nThe older man lowered his voice. \"Master Chief, thank you. We're finished here, I think. We may wish to recall you later . . . but for now, you are dismissed. You are to treat all information you have heard or seen at this debriefing as classified.\"\n\"Yes, sir!\"The Master Chief saluted, spun on his heel, and marched to the exit. The double doors opened and then sealed behind him. He exhaled. It felt like he was being evac'd from the battlefield. He reminded himself that these last few steps were often the most dangerous.\n\"I hope they treated you well . . . or at least decently.\"Dr. Halsey sat in an overstuffed chair. She wore a long gray skirt that matched her hair. She rose and took his hand and gave it a small squeeze. The Master Chief snapped to attention. \"Ma'am, a pleasure to see you again.\"\n\"How are you, Master Chief?\" she asked. She stared pointedly at the hand pressed to his forehead in a tight salute. Slowly, he dropped his hand. She smiled. Unlike everyone else, who greeted the Master Chief and stared at his uniform, medals, ribbons, or the Spartan insignia, Dr. Halsey stared into his eyes. And she never saluted. John had never gotten used to that.\n\"I'm fine, ma'am,\" he said. \"We won at Sigma Octanus. It was good to have a complete victory.\"\n\"Indeed it was.\" She paused and glanced about. \"How would you like to have another victory?\" she whispered. \"The biggest we've ever had?\"\n\"Of course, ma'am,\" he said with no hesitation.\"I was counting on you to say that, Master Chief. We'll be speaking soon.\" She turned to the Military Police attendant waiting at the entrance to the lounge. \"Open these damn doors, soldier. Let's get this over with.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" the MP said. The doors swung inward. She stopped and said to the Master Chief, \"I'll be speaking to you and the other Spartans, soon.\" She then entered the darkened chamber and the doors sealed behind her. The Master Chief forgot about the debriefing and Captain Keyes' puzzling question about not winning.If Dr. Halsey had a mission for him and his team, it would be a good one. She had given him everything:\nduty, honor, purpose, and a destiny to protect humanity. John hoped she would give him one more thing: a way to win the war. SECTION IV MJOLNIR\n CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE0915 Hours, August 25, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nEpsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, planet Reach, Omega WingSection Three secure facility\n\"Good morning, Dr. Halsey,\" Deja said. \"You're fourteen point three minutes late this morning.\"\n\"Blame security, Deja,\" Dr. Halsey replied, gesturing absently at the AI's holographic projection floating above her desk. \"ONI's precautions here are becoming increasingly ridiculous.\"\nDr. Halsey threw her coat over the back of an antique armchair before settling behind her desk. She sighed, and for the thousandth time, wished she had a window. The private office was located deep underground, inside the \"Omega Wing\" of the super-secure ONI facility, codenamed simply CASTLE. Castle was a massive complex, two thousand meters below the granite protection of the Highland Mountainsbombproof, well defended, and impenetrable. The security had its drawbacks, she was forced to admit. Every morning she descended into the secret labyrinth, passed through a dozen security checkpoints, and submitted to a barrage of retina, voice, fingerprint, and brainwave ID scans. ONI had buried her here years ago when her funding had been shunted to higher profile projects. All other personnel had been transferred to other operations, and her access to classified materials had been severely restricted. Even shadowy ONI was squeamish about her experiments. That's all changedthanks to the Covenant, she thought. The SPARTAN projectunpopular with the Admiralty, and the scientific communityhad proven most effective. Her Spartans had proven themselves time after time in countless ground engagements.When the Spartans started racking up successes, the Admiralty's reticence vanished. Her meager budget had mushroomed overnight. They had offered her a corner office in the prestigious Olympic Tower at FLEETCOM HQ. She had, of course, declined. Now the brass and VIPs that wanted to see her had to spend half the day just getting through the security barriers to her lair. She relished the ironyher banishment had become a bureaucratic weapon. But none of that really mattered. It was just a means to an end for Dr. Halsey . . . a means to getting Project MJOLNIR back on track. She reached for her coffee cup and knocked a stack of papers off her desk. They fell, scattered onto the floor, and she didn't bother to retrieve them. She examined the mud-brown dregs in the bottom of the mug; it was several days old. The office of the most important scientist in the military was not the antiseptic clean-room environment most people expected. Classified files and papers littered the floor. The holographic projector overhead painted the ceiling with a field of stars. Rich maple paneling covered the walls and hanging there were framed photographs of her SPARTAN IIs, receiving awards, and the plethora of articles about them that appeared when the Admiralty had made the project public three years ago. They had been called the UNSC's \"super soldiers.\" The military brass had assured her that the boost to morale was worth the compromised security. At first she had protested. But ironically, the publicity had proved convenient. With all the attention on the Spartans' heroics, no one had thought to question their true purposeor their origin. If the truth ever came to lightabducted children, replaced by fast-grown clones; the risky, experimental surgeries and biochemical augmentationspublic opinion would turn against the SPARTAN project overnight. The recent events at Sigma Octanus had given the Spartans and MJOLNIR the final push it needed to enter its final operational phase. She slipped on her glasses and called up the files from yesterday's debriefing; the ONI computer system once again confirmed her retinal scan and voiceprint. IDENTITY CONFIRMED. UNAUTHORIZED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE UNIT DETECTED. ACCESS DENIED. Damn. ONI grew more paranoid by the day.\"Deja,\" she said with a frustrated sigh. \"The spooks are nervous. I need to power you down, or ONI won't give me access to the files.\"\"Of course, Doctor,\" Deja replied calmly. Halsey keyed the power-down sequence on her desktop terminal, sending Deja into standby mode. This, she thought, is Ackerson's work, the bastard. She had fought tooth and nail to keep Deja free from the programming shackles ONI demanded . . . and this was their petty revenge. She scowled impatiently until the computer system finally spit out the data she'd requested. The tiny projectors in the frames of her glasses beamed the data directly to her retina. Her eyes darted back and forth rapidly, as if she had entered REM sleep, as she scanned the documentation from the debriefing. Finally she removed her glasses and tossed them carelessly on the desk, a sardonic smirk on her face. The overarching conclusion of the finest military experts on the debriefing committee: ONI didn't have a clue as to what the Covenant were doing on Sigma Octanus IV. They had learned only four solid facts from the entire operation. First, the Covenant had gone to considerable trouble to obtain a single mineral specimen. Second, the pattern of inclusions in that igneous rock sample matched the signal that had been sentand intercepted by theIroquois . Third, the low entropy of the pattern indicated that it was not random. And fourth, and most important, UNSC translation software couldn't match this pattern to any known Covenant dialect. Her personal conclusions? Either the alien artifact was from a precursor to the present Covenant society . . . or it was from another, as yet undiscovered, alien culture. When she had dropped that little bombshell of a speculation in the debriefing room yesterday, the ONI specialists had gone scrambling for cover. Especially that arrogant ass, Colonel Ackerson, she thought with a cruel smile. The brass was not happy with either possibility. If it was old Covenant technology, it indicated they still knew virtually nothing about the Covenant culture. Twenty years of intensive study and trillions of dollars of research and they barely even understood the alien's caste system. And if it was the latter possibility, an artifact of another alien race . . . that could be even more problematic. Colonel Ackerson and some of the brass had immediately considered the logistics of fighting two alien enemies at once. Utterly ridiculous. They couldn't even fight one. The UNSC could never hope to survive a war on two fronts. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Despite the grim conclusions, there was a silver lining in all this.After the meeting, a new mandate had become the official secret policy of Fleet Command's Special Operations Commandthe parent organization for Naval Special Warfare, the Spartans' service branch. ONI had new marching orders: to step up funding of Intel and reconnaissance missions by an order of magnitude. Small stealth ships were to be deployed to search remote systems and find where the Covenant were based. And Dr. Halsey had finally received the green light to unleash MJOLNIR. She had mixed feelings about it. The truth be told, she always had. It would be the culmination of her life's greatest work. She knew the riskslike spinning a roulette wheel, it was long odds, but the payoff was potentially huge. It meant victory against the Covenant . . . or the death of all her Spartans.The holographic crystals overhead warmed and Cortana appeared, sitting cross-legged on Dr. Halsey's deskactually she sat hovering a centimeter off the table's edge. Cortana was slender. The hue of her skin varied from navy blue to lavender, depending on her mood and the ambient lighting. Her \"hair\" was cropped short. Her face had a hard angular beauty. Lines of code flickered up and down her luminous body. And if Dr. Halsey viewed her from the right angle, she could catch a glimpse of the skeletal structure inside her ghostly form.\n\"Good morning, Dr. Halsey,\" Cortana said. \"I've read the committee's report\"\"which was classified as Top Secret, Eyes Only.\"\n\"Hmm . . . \" Cortana mused. \"I must have overlooked that.\" She hopped off the desk and circled around Dr. Halsey once. Cortana had been programmed with ONI's best insurgency software, as well as the determination to use those code-cracking skills. While this had been necessary for her mission, when she grew bored, she caused chaos with ONI's own security measures . . . and she often grew bored.\n\"I assume you have examined the classified data brought back from Sigma Octanus Four?\" Halsey asked.\"I might have seen that somewhere,\" Cortana said matter-of-factly.\n\"Your analysis and conclusions?\"\n\"There is much more evidence to consider than the data in the committee's files.\" She looked off into space as if reading something.\"Oh?\"\n\"Forty years ago a geological survey team on Sigma Octanus Four found several igneous rocks with similarthough not identicalanomalous compositions. UNSC geologists believe that these samples were introduced onto the planet via meteorite impactsthey typically are found in long-eroded impact craters on the planet surface. Isotopic dating of the site place those impact craters at present minus sixty thousand years\" Cortana paused as a hint of a smile played across her holographic features. \"though that figure may be inaccurate due to human error, of course.\"\n\"Of course,\" Dr. Halsey replied dryly.\n\"I have also, um . . . coordinated with UNSC's astrophysics department and discovered some interesting bits archived in their long-range observational databases. There is a black hole located approximately forty thousand light-years from the Sigma Octanus System. An extremely powerful pulse-laser transmission back-scattered the matter in the accretion diskessentially trapped this signal as this matter accelerated toward the speed of light. From our perspective, according to special relativity, this essentially froze the residue of this information on the event horizon.\"\n\"I'll take your word for it,\" Dr. Halsey said.\"This 'frozen signal' contains information that matches the sample from Sigma Octanus Four.\" Cortana sighed and her shoulders slumped. \"Unfortunately, all my attempts at translating the code have failed . . . so far.\"\n\"Your conclusions, Cortana?\" Dr. Halsey reminded her.\n\"Insufficient data for complete analysis, Doctor.\"\"Hypothesize.\"\nCortana bit her lower lip. \"There are two possibilities. The data originates from the Covenant or another alien race.\" She frowned. \"If it's another alien species, the Covenant probably wants these artifacts to scavenge their technology. Either conclusion opens several new opportunities for the NavSpecWep\"\n\"I am aware of that,\" Dr. Halsey said, raising her hand. If she allowed the AI to continue, Cortana would talk all day. \"One of those opportunities is Project MJOLNIR.\"\nCortana spun around and her eyes widened. \"They approved the final phase?\"\"Is it possible, Cortana,\" Dr. Halsey replied, amused, \"that I know something you don't?\"Cortana wrinkled her brow in frustration, then smoothed her features to their normal placid state. \"I suppose that is a remote possibility. If you'd like, I can calculate those odds.\"\n\"No, thank you, Cortana,\" Halsey replied. Cortana reminded Dr. Halsey of herself when she had been an adolescent: smarter than her parents, always reading, talking, learning, and eager to share her knowledge with anyone who would listen. Of course, there was a very good reason why Cortana reminded Dr. Halsey of herself.Cortana was a \"smart\" AI, an advanced artificial construct. Actually, the termssmart anddumb as applied to AIs, were misleading; all AIs were extraordinarily intelligent. But Cortana was special. So-called dumb AIs were engineered to function only were misleading; within set limits of their dynamic memory-processing matrix. They were brilliant within their fields of expertise, but were lacking in \"creativity.\" Deja, for example, was a \"dumb\" AIincredibly useful, but limited. Smart AIs like Cortana, however, had no limits on their dynamic memory-processor matrix. Knowledge and creativity could grow unchecked. She would pay a price for her genius, however. Such growth eventually led to self-interference. Cortana would one day literally start thinking too much at the expense of her normal functions. It was as if a human were to think with so much of his brain that he stopped sending impulses to his heart and lungs. Like all the other smart AIs that Dr. Halsey had worked with over the years, Cortana would effectively\n\"die\" after an operational life of seven years. But Cortana's mind was unique among all the other AIs Dr. Halsey had encountered. An AI's matrix was created by sending electrical bursts through the neural pathways of a human brain. Those pathways were then replicated in a superconducting nano-assemblage. The technique destroyed the original human tissue, so they could only be obtained from a suitable candidate that had already died. Cortana, however, had to have the best mind available. The success of her mission and the lives of the Spartans would depend on it. At Dr. Halsey's insistence, ONI had arranged to have her own brain carefully cloned and her memories flash-transferred to the receptacle organs. Only one of the twenty cloned brains survived the process. Cortana had literally sprung from Dr. Halsey's mind, like Athena from the head of Zeus. So, in a way, Cortanawas Dr. Halsey.Cortana straightened, her face eager. \"When does the MJOLNIR armor become fully operational. When do I go?\"\"Soon. There are a few final modifications that need to be made in the systems.\"\nCortana leaped to her \"feet,\" turned her back to Dr. Halsey, and examined the photographs on the wall. She brushed her fingertips over the glass surfaces. \"Which one will be mine?\"\n\"Which one do you want?\"\nShe immediately gravitated to the picture in the center of Dr. Halsey's collection. It showed a handsome man standing at attention as Admiral Stanforth pinned the UNSC Legion of Honor upon his chesta chest that already overflowed with citations. Cortana framed her fingers around the man's face. \"He's so serious,\" she murmured. \"Thoughtful eyes, though. Attractive in a primitive animal sort of way, don't you think, Doctor?\"\nDr. Halsey blushed. Apparently, shedid think so. Cortana's thoughts mirrored many of her own, only unchecked by normal military and social protocol.\n\"Perhaps it would be best if you picked another\"\nCortana turned to face Dr. Halsey and cocked an eyebrow, mock stern. \"Youasked me which one I wanted. . . .\"\n\"It was a question, Cortana. I did not give you carte blanche to select your 'carrier.' There are compatibility issues to consider.\"\nCortana blinked. \"His neural patterns are in sync with my mine within two percent. With the new interface we'll be installing, that should fall well within tolerable limits. In fact\" Her gaze drifted and the symbols along her body brightened and flashed. \"I have just developed a custom interface buffer that will match us within zero point zero eight one percent. You won't find a better match among the others.\n\"In fact,\" she added coyly, \"I can guarantee it.\"\"I see,\" Dr. Halsey said. She pushed away from her desk, stood, and paced.Why was she hesitating? The matchwas superb. But was Cortana's predilection for Spartan 117 a result of him being Dr. Halsey's favorite? And did it matter? Who better to protect him?\nDr. Halsey walked over to the picture. \"He was awarded this Legion of Honor medallion because he dove into a bunker of Covenant soldiers. He took out twenty by himself and saved a platoon of Marines who were pinned down by a stationary energy weapon emplacement. I've read the report, but I'm still not sure how he managed to do it.\"\nShe turned to Cortana and stared into her odd translucent eyes. \"You've read his CSV?\"\n\"I'm reading it again right now.\"\n\"Then you know he is neither the smartest nor the fastest nor the strongest of the Spartans. But he is the bravestand quite possibly the luckiest. And in my opinion, he is the best.\"\n\"Yes,\" Cortana whispered. \"I concur with your analysis, Doctor.\" She drifted closer.\"Could you sacrifice him if you had to? If it meant completing the mission?\" Dr. Halsey asked quietly.\n\"Could you watch him die?\"\nCortana halted and the processing symbols racing across her skin froze midcalculation.\n\"My priority Alpha order is to complete this mission,\" she replied emotionlessly. \"The Spartans' safety as well as mine is a Beta-level priority command.\"\n\"Good.\" Dr. Halsey returned to her desk and sat down. \"Then you can have him.\"\nCortana smiled and blazed with brilliant electricity.\n\"Now,\" Dr. Halsey said, and tapped on her desk to regain Cortana's attention. \"Show me your pick of our ship candidates for the mission.\"\nCortana opened her hand. In her palm there was a tiny model of a Halcyon-class UNSC cruiser.\"ThePillar of Autumn,\" Cortana said. Dr. Halsey leaned back and crossed her arms. Modern USNC cruisers were rare in the fleet. Only a handful of the impressive warships remained . . . and those were being pulled back to bolster the defense of the Inner Colonies. This junk-heap, however, was not one of these ships.\n\"ThePillar of Autumn is forty-three years old,\" Cortana said. \"Halcyon-class ships were the smallest vessel ever to receive the cruiser designation. It is approximately one-third the tonnage of the Marathon-class cruiser currently in service.\n\"Halcyon-class ships were pulled from long-term storagethey were designated to be scrapped, in fact. TheAutumn was refit in 2550, to serve in the current conflict near Zeta Doradus. Their Mark Two fusion engines supply a tenth of the power of modern reactors. Their armor is light by current standards. Weapon refits have upgraded their offensive capabilities with a single Magnetic Acceleration Cannon and six Archer missile pods.\n\"The only noteworthy design feature of this ship is the frame.\" Cortana reached down and pulled off the skin of the holographic model as if it were a glove. \"The structural system was designed by a Dr. Robert McLeescofounder of the Reyes-McLees Shipyards over Marsin 2510. It was, at the time, deemed unnecessarily overmassed and costly due to series of cross-bracings and interstitial honeycombs. The design was subsequently dropped from all further production models. Halcyon-class ships, however, have a reputation for being virtually indestructible. Reports indicate these ships being operational even after sustaining breaches to all compartments and losing ninety percent of their armor.\"\n\"Their duty record?\" Dr. Halsey asked.\n\"Substandard,\" Cortana replied. \"They are slow and ineffective in offensive combat. They are somewhat of a joke within the fleet.\"\n\"Perfect,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"I concur with your final selection recommendation. We will start the refit operations at once.\"\n\"All we need now,\" Cortana said, \"is a Captain and crew.\"\n\"Ah yes, the Captain.\" Dr. Halsey slid on her glasses. \"I have the perfect man for the job. He's a tactical genius. I'll forward you his CSV, and you can see for yourself.\" She transferred the file to Cortana. Cortana smiled, but it quickly faded. \"His maneuvers at Sigma Octanus Four were performed without an onboard AI?\"\n\"His ship left dock without an AI for technical reasons. I believe he has no compunctions about working with computers. In fact, it was one of the first refit requests he put in for theIroquois .\"\nCortana did not look convinced.\n\"Besides, he has the most important qualification for this job,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"The man can keep a secret.\"\nCHAPTER TWENTY-SIX\n0800 Hours, August 27, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nEpsilon Eridani System, FLEETCOM Military Complex, planet Reach This was the third time John had been in this highly secure briefing room on Reach. The amphitheater had an aura of secrecy, as if matters of grave importance had regularly been discussed within its circular wall. Certainly, every time he had been here, his life had changed. His first time was his indoctrination into the Spartansa lifetime ago. He recalled with a start how young Dr. Halsey had looked then. The second time was when he graduated from the Spartan program, when he had last seen Chief Mendez. He had sat on the bench next to himwhere the Chief was sitting now. And today? He had a feeling that everything was about to change all over again. Clustered around him were two dozen Spartans: Fred, Linda, Joshua, James, and many others he had not spoken to for years; constant battle had kept the tight-knit Spartans light-years apart for more than a decade. Dr. Halsey and Captain Keyes entered the chamber. The Spartans stood at attention and saluted. Keyes returned their salute. \"At ease,\" he said. He escorted Dr. Halsey to the center stage. He sat while she stood at the podium.\n\"Good evening, Spartans,\" she said. \"Please take your seats.\"\nAs one, they sat down.\n\"Assembled here tonight,\" she said, \"are all surviving Spartans save three, who are otherwise engaged on fields of combat too distant to be easily recalled. In the last decade of combat there have only been three KIAs and one Spartan too wounded to continue active duty. You are to be commended for having the best operational record of any unit in the fleet.\" She paused to look at them. \"It is very good to see you all again.\"\nShe slipped on her glasses. \"Admiral Stanforth has asked me to brief you on the upcoming mission. Due to its complexity and unusual nature, please disregard your normal protocol and ask any questions you have during my presentation. Now, on to the business at hand: the Covenant.\"\nHolographic projectors overhead warmed and sleek Covenant corvettes, frigates, and destroyers appeared in a neat row on Dr. Halsey's left. On her right were a collection of Covenant species, roughly one-third their normal size. There was a Grunt, a Jackal, the floating, tentacled creature John had seen on Sigma Octanus IV, as well as the heavily armored behemoths he and his team had bested. A spike of adrenaline burned through the Master Chief at the sight of the enemy. Intellectually, he knew that the images were not real . . . but after a decade of fighting, his instincts were to kill first and get the details later.\n\"The Covenant are still largely unknown to us,\" Dr. Halsey began. \"Their motivations and thought processes remain a mysterythough our best analysis points to some compelling hypotheses.\"\nShe paused, and added, \"The following information is, naturally, classified.\"We know that the Covenantour translation of their name for themselvesare a conglomerate of a number of different alien species. We believe that they exist in some kind of caste structure, though to date the exact nature of that structure remains unknown. Our best guess is that the Covenant conquer and 'absorb' a species, and adapt its strengths into their own.\n\"The Covenant's science is imitative rather then innovative, a by-product of this societal 'absorption,' \"\nDr. Halsey continued. \"This is not to say that they are lacking intelligence, however. During our first encounter they gathered computer and network components from our destroyed ships . . . and they learned at an astonishing pace.\n\"By the time Admiral Cole's fleet arrived at Harvest, the Covenant initiated a communications link and attempted a primitive software infiltration of our ship AIs. In a matter of weeks, they had learned the rudiments of our computer systems and our language. Our own attempts to decipher Covenant computer systems have only been partially successful, despite our best efforts and decades of time.\n\"Since then they have made increasingly successful forays into our computer networks. That is why the Cole Protocol is so important and carries the punishment of treason for failure to comply. The Covenant may one day not need to capture a ship to steal the information within its navigational databanks.\"\nThe Master Chief stole a glance at Captain Keyes. The Captain cupped an antique pipe in one hand; the Navy officer puffed on it once, and stared thoughtfully at Dr. Halsey and the examples of the Covenant vessels. He slowly shook his head.\n\"As I stated earlier,\" Dr. Halsey continued, \"the Covenant are a collection of genetically distinct groups in what we believe is a rigid caste system.\" She waved toward the Grunts and Jackals. \"These are most likely part of their military or warrior castenot the highest ranking caste, either, given how many are sacrificed during ground operations. We believe there is a 'race' of field commanders, which we are currently calling 'Elites.' \"She stepped toward the floating, tentacular aliens. \"We believe these are their scientists.\" As she moved closer, the figure animated; the image showed the creature disassembling an electric car of human manufacture. John instantly recognized his own battlefield recording. She pointed to the giant armored creatures. \"This was recorded on Sigma Octanus Four. A heavily armored warrior superior to either Grunts or Jackals.\" The massive aliens also sprang into motion, lumbering into combat, until Dr. Halsey froze the images in place. She turned and strolled back to the podium. \"ONI hypothesizes at least two additional castes. A warrior capable of commanding ground forces and possibly piloting their ships, and a leadership caste. We have deciphered a handful of Covenant transmissions that refer to\" She paused, checking notes on the data screen in her glasses. \"Ah, yes. 'Prophets.' We believe that these Prophets are in fact the leadership caste, and that they are viewed by the Covenant rank and file with an almost religious reverence.\"\nDr. Halsey removed her glasses. \"This is where you come in. Your mission will involve these so-called Prophets, and will be executed in four phases.\n\"Phase one. You will engage the Covenant and sufficiently disable, but not destroy, one of their ships.\"\nShe turned to face Captain Keyes. \"I leave that in the capable hands of Captain Keyes and his newly refitted ship, thePillar of Autumn .\"\nCaptain Keyes acknowledged her compliment with a curt nod. He tapped the stem of his pipe on his lips thoughtfully. The Master Chief was unaware of any Covenant ship ever being captured. He had read the reports of Captain Keyes' actions at Sigma Octanus IV . . . and considered the odds of actually capturing a Covenant vessel. Even for a Spartan, it would be a difficult mission.\n\"Phase two,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Spartans will board the disabled Covenant shipneutralize the crew, and crack their navigation database. We will do precisely what they have been trying to do to us: find the location of their home world.\"\nThe Master Chief raised his hand.\n\"Yes, Master Chief?\"\n\"Ma'am. We will be given mission specialist personnel to access the Covenant computers?\"\"In a manner of speaking,\" she said, and looked away. \"I will come to that point in a moment. Let me assure you, however, that these specialists will cause you no serious complications during this phase. In fact, they will prove rather useful in combat. Shortly, you shall have a demonstration.\"Like Captain Keyes' statement that winning wasn't everything . . . Dr. Halsey's reply was another puzzle. How would such computer specialists not be a liability to the Spartans in combat? Even if they could fight, it was unlikely they'd be anything but weak links in combat. If they couldn't fight, the Spartans would be forced to baby-sit a vulnerable package in a hot combat zone.\n\"Phase three,\" Dr. Halsey said, \"will consist of taking the captured Covenant ship to their homeworld.\"\nSeveral questions immediately formed in the Master Chief's mind. Who would pilot the alien ship? Had any one ever deciphered the Covenant control systems? It seemed unlikely since the UNSC had never captured one of their ships before. Were there Covenant recognition signals that had to be sent when entering their space? Or would they just steal their way in-system?\nWhen a plan had so many missing pieces of data, the Spartans had been trained to stop and reconsider its effectiveness. Unanswered questions led to complications\"snags.\" And snags led to injuries, death, and failed missions. Simple was better. He held his questions, though. Dr. Halsey surely would have planned for these eventualities.\"Phase four,\" she continued, \"will be to infiltrate and capture the Covenant leadership and return with them to UNSC-controlled space.\"\nThe Master Chief shifted uneasily. There was no intel or reconnaissance of Covenant-held space. What did a Covenant leadera Propheteven look like?\nChief Mendez had told him to trust Dr. Halsey. The Master Chief decided to hear all the details before he asked any further questions. To do so might undermine her authority. And that's the last thing he needed the other Spartans to see. And yet, there was one thing hehad to clarify. The Master Chief raised his hand again. She nodded toward him.\n\"Dr. Halsey,\" he said, \"you did say 'capture' the Covenant leadersnot eliminate them?\"\"Correct,\" she replied. \"Our profile of Covenant society indicates that if you were to kill one of their leader caste, this war could actually escalate. Your orders are to preserve any captured Covenant leaders at all costs. You will bring them back to UNSC headquarters, where we will then use them to broker a truce, possibly even negotiate a peace treaty with the Covenant.\"\nPeace? The Master Chief considered the unfamiliar word. Was that what Captain Keyes had meant? The alternative to winning wasn't necessarily losing. If you chose not to play a game, then there could be neither winning nor losing. Dr. Halsey took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. \"Some of you already suspect this, but I shall state it anyway for emphasis. It is my opinion, and that of many others, that the war is not going well . . . despite our recent victories. What is not widely known is how badly it is going for us. ONI predicts that we have months, perhaps as much as a standard year, before the Covenant locates and destroys our remaining Inner Colonies . . . and then moves against Earth.\"\nThe Master Chief had heard the rumorsand promptly dismissed thembut to hear the words from someone he trusted chilled him to the core.\n\"Your mission will prevent this,\" Dr. Halsey said. She stopped and frowned, lowered her head, then finally looked up at them again. \"This op is considered extremely high risk. There are unknown elements involved and we simply do not have the time to gather the required intelligence. I have persuaded FLEETCOM not to order you on this mission. Admiral Stanforth is asking for volunteers.\"\nThe Master Chief understood. Dr. Halsey was unsure if she would be spending their lives or wasting them on this mission. He stood without hesitationand as he did so, the rest of the Spartans stood as well.\n\"Good,\" she said. She paused and blinked several times. \"Very good. Thank you.\"\nShe stepped away from the podium. \"We will meet with you individually within a few days to continue your briefing. I will show you how you will get our computer experts on board the Covenant vessel . . . and I will show you the one thing that will let you get through this mission in one piece: MJOLNIR.\"\nCHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN\n0600 Hours, August 29, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nEpsilon Eridani System, UNSC Military Reservation01478-B, planet Reach The firing range was uncharacteristically quiet. Normally, the air would be filled with noisethe sharp, staccato crackle of automatic-weapons fire; the urgent yells of soldiers practicing combat operations; and the barked, curse-laden orders of drill instructors. John frowned as he guided the Warthog to the security checkpoint. The silence on the combat range was somehow unsettling.Even more unsettling were the extra security personnel; today, there were three times the normal number of MPs patrolling the gate. John parked the Warthog and was approached by a trio of MPs. \"State your business here, sir,\" the lead MP demanded. Without a word, John handed over his papersorders direct from the top brass. The MP visibly stiffened. \"Sir, my apologies. Dr. Halsey and the others are waiting for you at the P and R area.\"\nThe guard saluted, and waved the gate open. On survey maps, the combat training range was listed as \"UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B.\" The soldiers who trained there had a different name for it\"Painland.\" John knew the facility well; a great deal of the Spartans' early training had taken place there. The range was divided into three areas: a live-fire obstacle course; a target practice range; and the P&R\n\"Prep and Recovery\" areawhich more often than not doubled as an emergency first-aid station. John had spent plenty of time in the aid station during his training. The Master Chief walked briskly to the prefabricated structure. Another pair of MPs, MA5B assault rifles at the ready, double-checked his credentials before they admitted him to the building.\n\"Ah, here at last,\" said an unfamiliar voice. \"Let's go, son, on the double, if you please.\"\nJohn paused; the speaker was an older man, at least in his sixties, in the coveralls and lab coat of a ship's doctor. No rank insignia, though, John thought with a twinge of concern. For a moment, the image of his fellow Spartansvery young, and clubbing, kicking, and beating un-uniformed instructors into unconsciousness flashed into his memory with crystal clarity.\n\"Who are you, sir?\" he asked, his voice cautious.\n\"I'm a Captain in the UNSC Navy, son,\" the man said with a thin-lipped smile, \"and I've no time for spit and polish today. Let's go.\"\nA Captainand new orders. Good. \"Yes, sir.\"The Captain in the lab coat escorted him into the P&R's medical bay. \"Undress, please,\" the man said.John quickly disrobed, then stacked his neatly folded uniform on a nearby gurney. The Captain stepped behind him and began to swab John's neck and the back of his head with a foul-smelling liquid. The liquid felt ice-cold on his skin. A moment later, Dr. Halsey entered. \"This will just take a moment, Master Chief. We're going to upgrade a few components in your standard-issue neural interface. Lie back and remain still, please.\"\nThe Master Chief did as she said. A technician sprayed a topical anesthetic on his neck. The skin tingled, then went cold and numb. The Master Chief felt layers of skin incised, and then a series of distinct clicking sounds that echoed through his skull. There was a brief laser pulse and another spray. He saw sparks, felt the room spin, then a sense of vertigo. His vision blurred; he blinked rapidly and it quickly returned to normal.\n\"Good . . . the procedure is complete,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Please follow me.\"\nThe Captain handed the Master Chief a paper gown. He slipped it on and followed the doctor outside. A field command dome had been assembled on the range. Its white fabric walls rippled in the breeze.Ten MPs stood around the structure, assault rifles in hand. The Master Chief noted these weren't regular Marines. They wore the gold comet insignia of Special Forces Orbital Drop Shock Troopers\"Helljumpers.\" Tough and iron-disciplined. A flash of memory: the blood of troopsjust like thesesoaking into the mat of a boxing ring. John felt his adrenaline spike as soon as he saw the soldiers. Dr. Halsey approached the MP at the entrance and presented her credentials. They accepted them and scanned her retina and voiceprint, then did the same to the Master Chief.Once they confirmed his identify, they immediately salutedwhich was technically unnecessary, as the Master Chief was out of uniform. He did them the courtesy of returning their salute. The soldiers kept looking around, scanning the field, as if they were expecting something to happen. John's discomfort grewnot much spooked an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. Dr. Halsey led the Master Chief inside. In the center of the dome stood an empty suit of MJOLNIR armor, suspended between two pillars on a raised platform. The Master Chief knew it was not his suit. His, after years of use, had dents and scratches in the alloy plates and the once iridescent green finish had dulled to a worn olive brown. This suit was spotless and its surface possessed a subtle metallic sheen. He noted the armor plates were slightly thicker, and the black underlayers had a more convoluted weave of components. The fusion pack was half again as large, and tiny luminous slits glowed near the articulation points.\n\"This is the real MJOLNIR,\" Dr. Halsey whispered to him. \"What you have been using was only a fraction of what the armor should be. This\" She turned to the Master Chief. \"is everything I had always dreamed it could be. Please put the suit on.\"\nThe Master Chief stripped the paper gown off andwith the help of a pair of techniciansdonned the armor components. Dr. Halsey averted her eyes.Although the armor's components were bulkier and heavier than his old suit, once assembled and activated, they felt light as air. The armor was a perfect fit. The biolayer warmed and adhered to his skin, then cooled as the temperature difference between the suit and his skin equalized.\n\"We've made hundreds of minor technical improvements,\" she said. \"I'll have the specifications sent to you later. Two of those changes, however, are rather serious modifications to the system. It may take . . . some getting used to.\"\nDr. Halsey's brow furrowed. John had never seen her worried before.\"First,\" she told him, \"we have replicated, and I might add, improved upon the energy shield the Covenant Jackals have been using against us to great effect.\"\nThis armor had shields? The Master Chief had known that ONI research had been working on adapting Covenant technology; Spartans had standing orders to capture Covenant machines wherever they could. The researchers and engineers had announced some breakthroughs in artificial gravitysome UNSC ships were already undergoing trials with the grav systems. The fact that the MJOLNIR armor possessed shields was a stunning breakthrough. For years, there had been no luck back-engineering Covenant shield tech. Most in the scientific community had given up hope of ever cracking it. Maybe that's why Dr. Halsey was worried. Maybe they hadn't worked out all the bugs. Dr. Halsey nodded to the technicians. \"Let's begin.\"\nThe techs turned to a series of instrument panels. One, a slightly younger man, donned a COM headset.\"Okay, Master Chief.\"The tech's voice crackled through John's helmet speakers.\"There's an activation icon in your heads-up display. There is also a manual control switch located at position twelve in your helmet.\"\nHe chinned the control. Nothing happened.\n\"Wait a moment, please, sir. We have to give the suit an activation charge. After that, it can accept regenerative power from the fusion pack. Stand on the platform and be absolutely still.\"\nHe stepped onto the platform that had held the MJOLNIR armor. The pillars flickered on and glowed a brilliant yellow. The pillars started to spin slowly around the base of the platform. The Master Chief felt a static charge tingling in his extremities. The glow intensified and his helmet's blast shield automatically dimmed. The charge in the air intensified; his skin crawled with ionization. He smelled ozone. Then the spinning slowed and the light dimmed.\n\"Reset the activation button now, Master Chief.\"The air around the Master Chief poppedas if it jumped away from the MJOLNIR armor. There was none of the shimmer that normal Covenant shields had. Was it working?\nHe ran his hand over his arm and encountered resistance a centimeter from the surface of the armor. It was working. How many times had he and his teammates had to find ways to slip past a Jackal's shield? He'd have to rethink his tactics. Rethink everything.\"It provides full coverage\"Dr. Halsey's voice piped through the speakers.\"and dissipates energy far more efficiently than the Covenant shields the Spartans have recovered, though the shield is concentrated on your arms, head, legs, chest, and back. The energy field tapers down to a hair under a millimeter so you don't lose the ability to hold or manipulate items with your hands.\"\nThe lead technician activated another control, and new data scrawled across John's display.\"There's a segmented bar in the upper corner of your HUD,\"the technician said,\"right next to your biomonitor and ammunition indicators. It indicates the charge level of your shield. Don't let it completely dissipate; when it's gone, the armor starts taking the hits.\"\nThe Master Chief slipped off the platform. He skiddedthen came to a halt. His movements felt oiled. His contact with the floor felt tentative.\n\"You can adjust the bottom of your boot emitters as well as the emitters inside your gloves to increase traction. In normal use, you will want to set these to the minimal leveljust be aware your defenses will be diminished in those locations.\"\n\"Understood.\" He adjusted the field strengths. \"In zero-gee environment I should increase those sections to full strength, correct?\"\n\"That is correct,\"Dr. Halsey said.\n\"How much damage can they take before the system is breached?\"\n\"That is what you will learn here today, Master Chief. I think you'll find that we have several challenges in store for you to see how much punishment the suit can take.\"\nHe nodded. He was ready for the challenge. After weeks spent traveling in Slipspace, he was long overdue for a workout. John slid back his helmet visor and turned to face Dr. Halsey. \"You said there weretwo major system improvements, Doctor?\"\nShe nodded and smiled. \"Yes, of course. \" She reached into her lab coat and withdrew a clear cube. \"I doubt you've ever seen one of these before. It is the memory-processor core of an AI.\"\n\"Like Deja?\"\"Yes, like your former teacher. But this AI is slightly different. I'd like to introduce you to Cortana.\"\nThe Master Chief looked around the tent. He saw no computer interface or holographic projectors. He cocked an eyebrow at Dr. Halsey.\n\"There is a new layer sandwiched between the reactive circuits and the inner biolayers of your armor,\"\nDr. Halsey explained. \"It is a weave of additional memory-processor super-conductor.\"\n\"The same material as an AI's core.\"\n\"Yes,\" Dr. Halsey replied. \"An accurate analysis. Your armor will carry Cortana. The MJOLNIR system has the nearly the same capacity as a ship-borne AI system. Cortana will interface between you and the suit and provide tactical and strategic information for you in the field.\"\n\"I'm not sure I understand.\"\"Cortana has been programmed with every ONI computer insurgency routine,\" Dr. Halsey told him.\n\"And she has a talent for modifying them on the fly. She has our best Covenant-language-translation software as well. Her primary purpose is to infiltrate their computer and communications systems. She will intercept and decode point-to-point Covenant transmissions and give you updated intelligence in the field.\"\nIntel support in an operation where there had been no reconnaissance. The Master Chief liked that. It would level the playing field significantly.\n\"This AI is the computer specialist we'll be taking onto the Covenant ship,\" the Master Chief said.\"Yes . . . and more. Her presence will allow you to utilize the suit more effectively.\"\nJohn had a sudden flashAIs handled a great deal of point defense during Naval operations. \"Can she control the MJOLNIR armor?\" He wasn't sure he liked that.\n\"No. Cortana resides in the interface between your mind and the suit, Master Chief. You will find your reaction time greatly improved. She will be translating the impulses in your motor cortex directly into motionshe can't make you send those impulses.\"\n\"This AI,\" he said, \"will beinside my mind?\" That must have been what that \"upgrade\" to his standard issue UNSC computer interface had been for.\n\"That is the question, isn't it?\" Halsey replied. \"I can't answer that, Master Chief. Not scientifically.\"\n\"I'm not sure I understand, Doctor.\"\n\"What is the mind, really? Intuition, reason, emotionwe acknowledge they exist, but we still don't know what makes the human mindwork .\" She paused, searching for the right words. \"We model AIs on human neural networkson electrical signals in the brainbecause we just know that the human brain works . . . but not how, or why. Cortana resides 'between' your mind and the suit, interpreting the electrochemical messages in your brain and transferring them to the suit via your neural implant.\n\"So, for lack of a better term, yes, Cortana will be 'inside' your mind.\"\n\"Ma'am, my priority will be to complete this mission. This AICortanamay have conflicting directives.\"\n\"There is no need to worry, Master Chief. Cortana has the same mission parameters as you do. She will do anything necessary to make sure that your mission is accomplished. Even if that means sacrificing herselfor youto accomplish it.\"\nThe Master Chief exhaled, relieved.\"Now, please kneel down. It's time to insert her memory-processor matrix into the socket at the base of your neck.\"\nThe Master Chief knelt. There was a hissing noise, a pop, and then cold liquid poured into the Master Chief's mind; a spike of pain jammed into his forehead, then faded.\n\"Not a lot of room in here,\" a smooth female voice said. \"Hello, Master Chief.\"Did this AI have a rank? Certainly, she was not a civilianor a fellow soldier. Should he treat her like any other piece of UNSC-issued equipment? Then again, he treated his equipment with the respect it deserved. He made sure every gun and knife was cleaned and inspected after every mission. It was unsettling . . . he could hear Cortana's voice through his helmet speakers, but it also felt like she was speaking inside his head. \"Hello, Cortana.\"\n\"Hmm . . . I'm detecting a high degree of cerebral cortex activity. You're not the muscle-bound automatons the press makes you out to be.\"\n\"Automaton?\" the Master Chief whispered. \"Interesting choice of words for an artificial intelligence.\"Dr. Halsey watched the Master Chief with great interest. \"You must forgive Cortana, Master Chief. She is somewhat high-spirited. You may have to allow for behavioral quirks.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\"I think we should begin the test straightaway. There's no better way for the two of you to get acquainted than in simulated combat.\"\n\"No one said anything about combat,\" Cortana said.\n\"The ONI brass have arranged a test for you and the new MJOLNIR system,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"There are some that believe you two are not up to our proposed mission.\"\n\"Ma'am!\" The Master Chief snapped to attention. \"I'm up for it, ma'am!\"\"I know you are, Master Chief. Others . . . require proof.\" She looked around at the shadows cast by the Marines outside the fabric walls of the command dome. \"You hardly need a reminder to be prepared for anything . . . but stay on your guard, just the same.\"\nDr. Halsey's voice dropped to a whisper. \"I think some of the ONI brass would prefer to see you fail this test, Master Chief. And they may have arranged to make sure you doregardless of your performance.\"\n\"I won't fail, Doctor.\"\nHer forehead wrinkled with worry lines, but then they quickly disappeared. \"I know you won't.\"She stepped back, and dropped her conspiratorial whisper. \"Master Chief, you are ordered to count to ten after I leave. After that, make your way to the obstacle course. At the far end is a bell. Your goal will be to ring it.\" She paused, then added, \"You are authorized to neutralize any threats in order to achieve this objective.\"\n\"Affirmative,\" the Master Chief said. Enough uncertaintynow he had an objective, and rules of engagement.\n\"Be careful, Master Chief,\" Dr. Halsey said quietly. She gestured at the pair of technicians to follow her, then turned and walked out of the tent. The Master Chief didn't understand why Dr. Halsey thought he was in real dangerhe didn't have to understand the reason. All he needed to know was that danger was present. He knew how to handle danger.\n\"Uploading combat protocols now,\" Cortana said. \"Initiating electronic detection algorithms. Boosting neural interface performance to eighty-five percent. I'm ready when you are, Master Chief.\"\nThe Master Chief heard metallic clacks around the tent.\"Analyzing sound pattern,\" Cortana said. \"Database match.Identified as\"\n\"As someone cycling the bolt of an MA5B assault rifle. I know. Standard-issue weapons for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers.\"\n\"Since you're 'in the know,' Master Chief,\" Cortana quipped. \"I assume you have a plan.\"\nJohn snapped his helmet visor back down and sealed the armor's environment system. \"Yes.\"\"Presumably your plan doesn't involve getting shot . . . ?\"\"No.\"\n\"So, what's the plan?\" Cortana sounded worried.\n\"I'm going to finish counting to ten.\"John heard Cortana sigh in frustration. John shook his head in puzzlement. He'd never encountered a so called smart AI before. Cortana sounded . . . like a human. Worse, she sounded like acivilian . This was going to take a lot of getting used to. Shadows moved along the wall of the tentmotion from outside. Eight.There was a snag in this mission and he hadn't even reached the obstacle course. He would have to engage his fellow soldiers. He pushed aside any questions about why. He had his orders and he would follow them. He had dealt with ODSTs before. Nine. Three soldiers entered the tent, moving in slow motionblack-armored figures, helmets snug over their faces, crouched low, and their rifles leveled. Two took flanking positions. The one in the middle opened fire. Ten. The Master Chief blurred into motion. He dove from the activation platform andbefore the soldiers could adjust their aimlanded in their midst. He rolled to his feet right next to the soldier who fired first, and grabbed the man's rifle.John brutally yanked the weapon away from the soldier. There was a loud cracking sound as the man's shoulder dislocated. The wounded trooper stumbled forward, off balance. John spun the rifle and slammed the butt of the weapon into the soldier's side. The man exhaled explosively as his ribs cracked. He grunted, and fell unceremoniously to the floor, unconscious. John spun to face the left-flank gunner, assault rifle leveled at the man's head instantly. He had the man in his sights, but he still had timethe soldier was not quite in position. To John's enhanced senses, amped up by Cortana and the neural interface, the rifleman seemed to be moving in slow motion. Too slow. The Master Chief lashed out with the rifle butt again. The trooper's head snapped back from the sudden, powerful blow. He flipped head over tail and slammed into the ground. John sized the man's condition up with a practiced eye: shock, concussion, fractured vertebrae. Gunner number two was out of the fight.The remaining gunner completed his turn and opened fire. A three-round burst ricocheted off the MJOLNIR armor's energy shield. The shield's recharge bar flickered a hairbreadth. Before the soldier could react, the Master Chief sidestepped and slammed his own rifle downhard. The trooper screamed as his leg gave out. A jagged spoke of bone burst through the wounded man's fatigues. The Master chief finished him with a rifle butt to his helmeted head. John checked the condition of the rifle, andsatisfied that it was in working orderbegan to pull ammo clips from the fallen soldiers' belt pouches. The lead soldier also carried a razor-edged combat knife; John grabbed it.\n\"You could have killed them,\" Cortana said. \"Why didn't you?\"\"My orders gave me permission to 'neutralize' threats,\" he replied. \"They aren't threats anymore.\"\n\"Semantics,\" Cortana replied. She sounded amused. \"I can't argue with the results, though\" She broke off, suddenly. \"New targets. Seven contacts on the motion tracker,\" Cortana reported. \"We're surrounded.\"\nSeven more soldiers. The Master Chief could open fire now and kill them all. Under any other circumstances, he would have removed such threats. But their MA5Bs were no immediate danger to him . . . and the UNSC could use every soldier to fight the Covenant. He strode to the center pole of the tent, and with a yank, he pulled it free. As the roof fluttered down, he slashed a slit in the tent fabric and shoved through. He faced three Marines; they firedthe Master Chief deftly jumped to one side. He sprang toward them and lashed out with the steel pole, swiped out their legs. He heard bones crackfollowed by screams of pain. The Master Chief turned as the tent finished collapsing. The remaining four men could see him now. One reached for a grenade on his belt. The other three tracked him with their assault rifles. The Master Chief threw the pole like a javelin at the man with the grenade. It impacted in his sternum and he fell with awhoopf. The grenade, minus the pin, however, dropped to the ground.The Master Chief moved and kicked the grenade. It arced over the parking lot and detonated in a cloud of smoke and shrapnel. The three remaining Marines opened firespraying bullets in a full-auto fusillade. Bullets pinged off the Master Chief's shield. The shield status indicator blinked and dropped with each bullet impactthe sustained weapons fire was draining the shield precipitously. John tucked and rolled, narrowly avoiding an incoming burst of automatic-weapons fire, then sprang at the nearest Marine. John launched an openhanded strike at the man's chest. The Marine's ribs caved in and he dropped without a sound, blood flowing from his mouth. John spun, brought his rifle up, and fired twice. The second soldier screamed and dropped his rifle as the bullets tore through each knee. John kicked the discarded rifle, bending the barrel and rendering the weapon useless. The last man stood frozen in place.The Master Chief didn't give the man time to recover; he grabbed his rifle, ripped off his bandolier of grenades, then punched his helmet. The Marine dropped.\n\"Mission time plus twenty-two seconds,\" Cortana remarked. \"Although, technically, you started to move forty milliseconds before you were ordered to.\"\n\"I'll keep that in mind.\"\nThe Master Chief slung the assault rifle and bandolier of grenades over his shoulder and ran for the shadows of the barracks. He slipped under the raised buildings and belly-crawled toward the obstacle course. No need to make himself a target for snipers . . . although it would be an interesting test to see what caliber of bullet these shields could deflect. No. That kind of thinking was dangerous. The shield was useful, but under combined fire it dropped very quickly. He was tough . . . not invincible. He emerged at the beginning to the obstacle course. The first part was a run over ten acres of jagged gravel. Sometimes raw recruits had to take off their boots before they crossed. Other than the painit was the easiest part of the course. The Master Chief started toward the gravel yard.\"Wait,\" Cortana said. \"I'm picking up far infrared signals on your thermal sensors. An encrypted sequence . . . decoding . . . yes, there. It's an activation signal for a Lotus mine. They've mined the field, Master Chief.\"\nThe Master Chief froze. He'd used Lotus mines before and knew the damage they could inflict. The shaped charges ripped though the armor plate of a tank like it was no thicker than an orange peel. This would slow him down considerably. Not crossing the obstacle course was no option. He had his orders. He wouldn't cheat and go around. He had to prove that he and Cortana were up for this test.\n\"Any ideas?\" he asked.\n\"I thought you'd never ask,\" Cortana replied. \"Find the position of one mine, and I can estimate the rough position of the others based on the standard randomization procedure used by UNSC engineers.\"\n\"Understood.\"The Master Chief grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, counted to three, and lobbed it into the middle of the field. It bounced and explodedsending a shock wave through the groundtripping two of the Lotus mines. Twin plumes of gravel and dust shot into the air. The detonation shook his teeth. He wondered if the armor's shields could have survived that. He didn't want to find out while he was still inside the thing. He boosted the field strength on the bottom of his boots to full. Cortana overlaid a grid on his heads-up display. Lines flickered as she ran through the possible permutations.\"Got a match!\" she said. Two dozen red circles appeared on his display. \"That's ninety-three percent accurate. The best I can do.\"\n\"There are never any guarantees,\" the Master Chief replied. He stepped onto the gravel, taking short, deliberate steps. With the shields activated on the bottoms of his boots, it felt like he was skating on greased ice. He kept his head down, picking his way between red dots on his display.If Cortana was wrong, he probably wouldn't even know it.The Master Chief saw the gravel had ended. He looked up. He had made it.\n\"Thank you, Cortana. Well done.\"\n\"You're welcome . . .\" Her voice trailed off. \"Picking up scrambled radio frequencies on the D band. Encrypted orders from this facility to Fairchild Airfield. They're using personal codewords, tooso I can't tell what they're up to. Whatever it is, I don't like it.\"\n\"Keep your ears open.\"\n\"I always do.\"\nHe ran to the next section of the obstacle course: the razor field. Here, recruits had to crawl in the mud under razor wire as their instructors fired live rounds over them. A lot of soldiers discovered whether they had the guts to deal with bullets zinging a centimeter over their heads. Along either side of the course there was something new: three 30mm chain-guns mounted on tripods.\"Weapons emplacements are targeting us, Chief!\" Cortana announced. The Master Chief wasn't about to wait and see if those chain-guns had a minimum-depth setting. He had no intention of crawling across the field and letting the chain-guns' rapid rate of fire chip away at his shields. The chain-guns clicked and started to turn.He sprinted to the nearest tripod-mounted gun. He opened fire with his assault fire, shot the lines that powered the servosthen spun the chain-gun around to face the others.He crouched behind the blast shield and unloaded on the adjacent gun. Chain-guns were notoriously hard to aim; they were best known for their ability to fill the air with gunfire. Cortana adjusted his targeting reticle to sync up with the chain-gun. With her help, he hit the adjacent weapon emplacements. John guided a stream of fire into the guns' ammo packs. Moments later, in a cloud of fire and smoke, the guns fell silent . . . then toppled. The Master Chief ducked, primed a grenade, and hurled it at the closest of the remaining automated weapons. The grenade sailed through the airthen detonated just above the autogun.\n\"Chain-gun destroyed,\" Cortana reported. Two more grenades and the automated guns were out of commission. He noted that his shields had dropped by a quarter. He watched the status bar refill. He hadn't even known he had taken hits. That was sloppy.\n\"You seem to have the situation under control,\" Cortana said, \"I'm going to spend a few cycles and check something out.\"\n\"Permission granted,\" he said.\n\"I didn't ask, Master Chief,\" she replied. The cool liquid presence in his mind withdrew. The Master Chief felt empty somehow.He ran through the razor fields, snapping through steel wire as if it were rotten string. Cortana's coolness once again flooded his thoughts.\n\"I just accessed SATCOM,\" she said. \"I'm using one of their satellites so I can get a better look at what's happening down here. There's a SkyHawk jump jet from Fairchild Field inbound.\"\nHe stopped. The automatic cannons were one thingcould the armor withstand against air power like that? The SkyHawk had a quartet of 50mm cannons that made the chain-guns look like peashooters. They also had Scorpion missilesdesigned to take out tanks. Answer: he couldn't do a thing against it. The Master Chief ran. He had to find cover. He sprinted to the next section of the course: the Pillars of Loki. It was a forest of ten-meter-tall poles spaced at random intervals. Typically, the poles had booby traps strung on, under, and between themstun grades, sharpened sticks . . . anything the instructors could dream up. The idea was to teach recruits to move slowly and keep their eyes open. The Master Chief had no time to search for the traps. He climbed up the first pole and balanced on top. He leaped to the next pole, teetered, regained his balancethen jumped to the next. His reflexes had to be perfect; he was landing a half ton of man and armor on a wooden pole ten centimeters in diameter.\n\"Motion tracking is picking up an incoming target at extreme range,\" Cortana warned. \"Velocity profile matches the SkyHawk, Chief.\"\nHe turnedalmost lost his balance and had to shift back and forth to keep from falling. There was a dot on the horizon, and the faint rumble of thunder. In the blink of an eye, the dot had wings and the Master Chief's thermal sensors picked up a plume of jetwash. In seconds, the SkyHawk closedthen opened fire with its 50mm cannons. He jumped. The wooden poles splintered into pulp. They were mowed down like so many blades of grass.The Master Chief rolled, ducked, and flattened himself on the earth. He caught a smattering of rounds and his shield bar drooped to half. Those rounds would have penetrated his old suit instantly. Cortana said, \"I calculate we have eleven seconds before the SkyHawk can execute a maximum gee turn and make another pass.\"\nThe Master Chief got up and ran through the shattered remains of the poles. Napalm and sonic grenades popped around him, but he moved so fast he left the worst of the damage in his wake.\n\"They won't use their cannons next time,\" he said. \"They didn't take us outthey'll try the missiles.\"\"Perhaps,\" Cortana suggested, \"we should leave the course. Find better cover.\"\n\"No,\" he said. \"We're going to win . . . by their rules.\"\nThe last leg of the course was a sprint across an open field. In the distance, the Master Chief saw the bell on a tripod. He glanced over his shoulder.The SkyHawk was back and starting its run straight toward him. Even with his augmented speed, even with the MJOLNIR armorhe'd never make it to the bell in time. He'd never make it alive. He turned to face the incoming jet.\n\"I'll need your help, Cortana,\" he said.\"Anything,\" she whispered. The Master Chief heard nervousness in the AI's voice.\"Calculate the inbound velocity of a Scorpion missile. Factor in my reaction time and the jet's inbound speed and distance at launch, and tell me the instant I need to move to sidestep and deflect it with my left arm.\"\nCortana paused a heartbeat. \"Calculation done. You did say 'deflect'?\"\n\"Scorpion missiles have motion-tracking sensors and proximity detonators. I can't outrun it. And it won't miss. That leaves us very few options.\"\nThe SkyHawk dove.\n\"Get ready,\" Cortana said. \"I hope you know what you're doing.\"\n\"Me, too.\"Smoke appeared from the jet's left wingtip and fire and exhaust erupted as a missile streaked toward him.The Master Chief saw the missile's track back and forth, zeroing in on his coordinates. A shrill tone in his helmet warbledthe missile had a guidance lock on him. He chinned a control and the sound died out. The missile was fast. Faster than he was ten times over.\n\"Now!\" Cortana said. They moved together. He shifted his muscles and the MJOLNIRaugmented by his link to Cortana moved faster than he'd ever moved before. His leg tensed and pushed him aside; his left arm came up and crossed his chest. The head of the missile was the only thing he saw. The air grew still and thickened.He continued to move his hand, palm open in a slapping motionas fast as he could will his flesh to accelerate. The tip of the Scorpion missile passed a centimeter from his head. He reached outfingertips brushed the metal casing and slapped it aside.The SkyHawk jet screamed over his head.The Scorpion missile detonated. Pressure slammed though his body. The Master Chief flew six meters, spinning end over end, and landed flat on his back. He blinked, and saw nothing but blackness. Was he dead? Had he lost?The shield status bar in his heads-up display pulsed weakly. It was completely drainedthen it blinked red and slowly started to refill. Blood was spattered across the inside of his helmet and he tasted copper. He stood, his muscles screaming in protest.\n\"Run!\" Cortana said. \"Before they come back for a look.\"The Master Chief got up and ran. As he passed the spot where he had stood to face down the missile, he saw a two-meter-deep crater. He could feel his Achilles tendon tear, but he didn't slow. He crossed the half-kilometer stretch in seventeen seconds flat and skidded to halt. The Master Chief grabbed the bell's cord and rang it three times. The pure tone was the most glorious sound he had ever heard. Over the COM channel Dr. Halsey's voice broke:\"Test concluded. Call off your men, Colonel Ackerson!\nWe've won. Well done, Master Chief. Magnificent! Stay there; I'm sending out a recovery team.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" he replied, panting. The Master Chief scanned the sky for the SkyHawknothing. It had gone. He knelt and let blood drip from his nose and mouth. He looked down at the belland laughed.He knew that stainless-steel dented shape. It was the same one he had rung that first day of boot. The day Chief Mendez had taught him about teamwork.\n\"Thank you, Cortana,\" he finally said. \"I couldn't have done it without you.\"\n\"You're welcome, Master Chief,\" she replied. Then, her voice full of mischief, she added: \"And no, you couldn't have done it without me.\"\nToday he had learned about a new kind of teamwork with Cortana. Dr. Halsey had given him a great gift. She had given him a weapon with which to destroy the Covenant. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT\n0400 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCPillar of Autumn , in orbit around Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex Cortana never rested. Although based approximately on a human mind, AIs had no need to sleep or dream. Dr. Halsey had thought she could keep Cortana occupied by checking the systems of thePillar of Autumn while she attended to her other secret projects. Her assumption was incorrect.While Cortana was intrigued with the unique design and workings of the shipits preparation barely occupied a fraction of her processing power. She watched with thePillar of Autumn 's camera as Captain Keyes approached the ship in a shuttle pod. Lieutenant Hikowa left to greet him in the docking bay. From C deck, Captain Keyes spoke over the intercom: \"Cortana? Can we have power to move the ship?\nI'd like to get under way.\"\nShe calculated the remaining reactor burn-in time and made an adjustment to run it hotter. \"The engines'\nfinal shakedown is in theta cycle,\" Cortana replied. \"Operating well within normal parameters. Diverting thirty percent power to engines; aye, sir.\"\n\"And the other systems' status?\" Captain Keyes asked.\n\"Weapons-system check initiated. Navigational nodes functioning. Continuing systemwide shakedown and triple checks, Captain.\"\n\"Very good,\" he said. \"Apprise me if there are any anomalies.\"\"Aye, Captain,\" she replied. The COM channel snapped off. She continued her checks on thePillar of Autumn as ordered. There were, however, more important things to consider; namely, a little reconnaissance into ONI databases . . . and a little revenge.She dedicated the balance of her run time toward probing the SATCOM system around REACH for entry points. There. A ping in the satellite network coordination signal. She broadcast a resonant carrier wave at that signal and piggybacked into the system. First things first. She had two loose ends to take care of. While she and the Master Chief had been on the obstacle course, she had commandeered SATCOM observation beacon 419 and rotated it to view them from orbit. She reentered the back door she had left open in the system, and rewrote the satellite's guidance thruster subroutine. If the system was analyzed later, it would be determined that this error had altered it to a random orientation rather than a planned position. She withdrew, but left her back door intact. This trick might come in handy again.The other loose end that required her attentions was Colonel Ackersonthe man who had tried to erase her and the Master Chief. Cortana reread Dr. Halsey's recommended test specifications for the MJOLNIR system on the obstacle course. She had suggested live rounds, yes. But never a squad of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, chain-guns, Lotus mines . . . and certainly not an air strike. That was the Colonel's doing. He was an equation that needed to be balanced. What Dr. Halsey might have called \"payback.\"\nShe linked to the UNSC personnel and planning database on Reach. The ONI AI there, Beowulf, knew her . . . and knew not to let her in. Beowulf was thorough, methodical, and paranoid; in her own way, Cortana couldn't help but like him. But compared with her code-cracking skills, he might as well have been an accounting program. Cortana sent a rapid series of queries into the network node that processed housing transfer requests. A normally quiet nodeshe overloaded it with a billion different pings per minute. The network attempted to recover and reconfigure, causing all nodes to lag, including node seventeen personnel records. She stepped in and inserted a spike wedge, a subroutine that looked like a normal incoming signal, but bounced any handshake protocol. She slipped in.The Colonel's CSV was impressive. He had survived three battles with the Covenant. Early in the war, he received a promotion and volunteered for a dozen black ops. For the last few years, however, his efforts had focused on political maneuvers rather than battlefield tactics. He had filed several requests for increased funding for his Special Warfare projects. No wonder he wanted the Master Chief gone. The Spartan IIs and MJOLNIR were his direct competition. Worse, they were succeeding where he failed. At best, Ackerson's actions were treason. But Cortana wasn't about to reveal all this to the ONI oversight committee. Despite the Colonel's methods, the UNSC still needed himand his SpecWar specialistsin the war. Justice, however, would still be meted out.From the ONI database, she masqueraded as a routine credit check and entered the Colonel's bank accountto which she wired a substantial amount to a brothel on Gilgamesh. She made sure the bank queries sent to confirm the transaction were copied to his home immediately. Colonel Ackerson was a married man . . . and his wife should be there to receive them. She cut into his personal E-mail and sent a carefully crafted messagerequesting reassignment to a forward areato personnel. Finally, she inserted a \"ghost\" record, an electronic footprint that identified the source of the alterations: Ackerson's personal-computer pad. By the time Ackerson was done untangling all of that, he'd be reassigned to field duty . . . and get back to fighting the Covenant where he belonged. With all loose ends neatly tied up, Cortana rechecked thePillar of Autumn 's reactor; the shakedown was proceeding nicely. She tweaked the magnetic-field strength, and part of her watched the output from the engines for fluctuations. She inspected all weapons systems three times, and then went back to her own personal research. She considered how well the Master Chief had performed this morning on the obstacle course. He was more than Cortana could have hoped for. The Master Chief was much more than Dr. Halsey or the press releases had indicated. He was intelligent . . . not fearless, but as close to it as any human she had encountered. His reaction time under stress was one-sixth the standard human norm. More than that, however, Cortana had sensed that he had a certainshe searched her lexicon for the proper wordnobility. He placed his mission and his duty and honor above his personal safety. She reexamined his Career Service Vitae. He had fought in 207 ground engagements against the Covenant, and been awarded every major service medal except the Prisoner of War Medallion. There were holes in his CSV, though. The standard black-out sections courtesy of ONI, of course . . . but most curious, all data before he entered active duty had been expunged.Cortana wasn't about to let a mere erasure stop her. She traced where the order to erase that data had originated. Section Three. Dr. Halsey's group. Curious. She followed the order pathwaycrashed into layers of counter code. The code started a trace on her signal. She blocked itand it restarted a trace of the origin of her block. This was a very well-crafted piece of counterintrusion software, far superior to the normal ONI slugcode. If nothing else, Cortana liked a challenge. She withdrew from the database and looked for an unguarded way into ONI Section Three files. Cortana listened to the hum of coded traffic along the surface of ONI's secure network. There was an unusual amount of packets today: queries and encrypted messages from ONI operatives. She peered into them and unraveled their secrets as they passed her. There were orders for ship movements and operatives outbound from Reach. This must be the new directive to send scouts into the periphery systems and find the Covenant. She saw several ships docked in Reach's space docksONI stealth jobs made to look like private yachts. They had cute, innocuous names: theApplebee ,Circumference , and theLark . She spotted something she could use: Dr. Halsey had just entered her laboratory. She was at checkpoint three. The doctor waited as her voice and retina patterns were being scanned. Cortana intercepted and killed the signal. The verification system reset.\n\"Please rescan retina, Dr. Halsey,\" the system requested, \"and repeat today's code phrase in a normal voice.\"\nBefore Dr. Halsey could do this, Cortana sent her own files of Dr. Halsey's retina and voice scans. She had long ago copied them and occasionally they came in handy. Section Three verification opened for Cortana. She had only a second before the doctor spoke and overrode the previous entry access. Cortana, however, was a lightning strike in the system. She entered, searched, and found what she wanted. Every piece of data on SPARTAN 117 was copied to her personal directory within seventy milliseconds. She withdrew from the ONI database, routing all traces of her queries back to her Ackerson \"ghost.\"She closed all connections and returned to thePillar of Autumn . One quick check of the reactoryes, operating within normal parametersand she sent a complete report to Lieutenant Hall on the bridge. Cortana examined the Master Chief'scomplete CSV. She scanned backward through time: his performance data on the obstacle course, and the debriefing he had given at ONI headquarters. She paused and pondered the signal the Covenant had sent from Sigma Octanus IV. Intrigued, she tried to translate the sequence. The symbols looked tantalizingly familiar. Every algorithm and variation of the standard translation software she attempted, however, failed. Puzzled, she set it aside to examine later. She continued, absorbing the data from the Master Chief's files. She learned of the augmentations he and the other Spartans were made to endure; the brutal indoctrination and training they had received; and how he had been abducted at the age of six, and a flash clone used to replace him in an ONI black op. All of it had been authorized by Dr. Halsey.Cortana paused for a full three processor cycles churning this new data through her ethics subroutines . . . not comprehending. How could Dr. Halsey, who was so concerned for her Spartans, have done this to them?\nOf coursebecause it was necessary. There was no other way to preserve the UNSC against rebellion and Covenant forces. Was Dr. Halsey a monster? Or just doing what had to be done to protect humanity? Perhaps a little of both. Cortana erased her stolen files. No matter. Whatever the Master Chief had been through in the past . . . it was done. He was in Cortana's care now. She would do everything in her powershort of compromising their missionto make sure nothing ever happened to him again. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE\n0400 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCPillar of Autumn , in orbit around Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex Captain Keyes tapped the thrusters of the shuttle podCoda . The tiny craft rolled and thePillar of Autumn came into view. Normally, Captains did not ferry themselves around the space docks of Reach, but Keyes had insisted. All unauthorized personnel were restricted to a narrow flight path around thePillar of Autumn , and he wanted to take a careful look around the outside of this ship before he took command. From this distance, thePillar of Autumn could have been mistaken for an elongated frigate. As the shuttle pod moved closer, however, details appeared that betrayed the ship's age. ThePillar of Autumn 's hull had several larger dents and scratches. Her engine baffles were blackened. The portside emergency thrusters were missing. What had he gotten himself into by signing up for Dr. Halsey's mission?\nHe moved within a hundred meters and circled to the starboard. The shuttle bay on this side was sealed off. Red-and-yellow hazard warnings had been painted on metal plates that had been hastily welded over her entrance. He closed to ten meters and saw the plate was not a solid sheet of metalhe could see armored ports, heavily reinforced . . . almost solid titanium A. Honeycombed throughout this section were the round covers of Archer missile pods. Captain Keyes counted: thirty pods across, ten down. Each pod held dozens of missiles. ThePillar of Autumn had a secret arsenal to rival any real cruiser in the fleet. Captain Keyes drifted toward the stern and noticed concealed and recessed 50mm autocannons for defense against single ships. Underneath were bumpspart of the linear accelerator system for the ship's lone MAC gun. It looked too small to be truly effective. But he would reserve judgment. Perhaps, like the rest of thePillar of Autumn , the weapon was more than it appeared to be. He certainly hoped so.Captain Keyes returned to the port side and drifted gently into the shuttle bay. He took note of three Longsword single ships and three Pelican dropships in the bay. One of the Pelicans had double the normal armor plating and what looked like grappling attachments. A serrated titanium ram decorated the dropship's prow. He touched down on an automated landing platform and locked the controls down. A moment later the shuttle descended belowdecks and was cycled through the airlock. Captain Keyes gathered his duffel bag and stepped onto the flight deck. Lieutenant Hikowa was there to meet him. She saluted. \"Welcome aboard, Captain Keyes.\"\nHe saluted. \"What do you think of her, Lieutenant?\"Lieutenant Hikowa's dark eyes widened. \"You're not going to believe this ship, sir.\" Her normally serious face broke with a smile. \"They've turned it into something . . . special.\"\n\"I saw what they did to my starboard shuttle bay,\" Captain Keyes remarked sourly.\n\"That's just the start,\" she said. \"I can give you a full tour.\"\n\"Please,\" Captain Keyes said. He paused at an intercom. \"Just one thing first, Lieutenant.\" He keyed the intercom. \"Ensign Lovell, plot a course to the system's edge and move thePillar of Autumn on an accelerating vector. We will jump to Slipstream space as soon as we get there.\"\n\"Sir,\" Lovell replied. \"Our engines are still in shakedown mode.\"\n\"Cortana?\" Captain Keyes asked. \"Can we have power to move the ship? I'd like to get under way.\"\n\"The engines' final shakedown is in theta cycle,\" Cortana replied. \"Operating well within normal parameters. Diverting thirty percent power to engines; aye, sir.\"\n\"And the other systems' status?\" Captain Keyes asked.\"Weapons-system check initiated. Navigational nodes functioning. Continuing systemwide shakedown and triple checks, Captain.\"\n\"Very good,\" he said. \"Apprise me if there are any anomalies.\"\n\"Aye, Captain,\" she replied.\"We finally have an AI,\" he remarked to Hikowa.\"We've got more than that, sir,\" Hikowa replied. \"Cortana is running the shakedown and supervising Dr. Halsey's modifications to the ship. We have a backup AI to handle point defense.\"\n\"Really?\" Keyes was surprised; getting a single AI was tough enough these days. Getting two was unprecedented.\n\"Yes, sir. I'll see to the initialization of our AI as soon as Cortana is through running her diagnostics.\"\nCaptain Keyes had meet Cortana briefly in Dr. Halsey's office. Although every AI he had met was brilliant, Cortana seemed exceptionally qualified. Captain Keyes had posed several navigation problems and she had figured out all the solutions . . . and had come up with a few options he had not considered. She was somewhat high-spirited, but that was not necessarily a bad thing. Lieutenant Hikowa led him into the elevator and punched the button for D deck.\"At first,\" Hikowa said, \"I was concerned with all the ordnance on board. One penetrating shot and we could explode like a string of firecrackers. But this ship doesn't have much empty spaceit's full of braces, honeycombed titanium-A, and hydraulic reinforcements that can be activated in an emergency. She can take a tremendous beating, sir.\"\n\"Let's hope we don't have to test that,\" Captain Keyes said. He checked that this pipe was in his pocket.\n\"Yes, sir.\"Their elevator passed through the rotating section of the ship and Captain Keyes felt his weight ease and a flutter of vertigo. He grabbed hold of the rails. The doors opened and they entered the cavernous engine room. The ceiling was four stories high, making this the largest compartment in the ship. Catwalks and platforms ringed the hexagonal chamber.\n\"Here's the new reactor, sir,\" Hikowa said.The device perched within a lattice of nonferric ceramic and leaded crystal. The main reactor ring was nestled in the center of what appeared to be two smaller reactor rings. Technicians floated nearby taking readings and monitoring the output displays on the walls.\n\"I'm not familiar with this design, Lieutenant.\"\n\"The latest reactor technology. ThePillar of Autumn is the first ship to get it. The two smaller fusion reactors come online to supercharge the main reactor. Their overlapping magnetic fields can temporally boost power by three hundred percent.\"Captain Keyes whistled appreciatively as he scrutinized the room. \"I don't see any coolant pipes.\"\n\"There are none, sir. This reactor uses a laser-induced optical slurry of ions chilled to near-absolute zero to neutralize the waste heat. The more we crank up the power, the more juice we have to cool the system. It is very efficient.\"\nThe smaller reactors flickered to life and Captain Keyes felt the ambient heat in the room jump, then suddenly cool again. He removed his pipe and tapped it in the palm of his hand. He would have to rethink his old tactics. This new engine could give him new options in battle.\n\"There's more, sir.\"Lieutenant Hikowa led him back into the lift. \"We have forty fifty-millimeter cannons for point defense, with overlapping fields of fire covering all inbound vectors.\"\n\"What is our least defended approach vector?\"\n\"Bottom fore,\" she said, \"along the lay line of the MAC system. There are very few gunnery placements there. Transient magnetic bursts tend to magnetize the weapons.\"\n\"Tell me about the MAC gun, Lieutenant. It looks under-powered.\"\"It fires a special light round with a ferrous core, but an outer layer of tungsten carbide. The round splinters on impactlike an assault rifle's shredder rounds.\" She was talking so fast she had to pause and take a deep breath. \"This gun has magnetic field recyclers along the length that recapture the field energy. Coupled with booster capacitors, we can firethree successive shots with one charge.\"\nThat would be very effective against the Covenant energy shields. The first shot, maybe the first pair of shots, would take down their shields. The last round would deliver a knockout punch.\n\"I take it you approve, Lieutenant?\"\"To quote Ensign Lovell, sir, 'I think I'm in love.' \"Captain Keyes nodded. \"I notice we have several single ships and some Pelican dropships in the bay.\"\n\"Yes, sir. One of the Longswords is equipped with a Shiva nuclear warhead. It can be remote-piloted. We also have three HAVOK warheads onboard.\"\n\"Of course,\" Captain Keyes said. \"And the Pelicans? One of them had extra armor.\"\"The Spartans were working on it. Some sort of boarding craft.\"\n\"The Spartans?\" Captain Keyes asked. \"They're already onboard?\"\n\"Yes, sir. They were here before we got on board.\"\n\"Take me to them, Lieutenant.\"\"Yes, sir.\" Lieutenant Hikowa stopped the elevator and hit the button for C deck.Twenty-five years ago Captain Keyes had helped procure the Spartan candidates for Dr. Halsey. She had said they might one day be the best hope the UNSC had for peace. At the time he'd assumed that the Doctor was prone to hyperbolebut it appeared that she'd been correct. That didn't make what they had done right, though. His complicity in those kidnappings still haunted him. The elevator doors opened. The primary storage bay had been converted into barracks for the thirty Spartans. Every one of them wore MJOLNIR battle armor. They looked alien to him. Part machine, part titanbut completely inhuman. The room was filled with motionSpartans unpacked crates, others cleaned and field-stripped their assault rifles, and a pair of them practiced hand-to-hand combat. Captain Keyes could barely follow their motions. They were so fast, no hesitation. Strike and block and counter-striketheir movements were a continuous stream of rapid-fire blurs. Captain Keyes had seen the news feeds and heard the rumors, like everyone on in the fleetthe Spartans were near-mythological figures in the military. They were supposed to be super-human soldiers, invulnerable and indestructibleand it was almost the truth. Dr. Halsey had shown him their operational records. Between the Spartans and the refittedPillar of Autumn , Captain Keyes was beginning to believe Dr. Halsey's long-shot mission might work after all.\n\"Captain on the deck!\" one of the Spartans shouted.Every Spartan stopped and snapped to attention.\"As you were,\" he said. The Spartans relaxed slightly. One turned and strode toward him.\n\"Master Chief SPARTAN 117 reporting as ordered, sir.\" The armored giant paused, and for a moment, Keyes thought the Spartan looked uncomfortable. \"Sir, I regret the unit was not able to ask your permission to come aboard. Admiral Stanforth insisted we keep our presence off the COM channels and computer networks.\"\nCaptain Keyes found the reflective faceplates of the Spartans' helmets disconcerting. It was impossible to read their features.\n\"Quite all right, Master Chief. I just wanted to extend my regards. If you or your men need anything, let me know.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" the Master Chief said.An awkward moment of silence passed. Captain Keyes felt like he didn't belong herean intruder in a very exclusive club. \"Well, Master Chief, I'll be on the bridge.\"\n\"Sir!\" The Master Chief saluted. Captain Keyes returned the salute and left with Lieutenant Hikowa. When the elevator doors closed, Lieutenant Hikowa said, \"Do you thinkI mean with all due respect to the Spartans, sirdon't you think they're . . . strange?\"\n\"Strange? Yes, Lieutenant. You might act a little strange if you seen and been through as much as they had.\"\n\"Some people say they're not even humans in those suitsthat they're just machines.\"\n\"They're human,\" Captain Keyes said.The elevator doors parted and Captain Keyes stepped onto his bridge. It was much smaller than he was accustomed to; the command chair was only a meter from the other stations. View screens dominated the room, and a massive, curved window afforded a panoramic view of the stars.\n\"Status reports,\" Captain Keyes ordered. Lieutenant Dominique spoke first. \"Communication systems are green, sir. Monitoring FLEETCOM Reach traffic. No new orders.\" Dominique had gotten his hair shorn since he had been on theIroquois . He also had a new tattoo around his left wrist: the wavy lines of a Besell function.\n\"Reactor shakedown eighty percent complete,\" Lieutenant Hall reported. \"Oxygen, power, rotation, and pressure all green lights, sir.\" She smiled, but it wasn't like beforean automatic gesture. She seemed genuinely happy. Lieutenant Hikowa took her seat and strapped in. She gathered her black hair and tied it into a knot.\n\"Weapons panel shows green, sir. MAC gun capacitors at zero charge.\"\nEnsign Lovell finally reported: \"Navigation and sensor systems online, Captain, and all green. Ready for your orders.\" Lovell was completely focused on his station. A small hologram of Cortana flickered on the AI pedestal near navigation. \"Engine shakedown running smoothly, Captain,\" she said. \"All personnel onboard. You have half-power now if you wish to move the ship. Fujikawa-Shaw generators on-line . . . you can take us into the Slipstream at your pleasure.\"\n\"Very good,\" Captain Keyes said.Keyes surveyed his crew, pleased at how they had sharpened up after Sigma Octanus. Gone were the bleary, haggard expressions, and the tentative, nervous mannerisms. Good, he thought. We're going to need everyone at the top of their game now. The crew had been briefed on their missionpart of it anyway. Captain Keyes had insisted. They were told they would be attempting to capture Covenant technology, with an aim to disabling one of the aliens' ships and bringing it back intact. What the crew didn't know were the stakes.\n\"Approaching Reach system's edge,\" Ensign Lovell reported. \"Ready to generate a Slipstream\"\n\"Captain!\" Lieutenant Dominique cried. \"Incoming Alpha priority transmission from FLEETCOM HQ at Reach . . . sir, they're under Covenant attack!\"\nSECTION V REACH\n CHAPTER THIRTY0000 Hours, August 29, 2552 (Military Calendar) / narrow-band point-to-point transmission:\norigin UNKNOWN; termination: Section Three, Omega secure antenna array, UNSC HQ Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex PLNBPriority Transmission XX087R-XX Encryption Code:GAMMAPublic Key:N/A From:CODENAME:COALMINER To:CODENAME:SURGEONSubject:PROGRESS REPORT/OPERATIONHYPODERMICClassification:EYES ONLY TOP SECRET (SECTION III X-RAY DIRECTIVE)\n/file extraction-reconstitution complete/\n/start file/Secured space-dock repair bay. CorvetteCircumference undergoing final stealth upgrades. Shipyard records successfully altered. Queries detected from transient AI. Operation deemed AT RISK of being uncovered. As per contingency plan TANGO: ship registration numbers scrambled; hard isolated from dockside computer network; counterintrusion software implemented; Alpha security protocols enacted onboard.Just as you called it, sir. Don't worryas far as the station computers are concerned,Circumference never even existed.\n/end file/\n/scrambledestruction process enabled/\nPressENTER to continue. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE\n0447 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nRemote Sensing StationFermion, Epsilon Eridani System's edge Chief Petty Officer McRobb entered the command center of Remote Sensing StationFermion . Lieutenants (JG) Bill Streeter and David Brightling stood and saluted. He wordlessly returned their salutes.The wall-sized monitors displayed the contents of the last Slipstream probes: multidimensional charts, a rainbow of false color enhancements, and a catalog of objects adrift in the alternate space. Some of the new officers thought the representations looked \"pretty.\"\nTo Chief McRobb, however, each pixel on the screens represented danger. So many things could hide in multidimensional space: pirates, black marketers . . . the Covenant. McRobb inspected their duty stations. He double-checked that all programs and hardware were running within UNSC specifications. He ran his hand along the monitors and keypads looking for dust. Their stations were in tip-top shape. Considering what they were guarding, Reach, anything less than perfection was unacceptable. He made certain his crew knew it, too.\n\"Carry on,\" he said. Since the battle of Sigma Octanus, FLEETCOM had reassigned top people to its Remote Sensing Stations. Chief McRobb had been pulled from Fort York on the edge of the Inner Colonies. He had spent the last three months helping his crew brush up on their abstract and complex algebras to interpret the probe data.\n\"Ready to send out the next set of probes, sir,\" Lieutenant Streeter said. \"Linear accelerator and Slipspace generators online and charged.\"\n\"Set for thirty-second return cycle and launch,\" Chief McRobb ordered.\n\"Aye, sir. Probes away, sir. Accelerated and entering the Slipstream.\"FLEETCOM didn't really expect anything to attack the Reach Military Complex. It was the heart of the UNSC military operations. If anything did attack it, the battle would be a short one. There were twenty Super MAC guns in orbit. They could accelerate a three-thousand-ton projectile to point four-tenths the speed of lightand place that projectile with pinpoint accuracy. If that wasn't enough to stop a Covenant fleet, there were anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty ships in the system at any given time. Chief McRobb knew, though, there had been another military base that was once thought too strong to attackand the military had paid the price for their lack of vigilance. He wasn't about to let Reach become another Pearl Harbor. Not on his watch.\n\"Probes returning, sir,\" Lieutenant Brightling announced. \"Alpha reentering normal space in three . . . two . . . one. Scanning sectors. Signal acquired at extraction point minus forty five thousand kilometers.\"\n\"Process the signals and send out the recovery drone, Lieutenant.\"\"Aye, sir. Getting signal lock on\" The Lieutenant squinted at his monitor. \"Sir, would you take a look at this?\"\n\"On the board, Lieutenant.\"\nRadar and neutron imager silhouettes appeared on-screenand filled the display. Chief McRobb had never seen anything like it in Slipstream space.\n\"Confirm that the data stream is not corrupted,\" the Chief ordered. \"I'm estimating that object is three thousand kilometers in diameter.\"\n\"Affirmative . . . thirty-two-hundred-kilometer diameter confirmed, sir. Signal integrity is green. We'll have a trajectory for the planetoid as soon as Beta probe returns.\"\nIt was rare for any natural object this large to be in Slipstream space. An occasional comet or asteroid had been loggedUNSC astrophysicists still weren't sure how the things got into the alternate dimension. But there had never been anything like this. At least, not since\n\"Oh my God,\" McRobb whispered.Not since Sigma Octanus.\"We're not waiting for Beta probe,\" Chief McRobb barked. \"We are initiating the Cole Protocol. Lieutenant Streeter, purge the navigational database, and I meanright now . Lieutenant Brightling, remove the safety interlocks on the station's reactor.\"His junior officers hesitated for a momentthen they understood the gravity of their situation. They moved quickly.\n\"Initiating viral data scavengers,\" Lieutenant Streeter called out. \"Dumping main and cache memory.\"\nHe turned in his seat, his face white. \"Sir, the science library is offline for repairs. It has every UNSC astrophysics journal in it.\"\n\"With navigation data on every star within a hundred light-years,\" the Chief whispered. \"Including Sol. Lieutenant, you get someone down there and destroy that data. I don't care if they have to hit it with a goddamn sledgehammermake sure that data is wiped.\"\n\"Aye, sir!\" Streeter turned to the COM and began issuing frantic orders.\"Safety interlocks red on the board,\" Lieutenant Brightling reported. His lips pressed into a single white line, concentrating. \"Beta probe returning, sir, in four . . . three . . . two . . . one. There. Off target one hundred twenty thousand kilometers. Signal is weak. The probe appears to be malfunctioning. Trying to scrub the signal now.\"\n\"It's too much of a coincidence that it's malfunctioning, Streeter,\" the Chief said. \"Get FLEETCOM on Alpha channel on the double! Compress and send the duty log.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\" Lieutenant Streeter's fingers fumbled with the keypad as he typedthen had to retype the command. \"Logs sent.\"\n\"Beta probe signal on the board,\" Lieutenant Brightling reported. \"Calculating the object's trajectory . . .\n\"\nThe planetoid was closer. Its edges, however, had abnormalitiesbumps and spikes and protrusions. Chief McRobb shifted and clenched his hands into fists.\n\"It will pass though Reach System,\" Lieutenant Brightling said. \"Intersecting the solar plane in seventeen seconds at the system's outer edge at zero four one.\" He inhaled sharply. \"Sir, that's only a light-second away from us.\"\nLieutenant Streeter stood and knocked over his chair, almost backing into the Chief.McRobb righted the chair. \"Sit down, Lieutenant. We've got a job to do. Target the telescope array to monitor that region of space.\"\nLieutenant Streeter turned and gazed into the rock-solid features of the Chief. He took a deep breath. \"Yes, sir.\" He sat back down. \"Aye, sir, moving the array.\"\n\"Gamma probe returning in three . . . two . . . one.\" Lieutenant Brightling paused. \"There's no signal, sir. Scanning. Time plus four seconds and counting. Probe may have translated on a temporal axis.\"\n\"I don't think so,\" the Chief murmured. Lieutenant Streeter said, \"Telescope array now on target, sir. On the main view screen.\"Pinpoints of green light appeared at the edge of the Reach solar system. They collected and swarmed as if they were caught in a boiling liquid. Space stretched, smeared, and distorted. Half the stars in that region were blotted out.\n\"Radar contact,\" Lieutenant Brightling said. \"Contact with . . . more than three hundred large objects.\"\nHis hands started to shake. \"Sir, silhouettes match known Covenant profiles.\"\n\"They're accelerating,\" Lieutenant Streeter whispered. \"On an intercept course for the station.\"\n\"FLEETCOM network connections are being infiltrated,\" Lieutenant Brightling said. His trembling hands could barely type in commands. \"Cutting our connection.\"\nChief McRobb stood as straight as he could. \"What about the astrophysics data?\"\n\"Sir, they're still trying to end the diagnostic cycle, but that takes a few minutes.\"\n\"Then we don't have a lot of options,\" McRobb muttered.He set his hand on Lieutenant Brightling's shoulder to steady the young officer. \"It's all right, Lieutenant. We've done the best we could. We've done our duty. There's nothing more to worry about.\"\nHe set his palmprint on the control station. The Chief locked out the reactor safeties and saturated the fusion chamber with their deuterium reserve tanks. Chief McRobb said, \"Just one last order to carry out.\"\nCHAPTER THIRTY-TWO\n0519 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCPillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System's edge Something was wrong.John felt it in his stomach first: a slight lateral accelerationthat became a spin strong enough that he had to brace his legs. ThePillar of Autumn was turning. Every other Spartan in the storage bay felt it as well; they paused as they unloaded equipment from crates and readied the cryo tubes for their journey. The lateral motion slowed and stopped. ThePillar of Autumn 's engines rumbled like thunder through the hull of the ship. Kelly approached him. \"Sir? I thought we were accelerating to enter Slipspace?\"\"So did I. Have Fred and Joshua continue to prep the tubes. Have Linda get a team and secure our gear. I'll find out what's going on.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\"\nThe Master Chief marched toward the intercom panel. He hated being on spaceships. The lack of control was disturbing. He and the other Spartans were just extra cargo in a space battle. He hesitated as he reached for the intercom. If Captain Keyes was involved in some tricky maneuver or engaging an enemy, the last thing he needed was an interruption. He pressed the button. \"Cortana? We've changed course. Is there a problem?\"\nInstead of her voice, however, Captain Keyes spoke over the channel: \"Captain Keyes to Spartan 117.\"\nHe replied, \"Here, sir.\"\"There's been a change in plans,\" Keyes said. There was a long pause. \"This will be easier to explain face-to-face. I'm on my way down to brief you. Keyes out.\"John turned and the other Spartans snapped to their tasks. Those without specific orders checked and rechecked their weapons and assembled their combat gear. They had all heard the Captain, however. The sound receivers in their armor could pick up a whisper at a hundred meters. And the Spartans didn't have to be told this was trouble. John clicked on the monitor near the intercom. The fore camera showed thePillar of Autumn had indeed turned about. Reach's sun blazed in the center of the screen. They were heading back. Was something wrong with the ship? No. Captain Keyes wouldn't be coming to brief him if that was the case. There was definitely a snag. The elevator doors opened and Captain Keyes stepped off the lift.\n\"Captain on the deck!\" the Master Chief shouted. The Spartans stood at attention.\"At ease,\" Captain Keyes said. The expression on the Captain's face suggested that \"ease\" was the last thing on his mind. He smoothed his thumb over the antique pipe the Master Chief had seen him carry.\n\"There is something very wrong,\" Keyes said. He glanced at the other Spartans. \"Let's talk in private,\"\nhe told the Master Chief in a low voice. He walked to the monitor over the intercom.\n\"Sir,\" the Master Chief said. \"Unless you wish to leave the deck, the Spartans will hear everything we say.\"\nKeyes looked at the Spartans and frowned. \"I see. Very well, your squad might as well hear this now, too. I don't know how they found Reachthey bypassed a dozen Inner Colony worlds to get here. It doesn't matter. Theyare here. And we have to do something.\"\n\"Sir? 'They'?\"\n\"The Covenant.\" He turned to the intercom. \"Cortana, display the last priority Alpha transmission.\"\nA communique flickered on screen, and the Master Chief read:United Nations Space Command ALPHA PRIORITY TRANSMISSION 04592Z-83Encryption Code:Red Public Key:file /bravo-tango-beta-five/\nFrom:Admiral Roland Freemont, Commanding Fleet Officer, FLEETCOM Sector One Commander/\n(UNSC Service Number: 00745-16778-HS)\nTo:ALL UNSC warships in REACH, JERICO, and TANTALUS systemsSubject:IMMEDIATE RECALLClassification:Classified (BGX Directive)\n/start file/\nCovenant presence detected on REACH system's edge coordinates 030 relative.All UNSC warships are hereby ordered to cease all activities and regroup at rally pointZULU at best speed. ALL SHIPSare to enact the Cole Protocol immediately.\n/end file/\"Cortana has picked up ship signatures on thePillar of Autumn 's sensors,\" Captain Keyes said. \"She cannot be sure how many because of electrical interference, but there are more than a hundred alien ships inbound toward Reach. We have to go. We have our orders. The Section Three mission has to be scrubbed.\"\n\"Sir? Scrubbed?\" John had never had a mission canceled.\n\"Reach is our strategic headquarters and our biggest ship-building facility, Master Chief. If the shipyards fall, then Dr. Halsey's prediction of humanity having only months to survive will shrink to weeks.\"\nThe Master Chief normally would never have contradicted a superior officer, but this time duty compelled him. \"Sir, our two missions are not mutually exclusive.\"\nCaptain Keyes lit his pipein defiance of three separate regulations of igniting a combustible on a USNC ship. He puffed once and thoughtfully examined the smoke. \"What do you have in mind, Master Chief?\"\"A hundred alien vessels, sir. Between the combined force of the fleet and Reach's orbital gun platforms, it is almost guaranteed there will be a disabled ship my squad can board and capture.\"\nCaptain Keyes mulled this over. \"There will also be hundreds of ships exchanging fire with one another. Missiles, nukes . . . Covenant plasma torpedoes.\"\n\"Just get us close enough,\" the Master Chief said. \"Punch a hole in their shields long enough for us to get on their hull. We'll do the rest.\"\nCaptain Keyes chewed on his pipe. He tucked it into the cup of his hand. \"There are operational complications with your plan. Cortana has been running thePillar of Autumn 's shakedown. We have our own AI, but by the time we get it initialized and running this shipthe battle may be over.\"\n\"I see, sir.\"Captain Keyes gazed a moment at the Master Chief, then sighed. \"If there is a disabled Covenant ship and if we are close enough to itand if we're not blown to a million bits by the time we get there, then I'll transfer Cortana to you. I've flown ships without an AI before.\" Captain Keyes managed a weak smile, but it quickly disappeared.\n\"Yes, sir!\"\n\"We'll be at rally point Zulu in twenty minutes, Master Chief. Have your team ready by then . . . for anything.\"\n\"Sir.\" He saluted. Captain Keyes returned the salute and entered the elevator, puffing on his pipe and shaking his head. The Master Chief turned to his teammates. They halted what they were doing.\"You all heard. This is it. Fred and James, I want to you to refit one of our Pelicans. Get every scrap of C-12 and shape a charge on her nose. If Captain Keyes downs a Covenant shield, we may have to blast our way into the ship's hull.\"\nFred and James replied, \"Aye, sir.\"\n\"Linda, assemble a team and get into every crate ONI packed for usdistribute that gear ASAP. Make sure everyone gets a thruster pack, plenty of ammo, grenades, and Jackhammer launchers if we have them. If we do get on board, we may encounter those armored Covenant types againthis time I want the firepower to take them out.\"\"Yes, sir!\"\nThe Spartans scrambled to make ready for the mission. The Master Chief approached Kelly. On a private COM channel, he told her, \"Crate thirteen on the manifest has three HAVOK nuclear mines. Get them. I have the arming cards. Ready them for transport.\"\n\"Affirmative.\" She paused.The Master Chief couldn't see her face past the reflective shield of her helmet, but he knew her well enough to know that the tiny slump of her shoulders meant that she was worried.\n\"Sir?\" she said. \"I know this mission will be tough, but . . . do you ever get the feeling that this is like one of Chief Mendez's missions? Like there's a trick . . . some twist that we've overlooked?\"\n\"Yes,\" he replied. \"And I'm waiting for it.\"\nCHAPTER THIRTY-THREE\n0534 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCPillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System ThePillar of Autumn detonated its port emergency thrusters. The ship slid out of the path of the asteroid, missing it by ten meters The Covenant plasma trailing them did not. It impacted the city-sized rock and sent fountains of molten iron and nickel spewing into space. Nine of the ten teardrop-shaped Covenant fightersnicknamed \"Seraphs\" by ONIdodged the asteroid as well. The tenth ship slammed into the asteroid and vanished from the bridge's view screen. The other single ships accelerated and swarmed around thePillar of Autumn , harassing her with pulse laser fire.\n\"Cortana,\" Captain Keyes said, \"activate our point defense system.\"ThePillar of Autumn 's 50mm cannons flashedchipping away at the Covenant ships' shields.\n\"Already engaged, Captain,\" Cortana said calmly.\n\"Ensign Lovell,\" Captain Keyes said. \"Engines all stop and bring us about one hundred eighty degrees. Lieutenant Hikowa, ready our MAC gun and arm Archer missile pods A1 through A7. I want a firing solution that has our Archer missiles hitting with the third MAC round.\"\n\"On it, sir,\" Lieutenant Hikowa replied.\"Aye, sir,\" Ensign Lovell said. \"Answering engines all stop. Coming about. Brace yourselves.\"\nThePillar of Autumn 's engines sputtered and died. Navigational thrusters fired and rotated the ship to face the real threata Covenant carrier. The enormous alien craft had materialized aft of thePillar of Autumn and launched their single ships. The carrier had then launched two salvos of plasmawhich Captain Keyes had only shaken by entering the asteroid field.Cortana maneuvered the massivePillar of Autumn like it was a sporting yacht; she nimbly dodged tumbling rocks, used them to screen Covenant plasma and pulse laser bolts. But thePillar of Autumn would emerge from the asteroid field in twenty seconds.\n\"Firing solution online, sir,\" Lieutenant Hikowa said. \"MAC gun hot and missile safety interlocks removed. Ready to launch.\"\n\"Fire missiles at will, Lieutenant.\"Rapid-fire thumps echoed though thePillar of Autumn 's hull and a swarm of Archer missiles sped toward the incoming carrier.\n\"MAC gun is hot,\" Hikowa said. \"Booster capacitors ready. Firing in eight seconds, sir.\"\n\"I must make one small adjustment to your trajectory, Lieutenant,\" Cortana said. \"Covenant single ships are concentrating their attacks on our underside. Captain? With your permission?\"\n\"Granted,\" Keyes said.\"Firing solution recalculated,\" Cortana said. \"Hang on.\"\nCortana fired thrusters and thePillar of Autumn rotated belly upbrought the majority of her 50mm cannons to bear on the Covenant Seraph fighters underneath her. Overlapping fields of fire wore down their shieldspunctured their armored hulls with a thousand rounds, tore through the pilots with a hail of projectiles, and peppered their reactors. Nine puffs of fire dropped behind thePillar of Autumn and vanished into the darkness.\n\"Enemy single ships destroyed,\" Cortana said. \"Approaching firing position.\"\"Cortana, give me a countdown. Lieutenant Hikowa, fire on my mark.\" Captain Keyes said.\n\"Ready to fire, aye,\" Lieutenant Hikowa said. Cortana nodded; her trim figure projected in miniature inside the bridge holotank. As she nodded, a time display appeared, the numbers counting down rapidly. Keyes gripped the edge of the command chair, his eyes glued to the countdown. Three seconds, two, one . . . \"Mark.\"\"Firing!\" Hikowa answered. A triple flash of lightning saturated the forward view screen and bled in from the viewport; three white hot projectiles crossed the black distance between thePillar of Autumn and the Covenant carrier. Along the side of the carrier, motes of light collected as they rebuilt the charges of their plasma weapons. Archer missiles were pinpoints of exhaust in the distance; the carrier's pulse lasers fired and melted a third of the incoming missiles. ThePillar of Autumn rolled to starboard and dove.Captain Keyes floated in free fall for a heartbeat, then landed awkwardly on the deck. The crenellated surface of an asteroid appeared on their port camerameters awaythen vanished. Captain Keyes was grateful that he never had time to initialize thePillar of Autumn 's AI. Cortana performed superbly. The trio of blazing MAC rounds struck the carrier. The shield flashed once, twice. The third round got throughgutting the ship from stem to stern. The carrier spun sideways. Her shields stuttered once, trying to reestablish a protective screen. A hundred Archer missiles struck, cratered the hull, blossomed into fire and sparks and smoldering metal. The alien carrier listed and crashed into the asteroid thePillar of Autumn had just narrowly avoided. It stuck there, hull broken and cracked. Columns of fire blossomed from the shattered vessel. Captain Keyes sighed. A victory.The Spartans, however, would not be taking that ship into Covenant space. It wasn't going anywhere.\"Cortana, mark the location of the destroyed ship and the asteroid. We may have a chance to salvage her later.\"\n\"Yes, Captain.\"\n\"Ensign Lovell,\" Captain Keyes said, \"turn us around and give me best speed to rally point Zulu.\"Lovell tapped the thrusters and rotated thePillar of Autumn to relative space normal with Reach. The rumble of the engines shook the decks as the ship accelerated in-system.\"ETA twenty minutes at best speed, sir.\"\nThe battle for Reach could be over by the time he got there. Captain Keyes wished he could move through Slipspace for short, precision jumps like the Covenant. That carrier had materialized a kilometer behind thePillar of Autumn . If he had that kind of accuracy, he could be at the rally point nowand be of some use. Any attempt to jump in-system, however, would be foolish at best. At worst, it would be a fatal move. Jump targets varied by hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Theoretically, they could reenter normal spaceinside Reach's sun.\n\"Cortana, give me maximum magnification on the fore cameras.\"\n\"Aye sir,\" she said.The view on the forward screen zoomed injumped and refocused on planet Reach.Twenty thousand kilometers from the planet, a cluster of a hundred UNSC ships collected at rally point Zulu: destroyers, frigates, three cruisers, two carriersand three refit and repair stations hovering over them . . . waiting to be used as sacrificial shields.\n\"Fifty-two additional UNSC warships inbound to rally point Zulu,\" Cortana reported.\n\"Shift focus to section four by four on-screen, Cortana. Show me those Covenant forces.\"The scene blinked and transferred to the approaching Covenant fleet. There were so many ships Captain Keyes couldn't estimate their numbers.\n\"How many?\" he asked.\n\"I count three hundred fourteen Covenant ships, Captain,\" Cortana replied.Captain Keyes couldn't tear his gaze away from the ships. The UNSC only won battles with the Covenant when they outnumbered the enemy forces three to one . . . not the other way around. They had one advantage: the MAC orbital guns around Reachthe UNSC's most powerful nonnuclear weapon. Some called them \"Super\" MAC guns or the \"big stick.\"\nTheir linear accelerator coils were larger than a UNSC cruiser. They propelled a three-thousand-ton projectile at tremendous speed, and could reload within five seconds. They drew power directly from the fusion reactor complex planetside.\n\"Pull back the camera angle, Cortana. Let me see the entire battle area.\"The Covenant ships accelerated toward Reach. The fleet at rally point Zulu fired their MAC guns and missiles. The orbital Super MAC guns opened fire as welltwenty streaks of white hot metal burned across the night. The Covenant answered by launching a salvo of plasma torpedoes at the orbital gunsso much fire in space that it looked like a solar flare. Deadly arcs of flame and metal raced through space and crossed paths. The engines of the three refit stations flared to life and the platelike ships moved toward the path of the flaming vapor. A plasma bolt caught the edge of the leading stationfire splashed over its flat surface. More bolts hit, and the station melted, sagged, and boiled. The metal glowed red, then white-hot, tinged with blue. The other two stations maneuvered into position and shielded the orbital guns from the fiery assault. Plasma torpedoes collided with them and sprayed plumes of molten metal into space. After a dozen hits, clouds of ionizing metal enveloped the place where the three stations had been. They had been vaporized. The last of the Covenant plasma hit the hazescattered, absorbed, and made the cloud glow a hellish orange. Meanwhile, the fleet's opening salvo and the Super MAC rounds hit the Covenant fleet. The smaller ship-based MAC rounds bounced off the Covenant shieldsit took three or more to wear them down. The Super MAC rounds, however, were another story. The first Super MAC shell hit a Covenant destroyer. The ship's shield flashed and vanishedthe remaining impact momentum transferred to the shipthe hull rippled and shattered into a million fragments. Four nuclear mines detonated in the center of the Covenant fleet. Dozens of ships with downed shields flared white and dissolved. The other ships however, shrugged off the damage; their shields burned brilliant silver, then cooled. The surviving Covenant vessels advanced in-systema third of their number were left behind . . . burning radioactive hulks or utterly destroyed by the Super MAC rounds.Plasma charges collected on the lateral lines of the Covenant ships. They fired. Fingers of deadly energy reached across space . . . toward the UNSC fleet. One Covenant ship sat in the center of the pack, a gigantic vessel, larger than three UNSC cruisers. White-blue beams flashed from its prowa split second later five UNSC vessels detonated.\n\"Cortana . . . what the hell was that?\" Keyes asked. \"Lovell, push those engine superchargers as hot as you can make them.\"\n\"Running at three hundred ten percent, sir,\" Lovell reported. \"ETA fourteen minutes.\"\"Replaying and digitally enhancing video record,\" Cortana said.She split the screen and zoomed in on the huge Covenant ship, replaying the video as the large ship fired. The Covenant energy beams looked like pulse lasers . . . but tinged silver white, the same scintillation effect that they'd seen when their shields were hit. Cortana switched back to view the doomed UNSC destroyerMinotaur . The lance of energy was needle thin. It struck the vessel on A deck, aft, near the reactor. Cortana pulled the view back and slowed the record frame by framethe beam punctured through the entire ship, emanating below H deck by the engines.\n\"It drilled through every deck and both sets of battleplate,\" Captain Keyes murmured.The beam moved through theMinotaur , slicing a ten-meter-wide swath.\n\"Projected beam path cut through theMinotaur 's reactors,\" Cortana said.\n\"A new weapon,\" Captain Keyes said. \"Faster than their plasma. Deadlier, too.\"The large Covenant ship veered off course and accelerated away from the battle. Perhaps it didn't want to risk getting too close to their orbital MAC guns. Whatever the reason, Keyes was grateful to see it withdraw. The UNSC forces slowly scattered. Some launched missiles to intercept the plasma torpedoes, but the high-energy explosives did nothing to the stop the superheated bolts. Fifty UNSC ships went up like flares, burning, exploding, falling toward the planet. The orbital Super MAC guns firedsixteen hits and sixteen Covenant ships were blasted into flame and glittering fragments.The Covenant fleet split into two groups: half accelerated to engage the dispersing UNSC fleet; the remainder of their ships arced upward relative to the plane of the system. That group maneuvered to get a clear shot around the cloud of vaporized titanium from the refit stations. They were going to target the orbital guns. Plasma charges collected along their sides. The orbital guns fired. The super-heavy rounds tore through the clouds of ionized metal vapor, leaving whorls and spirals in the haze. They impacted eighteen incoming Covenant shipsripped through them like tinfoil, with enough momentum to pulverize their hulls. Six Covenant ships cleared the interfering cloud of vapor. They had a clear shot.The Super MAC guns fired again.Plasma erupted from the sides of the nearby Convent ships. The Super MAC rounds hit the vessels and obliterated the enemy. The streams of plasma, however, had already launched. They streaked toward the orbital guns impacted and turned the installations into showers of sparks and molten metal. When the haze cleared, fifteen of the Super MAC orbital installations remained intact . . . five had been vaporized. The Covenant ships engaging the fleet turned and fled on an out-system vector. The remaining UNSC ships did not pursue.\"Incoming orders, sir,\" Lieutenant Dominique called out. \"We're being ordered to fall back and regroup.\"\nKeyes nodded. \"Cortana,\" he said, \"can you give me damage and casualty estimates for the fleet?\"\nHer tiny holo image coalesced in the display tank. \"Yes, Captain,\" she said. She cocked an eyebrow at him. \"Are you sure you want the bad news?\"\nDamage estimates scrolled across his personal screen.They had taken heavy lossesan estimated twenty ships remained. Nearly one hundred shattered and burning UNSC vessels floated, lifeless, in the combat area.Captain Keyes realized that he was holding his breath. He exhaled. \"That was too close,\" he murmured.\n\"It could have been closer, Captain,\" Cortana whispered. He watched the retreating Covenant. Once againit was too easy. No . . . it had been anything but\n\"easy\" for the UNSC forces, but the Covenant were certainly giving up far earlier than in any previous battle. The aliens had never stopped once they engaged an enemy. Except at Sigma Octanus, he thought.\"Cortana,\" Captain Keyes said. \"Scan the poles of planet Reach and filter out the magnetic interference.\"The view screen snapped to the Reach's northern pole. Hundreds of Covenant dropships streamed toward the planet's surface.\n\"Get FLEETCOM HQ online,\" he ordered Lieutenant Dominique. \"Copy this message to the Fleet Commander, as well.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" Lieutenant Dominique said. \"Channel connected.\"\"Tell them they're being invaded. Dropships inbound at both poles.\"\nDominique sent the message, listened a moment, then reported, \"Message received and acknowledged, sir.\"\nThe Super MAC guns pivoted and firedshattering dozens of the Covenant dropships in the shells'\nsupersonic wake. The remains of the UNSC fleet split into two groups, moving toward either pole. Missiles and MAC guns fired and blasted the dropships to bits. The poles were punctuated with thousands of meteoroids as the bits of hull burned up in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have gotten through, Keyes thought. Reach had been invaded.\n\"Incoming distress signal from FLEETCOM HQ planetside, sir,\" Lieutenant Dominique said, his voice breaking.\n\"On speakers,\" Captain Keyes said.\"There are thousands of them. Grunts, Jackals, and their warrior Elites.\"The transmission broke into static.\"They have tanks and fliers. Christ, they've breached the perimeter. Fall back! Fall back! If anyone can hear this: the Covenant is groundside. Massing near the armory . . . they're\" White noise filled the speakers. Captain Keyes winced as he heard screams, bones snapping, an explosion. The transmission went dead.\n\"Sir!\" Lieutenant Hall said. \"The Covenant fleet has altered their outbound trajectory. . . . they're turning.\" She rotated to face the Captain. \"They're coming in for another attack.\"\nCaptain Keyes stood straighter and smoothed his uniform. \"Good.\" He addressed the crew in the calmest voice he could muster. \"Looks like we're not too late after all.\"\nEnsign Lovell nodded. \"Sir, ETA to rally point Zulu in five minutes.\"\n\"Remove all missile safety locks,\" Captain Keyes ordered. \"Get our remote-piloted Longsword into the launch tube. And make sure our MAC gun capacitors and boosters are hot.\"\nCaptain Keyes pulled out his pipe. He lit it and puffed. The Covenant were, of course, after the orbital guns. Their suicidal frontal chargewhile almost effective enoughhad been just another diversion. The real danger was on the ground; if their troops took out the fusion generators, the Super MAC guns would be so much floating junk in orbit.\n\"This is bad,\" he muttered to himself.Cortana appeared on the AI pedestal near the NAV station. \"Captain Keyes, I'm picking up another distress signal. It's from the Reach space dock AI. And if you think this\" she gestured at the incoming Covenant fleet on screen \"is bad, wait until you hear this. It gets worse.\"\nCHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR\n0558 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCPillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System The mission had just encountered another snag.It never entered the Master Chief's mind that he would fail to achieve his objectives. He had to succeed. Failure meant death for not only himself, but for all the Spartans . . . every human. He stood at the view screen in the cargo bay and reread the priority Alpha transmission Captain Keyes had sent down:\nAlpha priority channel: To Fleet Admiralty from REACH Space Dock Quartermaster AI8575 (a. k.a. Doppler) /\n/triple-encryption time-stamped public key: red rover red rover//start file/\nIMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED Item:Covenant data invasion packets detected penetrating firewall of REACH DOC NET. Counterintrusion software enacted. Resolution: 99.9 percent certainty of neutralization. Item:Initialization of triple-screening protocol discovered the corvetteCircumference /Bay Gamma-9/\nisolated from REACH DOC NET. Item:Covenant ships detected on inbound Slipstream vector intersecting Bay Gamma-9. Conclusion:Unsecured navigation data on theCircumference detected by Covenant forces. Conclusion: VIOLATION OF THE COLE PROTOCOL.IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED.\n/end file/He replayed the distress call from Reach's groundside FLEETCOM HQ.\n\" . . . They've breached the perimeter. Fall back! Fall back! If anyone can hear this: the Covenant is groundside. Massing near the armory . . . they're\"\nThe Master Chief copied these files and sent them over his squad's COM channel. They had a right to know everything, too. There was only one reason the Covenant would launch a ground invasion: to take out the planetary defense generators. If they succeeded, Reach would fall. And there was only one reason why the Covenant wanted the shipCircumference to plunder its NAV databaseand find every human world, including Earth. Captain Keyes appeared on the view screen. He held his pipe in one hand, squeezing it so tight his knuckles were white. \"Master Chief, I believe the Covenant will use a pinpoint Slipspace jump to a position just off the space dock. They may try to get their troops on the station before the Super MAC guns can take out their ships. This will be a difficult mission, Chief. I'm . . . open to suggestions.\"\n\"We can take care of it,\" the Master Chief replied. Captain Keyes' eyes widened and he leaned forward in his command chair. \"How exactly, Master Chief?\"\n\"With all due respect, sir, Spartans are trained to handle difficult missions. I'll split my squad. Three will board the space dock and make sure that NAV data does not fall into the Covenant's hands. The remainder of the Spartans will go groundside and repel the invasion forces.\"\nCaptain Keyes considered this. \"No, Master Chief, it's too risky. We've got to make sure the Covenant doesn't get that NAV data. We'll use a nuclear mine, set it close to the docking ring, and detonate it.\"\n\"Sir, the EMP will burn out the superconductive coils of the orbital guns. And if you use thePillar of Autumn 's conventional weapons, the NAV database may still survive. If the Covenant search the wreckagethey may obtain the data.\"\n\"True,\" Keyes said, and tapped his pipe thoughtfully on his chin. \"Very well, Master Chief. We'll go with your suggestion. I'll plot a course over the docking station. Ready your Spartans and prep two dropships. We'll launch you\" he consulted with Cortana \"in five minutes.\"\n\"Aye, Captain. We'll be ready.\"\"Good luck,\" Captain Keyes said, and snapped off the view screen. Luck. The Master Chief always had been lucky. He'd need luck more than ever this time. He turned to face the Spartans . . . his Spartans. They stood at attention. Kelly stepped forward. \"Master Chief sir, permission to lead the space op, sir.\"\"Denied,\" he said. \"I'll be leading that one.\"He appreciated her gesture. The space operation would be ten times more dangerous than the ground op. The Covenant would outnumber them ten to oneor morebut the Spartans were used to taking the fight against numerically superior enemies. They had always won on the ground. The extraction of theCircumference database, however, would be in vacuum and zero gravityand they might have to fight their way past a Covenant warship to reach the objective. Not exactly ideal conditions.\n\"Linda and James,\" he said. \"You're with me. Fred, you're Red Team Leader. You'll have tactical command of the ground operation.\"\n\"Sir!\" Fred shouted. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\"Now make ready,\" he said. \"We don't have much time left.\"The Master Chief regretted his unfortunate choice of words.The Spartans stood a moment. Kelly called out, \"Attention!\" They snapped to and gave the Master Chief a crisp salute. He stood straighter and returned their salute. He was intensely proud of them all. The Spartans scattered and gathered their gear, racing for the dropship bay.The Master Chief watched them go. This was the mission the Spartans had been tempered for in mission after mission. It would be their finest moment . . . but he knew that it might also be their last moment. Chief Mendez had said that a leader would be required to spend the lives of those under his command. The Master Chief knew he would lose comrades todaybut would their deaths serve a necessary purpose . . . or would they be wasted?\nEither way, they were ready.\n\nJohn tapped the thrusters and rotated the Pelican dropship 180 degrees. He pushed the engines to full power to brake their forward momentum. ThePillar of Autumn had dropped them while she had been cruising at one-third full speed. They'd need every millimeter of the ten thousand kilometers between them and the docking station to slow down. The Master Chief had taken the Spartan's modified Pelican, rigged with explosives. The station would be locked downevery airlock sealed. They'd have to blast their way in. He glanced aft. Linda checked one of the three sniper rifle variants she had brought. James inspected his thruster pack. He had picked Linda because no other single Spartan was as efficient at long-range combat. And that's what the Master Chief wanted:long -range combat. If it came to hand-to-hand combat in zero gee with hordes of Covenant troopers . . . even his luck wouldn't hold out too long. He had picked James because James had never quit. Even when his hand had been burned off, he had shrugged off the shockat least for a whileand helped them dispatch the Covenant behemoths on Sigma Octanus IV. The Master Chief would need that kind of determination on this mission. He took a long look out the front of the Pelican. Their sister dropship initiated a burn and hurtled toward Reach. Kelly, Fred, Joshua . . . all of them. Part of him longed to join them in the ground action.The radar panel blinked a proximity warning; the Pelican was one thousand kilometers from the docking ring. The Master Chief tapped the thrusters to align the dropship. He squelched the proximity alert. The alert immediately re-sounded. Strange. He reached for the squelch againthen stopped as he saw the space around the Pelican change. Motes of green light appeared, pinpoints at first, which swelled like bruises on velvet black space. The green smears lengthened, compressed, and distorted the stars.a Slipstream entry point. The Master Chief cut the Pelican's engines, slowing them for impact. A Covenant frigate materialized a kilometer from the dropship's nose. Its prow filled their view screen. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE\n0616 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSC Pelican dropship, Epsilon Eridani System near Reach Station Gamma\n\"Brace for maneuvering!\" the Master Chief barked.The Spartans dove for safety harnesses and strapped in. \"All secure!\" Kelly shouted.The Master Chief killed the Pelican's forward thrusters and triggered a short, sudden reverse burn. The Spartans were brutally slammed forward into their harnesses as the Pelican's acceleration bled away. The Master Chief quickly shut down the engines. The tiny Pelican faced the Covenant frigate. At a kilometer's distance, the alien ship's launch bay and pulse laser turrets looked close enough to touch on the view screen; enough firepower to vaporize the Spartans in the blink of an eye. The Master Chief's first instinct was to fire their HE Anvil-II missiles and autocannonsbut he checked his hand as he reached for the triggers. That would only attract their attention . . . which was the last thing he wanted. For the moment, the alien vessel ignored themprobably because the Master Chief had shut down the Pelican's engines. But the ship also seemed dead in space: no lights, no single ships launched, and no plasma weapons charging. The dropship continued toward the docking station, their momentum putting distance between them and the frigate. Space around the Covenant ship boiled and pulled apartand two more alien ships appeared.They, too, ignored the dropship. Was it too small to bother with? The Master Chief didn't care. His luck, it seemed, was holding. He checked the radarthirty kilometers to the docking ring. He ignited the engines to slow them down. He had to or they would crash into the station. Twenty kilometers. Rumbling shook the dropship. They slowedbut it wasn't going to be enough.Ten kilometers.\n\"Hang on,\" he told Linda and James. The sudden impact whiplashed the Master Chief back and forth in his seat. The straps holding him snapped. He blinked . . . saw only blackness. His vision cleared and he noted that his shield bar was dead. It slowly began to fill again. Every display and monitor in the cockpit had shattered. The Master Chief shook off the disorientation and pulled himself aft.The interior of the dropship was a mess. Everything tied down had come loose. Ammunition boxes had broken open in the crash landing and loose carriages filled the air. Coolant leaked, spraying blobs of black fluid. In zero gravity, everything looked like the inside of a shaken snowglobe. James and Linda floated off the deck of the Pelican. They slowly moved.\n\"Any injuries?\" the Master Chief asked.\"No,\" Linda replied.\n\"I think so,\" James said. \"I mean, no. I'm good, sir. Was that a landing or did those Covenant ships take a shot at us?\"\n\"If they had, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Get whatever gear you can and get out, double time,\"\nthe Master Chief said. The Master Chief grabbed an assault rifle and a Jackhammer launcher. He found a satchel. Inside was a kilogram of C-12, detonators, and a Lotus antitank mine. Those would come in handy. He salvaged five intact clips of ammunition but couldn't locate his thruster pack. He'd have to do without one.\n\"No more time,\" he said. \"We're sitting ducks here. Out the side hatch now.\"\nLinda went first. She paused, andonce she was satisfied the Covenant weren't lying in ambush motioned them forward. The Master Chief and James exited, clung to the side of the Pelican in zero gravity, and took flanking positions at the fore and aft ends of the dropship. Space dock Gamma was a three-kilometer-diameter ring. Dull gray metal arced in either direction. On the surface were communications dishes and a few conduitsno real cover. The docking bay doors were sealed tight. The station wasn't spinning. The dockmaster AI must have shut the place up tight when it detected the unsecured NAV database. The Master Chief frowned when he spotted the tail end of their Pelicancrumpled and embedded into the station's hull. Its engines were ruined. The dropship jutted out at an angle; its prow and the charges of C-12 that were supposed to have blasted them into a Covenant shipnow pointed into the air. The Master Chief started to drift off the station. He clipped himself to the hull of the dropship.\n\"Blue-Two,\" he said, \"police those explosives.\" He gestured to the prow. The motion sent him gyrating.\n\"Yes, sir.\" James puffed his thruster pack once and drifted up to the nose of the Pelican.The Spartans had trained to fight in zero gravity. It wasn't easy. The slightest motion sent you spinning out of control. A flash overhead reflected off the hull. The Master Chief looked up. The Covenant ships were alive now lances of blue laser fire flashed and motes of red light collected on their lateral lines. Their engines glowed and they moved close to the station. A streak crossed the Master Chief's field of vision in the blink of an eye. The center Covenant frigate shields strobed silver; the ship shattered into a cloud of glistening fragments. The orbital guns had turned and fired on the new threat. This was a suicide maneuver. How did the Covenant think they could withstand that kind of firepower?\n\"Blue-One,\" the Master Chief said. \"Scan those ships with your scope.\"Linda floated closer to the Master Chief. She pointed her sniper rifle up and sighted the ships. \"We've got inbound targets,\" she said, and fired. The Master Chief hit his magnification. A dozen pods burst from the two remaining Covenant ships. Trails of exhaust pointed right at the Spartans' position. There were tiny specks accompanying the pods; the Master Chief increased his display's magnification to maximum. They looked like men in thruster packs No, they were definitely not men. These things had elongated headsand even at this distance, the Master Chief could see past their faceplates and noted their pronounced sharklike teeth and jaws. They wore armor; it shimmered as they collided with debriswhich meant energy shields. These must be the elite warrior class Dr. Halsey had conjectured. The Covenant's best? They were about to find out. Linda shot one of the EVA aliens. Shields shimmered around its body and the round bounced off. She didn't stop. She pumped four more rounds into the creaturehitting a pinpoint target in its neck. Its shields flickered and a round got through. Black blood gushed from the wound and the creature writhed in space. The other aliens spotted them. They jetted toward their location, firing plasma rifle and needlers.\"Take cover,\" the Master Chief said. He unclipped himself and clung to the side of the dropship.Linda followedbolts of fire spattering on the hull next to them, spattering molten metal. Crystalline needles bounced off their shields\n\"Blue-Two,\" the Master Chief said. \"I said fall back.\"\nJames almost had the explosives rigged to the nose free. A shower of needles hit him. One stuck the tank of his thruster harnesspenetrated. It remained embedded for a split second . . . then exploded. Exhaust billowed from the pack. The uncontrolled jets spun James in the microgravity. He slammed into the station, bouncedthen rocketed away into space, tumbling end over end, unable to control his trajectory.\n\"Blue-Two! Come in,\" the Master Chief barked over the COM channel.\n\"Cancontrol\" James' voice was punctuated with static. \"They'veeverywhere\" There was more static and the COM channel went dead. The Master Chief watched his teammate tumble away into the darkness. All his training, his superhuman strength, reflexes, and determination . . . completely useless against the laws of physics. He didn't even know if James was dead. For the moment, he had to assume that he wasput him out of his mind. He had a mission to complete.If he survived, then he'd get every UNSC ship in the area to mount a search and rescue op. Linda shrugged out of her thruster harness.The suppressing fire from the aliens halted. Covenant landing pods descended toward the station, touching down at roughly three-hundred-meter intervals. A pod landed twenty meters away. Its sides uncurled like the petals of a flower. Jackals in black-and blue vacuum suits drifted out. Their boots adhered to the station's hull.\n\"Let's pave a path out of here, Blue-One.\"\n\"Roger that,\" she said.Linda targeted spots their energy shields didn't coverboots, the top of one's head, a fingertip. Three Jackals went down in quick succession, their spacesuits ruptured by her marksmanship. The rest scrambled for cover inside the pod. The Master Chief braced his back against the dropship and fired his assault rifle in controlled bursts. The microgravity played havoc with his aim. One Jackal leaped from his coverstraight towards them. The Master Chief switched to full auto and blasted his shield with enough rounds to send the alien flying backward off the station. He spent the clip, reloaded, and got out a grenade. He pulled the pin and lobbed it. He threw it in a flat trajectory. The grenade ricocheted off the far side of the pod and bounced inside. It detonateda flash and spray of freeze-dried blue vented upward. The explosion had caught the enemy on their unshielded sides.\n\"Blue-One, secure that landing pod. I'll cover you.\" He leveled his rifle.\"Yes, sir.\" Linda grabbed a pipe that ran along the station and pulled herself hand over hand. When she was inside the pod, she flashed him a green light on his heads-up display. The Master Chief crawled toward the prow of the Pelican. As he crested the ship he saw that the station was swarming with Covenant troops: a hundred Jackals and at least six Elites. They pointed toward the Pelican and slowly started to advance on their position.\n\"Come and get it,\" the Master Chief muttered. He pulled two grenades from his satchel and wedged them into the C-12 on the nose of the ship. He pushed off and propelled himself back to his teammate.She grabbed him and pulled him into the interior of the open pod. Bits of a dozen dead Jackals pasted the inside.\n\"You've got a new target,\" he told her. \"A pair of frag grenades. Sight on them and wait for my order to fire.\"\nShe propped her rifle on the edge of the open pod and aimed. Jackals crawled over the Pelicanone of the Elite warriors appeared as well, maneuvering in a harness, flying over the ship. The Elite gestured imperiously, directing the Jackals to search the ship.\n\"Fire,\" the Master Chief said.Linda fired once. The grenades detonated; the chain reaction set off the twenty kilograms of C-12. A subsonic fist slammed into the Master Chief and threw him to the far side of the landing pod. Even twenty meters away, the sides of the craft warped and the top edges sheared away. He looked over the edge.There was a crater where the Pelican had been. If anything had survived that blast, it was now in orbit.\n\"We have a way in,\" the Master Chief remarked. Linda nodded.In the distance, where the station curved out of view, more Covenant pods landedand the Master Chief saw the silhouettes of hundreds of Jackals and Elite fighters crawling and jetting their way closer.\n\"Let's go, Blue-One.\"\nThey pulled themselves toward the hole. The detonation had blown through five decks, leaving a tunnel of ragged-edged metal and sputtering gas hoses. The Master Chief called up the station's blueprints on his display. \"That one,\" he said, and pointed two decks down. \"B level. That's where bay nine and theCircumference should be, three hundred meters to port.\"\nThey climbed into the interior and into B deck's corridor. The station's emergency lights were on, filling the passage with dull red illumination.The Master Chief paused and signaled her to halt. He pulled out the Lotus antitank mine from his satchel and set it on the deck. He set the sensitivity to maximum and triggered its proximity detectors. Anything that tried to follow them would get a surprise. The Master Chief and Linda gripped the handrails along the corridor and pulled themselves up the curved hall. Flashes of automatic-weapons fire flashed in the low light, just ahead of their position.\n\"Blue-One,\" the Master Chief said, \"Ahead, ten metersthere's a pressure door open.\"They quickly took positions on either side of the door. He sent his optical probe around the corner.The docking bay had a dozen ship berths on two levels. The Master Chief spotted a few battered Pelicans; a station service bot; and in berth eleven, a sleek private craft held in place by massive service clamps. Where the ship's name should have been painted on the prow there was only a simple circle. That had to be the target. Two berths aft, four Marines in vac suits were pinned down by plasma and needler fire. The Master Chief turned his optical probe and saw what was pinning them down: thirty Jackals were in the forward portion of the bay, slowly advancing, under cover of their energy shields. The Marines tossed frag grenades. The Jackals scrambled for cover and turned their shields.Three silent explosions flashed in the vacuum. Not one of the Jackals fell. Another explosion rippled through the deckbehind them. It shook the Master Chief's bones in his armor. The Lotus mine had detonated. They didn't have much time before the Covenant force outside caught up with them.The Master Chief readied his assault rifle.\"Take those Jackals out, Blue-One. I'll make a break for theCircumference .\"\nLinda gripped the edge of the pressure door with her left hand, propped her rifle across it, and curled her right hand around the trigger.\n\"There are a lot of them,\" she said. \"This may take a few seconds.\"A flicker of a contact appeared on the Master Chief's motion trackerthen vanished. He turned and brought his assault rifle to bear. Nothing. \"Hang on, Blue-One. I'm going to check our six.\"\nLinda's acknowledgment light winked on. The Master Chief eased back down the passage ten meters. No sensor contact. There was just dim red light and shadows . . . but one of the shadows moved. It only took an instant for the image to fully resister: a black film peeled away from the darkness. It was a meter taller than John and wore blue armor similar to that on Covenant warships. Its helmet was elongated and it had rows of sharp teeth; it looked like it was smiling at him. The Elite warrior leveled a plasma pistol.At this range, there was no way the creature would missthe plasma weapon would cut through John's slowly recharging shields almost immediately. And if John used his assault rifle, it wouldn't cut though the alien's energy shield. In a simple exchange of fire, the alien would win. Unacceptable. He needed to change the odds. The Master Chief pushed off the wall and launched himself at the creature. He slammed into the Elite before it had a chance to fire. They tumbled backward and crashed into the bulkhead. The Master Chief saw the alien's shield flicker and fade he hammered on the edge of the alien's gun. The creature howled soundlessly in the vacuum and dropped the plasma weapon.The Elite kicked him in the midsection; his shield took the brunt of the attack, but the blow sent him spinning end over end. He slapped his hand against the ceiling and stalled his spinthen dove under the Elite's follow-up attack. The Master Chief tried to grab the alienbut their weakened shields slid and crackled over one another. Too slippery. They bounced down the curved length of the passage. The Master Chief's boot caught on a railing, twisteda lance of pain shot up his legbut he halted their combined momentum. The Elite pushed away and caught a railing on the opposite side of the passage. Then it turned and sprang back toward the Master Chief.John ignored the pain in his leg. He pushed himself at the alien. They collidedthe Master Chief struck with both fists, but the force slid off the Elite's shields. The Elite grabbed him and threw him. They both spun into the wall. The Master Chief was pinnedperfect: he had something to brace against in the zero gravity. He swung his fist, used every muscle in his body, and connected with the alien's midsection. Its shield shimmered and crackled but some of the momentum transferred. The alien doubled over and reeled backward and its hands found the plasma weapon that it had dropped.The Elite recovered quickly and aimed at the Master Chief. The Master Chief jumped, grabbed its wrist. He locked his armor's glove articulationit became a vise clamp. They wrestled for control. The gun pointed at the alienthen the Master Chief.The alien was as strong as the Master Chief. They spun and bounced off the floor, ceiling, and walls. They were too evenly matched. The Master Chief managed to force a stalemate: the pistol now pointed straight up between their bodies. If it went off it would hit them bothone shot at point-blank range might collapse their shields. They'd both fry. The Master Chief whipped his forearm and elbow over the creature's wrist and slammed it in the head. For a split second it was stunned and its strength ebbed. John turned the gun into its facesqueezed the firing mechanism. The plasma discharge exploded into the creature. Fire sprayed across its shields; they shimmered, flickered, and dimmed. The energy splash washed over the Master Chief; his shields drained to a quarter. The internal suit temperature spiked to critical levels. But the Elite's shields were dead.He didn't wait for the plasma gun to recharge. The Master Chief grabbed the creature with his left hand his right fist struck an uppercut to the head, a hook to the throat and chest, three rapid-fire strikes with his forearm to its helmetthat cracked and hissed atmosphere.The Master Chief pushed away and fired the pistol again. The bolt of fire caught the Elite in the face. It writhed and clawed at nothing. The Elite shuddered . . . suspended in midair; it twitched and finally stopped moving. The Master Chief shot it again to make sure it was dead. Motion sensors picked up multiple targets approaching down the corridorforty meters and closing.The Master Chief turned and double-timed it back to Blue-One.Linda was where he left her, shooting her targets with absolute concentration and precision.\n\"There are more on the way,\" he told her.\n\"Reinforcements have already arrived in the bay,\" she reported. \"Twenty, at least. They're learning, overlapping their shieldscan't get a good shot in.\"\nStatic crackled over the Master Chief's COM channel:\"Master Chief, this is Captain Keyes. Did you get the NAV database?\" The Captain sounded out of breath.\n\"Negative, sir. We're close.\"\n\"We're bound in-system to retrieve you. ETA is five minutes. Destroy theCircumference's database and get out ASAP. If you cannot accomplish your mission . . . I'll have to take out the station with thePillar of Autumn's weapons. We are running out of time.\"\n\"Understood, sir.\"The channel snapped off. Captain Keyes was wrong. They weren't running out of time . . . time had already run out.\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-SIX\n0616 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCPillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System near Reach Station Gamma The plan started to fall apart almost the instant thePillar of Autumn launched their Pelican dropships.\"Bring us about to heading two seven zero,\" Captain Keyes ordered Ensign Lovell.\"Aye, Captain,\" Lovell said.\n\"Lieutenant Hall, track the dropships' trajectories.\"\n\"Pelican One on target to dock with station Gamma,\" Lieutenant Hall reported. \"Pelican Two initiating descent burn. They are five by five to land just outside FLEET HQ\"\n\"Captain,\" Cortana interrupted. \"Spatial disruption behind us.\"\nThe view screen snapped to the aft. Black space bubbled with green points of light; the stars in the distance faded and stretcheda Covenant frigate appeared from nowhere.\n\"Lieutenant Dominique,\" Captain Keyes barked, \"notify FLEETCOM that we have unwanted visitors in the backyard. I respectfully suggest they reorient those orbital guns ASAP. Ensign Lovell, turn this ship around and give me maximum power to the engines. Lieutenant Hikowa, prepare to fire the MAC gun and arm Archer missile pods B1 through B7.\"\nThe crew jumped to their tasks.ThePillar of Autumn spun about, her engines flared, and she slowly came to a halt. The ship started back toward the new Covenant threat.\n\"Sir,\" Cortana said. \"Spatial disruptions increasing exponentially.\"\nTwo more Covenant frigates appeared, flanking the first ship.As soon as they exited Slipstream spacea white-hot line streaked across the blackness. A Super MAC gun had targeted them and fired. The Covenant ship only existed for a moment longer. Its shields flashed and the hull blasted into fragments.\"They're powered down,\" Captain Keyes said. \"No lights, no plasma weapons charging, no lasers. What are they doing?\"\n\"Perhaps,\" Cortana said, \"their pinpoint jumps require all their energy reserves.\"\n\"A weakness?\" Captain Keyes mused.\n\"Not for long,\" Cortana replied. \"Covenant energy levels climbing.\"The two remaining Covenant ships powered uplights snapped on, engines glowed, and motes of red light appeared and streamed along their lateral lines.\n\"Entering optimal firing range,\" Lieutenant Hikowa announced. \"Targeting solutions computer for both ships, Captain.\"\n\"Target the port vessel with our MAC gun,\" Lieutenant Hikowa. \"Ready Archer missiles for the starboard target. Let's hope we can draw their fire.\"\nLieutenant Hikowa typed in the commands. \"Ready, sir.\"\"Fire.\"\nThePillar of Autumn 's MAC gun fired three times. Thunder roiled up from the ventral decks. Archer missiles snaked through space toward the Covenant frigate on the starboard edge of the enemy formation. The Covenant ships fired . . . but not at thePillar of Autumn . Plasma bolts launched toward the two closest orbital guns. ThePillar of Autumn 's MAC rounds struck the Covenant ship once, twice. Their shields flared, glowed, and dimmed. The third round struck clean and penetrated her hull aftsent the ship spinning counterclockwise. The orbital MAC guns fired againa streak of silver and the port Covenant vessel shattereda split second later the starboard ship exploded, too. But their plasma torpedoes continued toward their targets, splashing across two of the orbital defense platforms. The guns melted and collapsed into boiling molten spheres in the microgravity. Thirteen guns left, Captain Keyes thought. Not exactly a lucky number.\"Lieutenant Dominique,\" he said, \"request FLEETCOM to send all arriving vessels in-system to take up defense positions near our guns. The Covenant is willing to sacrifice a ship for one of our orbital guns. Advise them the Covenant ships appear to be dead in space for a few seconds after they execute a pinpoint jump.\"\n\"Got it, sir,\" Lieutenant Dominique said. \"Message away.\"\n\"Lieutenant Hikowa,\" Captain Keyes said. \"Send the destruction codes to those wild missiles we launched.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\"\"Belay that,\" Captain Keyes said. Something didn't feel right. \"Lieutenant Hall, scan the region for anything unusual.\"\n\"Scanning, sir,\" she said. \"There are millions of hull fragments; radar is useless. Thermal is off the charts everything is hot out there.\" She paused, leaned closer, and a hank of her blond hair fell into her face, but she didn't brush it aside. \"Reading motiontoward Gamma station, sir. Landing pods.\"\n\"Lieutenant Hikowa,\" Keyes said. \"Repurpose those Archer missiles. New targetslink with Lieutenant Hall for coordinates.\"\n\"Yes, Captain,\" they said in unison.\"Diversion, distraction, and deceit,\" Captain Keyes said. \"The Covenant's tactics are almost getting predictable.\"\nA hundred pinpoints of fire dotted the distant space as their missiles found Covenant targets.\n\"Picking up activity just out of the effective range of our orbital guns,\" Cortana said.\"Show me,\" Captain Keyes said.The titanic Covenant vessel Keyes had seen before was back. It fired its brilliant blue-white beama lance across spacethat struck the destroyerHerodotus , one hundred thousand kilometers distant. The beam cut clean through the ship, stem to stern, bisecting her.\n\"Christ,\" Ensign Lovell whispered. A salvo of orbital gun rounds fired at this new target . . . but it was too far away. The ship moved out of the trajectory of the shells. They missed.Another beam flashed from the Covenant vessel. Another shipa carrier, theMusashi was severed amidships as it moved to cover the orbital guns. The aft section of the ship continued to thrust forward, her engines still running hot.\n\"They're going to sniper our ships,\" Keyes said. \"Leave us nothing to fortify Reach.\" He took out his pipe and tapped it in the palm of his hand. \"Ensign Lovell. Plot an intercept course. Engines to maximum. We're going to take that ship out.\"\n\"Sir?\" Lovell sat straighter. \"Yes, sir. Plotting course now.\"\nCortana appeared on the holographic display. \"I assume you have another brilliant navigational maneuver to evade this enemy, Captain.\"\n\"I thought I'd fly straight in, Cortana . . . and let you do the driving.\"\"Straight? Youare joking.\" Logic symbols streamed up her body.\n\"I never joke when it comes to navigation,\" Captain Keyes said. \"You will monitor the energy state of that ship. The instant you detect a buildup in their reactors, a spike of particle emissionsanythingyou fire our emergency thrusters to throw off their aim.\"\nCortana nodded. \"I'll do my best,\" she said. \"Their weapondoes travel at light speed. There won't be much time to\"\nA bang resonated through their port side hull. Captain Keyes flew sideways. Blue-white light flashed on their port view screen.\n\"One shot missed,\" Cortana replied. Captain Keyes stood up and straightened his uniform. \"Ready MAC gun, Lieutenant Hikowa. Arm Archer missile pods C1 through E7. Give me a firing solution for missile impact on our last MAC round.\"\nLieutenant Hikowa arched an eyebrow. She had good reason to be dubious. They would be firing more than five hundred missiles at a single target. \"Solution online, sir. Guns hot and ready.\"\n\"Distance, Lieutenant Hall?\"\n\"Closing in on extreme range for MAC guns, sir. In four . . . three. . . .\"\nAn explosion to starboard and thePillar of Autumn jumped. Keyes was braced this time.\"Fire, Lieutenant Hikowa. Send them back where they belong.\"\n\"Missiles away, sir. Waiting to coordinate MAC rounds.\"\nBlue lightning washed out the view screen. Dull thumps sounded through thePillar of Autumn like a string of firecrackers going off. The ship listed to port, and it started to roll.\n\"We're hit!\" Lieutenant Hall said. \"Decompression on Decks C, D, and E. Sections two through twenty seven. Venting atmosphere. Reactor's damaged, sir.\" She listened to her headset. \"Can't get a clear report of what's going on belowdecks. We're losing power.\"\n\"Seal those sections. Lieutenant Hikowa, do we have gun control?\"\"Affirmative.\"\n\"Then fire at will, Lieutenant.\"\nThePillar of Autumn shuddered as its MAC gun fired. Pings and groans diffused though her damaged hull. A trio of white-hot projectiles appeared on the view screen, chasing the Archer missiles toward their intended target. The first round struck the Covenant ship; its shields rippled. The second and third rounds struck, and more than five hundred missiles detonated along her length. Flame dotted the massive vessel, and her shields blazed solid silver. They faded and popped. A dozen missiles impacted her hull and exploded, scarring the bluish armor.\n\"Minimal damage to the target, sir,\" Lieutenant Hall reported.\n\"But we downed their shields,\" Captain Keyes said. \"We can hurt them. That's all I needed to know. Lieutenant Hikowa, make ready to fire again. Identical targeting solution. Lieutenant Hall, launch our remote-piloted Longsword interceptor and arm its Shiva nuclear warhead. Cortana, take control of the single ship.\"\nCortana tapped her foot. \"Longsword away,\" she said. \"Where do you want me to park this thing?\"\"Intercept course for the Covenant ship,\" he told her.\n\"Sir,\" Lieutenant Hikowa cried. \"We have an insufficient charge rate to fire the MAC guns.\"\n\"Understood,\" Captain Keyes said. \"Divert all power from the engines to regenerate gun capacitors.\"\"May I point out\" Cortana said and crossed her arms \"that if you power down the engines, we will be inside the blast radius of the Shiva warhead when it reaches the Covenant ship?\"\n\"Noted,\" Captain Keyes said. \"Do it.\"\n\"Capacitors at seventy-five percent,\" Lieutenant Hikowa announced. \"Eighty-five. Ninety-five. Full charge, sir. Ready to fire.\"\n\"Fire at will,\" Captain Keyes ordered.\"Missiles away\"A javelin of blue-white energy from the Covenant ship slashed at thePillar of Autumn . The beam struck, and cut through the hull. ThePillar of Autumn slid into a flat spin as the explosive decompression knocked the ship off course. As theAutumn spun, the Covenant energy beam carved a spiral pattern in the hull, shredding armor and puncturing deep into the ship. The ship lurched sickeningly as the beam played across the portside Archer pods; the missiles detonated in their tubes. Keyes was nearly thrown from the command chair as the deck bucked beneath him. He tightened his safety straps and scowled at the tactical displays. \"Damage report!\" he yelled, his voice competing with the dozens of hazard alarms that blared through the bridge speakers. Cortana brought up a holographic view of the ship and flagged damaged areas in pulsing red. \"Port launch and storage bays have been breachedfires on all decks, all sections. Primary fusion chamber is breached.\"\nThePillar of Autumn tumbled out of control.\n\"Cortana, get us straight and level. We have to fire our guns!\"\"Yes, Captain.\" Her body became a blur of mathematical symbols. \"This is an extremely chaotic trajectory,\" she said. \"Atmosphere still venting. Hang on. There. Got it.\"\nThePillar of Autumn righted herself. The Covenant ship centered on the main view screen. This close Captain Keyes saw how huge the ship wasthree times the mass of a normal cruiser. There was a pod mounted on the top deck; it swiveled and tracked thePillar of Autumn , bringing the turret to bear. It glowed electric white as it built up another lethal charge.\n\"Fire when ready, Lieutenant Hikowa,\" Captain Keyes ordered.\"Firing!\" Thunder rumbled belowdecks. \"MAC rounds away.\"\nThe shells struck the Covenant vessel; Archer missiles impacted . . . only a handful got though her downed shields.\n\"Cortana, crash-land our Longsword on that bastard. Set timer delay on the nuke for fifteen seconds.\"\n\"Afterburners on,\" Cortana replied. \"Impact in three . . . two . . . one. She's down, sir.\"ThePillar of Autumn sped past the Covenant ship.\"Lieutenant Hall, divert any power you can muster to the engines.\"\n\"Bringing secondary reactor back online, sir. That gives us fifteen percent.\"\n\"Aft camera on center screen,\" Captain Keyes ordered.The Covenant ship slowly turned toward thePillar of Autumn and its turret tracked their position. For the first time in his life, Keyes prayed that a Covenant ship's shields would hold. The alien ship became a flash of white light; its outline blurred. Their shields held for a split second as the Shiva warhead detonatedinside its protective aura. The shockwave rebounded off the asymmetrical shape of the shields just before their collapse. Jets of energy exploded outward at three different angles. Thunder and plasma roiled into space . . . cleanly missing thePillar of Autumn . The light faded and the Covenant flagship was gone.Captain Keyes puffed again on his pipe and tapped it out. Maybe now they had a chance to rally what remained of the UNSC fleet and defend Reach.\n\"Congratulations Captain,\" Cortana said. \"I couldn't have done better myself.\"\n\"Thank you, Cortana. Is there a planet nearby?\"\n\"Beta Gabriel,\" she said. \"Fourteen million kilometers. Practically next door.\"\"Good. Ensign Lovell, plot a course for a slingshot orbit. Reverse our trajectory back in-system.\"\n\"Sir,\" Lieutenant Dominique interrupted. \"Incoming transmission from Reach. It's the Spartans.\"\n\"On speakers, Lieutenant.\"Static hissed from the channel. A man's voice broke through.\"bad. Reactor complex seven has been compromised. We're falling back. Might be able to save number three. Set off those charges now!\" There was a series of explosions . . . more white noise, then the man returned.\"Be advised Pillar of Autumn, groundside reactors are being taken. Orbital guns at risk. Nothing we can do. Too many. We will have to use the nukes\"Static washed away the transmission.\n\"Captain,\" Cortana said. \"You need to see this, sir.\"\nShe overlaid a tactical map of the system on the main view screen. Tiny triangular red markers winked on the edges: Covenant shipsdozens of themreentered the system from Slipspace.\n\"Sir,\" she said, \"when the guns around Reach go down. . . .\"\"There will be nothing left to stop the Covenant,\" he finished.Captain Keyes turned to Lieutenant Dominique. \"Get those Spartans back online,\" he said. \"Tell them to evac ASAP. In a few minutes, it's going to get very nasty around Reach.\"\nHe took a deep breath. \"Then raise the Master Chief on a secure channel. Let's hope he has some good news for us.\"\nCHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN\n0637 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nEpsilon Eridani System, Reach Station Gamma\n\"Multiple signals on motion tracker,\" the Master Chief said. \"They're all around us.\"The passageway behind the Master Chief and Blue-One swarmed with blips. So did docking Bay Nine, ahead of them. The Master Chief saw, however, not all the blips were hostiles. Four Marine friend-or-foe tags strobed on his heads-up display: SGT. JOHNSON, PVT. O'BRIEN, PVT. BISENTI, and PVT. JENKINS. The Master Chief opened up a COM channel to them. \"Listen up, Marines. Your lines of fire are sloppy;\ntighten them up. Concentrate on one Jackal at a timeor you'll just waste your ammo on their shields.\"\n\"Master Chief?\" Sergeant Johnson said, startled. \"Sir, yes sir!\"\n\"Blue-One,\" the Master Chief said. \"I'm going in. We're going to open up theCircumference like a tin can.\" He nodded toward the Pelican in the adjacent bay. \"Give me a few grenades over the top.\"\n\"Understood,\" she replied. \"You're covered, sir.\" She primed two frag grenades, swung around the pressure doors, and threw them behind the Jackals. The Master Chief pushed off the wallpropelled himself in the zero gee across the bay. The grenades detonated and caught the Jackals on their backsides. Blue blood spattered on the insides of their shields and across the deck. The Master Chief crashed into the Pelican's hull. He pulled himself to the side hatch, opened it, and crawled in. He got into the cockpit, released the docking clamps, and tapped the maneuvering thrusters once to break free. The Pelican lifted off the deck. The Master Chief said over the COM channel, \"Marines and Blue-One: take cover behind me.\" He maneuvered the Pelican into the center of the docking bay. A dozen Jackals poured in through the passage that Blue-One had just left.The Master Chief fired with the Pelican's autocannoncut down their shields and peppered the aliens with hundreds of rounds. They exploded into chunks; alien blood twisted crazily in zero gravity.\n\"Master Chief,\" Linda said, \"I'm picking upthousands of signals on the motion tracker, inbound from all directions. The entire station is crawling.\"\nThe Master Chief opened the Pelican's back hatch. \"Get in,\" he said. Blue-One and the Marines piled inside. The Marines did a double take at Blue-One and the Master Chief in their MJOLNIR armor.The Master Chief turned the Pelican to face theCircumference . He sighted the autocannon on the ship's forward viewportsand opened fire. Thousands of rounds streamed from the chain-gun and cracked through the thick, transparent windows. He followed up with an Anvil-II missile. It blasted through the prow and peeled the craft open.\n\"Take the controls,\" he told Blue-One. He slipped out the side hatch and jumped to theCircumference . The inside of the ship's cockpit was scrap metal. He accessed the computer panel in the floor deck and located the NAV database core. It was a cube of memory crystal the size of his thumb. Such a tiny thing to cause so much trouble. He shot it three times with his assault rifle. It shattered.\"Mission completed,\" he said. One small victory in all this mess. The Covenant wouldn't find Earth . . . today. He exited theCircumference . Jackals appeared on the level above them in the docking bay. His motion tracker blinked with solid contacts. He jumped back into the Pelican, strapped himself in the pilot's chair, and turned the ship to face the outer doors.\n\"Blue-One, signal the dockmaster AI to open the outer bay doors.\"\"Signal sent,\" she said. \"No response, sir.\" She looked around. \"There's a manual release by the outer door.\" She moved toward the aft hatch. \"I'll get this one, sir. It's my turn. Cover me.\"\n\"Roger, Blue-One. Keep your head down. I'll draw their fire.\"\nShe launched herself out the back hatch.The Master Chief tapped the Pelican's thrusters and the ship rose higher in the bayup to the second level. The upper decks were the mechanic bays; the area was littered with ships that were partially disassembled in various stages of repair. It was also where a hundred Jackals and a handful of Elite warriors were waiting for him. They opened fire. Plasma bolts scored the hull of the Pelican. The Master Chief fired the chain-gun and let loose a salvo of missiles. Alien shields blazed and failed. Blue and green blood splashed and flash-froze in the icy vacuum. He hit the top thrusters and dropped down to the lower levelslammed the ship back into a berth for cover. Blue-One crouched by the manual release. The outer doors eased open, revealing the night and stars beyond. \"You're clear for exit, Master Chief. We're home free\"\nA new contact on the Pelican's targeting display appearedright behind Linda. He had towarn her A bolt of plasma struck her in the back. Another blot of fire blazed her from the upper decks and splashed across her front. She crumpledher shields flickered and went out. Two more bolts hit her chest. A third blast smashed into her helmet.\n\"No!\" the Master Chief said. He felt each of those plasma bolts as if they had hit him, too.He moved the Pelican to cover her. Plasma struck the hull, melting its outer skin.\n\"Get her inside!\" he ordered the Marines. They jumped out, grabbed Linda and her smoldering armor, and pulled her inside the Pelican.The Master Chief sealed the hatch, ignited the engines and pushed them to full thrustrocketing into space.\n\"Can you fly this ship?\" he asked the Marine Sergeant.\n\"Yes, sir,\" Johnson replied.\n\"Take over.\"The Master Chief went to Linda and knelt by her side. Sections of her armor had melted and adhered to her. Underneath, in patches, bits of carbonized bone showed. He accessed her vital signs on his heads-up display. They were dangerously low.\n\"Did you do it?\" she whispered. \"Get the database?\"\n\"Yes. We got it.\"\n\"Good,\" she said. \"We won.\" She clasped his hand and closed her eyes.Her vital signs flat-lined.John squeezed her hand and let go. \"Yes,\" he said bitterly. \"We won.\"\n\"Master Chief, come in.\"Captain Keyes voice sounded over the COM channel. \"ThePillar of Autumnwill be in rendezvous position in one minute.\"\n\"We're ready, Captain,\" he answered. He set Linda's hand over her chest. \"I'mready.\"\nThe instant the Master Chief docked the Pelican to thePillar of Autumn , he felt the cruiser accelerate. He took Linda's body double time to a cryo chamber and immediately froze her. She was clinically dead there was no doubt of that. Still, if they could get her to a Fleet hospital, they might be able to resuscitate her. It was a long shotbut she was a Spartan. The med techs wanted to check him out as well, but he declined and took the elevator to the bridge to report to Captain Keyes. As he rode inside the lift he felt the ship accelerate portthen starboard. Evasive maneuvers. The elevator doors parted and the Master Chief stepped onto the bridge. He snapped a crisp salute to Captain Keyes. \"Reporting for debriefing, sir.\"Captain Keyes turned and looked surprised to see him . . . or maybe he was shocked to see the condition of his armor. It was charred, battered, and covered with alien blood. The Captain returned the Master Chief's salute. \"The NAV database was destroyed?\" he asked.\n\"Sir, I would not have left if my mission was incomplete.\"\"Of course, Master Chief. Very good,\" Captain Keyes replied.\n\"Sir, may I ask that you scan for active FOF tags in the region?\" The Master Chief glanced at the main view screensaw scattered fights between Covenant and UNSC warships in the distance. \"I lost a man on the station. He may be floating out there . . . somewhere.\"\n\"Lieutenant Hall?\" the Captain asked.\n\"Scanning,\" she said. After a moment she looked back and shook her head.\"I see,” the Master Chief replied. There could be worse deaths . . . but not for one of his Spartans. Floating helpless. Slowly suffocating and freezinglosing to an enemy that could not be fought.\n\"Sir,\" the Master Chief said, \"when will thePillar of Autumn rendezvous with my planetside team?\"\nCaptain Keyes turned from the Master Chief and stared out into space. \"We won't be picking them up,\"\nhe said quietly. \"They were overrun by Covenant forces. They never made orbit. We've lost contact with them.\"\nThe Master Chief took a step closer. \"Then I would like permission to take a dropship and retrieve them, sir.\"\n\"Request denied, Master Chief. We still have a mission to perform. And we cannot remain in this system much longer. Lieutenant Dominique, aft camera on the main screen.\"\nCovenant vessels swarmed though the Reach System in five-ship crescent formations. The remaining UNSC ships fled before them . . . those that could still move. Those ships too damaged to outrun the Covenant were blasted with plasma and laser fire. The Covenant had won this battle. They were mopping up before they glassed the planet; the Master Chief had seen this happen in a dozen campaigns. This time was different, however. This time the Covenant was glassing a planet . . . with his people still on it.He tried to think of a way to stop them . . . to save his teammates. He couldn't. The Captain turned and strode to the Master Chief, stood by his side. \"Dr. Halsey's mission,\" he said, \"is more important than ever now. It may be the only chance left for Earth. We have to focus on that goal.\"\nThree dozen Covenant craft moved toward Gamma station and the now inert orbital defense platforms. They bombarded the installationsthe mightiest weapons in the UNSC arsenalwith plasma. The guns melted, and boiled away. The Master Chief clenched his hands into fists. The Captain was correct: there was nothing to do now except complete the mission they had set out to do. Captain Keyes barked, \"Ensign Lovell, give me our best acceleration. I want to enter Slipstream space as soon as possible.\"\nCortana said, \"Excuse me, Captain. Six covenant frigates are inbound on an intercept course.\"\"Continue evasive maneuvers, Cortana. Prepare the Slipspace generators and get me an appropriate randomized exit vector.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\" Navigation symbols flashed along the length of her holographic body. The Master Chief continued to watch as the Covenant ships closed in on them. Was he the only Spartan left? Better to die than live without his teammates. But he still had a mission:\nvictory against the Covenantand vengeance for his fallen comrades.\n\"Generating randomized exit vector per the Cole Protocol,\" Cortana said. The Master Chief glanced at her translucent body. She looked vaguely like a younger Dr. Halsey. Tiny dots, ones, and zeros slid over her torso, arms, and legs. Her thoughts were literally worn on her sleeve; the symbols also appeared on Ensign Lovell's NAV station. He cocked his head as the symbols and numbers scrolled across the NAV console.The representations of Slipspace vectors and velocity curves twisted across the screentantalizingly familiar. He'd seen them somewhere beforebut he could not make the connection.\n\"Something on your mind, Master Chief?\" Cortana asked.\n\"Those symbols . . . I thought I had seen them somewhere before. It's nothing.\"\nCortana got a far off look in her eyes. The marks cycling on her hologram shifted and rearranged.The Master Chief saw the Covenant fleet gathered around planet Reach. They swarmed and circled like sharks. The first of their plasma bombardments launched toward the surface. Clouds in the fire's path boiled away.\"Jump to Slipspace, Ensign Lovell,\" the Captain said. \"Get us the hell out of here.\"\nJohn remembered Chief Mendez's wordsthat they had to live and fight another day. He was alive . . . and there was still plenty of fight left in him. And he would win this warno matter what it took. SECTION VI HALO\n EPILOGUE0647 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSCPillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System's edge Cortana fired thePillar of Autumn 's autocannonstargeting a dozen Seraph fighters harassing them as they were accelerated out of the system. Seven Covenant frigates were now locked into the pursuit. She dodged a volley of pulse laser fire, using the ventral emergency thrusters. She pushed the damaged secondary reactor to critical levels. They had to build up more speed before activating the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators or the jump to Slipstream space would fail. She rechecked her calculations. Under the Cole Protocol, they would be jumping away from Earth . . . but it would not be a totally random heading. The Master Chief had been right when he said that he recognized the shorthand navigation symbols on the NAV display. Cortana accessed the Spartans' mission logs. She sifted through the data, and filed it into a secondary long-term storage buffer. When she reviewed the database of his mission reports, Cortana learned that Spartan 117had seen something similar on the Covenant vessel he had boarded in 2525. And againthe symbols almost looked like those on the rock he had extracted from Covenant forces on Sigma Octanus IV. ONI reports on the symbols found in the anomalous rock had defied cryptoanalysis. Keyes' order to plot a navigation route sparked a connection between this data; she accessed the alien symbols, and rather than compare them with alphabets or hieroglyphics, compared them to star formations. There were some startling similaritiesalong with a number of differences. Cortana reanalyzed the symbols and accounted for thousands of years of stellar drift. A tenth of a second later she had a close match on her charts86.2 percent.Interesting. Perhaps the markings in the rock recovered on Sigma Octanus IV were navigation symbols, albeit highly unusual and stylized onesmathematical symbols as artistic and elegant as Chinese calligraphy. What was there that the Covenant wanted so badly that they had launched a full offensive against Sigma Octanus IV? Whatever it was . . . Cortana was interested, too. She compared the new NAV coordinates with her directives and was pleased with what she saw; the new course complied with the Cole Protocol. Good. The Covenant frigates fired their plasma again. Seven bolts of fire streaked toward thePillar of Autumn . She dumped the coordinates to the NAV controls and stored the logic path that led to her deduction in her high-security buffer.\n\"Approaching saturation velocity,\" she told Captain Keyes. \"Powering Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators. New course available.\"\nThe Covenant frigates aligned with their outbound vector. They were going to try to follow thePillar of Autumn through Slipspace. Damn. The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators tore a hole in normal space. Light boiled around thePillar of Autumn and she vanished.\n\nCortana had plenty of time to think on the journey. Most of the crew were frozen in cryo for the trip. Some of the engineers had elected to try to repair the main reactor. A futile gesture . . . but she lent them a few cycles to try to rebuild the convection inductor. Had Dr. Halsey been on Reach when it fell to the Covenant? Cortana felt a pang of regret for her creator. Maybe she had gotten away. The probability was low . . . but the doctor was a survivor. Cortana ran a self-diagnostic. Her Alpha-level commands were intact. She had not jeopardized her primary mission by following this vector. There were, unfortunately, sure to be Covenant ships when they arrived . . . wherever they arrived. The Covenant had followed them into Slipstream space. And they had always been faster and more accurate than UNSC navigators in the elusive dimension. Captain Keyes and the Master Chief would get their chance to disable and capture one of those vessels. Their \"luck\" had so far defied all probability and statistical variations. She hoped their defiance of the odds continued.\n\n\"Captain Keyes? Wake up, sir,\" Cortana said. \"We will enter normal space in three hours.\"\nCaptain Keyes sat up in the cryo tube. He licked his lips and gagged. \"I hate that stuff.\"\"The inhalant surfactant is highly nutritious, sir. Please regurgitate and swallow the protein complex.\"Captain Keyes swung his legs out of the tube. He coughed and spat the mucus onto the deck. \"You wouldn't say that, Cortana, if you ever tasted this stuff. Ship status?\"\n\"Reactor two has been fully repaired,\" she replied. \"Reactors one and three are inoperable. That gives us twenty percent power. Archer missile pods I and J rows serviceable. Autocannon ammunition at ten percent. Our two remaining Shiva warheads are intact.\" She paused and double-checked the MAC gun. \"Magnetic Accelerator Gun's capacitors depolarized. We cannot fire the system, sir.\"\n\"More good news,\" he grumbled. \"Continue.\"\"Hull breaches patchedbut the majority of decks eleven, twelve, and thirteen are destroyedthat includes the Spartans' weapons locker.\"\n\"Are there any infantry weapons left?\" Keyes asked. \"We may need to repel boarders.\"\n\"Yes, Captain. A substantial number of standard Marine infantry weapons survived the engagement. Would you like an inventory?\"\n\"Later. What about the crew?\"\"All crew accounted for. Spartan 117 is in cryo sleep with the Marine and security personnel. Waking bridge officers and all essential personnel.\"\n\"And the Covenant?\"\n\"We'll know in a moment if they were able to track us, sir.\"\"Very well. I'll be on the bridge in ten minutes.\" He eased out of the tube. \"I'm getting too damn old to be frozen and shot through space at light speed,\" he muttered.Cortana checked the status of the waking crew. There was a minor flutter in Lieutenant Dominique's heart, which she corrected. Otherwise, status normal. The Captain and crew assembled on the bridge. They waited.\n\"Five minutes until normal space, sir,\" Cortana announced. She knew they could see the countdown timer, but Cortana noticed that the crew responded well to her calm voice in stressful situations. Their reaction times generally improved by as much as 15 percentgive or take. Sometimes, human imperfection made calculations maddeningly imprecise. She ran another check on all intact systems. ThePillar of Autumn had taken a tremendous beating at Reach. It was a wonder it was still in one piece.\n\"Entering normal space in thirty seconds,\" she informed Captain Keyes.\n\"Shut down all systems, Cortana. I want us to be dark when we hit normal space. If the Covenant did follow usmaybe we can hide.\"\n\"Aye, sir. Running dark.\"The view screen filed with green light; smears of stars came into focus. A purple-hued gas giant filled a third of the screen. Captain Keyes said, \"Fire thrusters to position us in orbit around the planet, Ensign Lovell.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" he replied.ThePillar of Autumn glided around the gravity well of the moon.Cortana detected a radar echo ahead, an object hidden in the shadow. As the ship rounded the dark side of the gas giant, the object came into full view. It was a ring-shaped structure . . . gigantic.\n\"Cortana,\" Captain Keyes whispered. \"What is that?\"Cortana noted a sudden spike in pulse and respiration among the bridge crew . . . particularly the Captain. The object spun serenely in the heavens. The outer surface was gray metal, reflecting the brilliant starlight. From this distance, the surface of the object seemed to be engraved with deep, ornate geometric patterns.\n\"Could this be some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon?\" Dominique asked.\n\"Unknown,\" Cortana replied. She activated the ship's long-range detection gear. Cortana's holo image frowned. ThePillar of Autumn\n's scanning systems were fine for combat . . . but for this kind of analysis it was like using stone tools. She diverted processing power away from ancillary systems and channeled it into the task. Figures scrolled across the sensor displays.\"The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,\" Cortana announced, \"and twenty-two point three kilometers thick. Spectroscopic analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant materials, sir.\"\nShe paused and aimed the long-range camera array at the ring. A moment later a close-up of the object snapped into focus. Keyes let out a low whistle.The inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and brownstrackless desert; jungles; glaciers and vast oceans. Streaks of white clouds cast deep shadows upon the terrain. The ring rotated and brought a new feature into viewa tremendous hurricane forming over an unimaginably wide body of water. Equations scrolled furiously across Cortana as she studied the ring. She checked and rechecked her numbersthe rotational speed of the object and its estimated mass. They didn't quite add up. She ran through a series of passive and active scans . . . and found something.\n\"Captain,\" Cortana said, \"the object is clearly artificial. There's a gravity field that controls the ring's spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. At this rangeand with this gearI can't say with one hundred percent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and Earth-normal gravity.\"\n\"If it's artificial, who the hell built it . . . and what in God's name is it?\"Cortana processed that question for a full three seconds, then finally answered: \"I don't know, sir.\"\nCaptain Keyes took out his pipe, lit it, and puffed once. He examined the curls of smoke thoughtfully.\n\"Then we'd better find out.\"\nThey stand aloneundauntedbefore the mightiest enemy in the universe.\n\n But these are no ordinary men. They are SPARTANS . . .\n\n\nPLUMB THE THRILLING DEPTHS OF HALOAS SECRETS UNFOLD AND THE ACTION BEGINS . . .\n HALOThe Fall of Reach A Del ReyBook Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group\n\nCopyright  2001 by Microsoft Corporation All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.\n\nBungie, Halo, Xbox, and the Xbox Logos are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Used under license.  2001 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.\n\nDel Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. www.delreydigital.com\n\nISBN 0-345-45134-1\n\nFirst Edition: November 2001"
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "THE FLOOD WILLIAM C. DIETZ BALLANTINE BOOKS  NEW YORK\n\nFor Marjorie, with love and gratitude.\n\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks go to Steve Saffel for charting the course, to Doug Zartman for coordinating the pieces, to Eric S. Trautmann for polishing 'til it sparkled, to Eric Nylund who led the way inThe Fall of Reach , to Nancy Figatner and the Franchise Development Group for their support, and to Jason Jones, who, along with the rest of the outstanding Bungie team, created one helluva pulse-pounding game.\n\n\nPROLOGUE\n0103 Hours, September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSC CruiserPillar of Autumn, location unknown. Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the intercom roused him from fitful sleep. He rubbed his blurry eyes and glanced at the Mission Clock bolted to the wall above his bunk. He'd been asleep for three hours his first sleep cycle in thirty-six hours, damn it. Worse, this was the first time since the ship had jumped that he'd been able to fall asleepat all .\n\"Jesus,\" he muttered, \"this better be good.\" THE FLOOD WILLIAM C. DIETZ BALLANTINE BOOKS  NEW YORK\n\nFor Marjorie, with love and gratitude.\n\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks go to Steve Saffel for charting the course, to Doug Zartman for coordinating the pieces, to Eric S. Trautmann for polishing 'til it sparkled, to Eric Nylund who led the way inThe Fall of Reach , to Nancy Figatner and the Franchise Development Group for their support, and to Jason Jones, who, along with the rest of the outstanding Bungie team, created one helluva pulse-pounding game.\n\n\nPROLOGUE\n0103 Hours, September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSC CruiserPillar of Autumn, location unknown. Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the intercom roused him from fitful sleep. He rubbed his blurry eyes and glanced at the Mission Clock bolted to the wall above his bunk. He'd been asleep for three hours his first sleep cycle in thirty-six hours, damn it. Worse, this was the first time since the ship had jumped that he'd been able to fall asleepat all .\n\"Jesus,\" he muttered, \"this better be good.\" The Old Man had put the tech crews on triple shifts after thePillar of Autumn jumped away from Reach. The ship was a mess after the battle, and what was left of the engineering crews worked around the clock to keep the aging cruiser in one piece. Nearly one third of the tech staff had died during the flight from Reach, and every department was running a skeleton crew. Everyone else went into the freezer, of coursenonessential personnel always got an ice-nap during a Slipspace jump. In over two hundred combat cruises, Marcus had clocked fewer than seventy-two hours in cryostorage. Right now, though, he was so tired that even the discomfort of cryorevival sounded appealing if it meant that he could manage some uninterrupted sleep. Of course, it was difficult to complain; Captain Keyes was a brilliant tacticianand everyone aboard theAutumn knew just how close they'd come to destruction when Reach fell to the enemy. A major naval base destroyed, millions dead or dying as the Covenant burned the planet to a cinderand one of Earth's few remaining defenses transformed into corpses and molten slag. All in all, they'd been damned lucky to get awaybut Sam couldn't help but feel that everyone on theAutumn was living on borrowed time. The intercom buzzed again, and Sam swung himself out of the bunk. He jabbed at the comm control. \"Marcus here,\" he growled.\n\"I'm sorry to wake you, Sam, but I need you down in Cryo Two.\" Tech Chief Shephard sounded exhausted. \"It's important.\"\n\"Cryo Two?\" Sam repeated, puzzled. \"What's the emergency, Thom? I'm not a cryo specialist.\"\n\"I can't give you specifics, Sam. The Captain wants it kept off the comm,\"\nShephard replied, his voice almost a whisper. \"Just in case we have eavesdroppers.\"\nSam winced at the tone in his superior's voice. He'd known Thom Shephard since the Academy and had never heard the man sound so grim.\n\"Look,\" Shephard said, \"I need someone I can depend on. Like it or not, that's you, pal. You've cross-checked on cryo systems.\" Sam sighed. \"Months ago . . . but yes.\"\n\"I'm sending a feed to your terminal, Sam,\" Shephard continued. \"It'll answer some of your questions anyway. Dump it to a portable 'pad, grab your gear and get down here.\"\n\"Roger,\" Sam said. He stood, shrugged into his uniform tunic, and stepped over to his terminal. He activated the computer and waited for the upload from Shephard. As he waited, his eyes locked on a small two-dee photograph taped to the edge of the screen. Sam brushed his fingers against the photo. The pretty young woman frozen in the picture smiled back at him. The terminal chimed as the feed from Shephard appeared in Sam's message queue. \"Receiving the feed, Chief,\" he called out to the intercom pickup. He opened the file. A frown creased his tired features as a new message scrolled across his screen.\n>FILE ENCRYPTED/EYES ONLY/MARCUS, SAMUEL N./SN:18827318209-M.\n>DECRYPTION KEY: [PERSONALIZED: \"ELLEN'S ANNIVERSARY\"]\nHe glanced back at the picture of his wife. He hadn't seen Ellen in almost three yearssince his last shore leave on Earth, in fact. He didn't know anyone on active duty who'd been able to see their loved ones for years. The war simply didn't allow for it. Sam's frown deepened. UNSC personnel generally avoided talking about the people back home. The war had been going badly for so long that morale was rock-bottom. Thinking about the home front only made things worse. The fact that Thom had personalized the security encoding was unusual enough; reminding Sam of his wife in the process was completely out of character for Chief Shephard. Someone was being security-conscious to the point of paranoia. He punched in a series of numbersthe date of his weddingand enabled the decryption suite. In seconds, the screen filled with schematics and tech readouts. His practiced eye scanned the fileand adrenaline suddenly spiked through his fatigue like a bolt of lightning. \"Christ,\" he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. \"Thom, is this what . . . who Ithink it is?\"\n\"Damn right. Get down to Cryo Two on the double, Sam. We've got an important package to thaw outand we drop back into real space soon.\"\n\"On my way,\" he said. He killed the intercom connection, his exhaustion forgotten. Sam quickly dumped the tech file to his portable compad and deleted the original from his computer. He strode toward the door to his cabin, then stopped. He snatched Ellen's picture from the workstationalmost as an afterthoughtand shoved it into his pocket. He sprinted for the lift. If the Captain wanted the inhabitant of Cryo Two revived, it meant that Keyes believed that the situation was about to go from bad to worse . . . or it already had.\n\nUnlike vessels designed by humansin which the command area was almost always located toward the ship's bowCovenant ships were constructed in a more logical fashion, which meant that their control rooms were buried deep within heavily armored hulls, making them impervious to anything less than a mortal blow. The differences did not end there. Rather than surround themselves with all manner of control interfaces, plus the lesser beings required to staff them, the Elites preferred to command from the center of an ascetically barren platform held in place by a latticework of opposing gravity beams. However, none of these things were at the forefront of Ship Master Orna\n'Fulsamee's mind as he stood at the center of his destroyer's control room and stared at the data projections which appeared to float in front of him. One showed the ring world, Halo. Near that, a tiny arrow tracked the interloper's course. The second projection displayed a schematic titledHUMAN ATTACK SHIP, TYPE C -11. A third scrolled a constant flow of targeting data and sensor readouts. He fought a moment of revulsion. That these filthy primates somehow merited an actual namelet alone names for their inferior constructsgalled him to his core. It was perverse. Names implied legitimacy, and the vermin deserved only extermination. The humans had \"names\" for his own kind\"Elites\"as well as the lesser races of the Covenant: \"Jackals,\" \"Grunts,\" \"Hunters.\" The appalling temerity of the filthy creatures, that they would darename his people with their harsh, barbaric tongue, was beyond the pale. He paused, and regained his composure. 'Fulsamee clicked his lower mandiblesthe equivalent of a shrugand mentally recited one of the True Sayings.Such is the Prophets' decree, he thought. One didn't question such things, even when one was a Ship Master. The Prophets had assigned names to the enemy craft, and he would honor their decrees. Any less was a disgraceful dereliction of duty. Like all of his kind, the Covenant officer appeared to be larger than he actually was, due to the armor that he wore. It gave him an angular, somewhat hunched appearance which, when combined with a heavy, pugnacious jaw, caused him to look like what he was: a very dangerous warrior. His voice was calm and well modulated as he assessed the situation.\n\"They must have followed one of our ships. The culprit will be found and put to death at once, Exalted.\"\nThe being who floated next to 'Fulsamee bobbed slightly as a gust of air nudged his heavily swathed body. He wore a tall, ornate headpiece made of metal and set with amber panels. The Prophet had a serpentine neck, a triangular skull, and two bright green eyes which glittered with malevolent intelligence. He wore a red overrobe, a gold underrobe, and somewhere, hidden beneath all the fabric, an antigrav belt which served to keep his body suspended one full unit off the deck. Though only a Minor Prophet, he still outranked 'Fulsamee, as his bearing made clear. True Sayings aside, the Ship Master couldn't help but be reminded of the tiny, squealing rodents he had hunted in his childhood. He immediately banished the memory of blood on his claws and returned his attention to the Prophet, and his tiresome assistant. The assistant, a lower-rank Elite named Bako 'Ikaporamee, stepped forward to speak on the Prophet's behalf. He had an annoying tendency to use the royal \"we,\" a habit that angered 'Fulsamee. \"That is very unlikely, Ship Master. We doubt the humans have the means to follow one of our vessels through a jump. Even if they do, why would they send only a single cruiser? Is it not their way to drown us in their own blood? No, we think it's safe to surmise that this ship arrived in the system by accident.\"\nThe words dripped with condescension, a fact which made the Ship Master angry, but couldn't be addressed. Not directly, and certainly not with the Prophet present, although 'Fulsamee wasn't willing to cave in completely.\n\"So,\" 'Fulsamee said, careful to direct his comment to 'Ikaporamee alone,\n\"you would have me believe that the interlopers arrived here entirely bychance ?\"\n\"No, of course not,\" 'Ikaporamee replied loftily. \"Though primitive by our standards, the creaturesare sentient, and like all sentient beings, they are unconsciously drawn to the glory of the ancients' truth and knowledge.\"\nLike all the members of his caste, 'Fulsamee knew that the Prophets had evolved on a planet which the mysterious truth-givers had previously inhabited, and then, for reasons known only to the ancients themselves, subsequently abandoned. This ring world was an excellent example of the ancients' power . . . and inscrutability.\n'Fulsamee found it hard to believe that mere humans would be drawn here, the ancients' wisdom notwithstanding, but 'Ikaporamee spoke for the Prophet, so it must be true. 'Fulsamee touched the light panel in front of him. A symbol glowed red. \"Prepare to fire plasma torpedoes. Launch on my command.\"\n'Ikaporamee raised both hands in alarm. \"No!We forbid it. The human vessel is much too close to the construct! What if your weapons were to damage the holy relic? Pursue the ship, board it, and seize control. Anything else is far too dangerous.\"\nAngered by what he saw as 'Ikaporamee's interference, 'Fulsamee spoke through gritted teeth. \"The course of action that the holy one recommends is likely to result in a high number of casualties. Is this acceptable?\"\n\"The opportunity to transcend the physical is a gift to be sought after,\" the other responded. \"The humans are willing to spendtheir livescan we do less?\" No,'Fulsamee thought,but we should aspire to more. He again clicked his lower mandibles, and touched the light panel. \"Cancel the previous order. Load four transports with troops, and launch another flight of fighters. Neutralize the interloper's weaponry before the boarding craft reach their target.\"\nA hundred units aft, sealed within the destroyer's fire control center, a half commander acknowledged the order and issued instructions of his own. Lights began to strobe, the decks transmitted a low frequency vibration, and more than three hundred battle-ready Covenant warriorsa mix of what the humans called Elites, Jackals, and Gruntsrushed to board their assigned transports. There were humans to kill. None of them wanted to miss the fun.\n\n\nSECTION I PILLAR OF AUTUMN\n\nCHAPTER ONE\n0127 Hours (Ship's Time), September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) /\nUNSC CruiserPillar of Autumn , location unknown. ThePillar of Autumn shuddered as her Titanium-A armor took a direct hit. Just another item in the Covenant's bottomless arsenal,Captain Jacob Keyes thought.Not a plasma torpedo, or we'd already be free-floating molecules. The warship had taken a beating from Covenant forces off Reach and it was a miracle that the hull remained intact and even more remarkable that they'd been able to make a jump into Slipspace at all.\n\"Status!\" Keyes barked. \"What just hit us?\" \"Covenant fighter, sir. Seraph-class,\" the tactical officer, Lieutenant Hikowa, replied. Her porcelain features darkened. \"Tricky bastard must have powered down and slipped past our sentry ships.\"\nA humorless grin tugged at Keyes' mouth. Hikowa was a first-rate tactical officer, utterly ruthless in a fight. She seemed to take the Covenant fighter pilot's actions as a personal insult. \"Teach him a lesson, Lieutenant,\" he said. She nodded and tapped a series of orders into her panelnew orders for theAutumn 's fighter squadron. A moment later, there was radio chatter as one of theAutumn 's C709\nLongsword fighters went after the Seraph, followed by a cheer as the tiny alien ship transformed into a momentary sun, complete with its own system of co-orbiting debris. Keyes wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. He checked his display they'd reverted back into real space twenty minutes ago.Twenty minutes , and the Covenant picket patrols had already found them and started shooting. He turned to the bridge's main viewport, a large transparent bubble slung beneath theAutumn 's bow superstructure. A massive purple gas giant Thresholddominated the spectacular view. One of the Longsword fighters glided past as it continued its patrol. When Keyes had been given command of thePillar of Autumn , he'd been skeptical of the large, domed viewport. \"The Covenant are tough enough,\"\nhe had argued to Admiral Stanforth. \"Why give them an easy shot into my bridge?\"\nHe'd lost the argumentcaptains don't win debates with admirals, and in any case there simply hadn't been time to armor the viewport. He had to admit, though, the view was almost worth the risk. Almost. He absently toyed with the pipe he habitually carried, lost in thought. It ran completely counter to his nature to slink around in the shadow of a gas giant. He respected the Covenant as a dangerous, deadly enemy, and hated them for their savage butchery of human colonists and fellow soldiers alike. He had never feared them, however. Soldiers didn't hide from the enemythey met the enemy head-on. He moved back to the command station and activated his navigation suite. He plotted a course deeper in-system, and fed the data to Ensign Lovell, the navigator.\n\"Captain,\" Hikowa piped up. \"Sensors paint a squadron of enemy fighters inbound. Looks like boarding craft are right behind them.\"\n\"It was just a matter of time, Lieutenant.\" He sighed. \"We can't hide here forever.\"\nThePillar seemed to glide out of the shadow cast by the gas giant, and into bright sunlight. Keyes' eyes widened with surprise as the ship cleared the gas giant. He had expected to see a Covenant cruiser, Seraph fighters, or some other military threat. He hadn't expected to see the massive object floating in a Lagrange point between Threshold and its moon, Basis. The construct was enormousa ring-shaped object that shimmered and glowed with reflected starlight, like a jewel lit from within. The outer surface was metallic and seemed to be engraved with deep geometric patterns. \"Cortana,\" Captain Keyes said. \"Whatis that?\"\nA foot-high hologram faded into view above a small holopad near the captain's station. Cortanathe ship's powerful artificial intelligence frowned as she activated the ship's long-range detection gear. Long lines of digits scrolled across the sensor displays and rippled the length of Cortana's\n\"body\" as well.\n\"The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,\" Cortana announced, \"and twenty-two point three kilometers thick. Spectroscopic analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant materials, sir.\"\nKeyes nodded. The preliminary finding was interesting,very interesting, since Covenant ships had already been present when theAutumn dropped out of Slipspace and right into their laps. When he first saw the ring, Keyes had a sinking feeling that the construct was a large Covenant installationone far beyond the scope of human engineering. The thought that the construct might also be beyondCovenant engineering held some small comfort. It also made him nervous. Under intense pressure from enemy warships in the Epsilon Eridani systemthe location of the UNSC's last major naval base, ReachCortana had been forced to launch the ship toward a random set of coordinates, a standard procedure to lead the Covenant forces away from Earth. Now it appeared that the men and women aboard thePillar of Autumn had succeeded in leaving their original pursuers behind, only to encounter even more Covenant forceshere . . . wherever \"here\" was. Cortana aimed a long-range camera array at the ring and a close-up snapped into focus. Keyes let out a long, slow whistle. The construct's inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and brownstrackless desert, jungles, glaciers, and oceans. Streaks of white clouds cast deep shadows on the terrain below. The ring rotated and brought a new feature into view: a tremendous hurricane forming over a large body of water. Equations again scrolled across the AI's semitransparent body as she continued to evaluate the incoming data. \"Captain,\" Cortana said, \"the object is clearly artificial. There's a gravity field that controls the ring's spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. I can't say with one hundred percent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and Earth normal gravity.\"\nKeyes raised an eyebrow. \"If it's artificial, who the hell built it, and what in God's name is it?\"\nCortana processed the question for a full three seconds. \"I don't know, sir.\"\nRegulations be damned,Keyes thought. He took out his pipe, used an old fashioned match to light it, and produced a puff of fragrant smoke. The ring world shimmered on the status monitors. \"Then we'd better find out.\"\n Sam Marcus rubbed his aching neck with hands that trembled with fatigue. The rush of adrenaline that had flooded him when he'd received Tech Chief Shephard's instructions had worn off. Now he just felt tired, strung out, and more than a little afraid. He shook his head to clear it and surveyed the small observation theater. Each cryostorage bay was equipped with such a station, a central monitoring facility for the hundreds of cryotubes the storage bays held. By shipboard standards, the Cryo Two Observation Theater was large, but the proliferation of life-sign monitors, diagnostic gauges, and computer terminalstied directly into the individual cryotubes stored in the bay belowmade the room seem cramped and uncomfortable. A chime sounded and Sam's eyes swept across the status monitors. There was only one active cryotube in this bay, and its monitor pinged for his attention. He double-checked the main instrument panel, then keyed the intercom. \"He's coming around, sir,\" he said. He turned and looked out the observation bay's window. Tech Chief Thom Shephard waved up at Sam from the floor of Cryostorage Unit Two. \"Good work, Sam,\" he called back. \"Almost time to pop the seal.\"\nThe status monitors continued to feed information to the observation theater. The subject's body temperature was approaching normalat least, Sam assumed it was normal; he'd never awakened a Spartan beforeand most of the chemicals had already been flushed out of his system.\n\"He's in a REM cycle now, Chief,\" Sam called out, \"and his brainwave activity shows he's dreamingthat means he's pretty much thawed. Shouldn't be long now.\"\n\"Good,\" Shephard replied. \"Keep an eye on those neuro readings. We packed him in wearing his combat armor. There may be some feedback effects to watch out for.\"\n\"Acknowledged.\"\nA red light winked to life on the security terminal, and a new series of codes flashed across the screen: >WAKE-UP SERIES STANDBY. SECURITY LOCK [PRIORITY ALPHA] ENGAGED.\n>x-CORTANA.1.0CRYOSTOR.23.4.7\n\"What the hell?\" Sam muttered. He keyed the bay intercom again. \"Thom?\nThere's something weird here . . . some kind of security lockout from the bridge.\"\n\"Acknowledged.\" There was a static-spotted click as Shephard looped in the bridge channel. \"Cryo Two to Bridge.\"\n\"Go ahead, Cryo Two,\" a female voice replied, laced with the telltale warble of synthesized speech.\n\"We're ready to pop the seal on our . . . guest, Cortana,\" Shephard explained. \"We need\"\n\"the security code,\" the AI finished. \"Transmitting. Bridge out.\"\nAlmost instantly, a new line of text scrolled across the security screen:\n>UNSEAL THE HUSHED CASKET. Sam hit the execute command, the security lockout dropped away, and a countdown timer began marking time until the wake-up sequence would be completed. The soldier was coming around. Respiration was up, ditto his heart rate, as both returned to normal levels.Here he is, Sam thought,a real honest-to-god Spartan. Not just any Spartan, but maybe thelast Spartan. The shipboard scuttlebutt said that the rest of them had bought the farm at Reach. Like his fellow techs, Sam had heard of the program, though he'd never seen anactual Spartan in person. In order to deal with increasing civil turmoil the Colonial Military Administration had secretly launched Project ORION back in 2491. The purpose of the program was to develop supersoldiers, code named \"Spartans,\" who would receive special training and physical augmentation. The initial effort was successful, and in 2517 a new group of Spartans, the II-series, had been selected as the next generation of supersoldier. The project had been intended to remain secret, but the Covenant War had changed all that. It was no secret that the human race was on the verge of defeat. The Covenant's ships and space technology were just too advanced. While human forces could hold their own in a ground engagement, the Covenant would simply fall back into space and glass the planet from orbit. As the situation grew increasingly grim, the Admiralty was faced with the ugly prospect of fighting a two-front warone against the Covenant in space, and another against the collapsing human society on the ground. The general public and the rank-and-file in the military needed a morale boost, so the existence of the SPARTAN-II project was revealed. There were now successful heroes to rally behind, men and women who had taken the fight to the enemy and won several decisive battles. Even the Covenant seemed to fear the Spartans. Except they were gone now, all but one, sacrificed to protect the human race from the Covenant and the very real possibility of extinction. Sam gazed on the soldier in front of him with something akin to awe. Here, about to rise as if from a grave, was a true hero. It was a moment to remember, and if he was lucky enough to survive, to tell his children about. It didn't make him any less afraid, however. If the stories were true, the man gradually regaining consciousness in the bay below was almost as alien, and certainly as dangerous, as the Covenant.\n\nHe was floating in the never-never land somewhere between cryo and full consciousness when the dream began. It was a familiar dream, a pleasant dream, and one which had nothing to do with war. He was on Eridanus IIthe colony world he'd been born on, long since destroyed by the Covenant. He heard laughter all around. A female voice called him by nameJohn. A moment later, arms held him, and he recognized the familiar scent of soap. The woman said something nice to him, and he wanted to say something nice in return, but the words wouldn't come. He tried tosee her, tried to penetrate the haze that obscured her face, and was rewarded with the image of a woman with large eyes, a straight nose, and full lips. The picture wavered, indistinct, like a reflection in a pond. In an eyeblink, the woman who held him transformed. Now she had dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and pale skin. He knew her name: Dr. Halsey. Dr. Catherine Halsey had selected him for the SPARTAN-II project. While most believed that the current generation of Spartans had been culled from the best of the UNSC military, only a handful of people knew the truth. Halsey's program involved the actual abduction of specially-screened children. The children were flash-clonedwhich made the duplicates prone to neurological disordersand the clones covertly returned to the parents, who never suspected that their sons and daughters were duplicates. In many ways, Dr. Halsey was the only \"mother\" that he had ever known. But Dr. Halseywasn't his mother, nor was the pale semitranslucent image of Cortana that appeared to replace her. The dream changed. A dark, nebulous shape loomed behind the Mother/Halsey/Cortana figure. He didn't know what it was, but it was a threatof that he was certain. His combat instincts kicked in, and adrenaline coursed through him. He quickly surveyed the areasome kind of playground, with high wooden poles, distantly familiarand decided on the best route to flank the new threat. He spied an assault rifle, a powerful MA5B, nearby. If he placed himself between the woman and the threat, his armor could take the brunt of an attack, and he could return fire. He moved quickly, and the dark shape howled at hima fierce and terrifying war cry. The beast was impossibly fast. It was on him in seconds. He grabbed the assault rifle and turned to open fireand discovered to his horror that he couldn't lift the weapon. His arms were small, underdeveloped. His armor was gone, and his body was that of a six-year old child. He was powerless in the face of the threat. He roared back at the beast in rage and fearangry not just at the threat, but at his own sudden powerlessness . . . The dream started to fade, and light appeared in front of the Spartan's eyes. Vapor vented, swirled, and began to dissipate. A voice came, as if from a great distance. It was male and matter-of-fact.\n\"Sorry for the quick thaw, Master Chiefbut things are a bit hectic right now. The disorientation should pass quickly.\"\nA second voice welcomed him back and it took the Spartan a moment to remember where he'd been prior to entering the cryotube. There had been a battle, a terrible battle, in which most if not all of his Spartan brothers and sisters had been killed. Men and women with whom he had been raised and trained since the age of six, and who, unlike the dimly remembered woman of his dreams, constituted hisreal family. With the memory, plus subtle changes to the gas mix that filled his lungs, came strength. He flexed his stiff limbs. The Spartan heard the tech say something about \"freezer burn,\" and pushed himself up and out of the cryotube's chilly embrace.\n\n\"God in heaven,\" Sam whispered. The Spartan was huge, easily seven feet tall. Encased in pearlescent green battle armor, the man looked like a figure from mythologyotherworldly and terrifying. Master Chief SPARTAN-117 stepped from his tube and surveyed the cryo bay. The mirrored visor on his helmet made him all the more fearsome, a faceless, impassive soldier built for destruction and death. Sam was glad that he was up here in the observation theater, rather than down on the Cryo Two main floor with the Spartan. He realized that Thom was waiting for diagnostic data. He checked the displaysneural pathways clear, no fluctuations in heartbeat or brainwave activity. He opened an intercom channel. \"I'm bringing his health monitors on-line now.\"\nSam watched as Thom led the Spartan to the various test stations in the bay, pitching in where he was required. In short order, the soldier's gear had been brought on-linerecharging shield system, real-time health monitors, targeting and optical systems all read in the green. The suitcode-named MJOLNIR armorwas a marvel of engineering, Sam had to admit. According to the specs he'd received, the suit's shell consisted of a multilayered alloy of remarkable strength, a refractive coating that could disperse a fair amount of directed energy, a crystalline storage matrix that could support the same level of artificial intelligence usually reserved for a starship, and a layer of gel which conformed to the wearer's skin and functioned to regulate temperature. Additional memory packets and signal conduits had been implanted into the Spartan's body, and two externally accessible input slots had been installed near the base of his skull. Taken together, the combined systems served to double his strength, enhance his already lightning-fast reflexes, and make it possible for him to navigate through the intricacies of any high-tech battlefield. There were substantial life-support systems built into the MJOLNIR gear. Most soldiers went into cryo naked, since covered skin generally reacted badly to the cryo process. Sam had once worn a bandage into the freezer and discovered the affected skin blistered and raw when he woke up. The Spartan's skin must have hurt like hell, he realized. Through it all, though, the soldier remained silent, simply nodding when asked questions or quietly complying with requests from Thom. It was eeriehe moved with mechanistic efficiency from one test to the next, like a robot. Cortana's voice rang from the shipwide com: \"Sensors show inbound Covenant boarding craft. Stand by to repel boarders.\"\nSam felt a pang of fearand sorrow for the Covenant troops that would have to face this Spartan in combat.\n The neural interface which linked the Master Chief to his MJOLNIR armor was working perfectly, and immediately fed data to his helmet's heads-up display on the inside surface of his visor. It felt good to move around, and the Master Chief quietly flexed his fingers. His skin itched and stung, a side effect of the cryo gases, but he quickly banished the pain from his awareness. He had long ago learned how to disassociate himself from physical discomfort. He'd heard Cortana's announcement. The Covenant were on their way. Good. He scanned the room for weapons, but there was no arms locker present. The lack of weapons wasn't of great concern to him; he'd taken weapons away from Covenant soldiers before. The intercom crackled again: \"Bridge to Cryo Twothis is Captain Keyes. Send the Master Chief to the bridge immediately.\"\nOne of the techs started to object, pointing out that more tests were required, when Keyes cut in. He said, \"On the double, crewman,\" and the rating gave the only reply he could.\n\"Aye, aye, sir.\"\nThe tech chief turned and faced him. \"We'll find weapons later.\"\nThe Master Chief nodded and was about to move for the door when an explosion echoed through the cryo bay.\n\nThe first blasts slammed into the observation theater's door with a noise that made Sam jump. His heart pounded as he quickly hit the door controls, engaging an emergency lockout. A heavy metal barrier slammed into place with a crashthen began to glow red as Covenant energy weapons burned their way through.\n\"They're trying to get through the door!\" he yelled. He glanced down into the bay and saw Thom, a stricken look on his face. Sam could see his own startled reflection in the Spartan's mirrored visor. Sam lunged for the alarm, and had time to call in an alert. Then, the security door exploded in a shower of fire and molten steel. He heard the whine of plasma rifle fire, then felt something punch him in the chest. His vision blurred, and he groped to feel the wound. His hands came away sticky with blood.It doesn't hurt, he thought.It should hurt, shouldn't it?\nHe felt disoriented, confused. He could see a flurry of movement, as armored figures swarmed into the observation theater. He ignored them and focused on his wife's picturesmeared with his own bloodwhich had somehow fallen to the deckplates. He fell to his knees and scrambled for the photograph, his hands shaking. His field of vision narrowed as he struggled to reach the discarded photo. It was only inches away now, but the distance felt like miles. He'd never been so tired. His wife's name echoed in his mind. Sam's fingers had just brushed the edge of the photograph when an armored boot pinned his arm to the deck. Long, clawed fingers plucked the picture from the floor. Sam cursed weakly and struggled to face his attacker. The alienan Elite cocked his head at the image in puzzlement. He glanced down, as if noticing Sam for the first time. The human continued to reach for the picture. He dimly heard Thom's voice call out in anguish: \"Sam!\"\nThe Elite aimed the plasma rifle at Sam's head and fired.\n\nThe Master Chief bristled. Covenant forces were in close proximity, and a fellow soldier had just died. He longed to climb to the observation bay and engage the enemybut orders were orders. He needed to get to the bridge. The cryo tech keyed open a hatchway. \"Come on!\" he yelled, \"we've got to get the hell out of here!\"\nThe Master Chief followed the crewman through the hatch and down the corridor. A sudden explosion blew the next door to smithereens, hurled what remained of the technician's body down the passageway, and caused the Chief's shields to flare. He mentally reviewed the schematics of the Halcyon-class line of ships and doubled back. He vaulted over a pair of power conduits, and landed in the dimly lit maintenance hallway beyond. An emergency beacon strobed and alarms wailed. The rumble of a second explosion echoed down the corridor. He pushed ahead, past a dead crewman, and into the next section of hallway. The Master Chief saw a hatch, its security panel pulsing green, and hurried forward. There was a third explosion, but his armor deflected the force of the blast. The Spartan forced open the partially melted door, saw an opening to his left, and heard someone scream. A naval crewman fired his sidearm at a target the Master Chief couldn't seeand the deck shuddered as a missile struck theAutumn 's hull. The Master Chief ducked under a half-raised door just in time to see the crewman take an energy bolt through the chest as the rest of the human counterboarders returned fire. Covenant forces backed through a hatch and were forced to retreat into an adjoining compartment. Chaos reigned as the ship's crew did the best they could to push the boarders back toward the air locks or to trap them in compartments where they could be contained and dispatched later. Unarmed, and well aware of the fact that Captain Keyes needed him on the bridge, the Master Chief had little choice but to follow the signs, and avoid the firefights that raged all around. He made his way down a darkened access corridorthe Covenant boarders must have shorted out the illumination circuits in this compartmentand nearly ran headlong into a Covenant Elite. The alien's personal shields sparked and he roared in surprise and anger. The Spartan crouched and prepared to meet the alien soldier's chargethen ducked, as a Marine fire-team unleashed a barrage of assault-rifle fire at the Elite. Purple gore splashed the bulkhead, and the alien dropped in a crumpled heap. The Marines moved forward to secure the area, and the Chief nodded in thanks to the squad leader. He turned, sprinted down the passageway, and made it to the bridge without further incident. He looked out through the main viewport, saw the strange-looking construct that floated out beyond the cruiser's hull, and was momentarily curious about what it was. No doubt the Captain would fill him in. He strode toward the captain's station, near the center of the bridge. A variety of naval personnel sat hunched at their consoles as they struggled to control their beleaguered vessel. Some battled the latest wave of Seraph fighters, others worked on damage control, and one grim-faced Lieutenant made use of the ship's environmental systems to suck the atmosphere out of those compartments which had been occupied by Covenant forces. Some of the enemy carried their own atmosphere, but some of them didn't, and that made them vulnerable. There were crew in some of those spaces, perhaps some she knew personally, but there was no way to save them. If she didn't kill them, then the enemy would. The Chief understood the situation well. Better a quick death in vacuum than at the hands of the Covenant. He spotted Keyes near the main tactical display. Keyes studied the screens intently, particularly a large display of the strange ring. The Spartan came to attention. \"Captain Keyes.\"\nCaptain Keyes turned to face him. \"Good to see you, Master Chief. Things aren't going well. Cortana did her bestbut we never really had a chance.\"\nThe AI arched a holographic eyebrow. \"A dozen Covenant battleships against a single Halcyon-class cruiser . . . With those odds we still had three\" She paused, as if distracted, then amended: \"make thatfour kills.\"\nCortana looked at the Chief. \"Sleep well?\"\n\"Yes,\" he replied. \"No thanks to your driving.\"\nCortana smiled. \"So, youdid miss me.\" Before he could reply, another blast rocked the entire ship. He grabbed a nearby support pillar and braced himself, as several crewers crashed to the deck nearby. Keyes grabbed onto a console for support. \"Report!\"\nCortana shimmered blue. \"It must have been one of their boarding parties. My guess is an antimatter charge.\"\nThe fire control officer turned in his seat. \"Ma'am! Fire control for the main cannon is off-line!\"\nCortana looked at Keyes. The loss of the ship's primary weapon, the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, was a crippling blow to their holding action.\n\"Captain, the cannon was my last defensive option.\"\n\"All right,\" Keyes said gruffly, \"I'm initiating Cole Protocol, Article Two. We're abandoning theAutumn . That means you too, Cortana.\"\n\"While you do what? Go down with the ship?\" she shot back.\n\"In a manner of speaking,\" Keyes replied. \"The object we foundI'm going to try and land theAutumn on it.\"\nCortana shook her head. \"With all due respect . . . this war has enough dead heroes.\"\nThe Captain's eyes locked with hers. \"I appreciate your concern, Cortana but it's not up to me. The Protocol is clear. The destruction or capture of shipboard AI is absolutely unacceptable. That means youare abandoning ship. Lock in a selection of emergency landing zones and upload them to my neural lace.\"\nThe AI paused, then nodded. \"Aye, aye, sir.\"\n\"Which is whereyou come in,\" Keyes continued as he turned to face the Spartan. \"Get Cortana off this ship. Keep her safe from the enemy. If they capture her, they'll learn everything. Force deployment, weapons research.\"\nHe paused, then added: \"Earth.\"\nThe Spartan nodded. \"I understand.\" Keyes glanced at Cortana. \"Are you ready?\"\nThere was a pause as the AI took one last look around. In many ways the ship was her physical body and she was reluctant to leave it. \"Yank me.\"\nKeyes turned to a console, touched a series of controls, and turned back again. The holo shivered and Cortana's image swirled into the pedestal below and disappeared from view. Keyes waited until the holo had disappeared, removed a data chip from the pedestal, and offered it to the Spartan, along with his sidearm. \"Good luck, Master Chief.\"\nSPARTAN-117 accepted the chip and reached back to slot the device into the neural interface, located at the base of his skull. There was a positive click, followed by a flood of sensation as the AI joined him within the confines of the armor's neural network. At first it felt as if someone had poured a cup of ice water into his mind, followed by a momentary jab of pain, and a familiar presence. He'd worked with Cortana beforejust prior to the disaster at Reach. The AI-human interface was intrusive in a way, yet comforting too, since he knew what Cortana could do. He would depend on her during the hours and days aheadjust as she would depend on him. It was like being part of a team again. The Master Chief saluted and left the bridge. The sounds of fighting were even louder now, indicating that, in spite of the crew's best efforts, Covenant forces had still managed to fight their way out of the areas adjacent to the air locks and made it all the way up to the area around the command deck. Bodies lay strewn around the corridor, roughly fifty meters from the bridge. The human defenders had pushed them back, but the Chief could tell that the last assault had been close. Too close. The Master Chief paused to kneel next to a dead ensign, took a moment to close her eyelids, and appropriated the fallen trooper's ammo. The pistol the Captain had given him was standard Navy issue; it fired 12.7mm semi-armor piercing high-explosive ammo from twelve-round clips. Not what he would choose to tackle an Elite withbut good enough for Grunt work. There was a metallicclick as the first clip slid into the pistol's handle, followed by the sudden appearance of a blue circle in his HUDa targeting reticleas his armor made electronic contact with the weapon in his hand. Then, conscious of the need to get Cortana off the ship, he made his way down the corridor. He heard the strange high-pitched squeaks and barks before he actually saw the Covenant Grunts themselves. Consistent with his status as a veteran, the first alien to come around the corner wore red trimmed armor, a methane rig, and a Marine's web pistol belt. The alien wore the captured gear Pancho Villastyle and dragged it across the deck. Two of his comrades brought up the rear. Confident that there were more of the vaguely simian aliens on the way, the Master Chief paused long enough to let more of them appear, then opened fire. The recoil compensators in his armor dampened the effect, but he could still feel the handgun kick against his palm. All three of the Grunts went down from head shots. Phosphorescent blue ichor spattered the deck. It wasn't much, but it was a start. The Master Chief stepped over their bodies and moved on. A lifeboat. That was hisreal goaland he would do whatever it took to find one.\n\nAshamed by the ignominy of it, but consistent with his orders, the Elite named Isna 'Nosolee waited until the Grunts, Jackals, and two members of his own race had charged out through the human air lock before leaving the assault boat himself. Though armed with a plasma pistol, plus a half-dozen grenades, he was there to observe rather than fight, which meant that the Elite would rely on both his energy shielding and active camouflage to keep him alive. His role, and an unaccustomed one at that, was to function as an \"Ossoona,\"\nor Eye of the Prophet. The concept, as outlined to 'Nosolee by his superior, was to insert experienced officers into situations where intelligence could be gleaned, and to do so early enough to obtain high-quality information. Though both intelligent and brave, the Prophets felt that the Elites had an unfortunate tendency to destroy everything in their path, leaving very little for their analysts to analyze. Now, by adding Ossoonas to the combat mix, the Prophets hoped to learn more about the humans, ranging from data on their weapons and force deployments to the greatest prize of all: the coordinates for their home planet, \"Earth.\"\n'Nosolee had three major objectives: to retrieve the enemy ship's AI, to capture senior personnel, and to record everything he saw via the cameras attached to his helmet. The first two goals were bound to be difficult, but a quick check confirmed that the video gear was working, and the third objective was assured. So, even though the assignment was empty of honor, 'Nosolee understood its purpose, and was determined to succeed, if only as a means to return to the regular infantry where he belonged. The Elite heard the rhythmic clatter of a human weapon as a group of their Marines backed around a corner, closely pursued by a pack comprised of Grunts and Jackals. The Ossoona considered killing the humans, thought better of it, and flattened himself against a bulkhead. None of the combatants noticed the point where the metal appeared to be slightly distorted, and a moment later the spy slipped away.\n\nIt seemed as if theAutumn was infested with chrome-armored demons spouting plasma fire. The Master Chief had acquired an MA5B assault rifle along with close to four hundred rounds of 7.62mm armor piercing ammunition. In this situation, with plenty of ordnance lying around, he preferred to reload when the ammo indicator on his weapon dropped to around 10. Failure to do so could result in disaster if he ran into serious opposition. With that in mind, the Chief hit the release, allowed a nearly empty magazine to fall, and shoved a new clip into its place. The weapon's digital ammo counter reset, as did its cousin in his HUD.\n\"We're closer,\" Cortana said from someplace just outside his head. \"Duck through the hatch ahead and go up one level.\" The Master Chief ran into a shimmery, black-clad Elite, and opened fire. There were Grunts in the area as well, but he knew that the Elite posed thereal danger. He expertly sprayed a trio of bursts at the alien. The Elite roared defiance and fired in return, but the sheer volume of the specially hardened 7.62mm projectiles caused the Elite's shielding to flare, overload, and fail. The bulky alien fell to his knees, bent forward, and collapsed. Frightened by what had happened to their leader, the Grunts made barking noises, turned, and began to scurry away. Individually, the Grunts were cowards, but the Spartan had seen what a pack of the creatures could do. He opened fire again. Alien bodies tumbled and fell. He continued on through a hatch, heard more firing, and turned in that direction. Cortana called out: \"Covenant! On the landing above us!\"\nHe ran toward a flight of metal stairs, and charged straight for the landing. Boots rang on metal as he slammed a fresh magazine into the weapon's receiver and passed a wounded Marine. The Spartan remembered the soldier from his last action on one of Reach's orbiting defense stations. The Marine held a dressing to a plasma burn and managed to smile. \"Glad you could make it, Chief . . . we saved some party favors just for you.\"\nThe Spartan nodded, paused on the landing, and took aim at a Jackal. The vaguely birdlike aliens carried energy shieldshandheld units, rather than the full-body protection the Elites favored. The Jackal shifted to take aim at the wounded Marine, and the Chief saw his opening. He fired a burst at the Jackal's unprotected flank and the alien hit the deckplates, dead. He continued the climb up the flight of stairs, and came nearly visor-to-visor with another Elite. The alien roared, charged forward, and attempted to use his plasma rifle like a club. The Master Chief evaded the blowhe'd fought Elites hand-to-hand before, and knew they were dangerously strongand backed away. He leveled the assault weapon at the Elite's belly, and squeezed the trigger. The Covenant soldier seemed to absorb the bullets like a sponge, continued to advance, and was just about to swing when a final round cut through his spinal cord. The alien soldier slammed into the deck, twitched once, and died. SPARTAN-117 reached for another magazine. Another Elite roared, as didanother . There was no time to reload, so the Master Chief turned to take them on. He discarded the assault rifle and drew his sidearm. There were a pair of dead Marines at the aliens' feet, roughly twenty-five meters away.Well within range, he thought, and opened fire. The lead Elite snarled as the powerful handgun rounds tore into the shielding around his head. Sensing the Spartan's threat, the aliens shifted all of their fire in his direction only to watch as it dissipated against his shields and armor. Now, free to direct their fire wherever they chose, the Marines launched a hastily organized counterattack. A fragmentation grenade blew one Elite into bloody ribbons, shredded the Jackals who had the poor judgment to stand next to him, and sent pieces of shrapnel flying across the stairwell to slam into the bulkhead. The other Elite was consumed by a hail of bullets. He seemed to wilt, fold, and fly apart. \"That's what I'm talking about!\" a Marine crowed. He fired acoup de grace into the alien's head. Satisfied that the area was reasonably secure, the Master Chief moved on. He passed through a hatch, helped a pair of Marines take out a group of Grunts, and marched down a corridor drenched with bloodboth human and alien. The deck shook as theAutumn took a new hit from a ship-to-ship missile. There was a muffled clang, and a light flared beyond a viewport.\n\"The lifeboats are launching,\" Cortana announced. \"We should hurry!\"\n\"Iam hurrying,\" the Master Chief replied. \"I'll get there as soon as I can.\"\nCortana started to reply, reconsidered, and processed the equivalent of an apologetic shrug. Sometimes, fallible though they were, humans were right.\n\nFlight Officer Captain Carol Rawley, better known to the ship's Marine contingent by her call sign, \"Foehammer,\" waited for the Grunt to round the corner. She shot him in the head, and the little methane-breathing bastard dropped like a rock. The pilot took a quick peek, verified that the next corridor was clear, and motioned to those behind her. \"Come on! Let's get while the getting's good!\"\nThree pilots, along with an equal number of ground crew, followed as Rawley thundered down the hall. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, and she ran with a flat-footed determination. The plan, if the wild-assed scheme she'd concocted could be dignified as such, was to make it down to the ship's launch bay, jump into their D77-TC \"Pelican\" dropships, and get off theAutumn before the cruiser smacked into the construct below. At best, it would be a tricky takeoff, and a messy landing, but she'd rather die behind the stick of her bird than trust her fate to some lifeboat jockey. Besides, maybe some transports would come in handy, if anybody actually made it off the ship alive. That was looking like an increasingly big maybe.\n\"They're behind us!\" somebody yelled. \"Run faster!\"\nRawley wasn't a sprintershe was a pilot, damn it. She turned to take aim on her pursuers, when a globe of glowing-green plasma sizzled past her ear.\n\"Screw this,\" she yelled, then ran with renewed energy.\n\nAs the battle with the interlopers continued to rage, a Grunt named Yayap led a small detachment of his own kind through a half-melted hatch and came upon the scene of a massacre. The nearest bulkhead was drenched in shimmering blue blood. Spent shell casings were scattered everywhere and a tangled pile of Grunt bodies testified to an engagement lost. Yayap keened in brief mourning for his fallen brethren. That most of the dead were Grunts like Yayap didn't surprise him. The Prophets had long made use of his race as cannon fodder. He hoped that they had gone to a methane-rich paradise, and was about to pass by the gruesome heap, when one of the bodies groaned. The Grunt paused and, accompanied by one of his fellowsa Grunt named Gagawhe waded into the gory mess, only to discover that the noise was associated with a black-armored member of the Elite, one of the \"Prophet blessed\" types who were in charge of this ill-considered raid. By law and custom, Yayap's race was required to revere the Elites as near-divine envoys of the Prophets. Of course, the implementation of law and custom was somewhat flexible on the battlefield.\n\"Leave him,\" Gagaw advised. \"That's whathe would do if it were one of us lying wounded.\"\n\"True,\" Yayap said thoughtfully, \"but it would take all five of us to carry him back to the assault boat.\"\nIt took Gagaw ten full heartbeats to assimilate the idea and finally appreciate the genius of it. \"We wouldn't have to fight!\"\n\"Precisely,\" Yayap said, as the sounds of battle grew louder once more, \"so let's slap some dressings on his wounds, grab his arms and legs, and drag his ass out of here.\"\nA quick check revealed that the Elite's wounds weren't mortal. A human projectile had punched its way through the warrior's visor, sliced along the side of his head, and flattened itself on the inside surface of the Elite's helmet. The force of the blow had knocked him unconscious. Aside from that, and some cuts and bruises sustained when he fell, the Elite would survive.A pity, Yayap thought. Satisfied that their ticket off the ship would live long enough to get them where they wanted to go, the Grunts grabbed the warrior's limbs and waddled down the corridor. Their battle was over.\n\nTheAutumn 's contingent of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, also known as ODST, or \"Helljumpers,\" had been assigned to protect the cruiser's experimental power plant, which consisted of a unique network of fusion engines. The engine room was served by two main access points, each protected by a Titanium-A hatch. Both were connected by a catwalk and were still under human control. The fact that Major Antonio Silva's Marines had been forced to stack the Covenant bodies like firewood in order to maintain clear fields of fire testified to how effective the men and women under his command had been. There had been human casualties as well,plenty of them, including Lieutenant Melissa McKay, who waited impatiently while \"Doc\" Valdez, the platoon's medic, bandaged her arm. There was a lot to doand clearly McKay wanted to get up and do it.\n\"Got some bad news for you, Lieutenant,\" the medic said. \"The tattoo on your bicep, the one with the skull and the letters 'ODST,' took a serious hit. You can get a new one, of course . . . but scar tissue won't take the ink in quite the same way.\"\nMcKay knew the patter had a purpose, knew it was Doc's way of taking her mind off Dawkins, Al-Thani, and Suzuki. The medic secured the bandage in place and the officer rolled her sleeve down over the dressing. \"You know what, Valdez? You are truly full of it. And I mean that as a compliment.\"\nDoc wiped his forehead with the back of a sleeve. It came away with Al Thani's blood on it. \"Thanks, El-Tee. Compliment accepted.\"\n\"All right,\" Major Silva boomed as he strode out onto the center of the catwalk. \"Listen up! Play time is over. Captain Keyes is tired of our company and wants us to leave this tub. There's a construct down there, complete with an atmosphere, gravity, and the one thing Marines love like beerand that's dirt beneath our feet.\"\nThe ODST officer paused at that point, allowing his bright, beady eyes to sweep the faces around him, his mouth straight as a crease. \"Most of the crewnot to mention your fellow jarheadswill be leaving the ship in lifeboats. They'll ride to the surface in air-conditioned comfort, sipping wine, and nibbling on appetizers.\n\"Notyou , however. Oh no, you're going to leave thePillar of Autumn by a different method. Tell me, boys and girls . . . How willyou leave?\"\nIt was a time-honored ritual, and the ODST Marines roared the answer in unison. \"WE GO FEET FIRST, SIR!\"\n\"Damned right you do,\" Silva barked. \"Now let's get to those drop pods. The Covenant is holding a picnic down on the surface and every single one of you is invited. You have five minutes to strap in, hook up, and shove a cork in your ass.\"\nIt was an old joke, one of their favorites, and the Marines laughed as if they had just heard it for the first time. Then they formed into squads, and followed their noncoms out into a corridor that ran down the port side of the ship. McKay led her platoon down the hall, past the troopers assigned to guard the intersection, and through what had been a battlefield. Bodies lay sprawled where they had fallen, plasma burns marked the bulkheads, and a long line of 7.62mm dimples marked the last burst that one of the dead soldiers would ever fire. They pounded around a corner, and into what the Marines referred to as\n\"Hell's waiting room.\" The troopers streamed down the center of a long narrow compartment that housed two rows of oval-shaped individual drop pods. Each pod bore the name of an individual trooper, and was poised over a tube that extended down through the ship's belly. Most combat landings were made via armed assault boats, but the boats were slow, and subject to antiaircraft fire. That was why the UNSC had invested the time and money necessary to create asecond way to deliver troops through an atmosphere: the HEV, or Human Entry Vehicle. Computer-controlled antiaircraft fire would nail some of the pods, but they made small targets, and each hit would result in one death rather than a dozen. There was just one problem. As the ceramic skins that covered the HEVs burned away, the air inside the pods became unbelievably hot, sometimes fatally so, which was why ODST personnel were referred to as\n\"Helljumpers.\" It was an all-volunteer outfit, and it took a special kind of crazy to join up. McKay remained on the central walkway until each of her men had entered his particular pod. She knew that meant she would have sixty seconds less to make her own preparations, and was quick to enter her HEV once the last hatch had closed. Once inside, McKay's hands were a blur as she secured her harness, ran the obligatory systems check, removed a series of safeties, armed her ejection tube, and eyed the tiny screen mounted in front of her. TheAutumn 's fire control computer had already calculated the force required to blow the pod free and drop the HEV into the correct entry path. All she had to do was hang on, pray that the pod's ceramic skin would hold long enough for the chute to open, and try to ignore how fragile the vehicle actually was. No sooner had the officer braced her boots against the bulkhead, and looked up at the countdown, than the last digit clicked from one to zero. The pod dropped, accelerated out of the ejection tube, and fell toward the ring-shaped world below. Her stomach lurched and her heart rate spiked. Somebody popped a tiny disk into a data player, touched a button, and pushed the hyped-up strains of the Helljumpers' anthem out over the team freq. The regs made it clear that unauthorized use of UNSC communications facilities was wrong,very wrong, but McKay knew that at that particular moment it wasright , and Silva must have agreed, because nothing came in over the command freq. The music pounded in her ears, the HEV shuddered as it hit the outer layer of the ring-construct's atmosphere, and the Marines fell feet first through the ring.\n\nThe deck jumped as thePillar of Autumn absorbed yet another blow and the battle continued to rage within. The Master Chief was close now, and prepared to sprint for a lifeboat. That was when Cortana said, \"Behind you!\"\nand the Master Chief felt a plasma bolt hit him squarely between the shoulder blades. He rolled with the blow and sprang to his feet. He whirled to face his attacker and saw that a Grunt had dropped out of an overhead maintenance way. The diminutive alien stood with his feet planted on the deck, a plasma pistol over-charging in his claws. The Master Chief took three steps forward, used the assault rifle to knock the creature off its feet, and followed it with a three-round burst. The Grunt's pistol discharged its stored energy into the ceiling. Drips of molten metal sizzled on the Master Chief's shields. The armor-piercing rounds punctured the alien's breathing apparatus, released a stream of methane, and caused the body to spin like a top. A trio of additional Grunts landed on the Master Chief's shoulders and grabbed hold. It was almost laughable, until the Spartan realized that one of them was trying to remove his helmet. A second alien carried an ignited plasma grenadethe little bastards meant to drop the explosive into his armor. He flexed his shoulders, and shook himself like a dog. Grunts flew in every direction as the Master Chief used short controlled bursts to put them down. He turned toward the lifeboats. \"Now!\" Cortana urged. \"Run!\"\nThe Spartan ran, just as the door started to close. A nearby Marine fell while running for the escape craft, and the Chief paused long enough to scoop the soldier up and hurl him into the boat. Once inside, they joined a small group of crew members already on board the escape craft. \"Now would be a very good time to leave,\" Cortana commented coolly, as something else exploded and the cruiser shuddered in response. The Master Chief stood facing the hatch. He waited for it to close all the way, saw the red light appear, and knew it was sealed. \"Punch it.\"\nThe pilot triggered the launch sequence and the lifeboat blasted free of the ship, balanced on a column of fire. The boat skimmed along the surface of theAutumn at dizzying speed. Plasma blasts from a Covenant warship slammed into theAutumn 's hull. In seconds, the lifeboat dropped away from the cruiser and dove toward the ring. The Master Chief killed his external com system, and spoke directly to Cortana. \"So, any idea what this thing is?\"\n\"No,\" Cortana admitted. \"I managed to slice some data out of the Covenant battle network. They call it 'Halo,' and it has some kind of religious significance to them, but . . . your guess is as good as mine.\" She paused, and the Spartan sensed the AI's amusement. \"Well,almost as good.\"\n\"Halo,\" he repeated. \"Looks like we're going to be calling it 'home' for a while.\" The lifeboat was too small to mount a Shaw-Fujikawa faster-than-light drive so there was nowhere to go but the ring. There were no shouts of jubilation, no high-fives, only silence as the boat fell through the blackness of space. They were alive, but that was subject to change, and that left nothing to celebrate. One Marine said, \"This duty station really sucks.\" No one saw any reason to contradict him.\n\nRawley and her companions skidded to a halt, turned back the way they had come, and let loose with everything they had. Their weaponry included two pistols, one assault rifle, and a plasma rifle that a pilot had scooped up along the way. Not much of an arsenal but sufficient to knock three Jackals off their feet and put the aliens down for good. Rawley caved the last Jackal's skull in with her boot. Eager to get aboard their ships, the group ducked through the docking bay hatch, closed it behind them, and ran for the Pelicans. Foehammer spotted her bird, gave thanks for the fact that it was undamaged, and ran up the ramp. As always, it was fueled, armed, and ready to fly. Frye, her copilot, dropped into position behind her, with Crew Chief Cullen bringing up the rear. Once in the cockpit, Rawley strapped in, ran an abbreviated preflight checklist, and started the transport's engines. They joined with the rest to create a satisfying roar. The outer hatch cycled open. Loose gear tumbled into space as the bay explosively decompressed. Moments later, the cruiser entered the ring world's atmosphere, which meant that the transports could depart . . . but they had to do it soon. Reentry friction was already creating a wall of fire around the ship.\n\"Damn!\" Frye exclaimed, \"Look at that!\" and pointed forward. Rawley looked, saw a Covenant landing craft coming straight toward the bay, braving the heat generated by theAutumn 's reentry velocity. There was a limited window of opportunity to get off this sinking ship, and the Covenant bastard was right in the way. She swore and released the safety on the Pelican's 70mm chin gun. The weapon shook the entire ship, punched holes through alien armor, and hit something vital. The enemy vessel shuddered, lost control, and spun into theAutumn 's hull.\n\"All right,\" the wing leader said over the ship-to-ship frequency, \"Let's go down and meet our hosts. See you on the ground. Foehammer out.\"\nShe clicked off the transmitter and whispered, \"Good luck.\"\nOne by one the dropships left the bay, did a series of wingovers, and dropped through the overarching ring. Rawley struggled to maintain control as the atmosphere tore at her ship. The status panel flashed a heat warning as friction created a massive thermal buildup along the Pelican's fuselage. The leading edges of the ship's short, stubby wings started to glow.\n\"Jeez, boss,\" Frye said, his teeth rattling from the constant jouncing of the Pelican, \"maybe this wasn't such a good idea.\"\nFoehammer made some adjustments, managed to improve the ship's glide angle, and glanced to her right. \"If you've got a better idea,\" she yelled,\n\"bring it up at the next staff meeting.\"\nHe nodded. \"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\"Until then,\" she added, \"shut the hell up and let mefly this thing.\"\nThe Pelican hit an air pocket, dropped like a rock, and caught itself. The transport shook like a thing possessed. Rawley screamed with anger and battled her controls as her ship plummeted toward the surface of the ring.\n\nCovenant forces had launched a concerted attack on the command deck about fifteen minutes earlier but the defenders had beaten them back. Since that time the fighting had lessened and there were reports that at least some of the aliens were using their assault boats to leave the ship. It wasn't clear whether that was due to the considerable number of casualties Covenant forces had suffered, or the realization that the ship was in danger of falling apart, but it hardly mattered. The important thing was that the area around the bridge was clear, which meant that Keyes, plus the command team who remained to help him, could carry out their duties without fear of being shot in the back. At least for the moment. Their next task was to take theAutumn down into the atmosphere. No small order considering the fact that, like all vessels of her tonnage, the cruiser had been constructed in zero-gee conditions and wasn't equipped to operate in a planetary atmosphere. Keyes believed it was possible. With that in mind he planned to close with the ring world, hand control to the subroutine that Cortana had left for that purpose, and use the last lifeboat to make his escape. Maybe the ship would pancake in the way he had plannedand maybe it wouldn't. Whatever the case, it was almost sure to be a landing that would best be experienced from a safe distance. Keyes turned to look at the data scrolling across the nav screen and detected motion out of the corner of his eye. He looked, saw the primary weapons control station shimmer like a mirage in the desert, and rubbed his eyes. By the time the Naval officer looked for asecond time, the phenomena had vanished. Keyes frowned, turned back to the nav screen, and began the sequence of orders that would put theAutumn in the place she wasleast equipped to go:\non solid ground.\n\nIsna 'Nosolee held his breath. The human had looked straight into his eyes, given no alarm, and turned away. Surely his activities had been blessed by those who went before and from whom all knowledge flowed. The camouflage, combined with his own talent for stealth, had proven to be extremely effective. Since he had come aboard, 'Nosolee had toured both the ship's engine room and fire control center prior to arriving on the bridge. Now, standing in front of a vent, the Elite contemplated what to do next. The ship's AI had either been removed or destroyed, he was sure of that. At least some senior personnel remained, howeverwhich meant there was still a chance. In fact, based on the manner in which the other humans interacted with him,\n'Nosolee felt certain that the man named \"Keezz\" held the position of Ship Master. A very valuable prize indeed. But how to capture the human? He wouldn't come willingly, that was obvious, and his companions were armed. The moment 'Nosolee deactivated his camouflage they would shoot him. Individually, the humans were weaklings, but they were dangerous in packs. And animals grew all the more dangerous the nearer they came to extinction. No, patience was the key, which meant that the Elite would have to wait. Vapor continued to roll out of the cold air vent, and the air seemed to shimmer, but no one noticed.\n\"All right,\" Keyes said, \"let's put her down. . . . Stand by to fire the bow thrusters . . . Fire!\"\nThe bow thrusters ignited and slowed the ship's rate of descent. ThePillar of Autumn wobbled for a moment as it battled the ring's gravity field, then corrected its angle of entry. Cortana took over after that, or rather, the part of herself that she had left behind did. TheAutumn 's thrusters fired in increments so small that they were like single notes in an ongoing melody. The highly adaptive subroutine tracked variables, monitored feedback, and made thousands of decisions per second. The much-abused hull shuddered as it entered the atmosphere, started to shake, and sent a host of loose items tumbling to the deck. \"That's as far as we can take her,\" Keyes announced. \"Delegate all command and control functions to Cortana's cousin, and let's haul ass off this boat.\"\nThere was a ragged chorus of \"Aye, ayes,\" as the bridge crew disengaged from the ship they had worked so hard to save, took one last look around, and drew their sidearms. The fighting had died down, but that didn't meanall of the Covenant forces had left.\n'Nosolee watched anxiously as the humans started to leave the bridge. He waited for the last person to exit, and fell into step behind. The beginnings of a plan had started to form in his mind. It was audaciousno, make that outrageousbut the Elite figured that made the scheme all the more likely to succeed.\n\nThe lifeboat reserved for the bridge crew was close by. Six Marines had been detailed to guard it and three of them were dead. Their bodies had been dragged off to one side and laid in a row. A corporal shouted, \"Attention on deck!\"\nKeyes said, \"As you were,\" and gestured toward the hatch. \"Thanks for waiting, son. I'm sorry about your buddies.\"\nThe corporal nodded stiffly. He must have been off duty when the attack beganone half of his face needed a shave. \"Thank you, sir. They took a dozen of the bastards with them.\"\nKeyes nodded. Three lives for twelve. It sounded like a good trade-off but how good was it really? How many Covenant troops were there, anyway?\nAnd how many would each human have to kill? He shook the thought off and jerked his thumb toward the opening. \"Everybody into the boat, on the double!\"\n\nThe survivors streamed onto the boat, and 'Nosolee followed, though it was difficult to avoid touching the human vermin in such tight quarters. There was a little bit of space toward the front and a handhold which would be useful once the gravity generated by the larger ship disappeared. Later, after the lifeboat landed, the Elite would find an opportunity to separate Keezz from the rest of the humans and seize him. In the meantime all he had to do was hang on, avoid detection, and make it to the surface. The human passengers strapped in. The lifeboat exploded out of the bay, and it fell toward the ring world below. Jets fired, the small craft stabilized, and followed a precalculated glide path toward the surface.\n Keyes was seated three slots aft of the pilot. He frowned, as if looking for something, then waited for the boat to clear. He leaned toward the Marine in front of him. \"Excuse me, Corporal.\"\n\"Sir?\" The Marine looked exhausted, but somehow managed to snap to a form of attention, despite being belted into an acceleration chair.\n\"Hand me your sidearm, son.\"\nThe expression on his face made it plain that the last thing the soldier wanted to do was part company with one of his weapons, particularly in close quarters. But the Captain was the Captain, so he had very little choice. The words, \"Yes, sir,\" were still making their way from the noncom's brain to his mouth when he felt the M6D pistol being jerked out of his holster. Would one of the 12.7mm rounds punch its way through the lifeboat's relatively thin hull? Keyes wondered. Cause a blowout and kill everyone aboard?\nHe didn't know, but one thing was certain: The Covenant son of a bitch standing in this lifeboat was about to die. Keyes raised the weapon, aimed at the very center of the strange, ghostly shimmer, and pulled the trigger.\n\nThe Elite saw the movement, had nowhere to run, and was busy reaching for his own pistol when the first bullet struck. The M6D bucked, the barrel started to rise, and the third slug from the top of the clip passed through the slit in 'Nosolee's helmet, blew his brains out through the back of his skull, and freed him from the tyranny of physical reality.\n\nNo sooner had the noise of the last shot died away than the camo generator failed, and an Elite appeared as if from thin air. The alien's body floated back toward the rear of the cabin. Thousands of globules of alien blood escorted bits of brain tissue on their journey to the lifeboat's stern. Lieutenant Hikowa ducked as one of the Elite's boots threatened to hit her head. She pushed the corpse away, her face impassive. The rest of the passengers were too shocked to do or say anything at all. The Captain calmly dropped the clip from the gun, ejected the round in the chamber, and handed the weapon back to the stunned corporal.\n\"Thanks,\" Keyes said. \"That thing works pretty well. Don't forget to reload it.\"\n\n\nSECTION II HALO\n\nCHAPTER TWO Deployment+00 hours:03 minutes:24 seconds (Major Silva Mission Clock) / Command HEV, in combat drop to surface of Halo. Consistent with standard UNSC insertion protocols, Major Antonio Silva's HEV accelerated once it was launched so that it was among the first to enter Halo's atmosphere. There were a number of reasons for this, including the strongly held belief that officers should lead rather than follow, be willing to do anything their troops were asked to do, and expose themselves to the same level of danger. There were still other reasons, however, beginning with the need to collect, sort, and organize the troops the moment their boots touched ground. Experience demonstrated that whatever the Helljumpers managed to accomplish during the first so-called golden hour would have a disproportionate effect on the success or failure of the entire mission. Especially now, as the Marines dropped onto a hostile world without any of the Intel briefings, virtual reality sims, or environment-specific equipment mods they would normally receive prior to such an insertion. To offset this, the command pod was equipped with a lot of gear that the regular \"eggs\" weren't, including some high-powered imaging gear, and the Class C military AI required to operate it. This particular intelligence had been programmed with a male persona, the name Wellsleyafter the famous Duke of Wellingtonand a personality to match. Though he was a good deal less capable than a top-level AI like Cortana,all of Wellsley's capabilities were focused on things military, which made him extremely useful if somewhat narrow-minded. The HEV shook violently and flipped end for end as the interior temperature rose to 98 degrees. Sweat poured down Silva's face.\n\"So,\" Wellsley continued, his voice coming in via the officer's ear plugs,\n\"based on the telemetry available from space, plus my analysis, it appears that the structure tagged as HS2604 will meet your needs.\" The AI's tone changed slightly as a conversational subroutine kicked in. \"Perhaps you would like to call it 'Gawilghur,' after the fortress I conquered in India?\"\n\"Thanks,\" Silva croaked as the pod inverted a second time, \"but no thanks. First:you didn't take the fortress, Wellington did. Second: There weren't any computers in 1803. Third: none of my troops would be able to pronounce\n'Gawilghur.' The designator 'Alpha Base' will do just fine.\"\nThe AI issued a passable rendition of a human sigh. \"Very well, then. As I was saying,'Alpha Base' is located at the top ofthis butte.\" The curvilinear screen located just six inches from the end of the Marine's nose seemed to shiver and the video morphed into a picture of a thick, pillarlike formation topped by a mesa with some variegated flat-roofed structures located at one end. That was all Silva got to see before the HEV's skin started to slough away revealing the alloy crash cage that contained the officer and his equipment. The air turned cold and ripped at his clothes. A moment later, the chute unfurled and assumed the shape of an airfoil. Silva winced as the pod decelerated with a bone-rattling jerk. His harness bit into his shoulders and chest. Wellsley sent an electronic signal to the rest of the Helljumpers. The remains of their HEVs turned in whatever direction was necessary in order to orient themselves on the command pod and follow it down through the atmosphere. All except for Private Marie Postly, who heard asnap as her main chute tore away. There was a sickening moment of freefall, then a jolt as the back-up chute deployed. A red light flashed on the instrument panel in front of her. She started to scream on freq two, until Silva cut her off. He closed his eyes. It was the death that every Helljumper feared, but none of them talked about. Somewhere, down toward Halo's surface, Postly was about to dig her own grave. Silva felt his HEV stabilize and took another look at the butte. It was tall enough to provide anyone who owned it with a good view of the surrounding countryside, plus the sheer cliffs would force attackers to either come by air or fight their way up along narrow paths. As a bonus, the structures located on top would provide his Marines with defensible shelter.\n\"It looks good. I like it.\"\n\"I thought you would,\" Wellsley replied smugly. \"There is one little problem, however.\"\n\"What's that?\" Silva shouted as the last section of the HEV's skin peeled away and the slipstream tore at his mask.\n\"The Covenant owns this particular piece of real estate,\" the AI replied, calmly, \"and if we want it, we'll have to take it.\"\nDeployment+00 hours:02 minutes:51 seconds\n(SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Lifeboat Lima Foxtrot Alpha 43, in emergency descent to surface of Halo. The Master Chief watched the ring open up in front of him as the pilot guided the lifeboat in past a thick silvery edge, and down \"under\" the construct's inner surface, before putting the tiny ship into a shallow dive calculated to place it on the strange landscape below. As he looked forward, he saw mountains, hills, and a plain that curved up and eventually out of focus as the ring swooped upward to complete itself somewhere over his head. The sight was beautiful, strange, and disorienting all at the same time. Then the sightseeing was over as the ground came up to meet them. The Master Chief couldn't tell whether the lifeboat took enemy fire, suffered an engine failure, or nicked an obstacle on final approach. It really didn't matter; the result was the same. The pilot had time to yell, \"We're coming in too fast!\" A moment later, the hull bounced off something solid, and the Spartan was knocked off his feet. Pain stabbed through his temples as his helmet slammed into the bulkhead on his way to the deckplatesfollowed by clinging blackness . . .\n\n\"Chief . . . Chief . . . Can you hear me?\" Cortana's voice echoed in his head. The Spartan opened his eyes and found himself facing the overhead light panels. They flickered and sparked. \"Yes, I can hear you,\" he replied.\n\"There's no need to shout.\"\n\"Oh,really ?\" the AI replied in an arch tone. \"Maybe you'd like to file a complaint with the Covenant. The crash triggered a lot of radio traffic and it's my guess that the welcome wagon is on the way.\"\nThe Master Chief struggled to his feet and was just about to answer in kind when he saw the bodies. The impact of the crash had ripped the boat open and mangled the unprotected people within. No one else had survived. There was no time to dwell on that, not if he wanted to stay alive, and keep Cortana from falling into enemy hands. He hurried to gather as much ammo, grenades, and supplies as he could carry. He had just finished checking the pins on a quartet of frag grenades when Cortana piped up in alarm: \"WarningI've detected multiple Covenant dropships on approach. I recommend moving into those hills. If we're lucky, the Covenant will believe that everyone aboard the lifeboat died in the crash.\"\n\"Acknowledged.\"\nCortana's plan made sense. The Spartan surveyed the area for threats, then hurried toward a canyon and the bridge that crossed it. The span was devoid of safety railings, and was constructed from a strange, burnished metal. Beneath the bridge, a towering waterfall thundered down a massive drop-off. The rest of the world arched high overhead. Large outcroppings of weather smoothed gray rock rose ahead, and a scattering of what looked like conifers reminded him of the forests he'd trained in on Reach. There were differences, however, like the way the ring tapered up from the horizon, the manner in which its shadow fell upon the land, and the crisp, clean air that came in through his filters. It was beautiful, breathtakingly so, but potentially dangerous as well.\n\"AlertCovenant dropship inbound.\" Cortana's voice was calm but insistent. The prophecy soon proved correct as a large shadow floated over the far end of the bridge and the ship's engines screamed a warning. There was very little doubt that the Spartan had been spotted, so he made plans to deal with it. He reached the end of the bridge, saw a likely-looking boulder off to his left, and hurried to take advantage of it. He skirted the cliff edge, ignoring the long drop. Careful to watch his footing, the Master Chief circled the rock and found a crevice where the boulder touched the cliff. Now, with his back to the wall, he had a chance to defend himself. He checked his motion tracker, and realized that a pair of Covenant Banshees were practically on top of him. The alien aircraft boasted plasma cannon and fuel rod guns. Though not especially fast, they were still dangerous, especially against ground troops. Combined with air support, the Grunts and Elites that dropped from the fork shaped alien troop carrier were a serious threat. He steadied his aim and sighted on the nearest Banshee. Careful not to fire early, the Spartan waited for the Banshee to come within range, then squeezed the trigger. The first assault ship came straight at him, which made it relatively easy to stay on target. Bullet impacts sparked on the Banshee's hull as his ammo counter dwindled. The ship shuddered as at least some of the armor-piercing rounds penetrated the fuselage, pulled up out of its dive, and started to trail smoke. The Master Chief was in no position to appreciate the results of his efforts, however, as the second Banshee swooped out of the sun, pounded the area around him with plasma fire. His shield display dropped, then pulsed red. An alarm whined in his helmet speakers. The Master Chief returned fire. Without pause, he thumbed the magazine release and slammed a fresh clip into the receiver. He crouched, searched the sky for targets, and spotted Banshee number one in the nick of time. He braced himself for another assault. The Spartan allowed the enemy aircraft to approach, took a slight lead, and squeezed the trigger again. The Covenant ship ran into the stream of bullets, exploded into flames, and slammed into the cliff wall. The second ship was still up there, flying in lazy circles, but the Spartan knew better than to stand around and watch it. A half dozen red dots had appeared on his motion sensors. Each blip represented a potential assailant and most were located to his rear. The Master Chief waited for his shields to return to their full charge, then turned, jumped up onto the boulder, and took a quick look around. The Covenant dropship had deposited a clutch of Grunts on the far side of the canyon where they were busy examining the wreckage of his lifeboat. But that wasn't all. To his left, on his side of the bridge,another group of Grunts was working its way through the trees, moving in his direction. They were still a ways off, howeverwhich gave him a few seconds to prepare. Though not armed with the standard S2 AM Sniper's Rifle, his weapon of choice for this sort of situation, the Spartan was packing the M6D pistol that Keyes had given him. It was equipped with a 2X scope and, in the hands of an expert, it could reach out and touch someone. The Master Chief drew the sidearm, turned to the group gathered around the wreckage, and placed the targeting circle over the nearest Grunt. In spite of the fact that they were of no immediate threat, the aliens on the other side of the canyon were in an ideal position to flank him, which meant he would deal with them first. Twelve shots rang out, and seven Grunts fell. Satisfied that his right flank was reasonably secure, he slammed a fresh clip into the pistol and shifted his attention to the enemy troops that were emerging from the trees. This group of Grunts was closer now,much closer, and they opened fire. The Master Chief chose to target the most distant alien first, thereby ensuring that he would still get a crack at the others, even if they turned and tried to escape. The pistol shots came in quick succession. The Grunts barked, hooted, and gurgled as the well-aimed bullets hurled their lifeless carcasses down the reverse slope. When there were no more targets to fire at, the Master Chief took a moment to reload the handgun, clicked on the safety, and returned the weapon to its holster. He jumped off the boulder and crouched under an outcropping of rock. He eyed the Banshee above. It was still there, circling well out of range, waiting to pounce should he emerge from cover. That meant he could sit there and wait for more ground forces to arrive, or he could abandon his hiding place and attempt to slip away. The Spartan had never been one for standing around, so he readied his assault rifle and slid forward over the rock. Once on open ground it was a short dash past the scattering of dead Grunts. He crouched beneath the cover offered by a copse of trees. He counted to three, then dashed from boulder to boulder. He leapfrogged uphill, still very much aware of the Banshee at his back, but reasonably certain he'd given the aircraft the slip. There were no blips on his threat detector, until he topped the rise and paused to examine the terrain ahead. A telltale red dot popped onto his HUD. The Master Chief eased his way forward, waiting for the moment of contact. Then he saw movement as hunched bodies dashed from one scrap of cover to the next. There were four of them, including a blue-armored Elite. The Elite charged recklessly forward, firing as he came. He'd engaged such Elites beforethere was some significance to the aliens'\narmor colorsand they always fought like aggressive rookies. A thin smile touched the Master Chief's lips. He ignored the alien's badly-placed shots, stood, and returned fire. The Elite's advance stalled, and the Grunts began to fall back toward a stand of trees. His threat indicator sounded a warning and a red arrow pointed to the right. The Master Chief drew and primed an M9\nHE-DP grenade. He turned just in time to see another Elitethis one in the scarlet armor of a veterancharge him. The grenade was already in hand, and the distance to the target was sufficient, so the soldier let the M9 fly. The grenade detonated with a loudwhump! and tossed the enemy soldier into the air, while stripping a nearby tree of half its branches. The rookie was close now, and roared a battle cry. The alien hosed the Master Chief with plasma fire. His shields dropped precipitously. The Spartan backed away, fired his assault rifle in short controlled bursts, and finally managed to knock the remaining Elite off his feet. With their leader down, the Grunts broke ranks and began to scamper away. The Master Chief cut their retreat short in a hail of bullets. He eased up on the trigger, felt the silence settle in around him, and knew he had made a mistake. The veteran had damned near blindsided him. How?\nHe realized with a start that he was still fighting like part of a unit. Though he was trained to act independently, he had spent most of his military career as part of a team. The Elite had managed to flank him because his was simply accustomed to one of his fellow Spartans watching out for him. He was cut off from the chain of command, alone, and most likely surrounded by the enemy. He nodded, his face grim behind the mirrored visor. This mission would require a major revision in his tactics. He pushed his way up through a meadow thick with knee-high, spiky grass. He could hear the distant chatter of automatic weapons fire and knew some Marines were somewhere up ahead. He sprinted toward the sound of battle. Perhaps he wouldn't be on his own for long. Deployment+00 hours:05 minutes:08 seconds (Captain Keyes' Mission Clock) / Lifeboat Kilo Tango Victor 17, in emergency descent to surface of Halo. Maybe it was because theAutumn 's navigator, Ensign Lovell, was at the controls, or maybe it was simply a matter of good luck, but whatever the reason, the rest of the trip down through Halo's atmosphere was completely uneventful. So peaceful that it made Keyes nervous.\n\"Where would you like me to put her down, sir?\" Lovell inquired, as the lifeboat skimmed a grassy plain.\n\"Anywhere,\" Keyes answered, \"so long as there aren't any Covenant forces around. Some cover would be nicesince this boat will act like a magnet if we leave it out in the open.\"\nLike most of its kind, the lifeboat had never been intended for extended atmospheric use; it flew like a rock, in fact. But the suggestion made sense, so the pilot turned toward what he had arbitrarily designated as the \"west,\"\nand the point where the grasslands met a tumble of low rolling hills.\n\nThe lifeboat was low, so low that the Covenant patrol barely had time to see what it was before the tiny vessel flashed over their heads and disappeared. The veteran Elites, both of whom were mounted on small single-seat hoversleds, Ghosts, stood to watch the lifeboat skim the plain. The senior of the pair called the sighting in. They turned toward the hills and opened their throttles. What had promised to be a long, boring day suddenly seemed a great deal more interesting. The Elites glanced at each other, bent over their controls, and raced to see which of them could reach the lifeboat firstand which of them would score the first kill of the afternoon.\n\nDeep in the hills ahead, Lovell fired the lifeboat's bow thrusters, dropped what flaps the stubby little wings had, and jazzed the boat's belly jets. Keyes watched in admiration as the young pilot dropped the boat into a gully where it would be almost impossible to spot, except from directly overhead. Lovell had been a troubled officer, well on his way to a dishonorable discharge, when Keyes had recruited him. He'd come a long way since then. \"Nice job,\" the Captain said as the lifeboat settled onto its skids. \"Okay, boys and girls, let's strip this ship of everything that might be useful, and put as much distance between it and ourselves as we can. Corporal, post your Marines as sentries. Wang, Dowski, Abiad, open those storage compartments. Let's see what brand of champagne the UNSC keeps in its lifeboats. Hikowa, give me a hand with this body.\"\nThere was a certain amount of commotion as 'Nosolee's corpse was carried outside and unceremoniously dumped into a crevice, the boat was stripped, and the controls were disabled. With emergency packs on their backs, the bridge crew started up into the hills. They hadn't gone far when a sonic boom rolled over the land, thePillar of Autumn roared across the sky, and dropped over the horizon to the arbitrary \"south.\"\nKeyes held his breath as he waited to see what would happen. He, like all COs, had neural implants that linked him to the ship, the ship's AI, and key personnel. There was a pause, followed by what felt like a mild earth tremor. A moment later, a terse message from Cortana's subroutine scrolled across his vision, courtesy of his neural lace:\n>CSR-1 :: BURST BROADCAST ::\n>PILLAR OF AUTUMNIS DOWN. THOSE SYSTEMS WHICH REMAIN FUNCTIONAL ARE ON STANDBY. OPERATIONAL READINESS STANDS AT 8.7%.\n>CSR-1 OUT. It wasn't the sort of message that any commanding officer would want to receive. In spite of the fact that theAutumn would never swim through space again, Keyes took some small comfort from the fact that his ship still had the equivalent of a pulse, and might still come in handy. He forced a smile. \"Okay, people, what are we waiting for? Our cave awaits. The last one to the top digs the latrine.\"\nThe bridge personnel continued their climb.\n\nIn spite of efforts to keep the HEVs together, the Helljumpers came down in a landing zone that stretched approximately three kilometers in diameter. Some of the landings were classic two-point affairs in which the more fortunate Marines were able to jettison their crash cages about fifty meters off the ground, and land like sim soldiers in a training vid. Others were a good deal less graceful, as the skeletal remains of their drop pods smashed against cliffs, dropped into lakes, and in one unfortunate case rolled into a deep ravine. As the surviving Helljumpers extricated themselves from their HEVs, a homing beacon snapped to life, and they were able to orient themselves to the red square which appeared on their transparent eye-screens. That was where Major Silva had landed, a temporary HQ had been established, and the battalion would regroup. Each pod was stripped of extra weapons, ammo, and other supplies, which meant that the force which converged on the hot dry plateau was well equipped. Helljumpers were supposed to be able to operate without external resupply for two-week periods, and Silva was pleased that his troops had retained most of their gear, despite the difficult drop conditions. In fact,Silva thought as he watched his troops stream in from every direction,the only thing we lack is a fleet of Warthogs and a squad of Scorpions. But those assets would come, oh, yes they would, shortly after the butte was wrenched from enemy hands. In the meantime, the Helljumpers would use what ground-pounders always use: their feet.\n\nFirst Lieutenant Melissa McKay had landed safely, as had most of her 130 person company. Three of her people had been killed in action on theAutumn\n, and two were missing and presumed dead. Not too bad, all things considered. As luck would have it, McKay hit the dirt only half a klick away from the homing beacon, which meant that by the time a perimeter had been established she had already humped her gear across the hardpan, located Major Silva, and reported in. McKay was one of his favorites. The ODST officer nodded by way of a greeting. \"Nice of you to drop in, Lieutenant . . . I was beginning to wonder if you'd taken the afternoon off.\"\n\"No, sir,\" McKay responded. \"I dozed off on the way down and slept through my wake-up alarm. It won't happen again.\"\nSilva managed to keep a straight face. \"Glad to hear it.\" He paused, then pointed. \"You see that butte? The one with the structures on top? I want it.\"\nMcKay looked, brought her binoculars up, and looked again. The butte's range appeared along the bottom of the image and was soon chased out of the frame by coordinates that Wellsley inserted to replace the concepts of longitude and latitude which worked on most planetary surfaces, but not here. The sun was \"setting\" but there was still enough light to see by. As she surveyed the target area, a Covenant Banshee took off from the top of the butte, circled out toward the \"west,\" and came straight at her. The only thing that was surprising about that was the fact that it had taken the enemy so long to respond to their landing.\n\"It looks like a tough nut to crack, sir. Especially from the ground.\"\n\"It is,\" Silva agreed, \"which is why we're going to tackle it from both the airand the ground. Lord only knows how they did it, but a group of Pelican pilots were able to launch their transports before the Old Man brought theAutumn down, and they're hidden about ten klicks north of here. We can use them to support an airborne operation.\"\nMcKay lowered her binoculars. \"And theAutumn ?\"\n\"She's KIA back thataway,\" Silva replied, hooking his thumb back over a shoulder. \"I'd like to go pay my final respects, but that will have to wait. What we need is a base, something we can fortify, and use to hold the Covenant at bay. Otherwise they're going to hunt our people down one, two, or three at a time.\"\n\"Which is where the butte comes in,\" McKay said.\n\"Exactly,\" Silva answered. \"So, start walking. I want your company at the foot of that butte ASAP. If there's a path to the top I want you to find it and follow it. Once you get their attention, we'll hit them from above.\"\nThere was a loudbang as one of the first company's rocket jockeys fired her M19 SSM man-portable launcher, blew the incoming Banshee out of the sky, and a put a period to Silva's sentence. The battalion cheered as the Banshee bits dribbled smoke and wobbled out of the sky. \"Sir, yes sir,\" McKay answered. \"When we get up there, you can buy me a beer.\"\n\"Fair enough,\" Silva agreed, \"but we'll have to brew it first.\"\n\nEven Grunts had to be granted some rest once in a while, which was why long, cylindrical tanks equipped with air locks had been shipped to Halo's surface, where they were pumped full of methane and used in lieu of barracks. Having survived the nearly suicidal attack on theAutumn by rescuing a wounded Elite, and insisting that the warrior be evacuated rather than left to die, Yayap had extended the duration of his own life, not to mention those of the Grunts directly under his command. Now, by way of celebrating that victory, the alien soldier was curled in a tiny ball, fast asleep. One leg twitched slightly as the Grunt dreamed of making his way through the swamps of his home world, past naturally occurring pillars of fire, to the marshy estuary where he had grown up. Then, before he could cross a row of ancient stepping-stones to the reedy hut on the far side of the family's ancestral fish pond, Gagaw shook his arm.\n\"Yayap! Get up quick! Remember the Elite we brought down from the ship?\nHe's outside, and he wants to see you!\"\nYayap sprang to his feet. \"Me?Did he say why?\"\n\"No,\" the other Grunt replied, \"but it can't be good.\"\nThat much was certainly true, Yayap reflected as he waded through the chaos of equipment that hung in untidy clusters along the length of the cylinder. He entered the communal lavatory, and hurried to don his armor, breathing apparatus, and weapons harness. Which was more dangerous, he wondered, to show up disheveled, and have the Elite find fault with his appearance, or to show up later because he had taken the time required to ensure that his appearance would be acceptable?\nDealing with Elites always seemed to involve such conundrums, which was one of the many reasons that Yayap had a hearty dislike for their kind. Finally, having decided to favor speed over appearance, Yayap entered the air lock, waited for it to cycle him through, and emerged into the bright sunlight. The first thing he noticed was that the sentries, who could normally be found leaning against the tank discussing how awful the rations were, stood at rigid attention.\n\"Are you the one called Yayap?\" The deep voice came from behind him and caused the Grunt to jump. He turned, came to attention, and tried to look soldierly. \"Yes, Excellency.\"\nThe Elite named Zuka 'Zamamee wore no helmet. He couldn't, not with the dressing that was wrapped around his head, but the rest of his armor was still in place. It was spotlessly clean, as were the weapons he wore. \"Good. The medics told me that you and your file not only pulled me off the shipbut forced the assault boat to bring me down to the surface.\"\nYayap felt a lump form in his throat and struggled to swallow it. The pilot had been somewhat reluctant, citing orders to wait for a full load of troops before breaking contact with the human ship, but Gagaw had been quite insistenteven going so far as to pull his plasma pistol and wave it about.\n\"Yes, Excellency,\" Yayap replied, \"but I can explain\"\n\"There's no need,\" 'Zamamee replied. Yayap almost jumped; the Elite's voice lacked the customary bark of command. It sounded almost . . . reassuring. Yayap was anything but reassured.\n\"You saw that a superior had been wounded,\" the Elite continued, \"and did what you could to ensure that he received timely medical treatment. That sort of initiative is rare, especially among the lower classes.\"\nYayap stared at the Elite, unable to reply. He felt disoriented. In his universe, Elites didn't offer accolades.\n\"To show my appreciation I've had you transferred.\"\nYayapliked the normally sleepy unit to which he was attached, and had no desire to leave it. \"Transferred, Excellency? To what unit?\" \"Why, tomy unit,\" the Elite replied, as if nothing could be more natural. \"My assistant was killed as we boarded the human ship.You will take his place.\"\nYayap felt his spirits plummet. The Elites who acted as special operatives of the Prophets were fanatics, chosen for their limitless willingness to risk their livesand the lives of those under their command. \"Th-thank you, Excellency,\" Yayap stuttered, \"but I don't deserve such an honor.\"\n\"Nonsense!\" the Elite replied. \"Your name has already been added to the rolls. Gather your belongings, say good-bye to your cohort, and meet me here fifteen units from now. I'm scheduled to appear in front of the Council of Masters later this evening. You will accompany me.\"\n\"Yes, Excellency,\" Yayap said obediently. \"May I inquire as to the purpose of the meeting?\"\n\"You may,\" 'Zamamee replied, allowing a hand to touch the bandage that circled his head. \"The human who inflicted this wound was a warrior so capable that he represents a danger to the entire battle group. An individual who, if our records can be believed, is personally responsible for the deaths of more than a thousand of our soldiers.\"\nYayap felt his knees start to give. \"By himself, Excellency?\"\n\"Yes. But never fear, those days are over. Once I receive authorization, you and I will find this human.\"\n\"Findhim?\" Yayap exclaimed, protocol forgotten. \"Thenwhat?\"\n\"Then,\" 'Zamamee growled, \"we will kill him.\"\n\nThe dawn air was cold, and McKay could see her breath as she stared upward and wondered what awaited her. Half the night had been spent marching across the stretch of intervening hardpan to get into position below the butte, and the other half had been spent between trying to find a way up to the top, and grabbing a little bit of sleep. The second task had been easy, perhaps a littletoo easy, because other than a sloppily constructed barricade, the foot of the four-foot-wide ramp was entirely unguarded. Still, the last thing the Covenant expected was for a human ship to appear out of Slipspace, and land infantry on the surface of the construct. Viewed in that light, a certain lack of preparation was understandable. In any case, the path started at ground level, spiraled steadily upward, and hadn't been used in some time judging from what she could see. That's the way itappeared , anyway, although it was hard to be sure from below, and Silva was understandably reluctant to send in one of the Pelicans lest it give the plan away. No, McKay and her troops would have to wind their way up along the narrow path, engage whatever defenses the Covenant might have in place, and hope that the Pelicans arrived quickly enough to take the pressure off. The Lieutenant eyed the readout on the transparent boom-mounted eye screen attached to her helmet, waited for the countdown to complete itself, and started up the steep incline. Company Sergeant Tink Carter turned to face the men and women lined up behind him. \"What the hell are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Let's get it in gear.\"\n\nWhile B Company marched toward the butte, and C Company marched off to rendezvous with the Pelicans, the rest of the battalion used the remaining hours of darkness to prepare for the following day under Major Silva's watchful eye. Wireless sensors were placed two hundred meters out and monitored by Wellsley; three-person fire teams took up positions a hundred fifty meters out; and a rapid response team was established to support them. There wasn't any natural cover here, so the Helljumpers moved their gear up onto a low rise, and did what they could to place fortifications around it. Dirt excavated from the firing pits was used to build a low barrier around the battalion's perimeter, connecting trenches were dug, and a landing pad was established so that Pelicans could put down within the battalion's footprint. Now, standing at the very highest point of the pad, and gazing off to the west, Silva listened as Wellsley spoke into his ear. \"I have good news and bad news. Thegood news is that Lieutenant McKay has started her climb. Thebad news is that the Covenant is about to attack from the west.\" Silva lowered his glasses, turned, and looked to the west. An enormous dust cloud had appeared during the five minutes that had passed since he looked that way. \"Whatkind of attack?\" the ODST officer demanded curtly.\n\"That's rather difficult to say,\" Wellsley replied deliberately, \"especially without the ships, satellites, and recon drones that I normally rely on for information. However, judging from the amount of dust, plus my knowledge of the Covenant weapons inventory, it looks like an old-fashioned cavalry charge similar to the one that Napoleon threw my way at Waterloo.\"\n\"You weren't at Waterloo,\" Silva reminded the AI as he brought the binoculars up to his eyes. \"But, assuming you're correct, what are they riding?\"\n\"Rapid attack and reconnaissance vehicles which our forces refer to as Ghosts,\" Wellsley replied pedantically. \"Perhaps a hundred of them . . . judging from the dust.\"\nSilva swore. The timing couldn't have been worse. The Covenant had to respond to his presence, he knew that, but he had hoped for a little more time. Now, with fully half his strength committed elsewhere, he was left with roughly two hundred troops. Still, they were ODST troops, the best in the UNSC.\n\"All right,\" Silva said grimly, \"if they want to charge, let's give them the traditional counter. Order the pickets to pull back, tell Companies A and D to form an infantry square, and let's get all the backup ammo below ground level. I want assault weapons in the pits, launchers halfway up the slope, and snipers up on the pad. No one fires until I give the command.\"\nLike Silva, Wellsley knew that the Roman legions had used the infantry square to good effect, as had Lord Wellington, and many since. The formation, which consisted of a box with ranks of troops all facing outward, was extremely hard to break. The AI relayed the instructions to the troops, who, though surprised to be deployed in such an archaic way, knew exactly what to do. By the time the Ghosts arrived and washed around the rise like an incoming tide, the square was set. Silva studied the rangefinder in his tac display and waited until the enemy was in range. He keyed the all-hands freq and gave the order: \"Fire!Fire! \"\nSheets of armor-piercing bullets sleeted through the air. The lead machines staggered as if they had run into a wall, Elites tumbled out of their seats, and a runaway machine skittered to the east. But there were a lot of the attack vehicles and as the oncoming horde sprayed the Marines with plasma fire, ODST troopers began to fall. Fortunately, the weapons that fired the energy bolts were fixed, which meant that the rise would continue to offer the humans a good deal of protection, so long as the Ghosts weren't allowed to climb the slopes. Also operating in the Helljumpers' favor were the skittish nature of the machines themselves, some poor driving, and a lack of overall coordination. Many of the Elites seemed eager to score a kill: They broke formation and raced ahead of their comrades. Silva saw one attack craft take fire from another Ghost, which crashed into a third machine, which subsequently burst into flame. The majority of the Elites were quite competent, however, and after some initial confusion, they went to work devising tactics intended to break the square. A gold-armored Elite led the effort. First, rather than allowing the riders to circle the humans in whatever direction they chose, he forced them into a counterclockwise rotation. Then, having reduced collisions by at least a third, the enemy officer chose the lowest pit, the one against which the fixed plasma cannons would be most effective, and drove at it time and time again. Marines were killed, the outgoing fire slackened, and one corner of the square became vulnerable. Silva countered by sending a squad to reinforce the weak point, ordering his snipers to concentrate their fire on the gold Elite, and calling on the rocket jockeys to provide rotating fire. If the humans' launchers had a weakness, it was the fact that they could only fire two rockets before being reloaded, which left at least five seconds between volleys. By alternating fire, and concentrating on the Ghosts closest to the hill, the Marine defenders were able to leverage the weapons' effectiveness. This strategy proved effective. Wrecked, burned, and mangled Ghosts formed a metal barricade, further protecting the humans from plasma fire, and interfering with new attacks. Silva lifted his binoculars and surveyed the smoke-laced battle area. He offered a silent thanks to whatever deity watched over the infantry. Hadhe led the assault, Silva would have sent in air support first to pin the Helljumpers downfollowed by Ghosts from the west. His opposite number had been trained differently, had too much confidence in his mechanized troops, or was just plain inexperienced. Whatever the reason, the Banshees were thrown into the mix late, apparently as an afterthought. Silva's rocket jockeys knocked two of the aircraft out of the air on the first pass, nailed another one on the second pass, and sent the fourth running south with smoke trailing from its failing engines. Finally, with the gold Elite dead, and more than half of their number slaughtered, the remaining Elites withdrew. Some of the Ghosts remained untouched, but at least a dozen of the surviving ships carried extra riders, and most were riddled with bullet holes. Two, their engines destroyed, were towed off the field of battle. This is why we need the butte,Silva thought as he surveyed the carnage,to avoid another victory like this one. Twenty-three Helljumpers were dead, six were critically injured, and ten had lesser wounds. Static burped in his ear, and McKay's voice crackled across the command freq.\"Blue One to Red One, over.\"\nSilva swung toward the butte, raised his glasses, and saw smoke drift away from a point about halfway up the pillarlike formation. \"This is Red One go. Over.\"\n\"I think we have their attention, sir.\"\nThe Major grinned. It looked more like a grimace. \"Roger that, Blue One. We put on a show for them, as well. Hang tight . . . help is on the way.\"\nMcKay ducked back beneath a rocky overhang as the latest batch of plasma grenades rained down from above. Some kept on falling, others found targets, bonded to them, and exploded seconds later. A trooper screamed as one of the alien bombs landed on top of his rucksack. A sergeant yelled, \"Dump the pack!\" but the Marine panicked, and backpedaled off the path. The grenade exploded and sprayed the cliff face with what looked like red paint. The infantry officer winced.\n\"Roger, Red One. Sooner would be a whole helluva lot better than later. Over and out.\"\nWellsley ordered the Pelicans into the air as Silva stared out over the plain. He wondered if his plan would work, and if he could stomach the price.\n\n\nCHAPTER THREE D+03:14:26 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Surface. Up ahead the Master Chief saw a light so bright that it seemed to compete with the sun. It originated somewhere beyond the rocks and trees ahead, surged up between the horns of a large U-shaped construct, and raced into the sky where the planet Threshold served as a pastel backdrop. Was the pulse some sort of beacon? Part of what held the ring world together? There was no way for him to know. Cortana had already warned the Spartan that a group of Marines had crash landed in the area, so he wasn't surprised to hear the rattle of automatic weapons fire or the characteristic whine as Covenant energy weapons answered in kind. He eased his way through the scrub and onto the hillside above the U-shaped edifice and the blocky structures that surrounded it. He could see a group of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites dashing back and forth as they tried to overwhelm a group of Marines. Rather than charge in, assault weapon blazing, the Master Chief chose to use his M6D pistol instead. He raised the weapon, activated the 2X magnification, and took careful aim. A series of well-placed shots knocked a trio of Grunts off their feet. Before the Covenant forces could locate where the incoming fire had originated, the Master Chief opened fire on a blue-armored Elite. It took a full magazine to put the warrior down, but it beat the hell out of going toe to-toe with the alien when there wasn't any need to. The quick, unexpected sniping attack gave the Marines the opportunity they needed. There was a quick flurry of fire as the Spartan made his way down the slope, paused to strip some plasma grenades off a dead Grunt, and was welcomed by a friendly private. \"Good to see you, Chief. Welcome to the party.\"\nThe Spartan's reply was a curt nod. \"Where's your CO, Private?\"\n\"Back there,\" the Marine said. He turned and called over his shoulder. \"Hey, Sarge!\"\nThe Master Chief recognized the tough-looking Sergeant who trotted to join them. He'd last seen Sergeant Johnson during a search-and-destroy run aboard one of Reach's orbital docking facilities.\n\"What's your status here, Sergeant?\"\n\"It's a mess,\" Johnson growled. \"We're scattered all over this valley.\" He paused, and added in a quiet voice, \"We called for evac, but until you showed up, I thought we were done for.\"\n\"Don't worry,\"Cortana said over the Spartan's external speakers,\"we'll stay here till evac arrives. I've been in touch with AI Wellsley. The Helljumpers are in the process of taking over some Covenant real estateand one of the Pelicans has been dispatched to pick you up.\"\n\"Glad to hear it,\" Johnson replied. \"Some of my people need medical attention.\"\n\"Here comes another Covenant dropship,\" the Private put in. \"It's time to roll out the welcome mat!\"\n\"Okay, Bisenti,\" Johnson barked. \"Re-form the squad. Let's get to work.\"\nThe Master Chief looked up and saw that the Marine was correctanother Covenant landing craft hovered for a moment, then dropped close to the ground. The oddly shaped vehicle dipped slightly, and the mandible structures that formed the bulk of the dropship's fuselage hinged open. A clutch of Grunts and an Elite dropped to the ground. The Master Chief moved fifty meters to the right, and raised his pistol once again. In seconds, a team of Marines poured fire into the Covenant LZ and flushed them out. As the aliens scattered and dove for cover, the Spartan put them down one by one. There was a brief respite, and the Master Chief paused to survey the situation. Cortana pulled up the Marine positions, tagged them asFIRE TEAM C , and highlighted their locations on his HUD. Several of them had climbed the large structure that dominated the area, and the rest patrolled the perimeter. He had just readied his assault rifle when a Marine voice called out:\n\"Contact! Enemy dropship sighted! They're trying to flank us!\"\nSeconds later, the Spartan's motion sensor painted a contacta large one nearby. He stayed close to a large boulder and used it for cover, then cautiously checked for targets. The dropship disgorged another contingent of troopsincluding a trio of Jackals. Their distinctive, glowing shields flared as Sergeant Johnson's men opened fire. Bullets ricocheted as the birdlike aliens crouched behind their protective devices, like medieval footmen forming a shield wall. Behind them, more Grunts and a blue Elite spread out in an enveloping formation. It was a good tactic, particularly if there were more dropships inbound. Eventually, the Covenant would wear down the Marine defenses and overrun the position. There was just one problem with their plan: He was in a perfect flanking position. He crouched, then sprinted forward into the Jackal's line. His assault rifle barked and bullets tore into the exposed aliens. They had barely hit the ground as the Spartan spun, primed a captured plasma grenade, and threw it at the Elite, almost thirty meters away. The alien only had time to roar in surprise before the glowing plasma orb struck him in the center of his helmet. The weapon fused to the alien's helmet and began to pulse a sickly blue-white. A moment later, as the alien attempted to tear off his helmet, the grenade detonated. After that it was a relatively simple matter for the Master Chief to move through the ruins and hunt down the remainder of the Covenant reaction force. A welcome voice sounded from his radio receiver.\"This is Echo 419. Does anyone read me? Repeat: any UNSC personnel, respond.\"\nCortana was quick to reply on the same frequency.\"Roger, Echo 419, we read you. This is Fire Team Charlie. Is that you, Foehammer?\"\n\"Roger, Fire Team Charlie,\"Foehammer drawled,\"it's good to hear from you!\"\nThere was a distant rumbling, and the Master Chief turned to identify the source of the noise. In the distance, he saw movementlifeboats, trailing smoke and fire as their friction-heated hulls tore through the atmosphere.\n\"They're coming in fast,\" Cortana warned. \"If they make it down, the Covenant will be right on top of them.\"\nThe Chief nodded. \"Then we should find them first.\"\n\"Foehammer, we need you to disengage your Warthog. The Master Chief and I are going to see if we can save some soldiers.\"\n\"Roger.\"\nThe Pelican rounded the spire of the alien structure, circled the area once, then hovered above the crest of a nearby hill. Slung beneath the Pelican was a four-wheeled vehiclean M12 LRV Warthog. The light reconnaissance vehicle hung beneath the dropship for a moment, then dropped to the ground as Foehammer released it from her craft. The Warthog bounced once on its heavy suspension, slid five meters down the hill, then was still.\n\"Okay, Fire Team Charlieone Warthog deployed,\"Foehammer said.\"Saddle up and give 'em hell!\"\n\"Roger, Foehammer, stand by to load survivors and evac them to safety.\"\n\"That's affirmative . . . Foehammer out.\" As the Marines sprinted for the Pelican, the Master Chief made his way to the Warthog. The all-terrain vehicle was mounted with a standard M41 light antiaircraft gun, or LAAG. The weapon fired five hundred rounds of\n12.7X99mm armor-piercing rounds per minute and was effective on both ground and airborne targets. The vehicle was capable of carrying up to three soldiers, and one Marine had already taken his place behind the gun. His rank and ID scrolled across the Spartan's display:PFC .FITZGERALD ,M .\n\"Hey, Chief!\" Fitzgerald said. \"Sergeant Johnson said you could use a gunner.\"\nThe Spartan nodded. \"That's right, Private. There's two boatloads of Marines on the far side of that ridge, and we're going after them.\"\nFitzgerald pulled the gun's charging lever back toward his chest, and released it with a metallic snap. A shell slipped into the first of the weapon's three barrels. \"I'm your man, Chief! Let's roll.\"\nThe Master Chief pulled himself up behind the wheel, started the engine, and strapped himself into the seat. The engine roared and the wheels kicked up geysers of dirt. The Warthog accelerated to the top of a rise, caught some air, and landed with a spine-jarring thump.\n\"I put a nav indicator on your HUD,\" Cortana said, \"just follow the arrow.\"\n\"Figures,\" the Spartan said, a hint of amusement in his level voice. \"You always were a backseat driver.\"\n\nTrue to the aircraft's nickname, Keyes heard the Banshee long before he actually caught a glimpse of the attack aircraft. The alien pilot had them on his sensorsKeyes was sure of thatand it wouldn't be long before another team dropped out of the sky in an attempt to root them out. The hills, which had seemed so welcoming when the command party first landed, had been transformed into a hellish landscape where the humans scuttled from one rocky crevice to the next, always on the run, and never allowed to rest. They had faced capture on three different occasions, but each time Corporal Wilkins and his Marines had managed to blow a hole in the Covenant's tightening net and lead the naval personnel to safety. But for how much longer?Keyes wondered. The continuous scrambling through the rocks, the lack of sleep, and the constant danger not only left them exhausted but levied a toll on morale as well. Abiad, Lovell, and Hikowa were still in fairly good shape, as were Wang and Singh, but Ensign Dowski had started to crack. It had started with a little self-concerned whining, grown into a stream of nonstop complaints, and now threatened to escalate into something worse. The humans were gathered in a dry grotto. Jagged rocks projected over their heads to provide some protection from the Banshee above. Wang knelt next to the thin, dirt-choked stream that gushed through the rocky passageway. He splashed water on his face. Singh was busy filling the command party's canteens while Dowski sat on a rock and glowered. \"They know where we are,\" the junior officer said accusingly, as if her commanding officer were somehow at fault. Keyes sighed. \" 'They know where we are,sir .' \"\n\"Okay,\" the Ensign replied, \"They know where we are,sir . So why continue to run? They'll catch us in the end.\"\n\"Maybe,\" Keyes agreed as he dabbed ointment onto a burst blister, \"and maybe not. I've been in contact with both Cortanaand Wellsley. They're both busy at the moment, but they'll send help as soon as they can. In the meantime, we tie up as many of their resources as possible, avoid capture, and kill some of the bastards if we can.\"\n\"For what?\" Dowski demanded. \"Soyou can make Admiral? I submit that we've done all we could reasonably be expected to do, that the longer we delay the harsher the Covenant will be. It makes sense to surrendernow .\"\n\"And you are anidiot ,\" Lieutenant Hikowa put in, her eyes blazing with uncharacteristic anger. \"First of all, the Captain rates the honorific 'sir.' You will render that honorific or I will plant my foot in your ass. \"Secondly, use your brain, assuming that you have one. The Covenant doesn't take prisoners, everyone knows that, so surrender equals death.\"\n\"Oh, yeah?\" Dowski said defiantly. \"Well, why haven't they already killed us then? They could strafe us with cannons, fire rockets into the rocks, or drop bombs on our position, but they haven't. Explainthat .\"\n\"Explainthis ,\" Singh said, inserting the barrel of his M6D into the Ensign's left ear. \"I'm starting to think that you look a lot like a Grunt. Lovell . . . check her face. I'll bet it peels right off.\"\nKeyes closed the fastener on the light-duty deck shoes, wished he had a pair of combat boots like the Marines wore, and knew Dowski was partially correct, insubordination aside. Itdid seem as though the aliens were intent on capturing his party rather than killing them, but why? It didn't square with their behavior in the past. Of course, the Covenant had changed tactics on him beforewhen he'd beaten the tar out of them at Sigma Octanus, and again when they'd returned the favor at Reach. The officer watched the tableau as it unfolded in front of him. Hikowa stood with her fists on her hips, face contorted with anger, while Singh screwed his weapon into Dowski's ear. The rest of the bridge crew were frozen, uncertain. The Marines weren't present, thank God, but it would be naIve to think they weren't aware of the Ensign's opinions, or of the discord among their superiors. The enlisted ranksalways knew, one way or another. So, what to do? Dowski wasn't about to change her mind, that was obvious, and she was becoming a liability. The Banshee whined loudly as it passed over the grotto for the second time. They needed to move and do it soon.\n\"Okay,\" Keyes said, \"you win. I should charge you with cowardice, insubordination, and dereliction of duty, but I'm a little pressed for time. So I hereby give you permission to surrender. Hikowa, relieve her of her weapon, ammo, and pack. Singh, truss her up. Nothing too tight . . . just enough so she can't follow us.\"\nA look of horror came over Dowski's face. \"You're going to leave me? All by myself? With no supplies?\" \"No,\" Keyes answered calmly, \"youwanted to surrender, remember? The Covenant will keep you company, and as for supplies, well, I have no idea what sort of rations they eat, but it should be interesting if they allow you a last meal. Bon appetit.\"\nDowski started to babble incoherently but Singh grew tired of it, shoved a battle dressing into the Ensign's mouth, and used some all-purpose repair tape to hold it in place. He used some of the same tape to hog-tie the officer.\n\"That should keep her out of trouble for a while.\"\nRocks clattered as Corporal Wilkins and two of his fellow Marines made their way down the streambed. The noncom saw Dowski, nodded as if everything were perfectly normal, and looked to Keyes. \"A Covenant dropship landed a squad of Elites about one klick to the south, sir. It's time to move.\"\nThe Naval officer nodded. \"Thank you, Corporal. The command team is ready. Please lead the way.\"\n\nMeanwhile, a few hundred meters above, and half a klick to the north, the Elite named Ado 'Mortumee put his Banshee into a wide turn, and watched the dropship touch down. There weren't many places to land, which meant that once on the ground his fellow Elites would still have a ways to go. Rather than drop hundreds of troops onto the rocky hillsides, and leave them to scramble over the exhausting up-and-down terrain, the Covenant command structure decided to use its air superiority to locate the humans and capture them. And there,'Mortumee mused,is the problem. Locating the aliens is one thingcapturing them is another. During the time since they had landed, the humans had proven themselves to be quite resourceful. Not only had they evaded capture, they had killed six of their pursuers, who, acting under strict orders to take the aliens alive, were at a considerable disadvantage. It made more sense simply to kill the humans. Of course, he was a mere pilot and soldier, not privy to the machinations of the Prophets or the Ship Masters. After the human lifeboat had been located, it wasn't long before Covenant scouts found Isna 'Nosolee's body, and ran a check on his identity. Intelligence was notified, official wheels began to turn, and the Covenant commanders were confronted with a problem: Why would an Ossoona risk his life to board a human lifeboat and ride it to the surface? The answer seemed obvious: Because someone important was on that boat. All of which served to explain why none of the humans had been killed. There was no way to knowwhich alien 'Nosolee had been afterso all of them had to be preserved. 'Mortumee glanced down at the instruments arrayed in front of him. A change! A string of seven heat blobs was winding its way to arbitrary \"north,\" while one remained behind. What did that signify?\nIt wasn't long before 'Mortumee's Banshee circled above the grotto. Dowski wrestled to free herself from the tape, and the Covenant closed in around her.\n\nSmoke swirled around the top of the butte as a Pelican pilot made use of his\n70mm chin gun to silence a Covenant gun emplacement. Satisfied that the Covenant plasma turreta powerful weapon that could be easily deployed and recoveredwas silent, he dropped down to within four feet of the top of the butte. Fifteen ODST Helljumpersthree more than the Pelican's operational maximumleaped from the Pelican's troop bay and fanned out. Cramming extra troops into a Pelican was a risky move, but Silva wanted to put as many soldiers as possible on the mesa, and Lieutenant \"Cookie\"\nPeterson knew his ship. The Pelican was still in reasonably good shape, he had the best maintenance crew in the Navywhat more could a pilot ask for?\nPeterson felt the dropship drift upward as the Marines bailed out, and he fought to keep the ship steady and level. He spotted movement in the landing zone. The chin gunlinked to his helmet sensorsfollowed the movement of Peterson's head. He spotted a column of Covenant troopers and fired. The heavy rotary cannon uttered a throaty roar and pounded the enemy formation into a puddle of blue-green paste. As the last of the Helljumpers jumped off, the Crew Chief yelled \"Clear!\"\nover the intercom. Peterson fired the ship's belly jets, demanded additional power from the twin turbine engines, and left the butte behind.\n\"This is Echo 136,\" the pilot said into his mike. \"We are green, clean, and extremely mean. Over.\"\n\"Roger that,\" Wellsley replied emotionlessly. \"Please return to way point two-five for another load of troopers. And, if you're going to insist on poetry, try some Kipling. You might find some of it rather instructive. Over and out.\"\nPeterson grinned, directed a one-fingered salute in the general direction of battalion HQ, and banked the dropship into a wide turn.\n\nResistance had slackened within minutes of the first landing, which allowed Lieutenant Melissa McKay and the surviving members of her company to advance upward. A significant number of the path's defenders were pulled away in a last-ditch attempt to hold their position. McKay discovered that the path was blocked by an ancient rockfall about thirty meters up, but saw the side door that was located just downhill of it, and knew what the aliens had been trying to defend. Here was the back door, the way she could enter the butte's interior, and push upward from there. Plasma fire stuttered out of the entryway, struck the cliff above her head, and blew rocky divots out of the smooth surface. McKay motioned for her troops to retreat back around the pillar's broad curvature, and waved a hand in the air. \"Hey, Top! I need a launcher!\"\nThe company sergeant was six troopers back so that a single well-placed grenade couldn't kill both leaders at once. He signaled assent, bawled an order, and passed one of the M19s forward. McKay accepted the weapon from the private behind her, checked to ensure that it packed a full load of rockets, and inched around the curve. Plasma fire sizzled out of the door, but the officer forced herself to remain perfectly still. She triggered the weapon's 2X scope, sighted carefully, and squeezed the trigger. The tube jumped as the 102mm rocket raced away, sailed through the hole, and detonated with a loud roar. There must have been some ammo stored inside, because there was a blue white secondary explosion which shook the rock beneath the ODST officer's boots. A gout of fire flared from the side of the cliff. It was difficult to imagine anyone or anything having survived such a blast, so McKay passed the launcher to the rear, and waved her troops forward. There was a cheer as the Marines ran up the path, shouldered their way through the smoke, and entered the butte's ancient interior. There were bodies, or whathad been bodies. Fortunately, the tunnel was intact. A couple of troopers collected plasma weapons, tried them out on the nearest wall, and added them to their personal armament. Others, McKay included, stared up through a thirty-meter-wide well toward the circle of daylight above. She saw a shadow pass overhead as one of the Pelicans dropped even more Helljumpers onto the mesa. The distantthump!\nof a frag grenade detonation made dust and loose soil tumble down on them.\n\"Hey, Loot,\" Private Satha said, \"what's the deal withthis ?\"\nSatha stomped on the floor and it rang in response. That was when McKay realized that she and her troops were standing on a large metal grating.\n\"What's it for?\" the private wondered aloud. \"To keep us out?\"\nMcKay shook her head. \"No, it looksold , too old to have been put in place by the Covenant.\"\n\"I found a lift!\" one of the Marines yelled. \"That's what it looks like, anywaycome check it out!\"\nMcKay went to investigate. Was this a way to reach the mesa? Her boot dislodged a shell casing which fell through one of the grating's rectangular holes and dropped into the darkness below. It was a long time before it could be heard clanging off ancient stone. Silva, Wellsley, and the rest of the Major's headquarters organization were on top of the butte waiting for her by the time McKay rode the antigrav lift to the surface and stepped out into the harsh sunlight. She blinked as she looked around. Bodies lay everywhere. Some wore Marine green but the vast majority were dressed in the rainbow colors that the Covenant used to identify its various ranks and specialties. A squad of Helljumpers moved through the carnage, searching for wounded humans, and kicking corpses to make sure that the enemy soldiers were actually dead. One of them attempted to rise and received a burst from an assault weapon for his trouble.\n\"Welcome to Alpha Base,\" Major Silva said as he arrived at McKay's side.\n\"You and your company did a damn good job, Lieutenant. Wellsley will have the rest of the battalion up here within the hour. It looks like I owe you that beer.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" McKay replied happily. \"You sure as hell do.\"\n\nThe tunnel washuge , plenty large enough to handle a Scorpion tank, which meant that the Master Chief had little difficulty steering the Warthog through the initial opening. He'd almost missed the entry, at the bottom of a large dry wash. Cortana's sensors had identified the entrance to the tunnel system. \"It's not a natural formation,\" she'd warned him. That meant someone built it. Logically, it meant that the tunnelled somewhereand it might shave precious time off his search for the crashed lifeboats. Once inside, things became a little more difficult as the Spartan was forced to maneuver the LRV up ramps, through a series of tight turns, and right to the very edge of a pit. A quick recon confirmed that the gap was narrow enough to jump, assuming the 'Hog had a running start. The Master Chief backed away, warned the gunner to hang on, and put his foot to the floor. The LRV raced up the ramp, sailed through air, and jounced to a hard landing on the other side. \"I'm picking up lots of Covenant traffic,\" Cortana said. \"It sounds like Major Silva and the Helljumpers have captured an enemy position. If we can round up the rest of the survivors, and find Captain Keyes, we'll have a chance to coordinate some serious resistance.\"\n\"Good,\" the Master Chief answered. \"It's about time something broke our way.\"\nThe Warthog's headlights swung across ancient walls as the Spartan turned the wheel, and the LRV emerged into a large open area, dotted with mysterious installations. It was dark; the road ended in front of a deep chasm. It wasn't long before Covenant troops emerged like maggots spilling out of a rotting corpse. Plasma fire splashed across the Warthog's windscreen. The Spartan dove from the vehicle, crouched near the driver's-side front tire, and drew his pistol. Fitzgerald opened up with the LAAG and swept the area with fire. Spent shell casings rained all around them. The Chief peered over the edge of the Warthog. They were dangerously exposed. The roadway they'd been using was devoid of cover, elevated roughly three meters above the rest of the massive vaulted chamber. Worse, it bisected the chamber, which left them exposed on virtually all sides. The giant enclosure was dimly lit; visibility was poor and the muzzle flash from the Warthog's gun played hell with his night vision. He blinked his eyes to clear them, then activated his pistol's scope. The metal floor dropped away to either side, and every surface was engraved with the strange geometric patterns that festooned Halo's mysterious architecture. Set well back from their position were a number of small structures, pillars, and support pylons. The Covenant were dug in among them. A Grunt popped out from cover, his plasma pistol glowing greenhe'd overcharged the weapon. The little SOBs liked to dump energy into the weapon, and discharge it all at once. It drained the weapon damn quick, but it also inflicted hellish damage on a target. A pulsing green-white orb of plasma sizzled past the Warthog. The Master Chief returned fire, then dropped back behind the 'Hog.\n\"Fitzgerald,\" he barked. \"Keep fire on them. I'll move up on the left and take them out.\"\n\"Got it.\" The tribarreled gun thundered, and fire hosed the Covenant position. The Spartan was prepared to charge ahead and into the fight when his motion sensor painted movement from the rear. The LAAG ceased fire as Fitzgerald yelled in pain and fell from the back of the Warthog. The Marine's helmet cracked into the metal floor. A shard of glassy, translucent material, tapered to a wicked point, protruded from the Marine's bicep. The shard glowed a ghostly purple. \"Goddamn it!\"\nFitzgerald grunted, as he tried to regain his footing. Two seconds later, the purple shard exploded, and blood sprayed from the wound. Fitzgerald howled in agony. There was no time to tend to Fitzgerald's injuries. A pair of Grunts charged up the slight incline and opened fire. A barrage of the glassy projectiles arced toward them and ricocheted madly from the Warthog. They were too close. The Chief fired at the nearest Grunt, three shots in succession. A trio of bullet pocks formed a neat cluster in the alien's chest. The Grunt's partner squealed in anger and brought his gun to bearan odd, hunchbacked device with a ridge of the glassy projectiles protruding from it like dorsal fins. The weapon spat purple-white needles at him. He sidestepped and slammed the butt of the pistol into the Grunt's head. The alien's skull caved in. He kicked the corpse back down the incline. Fitzgerald had crawled to cover behind the Warthog. He was pale, but didn't look shocky yet. The Spartan grabbed a first aid kit and expertly treated the wound. Self-sealing bio-foam filled the wound, packed it off, and numbed it. The young Marine would need some stitches and some time to rebuild the torn, savaged muscle of his arm, but he'd liveif either of them made it out of here alive.\n\"You okay?\" he asked the wounded soldier. Fitzgerald nodded, wiped sweat from his forehead with a bloody hand, then struggled back to his feet. Without another word, he manned the LAAG. It took the better part of fifteen minutes for the Master Chief and the gunner to sweep the area clear of Covenant forces. The Spartan patrolled the perimeter. To the left of the Warthog, the chamber stretched roughly eighty meters, then endedas did the road aheadin a massive chasm.\n\"Any ideas?\" he asked Cortana. There was a brief pause as the AI examined the data. \"The roadway ahead ends in a gap, but it's logical to assume that there's some kind of bridge mechanism. Find the controls that extend the bridge and we should be able to get across.\"\nHe nodded. He turned back and crossed the roadway and headed off to the right of the parked Warthog. As he passed the vehicle, he called over his shoulder to Fitzgerald. \"Wait here. I'm going to find us a way across.\"\nThe Master Chief marched across the chamber, and checked the odd structures that dotted the landscape. Some were illuminated by the dim glow from some kind of light panels, but there was no indication what powered them, or what the structures contained. He frowned. There didn't seem to be any sign of mechanisms or controls. He was about to head back to the Warthog and backtrack their course, then stopped. He stared at one of the massive pillars that stretched to the ceiling far overhead. There was nothing down here, but perhaps the mechanism he sought was above them. He moved as far to the end of the area as he could. Unlike the opposite side of the chamber, this half was bordered by a high, grooved metal wall. He followed the edge of the barrier and was gratified to locate a gap in the walla doorway. Inside, a ramp led up twenty meters, then turned ninety degrees to the left. The Spartan drew his pistol, activated his helmet lamp, and crept up the ramp. His caution was justified. As he reached the top, his motion sensor showed a contactright on top of him. He ducked around the corner just in time to meet the charge of a crimson-armored Elite. The Elite growled a challenge and swung a vicious blow at the Chief's head. He ducked, and his shields took the brunt of the blow. He fired at point blank range, not even bothering to aim. The Elite reared and returned fire and plasma blasts slashed through the narrow corridor. In one fluid motion, the Chief drew, primed, and dropped a frag grenade, practically at the Elite's feet. The alien warbled in surprise as the Spartan spun and ducked back around the corner. He was rewarded by a flash of smoke and fire. A spray of purple-black blood splashed the metal wall. He rounded the corner, pistol at the ready, and stepped over the Elite's smoking corpse. The Chief continued along the corridor, which opened onto a narrow ledge. Directly to his right, the thick metal walls stretched up and out of sight. To his left, the metal sloped away at a steep angle that led back to the main floor, that gradually gave way to the yawning abyss as he continued forward. Ahead of him, there was a pulsing glow, like the strobe of a Pelican's running lights. He stopped at the source of the light: A pair of small, glowing orbs hung suspended above a roughly rectangular frame of blue matte metal. Floating within the frame were a series of pulsing, shifting displays semitransparent, like Cortana's holographic appearance, though there was no visible projection device. The display's shimmering geometric patterns nagged at him, as if he should recognize them somehow. Even with his enhanced memory, he couldn't place where he'd seen them before. They just seemed . . . familiar. He reached a finger out to one of the symbols, a blue-green circle. The Spartan expected his finger to pass through nothing more than air. He was surprised when his finger met resistanceand the panel lights began to pulse more quickly.\n\"What did you do?\" Cortana asked, her voice alarmed. \"I'm detecting an energy spike.\"\n\"I . . . don't know,\" the Spartan admitted. He wasn't sure why he touched the \"button\" on the display. He just knew it felt right. There was a high-pitched whine and, from his vantage point, he could see the gap in the roadway in the distance. At its edges, harsh white light sprang into view, forming a path across the break in the road, like a flashlight beam in smoke. The light brightened, and there was a tremendous ripping sound. \"I'm showing a lot of photonic activity,\" Cortana said. \"The excited photons have displaced the air around the light path.\"\n\"Which means?\"\n\"Which means,\" she continued, \"that the light has become coherent. Solid.\"\nShe paused, then added, \"How did you know what control to push?\"\n\"I didn't. Let's get the hell out of here.\"\n\nThe ride across the light bridge was harrowing. He had tested the phenomenon with his foot, and discovered that it was as solid and unyielding as rock. Then he'd shrugged, told Fitzgerald to hang on, and sped the Warthog directly at the beam of illumination. He could hear Fitzgerald alternate between cursing and praying as they drove over the seemingly bottomless chasm on nothing more than a beam of light. Once on the other side, they followed the tunnel out into the valley beyond, where the Master Chief guided the 'Hog up through a scattering of rocks and trees, to the top of a grassy rise. A sheer cliff threatened to block progress to the right, forcing them to stay to the left, as they headed toward a gap to the south. The vehicle splashed through a shallow river. They saw the mouth of a passageway off to the right, decided that it would be best to investigate, and guided the all-terrain vehicle up through a rocky pass. It was only a matter of minutes before the Warthog arrived on a ledge that looked out over a valley below. The Master Chief could see a UNSC lifeboat and a scattering of Covenant troops, but no Marines. Not a good sign. A vaguely pyramidal structure rose to dominate the very center of the valley. The Master Chief saw a pulse of light race toward the sky, and knew that the structure had to be similar to whatever caused the flash he'd seen earlier. There was only a moment to take in the situation before the aliens opened fire and the gunner replied in kind. It was time to put the 'Hog into motion. The Master Chief drove as the M41 LAAG whirred and rattled behind him. Marine Fitzgerald shouted, \"You like that? Here, have some more!\" and fired another sustained burst. A pair of Grunts rolled in opposite directions, as a squat, long-armed Jackal was cut in half, and the heavy-caliber slugs blew divots out of the ground beyond. As the LRV swung past the pyramid, Cortana said, \"There are some Marines hiding up on the hill. Let's give them a hand.\"\nThe Spartan aimed for a gap between two trees and saw a tall, angular Elite step out from cover. The Elite raised a weapon but was quickly transformed into a speed bump as the Warthog knocked him down and the huge tires crushed his body. The Marines appeared soon after that, holding their assault weapons in the air, and calling greetings. A sergeant nodded. \"It's good to see you, Chief. It was starting to get a little bit warm around here.\"\nCovenant forces made a run at the hill after that, but the 12.7X99 mm rounds made short work of them, and the slope was soon littered with their bodies. The Master Chief heard a burst of static, followed by Foehammer's voice.\"Echo 419 to Cortana . . . come in.\"\n\"We read you, 419. We have survivors and need immediate dust-off.\"\n\"Roger, Cortana. On my way. I spotted additional lifeboats in your area.\"\n\"Acknowledged,\"Cortana answered.\"We're on our way.\"\nIt took the better part of the afternoon to check the interlocking valleys, locate the rest of the survivors, and deal with the Covenant forces who attempted to interfere. But finally, having rounded up a total of sixty-three Marines and naval personnel, the Spartan watched Echo 419 land for the last time, and jumped aboard. Foehammer looked back over her shoulder. \"You put in a long day, Chief. Nice job. Our ETA at Alpha Base is thirty minutes.\"\n\"Acknowledged,\" the Spartan said. He exhaled, then softened his clipped tone. He allowed himself to lean back against the bulkhead and added,\n\"Thanks for the ride.\"\nThirty seconds later he was asleep.\n\nCaptain Jacob Keyes stood, hands on knees, panting in front of a vertical cliff face. He and the rest of the command party had been running off and on for three hours. Even the Marines were exhausted, as the shadow cast by the Covenant dropship drifted over them and blocked the sun. Keyes considered making use of Dowski's pistol to fire at the aircraft but couldn't summon the energy. The voice that boomed through the externally mounted speakers was all too familiar.\"Captain Keyes? This is Ellen Dowski. This is a box canyon. There's no place for you to run. You might as well pack it in.\"\nThe darkness cast by the ship shifted as the aircraft lowered itself onto the bottom of the canyon. The engines howled and blew dust in all directions before eventually spooling down. A hatch opened and Dowski jumped to the ground. She appeared to be unharmed and wore what could only be described as a self-satisfied smirk. \"You see? It's just like I told you it would be.\"\nA half dozen veteran Elites dropped to the ground, followed by a brace of Grunts. All were heavily armed. Gravel crunched as they approached the cliff face. One of the aliens spoke, his booming voice warbling the human speech with detectable discomfort. \"You will drop your weapons.Now. \"\nThe command crew looked at Keyes. He shrugged, bent over, and laid the M6D on the ground. The others did likewise. The Grunts scurried about and collected the weapons. One of them chortled in his own language, as he collected all three of the Marines' assault weapons, and carried them away. \"Which?\" the Elite with the translator demanded, and looked at Dowski.\n\"That one!\" the renegade officer proclaimed, and pointed at Keyes. Hikowa started forward. \"You little bitch! I'll\"\nNo one ever learned what Hikowa would do, because the Elite shot her dead. Keyes lunged forward and attempted to tackle the Elite, to no avail. A lightning-fast blow clipped the side of his head, hard enough that his vision grayed out. He fell to the dirt. The Elite was methodical. Starting with the Marines, he shot each captured human in the head. Wang attempted to run but a plasma bolt hit him between the shoulder blades. Lovell made a grab for the pistol, and took a blast to the face. Keyes struggled to his feet again, dizzy and disoriented, and attempted to rush the Elite. He was clubbed to the ground a second time. Hikowa's dead eyes stared vacantly back at him. Finally, after the last plasma bolt had been fired and while the odor of burned flesh still hung in the air, only two members of the command crew were still alive: Keyes and Dowski. The Ensign was pale. She shook her head and wrung her hands. \"I didn't know, sir, honest I didn't. They told me\"\nThe Elite snapped up a fallen M6D pistol and shot Dowski. The bullet hit her in the center of her forehead. The pistol's report echoed down the canyon. The Ensign's eyes rolled back in her head, her knees gave way, and she collapsed in a heap. The Elite turned the M6D over in his hand. The weapon was small compared tohis pistoland his finger didn't fit easily inside the trigger guard.\n\"Projectiles. Very primitive. Take him away.\"\nKeyes felt the other Elites grab him by the arms and drag him up a ramp into the dropship's murky interior. It seemed that the Covenant's rules had changed again. Now theydid take prisonersjust not very many. The ship lifted, and the only human to survive sincerely wished that he hadn't.\n Alpha Base didn't offer a whole lot of amenities, but the Spartan took full advantage of what few there were. First came a full ten hours of completely uninterrupted sleep, followed by components selected from two MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, and a two-minute hot shower. The water was provided by the ring itself, the heat was courtesy of a Covenant power plant, and the showerhead had been fabricated by one of the techs from thePillar of Autumn . Though brief, the shower felt good,very good, and the Spartan enjoyed every second of it. The Master Chief had dried off, scrounged a fresh set of utilities, and was just about to run a routine maintenance check on his armor when a private stuck his head into the Spartan's quarters, a prefab memory-plastic cubicle that had replaced the archaic concept of tents.\n\"Sorry to bother you, Chief, but Major Silva would like to see you in the Command Post . . . on the double.\"\nThe Spartan wiped his hands with a rag. \"I'll be right there.\"\nThe Master Chief was just about to take the armor off standby when the Marine reappeared. \"One more thing . . . The Major said to leave your armor here.\"\nThe Spartan frowned. He didn't like to be separated from his armor, especially in a combat zone. But an order was an order, and until he determined what had happened to Keyes, Silva was in command. He nodded. \"Thank you, Private.\" He checked to ensure that his gear was squared away, activated the armor's security system, and buckled an M6D around his waist. The Major's office was located in Alpha Base's CP, the centermost of the alien structures at the top of the butte. He made his way through the halls, and down a bloodstained corridor. A pair of manacled Grunt POWs were hard at work scrubbing the floor under the watchful gaze of a Navy guard. Two Helljumpers stood guard outside of Silva's door. Both looked extremely sharp for troopers who had been in combat the day before. They favored the Spartan with the casually hostile look that members of the ODST reserved for anyone or anything that wasn't part of their elite organization. The larger of the pair eyed the noncom's collar insignia.\n\"Yeah, Chief, what can we do for you?\"\n\"Master Chief SPARTAN-117, reporting to Major Silva.\"\n\"SPARTAN-117\" was the only official designation he had in the eyes of the military. It occurred to him that, after Reach fell, there was no one left who knew his name was John.\n\"SPARTAN-117?\" the smaller of the two Marines inquired. \"What the hell kind of name is that?\"\n\"Look who's talking,\" McKay interrupted, as she approached the Master Chief from behind. \"That's a pretty strange question coming from a guy named Yutrzenika.\"\nBoth of the Helljumpers laughed, and McKay waved the Spartan through the door. \"Never mind those two, Chief. They're jump happy. My name is McKay. Go on in.\"\nThe Spartan said \"Thank you, ma'am,\" took three steps forward, and found himself standing in front of a makeshift desk. Major Silva looked up from what he was doing and met the Master Chief's eyes. The Chief snapped to attention. \"Sir! Master Chief SPARTAN-117, reporting as ordered, sir!\"\nThe chair had been salvaged from a UNSC lifeboat. It made a gentle hissing noise as Silva leaned backward. He held a stylus which he used to tap his lips. That was the moment when most officers would have said, \"At ease,\"\nand the fact that he didn't was a clear indication that something was wrong. But what?\nMcKay circled around to Silva's left, where she leaned on the wall and watched the scene through hooded eyes. She wore her hair Helljumper style, short on the sides so that the tattoos on her scalp could be seen, and flat on top. She had green eyes, a slightly flattened nose, and full lips. It managed to be both a soldier's faceand a woman's face at the same time. When Silva spoke, it was as if he could read the Spartan's mind. \"So, you're wondering who I am, and what this is all about. That's understandable, especially given your elite status, your close relationship with Captain Keyes, and the fact that we now know he has been captured. Loyalty is a fine thing, one of the many virtues for which the military is known, and a quality I admire.\"\nSilva stood and started to pace back and forth behind his chair. \"However, there is a chain of command, which means that you report tome .Not to Keyes,not to Cortana, andnot to yourself.\"\nThe Marine stopped, turned, and looked the Master Chief square in the eye.\n\"I thought it would be a good idea for you and I to pull a com check. So, here's the deal. I'm short a Captain, so Lieutenant McKay is serving as my Executive Officer. If either one of us says 'crap,' then I expect you to ask\n'what color, how much, and where do you want it?' Do you read me?\"\nThe Chief stared for a moment and clenched his jaw. \"Perfectly, sir.\"\n\"Good. Now one more thing. I'm familiar with your record and I admire it. You are one helluva soldier. That said, you are also afreak , the last remaining subject in a terribly flawed experiment, and one which should never be repeated.\"\nMcKay watched the Master Chief's face. His hair was worn short, not as short as hers, but short. He had serious eyes, a firm mouth, and a strong jaw. His skin hadn't been exposed to the sun for a long time and it was white,too white, like something that lived in the deep recesses of a cave. From what she had heard he had been a professional soldier since the age of six, which meant he was an expert at controlling what showed on his face, but she could see the words hit like bullets striking a target. Nothing overt, just a slight narrowing of the eyes, and a tightness around his mouth. She looked at Silva, but if the Major was aware of the changes, he didn't seem to care.\n\"The whole notion of selecting people at birth, screwing with their minds, and modifying their bodies is wrong. First, because the candidates have no choice, second, because the subjects of the program are transformed into human aliens, and third, because the Spartan program failed.\n\"Are you familiar with a man named Charles Darwin? No, probably not, because he never went to war. Darwin was a naturalist who proposed a theory called 'natural selection.' Simply put, he believed that those species best equipped to survive would do sowhile other, less effective organisms would eventually die out. \"That's what happened to the Spartans, Chief:They died out. Or will, once you're gone. And that's where the ODST comes in. It was the Helljumpers who took this butte, sonnot a bunch of augmented freaks dressed in fancy armor.\n\"When we push the Covenant back, which I sincerely believe we will, that victory will be the result of work by men and women like Lieutenant McKay. Human beings who are razor-sharp, metal tough, and green to the core. Do you read me?\"\nThe Master Chief remembered Linda, James, and all the rest of the seventy three boys and girls with whom he learned to fight. All dead, all labeled as\n\"freaks,\" all dismissed as having been part of a failed experiment. He took a deep breath.\n\"Sir, no sir!\"\nThere was a long moment of silence as the two men stared into each other's eyes. Finally, after a good five seconds had elapsed, the Major nodded. \"I understand. ODSTs are loyal to our dead, as well. But that doesn't change the facts. The Spartan program isover . Human beings will win this war . . . so you might as well get used to it. In the meantime, we need every warrior we haveespecially those who have more medals than the entire general staff put together.\"\nThen, as if some sort of switch had been thrown, the ODST officer's entire demeanor changed. He said, \"At ease,\" invited both of his guests to sit down, and proceeded to brief the Master Chief on his upcoming mission. The Covenant had Captain Keyes, recon had confirmed it, and Silva was determined to get him back.\n\nThough their ship had been damaged by thePillar of Autumn during her brief rampage through the system, the Covenant's Engineers were hard at work making repairs to theTruth and Reconciliation . Now, hovering only a few hundred units off Halo's surface, the ship had become a sort of de facto headquarters for those assigned to \"harvest\" the ring world's technology. The warship was at the very center of the command structure's activities. The corridors were thick with officer Elites, major Jackals, and veteran Grunts. There was also a scattering of Engineers, amorphous-looking creatures held aloft by gas bladders, who had a savantlike ability to dismantle, repair, and reassemble any complex technology. But all of them, regardless of how senior they might be, hurried to get out of the way as Zuka 'Zamamee marched through the halls, closely followed by a reluctant Yayap. Not because of his rank, but because of his appearance and the message it sent. The arrogant tilt of his head, the space-black armor, and the steadyclick-clack of his heels all seemed to radiate confidence and authority. Still, formidable as 'Zamamee was, no one was allowed onto the command deck without being screened, and no less than six black-clad Elites were waiting when he and his aide stepped off the gravity lift. If these Elites were intimidated by their fellow's demeanor they gave no sign of it.\n\"Identification,\" one of them said brusquely, and extended his hand.\n'Zamamee dropped his disk into the other warrior's hand with the air of someone who was conferring a favor on a lesser being. The security officer accepted 'Zamamee's identity disk and dropped it into a handheld reader. Data appeared and scrolled from right to left. \"Place your hand in the slot.\"\nThe second machine took the form of a rectangular black box which stood about five units high. Green light sprayed out of a slot located in the structure's side.\n'Zamamee did as instructed, felt a sudden stab of pain as the machine sampled his tissue, and knew that a computer was busy comparing his DNA with that on file. Not because he might be human, but because politics were rife within the Covenant, and there had been a few assassinations of late.\n\"Confirmed,\" the Elite said. \"It appears as though you are the same Zuka\n'Zamamee that's scheduled to meet with the Council of Masters fifteen units from now. The Council is running behind schedule, however, so you'll have to wait. Please hand all personal weapons to me. There's a waiting room over therebut the Grunt will have to remain outside. You will be called when the Council is ready.\" Though not burdened by his energy rifle, which he had given to Yayap to carry, the Elite did have a plasma pistol, which he surrendered butt first.\n'Zamamee made his way into the makeshift holding area and discovered that a number of other beings had been forced to wait as well. Most sat hunched over, kept to themselves, and stared at the deck. Making matters even worse was the fact that, rather than first come, first served, it seemed as though rank definitely had its privileges, and the most senior penitents were seen first. Not that the Elite could complain. Had it not been forhis rank the Council would never have agreed to see him atall . But finally, after what seemed like an eternity, 'Zamamee was ushered into the chamber where the Command Council had convened. A minor Prophet sat, legs folded, at the center of a table which curved around a podium at which the Elite was clearly expected to stand. Whenever a gust of air hit the exalted one he seemed to bob slightly, suggesting that rather than sit on a chair, he preferred to let his antigrav belt support him, either as a matter of habit, or as a stratagem designed to remind others of who and what he was. Something 'Zamamee not only understood, but admired. The Prophet wore a complex headpiece. It was set with gemstones and wired for communications. A silver mantle rested on his shoulders and supported a fancifully woven cluster of gold wires which extended forward to place a microphone in front of his bony lips. Richly embroidered red robes cascaded down over his lap and fell to the deck. Obsidian black eyes tracked the Elite all the way to the podium while an assistant whispered in his ear. The other Elite, an aristocrat named Soha 'Rolamee, raised a hand palm outward. \"I greet you 'Zamamee. How is your wound? Healing nicely, I hope.\"\n'Rolamee outranked 'Zamamee by two full levels. The junior officer gloried in the respectful manner with which the other Elite had greeted him. \"Thank you, Excellency. I will heal.\"\n\"Enough,\" the Prophet said officiously, \"we're running late, so let's get on with it. Zuka 'Zamamee comes before the Council seeking special dispensation to take leave of the unit he commands, in order to locate and kill one particular human. A rather strange notion, since all of them look alike and are equally annoying. However, according to our records, this particular human is responsible for hundreds of Covenant casualties.\n\"The Council notes that Officer 'Zamamee was wounded during an encounter with this human, and reminds Officer 'Zamamee that the Covenant has no tolerance for personal vendettas. Please keep that in mind as you make your case, and be mindful of the time. A measure of brevity will serve you well.\"\n'Zamamee lowered his eyes as a signal of respect. \"Thank you, Excellency. Our spies suspect that the individual in question was raised to be a warrior from a very young age, surgically altered to enhance his abilities, and furnished with armor which may be superior to our own.\"\n\"Better than our own?\" the Prophet inquired, his tone making it clear that he considered such a possibility extremely unlikely. \"Mind your words, Officer\n'Zamamee. The technology underlying the armor you wear came straight from the Forerunners. To say that it is in any way inferior verges on sacrilege.\"\n\"Still, what 'Zamamee says is true,\" 'Rolamee put in. \"The files are full of reports which, though contradictory in some cases, all make mention of one or more humans clad in reactive special armor. Assuming that the eyewitness accounts are accurate, it appears that this individual or group of individuals can absorb a great deal of punishment without suffering personal injury, have exceptional combat skills, and demonstrate superior leadership capabilities. Wherever he or they appear, other humans rally and fight with renewed vigor.\"\n\"Exactly,\" 'Zamamee said gratefully. \"Which is why I recommend that a special Hunter-Killer team be commissioned to find the human and retrieve his armor for analysis.\"\n\"Noted,\" the Prophet said gravely. \"Withdraw while the Council confers.\"\n'Zamamee had little choice but to lower his eyes, back away from the podium, and turn to the door. Once out in the hallway, the Elite was required to wait for only a few units before his name again was called, and he was ushered back into the room. 'Zamamee saw that both the Prophet and the second Elite had disappeared, leaving 'Rolamee to deliver the news. The other officer stood as if to reduce the width of the social gap that separated them. \"I regret, 'Zamamee, that the Prophet places little weight on the reports, labeling them 'combat-induced hysteria.' More than that, we all agreed that you are far too valuable an asset to expend on a single target. Your request has been denied.\"\n'Zamamee knew that 'Rolamee had invented the \"far too valuable\" aspect of his report in order to cushion the blow, but appreciated the intent behind the words. Though severely disappointed, he was a soldier, and that meant following orders. He lowered his eyes. \"Yes, Excellency. Thank you, Excellency.\"\n\nYayap saw the Elite emerge, read the slight droop of his shoulders, and knew his prayers had been answered. The Council had denied the Elite's insane request, he would be allowed to return to his unit, and life would return to normal. If 'Zamamee had been intimidating on his way to see the Council, he was a good deal less so on his way out. He walked even faster, however, forcing Yayap to break into a run. The Grunt weaved his way through the foot traffic arrayed in front of him and struggled to keep pace with 'Zamamee. Yayap squealed in surprise when he slammed into the back of 'Zamamee's armored legs; the Elite had come to a sudden halt. The Grunt noticed with unease that his new master's hands were clenched. He followed 'Zamamee's gaze and spotted a group of four Jackals. They dragged a uniformed human between them.\n\nKeyes had just been interrogated for the third time. Some sort of neural shock treatment had been administered to make him talk, and his nerve endings continued to buzz as the aliens prodded his back, yelled incomprehensible gibberish into his ears, and laughed at his discomfort. He tasted his own blood. The procession came to a sudden stop as an Elite in black combat armor blocked the way, pointed a long slender finger at the human, and said \"You!\nTell me where the I can find the human who wears the special armor.\"\nKeyes looked up, struggled to focus his eyes, and faced the alien. He saw the dressing and guessed the rest. \"I don't have the foggiest idea,\" he said. He managed a weak smile. \"But the next time you run into him, you might consider ducking.\"\n'Zamamee took a full step forward and backhanded the human across the face. Keyes staggered, recovered his balance, and wiped a trace of blood away from the corner of his mouth. He locked eyes with the alien for the second time. \"Go aheadshoot me.\"\nYayap saw the Elite consider doing just that, as his right hand went to the pistol, touched the butt, and fell away. Then, without another word,\n'Zamamee walked away. The Grunt followed. Somehow, by means Yayap wasn't quite sure of, the human had won.\n\n\nCHAPTER FOUR D+17:11:04 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) /\nPelican Echo 419, in flight. Recon flights conducted the day before had revealed that the sensors aboard Covenant vesselTruth and Reconciliation might have a blind spot down-spin of the alien vessel's current position, where a small mountain rose to block the electronic view. Even more important, Wellsley had concocted an array of signals designed to trick the Covenant technicians into believing that any UNSC dropship was actually one of their own. Fifty meters above the deck, and cloaked in electronic camouflage, the Master Chief and a Pelican-load of Helljumpers waited to find out if their ruse would work. Only time would tell if the fake signals were effective. One thing was for certain: Though conceived for the express purpose of rescuing Captain Keyes, the mission put together by Silva, Wellsley, and Cortana bore still another, even more important purpose. If the rescue teamdid manage to penetrate a Covenant vessel, and successfully remove a prisoner, the human presence on Halo would be transformed from an attempt merely to survive into a full-fledged resistance movement. The ship shuddered as it hit a series of air pockets, then swayed from side to side as the pilot who referred to herself as Foehammer wove back and forth through an obstacle course of low-lying hills. The Master Chief took the opportunity to assess the Marines seated around him. They were Helljumpers, the same people Silva said would ultimately win the war, relegating \"freaks\" like himself to the dustbin of history. Maybe Silva was right, maybe the Spartan programwould end with him, but that didn't matter. Not herenot now. The Marines would help him take out the sentries, cope with weapons emplacements, and reach the gravity lift located directly below theTruth and Reconciliation 's belly, and he was glad to have their help. Even with the element of surprise, plus support from the ODST troops, things were likely to be pretty hot by the time they made it to the lift. That's when asecond dropship would land and discharge a group of regular Marines that would join the assault on the ship itself. There was some concern that theTruth and Reconciliation might simply lift at that point, but Cortana had been monitoring Covenant communications, and was convinced that critical repairs were still being made to the alien cruiser. Assuming that they were able to reach the gravity lift, meet up with their reinforcements, and fight their way aboard the ship, all they had to do was find Keyes, eliminate an unknown number of hostiles, and show up for the dust-off. A walk in the park. Foehammer's voice came over the intercom. \"We are five to dirt . . . repeat five to dirt.\"\nThat was Sergeant Parker's cue to stand and eye his troops. His voice came over the team freq and grated on the Spartan's ears. \"All right, boys and girls\n. . . lock and load. The Covenant is throwing a party and you are invited. Remember, the Master Chief goes in first, so take your cues from him. I don't know about you, but Ilike having a swabbie on point.\"\nThere was general laughter. Parker gave the Spartan a thumbs-up, and he offered the same gesture in return. It felt good to have some backup for a change. He mentally reviewed the plan, which called for him to insert ahead of the Helljumpers, and clear a path with his S2 AM sniper's rifle. Once the outer defenses were cleared, the Marines would move up. Then, once the element of surprise had been lost, the Master Chief planned to switch to his MA5B assault rifle for the close-in work. Like the rest of the troops, the Spartan was carrying a full combat load of ammo, grenades, and other gear, plus two magazines for the M19 launchers.\n\"Thirty seconds to dirt!\" Foehammer announced. \"Shoot some of the bastards for me!\"\nAs the Pelican hovered a foot above the surface, Parker yelled, \"Go, go, go!\"\nand the Master Chief sprang down the ramp. He sidestepped and swept the area. The Helljumpers thundered down the ramp and onto the ground, right behind him. It was dark, which meant they had nothing beyond the light reflected off the moon that hung in the sky and the glow of Covenant work lights to guide them to their objective. Seconds later, Echo 419 was airborne again. The pilot turned down-spin, fed fuel to her engines, and disappeared into the night. The Master Chief heard the aircraft pass over his head, gathered his bearings, and spotted a footpath off to the right. The ODST troops spread out to either side as Parker and a three-Marine fire team turned to cover the group's six. He crept along the rocky footpath, which rose to a two-meter-high embankment. As he neared a cluster of rocks, Cortana warned the Spartan of enemy activity ahead. A host of red dots appeared on his motion sensor. Several meters ahead and to the left was a deep pitsome kind of excavation, judging from the Covenant work lights that dotted the area with pools of illumination. He briefly wondered what the aliens were looking for. He clicked the rifle's safety off. What they were looking for didn't matter. In the end, he'd make sure they never lived to find it. The Master Chief found a patch of cover next to a tree, raised the rifle, and used the scope's 2X and night optics setting to find the Covenant gun emplacements located on the far side of the depression. There were lots of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites in the area, but it was imperative to neutralize the plasma cannonsknown as Shadesbefore the Marines moved out into the open. His MJOLNIR armor and shields could handle a limited amount of the Shades' plasma fire. The Helljumpers' ballistic armor, on the other hand, just couldn't handle that kind of firepower. Once both Shades had been located, the Spartan switched to the 10X setting, practiced the move from one target to the next, and tried it yet again. Once he was sure that he could switch targets quickly enough, he exhaled quietly, then held his breath. His hand squeezed the trigger and the rifle kicked against his shoulder. The first shot took the nearest gunner in the chest. As the Grunt tumbled from the Shade's seat, the Master Chief panned the rifle to the right, and put a 14.5mm round through the second Grunt's pointy head. The rifle's booming report alerted the Covenant and they returned fire. He moved forward along the low ridge and took a new firing position behind the scaly bark of a tree. The rifle barked twice more, and a pair of Jackals fell. He reloaded with practiced ease, and continued sniping. Without the Shades to support them, the enemy fell in ones, twos, and threes. The Master Chief reloaded again, fired until there were no more targets of opportunity, and made the switch to his assault rifle. He jumped down into the open pit and crouched behind a large boulder, one of several that were strewn around the depression.\n\"Helljumpers: move up!\" he barked into the radio. In seconds, the ODSTs charged into the pit. As the lead soldiers entered, a trio of Grunts burst from hiding, shot one of the Marines in the face, and tried to run. The Helljumper's body hadn't even hit the ground before the Spartan and another ODST hosed the aliens with bullets. The gunshots echoed through the twisting canyons, then faded. The Spartan frowned; there was no way the fracas would go unnoticed. The element of surprise was gone. There was no time to waste. The Master Chief led the Helljumpers through the depression, up a hill on the far side of the pit, and along the side of a sheer cliff face. He stayed close to this rock wall on his right, mindful of the sheer drop that awaited any who strayed too far to the left. He could just make out the glint of moonlight on a massive ocean, far below him. His motion sensor pinged two contacts and he waved the ODSTs to a halt. He crouched behind a clump of brush at the top of the cliff path, conscious of the massive drop on the other side. A pair of Jackals rounded the bend ahead, their overcharged plasma pistols pulsing green, and paid dearly for their enthusiasm. The Spartan sprang from his cover and slammed the butt of his rifle into the nearest Jackal's shield. The energy field flared and died, and the force of the blow sent the alien tumbling off the path. The alien screamed and plummeted off the cliff. The Chief pivoted and fired his rifle from the hip. The burst struck the second alien in the side. The Jackal slammed to the ground as his finger tightened on his weapon's trigger as he died. A massive hole blossomed in the rock above the Master Chief's head. He slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon, and continued to advance.\n\"Here's a little something to remember me by,\" one of the Marines growled, and shot each Jackal in the head. As the team continued up the path, they encountered another Shade, more Grunts, and a pair of Jackals, all of whom seemed to melt away under the combined assault by the Master Chief's sniper rifle, the Marine's assault weapons, and a few well-placed grenades. The rescue force pressed on, toward the lights beyond. Covenant resistance was determined but spotty, and before long the Master Chief could hear the thrumming sound of the alien ship as it hovered more than a hundred meters above them. His skin crackled with static electricity. In the center of a steep dip in the rock lay a large metal disk, the gravity lift that the Covenant used to move troops, supplies, and vehicles to and from the ring world's surface. Purple light shimmered around the platform where the beam was anchored.\n\"Come on!\" the Master Chief shouted, pointing at the lift. \"That's our way in. Let's move!\"\nThere was a mad dash through a narrow canyon followed by a pitched battle as the Master Chief and the Helljumpers entered the area directly below the ship. The depression was ringed with Shades, and all of them opened fire at once. The Chief made use of the sniper rifle to kill the nearest gunner, charged up the intervening slope, and jumped into the now vacant seat. The first order of business was to silence the other guns. He yanked the control yoke to the left and the gun swiveled to face a second Shade, across the defile. A glowing image of a hollow triangle floated in front of his face. When it lined up with the other gun, it flashed red. He thumbed the firing studs, and lances of purple-white energy lashed the enemy emplacement. The Grunt gunner struggled to leap free of his Shade, fell into the path of the Spartan's fire, and was speared by a powerful blast. He slumped against the base of his abandoned Shade, a smoking hole burned through his chest. The Master Chief swiveled the captured gun and took aim on the remaining Shades. He hosed the targets with a hellish wave of destructive energy, then, satisfied that the emplacements were silenced, went to work on the enemy ground troops. He had just burned a pair of Jackals to the ground when Cortana announced that a Covenant dropship was inbound, and the Master Chief was forced to shift his fire to the alien aircraft and the troops that spilled out onto the ground. The human walked the blue Shade fire across the aliens, cutting them down, and pounding what remained into mush. He was still at it when a Marine yelled, \"Look at that! There's more of them!\" and a dozen figures floated down through the gravity lift. A pair of the newcomers were huge and wore steel-blue armor as well as handheld plate-armor shields. The Chief had faced such creatures before, not long before Reach fell. Covenant Hunters were tough, dangerous foespractically walking tanks. They were slow and appeared clumsy, but the cannons mounted on their arms were equivalent to the heavy weapons a Banshee carried, and they could leap into motion with startling suddenness. Their metal shields could withstand a tremendous amount of punishment. Worse, they would never stop until the enemy lay dead at their feet . . . or they were dead themselves. The Helljumpers opened fire, grenades exploded, and the pair of Hunters roared defiance. One of them lifted his right arm and fired his weapon, a fuel rod gun. One of the ODSTs screamed and fell, his flesh melting. The Marine's rocket fired into the air, slid into the grav lift beam, and detonated harmlessly. The Hunters lumbered from the grav lift and strode up the edge of the pit. Behind them, a swarm of Jackals and Elites formed a rough phalanx and peppered the human positions with plasma fire. Sergeant Parker yelled, \"Hit 'em, Helljumpers!\" and the ODSTs poured fire onto the massive alien juggernauts. Bullets pinged from their armor and whined through the rocks. The Spartan swiveled around, and heard a warning tone as a Hunter's weapon discharged. Burning energy smashed into him. The Shade shook under the force of the incoming fire as the Master Chief clenched his jaw and forced himself to bring the targeting reticle down onto the target. His shield bled energy and began to shriek a shrill alarm. The instant the targeting display pulsed red, he mashed down the firing studs and unleashed a flood of incandescent blue light. The Hunter didn't have time to bring its shield fully into play, and plasma blasts burned through multiple layers of armor, and exited through his spine. The Spartan heard a cry of what sounded like anguish as the second alien saw his bond brother fall. The Hunter spun and fired his fuel rod gun at the Master Chief's captured emplacement. The Shade took a direct hit, flipped over onto its side, and threw him to the ground. The ground vibrated as the enraged alien charged up the slope, right for the downed Spartan. The Chief rolled to his right and came up in a low crouch. The alien was close now, within five meters. A row of razor-sharp spines sprang up along the Hunter's back. With his shields depleted, the Chief knew that those spines could cut him in two. He dropped to one knee and unslung his assault rifle. Bullets bounced harmlessly from the alien's armor. At the last second, he dodged left and slid down the slope. The Hunter didn't anticipate the move, and the razor-spines passed over the Spartan's head, missing him by mere inches. The Chief rolled onto his bellyand saw his opportunity. A patch of orange, leathery skin was visible along the Hunter's curved spine. He emptied the MA5B's magazine into the unprotected target, and thick orange blood gouted from a cluster of bullet wounds. The Hunter gave a low, keening wail, then collapsed in a puddle of his own gore. He rose to one knee, fed a fresh magazine into the assault rifle, and scanned the area for enemies. \"All clear,\" he called out. The remaining ODSTs called in all clears as well. That opened the way to the lift and Cortana was quick to seize on the opportunity. She activated the armor's communication system.\"Cortana to Echo 419. We made it to the gravity liftand are ready for reinforcements.\"\n\"Copy that, Cortana . . . Echo 419 inbound. Clear the drop zone.\"\n\"What's the matter?\" Sergeant Parker demanded of his troops, several of whom were looking longingly at the fast-approaching Pelican's running strobes. \"Never seen a UNSC dropship before? Keep your eyes on the rocks, damn itthat's where the bastards will come from.\"\nThe Spartan waited for Echo 419 to unload the fresh Marines, waved them forward, and joined the surviving Helljumpers on the lift pad. \"Looks like we made it,\" a private said, just before an invisible hand reached down to pluck him off the surface. Sergeant Parker looked up toward the belly of the ship, and said, \"Aren't we the lucky ones?\" then rose as if suspended from a rope.\n\"Once we're in the ship I can home in on the Captain's Command Neural Interface,\" Cortana said. \"The CNI will lead us to him. He'll probably be in or near the ship's brig.\" \"I'm glad to hear it,\" the Chief answered dryly, and felt the beam pull him upward. Someone else yelled, \"Yeehaw!\" and vanished into the belly of the ship. The Covenant didn't realize it yetbut the Marines had landed.\n\nNone of the humans understood, much less had the ability to predict, the ring world's weather. So, when big drops of blood-warm rain fell on the mesa, it came as a complete surprise. The Helljumpers grumbled as the water streamed off their faces, soaked their uniforms, and started to pool on the surface of the landing pad. McKay saw things differently, however. She liked the wet stuff, not just because it felt good on her skin, but because bad weather would offer the insertion team that much more cover.\n\"Listen up, people!\" Sergeant Lister bellowed. \"You know the drill. Let's shake, rattle, and roll.\"\nThere weren't many lights, just enough so that people could move around without running into one another, but the fact that Silva had been on such missions himself meant that he could visualize what his eyes couldn't see. The troopers carried a full combat load, which meant that their packs were festooned with weapons, ammo, grenades, flares, radios, and med packsall of which would make noise unless properly secured. Noise would bring a world of trouble down on their heads during an op. That's why Lister passed through the ranks and forced each Marine to jump up and down. Anything that clicked, squeaked, or rattled was identified and restowed, taped, or otherwise fastened into place. Once all the troops had passed inspection, the Helljumpers would board the waiting dropships for a short flight to the point where thePillar of Autumn had crashed. The Covenant had placed guards in and around the fallen cruiser, so McKay and her Marines would have to retake the ship long enough to fill the extensive shopping list that Silva had given her. According to Wellsley, Napoleon I once said, \"What makes the general's task so difficult is the necessity of feeding so many men and animals.\" Silva didn't have any animals to feed, but he did have a flock of Pelicans, and the essence of the problem was the same. With the exception of the ODST troopers, who carried extra supplies in their HEVs, the rest of the Navy and Marine personnel had bailed out of theAutumn with very little in the way of supplies. Obtaining more of everything, and doing it before the Covenant launched an all-out attack on Alpha Base, would be the key to survival. Later, assuming there was a later, the infantry officer would have to find a way to get his people the hell off the ring world. Silva's thoughts were interrupted as Echo 419 raced in over the mesa, flared nose up, and settled onto what had been designated as Pad 3. The assault on theTruth and Reconciliation had gone well so far, which meant that Second Lieutenant Dalu, who had been assigned to follow along behind the rescue team and scoop up everything he could, was having a good evening. Each time Echo 419 dropped a load of troops she brought enemy arms and equipment back in. Plasma rifles, plasma pistols, needlers, power packs, hand tools, com equipment, and even food packs. Dalu loved them all. Silva grinned as the Lieutenant waved a team of Naval techs in under the Pelican's belly to take delivery of the Shade he and his team had lifted right out from under the Covenant's collective noses. That was the third gun acquired since the beginning of the operation, and would soon take its place within the butte's steadily growing air defense system. Sergeant Lister shouted, \"Ten-shun!\", did a smart about-face, and saluted Lieutenant McKay. She returned the salute, and said, \"At ease.\"\nSilva walked out into the rain and felt it pelt his face. He turned to look at the ranks of black, brown, and white faces. All he saw were Marines.\n\"Most, if not all of you, are familiar with my office aboard thePillar of Autumn . In the rush to leave it seems that I left a full bottle of Scotch in the lower left-hand drawer of my desk. If one or more of you would be so kind as to retrieve that bottle, not only would I be extremely grateful, I would show my gratitude by sharing it with the person or persons who manage to bring it in.\" There was a roar of approval. Lister shouted them down. \"Silence! Corporal, take that man's name.\" The Corporal to whom the order was directed had no idea which name he was supposed to take down, but knew it didn't matter. Silva knew the Helljumpers had been briefed, and understood thetrue purpose of the mission, so he brought his remarks to a close.\n\"Good luck out there . . . I'll see you in a couple of days.\" Except that hewouldn't see them, not all of them. Good commanding officers had to love their menand still be willing to order their deaths if needed. It was the aspect of command he hated the most. The formation was dismissed. The Marines jogged up into the back of the waiting Pelicans, and the dropships soon disappeared into the blackness of the night. Silva remained on the pad until the sound of the engines could no longer be heard. Then, conscious of the fact that every war must be won on the equivalent of paper before it can be won on the ground, he turned back toward the low-lying structure that housed his command post. The night was still youngand there was plenty of work left to do.\n\nThe gravity lift deposited the rescue team three feet above the deck. They hung suspended for a moment, then fell. Parker gave a series of hand signals, and the ODSTs crept forward into the lift bay. The Covenant equivalent of gear cratestapered rectangular boxes made from the shimmering, striated purple metal the aliens favoredwere stacked around the high compartment. A pair of Covenant tanks, \"Wraiths,\" were lined along the right side of the bay. The Master Chief moved forward toward one of the high metal doors that were spaced along the perimeter of the compartment. Parker gave the all clear signal and the Marines relaxed a bit. \"There's no Covenant here,\" one of them whispered, \"so where the hellare they?\"\nThe door was proximity activated, and as he neared the portal, it slid open and revealed a surprised Elite. Without pause, the Spartan tackled the alien and slammed its armored head into the burnished deckplates. With luck, he'd finished the Elite quietly enough Another set of doors flashed open on the other side of the bay, and Covenant troops boiled into the compartment. A second Marine turned to the Corporal who'd just spoken. \" 'No Covenant,' \" he snarled, mocking his fellow trooper. \"You justhad to open your mouth, didn't you?\"\n\nInside the Covenant ship, chaos reigned. The Master Chief charged ahead, and the rescue team fought their way through a maze of interlocking corridors, which eventually emerged into a large shuttle bay. A Covenant dropship passed through a bright blue force field as all hell broke loose. Fire stuttered down from a platform above. A Marine took a flurry of needles in the chest and was torn in half by the ensuing explosion. A Grunt dropped from above and landed on a Corporal's shoulders. The Marine reached up, got a grip on the alien's methane rig, and jerked the device off. The Grunt started to wheeze, fell to the deck, and flopped around like a fish. Someone shot him. Numerous hatches opened into the bay and additional Covenant troops poured in from every direction. Parker stood up and motioned his men forward. \"It's party time!\" he bellowed. He spun and opened fire, and was soon joined by all the rest. Within a matter of seconds what seemed like a dozen different firefights had broken out. Wounded and deadhumans and Covenant alikelittered the deck. The Master Chief was careful to keep his back to a Marine, a pillar, or the nearest bulkhead. His MJOLNIR armor, and the recharging shield it carried, provided the Spartan with an advantage that none of the Marines possessed, so he focused most of his attention on the Elites, leaving the Jackals and Grunts for others to handle. Cortana, meanwhile, was hard at work tapping into the ship's electronic nervous system in an attempt to find the best way out of the trap. \"We need a way out of this baynow ,\" the Master Chief told her, \"or there won't be anyone left to complete the mission.\"\nHe ducked behind a crate, emptied his magazine into a charging Grunt who wielded a plasma grenade, then paused to reload. A Hunter gave a bloodcurdling roar as it charged into the fray. The Spartan turned and saw Sergeant Parker fire at the massive alien. A trio of bullets spat from his assault riflethe last three rounds in the weapon. He discarded the empty gun and backpedaled in an attempt to buy himself some time. His hand dipped for his sidearm. The Hunter sprang forward and the tips of the beast's razor-spines shredded through the Marine's ballistic armor. He crashed to the deck. The Master Chief cursed under his breath, slapped a fresh clip into place, racked a round into the chamber and took aim on the Hunter. The alien was coming on fast,too fast, and the Spartan knew he wasn't going to get a kill shot in time. The Hunter stepped past Sergeant Parker's prone form. The alien's razor spines sprang into view, and it roared again as the Spartan sprayed it with gunfire, knowing the gesture was futile, but unwilling to let the enemy at his teammate's exposed flank. Without warning, the Hunter reared up, howled, and crashed to the ground. The Master Chief was puzzled, and briefly checked his weapon. Could he have gotten in a lucky shot?\nHe heard a cough, and saw Sergeant Parker struggling to his feet, a smoking M6D pistol in his hand. Blood flowed from the gashes in his side, and he was unsteady on his feet, but he found the strength to spit on the Hunter's fallen corpse. The Chief took a covering position near the wounded sergeant. He gave him a brisk nod. \"Not bad for a Marine. Thanks.\"\nThe sergeant grabbed a fallen assault rifle, slammed a fresh magazine into place, and grinned. \"Any time, swabbie.\" His motion sensor showed more contacts inbound, but they were keeping their distance. Their failed assault on the bay must have left them disorganized.Good, he thought.We need all the time we can get. \"Cortana,\"\nhe said, \"how much longer before you get a door open?\"\n\"Got it!\" Cortana proclaimed exultantly. One of the heavy doors hissed open. \"Everyone should move through the door now. I can't guarantee that it won't lock when it closes.\"\n\"Follow me!\" he barked, then led the surviving Marines out of the shuttle bay and into the comparative safety of a corridor beyond. The next fifteen minutes were like a slow-motion nightmare as the rescuers fought their way through a maze of corridors, up a series of narrow ramps, and onto the launch bay's upper level. With Cortana's guidance, they plunged back into the ship's oppressive passageways. As they proceeded through the bowels of the large warship, Cortana finally gave them good news: \"The Captain's signal is strong. He must be close.\"\nThe Chief frowned. This was taking too long. Every passing second made it that much less likely that any of the rescue party would be able to get off theTruth and Reconciliation alive, let alone with Captain Keyes. The ODSTs were good fighters, but they were slowing him down. He turned to Sergeant Parker and said, \"Hold your men here. I'll be back soonwith the Captain.\"\nShe started to protest, then nodded. \"Just don't tell Silva,\" she said.\n\"I won't.\"\nThe Master Chief ran from door to door until one of them opened to reveal a rectangular room lined with cells. It appeared that the translucent force fields served in place of bars. He dashed inside and called the Captain's name, but received no answer. A quick check confirmed that, with the exception of one dead Marine, the detention center was empty. Frustrated, yet reassured by Cortana's insistence that the CNI signal remained strong, the Spartan exited the room, entered the hall, and literally went door to door, searching for the correct hatch. Once he located it, the Master Chief almost wished he hadn't. The portal slid open, a Grunt yelled something the Master Chief couldn't understand, and a plasma beam lashed past the human's helmet. The Master Chief opened fire, heard a Marine yell from within one of the cells, \"Good to see you, Chief!\" and knew he was in the right place. A plasma beam appeared out of nowhere, hit the Spartan in the chest, and triggered the armor's audible alarm. He ducked behind a support column, just in time to see an energy beam slice through the spot he had just vacated. He scanned the room, looking for his assailant. Nothing. His motion sensor showed faint trace movements, but he couldn't spot their source. His eyes narrowed, and he noticed a slight shimmer in the air, directly in front of him. He fired a sustained burst through the middle of it, and was rewarded with a loud howl. The Elite seemed to materialize out of thin air, made a grab for his own entrails, and managed to catch them before he died. He strode to the access controls and, with Cortana's help, killed the force fields. Captain Keyes stepped out of his cell, paused to scoop a Needler off the floor, and met the Chief's eyes. \"Coming here was reckless,\" he said, his voice harsh. The Chief was about to explain his orders when Keyes'\nexpression warmed, and theAutumn 's CO smiled. \"Thanks.\"\nThe Spartan nodded. \"Any time, sir.\"\n\"Can you find your way out?\" Keyes inquired doubtfully. \"The corridors of this ship are like a maze.\"\n\"It shouldn't be too difficult,\" the Master Chief replied. \"All we have to do is follow the bodies.\"\n Lieutenant \"Cookie\" Peterson put Echo 136 down a full klick from thePillar of Autumn , looked out through the rain-spattered windscreen, and saw Echo\n206 settle in approximately fifty meters away. It had been an uneventful flight, thanks in part to the weather, and the fact that the assault on theTruth and Reconciliation had probably served to distract the Covenant from what was going on elsewhere. Peterson felt the ship shudder as the ramp hit the ground, waited for the Crew Chief to call \"Clear!\", and fired the Pelican's thrusters. The ship was extremely vulnerable while on the groundand he was eager to return to the relative safety of Alpha Base. Then, assuming the Helljumpers got the job done, he and his crew would be back to transport some of the survivors and their loot.\n\nBack at Alpha Base, McKay watched Echo 136 wobble as a gust of wind hit the Pelican from the side, saw the ship gather speed, and start to climb out. Echo 206 took off a few moments later and both ships were gone within a matter of seconds. Her people knew what they were doing, so rather than make a pest of herself, McKay decided to wait and watch as the platoon leaders sorted things out. The officer felt the usual moments of fear, of self-doubt regarding her ability to accomplish the mission, but took comfort from something an instructor once told her.\n\"Take a look around,\" the instructor had advised. \"Ask yourself if there's anyone else who is better qualified to do the job. Not in the entire galaxy, but right there, at that point in time. If the answer is 'yes,' ask them to accept command, and do everything you can to support them. If the answer is 'no,'\nwhich it will be ninety-nine percent of the time, then take your best shot. That's all any of us can do.\"\nIt was good advice, the kind that made a difference, and while it didn't erase McKay's fears, it certainly served to ease them. Master Sergeant Lister and Second Lieutenant Oros seemed to materialize out of the darkness. Oros had a small, pixielike face which belied her innate toughness. If anything happened to McKay, Oros would take over, and if she bought the farm Lister would step in. The battalion had been short of officersbefore the shit hit the fan, and what with Lieutenant Dalu off playing Supply Officer, McKay was one Platoon Leader short of a full load. That's why Lister had been called upon to fill the hole.\n\"Platoons one and two are ready to go,\" Oros reported cheerfully. \"Let us at\n'em!\"\n\"You just want to raid the ship's commissary,\" McKay said, referring to the Platoon Leader's well-known addiction to chocolate.\n\"No, ma'am,\" Oros replied innocently, \"the Lieutenant lives only to serve the needs of humanity, the Marine Corps, and the Company Commander.\"\nEven the normally stone-faced Lister had to laugh at that, and McKay felt her own spirits lift as well. \"Okay, Lieutenant Oros, the human race would be grateful if you would put a couple of your best people on point and lead this outfit to the ship. I'll ride your six with Sergeant Lister and the second platoon walking drag. Are you okay with that?\"\nBoth Platoon Leaders nodded and melted into the night. McKay looked for the tail end of the first platoon, slid into line, and let her mind roam ahead. Somewhere, about one kilometer ahead, thePillar of Autumn lay sprawled on the ground. The Covenant owned the ship for the momentbut McKay was determined to take her back.\n\nIt was time to get off theTruth and Reconciliation . As Covenant troops ran hither and yon, the recently freed Marines armed themselves with alien weapons, then linked up with the rest of the rescue team. Keyes and Cortana convened a quick council of war. \"While the Covenant had us locked up in here, I heard them talking about the ring world,\" Keyes said, \"and its destructive capabilities.\"\n\"One moment, sir,\" Cortana interrupted, \"I'm accessing the Covenant battle net.\" She paused, as her vastly powerful intrusion protocols sifted through the Covenant systems. Information systems seemed to be the one field where human technologies held their own against those of the Covenant. Seconds later, she finished her sift of the alien data stream. \"If I'm interpreting the data correctly, they believe Halo is some kind of weapon, one that possesses vast, unimaginable power.\"\nKeyes nodded thoughtfully. \"The aliens who interrogated me kept saying that 'whoever controls Halo controls the fate of the universe.' \"\n\"Now I see,\" Cortana put in thoughtfully. \"I intercepted a number of messages about a Covenant search team scouting for a control room. I thought they were looking for the bridge of the ship I damaged during the battle above the ringbut they must be looking for Halo's control room.\"\n\"That's bad news,\" Keyes responded gravely. \"IfHalo is a weapon, and the Covenant gains control of it, they'll use it against us. Who knows what power that would give them?\n\"Chief, Cortana, I have anew mission for you. We need to beat the Covenant to Halo's control room.\"\n\"No offense, sir,\" the Master Chief replied, \"but it might be best to finishthis mission before we tackle another one.\"\nKeyes offered a tired grin. \"Good point, Chief. Marines! Let's move!\"\n\"We should head back to the shuttle bay and call for evac,\" Cortana said,\n\"unless you'd like to walk home.\"\n\"No thanks,\" Keyes said. \"I'm Navywe prefer to ride.\"\nThe journey out of the detention area and back to the launch bay was hairy but not quite as bad as the trip in. It wasn't long before they all realized that they reallycould follow the trail of dead bodies back to the launch bay. Sadly, some of the dead wore Marine green, which served to remind the Chief of how many humans the Covenant had murdered since the war had begun more than twenty-five years before. Somehow, in some way, the Covenant would be made to pay. The tactical situation was made even more risky by the Captain's condition. He didn't complain, but the Spartan could tell that Keyes was sore and weak from the Covenant interrogation. It was a struggle for him to keep up with the others. The Master Chief signaled for the team to halt. Keyesout of breath favored him with a sour look, but seemed grateful for the breather. Two minutes later, the Chief was about to signal the group to move forward when a trio of Grunts scuttled into view. Needler rounds bounced from the bulkhead and angled right for him. His shields took the brunt of it, and he returned fire, as did the rest of the group. Keyes blew one Grunt apart with a barrage of the explosive glassy needles. The rest were finished off by a combination of plasma rifle fire and the Chief's assault rifle.\n\"Let's get moving,\" the Spartan advised. He took point and moved down the corridor, bent low and ready for trouble. He'd barely gotten twenty meters down the passageway when more Covenant moved intwo Jackals and an Elite. The enemy was getting closer, and more determined, the longer they remained. He finished off the Jackals with his last frag grenade, then pinned the Elite down with assault rifle fire. Keyes directed the Marines to fire on the alien's flank, and he went down.\n\"We need togo , sir,\" the Chief warned Keyes. \"With respect, we're moving too slowly.\"\nKeyes nodded, and as a group they sprinted down the twisting passages, stealth abandoned. Finally, after numerous twists and turns, they reached the shuttle bay. The Spartan thought it was empty at first, until he noticed what appeared to be two light wands, floating in midair. Fresh from his encounter with the stealth Elite who had been stationed in the brig, the Master Chief knew better than to take chances. He drew his pistol, linked in the scope, and took careful aim. He squeezed the trigger several times and put half a clip into the area just to the right of the energy blade. A Covenant warrior faded into view and toppled off the platform. A Marine yelled, \"Watch it!\" and \"Cover the Captain!\" as the second blade sliced the air into geometric shapes, and started to advance as if on its own. The Spartan put three quick bursts into the second alien, hit his stealth generator, and the Elite was revealed. Fire poured in from all sides and the warrior went down. There was a blast of static as Cortana activated the MJOLNIR's communication relays.\"Cortana to Echo 419 . . . We have the Captain and need extraction on the double.\"\nThe reply was nearly instantaneous.\"Negative, Cortana! I have a flock of Banshees on my tail . . . and I can't seem to shake them. You'll be better off finding your own ride.\"\n\"Acknowledged, Foehammer. Cortana out.\"The radio clicked as Cortana switched from the suit's radio to its external speakers.\n\"Air support is cut off, Captain. We'll need to hold here until Foehammer can move in.\"\nA Marine heard the interchange and, already traumatized by the time spent as a Covenant prisoner, began to lose it. \"We're trapped! We're all gonna die!\"\n\"Stow the bellyaching, soldier,\" Keyes growled. \"Cortana, if you and the Chief can get us into one of those Covenant dropships, I can fly us out of here.\"\n\"Yes, Captain,\" the AI replied. \"There's a Covenant ship docked below.\"\nThe Master Chief saw the nav indicator appear on his HUD, followed the arrow through a hatch, down a series of corridors, and out into the troopship bay. Unfortunately, the bay was well defended, and another firefight broke out. The situation was getting worse. The Chief slammed his last full clip into the MA5B and fired short, controlled bursts. Grunts and Jackals scattered and returned fire. The ammo counter dropped rapidly. A pair of Grunts fell under the Spartan's hail of fire. Within seconds, the ammo counter readOO empty. He tossed the rifle away and drew his pistol, and continued firing at the alien forces that had begun to regroup at the far side of the bay. \"If we're going,\"\nhe called out, \"we need to go now.\" The dropship was shaped like a giant U. It rode a grav field and bobbed slightly as some of the outside air swirled around it. As they approached it, Keyes said, \"Everybody mount up! Let's get on board!\" and led the Marines through an open hatch. The Spartan waited until everyone else had boarded and backed into the aircraftjust in time. He was down to a single round in his sidearm. Cortana said, \"Give me a minute to interface with the ship's controls.\"\nKeyes shook his head. \"No need. I'll take this bird up myself.\"\n\"Captain!\" one of the Marines called. \"Hunters!\"\nThe Master Chief peered out through the nearest viewport and saw that the private was correct. Another pair of the massive aliens had arrived on the loading platform and were making for the ship. Their spines stood straight up, their fuel rod guns were swinging into position, and they were about to fire.\n\"Hang on!\" Keyes said as he disengaged the ship's gravity locks, brought the ship up over the edge of the platform, and pushed one of two joysticks forward. The twin hulls straddled a column, struck both Hunters with what appeared to be glancing blows, and withdrew. Even a glancing blow from a ship that weighs thousands of kilos proved to be a serious thing indeed. The dropship's hull crushed the Hunters' chest armor and forced it through their body cavities, killing both of them instantly. One corpse somehow managed to attach itself to one of the twin bows. It fell as the dropship cleared theTruth and Reconciliation 's hull. The Master Chief leaned back against the metal wall. The Covenant craft's troop bay was cramped, uncomfortable, and dimly litbut it beat hell out of wandering through one of their cruisers. He braced himself as Keyes put the alien aircraft into a tight turn, and accelerated out into the surrounding darkness. He forced his shoulders to relax, and closed his eyes. The Captain had been rescued, and the Covenant had been put on notice: The humans were determined to be more than an annoyancethey were going to be a major pain in the ass. Dawn had just started to break when Zuka 'Zamamee and Yayap passed through the newly reinforced perimeter that surrounded the gravity lift, and were forced to wait while a crew of hardworking Grunts pulled a load of Covenant dead off the blood-splattered pad, before they could step onto the sticky surface and be pulled up into the ship. Although theTruth and Reconciliation 's commanding officer believed that all of the surviving humans had left the ship, there was no way to be certain of that without a compartment-by-compartment check. The shipboard sensors read clear, but this raid had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the humans had learned how to trick Covenant detection gear. The visitors could feel the tension as teams of grim-faced Elites, Jackals, and Grunts performed a deck-by-deck search of the ship. As the pair made their way through the corridors to the lift that would carry them up to the command deck, 'Zamamee was shocked by the extent of the damage that he saw. Yes, there were long stretches of passageway that were completely untouched, but every now and then they would pass through a gore-streaked section of corridor, where bullet-pocked bulkheads, plasma scorched decks, and half-slagged hatches told of a hard-fought running gun battle.\n'Zamamee stared in wonder as a grav cart loaded with mangled Jackals was towed past, blood dripping onto the deck behind it. Finally, they made their way to the appropriate lift, and stepped out onto the command deck. The Elite expected the same level of security scrutiny as the last time he addressed the Prophet and the Council of Masters; no doubt he'd be dumped into the holding room for another interminable wait. Nothing could have been further from the truth. No sooner did 'Zamamee clear security than he and Yayap were whisked into the compartment where the Council of Masters had been convened during his last visit. There was no sign of the Prophet, or any of 'Zamamee's immediate superiorsbut the hardworking Soha 'Rolamee was there, along with a staff of lesser Elites. There was no mistaking the crisis atmosphere as reports flowed in, were evaluated, and used to create a variety of action plans.\n'Rolamee saw 'Zamamee and raised his hand by way of a greeting.\n\"Welcome. Please sit.\"\n'Zamamee complied. It didn't occur to either one of the Elites to offer the same courtesy to Yayap, who continued to stand. The diminutive Grunt rocked back and forth, ill at ease.\n\"So,\" 'Rolamee inquired, \"how much have you heard about the latest . . .\n'incursion'?\"\n\"Not much,\" 'Zamamee was forced to admit. \"The humans managed to board the ship via the gravity lift. That's the extent of my knowledge.\"\n\"That's correct in so far as it goes,\" 'Rolamee agreed. \"There is more. The ship's security system recorded quite a bit of the action. Take a look atthis .\"\nThe Elite touched a button and moving images popped into view and hovered in the air nearby. 'Zamamee found himself looking at two Grunts and a Jackal standing in a corridor. Suddenly, without warning, the same human he had encountered on thePillar of Autumn the large one with the unusual armorstepped around the corner, spotted the Covenant troops, and opened fire on them. The Grunts went down quickly, but the Jackal scored a hit, and 'Zamamee saw plasma splash the front of the human's armor. However, rather than fall as he should have, the apparition shot the Jackal in the head, stepped over one of the dead Grunts, and marched toward the camera. The image froze as 'Rolamee touched another control. 'Zamamee felt an almost unbelievable tightness in his chest. Would he have the courage to face the human again? He wasn't sureand that frightened him as well.\n\"So,\" 'Rolamee said, \"there he is, the very human you warned us about. A dangerous individual who is largely responsible for the six-score casualties inflicted during this raid alone, not to mention the loss of a valuable prisoner, and six Shades which the enemy managed to steal.\"\n\"And the humans?\" 'Zamamee inquired. \"How many of them were our warriors able to kill?\" \"The body count is incomplete,\" the other Elite replied, \"but the preliminary total is thirty-six.\"\n'Zamamee was shocked. The numbers should have been reversed.Would have been reversed had it not been for the alien in the special armor.\n\"You will be pleased to learn that your original request has now been approved,\" 'Rolamee continued. \"We have preliminary reports from other strike groups that most of these unusual humans were killed in the last large engagement. This one is believed to be the last of his kind. Take whatever resources you need, find the human, and kill him. Do you have any questions?\"\n\"No, Excellency,\" 'Zamamee said as he stood to leave. \"None at all.\"\n\n\nSECTION III THE SILENT CARTOGRAPHER\n\nCHAPTER FIVE D+128:15:25 (Lieutenant McKay Mission Clock) /\nOn the plain surrounding thePillar of Autumn . The rain stopped just before dawnnot gradually but all at once, as if someone had flipped a switch. The clouds melted away, the first rays of the sun appeared, and darkness surrendered to light. Slowly, as if to reveal something precious, the golden glow slid across the plain to illuminate thePillar of Autumn , which lay like an abandoned scepter, her bow hanging out over the edge of a steep precipice. She washuge , so huge that the Covenant had assigned two Banshees to fly cover over her, and a squad of six Ghosts patrolled the area immediately around the fallen cruiser's hull. However, from the listless manner with which the enemy soldiers went about their duties, McKay could tell they were unaware of the threat that had crept up on them during the hours of rain-filled darkness. Back on Earth, before the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, and the subsequent efforts to colonize other star systems, human soldiers had frequently staged attacks at dawn, when there was more light to see by, and the enemy sentries were likely to be tired and sleepy. In order to counter, the more sophisticated armies soon developed the tradition of an early morning \"stand-to,\" when every soldier went to barricades in case the enemy chose that particular morning to attack. Did the Covenant have a similar tradition, McKay wondered? Or were they dozing a bit, relieved that the long period of darkness was finally over, their fears eased by the first rays of the sun? The officer would soon find out. Like all sixty-two members of her Company, the Helljumper was concealed just beyond the border of the roughly U-shaped area that the Covenant actively patrolled. And now, with daylight only minutes away, the time had arrived either to commit herself or to withdraw. McKay took one last look around. Her arm ached, and her bladder was full, but everything else was A-okay. She keyed the radio and gave the order that both platoons had been waiting for. \"Red One to Blue One and Green One . .\n. Proceed to objective. Over.\"\nThe response came so quickly that McKay missed whatever acknowledgments the two Platoon leaders might have sent. The key was to neutralize the Banshees and the Ghosts so quickly, so decisively, that the ODST troopers would be able to cross the long stretch of open ground and reach theAutumn virtually unopposed. That's why no fewer than three of the powerful M19 rocket launchers were aimed at each Bansheeand three Marines had been assigned to each of the half dozen target Ghosts. Two of the four rockets fired at the Covenant aircraft missed their marks, but both Banshees took hits, and immediately exploded. Wreckage rained on the Covenant position. The Ghost drivers on both sides of the ship were still looking upward, trying to figure out what had occurred, when more than two dozen assault weapons opened up on them. Four of the rapid attack vehicles were destroyed within the first few seconds of the battle. The fifth, piloted by a mortally wounded Elite, described a number of large overlapping circles before crashing into the cruiser's hull and finally putting the driver out of his misery. The Elite behind the controls of the sixth and last Ghost panicked, backed away from the wholesale destruction, and toppled over the edge of the precipice. If the alien screamed on the way down McKay wasn't able to hear it, especially with the steadycrack ,crack,crackof multiple S2 Sniper Rifles going off all around her. She keyed her radio to the command freq and ordered her platoon leaders to move up. The assault force crossed the open area in a run, and headed toward the ship's sternmost air locks. Covenant troops stationed within the ship heard the ruckus and hurried outside, and were met by the sight of the still-smoking wrecks of their mechanized support, and an enthusiasticif somewhat thininfantry assault. Most were simply standing there, waiting for someone to tell them what to do, when the snipers' 14.5mm armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding sabot rounds began to cut them down. The impact was devastating. McKay saw Elites, Jackals, and Grunts alike throw up their arms and collapse as the rolling fusillade took its toll. Then, as the aliens started to pull back into the relative safety of the ship's interior, McKay jumped to her feet, knowing that one of her noncoms would do likewise on the far side of the hull, and waved the snipers forward.\n\"Switch to your assault weapons! The last one to the lock has to stay and guard it!\"\nAll the ODST troopers knew there were plenty of things to scrounge inside the hull, and they were eager to do so. The possibility that they might end up guarding a lock rather than pillaging theAutumn 's interior was more than sufficient motivation to make each Marine run as fast as possible. The purpose of the exercise was to get the last members of the Company across what could have been a Covenant killing ground and to do so as quickly as possible. McKay thought she'd been successful, thought she'd made a clean break, when a momentary shadow passed over her and someone yelled, \"Contact! Enemy contact!\"\nThe officer glanced back over her shoulder and spied a Covenant dropship. The ungainly looking craft swept in from the east, and was about to deploy additional forces. Its plasma cannon opened fire and stitched a line of black dots in the dirt, out toward the edge of the drop-off. A sniper disappeared from the waist down, and still had enough air to scream as his forward motion slowed, and his torso landed on a pile of his own intestines. McKay skidded to a halt, yelled, \"Snipers! About face,fire !\" and hoped that the brief parade groundstyle orders would be sufficient to communicate what she wanted. Each Covenant dropship had side slots, small cubicle-like spaces where their troops rode during transit, and from which they were released when the aircraft arrived over the landing zone. Had the pilot been more experienced he would have positioned the aircraft so that it was nose-on to the enemy and fired his cannon while the troops bailed outbut he wasn't, or he'd simply made a mistake, as he presented the ship's starboard side to the humans and opened the doors. More than half the ODST snipers had switched back to their S2s and had shouldered their weapons up as the drop doors opened. They opened fire before the Covenant troops could leap to the ground. One of their rounds hit a plasma grenade and caused it to explode. A control line must have been severed, because the dropship lurched to port, pitched forward, and nosed into the ground. Twin waves of soil were gouged out of the plateau as the aircraft slid forward, hit a boulder, and exploded into flame. Secondary explosions cooked off and the twin hulls disintegrated. The sound of the blast bounced off theAutumn 's hull and rolled across the surrounding plain. The Marines waited a moment to see if any of the aliens would try to crawl, walk, or run away, but none of them did. McKay heard the muffledthump ,thump,thumpof automatic weapons fire coming from within the ship behind her, knew the job was only half done, and waved to the half dozen Marines. \"What are you waiting for? Let's go!\"\nThe Helljumpers looked at one another, grinned, and followed McKay into the ship. The El-tee mightlook like a wild-eyed maniac, but she knew her stuff, and that was good enough for them.\n\nThe soil was still damp from the rain, so when the sun hit the top of the mesa a heavy mist started to form, as if a battalion of spirits had been released from bondage. Keyes, exhausted by his captivity, not to mention the harrowing escape from theTruth and Reconciliation , had literally collapsed in the bed the Helljumpers had prepared for him and slept hard for the next three hours. Now, awakened by both a nightmare and the internal clock that was still attuned to the arbitrarily set ship time, the Naval officer was up and prowling about. The view from the rampart was nothing less than spectacular, looking out over a flat plain to the gently rolling hills beyond. A bank of ivory-white clouds scudded above the hills. The vista wasso beautiful,so pristine, that it was difficult to believe that Halo was a weapon. He heard the scrape of footsteps, and turned to watch Silva emerge from the staircase that led up to the observation platform. \"Good morning, sir,\" the Marine said. \"I heard you were up and around. May I join you?\"\n\"Of course,\" Keyes said, gesturing to a place at the waist-high wall. \"Please do. I took a self-guided tour of the landing pads, the Shade emplacements, and the beginnings of the maintenance shop. Good work, Major. You and your Helljumpers are to be congratulated. Thanks to you, we have a place to rest, regroup, and plan.\"\n\"The Covenant did some of the work for us,\" Silva replied modestly, \"but I agree, sir, my people did a hell of a job. Speaking of which, I thought I should let you know that Lieutenant McKay and two platoons of ODST troops are fighting their way into theAutumn even as we speak. If they retrieve the supplies we need, Alpha Base will be able to hold for quite a while.\"\n\"And if the Covenant attacks before then?\"\n\"Then we are well and truly screwed. We're running short on ammo, food, and fuel for the Pelicans.\"\nKeyes nodded. \"Well, let's hope McKay pulls it off. In the meantime there are some other things we need to consider.\"\nSilva found the easy, almost offhanded manner in which Keyes had reassumed command to be a bit irritating, even though he knew it was the other officer's obligation to do so. There was a clear-cut chain of command, and now that Keyes was free, the Naval officer was in charge. There was nothing the Marine could do except look interestedand hope his superior came up with at least some of the right ideas.\n\"Yes, sir. What's up?\"\nSo Keyes talked, and Silva listened, as the Captain reviewed what he had learned while in captivity. \"The essence of the matter is that while the races which comprise the Covenantseem to possess a high level of technology, most if not all of it may have been looted from the beings they refer to as the\n'Forerunners,' an ancient race which left ruins on dozens of planets, and presumably was responsible for constructing Halo.\n\"In the long run, the fact that they are adaptive, rather than innovative, may prove to be their undoing. For the moment, however, before we can take advantage of that weakness, we must first find the means to survive.If Halo is a weapon, andif it has the capacity to destroy all of humanity as they seem to believe, then we must find the means to neutralize itand perhaps turn it against the Covenant.\n\"That's why I ordered Cortana and the Master Chief to find the so-called Control Room to which the aliens have alluded, and see if there's a way to block the Covenant's plan.\"\nSilva placed his forearms on the top of the wall that fronted the rampart and looked out over the plain. If one knew where to look, and had a good eye, he could see the blast-scarred ground where the Ghosts had attacked, the Helljumpers had held, and some of his Marines lay buried.\n\"I see what you mean, sir. Permission to speak freely?\"\nKeyes looked at Silva, then back to the view. \"Of course. You're second in command here, and obviously you know your way around ground engagements far better than I do. If you have ideas, suggestions, or concerns, I want to hear them.\"\nSilva nodded respectfully. \"Thank you, sir. My question has to do with the Spartan. Like everyone else, I have nothing but respect for the Chief's record. However, is he the right person for the mission you have in mind?\nCome to think of it, is anyone person right for that kind of operation?\n\"I know that the Master Chief has an augmented body,\" Silva continued,\n\"not to mention the advantage that the armor gives him, but take a look around. This base, these defenses, were the work of normal human beings.\n\"The Spartan program is a failure, Captainthe fact that the Chief is the only one left proves that, so let's put your mission into the hands of some real honest-to-god Marines and let them earn their pay.\n\"Thanks for hearing me out.\"\n\nKeyes had been in the Navy for a long time. He knew Silva was ambitious, not only for himself, but for the ODST branch of the Marine Corps. He also knew that Silva was brave, well-intentioned, and in this case, flat-outwrong . But how to tell him that? He needed Silva's enthusiastic support if any of them were going to make it out of this mess alive. The Captain considered Silva's words, then nodded. \"You make some valid points. What you and your 'honest-to-god' Marines have accomplished on this butte is nothing short of miraculous.\n\"However, I can't agree with your conclusions regarding the Chief or the Spartan program. First, it's important to understand that what makes the Chief so effective isn'twhat he is, butwho he is. His record is not the result of technologynot because of what they've done to him butin spite of what they've done to him, and the pain he has suffered.\n\"The truth is that the Chief would have grown up to be a remarkable individual regardless of what the government did or didn't do to him. Do I think children should be snatched away from their families? Raised by the military? Surgically altered? No, I don't, not during normal times.\"\nHe sighed and folded his arms across his chest. \"Major, one of my first assignments was to escort the Spartan's project leader during the selection process for the II-series candidates. At the time, I didn't know the full scope of the operationand I probably would have resigned had I known.\n\"Thesearen't normal times. We're talking about the very real possibility oftotal extinction , Major. How many people did we lose in the Outer Colonies? How many did the Covenant kill on Jerico VII? On Reach? How many will be glassed if they locate Earth?\"\nIt was a rhetorical question. The Marine shook his head. \"I don't know, sir, but I do knowthis . More than twenty-five years ago, when I was a second lieutenant, the people who invented the Chief thought it would be fun to test their new pet weapon on somereal meat. They engineered a situation in which four of my Marines would run into your friend, take offense at something he did, and try to teach him a lesson.\n\"Well, guess what? The plan worked perfectly. The plan sucked my people in, and the freak not only kicked the hell out of them, he left two of them deadbeaten to death in a goddamned ship's gymnasium. I don't know what you call that, sir, but I call it murder. Were there repercussions? Hell, no. The windup toy got a pat on the head and a ticket to the showers. It was all in a day's bloody work.\"\nKeyes looked bleak. \"For whatever it's worth I'm truly sorry about what happened to your men, Major, but here's the truth: Maybe it isn't nicehell, maybe it isn't evenright but if I could get my hands on a million Chiefs I'd take every single one of them. As for this particular mission, yes, I believe it's possible that your people could get the job done, and if that's all we had, I wouldn't hesitate to send them in. But the Chief has a number of distinct advantages, not the least of which is Cortana, and by taking this task on he will free your Helljumpers to handle other things. Lord knows there's plenty to do. My decision stands.\" Silva nodded stiffly. \"Sir, yes sir. My people will do everything they can to support both the Chief and Cortana.\"\n\"Yes,\" Keyes said, as he gazed up into the gently curving ring, \"I'm sure they will.\"\n\nThe normally dark room was bright with artificial light. Zuka 'Zamamee had studied the raid on theTruth and Reconciliation , taken note of the manner in which the human AI had accessed the Covenant battle net, and analyzed the nature of the electronic intrusions to see what the entity seemed most interested in. Then, based on that analysis, he had constructed projections of what the humans would do next. Notall of the humans, since that lay outside the parameters of his mission, but the one person in whom he was truly interested. An individual who appeared to be part of a specialized, elite group similar to his own, and would almost certainly be sent to follow up on what the humans had learned. Now, in the room that led directly into the Security Control Center,\n'Zamamee laid a trap. The armored human would come, he felt sure of that, and once inside the snare, the human would meet his end. The thought cheered 'Zamamee immensely and he hummed a battle hymn as he worked.\n\nThere was a flash, followed by a loudbang! as the fragmentation grenade went off. A Jackal screamed, an assault weapon stuttered, and a Marine yelled, \"Let me know if you want some more!\"\n\"Good work!\" McKay exclaimed. \"That's the last of them. Close the hatch, lock it, and post a fire team here to make sure they don't cut their way out. The Covenant is welcome to the upper decks. What we need is down here.\"\nThe battle had been raging for hours by then as McKay and her Marines fought to push the remaining enemy forces out of key portions of theAutumn and into the sections of the ship that weren't mission-critical. As the Helljumpers sealed the last interdeck ladder not already secured, they had what they'd been striving for: free and unfettered access to the ship's main magazine, cargo holds, and vehicle bays. In fact, even as the second platoon pushed the last of the aliens out of the lower decks, the first platoon, under the leadership of Lieutenant Oros, had begun the important task of hitching trailers to the fleet of Warthogs stowed in theAutumn 's belly and loading them with food, ammo, and the long list McKay had brought with her of other supplies. Then, once each 'Hog-trailer combo was ready, the Marines drove them down makeshift ramps onto the hardpan below. Once outside, and positioned laager style, the combined power of the LRV mounted M41 light antiaircraft guns formed a potent defense against possible attack by Covenant dropships, Banshees, and Ghosts. It wouldn't hold out forever, but it would do the most important job: It would buy themtime . Adding to the supply column's already formidable firepower were four M808B Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, or MBTs, which rumbled down off the ramps, and threw dirt rooster tails up off their powerful treads as they growled into position within the screen established by the Warthogs. The MBTs' ceramic-titanium armor provided them with excellent protection against small arms firealthough the vehicles were vulnerable should the aliens manage to get in close. That's why provision had been made for up to four Marines to ride on top of each Scorpion's track pods. Now, free to withdraw from the grounded cruiser and supervise final loading, McKay left Lister in charge of keeping the aliens penned up. As she exited the ship, McKay caught sight of two heavily-loaded Pelicans flying off in the general direction of the butte, each with a 'Hog clutched beneath its belly. And there, arrayed on the hardpan in front of her, twenty six Warthog-trailer combinations sat ready to roll, with still more coming off the ship. Their only problem was personnel. As a result of the work only fifty-two effectives remained, which meant that the stripped-down infantry company would be hard-pressed to crew thirty-four vehicles and fight, should that become necessary. Both McKay and her noncoms would all play a role as drivers or gunners during the return trip. Oros saw the Company Commander emerge from theAutumn 's hull. The Platoon Leader was caged inside one of the loader-type exoskeletons taken from the ship. Servos whined in sympathy with her movements as she crossed the intervening stretch of wheel-churned dirt to the point where McKay waited with hands on hips. Grime covered her face and her body armor was charred where a plasma pulse had hit. \"You look good in orange.\"\nOros grinned. \"Thanks, boss. Did you see the Pelicans?\"\n\"As a matter of fact I did. They looked a bit overloaded.\"\n\"Yeah, the pilots were starting to whine about weight, but I bribed them with a couple of candy bars. They'll be back in about forty-five minutes. When they do we'll wrestle fuel bladders into the cargo compartments, fill them from the ship, and top their tanks all at the same time. Then, just to make sure we get our money's worth, we'll hook a 50mm MLA autocannon under each fuselage and take those out as well.\"\nMcKay raised both eyebrows. \"Autocannons? Where did you get those?\"\n\"They were part of theAutumn 's armament,\" the other officer answered cheerfully. \"I thought it would be fun to spot the occasional Covenant dropship from the top of the mesa.\"\nHe paused then added, \"That's the good news.\"\n\"What's the bad news?\"\n\"A lot of gear didn't survive the crash. No missile or rocket pods for the Pelicans, and we're almost bone dry on 70mm for their chin guns. We can't count on air support for much more than bus rides.\"\n\"Damn.\" She scowled. Without well-armed air support, Alpha Base was going to be a lot tougher to defend.\n\"Affirmative,\" Oros agreed. \"Oh, and I ordered the pilots to bring fifteen additional bodies on the return trip. Clerks, medics, anybody who can drive or fire an M41. That would allow me to squeeze some additional 'Hogs into the column and put at least two people on each tank.\"\nMcKay raised an eyebrow. \"You 'ordered' them to bring more bodies?\"\n\"Well, I kind of let them believe thatyou whistled them up.\"\nMcKay shook her head. \"You are amazing.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" Oros replied shamelessly.\"Semper Fi.\"\n\nThe Pelicans swept over the glittering sea, passed over a line of gently breaking surf, and flew parallel with the beach. Foehammer saw a construct up ahead, a headland beyond, and a whole lot of Covenant troops running around in response to the sudden and unexpected arrival of two UNSC dropships. Rawley fought the urge to trigger the Pelican's 70mm chin gun. She'd expended the last of her ammo on the last passhad watched geysers of sand chase an Elite up the beach, and was rewarded by the sight of the alien disappearing in a cloud of his own bloodand it didn't look like more were coming anytime soon. She keyed open a master channel. \"The LZ is hot, repeat,hot ,\" Foehammer emphasized. \"Five to dirt.\"\nThe Master Chief stood next to the open hatch, and waited for Foehammer's signal: \"Touchdown! Hit it, Marines!\"\nHe was among the first to step off the ramp, his boots leaving deep impressions in the soft sand. He paused for a quick look around, then started down-spin to the point where the aliens waited. No sooner had the last member of the landing party disembarked than the Pelicans were airborne once moreand flying up spin. Plasma fire stuttered down from the top of a rise as the Marines advanced up the sandy slope, careful to fire staggered bursts, so the entire group didn't wind up reloading at the same time. The Spartan ran forward, added his fire to the rest, and sent an Elite sprawling to the ground. The Covenant forces were outnumbered for once and the human attackers wasted little time cutting them down. The whole fight lasted only ten minutes. Time to get moving. He reviewed the mission objectives as he surveyed the LZ: find and secure a Covenant-held facility, some kind of map room which the enemy had already captured. The Covenant called the site \"the Silent Cartographer\"which could presumably pinpoint the location of Halo's control room. Keyes had been very adamant about the urgency of the mission. \"If the Covenant figure out how to turn Halo into a weapon, we're cooked.\"\nMaybe, with Cortana's help, they had a good chance of figuring out where the hell the ring's control systems were housed. All they had to do is take it away from an entrenched enemy. The Spartan heard a burst of static followed by Foehammer's cheerful voice as her Pelican swooped back into the LZ area.\"Echo 419 inbound. Did someone order a Warthog?\"\nA Marine said, \"I didn't know that you made house calls, Foehammer.\"\nThe pilot chuckled.\"You know our motto: 'we deliver.' \"\nThe Master Chief waited for the dropship to deposit the LRV on the beach, saw two Marines jump on board, and climbed up behind the wheel. The soldier riding shotgun nodded. \"Ready when you are, Chief.\"\nThe Spartan put his foot on the accelerator, sand shot out from under the vehicle's tires, and the 'Hog left parallel tracks as it raced along the edge of the beach. They rounded the headland in minutes, and entered the open area beyond. There was a scattering of trees, some weathered boulders, and a swath of green ground cover. \"Firing!\" the gunner called, and pulled his trigger. The petty officer saw Covenant troops scurry for cover, steered right to give the three-barreled weapon a better angle, and was soon rewarded with a batch of dead Grunts and a badly mangled Jackal. The Spartan drove the Warthog uphill, turning to avoid obstacles, careful to maintain the vehicle's traction. It wasn't long before the humans neared the top of the slope and spotted the massive structure beyond. The top curved downward, cut dramatically in, and gave way to a flat area where a Covenant dropship had been docked. It appeared that the aircraft had just finished loading: It backed out of a U shaped slot, swung out toward the ocean, and quickly disappeared. The noise generated by its engines covered the sound made by the Warthog and provided the defenders with something to look at. The gunner tracked the aircraft but knew better than to open fire and attract unwanted attention. The area beyond was crawling with Covenant troops.\n\"Anyone else see whatI see?\" the second leatherneck inquired. \"How are we supposed to get aroundthat ?\"\nThe Master Chief killed the 'Hog's engine, motioned for the Marines to remain where they were, and eased his way up to a point where a fallen log offered him some cover. He drew his pistol, took aim, and opened fire. Four Grunts and an Elite fell beneath the quick barrage of gunfire. The response was nearly instantaneous as the surviving troops ran for cover and a series of plasma bolts blew chunks of wood out of the protective log and set it ablaze. Confident that he had whittled the opposition down to a more manageable size, the Chief eased his way back to the LRV and pulled himself up into the driver's seat. The Marines waited to see what he would do next. \"Check your weapons,\" he advised, as he hit the ignition switch and the big engine roared to life. \"We have some clean-up to do.\"\n\"Roger that,\" the gunner said grimly. \"It looks like we have KP duty again.\"\nThere was no telling what the Covenant troops expected the humans to do, but judging from the way they ran around screaming, the possibility of an old-fashioned frontal assault just hadn't occurred to them. The Spartan aimed the vehicle for the front of the complex, spotted the hallway that extended back toward the face of the cliff, and drove straight inside. It was a tight fit, and the Warthog wallowed a bit as the big off-road tires rolled over a couple of dead Grunts, but the strategy worked. Both Marines opened up on the Covenant troops and the Chief ran one of them down. Then, once the outer part of the structure had been cleared, the Master Chief parked the LRV where the Marines could provide him with fire support, and ventured inside. A series of ramps led down through darkened hallways to the antechamber below. It was full of aliens. The Master Chief tossed a grenade in among them, backed up out of the way, and sprayed the ramp with bullets. The grenade went off with a satisfyingwham! and body parts flew high into the air before thumping to the floor. Cortana said, \"Don't let them lock the doors!\"\nToo late. The doors noiselessly flashed shut. The Spartan polished off the last of the resistance, checked to confirm that the doors were locked, and was already on his way back to the surface when the AI accessed the suit's radio.\"Cortana to Keyes . . .\"\n\"Go ahead, Cortana. Have you found the Control Center?\"\n\"Negative, Captain. The Covenant have impeded our progress. We can't proceed unless we can disable the installation's security system.\"\n\"Understood,\"Keyes replied.\"Use any means necessary to force your way into the facility and find Halo's Control Center. Failure is not an option.\"\nThe Master Chief was back in the 'Hog and halfway to the LZ by the time the Captain signed off.\"Good luck, people. Keyes out.\"\nIf the front door is lockedthen go around back.That's what the Spartan figured as the LRV rolled back the way it had come, through the LZ. The Marine seated next to him exchanged insults with a buddy stationed on the beach. They had just rounded a bluff when Cortana said, \"Look up to the right. There's a path that leads toward the interior of the island.\"\nThe AI had no more than finished her sentence when the gunner said,\n\"Freaks at two o'clock!\" and opened fire. The Spartan ran the Warthog up a slope, allowed the M41 LAAG to handle the heavy lifting, and positioned the vehicle so the gunner could put fire on the ravine ahead. \"Tell me something, Cortana,\" the Master Chief said, as he lowered himself to the ground. \"How come you're always advising me to go up gravity lifts, run down corridors, and sneak through forests while making no mention of all the enemy troops that seem to inhabit such places?\"\n\"Because I don't want you to feel unnecessary,\" the AI replied easily. \"For example, given the fact that your sensors are telling both of us that there are at least five Covenant soldiers lying in wait farther up the ravine, it's logical to suppose that there are even more beyond them. Doesthat make you feel better?\"\n\"No,\" the Spartan admitted as he checked to ensure that both of his weapons were fully loaded. He charged up the ravine and took cover behind a large outcropping of rock. Plasma bolts melted the stone near his head, and he snapped a quick shot in return. The Grunt snarled and dove for cover, as a pair of his partners opened up on the Spartan's position. Behind them, a cobalt-armored Elite urged them forward. The Master Chief took a deep breath.Time to go to work, he thought. He sprinted from his cover and his pistol's reports echoed through the narrow ravine. The skirmish took mere minutes. His shield indicator pulsed a warning yet again, and he paused at the top of the ravine to allow it time to recharge. His gun swept the area, and noted the circular structure that dominated a small depression at the top of the ravine. His shield had just begun a recharge cycle, feeding off the armor's capacious power plant, when the pair of Hunter aliens burst from cover and lobbed fire at his position. The first blast struck him square in the chest and sent him tumbling backward. The second shot was stopped by a thick-trunked tree. A trickle of blood pooled in the corner of his left eye. He shook his head to clear his blurred vision and rolled to his left. A third shot kicked up a plume of soil where he had lain just seconds before. The Chief tossed a frag grenade, counted to three, then sprang to his feet and sidestepped to his right, firing all the way. He'd timed it perfectly. The grenade detonated, and the flash and smoke briefly confused the aliens. His rounds bounced from their thick armor plates. In unison, they spun to face him, their weapons glowing green as they charged for another salvo. Another grenade detonated in their path and slowed the Hunters' advance. They fired through the smoke and the crash of their weapons thundered through the low ravine. The Hunters moved forward, eager for the killand realized too late that he'd doubled back and closed in on them. His assault rifle barked and tore into the gaps in their armor at close range. They screamed and died. The Master Chief followed the terrain as it gradually sloped back down to the west. He dealt with a brace of sentries, then located his objective: a way into the massive structure that loomed above. The human saw a dark, shadowy door, slipped through the opening. He felt the gloom settle around him. His biochemically altered eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, and he moved deeper into the structure, pausing only to feed a fresh magazine into his assault rifle.\n\nOne level below, Zuka 'Zamamee listened. Someone was on the way, the desperate radio traffic testified to that, and it seemed safe to assume that it was the very human he had set out to kill. The fact that the transmissions ceased amid the clatter of human weaponry attested to the fact that the armored human was here. But would he enter the trap? He had carefully seeded references to the map room into the stream of battle updates. If the humans had tapped into the network using the downed ship's AI, then they would have no choice but to send this fearsome soldier to find it. Yes,the Elite thought, as his highly sensitive ears heard the scrape of a booted foot, a mutedclick as a new magazine slid home, and the subtle rasp of armor.It won't be long now. 'Zamamee looked left and right, assured himself that the Hunters were in position, and withdrew to his hiding place. Others were present inside the cargo module as well, including Yayap and a team of Grunts.\n\nThe Master Chief hit the bottom of the ramp, saw the alien cargo modules that populated the center of the dimly lit room, and knew that damned near anything could be lurking among them. Somethinginstinct, or perhaps only luckcaused his heart to beat a little faster as he put his back to a wall and slid sideways. Something wasn't right. Light filtered in through an ornate window which enabled the Spartan to see that there was an alcove to his left. He eased in that direction, felt a cold weight hit the bottom of his stomach as he heard movement, and turned toward the sound. The Hunter rushed out of the darkness, intent on smashing the Chief with his shield, and finishing him with razor-sharp spines. A steady stream of\n7.62mm bullets hammered the Hunter's chest plate and slowed his rate of advance.\n'Zamamee, backed by Yayap and his team of Grunts, chose that moment to emerge from the relative safety of the cargo module. The Elite was frightened, but determined to conceal it, and he raised his weapon. But the Hunter was in his line of fire. Then, as if the melee weren't confusing enough, thesecond Hunter charged in, bumped into the Elite, and sent him spinning to the cold metal floor.\n\nYayap, who found himself standing out in the middle of the floor, was about to order a retreat when one of his subordinates, a Grunt named Linglin, fired a weapon. It was a stupid thing to do since there was no clear target to shoot at, but that's what Grunts were encouraged to do when in doubt: shoot. Linglin fired, and the plasma bolt flew straight and true. It hit the second Hunter in the back, and threw the spined warrior forward, and caused him to collide with his bond brother. \"Uh-oh,\" Yayap muttered.\n\nThe Master Chief saw his opponent start to go down, shot him in the back, and brought the assault weapon back up. The fact that the second Hunter was already down came as something of a surprise, albeit a pleasant one, and he looked for something else to shoot.\n\nNo doubt stunned by the enormity of his error, and terrified regarding the potential consequences, Linglin was still backing away when the bulky, armored human raised his weapon and fired. Yayap felt Linglin's blood spray the side of his face as he tripped over his own feet, fell over backward, and used his hands to push himself back into the shadows. A hand grabbed hold of his combat harness, jerked the Grunt into the still yawning cargo module, and held him in place. \"Silence!\" 'Zamamee instructed. \"This battle is over. We must live to fight another.\"\nThat soundedvery good, maybe the most sensible thing he'd heard in a hundred units, so Yayap held his breath as the human walked past the open cargo module. He briefly wondered if there was some way he could get a transfer back to a normal frontline unit. To the diminutive alien trooper, such an assignment seemed considerably less dangerous.\n\nHis nerves on edge, fully expecting yetanother attack, the Spartan circled the room. But there was nothing for him to deal with except his own twitchiness and the heavy silence which settled over the room.\n\"Nice job, Chief,\" Cortana said. \"Head through the cargo modules. The security center lies beyond.\"\nThe Master Chief followed Cortana's directions, entered a hall, and followed it into a room that featured a small constellation of lights floating at its very center. \"Use the holo panel to shut down the security system,\" Cortana suggested, and, eager to complete the job before anyone else could attack him, the Spartan hurried to comply. He was again struck by an odd near familiarity with the glowing controls. Cortana used the suit sensors to examine the results. \"Good!\" she exclaimed.\n\"That should open the door that leads into the main shaft. Now all we have to do is find the Silent Cartographer and the map to the Control Room.\"\n\"Right,\" the Master Chief replied. \"That, and avoid capture in unknown territory, possibly held by the enemy, with no air support or backup.\"\n\"Do you have a plan?\" she asked.\n\"Yes. When we get there, I'm going to kill every single Covenant soldier I find.\"\n\n\nCHAPTER SIX D+144:38:19 (Lieutenant McKay Mission Clock) /\nThe hills between Alpha Base and thePillar of Autumn . Three parallel columns of vehicles are pretty hard to hide, and McKay didn't even try. The combination of some thirty Warthogs and four Scorpions raised a cloud of dust that was visible from more than two kilometers away. No doubt the heat produced by the machines registered on sensors clear out in space. Banshee recon flights could have tracked them from the minute they hit the trail, and there was only one logical place the vehicles could be headed: the butte called Alpha Base. It wasn't too surprising that the Covenant not only organized a response, but a massive one. Here, after days of humiliation, was the opportunity to revenge themselves on the beings who had taken the butte away from them, paid a surprise visit to theTruth and Reconciliation , and raided more than a dozen other locations besides. Knowing she was in for a fight, McKay organized the vehicles into three temporary platoons. The first platoon was comprised of Warthogs under the command of Lieutenant Oros. She had orders to ignore ground targets and concentrate on defending the column from airborne attacks. Sergeant Lister was in charge of the second platoon's Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, which, because of their vulnerability to infantry, were kept at the center of the formation. The third platoon, under McKay herself, was charged with ground defense, which meant keeping Ghosts and infantry off the other two platoons. A third of her vehicles, five Warthogs in all, were unencumbered by trailers and left free to serve as a quick reaction force. By giving each platoon its own individual assignment, the officer hoped to leverage the Company's overall effectiveness, ensure fire discipline, and reduce the possibility of casualties caused by friendly fire, a real danger in the kind of melee that she expected. As the Marines headed east toward Alpha Base, the first challenge lay at the point where the flat terrain ended. Hills rolled up off the plain to form a maze of canyons, ravines, and gullies which, if the humans were foolish enough to enter them, would force the vehicles to proceed single file, which rendered the convoy vulnerable to air and ground attacks. There was a different route, however, a pass approximately half a klick wide. All three columns could pass through it without breaking formation. The problem, and a rather obvious one, was the fact that a pair of rather sizable hills stood guard to either side of the pass, providing the Covenant with the perfect platform from which to fire down on them. As if that weren't bad enough, athird hill lay just beyond, creating a second gate through which the humans would have to pass before gaining the freedom of the plain beyond. It was a daunting prospectand McKay felt a rising sense of despair as the company drew within rifle shot of the opposing hills. She wasn't especially religiousbut the ancient psalm seemed to form itself in her mind. \"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .\"\nScrew it,she thought. She ordered the convoy to lock and load and prepare for a fight. Psalms weren't going to win the coming fight. Firepower would.\n\nFrom his vantage point high on what Covenant forces had designated as\n\"Second Hill,\" the Elite Ado 'Mortumee used a powerful monocular to eye the human convoy. With the exception of five vehicles, the rest of the alien LRVs were hooked to heavily laden trailers, which prevented them from making much speed. Also serving to slow the convoy down was the presence of four of the humans' cumbersome tanks. Rather than risk passage through the hills, their commanding officer had opted to use the pass. Understandable, but a mistake for which the human would pay.\n'Mortumee lowered the monocular and turned to look at the Wraith. Though not normally a fan of the slow-firing, lumpy-looking tanks, he had to admit that the design was perfect for the work at hand, and in combination with an identical unit stationed on First Hill, the monster at his elbow was certain to make short work of the oncoming convoy. The counterthreat, if that's what it was, would come from the armored behemoths which rolled along at the very center of the human formation. Theylooked powerful, but never having seen one in action, and having found precious little data on them within the Intel files, 'Mortumee wasn't sure what to expect.\n\"So,\" a voice said from behind him, \"the Council of Masters has sent me a spy. Tell me,spy, who are you here to watch: the humans or me?\"\n'Mortumee turned to find that Field Master Noga 'Putumee had approached him from behind, something he did rather quietly for such a large being. Though known for his bravery, and his leadership in the field, 'Putumee was also famous for his blunt, confrontational, and paranoid ways. There was a good deal of truth in the officer's half-serious suggestion, however, since\n'Mortumee had been sent to watch both the Field Masterand the enemy.\n'Mortumee ignored the field commander's blunt tone, and clicked his mandibles. \"Someone has to count all the human bodies, write the report celebrating your latest victory, and lay the groundwork for your next promotion.\"\nIf there was a chink in 'Putumee's psychological armor it was in the vicinity of his ego, and 'Mortumee would have sworn that he saw the other officer's already massive chest expand slightly in response to the praise. \"If words were troops you would lead a mighty army indeed. So, spy, are the Banshees ready?\"\n\"Ready and waiting.\"\n\"Excellent,\" 'Putumee replied. The gold-armored Elite turned his own monocular on the approaching convoy. \"Order the attack.\"\n\"As you order, Excellency.\"\n'Putumee nodded.\n\nMcKay heard the incoming Banshees and the prospect of action banished her butterflies to a less noticeable sector of her stomach. The sound started as a low drone, quickly transformed itself into a buzz, then morphed into a bloodcurdling wail as the officer keyed her mike.\n\"This is Red One: We have hostile aircraft inbound. First Platoon is clear to engage. Everyone else will remain on standby. This is the warm-up, people, so stay sharp. There's more on the way. Over and out.\"\n\nThere were five flights of ten Banshees each, and the first group came through the pass so low that 'Mortumee found himself lookingdown on the wave of aircraft. Sun glinted off the burnished, reflective metal of the Banshees' wings. It was tempting to jump into his own aircraft and join them, thrilling to the feel of the low altitude flight, as well as the steadyboom ing of outgoing plasma fire. Such pleasures were denied the spy if he was to maintain the objectivity required to carry out his important work. Eager to have the first crack at the humans, and determined to leave nothing for subsequent flights to shoot at, the pilots of the first wave fired the moment they came within range.\n First Platoon's Marines saw the aircraft appear low on the horizon, watched the blobs of lethal energy blip their way, and knew better than to engage individual targets. Not yet, anyway. Instead, consistent with the orders that Lieutenant Oros had given, the Helljumpers aimed their M41 LAAGs at a point just west of the pass, and opened fire all at once. The Banshees didn't have brakes, and the pilots had just started to turn, when they ran right into the meat grinder.\n\n'Mortumee understood the problem right away, as did 'Putumee, who ordered the following waves to break up and attack the convoy independently. The orders came too late for eight of the first ten aircraft, which were ripped into thousands of pieces, and fell like smoking snow. A pair of the flyers got through the storm of gunfire. One of the Banshees managed to hit a Warthog with a burst of superheated plasma, killing the gunner, and slagging his weapon. The LRV continued to roll, however which meant that the trailer and its load of supplies did as well. Once through the hail of bullets, the surviving Banshees turned and lined up for a second pass. As the second flight of Covenant aircraft arrived from the east, split up, and launched individual attacks, Field Master 'Putumee barked an order into his radio. The mortar tanks on First and Second Hills fired in unison. Blue-white orbs of fire, trailing tendrils of energy, shot high into the sky, hung suspended for a moment, then began to fall. The plasma mortars fell with a deliberate, almost casual slowness. They arced gracefully into the ground and a deafening thunderclap shook the ground. Neither round found a target, but these were ranging shots, and that was to be expected.\n\nMcKay heard a Marine say, \"What the hell wasthat?\" over the command freq, then heard Lister tear a strip off him. She couldn't help but wonder the same thing herself. The truth was that while the officer knew the vehicles existed, she'd never seen a Wraith tank in action, and wasn't sure if that was what she faced. It didn't matter much, though, because the weapon in question was quite clearly lethal, and would cause havoc in the close quarters of the pass. She keyed her radio.\n\"Red One to Green One: Those 'energy bombs' originated from those hilltops. Let's give the bastards a haircut. Over.\"\n\"This is Green One,\"Lister acknowledged.\"Roger that, over.\"\nThere was a burst of static as Lister switched to his platoon's freq, though McKay could hear every word on the command channel.\n\"Green One to Foxtrot One and Two: lay some high explosive on the hill to the left. Over.\"\n\"Green One to Foxtrot Three and Four: ditto the hill to the right. Over.\"\n\nBanshees wheeled, turned, and poured fire down on the hapless humans as one of the pilots fired his fuel rod cannon and scored a direct hit. A trailer full of precious ammo exploded, wrapped the Warthog in a fiery embrace, and took the LRV with it. Covenant forces watching from the hilltops felt a sense of exultation, and more than that, the pleasure of revenge.\n'Mortumee was there to document the battle, not celebrate it, though he watched in fascination as two of the tank turrets swiveled to his left in order to fire on First Hill, while two turned in the opposite direction and seemed to point directly athim . The Elite wondered if he should seek cover, but before the message to move could reach his feet, he heard a reverberating roar as the 105mm shell passed through the intervening air space, followed by a loudcraack! as the shell landed about fifty units away. A column of bloody dirt flew high into the air. Body parts, weapons, and pieces of equipment continued to rain down as the half-deafened 'Mortumee recovered his composure and ran for cover. Field Master 'Putumee laughed out loud and pointed to show a member of his staff where 'Mortumee had taken shelter behind some rocks. That was when the second round detonated just below the summit of the hill and started a small landslide. \"This,\" the Elite said happily, \"is areal battle. Keep an eye on the spy.\"\n\nStung by the loss of a Warthog, a trailer-load of ammo, and three Marines, McKay was starting to question the division of labor she had imposed, and was just about to free her platoon's gunners to fire on the Banshees, when her driver said, \"Uh-oh, look at that!\"\nA series of plasma bolts stitched a line along the 'Hog's side, scorched the vehicle's paint, and kicked up geysers of dirt as the officer followed the pointing finger. A force of Ghosts skittered into the pass.\n\"Red One to all Romeo units . . . follow me!\" McKay yelled into her mike, and tapped the driver's arm. \"Go get 'em, Murphylet's clear that gap.\"\nNo sooner had the officer spoken than the Marine put his foot into it, the gunner whooped, and the LRV leapt forward. The rest of the five-vehicle reaction force followed just as the Wraith on Hill One hurled a third then a fourth plasma ball high into the sky. McKay looked up, saw the fireball slow to a near stop at the point of apogee, and knew it would be a race. Would the bomb land on top of the reaction force? Or, would the fast-moving 'Hogs slip out from under it, leaving the plasma charge to explode harmlessly on the ground?\nThe gunner saw the threat as well, and yelled, \"Go! Go! Go!\" as the driver swerved to avoid a clutch of rocks, did his best to push the accelerator through the floor. He mumbled, \"Damn, damn, damn,\" as he felt something wet and warm puddle on his seat. The energy bomb fell with increasing velocity. The first LRV slipped underneath it, quickly followed by the second and third. Heart in her throat, McKay looked back over her shoulder as the plasma weapon landed, detonated, and blew a large crater out of the ground. Then, like a miracle on wheels, Romeo Five flew through the smoke, bounced as it hit the edge of the newly created crater, and lurched up over the rim. There was no time to celebrate as the Ghosts pulled into range and the lead vehicle opened fire. McKay raised her assault rifle, took aim at the nearest blur, and squeezed the trigger.\n\nMaster Sergeant Lister faced a harsh reality. Never mind Banshees that swooped overhead, or the Ghosts up ahead, it was his job to do something about the mortar fire, and as the hills loomed ahead, Second Platoon's Scorpions were coming up on the point when their main guns would no longer be able to elevate high enough to engage the primary target. One more salvo, that's what the tanks could deliver, before their weapons could no longer be brought to bear.\n\"Wake up, people,\" Lister said over the platoon frequency, \"the last group on the left was at least fifteen meters too low, and the last group on the right overshot the hill. Make adjustments, take the tops off those hills, and do itnow . We don't have time to screw around.\"\nEach tank commander adjusted aim, sent their shells on the way, and prayed for a hit. They all knew that facing the Covenant would be easier than suffering Lister's wrath should the shells miss their marks.\n\nField Master 'Putumee watched impassively as the Wraith on First Hill exploded, taking a file of Jackals with it. He was sorry to lose the mortar tank, but the truth was that with two dozen Ghosts milling around in the pass below, he was going to have to cease fire anyway. Either that or risk killing his own troops. The Elite snapped an order, saw one last fireball sail into the air, and watched the humans enter the gap.\n\nLance Corporal \"Snaky\" Jones was screwed, he knew that, had known it ever since the front end of his 'Hog took a hit and flipped end-for-end. He was standing behind the LAAG, firing forward over the driver's head, when he was suddenly catapulted into the air. Jones saw a blur, hit hard, and tumbled head over heels. Once his body came to a stop the Marine discovered that it was almost impossible to breathe, which was why he just lay there at first, staring up into the amazing blue sky as he gasped for air. It was pretty,very pretty, until a Banshee screamed through the picture and a Warthog roared past on the left. That was when Jones managed to scramble to his feet, and yelled into his boom mike, only to discover that it was missing. Not just the mike, but his entire helmet, which had come loose during the fall. No helmet meantno mike,no radio, andno possibility of a pickup. The Lance Corporal swore, ran toward the wrecked Warthog, and gave thanks for the fact that it hadn't caught fire. The vehicle was resting on its side and the S2 was right where he had left itclamped butt down behind the driver's seat. It was hard to see Sergeant Corly strewn over the rear fender with half her face blown away, so Jones averted his eyes. His rucksack, the one that contained extra ammo, a med pack, and the stuff he had looted from thePillar of Autumn , was right where he had left it, secured to the bottom of the gun pedestal. Jones grabbed the pack, slung it across his back, and grabbed the sniper rifle. He made sure the rifle was ready to fire, then clicked on the safety and ran for the nearest hill. Maybe he could find a cave, wait for the battle to end, and haul ass back to Alpha Base. Dust puffed away from the Marine's boots and death hung all around.\n\nLieutenant Oros estimated that First Platoon had reduced the number of attacking aircraft by two thirdsand she had a plan to deal with the rest. McKay wouldn't approvebut what was the CO going to do? Send her to Halo? The Lieutenant grinned, gave the necessary order, and jumped down to the ground. She waved to the volunteers from four of the thirteen Warthogs she had remaining, then scampered toward a group of likely-looking rocks. All five of the Marines carried M19 SSM Rocket Launchers slung across their backs, plus assault weapons, and as many spare rockets as they could carry in the twin satchels that hung from their hands. They pounded across the hardpan, scurried into the protection offered by the surrounding boulders, and set up shop. When everyone was ready, Oros pulled the pins on one flare after another, tossed them out beyond the circle of rocks, and watched the orange smoke billow up into the sky. It wasn't long before the Banshee pilots spotted the smoke and, like vultures attracted to fresh carrion, hurried to the scene. The Marines held their fire, waited until no less than thirteen of the Covenant aircraft were circling above them, and fired five rockets, all at once. A second volley followed the firstand a third followed that. There was a steady drumbeat of explosions as ten Banshees took direct hits, some from multiple rockets, and ceased to exist. Of the aircraft that survived the barrage of rockets, two bugged out immediately. The last staggered in response to a near miss, belched smoke from its port engine, and looked like it would go down. Oros thought it was over at that point, that she and her volunteers would be free to fade into the hills, and beat feet for home. But it wasn't to be. Unlike most of his peers, the pilot in the damaged Banshee must have had a strong desire to transcend the physical, because he turned toward the enemy, put the aircraft into a steep dive, and plunged into the pile of boulders. Oros tried to make the shot but missedand barely had time to swear before the mortally wounded Banshee augered into the rocks and swallowed the ambush team in a ball of fire.\n\nThe fact that Lance Corporal Jones made it all the way to the base of the hill without getting killed was just plain luck. The subsequent scramble up through the loose tumble of rocks was instinctual. The desire to gain elevation is natural to any soldier, but especially to a sniper, which was what Jones had been trained to be when he wasn't busy humping supplies, operating LAAGs, or taking crap from sergeants. The fact that Jones was about to go on the offensive, about to take it to the Covenant,that was a decision. Maybe not the smartest decision he'd ever made, but one he knew to be right, and to hell with the consequences. Jones was only halfway up the side of the hill, but that was high enough to see the top of theopposite hill, and the tiny figures who stood there. Not the Grunts who were running this way and that, not the Jackals who lined the edge of the summit, but the shiny armor of the Elites. Those were the targets he wanted, and they seemed to leap forward as the Marine increased the magnification on his scope, and let the barrel drift slightly. Which life should he take? The one on the left with the blue armor? Or the one on the right, the shiny gold bastard? At that moment in time, in that particular place, Lance Corporal Jones was God. He clicked the sniper rifle's safety catch, and lightly rested his finger on the trigger.\n\n'Mortumee had emerged from hiding by that time and was standing next to Field Master 'Putumee as the human convoy cleared the pass and turned up ring. There was a third hill off to his leftand it, too, was topped with a Wraith. The mortar tank opened fire. For one brief moment 'Mortumee harbored the hope that the remaining tank would accomplish what the first two had not and decimate the convoy. But the humans were still out of range, and, knowing that the Wraith couldn't do them any harm, they took the time to put their own tanks into a line abreast. A single salvo was all it took. All four of the shells landed on target, the mortar tank was destroyed, and the way was clear.\n'Putumee lowered his monocular. His face was expressionless. \"So, spy, how will your report read?\"\n'Mortumee looked at the other Elite with a pitying expression. \"I'm sorry, Excellency, but the facts are clear, and the report will practically write itself. Had you deployed your forces differently, down on the plain perhaps, victory would have been ours.\" \"An excellent point,\" the Field Master replied, his tone mild. \"Hindsight is always perfect.\"\n'Mortumee was about to reply, about to say something about the value of foresight, when his head exploded.\n\nLance Corporal Jones steadied his aim for a second shot. The first shot had been perfect. The 14.5mm slug had flown true, entered the base of Blue Boy's neck, and exited through the top of his head. That blew his helmet off, allowing a mixture of blood and brains to fountain into the air.\n\n'Putumee snarled and threw himself backwardand thereby escaped the second bullet. Moments later, the twin reports echoed back and forth between the two hillsides. The Field Master crabbed back to cover and fed position information to the Banshee commander, and snarled into his communications gear: \"Sniper! Kill him!\"\nSatisfied that the sniper would be dealt with, 'Putumee stood and looked down at 'Mortumee's headless body. He bared his fangs. \"It looks like I'll have to write that report myself.\"\n\nJones spat into the dirt, angry that the gold Elite had evaded the second shot.Next time, he promised himself.You're minenext time, pal . Banshees banked overhead, searching for his position. Jones backed into a deep crevice among the rocks. Fortunately, thanks to the loot gathered aboard theAutumn , he had twenty candy bars to sustain him.\n\nThe security system neutralized, the Master Chief made his way back through the alien construct, and headed toward the surface. Time to find this\n\"Silent Cartographer\" and complete this phase of the mission. \"Mayday! Mayday! Bravo 22 taking enemy fire! Repeat, we are taking fire and losing altitude.\"The dropship pilot's strained voice was harsh and gratingthe sound of a man about to lose it.\n\"Understood,\" Cortana replied. \"We're on our way.\"\nThen, in an aside to the Spartan, the AI said, \"I don't like the sound of that I'm not certain they're going to make it.\"\nThe Master Chief agreed, and in his eagerness to get topside, made a potentially fatal error. Having just cleared the room adjacent to what appeared to be the ring world's Security Center, he assumed that it wasstill clear. Fortunately, the Eliteequipped with another of the Covenant's camouflage devicesannounced his presence with a throaty roar just prior to firing his weapon. Plasma fire still splashed the Chief's chest, followed by a brief moment of disorientation as he tried to figure out where the attack was coming from. His motion sensor detected movement, and he aimed his weapon as best he could. He fired a sustained burst and was rewarded with an alien scream of pain. As the Covenant warrior fell, the Master Chief made a mad dash for the ramp that led up toward the surface, reloading as he went. Walking into the once-cleared room too quickly had been stupidand he was determined not to make the same mistake again. The fact that Cortana was there, seeing the world via his sensors, made such errors that much more embarrassing. Somehow, for reasons he hadn't had time to sort out, the human wanted the AI's approval. Silly? Maybe so, if one thought of Cortana as little more than a fancy computer program, but she was more than that. In the Chief's mind at least. He smiled at the irony of the thought. The human-AI interface meant that, in many ways, Cortana wasliterally in the Chief's mind, using some of his wetware for processing power and storage. The Spartan made his way up the ramp, through a hall, and out into bright sunlight. He paused on a platform, and dropped to the slope below, as Cortana cautioned him to keep an eye peeled for Bravo 22. Covenant troops were patrolling the beach belowa mix of Jackals and Grunts. The Master Chief drew his sidearm, switched to the 2X magnification, and decided to work from right to left. He nailed the first Jackal, missed the next, and killed a pair of Grunts who were waddling around on top of the mesa opposite his position. As he moved farther down the slope, he could see Bravo 22's wreckage, half buried in the side of the mesa. There were no signs of life. Either the crew and passengers had been killed on impact, or some had survived and been executed by the enemy. The possibility made him particularly angry. He turned to the right, caught the surviving Jackal on the move, and put him down. He switched to his MA5B and made his way down the grassy slope to the sand beyond. It was a short walk to the smoking wreckage and the scattering of bodies. Plasma burns on some of the bodies served to confirm the Spartan's suspicions. Though not the most pleasant of tasks, the Chief knew he had to obtain ammo and other supplies wherever he could, and took advantage of the situation in order to stock up.\n\"Don't forget to grab a launcher,\" Cortana put in. \"There's no telling what might be waiting for us when we go back to looking for the Control Room.\"\nThe Master Chief took the AI's advice and decided to ride rather than walk. The Warthog that had been tucked under the dropship's belly had come loose during the final moments of flight, hit the ground, and flipped over on its side. He approached the vehicle, reached upward, got a good purchase, and pulled. Metal creaked as the 'Hog swayed, tilted in the Spartan's direction, and started to fall. He stepped back, waited for the inevitable bounce, and climbed up behind the wheel. After a quick check to ensure that the LRV was still operable, he was off. He skidded the Warthog into a slewing turn, then headed back to the mission LZthe beachhead the Marines had been left to hold. The Helljumpers had fought off two assaults during his absence, but they still owned the real estate they had originally taken, and remained undeterred. \"Welcome back,\" a Corporal said as she took her place behind the three barreled gun. \"It was getting boring without you.\" She had a grimy face, the wordsCUT HERE tattooed around the circumference of her neck, and a short, stocky body. The Chief eyed the hastily dug weapons pits and foxholes, the large pile of Covenant corpses, and the plasma-scorched sand. \"Yeah, I can see that.\"\nA freckle-faced PFC jumped into the passenger seat, a captured plasma rifle cradled in his arms. The Spartan turned back in the direction he had come from, and raced along the edge of the water. Spray flew up along the left side of the LRV and he wished he could feel the moisture on his face.\n\nA kilometer ahead, a Hunter named Igido Nosa Hurru fumed as he paced back and forth across a docking platform still stained with Covenant blood. Word had come down from an Elite named Zuka 'Zamamee that a lone human had killed two of his brothers a few hours earlier, and was about to attack his newly reinforced position, as well. This was something the spined warrior hoped would happen so that he, and his bond brother Ogada Nosa Fasu, could have the honor of killing the alien. So, when Hurru heard the whine of the surface vehicle's engine, and saw it round the headland, both he and his bond brother were ready. Having received the other Hunter's characteristic nod, Hurru took up a position directly outside the entrance to the complex.If the vehicle was some sort of trick, a ruse to lure both guards away from the door long enough for the human to slip inside, it wasn't going to work. Fasu, always one to seize the initiative, and something of an artist with the fuel rod cannon attached to his right arm, waited for the LRV to come within range, led the vehicle to ensure that the relatively slow-moving energy pulse would have an adequate amount of time to reach its destination, and fired a single shot.\n\nThe Master Chief saw the yellow-green blob appear in his peripheral vision, and made the decision to turn toward the enemy both to make the 'Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal an opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over. All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master Chief scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter drop down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive knees, and move forward. Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, \"Come on, Hosky! Let's take this bastard out!\"\nThe Spartan yelled, \"No! Fall back!\" and bent over to retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew there simply wasn't time. Another Spartan might have been able to dodge out of the way in time, but the Helljumpers didn't have a prayer. The distance between the alien and the two Marines had closed by then and they couldn't disengage. The Corporal threw a fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster, and stared in disbelief as the alien kept on coming. The alien charged right through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and lowered a gigantic shoulder. Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic shield hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what was left onto the ground. The private remained conscious, however, which meant he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot high into the air, and brought it down on his face. The Master Chief had the launcher up on his shoulder by then and was just about to fire when the Corporal screamed something incoherent, dashed into the line of fire, and blocked his shot. The Chief yelled at her to hit the deck and was moving sideways in an attempt to get a clear line of fire when Fasu blew a hole the size of a dinner plate through the leatherneck's chest. The Spartan hit the firing stud, and a rocketwhoosh ed for the Hunter. With surprising agility, the massive alien hunched and sidestepped, and the rocket skimmed past him. It detonated behind the Hunter, and showered them both with debris. The Hunter charged. The Master Chief stepped back, knew there wouldn't be time to reload, and that the next rocket would have to fly straight and true. The surf swirled around his knees as he backed out into the ocean, fought to maintain his footing in the soft sand, and saw the alien fill his sight. Was the target too close? There wasn't time to check. He pulled the trigger, and a second rocket streaked ahead on a column of smoke and fire. The Hunter had reached full speed and couldn't dodge in time. The creature's massive feet dug into the soft ground as it tried to alter course to avoid the rocketto no avail. The 102mm shaped charge exploded against the very center of the Hunter's chest armor, blew through his torso, and severed his spine. There was a mighty splash as the alien creature fell face first into the water. A pool of vibrant orange blood stained the surf around the fallen Hunter. The Master Chief took a moment to reload the launcher then slogged back up onto the beach. A distant howl of anguish issued from the other alien's throat.Serves you right, he thought.You only lost one brother. I lost all of mine. He felt a pang of sorrow for the two dead Marines. Heshould have anticipated the long-range attack, should have briefed the leathernecks about the possibility of Hunters, should have reacted more quickly. All of which meant that it washis fault that the Marines were dead.\n\"That wasn't your fault,\" Cortana said gently. \"Now be careful there'sanother Hunter up on the platform.\"\nThe words were like a bucket of cold water in the face. \"Mental combat,\"\nthat's how his teacher, Chief Mendez, had referred to it, always stressing the importance of a cool head. Slowly, methodically, the Master Chief worked his way up the slope, killing Covenant soldiers with machine precision. The small groups of Grunts were irrelevant. Thereal challenge waited above.\n\nHurru heard the firing, knew he was being flanked, and welcomed it. Rage, sorrow, and self-pity all churned around inside him causing him to fire his fuel rod cannon again and again, as if to obliterate the human by the weight of his barrage. The human made good use of what cover there was, put his left arm against the cliff face, and inched his way forward. The Hunter saw him and attempted to fire, but the fuel rod cannon hadn't had time to recharge after the last shot. That left the human free to fire, which he did. Hurru felt warm relief. He was about to join his bond brother.\n\nThe rocket was a hair high, hit Hurru in the head, and blew it off. Orange blood fountained straight up, splashed the alien metal around the Hunter, and splattered his body as it collapsed. The Spartan paused, switched to his assault weapon, and waited for the feeling of satisfaction. It never arrived. The Marines were still dead, wouldalways be dead, and nothing would change that. Was it fair that he remained alive? No, it wasn't. All he could do was accomplish what they would want him to do. Forge ahead, find the map, and make their deaths count for something. With that thought in mind, the Master Chief reentered the complex on foot, made his way through halls still slick with alien blood from his last visit, turned down the ramp, proceeded to the lower level, and passed through the door he had worked so hard to open. The Master Chief moved into the bowels of the structure. From outside, the spires stood several stories high, which was misleading. The interior of the structure plunged deep below the surface. He wound down a curving ramp. The air was still and slightly stale, and thick pillars of the first large chamber he moved through made the room feel like a crypt. He slipped through heavily shadowed rooms, padded down spiral ramps, passing through galleries filled with strange forms. The walls and floors were made of the same burnished, heavily engraved metal that he'd encountered elsewhere on the ring. He clicked on his light and noticed new patterns in the metal, like the swirls in marbleas if the material were some kind of metal-stone hybrid. The tomblike silence was shattered by the squalling of several Grunts and Jackals. There was opposition,plenty of it, as the human was forced to deal with dozens of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites. \"It's as if they knew we were on the way,\" Cortana observed. \"I think someone is tracking our progress, and has a pretty good idea of where we're headed.\"\n\"No kidding,\" the Master Chief replied dryly as he shot a Grunt and stepped over the body. \"I hope we reach the Cartographer before I run out of ammo.\"\n\"We're close,\" the AI assured him, \"but be careful. There's bound to be more Covenant ahead.\"\nThe Master Chief took Cortana's counsel to heart. He hoped that he would find a way to bypass whatever the Covenant had in store, but that wasn't to be. As the Spartan entered a large room, he saw that two Hunters had been assigned to patrol the far side of it. He slung his rifle and readied the rocket launcher. It was the right weapon for Hunters, no question about thatso long as he didn't allow either one of the monsters to get too close. A rocket fired under those conditions would killhim if it detonated nearby. One of the spined aliens spotted the intruder and bellowed a challenge. The Hunter was already in motion when the rocket flashed across the room, struck him in the right shoulder, and blasted him to hell. A second Hunter howled and fired his fuel rod cannon. The Chief swore as the wash from a slightly off-target plasma bolt set off the audible alarm, and the indicator in the upper right hand corner of his HUD morphed to red. The Spartan turned, hoping to put the second Hunter in his sight, but the massive alien slid behind a wall. Unable to fire, he backed off. The Hunter lunged forward, and the deadly razor-spines raked across his already-weakened shields. The Chief grunted in pain as the tip of the uppermost spine spiked through his armor's shoulder joint. He felt a sickly tearing as the meat of his arm parted beneath the scalpel-sharp limb. He spun, and the spine wrenched free. The Master Chief felt a rising sense of frustration as he switched to the assault weapon, backed up a ramp, and used his greater mobility to circle behind the alien. Then he had it, a brief glimpse of unprotected flesh, and the opportunity he needed. He put a quick burst into the warrior's back, spun away, and barely escaped a blast from the plasma pistols of the Jackals that had dropped into view and opened fire. The Master Chief hurled three grenades over a divider. One of them scored a direct hit, sprayed the walls with chunks of alien flesh, and finally brought the frantic firefight to an end.\n\nCortana, whose life had been on the line as well, and who had been forced to watch as the Spartan fought for both of them, processed a sense of relief. Somehow, against all odds, her human host had come through again, but it had been close,very close, and he was still in something akin to shock, his back pressed into a corner, his vital signs badly elevated, his eyes jerking from one shadow to the next. The AI hesitated as she processed the dilemma. It was difficult to balance the need to move ahead and complete the mission with her concern that she might push the Master Chieftoo hard, and possibly endanger them both. Cortana's affection for the human, plus her own desire to survive, made it difficult for her to arrive at the kind of clear, rational decision that she expected of herself. Then, just as Cortana was about to say something, anything, even if it was wrong, the Chief recovered and took the initiative. \"All right,\" he said whether to himself or to Cortana wasn't exactly clear. \"It's time to finish this mission.\"\nWorking carefully, so as not to walk into an ambush, the Master Chief left the large room, found his way onto a downward slanting ramp. He backed into a corner and, satisfied that the area was reasonably secure, disengaged the shoulder plates of the MJOLNIR armor. The wound was ragged, and blood flowed freely. The Chief could ignore the pain, but the blood loss would take its toll and jeopardize the mission. He made sure the motion sensor was still active, then slung his weapon. He dug into his equipment pack and drew out his med kit. The Spartan had been wounded before, and had on several occasions performed first aid on injured comrades and himself. He quickly cleaned the wound, sprayed a stinging puff of bio-foam into the wound, then applied a quick-adhesive dressing. In minutes, he had suited up, popped a wake-up stim, and moved on.\n\n\"Foehammer to ground team: You've got two Covenant dropships coming fast!\"\nThe Master Chief stood at the edge of a massive chasm and monitored his allies' radio chatter. In the distance, he could barely see the twinkling of the luminescent panels that Halo's creators had left behind to illuminate these subterranean warrens. Below him, the abyss yawned and appeared to be bottomless. He recognized the next voice as belonging to Gunnery Sergeant Waller, the Helljumper in charge of their LZ.\"Okay, people,\" Waller drawled,\"we got company coming. Engage enemy forces on sight.\"\n\"It'll be easier to hold them off frominside the structure,\" Cortana put in.\n\"Can you get inside?\"\n\"Negative!\"Waller replied.\"They're closing in too fast. We'll keep 'em busy as long as we can.\"\n\"Give 'em hell, Marine,\"the AI said grimly, and broke the connection.\n\"We'llall be in a tight spot if we don't get out of here before enemy reinforcements arrive.\"\n\"Roger that,\" the Master Chief replied, as he pushed his way down a ramp, through a pair of hatches, and into the gloomy spaces beyond. He marched over some transparent decking, crossed a footbridge and killed a pair of Grunts he found there, followed another ramp to the floor below, tossed a grenade into a group of enemies that patrolled the area, and hurried through a likely looking opening. There was a roar of outrage as an Elite fired up at him from the platform below while some Grunts barked and gibbered. The Spartan used a grenade to grease the entire group and hurried down to see what they had been guarding. He recognized the Map Room the moment he saw the opening, and had just stepped inside when another Elite opened up on him from across the way. A sustained burst from his assault weapon was sufficient to drop the alien's personal shields, and he put the alien down with a stroke of his rifle butt.\n\"There!\" Cortana said. \"That holo panel should activate the map.\"\n\"Any idea how to activate it?\"\n\"No,\" she replied, her tone arch. \"You'rethe one with the magic touch.\"\nThe Master Chief took a couple of steps forward and reached a hand toward the display. He seemed to know instinctively how to activate the panelit almost seemed hard-wired, like his fight-or-flight response. He banished the random thought and returned to the mission. He slid his armored hand across the panel and a glowing wire-frame map appeared and seemed to float in front of him. \"Analyzing,\" the AI said. \"Halo's Control Center is\"she highlighted a section of the map in his HUD\n\"there.Interesting. It looks like some sort of shrine.\"\nShe opened a channel.\"Cortana to Captain Keyes.\"\nThere was silence for a moment, followed by Foehammer's voice.\"The Captain has dropped out of contact, Cortana. His ship may be out of range or may be having equipment problems.\"\n\"Keep trying,\"the AI replied.\"Let me know when you reestablish contact. And then tell him that the Master Chief and I have determined the location of the Control Center.\"\n\nCaptain Jacob Keyes tried to ignore the incessantslam-bam beat of the Sergeant's colonial flip music that pounded over the intercom as the pilot lowered the dropship into a swamp. \"Everything looks clearI'm bringing her down.\"\nThe Pelican's jets whipped the water into a frenzy as the ramp was lowered and the cargo compartment was flooded with thick, humid air. It carried the nauseating stench of rotting vegetation, the foul odor of swamp gas, and the slight metallic tang typical of Halo itself. Somebody said,\"Pe-euu,\" but was drowned out by Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, who shouted, \"Go! Go! Go!\"\nand the Marines jumped down into the calf-deep water. Somebody said, \"Damn!\" as water splashed up their legs. Johnson said,\n\"Stow it, Marine,\" as Keyes cleared the ramp. Freed from its burden, the dropship fired its jets, powered its way up out of the glutinous air, and started to climb. Keyes consulted a small hand comp. \"The structure we're looking for is supposed to be overthere .\"\nJohnson eyed the pointing finger and nodded. \"Okay, you slackers, you heard the Captain. Bisenti, take point.\"\nPrivate Wallace A. Jenkins was toward the rear, which was almost as bad as point, but not quite. The ebony water topped his boots, seeped down through his socks, and found his feet. It wasn't all that coldfor which the Marine was thankful. Like the rest of the team, he knew that the ostensible purpose of the mission was to locate and recover a cache of Covenant weapons. Still an important thing to do, even in the wake of Lieutenant McKay's efforts to raid thePillar of Autumn , and the fact that Alpha Base had been strengthened as a result. It was a crap detail, howeverespecially slogging through this dark, mist clogged swamp.\n\nSomething loomed ahead. Bisenti hoped it was what the Old Man had dragged their sorry butts into this swamp for. He hissed the word back to the topkick. \"I see a building, Sarge.\" There was the sound of water splashing as Johnson came forward. \"Stay close, Jenkins. Mendoza, move it up! Wait here for the Captain and his squad. And get your asses inside.\"\nJenkins saw Keyes materialize out of the mist. \"Sir!\"\nJohnson saw Keyes, nodded, and said, \"Okay, let's move!\"\nKeyes followed the Marines inside. The entire situation was different from what he had expected. Unlike the Covenant, who killed nearly all of the humans they got their hands on, the Marines continued to take prisoners. One such individual, a rather disillusioned Elite named 'Qualomee, had been interrogated for hours. He swore that he'd been part of a group of Covenant soldiers who had delivered a shipment of arms to the forces guarding this very structure. But there was no sign of a Covenant security team, or the weapons\n'Qualomee claimed to have delivered, which meant that he had probably been lying. Something the Captain planned to discuss with the alien upon his return to Alpha Base. In the meantime, Keyes planned to push deeper into the complex and see what he could find. The second squad, under Corporal Lovik, was left to cover their line of retreat, while the rest of the team continued to press ahead. Ten minutes had passed when a Marine said, \"Whoa! Look at that. Something scrambled his insides.\"\nJohnson looked down at a dead Elite. Other Covenant bodies lay sprawled around the area as well. Alien blood slicked the walls and floor. Keyes approached from behind. \"What do we have, Sergeant?\"\n\"Looks like a Covenant patrol,\" the noncom answered. \"Badass Special Ops typesthe ones in the black armor. All KIA.\"\nKeyes eyed the body and looked up at Bisenti. \"Real pretty. Friend of yours?\"\nThe Marine shook his head. \"No, we just met.\" It took another five minutes to reach a large metal door. It was locked and no amount of fooling around with the keypad seemed likely to open it. \"Right,\"\nKeyes said, as he examined the obstacle. \"Let's get this door open.\"\n\"I'll try, sir,\" the Tech Specialist, Kappus, replied, \"but it looks like those Covenant worked pretty hard to lock it down.\"\n\"Just do it, son.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\nKappus pulled the spoofer out of his pack, attached the box to the door, and pressed a series of keys. Outside of the gentle beeping noises that the black box made as it tapped into the door's electronics and ran through thousands of combinations per second, there was nothing but silence. The Marines shifted nervously, unwilling to relax. Sweat dripped down Kappus' forehead. They held position for another few minutes, until Kappus nodded with satisfaction and opened the door. The Marines drifted inside. The electronics expert raised a hand. \"Sarge! Listen!\"\nAll of the Marines listened. They heard a soft, liquid, sort of slithery sound. It seemed to come from every direction at once. Jenkins felt jumpy but it was Mendoza who actually put it into words. \"I've got a bad feeling about this . . .\"\n\"You've always got a bad feeling,\" the Sergeant put in, and was about to chew Mendoza out when a message came in over the team freq. It sounded like the second squad was in some sort of trouble, but Corporal Lovik wasn't very coherent, so it was difficult to be sure. In fact, it almost sounded like screaming. Keyes responded. \"Corporal? Do you copy? Over.\"\nThere was no reply. Johnson turned to Mendoza. \"Get your ass back up to second squad's position and find out what the hell is going on.\"\n\"But Sarge\"\n\"I don't have time for your lip, soldier! I gave you an order.\"\n\"Whatis that?\" Jenkins asked nervously, his eyes darting from one shadow to the next.\n\"Where's that coming from, Mendoza?\" Sergeant Johnson demanded, the second squad momentarily forgotten.\n\"There!\" Mendoza proclaimed, pointing to a clutch of shadows as the Marines heard the muffled sound of metal striking metal. There was a cry of pain as something landed on Private Riley's back, drove a needlelike penetrator through his skin, and aimed it down toward his spine. He dropped his weapon, tried to grab the thing that rode his shoulders, and thrashed back and forth.\n\"Hold still! Hold still!\" Kappus yelled, grabbing onto one of the bulbous creatures and trying to pull it off his friend.\n\nAvery Johnson had been in the Corps for most of his adult life, and had logged more time humping across the surface of alien planets than any of the other men in the room combined. Along the way, he'd seen a lot of strange stuffbut nothing like what skittered across the metal floor and attached itself to one of his men. He saw a dozen white blobs, each maybe half a meter in diameter, and equipped with a cluster of writhing tentacles. They skittered and bobbed in a loose formation, then sprang in his direction. The tentacles propelled them several meters in a single leap. He fired a short, almost panicked burst. \"Let\n'em have it!\"\n Keyes, pistol in hand, fired at one of the creatures. It popped like a balloon, with surprising force. The tiny explosion caused three more to burst into feathery shards, but it seemed as if dozens more took their place. Keyes realized that Private Kappus had been correct. The Covenanthad locked the door for a reason, and this was it. But maybe, just maybe, they could pull back and close the blobs inside again. \"Sergeant, we're surrounded.\"\nBut Johnson's attention was elsewhere. \"God damn it, Jenkins,fire your weapon !\"\n\nJenkins, his face tight with fear, clutched his assault rifle with white knuckled hands. It seemed like the little things were boiling from thin air.\n\"There's too many!\"\nThe Sarge started to bellow a reply, but it was as if a floodgate had opened somewhere, as a new wave of the obscene, podlike creatures rolled out of the darkness to overwhelm the humans. Marines fired in every direction. Many lost their balance as two, three, or even four of the aliens managed to get a grip on them and pull them down. Jenkins began to back away as fear overwhelmed him.\n\nKeyes threw up his hands with the intention of protecting his face and accidentally caught one of the monsters. He squeezed and felt the creature explode. The little bastards were fragilebut there were so damned many of them.Another attacker latched onto his shoulder. The Captain screamed as a razor-sharp tentacle plunged through both his uniform and his skin, wriggled under the surface of his skin, and tapped his spinal cord. There was an explosion of pain so intense that he blacked out, only to be brought back to consciousness by chemicals the thing had injected into his bloodstream. He tried to yell for help, but couldn't make a sound. His heart raced as his extremities grew numb, one by one. His lungs felt heavy. As Keyes began to lose touch with the rest of his body, something foul entered it, pushing his consciousness down and back even as it claimed most of his cerebral cortex, polluting his brain with a hunger so base that it would have made him vomit, had he any possession of his own body. This hunger was more than a desire for food, for sex, or for power. This hunger was a vacuum, an endless vortex that consumed every impulse, every thought, every measure of who and what he was. He tried to scream, but it wouldn't let him.\n\nThe sight of Captain Keyes struggling with this new adversary had frozen Private Jenkins in place. When the Captain's struggles ceased, however, he snapped into motion. He turned to flee, and felt one of the little beasts slam into his back. Pain knifed into him as the creature inserted its tendrils into his body, then subsided. His vision clouded, then cleared. He had some sensation that time had passed, but he had no way to tell how long he'd been out. Private Jenkins, Wallace A., found himself in a strange half-world. Due to some fluke, some random toss of the galactic dice, the mind that invadedhis body had been severely weakened during the long period of hibernation, and while strong enough to take over and begin the work necessary to create a combat form, it lacked the force and clarity required to completely dominate its host the way it was supposed to. Jenkins, helpless to do anything about it, was fully aware of the invading intelligence as it seized control of his musculature, jerked at his limbs like a child experimenting with a new toy, and marched him around in circles even as his friends, who no longer had any consciousness at all, were completely destroyed. He screamed, and the air left his lungs, but no one turned to look.\n\n\nCHAPTER SEVEN Seventh Cycle, 49 units (Covenant Battle Calendar) /\nAboard Cruiser,Truth and Reconciliation, above Halo's surface. Zuka 'Zamamee had entered theTruth and Reconciliation via the ship's main gravity lift, taken a secondary lift up to the command deck, suffered through the usual security check, and been shown into the Council Chambers in record time. All of which seemed quite appropriate until he entered the room to find that only a single light was on, and it was focused on the spot where visitors were expected to stand. There was no sign of Soha 'Rolamee, of the Prophet, or of the Elite to whom he had never been introduced. Perhaps the Council had been delayed, there had been a scheduling error, or some other kind of bureaucratic error. But then, why had he been admitted?\nSurely the staff knew whether the Council was in session or not. The Elite was about to turn and leave when a second spot came on and\n'Rolamee's head appeared. Not attached to his body the way it should have been, but sitting on a gore-drenched pedestal, staring vacantly into space. An image of the Prophet appeared and seemed to float in midair. He gestured toward the head. \"Sad, isn't it? But discipline must be maintained.\"\nThe Prophet made what 'Zamamee took to be a mystical gesture. \"Halo is old,extremely old, as are its secrets. Blessings, really, which the Forerunners left for us to find, knowing that we would put them to good use.\n\"But nothing comes without risk, and there are dangers here as well, things which 'Rolamee promised to keep contained, but failed to do so.\n\"Now, with the humans blundering about, his failures have been amplified. Doors have been opened, powers have been released, and it is now necessary to shift a considerable amount of our strength to the process of regaining control. Do you understand?\"\n'Zamamee didn't understand, not in the least, but had no intention of admitting that. Instead he said, \"Yes, Excellency.\"\n\"Good,\" the Prophet said, \"and that brings us toyou . Not only were your most recent efforts to trap the marauding human a total failure, he went on to neutralize part of Halo's security system, found his way in to the Silent Cartographer, and will no doubt use it to cause us even more trouble. \"So,\" the Prophet added conversationally, \"I thought it might be instructive for you to come here, take a good look at the price of failure, and decide whether you can afford the cost. Do you understand me?\"\n'Zamamee gulped, then nodded. \"Yes, Excellency, I do.\"\n\"Good,\" the Prophet said smoothly. \"I'm gratified to hear it. Now, having failed once, and having determined never to do so again, tell me how you plan to proceed.If I like the answer,if you can convince me that it will work, then you will leave this room alive.\"\nFortunately 'Zamamee not only had a plan, but anexciting plan, and he was able to convince the Prophet that it would work. But later, after the Elite had rejoined Yayap, and the two of them were leaving the ship, it wasn't a vision of glory that he saw, but 'Rolamee's vacant stare.\n\nThe Master Chief paused just inside the hatch to ensure that he wasn't being followed, checked to make certain that his weapons were loaded, and wondered where the hell he was. Based on instructions from Cortana, Foehammer had dropped her Pelican through a hole in Halo's surface, flown the dropship through one of the enormous capillary-like maintenance tunnels that crisscrossed just below the ring world's skin, and dropped the unlikely twosome off on a cavernous landing platform. From there the Spartan felt his way through a maze of passageways and rooms, many of which had been defended. Now, as he walked the length of another corridor, he wondered what lay beyond the hatch ahead. The answer was quite unexpected. The door opened to admit cold air and a sudden flurry of snowflakes. It appeared as if he was about to step out onto the deck of a footbridge. A barrier blocked some of the view, but the noncom could see traction beams that served in place of suspension cables, and the gray cliff face beyond.\n\"The weather patterns here seem natural, not artificial,\" Cortana observed thoughtfully. \"I wonder if the ring's environmental systems are malfunctioningor if the designerswanted this particular installation to have inclement weather.\"\n\"Maybe this isn't even inclement weather to them,\" he said. The Chief, who wasn't sure it made a hell of a lot of difference, not tohim anyway, stuck his nose around the edge of the hatch to see what might be waiting for them. The answer was a Shade, with a Grunt seated at the controls. A quick glance to the right confirmed the presence of asecond energy weapon, this one unmanned. Then, just as he was about to make his move, a Pelican appeared off to the left, roared over the bridge, and settled into the valley below. There was a squawk of static, followed by a grim-sounding male voice.\n\"This is Fire Team Zulu requesting immediate assistance from any USNC forces. Does anyone copy? Over.\"\nThe AI recognized the call sign as belonging to one of the units operating out of Alpha Base and made her reply.\"Cortana to Fire Team Zulu. I read you. Hold position. We're on the way.\"\n\"Roger that,\"the voice replied.\"Make it quick.\"\nSo much for the element of surprise,he thought. The Spartan stepped out of the hatch, shot the Grunt in the head, and hurried to take the alien's place on the Shade. He could hear the commotion the sudden attack had caused and knew he had only seconds to bring the barrel around. He swiveled the weapon into position, saw the sight glow red, and pulled the trigger. A Grunt and a Jackal were snatched off their feet as the ravening energy bolts consumed not only them, but a chunk of the bridge as well. All the rest of the enemy forces seemed to melt back into the woodwork. Then, with no clear targets left in sight, he took a moment to inspect the bridge. It appeared to have been built for use by pedestrians rather than vehicles, had two levels, and was held aloft by the traction beams he had observed earlier. Snow swirled down from above, hissed when it hit the glowing cables, then ceased to exist. There was movement farther down the bridge deck, which he rewarded with a steady stream of glowing energy. He used the plasma like water from a hose, squirting the deadly fire into every nook and cranny he could find, thereby clearing the way. Then, satisfied that he had nailed all the obvious targets, the Spartan jumped to the deck. The bridge was large enough that it featured a variety of islands, turn-outs, and pass-throughs, all of which could be used for cover. That cut two ways, of coursemeaning that the Covenant had plenty of places to hide. Moving from one bit of protection to the next, he fought his way across the span, dropping down to the lower level to deal with Covenant forces there, then resurfacing at the far end, where he spotted an Elite armed with an energy blade. The Elite ducked behind a wall. The Chief saw no reason to close with such a dangerous opponent if it could be avoided, and tossed a plasma grenade over the wall. He heard the startled reaction as the explosive device latched onto the Elite's armor and refused to let go. The alien emerged from hiding, and vanished in a flash of light. Thankful to put the bridge behind him, the Chief activated the hatch, made his way through the mazelike room beyond, and entered a lift. It dropped for a long time before coming to a relatively smooth stop and allowing him to exit. A short passageway took him to a hatch and the battle that raged beyond. As the door opened the Master Chief looked up, saw the bridge directly above, and had a good idea where he was. Then, looking down, he saw a snow-covered valley, punctuated by groups of boulders, and the occasional stand of trees. Judging from the fact that most of the Covenant fire was directed toward the corner of the valley off to his left, the Spartan assumed that at least part of Fire Team Zulu was trapped there. They were under fire from at least two Shades and a Ghost, but putting up a good fight nonetheless. He knew that the heavy weapons offered the greatest danger to the Marines. He sprinted from the protection of the tunnel, paused to shoot the nearest gunner with his pistol, then headed toward the dead Grunt's Shade. He could feel the heat radiating off the weapon's barrel as he jerked the corpse out of the seat and took his place behind the controls. There were plenty of targets, a rather busy Ghost primary among them, so the Chief decided to tackle that first. A couple of bursts were sufficient to get the pilot's attention and bring him into range. Both the human and the Elite opened fire at the same moment, their reciprocal fire drawing straight lines back and forth, but the Shade won out. The attack vehicle shuddered, skittered sideways, and blew up. But there was no opportunity to celebrate as a Wraith mortar tank turned its attention to that corner of the valley, lobbed cometlike energy bombs high into the air, and started to walk them toward the Marines. The Spartan sent a stream of energy bolts toward the tank, but the range was too great, and the fire couldn't penetrate the monster's armor. Convinced that he would have to find some other way to deal with the tank, the Chief decided to bail out, and was twenty meters away when one of the bombs scored a direct hit on the Shade he had just occupied. The Marines saw him coming and took heart from his sudden appearance on the scene. A Corporal tossed him a weak grin, and whooped, \"The cavalry has arrived!\"\n\"We can sure use your helpthat Shade has us pinned,\" another Marine chimed in. The soldier pointed and the Spartan saw that the Covenant had dropped a Shade onto the top of a huge rock overlooking the valley. The elevation allowed the weapon to command half the depression and even as the Chief looked, the gunner continued to pound the area where Fire Team Zulu had taken refuge. The Marines' Warthog had flipped, spilling supplies out onto the ground. The Master Chief paused to grab a rocket launcher, but knew the range was extreme, and that it would pay to get closer. So he slung the launcher across his back, checked the load on his assault weapon, and moved into the trees. A party of Grunts made a run at the Marines, and were pushed back even as the Spartan spotted a likely looking tree trunk. He moved up, killed the Jackal that lurked behind the tree cover, then brought the launcher up to his shoulder. The Shade winked blue light as he peered through the sight, increased the magnification, and saw the gun leap toward him. Then, careful to hold the tube steady, he fired. There was an explosion on top of the rock, and the Shade toppled off the side of a cliff. The Marines cheered, but the Master Chief had already shifted priorities. He ran for the 'Hog. A mortar bomb exploded behind him and blew the tree cover he'd just vacated into splinters. A Marine screamed as a meter-long shard of wood penetrated his abdomen and nailed him to the ground. The Spartan grabbed hold of the Warthog's bumper, then used his armor's strength enhancements to flip it back onto its tires. One Marine jumped aboard and manned the LAAG, and another jumped into the passenger seat. Snow sprayed out from behind both of the rear tires as the Spartan put his foot down, felt the 'Hog break loose, and steered into the skid. The sudden movement gave their position away to the Wraith. It belched, and a comet arced their way and slid sideways across the center of the valley as if to block the humans from reaching the other end. The Spartan saw the fireball, raced to pass under it, and heard the LAAG open up as the range to the Wraith began to close. But there was an infantry screen to penetrate before they could dance with the tank, and both the LAAG gunner and the Marine in the passenger seat were forced to deal with a screen comprised of Elites, Jackals, and Grunts as the Chief slammed on the brakes, backed out of a crossfire, and turned to provide them with a better angle. The M41 roared as it sent hundreds of rounds downrange, plucked Grunts like flowers, and hurled them back into the bloodied snow. The Marine in the passenger seat yelled, \"Youwant me? Youwant some of this? Come and get it!\" as he emptied a clip into an Elite. The eight-foot-tall warrior staggered under the impact and fell over backward. He wasn't dead, however, not yet, not until the front of the Warthog sucked him under and spit chunks out the back. Then they were through the screen, and more important, inside the dead area where the Wraith couldn't fire mortar bombs without risking dropping them on itself. That was the key, the factor that made the attack possible. The Chief braked on a patch of ice, and felt the 'Hog start to slide. \"Hit him!\" he ordered. The gunner, who couldn't possibly miss at that range, opened fire. There was an earsplitting roar as large-caliber rounds pounded the side of the tank. Some glanced off, others shattered, but none of them managed to penetrate the Wraith's thick armor.\n\"Watch out!\" the Marine in the passenger seat exclaimed. \"The bastard is trying to ram!\"\nThe Spartan, who had just managed to bring the Warthog to a stop, saw that the private was correct. The tank surged forward, and was just about to crush the LRV, when the Master Chief slammed the lighter vehicle into reverse. All four wheels spun as the 'Hog backed away, guns blazing, suddenly on the defensive. Then, having opened what he hoped was a sufficient gap, the Spartan braked. He slammed the shifter forward and swung the wheel to the right. The vehicles were so close as they passed each other that the Wraith scraped the 'Hog's flank, hard enough to tip the left-side wheels off the snowy ground. They hit with a thump, the LAAG came off-target, and the gunner brought it to bear again. \"Hammer it from behind!\" the Chief yelled. \"It might be weaker there!\"\nThe gunner obeyed and was rewarded with a sharp explosion. A thousand pieces of metal flew up into the air, turned lazy circles, and drifted downward. Black smoke boiled up out of the wreckage. What remained of the tank slammed into a boulder, and the battle was over. The valley belonged to Fire Team Zulu. Cortana's intelligence revealed there were other valleys, all connected by one means or another, and he would have to negotiate every one of them in order to reach his objective. A drop-off prevented the Spartan from taking the Warthog any farther. He bailed out and made his way through the snow. A cold wind whistled past his visor and snowflakes dusted the surface of his armor. \"Damn,\" one of the Marines remarked, \"I forgot my mittens.\"\n\"Stow the BS,\" a sergeant growled. \"Watch those trees . . . this ain't no picnic.\"\nStrangely, the Chief felt very calm. Right then, right there, he was home.\n\nIt was sunny, only a few clouds dotted the sky, and the strangely uniform hills piled one on top of the other as if eager to reach the low-lying mountain ridge beyond. It had been dry in this region, which meant that the vehicles sent wisps of dust into the air as they climbed up off the plain, and made for the heights above. The patrol consisted of two captured Ghosts, or \"Gees\" as some of the Marines called them, plus two of the Warthogs that had survived the long, arduous journey back from thePillar of Autumn . Various combinations had been tried, but McKay liked the two-plus-two configuration best, combining as it did the best features ofboth designs. The alien attack craft were faster than the LRVs, which meant they could cover a lot of ground in a short period of time, thereby reducing the wear and tear on both the four-wheelers and the troops who rode them. But the Ghosts couldn't handle broken ground the way the Warthogs could and, not having anything like the M41 LAAG, they were vulnerable to Banshees. Therefore, if an enemy aircraft appeared, it was standard procedure for the Gees to scuttle in under the protection offered by the three-barreled weapons mounted on the 'Hogs. Each Warthog carried a passenger armed with a rocket launcher as well, which provided the Marines with even more antiaircraft capability. Of course thereal stick, the one the Covenant had learned to respect, was a Pelican full of Helljumpers sitting on a pad back at Alpha Base ready to launch on two minutes' notice. It could put as many as fifteen ODST Marines on any point inside the designated patrol area within ten minutes. No small threat. The purpose of the patrols was to monitor a circle ten kilometers in diameter with Alpha Base at its center. Now that the Marines had taken the butte and fortified it, they had to hold onto the high keep. And while there had been some air raids, and a couple of ground-based probes, the Covenant had yet to launch an all-out attack, something that bothered both Silva and McKay. It was almost as if the aliens were content to let the humans sit there while they tended to something elsealthough neither one of the officers could imagine what the something else could be. That didn't mean a complete cessation of activity; far from it, since the enemy had taken to watching the humans, making note of which routes they took, and setting ambushes along the way. McKay tried to ensure that she never followed the same path twice in a row, but often the terrain dictated where the vehicles could go, and that meant that there were certain river crossings, rocky defiles, and mountain passes where the enemy could safely lie in waitassuming they had the patience for it. As the patrol approached one such spot, a pass between two of the larger hills, the Marine on the lead Ghost called in.\"Red Three to Red One, over.\"\nMcKay, who had decided to ride shotgun in the first 'Hog, keyed her mike.\n\"This is One. Go . . . Over.\"\n\"I see a Ghost, Lieutenant. It's on its sidelike it crashed or something. Over.\"\n\"Stay clear of it,\" the officer advised. \"It could be some sort of trap. Hold on, we'll be there shortly. Over.\"\n\"Affirmative. Red Three, out.\"\nThe Warthog bounced over some rocks, growled as the driver downshifted, and entered an open area that led up to the pass. \"Red One to team: We'll leave the vehicles here and proceed on foot. Gunners, stay on those weapons, and split the sky. The last thing we need is to get bounced by a Banshee. Ghost Two, keep an eye on the back door. Over.\" There was a series of double-clicks by way of acknowledgment as McKay took the Warthog's rocket launcher, jumped to the ground, and followed her driver up the path. A scorched rock, and what might have been a patch of dried blood, served as reminder of the patrol that had been ambushed there not long ago. The sun beat down on the officer's back, the air was hot and still, and gravel crunched under her boots. The hill could have been on Earth, up in the Cascade Mountains. McKay wished that it were.\n\nYayap lay next to a pile of wreckage and waited to die. Like most of\n'Zamamee's ideas, this one was totally insane. After failing to find and kill the armored human, 'Zamamee had concluded that the elusive alien must be on top of the recently captured butte. Or, if noton the butte, then coming and going from the butte, which was the only base the humans had established. The butte was a strong point that the Council of Masters would very much like to take back. The only problem was that 'Zamamee had no way to know when the human was there, and when he wasn't, because while taking the butte would be something of a coup, doing so without killing the human might or might not be sufficient to keep his head on his shoulders. So, having given the problem extensive thought, and aware of the fact that humansdid take prisoners, the Elite came up with the idea of putting a spy on top of the butte, someone who could send a signal when the target was in residence, thereby triggering a raid. But who to send? Nothim , since it would be his role to lead the attack, and not some other Elite, because they were deemed too valuable for such a dangerous schemenor could they be trusted not to steal the glory of the killespecially given the increased demands associated with countering the mysterious \"powers\" to which the Prophet had referred. That suggested a lower ranking member of the Covenant forces, but someone 'Zamamee could trust. Which was why Yayap had been equipped with an appropriate cover story, enthusiastically beaten up, and laid out next to a wrecked Ghost which one of the transports had dropped in during the hours of darkness. The final scene had been established just prior to dawn, which meant that the Grunt had been there for nearly five full units. Unable to do more than flex his muscles lest he unknowingly give himself away, with nothing to drink, and subject to his own considerable fears, Yayap silently cursed the day he\n\"rescued\" 'Zamamee. Better to have died in the crash of the human vessel. Yes, 'Zamamee swore that the humans took prisoners, but what didhe know?\nThus far, Yayap had been unimpressed with 'Zamamee's plans. Yayap had seen Marines shoot more than one downed warrior during the battle on thePillar of Autumn , and saw no reason why they would spare him. And what if they discovered the signaling device that had been incorporated into his breathing apparatus?\nNo, the odds were against him, and the more he thought about it, the more the Grunt realized that he should have run. Taken what he could, headed out onto the surface of Halo, sought shelter with the other deserters who lurked there. The dignity of his eventual suffocation when his methane bladder finally emptied had considerable appeal. It was too late for that now. Yayap heard the crunch of gravel, smelled the musky, unpleasant meat odor he had come to associate with humans, and felt a shadow fall over his face. It seemed best to appear unconscious, so that's exactly what he did. He fainted.\n\n\"It sounds like he's alive,\" McKay observed, as the Grunt took a breath, and the methane rig wheezed in response. \"Check for booby traps, free that leg, and search him. I don't see much blood, but if he's leaking, plug the holes.\"\n\nYayap didn't understand a word the human said, but the tone was even, and no one put a gun to his head. Maybe, just maybe, he was going to survive. Five minutes later the Grunt had been hog-tied, thrown into the back of an LRV, and left to bounce around back there. McKay recovered two saddlebag-style containers from the wrecked Ghost, one of which contained some clothes wrapped around what she took to be rations. She sniffed the tube of bubbling paste and winced. It smelled like old socks wrapped in rotting cheese. She stuffed the alien food back into its pack, and investigated the second. It held a pair of Covenant memory blocks, brick-shaped chunks of some superdense material that could store who knew how many gazillion bytes of information. Probably a kilo's worth of BS? Yes, probably, but it wasn't for her to judge. Wellsley loved that kind of crap, and would have fun trying to sort it out. If they were lucky, it would distract him from quoting the Duke of Wellington for a few precious minutes. That alone was almost worth recovering the devices.\n\nAs the humans got back on their vehicles and went up over the pass,\n'Zamamee watched them from a carefully camouflaged hiding spot on a neighboring hill. He felt a thrill of vindication. The first part of his plan was a success. The second phaseand his inevitable victorywould follow.\n\nFinally, after battling his way through wintry valleys twisting passageways, and mazelike rooms, the Master Chief opened still another hatch and peered outside. He saw snow, the base of a large construct, and a Ghost which patrolled the area beyond.\n\"The entrance to the Control Center is located at the top of the pyramid,\"\nCortana said. \"Let's get up there. We should commandeer one of those Ghosts, we're going to need the firepower.\"\nThe Spartan believed her, but as he stepped through the hatch, and more Ghosts appeared and began shooting at him, none of the pilots seemed ready to surrender their machines. He destroyed one of them with a long, controlled burst from his assault rifle, then scurried up through a jumble of boulders, and perched on one of the pyramid's long, sloping skirts. From his new position he saw a Hunter patrolling the area above, and wished he had a rocket launcher. He might as well have wished for a Scorpion tank. The pyramid's support structures offered some cover, which allowed the Master Chief to climb unobserved, and toss a fragmentation grenade at the monster above. It went off with a loudcraack! , peppered the alien's armor with shrapnel, and generally pissed him off. Alerted now, the Hunter fired his fuel rod cannon, just as the Chief hurled a plasma grenade and hoped his aim was better this time. The energy pulse missed, the grenade didn't, and there was a flash of light as the Covenant warrior went down. It was tempting to run for the top, but if there was one lesson the Spartan had learned over the last few days it was that Hunters traveled in pairs. Rather than leave such a potent enemy guarding his six, the Master Chief climbed up to the first level, ducked around the wall that separated one side of the pyramid from the next, and took a peek. Sure enough, there was Hunter number two, gazing down-slope, unaware of the fact that his bond brother was dead. The human put a burst into the alien's unprotected back. The spined warrior fell and slid, face first, to the bottom of the structure. The Chief worked his way farther up, zigzagging back and forth across the front of the massive pyramid while an extremely determined Banshee pilot tried to bag him from above, and all manner of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites emerged to try and block his progress. He took a deep breath, and continued his climb.\n\nAt the top of the pyramid, the Spartan paused and allowed his long-suffering shield system to recharge. He stepped over the fallen body of a Grunt, and loaded his last clip into the assault rifle. A huge door fronted the top level. There was no way to tell what waited on the other side, but it wasn't likely to be friendlya series of motion sensor traces ghosted at the edge of the device's range. \"What's the plan?\" Cortana inquired.\n\"Simple.\" The Spartan took a deep breath, hit the switch, spun on his heel, and ran. It was about twenty meters back to the Shade, and the Chief covered the distance in seconds. Once at the controls he swiveled the barrel around just in time to see the doors part and a horde of Covenant soldiers pour out. The Shade was up to the job. Just as quickly as they appeared, the aliens died. Dismounting once again, the Spartan entered a large, hangarlike space, took the time required to deal with stragglers, and activated the next set of doors.\n\"Scanning,\" Cortana said. \"Covenant forces in the area have been eliminated. Nicely done. Let's move on to Halo's Control Center.\"\nHe made his way through the doors and out onto an immense platform. A gleaming reflective bridge, apparently without supports, extended over a vast emptiness and ended in a circular walkway. In the center of this walkway was a moving holographic model of the Threshold system: a giant transparent image of the gas giant overhead, the small gray moon Basis in orbit around it, and suspended between the two, the tiny shining ring of Halo itself. Outside of the walkway, stretching almost to the edges of the enormous space, was another model of Halo, this one thousands of feet across, displaying as it rotated a detailed map of the terrain on its inner surface. The span lacked any kind of railing, as if to remind those who passed over it of the dangers attendant to the power they were about to encounter. Or so it seemed to the Master Chief.\n\"This is it . . . Halo's Control Center,\" Cortana said as the Master Chief approached a large panel. It was covered with glyphs, all of which glowed as if lit from within, and went together to form what looked like a piece of abstract art.\n\"That terminal,\" the AI said. \"Try there.\" The Spartan reached out to touch one of the symbols, then stopped. He felt Cortana's presence dwindle in his mind as she transmitted herself into the alien computer station. A moment later, she appearedgiant sizedover the control panel. Data scrolled across her body, energy seemed to radiate out of her holographic skin, and her features were alight with pleasure. Her \"skin\" shifted from blue to purple, to red, then cycled back as she gazed around the room and sighed.\n\"Are you all right?\" the Master Chief inquired. He hadn't expected this.\n\"Never been better!\" Cortana affirmed. \"You can't imagine the wealth of informationsomuch , so fast. It'sglorious !\"\n\"So,\" the Master Chief asked, \"what sort of weapon is it?\"\nThe AI looked surprised. \"What are you talking about?\"\n\"Let's stay focused,\" the Spartan responded. \"Halo. How do we use it against the Covenant?\"\nThe image of Cortana frowned. Suddenly her voice was filled with disdain.\n\"This ring isn't a cudgel, you barbarian, it's something else. Something much more important. The Covenant were right, this ring\"\nShe paused, and her eyes moved back and forth as she scanned the tidal wave of data she now accessed. A puzzled look flashed across her face.\n\"Forerunner,\" she muttered. \"Give me a moment to access . . .\"\nA moment later, she began to speak, and her words rushed out in a flood, as if the constant stream of new information was sweeping her along.\n\"Yes, the Forerunners built this place, what they called a fortress world, in order to\"\nThe Chief had never heard the AI talk like that before, didn't like being referred to as a \"barbarian,\" and was about to cut her down to size when she spoke again. Plainly alarmed, her voice had a hesitant quality. \"No, that can't be . . . Oh, those Covenant fools, they must have known, there must have been signs.\"\nThe Chief frowned. \"Slow down. You're losing me.\"\nHer eyes widened in horror. \"The Covenantfound something , buried in this ring, somethinghorrible . Now they're afraid.\"\n\"Something buried?\"\nCortana looked off into the distance as if she could actually see Keyes.\n\"Captainwe've got to stop the Captain. The weapons cache he's looking for, it's not reallywe can't let him get inside.\"\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\"There's no time!\" Cortana said urgently. Her eyes were neon pink and they focused on the Spartan like twin lasers. \"I have to remain here. Get out, find Keyes, stop him. Before it's too late!\"\n\n\nSECTION IV\n343 GUILTY SPARK\n\nCHAPTER EIGHT D+58:36:31 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) /\nPelican Echo 419, approaching Covenant arms cache. Echo 419's engines roared as the Pelican descended through the darkness and rain into the swamp. The surrounding foliage whipped back and forth in response to the sudden turbulence, the water beneath the transport's metal belly was pressed flat, and the stench of rotting vegetation flooded the aircraft's cargo compartment as the ramp splashed into the evil-looking brew below. Foehammer was at the controls and it was her voice that came over the radio. \"The last transmission from the Captain's ship was fromthis area. When you locate Captain Keyes, radio in and I'll come pick you up.\"\nThe Master Chief stepped down off the ramp and immediately found himself calf-deep in oily-looking water. \"Be sure to bring me a towel.\"\nThe pilot laughed, fed more fuel to the engines, and the ship pushed itself up out of the swamp. In the three hours since she had plucked the Spartan off the top of the pyramid, he'd scarfed a quick meal and a couple hours of sleep. Now, as Foehammer dropped her passenger into the muck, she was glad to be an aviator. Ground-pounders worked too damn hard.\n\nKeyes floated in a vacuum. A gauzy white haze clouded his vision, though he could occasionally make out images in lightning-fast burstsa nightmare tableau of misshapen bodies and writhing tentacles. A muted gleam of light glinted from some highly polished, engraved metal. In the distance, he could hear a droning buzz. It had an odd, musical quality, like Gregorian chant slowed to a fraction of its normal speed. He realized with a start that the images were from his own eyes. The knowledge brought back a flood of memoryof his own body. He struggled, and realized in mounting horror that he could just barely feel his own arms. They seemed softer somehow, as if filled with a spongy, thick liquid. He couldn't move. His lungs itched, and the effort of breathing hurt. The strange droning chant suddenly sped into an insect buzz, painfully echoing through his consciousness. There was something . . . distant, something definitivelyother about the sound. Without warning, a new image flashed across his mind, like images on a video screen. The sun was setting over the Pacific, and a trio of gulls wheeled overhead. He smelled salt air, and felt gritty sand between his toes. He felt a sickening sensation, a feeling of indescribable violation, and the comforting image vanished. He tried to remember what he was seeing, but the memory faded like smoke. All he could feel now was a sense of loss. Something had been taken from him . . . butwhat ?\nThe insistent buzz returned, painfully loud now. He could sense tendrils of awarenesshungry for datawriggling through his confused mind like diseased maggots. A host of new images filled him.\n. . . the first time he killed another human being, during the riots on Charybdis IX. He smelled blood, and his hands shook as he holstered the pistol. He could feel the heat of the weapon's barrel . . .\n. . . the pride he felt after graduating at the Academy, then a hitchas if a bad holorecord was being scrolled backthen a knot in his gut. Fear that he wouldn't be able to meet the Academy's standards . . .\n. . . the sickening smell of lilacs and lilies as he stood over his father's coffin\n. . . Keyes continued to float, mesmerized by the parade of memories that began to pile on him, each one appearing faster than the last. He drifted through the fog. He didn't notice, or indeed care, that as soon as the bursts of memory ended, they disappeared entirely. The strangeotherness receded from his awareness, but not entirely. He could still sense theother probing him, but he ignored it. The next burst of memory passed . . . then another . . . then another . . .\n\nThe Chief checked his threat indicator, found nothing of concern, and allowed the swamp to close in around him. \"Make friends with your environment.\" That's what Chief Mendez had told him many years ago and the advice had served him well. Bylistening to the constant patter of the rain,feeling the warm humid air via his vents, andseeing the shapes natural to the swamp, the Spartan would know what belonged and what didn't. Knowledge that could mean the difference between life and death. Satisfied that he was attuned to the environment around him, and hopeful of gaining a better vantage point, he climbed a slight rise. The payoff was immediate. The Pelican had gone in less than sixty meters from the spot where Echo 419\nhad dropped him offbut the surrounding foliage was so thick Foehammer had been unable to see the crash site from the air. The Chief moved in to inspect the wreckage. Judging from appearances, and the fact that there weren't many bodies lying around, the ship had crashed during takeoff, rather than on landing. The impression was confirmed when he discovered that while they were dressed in fatigues, all of the casualties wore Naval insignia. That suggested that the dropship had landed successfully, discharged all of its Marine passengers, and was in the process of lifting off when a mechanical failure or enemy fire had brought the aircraft down. Satisfied that he had a basic understanding of what had taken place, the Chief was about to leave when he spotted a shotgun lying next to one of the bodies, decided it might come in handy, and slipped the sling over his right shoulder. He followed a trail of bootprints away from the Pelican and toward the glow of portable work lightsthe same kind of lights he'd seen in the area around theTruth and Reconciliation . The aliens were certainly industrious, especially when it came to stealing everything that wasn't nailed down. As if to confirm his theory regarding Covenant activity in the area, it wasn't long before the Spartan came across asecond wreck, a Covenant dropship this time, bows down in the swamp muck. Aside from swarms of mothlike insects and the distant chirp of swamp birds, there were no signs of life. Cargo containers were scattered all around the crash site, which raised an interesting question. When the transport nosed in, were the aliens trying to deliver something, weapons perhaps, or taking material away? There was no way to be certain. Whatever the case, there was a strong likelihood that Keyes had been attracted to the lights, just as he had, followed them to the crash site, and continued from there. With that in mind, he swung past a tree that stood on thick, spiderlike roots, followed a trail up over a rise, and spotted a lone Jackal. Without hesitation, he snapped the assault rifle to his shoulder and brought the alien down with a burst. He crouched, waiting for the inevitable counterattackwhich never came. Curious. Given the lights, the crash site, and the scattering of cargo modules, he would have expected to run into more opposition. Alot more. So where were they? It didn't make sense. Just one more mystery to add to his growing supply. The rain pattered against the surface of his armor, and swamp water sloshed around his boots as the Master Chief pushed his way through some foliage and suddenly came under fire. For one brief moment it seemed as if his latest question had been answered, that Covenant forceswere still in the area, but the opposition soon proved to be little more than a couple of hapless Jackals, who, upon hearing the sound of gunfire, had come to investigate. As usual they came in low, crouching behind their shields, so it was almost impossible to score a hit from directly in front of them. He shifted position, found a better angle, and fired. One Jackal went down, but the other rolled, and that made it nearly impossible to hit him. The Spartan held his fire, waited for the alien to come to a stop, and cut him down. He worked his way up the side of a steep slope, and Chief spotted a Shade sited on top of the ridge. It commanded both slopes, or would have, had someone been at the controls. He paused at the top of the ridge and considered his options. He could jump on the Shade, hose the ravine below, and thereby let everyone know that he had arrived, or slip down the slope, and try to infiltrate the area more quietly. The Chief settled on the second option, started down the slope in front of him, and was soon wrapped in mist and moist vegetation. Not too surprisingly, some red dots appeared on the Spartan's threat indicator. Rather than go around the enemy, and expose his six, the Master Chief decided to seek them out. He slung the MA5B and drew out the shotgunbetter suited for close-up work. He pumped the slide, flicked off the safety, and moved on. Broad variegated leaves caressed his shoulders, vines tugged at the barrel of the shotgun, and the thick half-rotten humus of the jungle floor gave way under the Chief's boots as he made his way forward. The Grunt perhaps heard a slight rustling, debated whether to fire, and was still in the process of thinking it over when the butt of the shotgun descended on his head. There was a solidthump! as the alien went down, followed by two more, as more methane breathers rushed to investigate. Satisfied with his progress so far, the Spartan paused to listen. There was the gentle patter of rain on wide, welcoming leaves, and the constant sound of his own breathing, but nothing more. Confident that the immediate perimeter was clear, the Master Chief turned his attention to the Forerunner complex that loomed off to his right. Unlike the graceful spires of other installations, this one appeared squat and vaguely arachnid. He crept down onto the flat area immediately in front of it. He decided that the entrance reminded him of a capital A, except that the top was flat, and was bracketed by a pair of powerful floodlights. Wasthis what Keyes had been looking for? Something caught his eyea pair of twelve-gauge shotgun shells, and a carelessly discarded protein bar wrapper, tossed near the entrance. He must be getting closer. Once through the door he came across a half dozen Covenant bodies lying in a pool of commingled blood. Struck once again by the absence of serious opposition, the Master Chief knelt just beyond the perimeter established by the blood, and peered at the bodies. Had the Marines killed them? No, judging from the nature of their wounds it appeared as if the aliens had been hosed withplasma fire. Friendly fire perhaps? Humans armed with Covenant weapons? Maybe, but neither explanation really seemed to fit. Perplexed, he stood, took a long, slow look around, and pushed deeper into the complex. In contrast with the swamp outside, where the constantdrip\n,drip,dripof the rain served to provide a constant flow of sound, it was almost completely silent within the embrace of the thick walls. The sudden sound of machinery startled him, and he spun and brought the shotgun to bear. Summoned by some unknown mechanism, a lift surfaced right in front of him. With nowhere else to go, the Master Chief stepped aboard. As the platform carried him downward a group of overlapping red blobs appeared on his threat indicator, and the Spartan knew he was about to have company. There was a screech of tortured metal as the lift came to a stop, but rather than rush him as he expected them to, the blobs remained stationary. They had heard the lift many times before, the Chief reasoned, and figured it was loaded with a group of their friends. That suggested Covenant,stupid Covenant. His favorite kind, in factapart from the dead kind. Careful to avoid the sort of noise that might give him away, he completed a full circuit of the dimly lit room, and discovered that the blobs were actually Grunts and Jackals, all of whom were clustered around a hatch. The Chief suppressed a grin, slung the shotgun, and unlimbered the assault rifle. Their punishment for not guarding the lift consisted of a grenade, followed by forty-nine rounds of automatic fire, and a series of shorter bursts to finish them off. The hatch opened onto a large four- or five-story-high room. The Master Chief found himself on a platform along with a couple of unsuspecting Jackals. He immediately killed them, heard a reaction from the floor below, and moved to the right. A quick peek revealed a group of seven or eight Covenant, milling around as if waiting for instructions. The noncom dropped an M9 HE-DP calling card into their midst, took a step back to avoid getting hit by the resulting fragments, and heard a loudwham! as the grenade detonated. There were screams, followed by wild firing. The Spartan waited for the volume of fire to drop off and moved forward again. A series of short controlled bursts was sufficient to silence the last Covenant soldiers. He jumped down off the platform to check the surrounding area. Still looking for clues as to where Keyes might have gone, the Master Chief conducted a quick sweep of the room. It wasn't long before he picked up some plasma grenades, circled a cargo container, and came across the bodies. Two Marines, both killed by plasma fire, their weapons missing. He cursed under his breath. The fact that both dog tags had been taken suggested that Keyes and his team had run into the Covenant just as he had, taken casualties, and pushed on. Certain he was on the right trail, the Spartan crossed the troughlike depression that split the room in two, and was forced to step over and around a scattering of Covenant corpses as he approached the hatch. Once through the opening he negotiated his way through a series of rooms, all empty, but painted with Covenant blood. Finally, just as he was beginning to wonder if he should turn back, he entered a room and found himself face-to-face with a fear-crazed Marine. His eyes jerked from side to side, as if seeking something hidden within the shadows, and his mouth was twisted into a horrible grimace. There was no sign of the soldier's assault weapon, but he had a pistol, which he fired at a shadow in the corner. \"Stay back! Stay back! You're not turning me into one of those things!\"\nThe Master Chief raised a hand, palm out. \"Put the weapon down, Marine . .\n. we're on the same side.\"\nBut the Marine wasn't having any of that, and pressed his back against the solidity of the wall. \"Get away from me! Don't touch me, you freak! I'll die first!\"\nThe pistol discharged. The Spartan felt the impact as the 12.7mm slug rocked him back onto his heels, and decided that enough was enough. Before the Marine had time to react, the Chief snatched the M6D out of his hand. \"I'll take that,\" he growled. The Marine leaped to his feet, but the Chief planted his feet and gently but firmly shoved the soldier back to the floor.\n\"Now,\" he said, \"where is Captain Keyes, and the rest of your unit?\"\nThe private turned fierce, his features contorted, spittle flying from his lips.\n\"Find your own hiding place!\" he screamed. \"The monsters are everywhere!\nGod, I can still hear them! Justleave me alone .\"\n\"Whatmonsters?\" the Spartan asked gently. \"The Covenant?\"\n\"No!Not the Covenant.Them! \"\nThat was all the Spartan could get from the crazed Marine. \"The surface is back that way,\" the Master Chief said, pointing toward the door. \"I suggest that you reload this weapon, quit wasting ammo, and head topside. Once you get there hunker down and wait for help. There'll be a dust-off later on. Do you read me?\"\nThe Private accepted the weapon, but continued to blather. A moment later he curled into a fetal ball, whimpered, then fell silent. The man would never make it out alone. One thing was clear from the Marine's ramblings. Assuming that Keyes and his troops were still alive, they were in a heap of trouble. That left the Chief with little choice; hehad to put the greatest number of lives first. The young soldier had clearly been through the wringerbut he'd have to wait for help until the Master Chief completed his mission. Slowly, reluctantly, he turned to investigate the rest of the room. The remains of a badly shattered ramp led up over a small fire toward the walkway on the level above. He felt heat wash around him as he stepped over a dead Elite, took comfort from the fact that the body had been riddled with bullets, and made his way up onto a circular gallery. From there, the Master Chief proceeded through a series of doorways and mysteriously empty rooms, until he arrived at the top of a ramp where a dead Marine and a large pool of blood caused him to pause. He had long ago learned to trust his instinctsand they nagged at him now. Something feltwrong . It was quiet, with only a hollow booming sound to disturb the otherwise perfect silence. He was close to something, he couldfeel it, but what?\nThe Chief descended the ramp. He arrived on the level spot at the bottom, and saw the hatch to his left. Weapon at the ready, he cautiously approached the metal barrier. The door sensed his presence, slid open, and dumped a dead Marine into his arms. The Spartan felt his pulse quicken, as he bent slightly to catch the body before it crashed into the ground. He held the MA5B one-handed and covered the room beyond as best he could, searching for a target. Nothing. He stepped forward, then spun on his heel and pointed the gun back the way he'd come. Damn it, it felt like eyes bored into the back of his head. Someone was watching him. He backed into the room, and the door slid shut. He lowered the body to the ground, then stepped away. The toe of his boot hit some empty shell casings which rolled away. That's when he realized that there werethousands of emptiesso many that they very nearly carpeted the floor. He noticed a Marine helmet, and bent to pick it up. A name had been stenciled across the side. JENKINS. A vid cam was attached, the kind worn by the typical combat team so they could critique the mission when they returned to base, feed data to the ghouls in Intelligence, and on occasions like this one, provide investigators with information regarding the circumstances surrounding their deaths. The Spartan removed the camera's memory chip, slotted the device into one of the receptacles on his own helmet, and watched the playback via a window on his HUD. The picture was standard qualitywhich meant pretty awful. The night vision setting was active, so everything was a sickly green, punctuated by white flares as the camera panned across a light source. The picture bounced and jostled, and intermittent spots of static marred the image. It was pretty routine stuff at first, starting with the moment the doomed dropship touched down, followed by the trek through the swamp, and their arrival in front of the A-shaped structure. He spooled ahead, and the video became more ominous after that, starting with the dead Elite, and growing even more uncomfortable as the team opened the final door and went inside. Not justany door, but the same door through which the Master Chief had passed only minutes before, only to have a dead Marine fall into his arms. He was tempted to kill the video, back his way through the hatch, and scrub the mission, but he forced himself to continue watching as one of the Marines said something about a \". . . bad feeling.\" A badly garbled radio transmission came in, odd rustling noises were heard, a hatch gave way, and hundreds of fleshy balls rolled, danced, and hopped into the room. That was when the screaming started, when the Master Chief heard Keyes say that they were \"surrounded,\" and saw the picture jerk as something hit Jenkins from behind, and the video snapped to black. For the first time since parting company with the AI back in the Control Room, he wished that Cortana were with him. First, because she might understand what the hell was going on, but also because he had come to rely on her company, and suddenly felt very much alone. However, even as one aspect of the Spartan's mind sought comfort, another part had directed his body to back toward the hatch, and was waiting to hear the telltale sound as it opened. But the doordidn't open, something which the Master Chief knew meant trouble. It caused a rock to form at the bottom of his gut. As he stood there, gripped by a growing sense of dread, he saw a flash of white from the corner of his eye. He turned to face it, and that was when he saw one, then five, twenty, fifty of the fleshy blobs dribble into the room, pirouette on their tentacles, and dance his way. His motion sensor painted a sudden blob of movementspeeding closer by the second. The Spartan fired at the ugly-looking creatures. Those which were closest popped like air-filled balloons, but there were more,many more, and they rolled toward him over the floor and walls. The Spartan opened up in earnest, the obscene-looking predators threw themselves forward, and the battle was joined.\n\nIt was dark outside. Only one mission had been scheduled for that particular night, and it had returned to the butte at 02:36 arbitrary. That meant the Navy personnel assigned to the Control Center didn't have much to do, and were busy playing a round of cards when the wall-mounted speakers burped static, and a desperate voice was heard.\"This is Charlie 2-1-7, repeat 217, to any UNSC forces . . . Does anyone copy? Over.\"\nCom Tech First Class Mary Murphy glanced at the other two members of her watch and frowned. \"Has either one of you had previous contact with Charlie 217?\"\nThe techs looked at each other and shook their heads. \"I'll check with Wellsley,\" Cho said, as he turned toward a jury-rigged monitor. Murphy nodded and keyed the boom-style mike that extended in front of her lips. \"This is UNSC Combat Base Alpha. Over.\"\n\"Thank God!\"the voice said fervently.\"We took a hit after clearing the Autumn,put down in the boonies, and managed to make some repairs. I've got wounded on boardand request immediate clearance to land.\"\nWellsley, who had been busy fighting a simulation of the battle of Marathon, materialized on Cho's screen. As usual, the image that he chose to present was that of a stern-looking man with longish hair, a prominent nose, and a high-collared coat. \"Yes?\"\n\"We have a Pelican, call sign Charlie 217, requesting an emergency landing. None of us have dealt with him before.\"\nThe AI took a fraction of a second to check the myriad of data stored within his considerable memory and gave a curt nod. \"There was a unit designated as Charlie 217 on board theAutumn . Not having heard from 217 since we abandoned ship, and not having received any information to the contrary, I assumed the ship was lost. Ask the pilot to provide his name, rank, and serial number.\"\nMurphy heard and nodded. \"Sorry, Charlie, but we need some information before we can clear you in. Please provide name, rank and serial number. Over.\"\nThe voice that came back sounded increasingly frustrated.\"This is First Lieutenant Rick Hale, serial number 876-544-321. Give me a break, I need clearance now .Over. \"\nWellsley nodded. \"The data matches . . . but how would Hale know that Alpha Base even existed?\"\n\"He could have picked up our radio traffic,\" Cho offered.\n\"Maybe,\" the AI agreed, \"but let's play it safe. I recommend you bring the base to full alert, notify the Major, and send the reaction force to Pad Three. You'll need the crash team, the emergency medical team, and some people from Intel all on deck. Hale should be debriefedbefore he's allowed to mix with base personnel.\"\nThe third tech, a Third Class Petty Officer named Pauley, slapped the alarm button, and put out the necessary calls.\n\"Roger that,\" Murphy said into her mike. \"You are cleared for Pad Three, repeat, Pad Three, which will be illuminated two minutes from now. A medical team will meet your ship. Safe all weapons and cut power the moment you touch down. Over.\"\n\"No problem,\"Hale replied gratefully. Then, a few moments later,\"I see your lights. We're coming in. Over.\"\n\nThe pilot keyed his mike off and turned to his copilot. Bathed in the green glow produced by the ship's instrument panel, the Elite looked all the more alien. \"So,\" the human inquired, \"how did I do?\"\n\"Extremely well,\" Special Operations Officer Zuka 'Zamamee said from behind the pilot's shoulder. \"Thank you.\" And with that 'Zamamee dropped what looked like a circle of green light over Hale's head, pulled the handles in opposite directions, and buried the wire in the pilot's throat. The human's eyes bulged, his hands plucked at the garrote, and his feet beat a tattoo against the control pedals. The Elite who occupied the copilot's position had already taken control of the Pelican and, thanks to hours of practice, could fly the dropship extremely well.\n'Zamamee waited until the kicking had stopped, released the wire, and smelled something foul. That's when the Elite realized that Hale had soiled himself. He gave a grunt of disgust, and returned to the Pelican's cargo compartment. It was crammed with heavily armed Elites, trained for infiltration. They carried camouflage generators, along with their weapons. Their job was to take as many landing pads as possible, and hold them until six dropships loaded with Grunts, Jackals, and more Elites could land on the mesa. The troops saw the officer appear and looked expectant.\n\"Proceed,\" 'Zamamee said. \"Youknow what to do. Turn on the stealth generators, check your weapons, and remember this moment. Becausethis battle,this victory, will be woven into your family's battle poem, and sung by generations to come.\n\"The Prophets have blessed this mission, have blessedyou , and want every soldier to know that those who transcend the physical will be welcomed into paradise. Good luck.\"\nA blur of lights appeared out of the darkness, the dropship shed altitude, and the warriors murmured their final benedictions.\n\nLike most AIs, Wellsley had a pronounced tendency to spend more time thinking about what hedidn't have rather than what he did, and sensors were at the very top of his list. The sad truth was that while McKay and her company had recovered a wealth of supplies from theAutumn , there had been insufficient time to strip the ship of the electronics that would have given the AI a real-time, all-weather picture of the surrounding air space. That meant he was totally reliant on the data provided by remote ground sensors which the patrols had planted here and there around the butte's ten kilometer perimeter. All of the feeds had been clear during the initial radio contact with Charlie\n217, but now, as the Pelican flared in to land, the package in Sector Six started to deliver data. It claimed that six heavy-duty heat signatures had just passed overhead, that whatever produced them was fairly loud, and that they were inbound at a speed of approximately 350 kph. Wellsley reacted with the kind of speed that only a computer is capable of but the response was too late to prevent Charlie 217 from putting down. Even as the AI made a series of strongly worded recommendations to his human superiors, the Pelican's skids made contact with Pad 3's surface, thirty nearly invisible Elites thundered down the ramp, and the men and women of Alpha Base soon found themselves fighting for their lives.\n\nOne level down, locked into a room with three other Grunts, Yayap heard the distant moan of an alarm, and thought he knew why. 'Zamamee had been correct: The human who wore the strange armor, and was believed to be responsible for more than a thousand Covenant casualties,did frequent this place. Yayap knew that because he hadseen the soldier more than six units before, triggered the transmitter hidden inside his breathing apparatus, and thereby set the raid in motion. That was thegood news. The bad news was that 'Zamamee's quarry might very well have left the base during the intervening period of time. If so, and the mission was categorized as a failure, the Grunt had little doubt as to who would receive the blame. But there was nothing Yayap could do but grip the crudely welded bars with his hands, listen to the distant sounds of battle, and hope for the best. At this point, \"the best\" would likely be a quick, painless death.\n\nAll the members of the crash team, half the medics, and a third of the reaction team were already dead by the time McKay had rolled out of her rack, scrambled into her clothes, and grabbed her personal weapons. She followed the crowd up to the landing area to find that a pitched battle was underway. Energy bolts seemed to stutter out of nowhere, plasma grenades materialized out of thin air, and throats were slit by invisible knives. The landing party had been contained, but just barely, and threatened to break out across the neighboring pads. Silva was there, naked from the waist up, shouting orders as he fired short bursts from an assault weapon. \"Flood Pad Three with fuel! But keep it inside the containment area. Do it now!\"\nIt was a strange order, and civilians would have balked, but the soldiers reacted with unquestioning obedience and a Naval rating ran toward the Pad\n3 refueling station. He flipped the safety out of the way, and grabbed hold of the nozzle. The air seemed to shimmer in the floodlit area off to the sailor's right, and Silva fired a full clip into what looked like empty air. A commando Elite screamed, seemed to strobe on and off as his camo generator took a direct hit, and folded at the waist. Undeterred, and unaware of his close call with death, the rating turned, gave the handgrip a healthy squeeze, and sent a steady stream of liquid out onto the surface of Pad 3. A Covenant work crew had been forced to build a curb around the area during the days immediately after the butte had been taken. The purpose of the barrier was to contain fuel spills, and it worked well, as the high-octane fuel crept in around the Pelican's skids and wet the area beyond.\n\"Get back!\" Silva shouted, and rolled a fragmentation grenade in under Charlie 217's belly. There was an explosion followed by a loudwhump! as the fuel went up and the rating shut off the hose. The general effect was to turn those Elites who remained on the pad into shimmering torchesscreaming, dancing torches. The response was immediate as the Marines opened fire, put the commandos down, and were then forced to turn their efforts to fire fighting. Charlie 217 was fully involved by that time, and shuddered as the fuel in one of her tanks blew. But there were other Pelicans to protect and while some had lifted off, others remained on their pads. Silva turned to McKay. \"Show time,\" the Major said, as Wellsley spoke into his ear. \"This was little more than a warm-up, no pun intended. Thereal assault force is only five minutes out. Six Covenant dropships, if Wellsley has it right. They can't land here, so they'll put down out on the mesa somewhere. I'll handle the padsyou take the mesa.\"\nMcKay nodded, said, \"Yes, sir,\" and spotted Sergeant Lister and waved him over. The noncom had a squad of her Marines in tow. \"Round up the rest of my company, tell them to dig in up-spin of the landing pads, and get ready to handle an attack from the mesa. Let's give the bastards a warm reception.\"\nLister tossed a glance at the raging fires and grinned at McKay's unintentional pun. \"Yes, ma'am!\" he said and trotted away. Elsewhere, out along the butte's irregularly shaped rim, the commandeered Shade emplacements opened fire. Pulses of bright blue energy probed the surrounding blackness, found the first ship, and cut the night into slices.\n\n'Zamamee and a file of five commando Elites had already cleared the landing pad by the time the humans flooded Pad 3 with fuel. In fact, the Elite officer wasn't even on the surface of the Forerunner installation during the ensuing infernohe and his commandos were already one level down, moving from room to room, slaughtering every human they could find. There had been no sign of the one enemy soldier they wanted most, but it was early yet, and he could be around the next corner.\n\nMurphy had just taken the safeties off the 50mm MLA autocannons, and delegated control to Wellsley, when she felt something brush her shoulder. The petty officer started to turn, saw blood spray, and realized that it belonged to her. An Elite produced a deep throaty chuckle as both Cho and Pauley met similar fates. The Control Room was neutralized. But Wellsley witnessed the murders via the camera mounted over the main video monitor, killed the lights, and notified Silva. Within a matter of minutes six three-person fire teams, all equipped with heat-sensitive night vision goggles, were busy working their way down through the mazelike complex. The Covenant's camo generators didn't block heat, they actuallygenerated it, and that put both sides on an even footing. In the meantime, thanks to a dead officer's personal initiative, Wellsley had a 50mm surprise waiting for the incoming dropships. Though effective against Banshees, the Shades lacked the power necessary to knock a dropship out of the sky, something the Covenant had clearly known in advance. But, just as an Elite couldn't withstand fifty rounds of 7.62mm armor piercing ammo, the enemy transports proved vulnerable to the 50mm high explosive shells that suddenly blasted their way. Not only that, but the fifties were computer-controlledwhich was to sayWellsley controlled, which meant that nearly every round went exactly where it was supposed to. Control had been delegated too late for the AI to nail the first dropship, but the second was right where he wanted it to be. It exploded as a dozen rounds of HE went off inside the fuselage. Ironically, the compartments that held the troops preserved most of their lives so they could die when the aircraft hit the foot of the butte. But there were only two of the guns, one to the west, and one to the east, which meant that the surviving transports were safely through the eastern MLA's field of fire before the AI could fire on them. Still, the destruction of that single ship had reduced the assault force by one sixth, which struck Wellsley as an acceptable result. Machine-generated death stabbed the top of the mesa as the Covenant dropships made use of their plasma cannons to strafe the landing zone. A fire team was caught out in the open and cut to shreds even as a barrage of shoulder-fired rockets lashed up to meet the incoming transports. There were hits, some of which inflicted casualties, but none of the enemy aircraft was destroyed. Then, hovering like obscene insects, the U-shaped dropships turned down ring, and spilled troops out their side slots, scattering them like evil seeds across the top of the mesa. McKay did the mental math. Five remaining transports, times roughly thirty troops each, equaled an assault force of about one hundred and fifty troops. \"Hit 'em!\" Lister shouted. \"Kill the bastards before they can land!\"\nThe response was a steadycrack! crack! crack! as the company's snipers opened fire, and Elites, Grunts, and Jackals alike tumbled to the ground dead. But there were plenty leftand McKay steeled herself against the coming assault.\n\nThe lights had gone off for reasons that the Grunt could only guess at, a factor which added to the fear he felt. Unable to do anything more, Yayap listened to the muffled sounds of battle, and wondered which side to root for. He didn't like being a prisoner but was starting to wonder if he wouldn't be better off with the humans. For a while at least, until A blob of light appeared, slid down the opposite wall, crossed the floor, and found its way into the cell. \"Yayap? Are you in there?\"\nThere were other lights now, and the Grunt saw the air shimmer in front of him. It was 'Zamamee! Much to Yayap's amazement, the Elite had kept his word and actually come looking for him. Realizing that the breathing apparatus made it difficult for others to tell his kind apart, the Grunt pushed his face up against the bars.\n\"Yes, Excellency, I am here.\"\n\"Good,\" the Elite said. \"Now stand back so we can blow the door.\"\nAll of the Grunts in the cell retreated to the back of the room while one of the commandos attached a charge to the door lock, backed away, and made use of a remote to trigger it. There was a small flash of light, followed by a subduedbang! as the explosive was detonated. Hinges squeaked as Yayap pushed the gate out of the way.\n\"Now,\" 'Zamamee said eagerly, \"lead us to the human. We've been through most of the complex, but haven't run into him yet.\"\nSo,Yayap thought to himself,the only reason you came looking for me was to find the human. I should have known. \"Of course, Excellency,\" the Grunt replied, surprised by his own smoothness. \"The aliens captured some of our Banshees. The human was assigned to guard them.\"\nYayap expected 'Zamamee to challenge the claim, to ask how he knew, but the Elite took him at his word. \"Very well,\" 'Zamamee replied. \"Where are the aircraft kept?\"\n\"Up on the mesa,\" Yayap answered truthfully, \"west of the landing pads.\"\n\"We will lead the way,\" the Elite said importantly, \"but stay close. It would be easy to become lost.\"\n\"Yes, Excellency,\" the Grunt replied, \"whatever you say.\"\n\nUnable to land on or near the pads as originally planned, Field Master\n'Putumee had been forced to drop his assault team on the area up-spin of the Forerunner complex. That meant that his troops would have to advance across open ground, with very little cover, and without benefit of heavy weapons to clear the way. The wily field officer had a trick up his sleeve, however. Rather than release the dropships, he ordered them to remain over the LZ, and strafe the ground ahead of his steadily advancing troops. It wasn't what the transports had been designed for, and the pilots didn't like it, but so what? 'Putumee, who saw all aviators as little more than glorified chauffeurs, wasn't especially interested in how they felt. So, the U-shaped dropships drifted down toward the human fortifications, plasma cannons probing the ground below, while volleys of rockets lashed upward, exploding harmlessly against their flanks. The field officer, who advanced along with the second rank of troops, waved his Jackals forward as the humans were forced to pull out of their firing pits, and withdraw to their next line of defense.\n'Putumee paused next to one of the now empty pits and looked into it. Something about the excavation bothered him, but what? Then he had it. The rectangular hole wastoo neat,too even, to have been dug during the last half unit. What other preparations had the aliens made, the officer wondered?\nThe answer came in a heartbeat. McKay said, \"Fire!\" and the Scorpion's gunner complied. The tank lurched under the officer's feet as the shell left the main gun and the hull started to vibrate as the machine gun opened up. The explosion, about six hundred meters downrange, erased an entire file of Grunts. The other MBT, one of two which Silva had ordered his battalion to bring topside, fired two seconds later. That round killed an Elite, two Jackals, and a Hunter. Marines cheered and McKay smiled. Though doubtful that the Covenant would try to put troops on the mesa, the Major was a careful man, which was why he ordered the Helljumpers to dig firing pits up-ring of the installation, and create bunkers for the tanks. Now, firing with their barrels nearly parallel to the ground, the MBTs were in the process of turning the area in front of them into a moonscape as each shell threw half a ton of soil up into the air, and carved craters out of the plateau. Unbeknownst to McKay, or any other human, for that matter, the third shell to roar down range blew Field Master 'Putumee in half. The assault continued, but more slowly now, as lower-ranked Elites assumed command, and tried to rally their troops.\n\nThough pursuing his own sub-mission, 'Zamamee had been monitoring the command net, and knew that the assault had stalled. It was only a matter of time before the dropships would be ordered to swoop in, pick up those who could crawl, walk, or run to them, and leave for safer climes. That meant that he should be pulling out, looking for a way to slip through the human lines, but the session with the Prophet continued to haunt him. His best chance, no, hisonly chance, was to find the human and kill him. He would keep his head, all would be forgiven, and who knew? A lot of Elites had been killedso there might be a promotion in the offing. Thus reassured, he drove ahead. The commandos were up on the first level by then, just approaching a door to the outside, when one of three waiting Marines saw a line of green blobs start to pass the alcove in which he was hiding, and opened fire. There was complete pandemonium as the humans ran through clip after clip of ammunition, Grunts were blown off their feet, Elites fired in every direction, and soon started to fall.\n'Zamamee felt his plasma rifle cycle open as it attempted to cool itself, and knew he was about to die, when a plasma grenade sailed in among the humans and locked onto a human soldier's arm. He yelled, \"No!\" but it was already too late, and the explosion slaughtered the entire fire team. Yayap, who had appropriated both the grenade and a pistol from one of the dead commandos, tugged on 'Zamamee's combat harness. \"This way, Excellency. . . . Follow me!\"\nThe Elite did. The Grunt led the officer out through a door, down a walkway, and onto the platform where ten Banshees stood in an orderly row. There were no guards. 'Zamamee looked around. \"Where is he?\"\nYayap shrugged. \"I have no idea, Excellency.\"\n'Zamamee felt a mixture of anger, fear, and hopelessness as a dropship passed over his head and disappeared down-spin. The entire effort had been a failure.\n\"So,\" he said harshly, \"you lied to me. Why?\"\n\"Becauseyou know how to fly one of these things,\" the Grunt answered simply, \"andI don't.\"\nThe Elite's eyes seemed to glow as if lit from within. \"I should shoot you and leave your body for the humans to throw off the cliff.\"\n\"You cantry ,\" Yayap said as he pointed the plasma pistol at his superior's head, \"but I wouldn't advise it.\" It took all the courage the Grunt could muster to point his weapon at an Eliteand his hand shook in response to the fear he felt. But not much, not enough so that an energy bolt would miss, and 'Zamamee knew it. The Elite nodded. Moments later, a heavily loaded Banshee wobbled off the ground, slipped over the edge of the butte, and immediately began to lose altitude. A Shade gunner caught a glimpse of it, and sent three bursts of plasma racing after the assault craft, but the Banshee was soon out of range. The battle for Alpha Base was over.\n\nThe Spartan fired into what seemed like a tidal wave of tentacled horrors, backed away, and resolved to keep moving. He was vulnerable, in particular from behind, but the armor would help, especially since the monsters liked to jump on people. What happened next wasn't clear, but could make Marines scream, and put them out of action in a relatively short period of time. Ammo would be a concern, he knew that, so rather than fire wildly, he forced himself to aim, trying to pop as many of the things as he could. They came at him in twos, threes, and fours, flew into fleshy bits as the bullets ripped them apart and seemed to melt away. The problem was that there were hundreds of the little bastards, maybethousands , which made it difficult to keep up as they flooded in his direction. There were strategies, though, things the Chief could do to help even the odds, and they made all the difference. The first was to run, firing as he went, stretching their ragged formation thin, forcing them to skitter from one end of the room to the other. They were numerous and determined, but not particularly bright. The second was to watch for breakouts, concentrations of the creatures where a well-thrown grenade could destroy hundreds of them all at once. And the third was to switch back and forth between the assault weapon and the shotgun, thereby maintaining a constant rate of fire, only pausing to reload when there was a momentary lull in the fighting. These strategies suddenly became even more critical as somethingnew leaped out of the darkness. A mass of tattered flesh and swinging limbs lashed at his head. During the first moments of the attack the Chief wondered if a corpse had somehow fallen on him from above, but soon learned the truth, as more of the horribly misshapen creatures appeared and hurled themselves forward. Not just ran, butvaulted high into the air, as if hoping to crush him under their weight. The creatures were roughly humanoid, hunchbacked figures that looked partially rotted. Their limbs seemed to be stretched to the breaking point. Clusters of tentacles protruded from ragged holes in the skin. They were susceptible to bullets, however, something for which the Chief was thankful, although it often took fifteen or twenty rounds to put one down for good. Strangely, even the live ones looked like they were dead, which on reflection the Master Chief was starting to believe they were. That would explain why some of the ugly sons of bitches had a marked resemblance to Covenant Elites, or to what an Elite would look like if you killed him, buried the body, and dug it up two weeks later. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, two of the reanimated Elites barged in through the hatch, and were promptly put down. That provided the Chief with an opportunity to escape. There were more of the two-legged freaks right on his tail, though, along with a jumble of the tumbling, leaping swarms of spherical creatures, and it was necessary to scrub the entire lot of them with auto fire before he could disengage and slip through a door. The Spartan found himself on the upper gallery of a large, well-lit room. It was packed with the bipedal, misshapen creatures, but none seemed to be aware of him. He intended to keep it that way, and slid silently along the right-hand wall to a hatch. A short journey brought the Chief to a similar space where what looked like full-fledged battle was underway between Covenant troops and the new hostiles. The Spartan briefly considered engaging the targetsthere was certainly no shortage of them. He held his fire instead, and lingered behind a fallen cargo module. After a hellish battle, the combatants had annihilated one another, which left him free to cross the bridge that led to the far end back along the walkway, and exit via the side door. Another of the hunchbacked creatures dropped from above and slammed into him. The Spartan staggered back, dipped, and hurled the monster back over his shoulder. It crunched into the wall and left a trail of mottled gray green, viscous fluid as it slid to the floor. The Master Chief turned to continue on, when his motion sensor flickered redilluminating a contact right behind him. He spun and was startled to see the crumpled, badly damaged creature struggle to its feet. Its left arm dangled uselessly and brittle bone protruded from its pale, gangrenous flesh. The thing's right arm was still functional, however. A twisting column of tentacles burst from the creature's right wrist and he could hear the bones inside break as they forced its right hand roughly aside. The tentacle flashed out, cracked like a whip and hurled the Master Chief to the floor. His shields were almost completely drained from the single blow. He rolled into a crouch and opened fire. The 7.62mm armor-piercing rounds nearly cut the monster in half. He kicked the fallen hostile, put two in its chest.This time, the damn thing should stay dead, he thought. He moved farther along the hallway. Two Marines lay where they had fallen, proving that at least some of the second squad had managed to get this far, which opened the possibility that more had escaped as well. The Master Chief checked, discovered that they still wore their dog tags, and took them. He crept through the wide galleries and narrow corridors, past humming machinery and entered a dark, gloomy vault. His motion tracker flashed crimson warningshe was in Hostile Central. Another of the misshapen bipedal hostiles shambled by, and he recognized the shape of the creature's headthe long, angular snout of an Elite faced him. What held his fire was where the head was located. The alien's skull was canted at a sickening angle, as if the bones of its neck had been softened or liquefied. It hung limply down the creature's back, lifelesslike a limb that needed amputation. It was as if something had rewritten the Elite, reshaped it from the inside out. The Spartan felt an unaccustomed emotion: a trill of fear. An image of helplessnessof screaming at a looming threat, powerlessflashed through his mind, a snapshot of his cryo-addled dreams aboard thePillar of Autumn . No way is that going to happen to me,he thought.No way . The beast shuffled by, and moved out of sight. He took a deep breath, exhaled, then burst from his position and charged for the center of the room. He battered aside the shambling beasts, and crushed a handful of the small spherical creatures beneath his boots. His shotgun boomed and thick, green blood splashed the floor. He reached his objective: a large lift platform, identical to the one he'd ridden down into this hellhole. He reached for the activation panel, and hoped that he'd find the up button. One of the hostiles leaped high in the air and landed next to him. The Chief dropped to one knee, shoved the barrel of the shotgun into the creature's belly and fired. The beast flipped end over end, and fell back into a clot of the smaller, round hostiles. He dove for the activation panel, and stabbed at the controls. The elevator platform dropped like a rock, so far down and so fast that his ears popped. Where the hell was Cortana when you needed her?Always telling him to \"go through that door,\" \"cross that bridge,\" or \"climb that pyramid.\" Annoying at times, but reassuring as well. The basement, if that's what it was, had all the charm of a crypt. A passageway took him into another large space where he had to fight his way across the floor to a door and the tunnel-like corridor beyond. That's when the Spartan came face-to-face with something he hadn't seen before and would have preferred never to see again: one of the combative, bipedal beaststhis one a horribly mutatedhuman . Though the creature was distorted by whatever had ravaged his body, the Chief recognized him nonetheless. It was Private Manuel Mendoza, the soldier that Sergeant Johnson loved to yell at, and one of the Marines who had been with Keyes when he disappeared into this nightmare. Though twisted by what had been done to him, the Private's face still retained a trace of humanity, and it was that which caused the Master Chief to remove this finger from the shotgun's trigger, and try to make contact.\n\"Mendoza, come on, let's get the hell out of here. I know they did something to you but the medics can fix it.\"\nThe reanimated Marine, now possessed of superhuman strength, struck the Chief with such force that it nearly knocked him off his feet, and triggered the suit's alarm. Mendozaor rather, thething that had once been Mendozawaved a whiplike tentacle and lashed out again. The Spartan staggered backward, pulled the trigger, and was subsequently forced to pull it again as the twelve-gauge buckshot tore what had been Mendoza apart. The results were both spectacular and disgusting. As the corpselike horror came apart, the Chief saw that one of the small, spherical creatures had taken up residence inside the soldier's chest cavity, and seemed to have extended its tentacles into other parts of what had been Mendoza's body. Athird shotgun blast served to destroy it as well. Was that how these things worked? The little round pod-things infected their hosts, and mutated the victim into some kind of combat form. He considered the possibility that this was some kind of new Covenant bio-weapon, and discarded it. The first of these combat forms he'd seen had once been Elites. Whatever these damned things were, they were lethal to humans and Covenant alike. He quickly fed shells into his shotgun, then moved on. The Spartan moved as fast as he couldat a dead run. He charged into another room, scrambled up onto the gallery above, blew an Elite form right out of his boots, and ducked through a waiting door. The area on the other side was more of a challenge. The Chief had the second floor to himself, but an army of the freaks owned the floor below, and that's where he needed to go. Height conferred advantages. Some well-placed grenades, followed by a jump from the walkway, and sixty seconds of close-quarters action were sufficient to see him through. Still, it was a tremendous relief to pass through a completely uncontested space, and into a compartment where he found anew development to cope with. In addition to their battering attacks, the creatures had acquired both human and Covenant weapons from their victims, and these combat forms were even more dangerous as a result. The combat forms weren't the smartest foes he'd ever encountered, but they weren't mindless automatons, either they could operate machines and fire weapons. Bullets pinged from the metal walls, plasma fire stuttered through the air, and a grenade detonated as the Master Chief cleared the area, discovered a place where some Marines had staged a last stand on top of a cargo container. He paused to recover their dog tags, scavenged some ammo, and kept on going.\n\nSomething nagged at him, but what was it? Something he'd forgotten?\nIt came to him all at once: He had nearly forgotten his own name. Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK. The droning chant that had lurked at the edge of his awareness buzzed more loudly, and he felt some kind of pressuresome sense of anger. Why was he angry?\nNo, somethingelse was angry . . . because he'd remembered his own name?\nKeyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK. Where was he? How did he get here? He struggled to find the memory. He remembered parts of it now. There was a dark, alien room, hordes of some terrifying enemy, gunfire, then a stabbing pain . . . They must have captured him. That was it. This might be some new trick by the enemy. He'd give them nothing. He struggled to remember who the enemy was. He repeated the mantra in his head: Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number\n01928-19912-JK. The buzzing pressure increased. He resisted, though he was unsure why. Something about the drone frightened him. The sense of invasion deepened. Is this a Covenant trick?he wondered. He tried to scream, \"It won't work. I'll never lead you to Earth,\" but couldn't make his mouth work, couldn't feel his own body. As the thought of his home planet echoed through Keyes' consciousness, the tone and tenor of the drone changed, as if pleased. HeKeyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JKwas startled when new images played across his mind. He realized, too late, that something was sifting through his mind, like a grave robber looting a tomb. He had never felt so powerless, so afraid . . . His fear vanished in a flood of emotion as he felt the warmth of the first woman he'd ever kissed . . . He tried to scream as the memory was ripped from him and discarded. Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK. As each of the fragments of his past played out and was sucked into the void, he could feel the invader enveloping him like an ocean of evil. But, like the pieces of flotsam that remain after a ship has gone down, random pieces of himself remained, a sort of makeshift raft to which he could momentarily cling. The image of a smiling woman, a ball spiraling through the air, a crowded street, a man with half his face blown away, tickets to a show he couldn't remember, the gentle sound of wind chimes, and the smell of newly baked bread. But the sea was too rough, waves crashed down on the raft, and broke it apart. Swells lifted Keyes up, others pushed him down, and the final darkness beckoned. But then, just as the ocean was about to consume him, Keyes became aware of the one thing the creature that raped his mind couldn't consume: the CNI transponder's carrier wave. He reached for it like a drowning man, clutched the lifeline with all his might, and refused to let go. For here, deep within his watery grave, was a thread that led back to what he had been. Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.\n\nThe Master Chief fired the last of his shotgun rounds into the collapsed hulk of a combat form. It twitched and lay still. After winding through the confusion of subterranean chambers and passageways for what seemed like hours, he'd finally found a lift to the surface. He carefully tapped the activation panelworried for a moment that this lift would also drop him deeper into the facilityand felt the lift lurch into a rapid ascent. As the lift climbed, Foehammer's worried voice crackled from his comm system.\n\"This is Echo 419. Chief, is that you? I lost your signal when you disappeared inside the structure. What's going on down there? I'm tracking movement all over the place.\"\n\"You wouldn't believe me if I told you,\" the Master Chief replied, his voice grim, \"and believe me: you don't want to know. Be advised: Captain Keyes is missing, and is most likely KIA. Over.\"\n\"Roger that,\"the pilot replied.\"I'm sorry to hear it, over.\"\nThe lift jerked to a halt, the Spartan stepped off, and found himself surrounded by Marines. Not the shambling combat forms he'd spent the last eternity fighting, but normal, unchanged human beings. \"Good to see you, Chief,\" a Corporal said. The Chief cut the soldier off. \"There's no time for that, Marine. Report.\"\nThe young Marine gulped, then started talking. \"After we lost contact we headed for the RV point, and thesethings , they ambushed us. Sir: Advise we get thehell out of here, ASAP.\"\n\"That's command thinking, Corporal,\" the Chief replied. \"Let's go.\"\nIt was a short walk up the ramp and into the rain. Strangely, and much to his surprise, it felt good to enter the stinking swamp.Very good indeed.\n\n\nCHAPTER NINE D+60:33:54 (Flight Officer Captain Rawley Mission Clock) /\nPelican Echo 419, above Covenant arms cache.\n\"There's a large tower a few hundred meters from your current position. Find a way above the fog and foliage canopy and I can move in and pick you up,\" Rawley said. Her eyes were glued to her scopes as SPARTAN-117 took the lead and the Marines left the ancient complex and entered the fetid embrace of the swamp. The rain and some kind of interference from the structure played hell with the Pelican's detection gear, but she was damned if she was going to lose this team now. She had a reputation to maintain, after all.\n\"Roger that,\"the Chief replied,\"we're on our way.\"\nShe kept the Pelican circling, her eyes peeled for trouble. There was no immediate threat. That made her even more nervous. Ever since they'd made it down to the surface of the ring, trouble always seemed to strike without warning. For the hundredth time since lifting off from Alpha Base, she cursed the lack of ammunition for the Pelicans.\n Knowing the dropship was somewhere above the mist, and eager to get the hell out, the Marines forged ahead. The Spartan cautioned them to slow down, to keep their eyes peeled, but it wasn't long before he found himself back toward the middle of the pack. The tower Foehammer had mentioned appeared up ahead. The base of the column was circular, with half-rounded supports that protruded from the sides, probably for stability. Farther up, extending out from the column itself, were winglike platforms. Their purpose wasn't clear, but the same could be said for the entire structure. The top of the shaft was lost in the mist. The Master Chief paused to look around, heard one of the leathernecks yell\n\"Contact!\" quickly followed by the staccato rip of an assault weapon fired on full automatic. A host of red dots had appeared on the Spartan's threat indicator. He saw a dozen of the spherical infection forms bounce out of the mist and knew that any possibility of containing the creatures underground had been lost.\n\nThe Pelican's sensors suddenly painted dozenscorrection, hundredsof new contacts on the ground. Rawley cursed and wheeled the Pelican around, expecting ground fire. No fire was directed at the dropship. \"What the hell?\" she muttered. First, the contacts appeared out of nowhere, charged into the open, but didn't shoot at the air cover? Maybe the Covenant were getting stupid as well as ugly. She hit the radio to warn the troops and winced as the muffled pop of automatic weapons fire burst from her headset. \"Heads up, ground team!\"\nshe yelled. \"Multiple contacts on the groundthey're right on top of you!\"\nThe radio squealed, then static filled her speakers. The interference worsened. She thumped the radio controls with a gloved fist. \"Damn it!\" she yelled.\n\"Uh, boss,\" Frye said. \"You better take a look at this.\" She glanced back at her copilot, followed his gaze, and her own eyes widened. \"Okay,\" she said, \"any idea what the hellthat is?\"\n\nThe Chief fired short bursts from his assault weapon, popped dozens of the alien pods, and turned to confront a combat form. It was armed with a plasma pistol but chose to throw itself forward rather than fire. The Chief's automatic weapon was actually touching the creature when he pulled the trigger. The ex-Elite's chest opened like an obscene flower and the infection form hidden within exploded into fleshy pieces. He heard a burst of static in his comm system. Interference whined as the MJOLNIR's powerful communications gear tried to scrub the signal, to no avail. It sounded like Foehammer, but he couldn't be sure.\n\nIt hovered in front of the Pelican's cockpit for a moment, and light stabbed Rawley's eyes. It was made from some kind of silvery metal, roughly cylindrical but with angular edges. Winglike, squarish fins shifted and slid like rudders as the device bobbed in the air. Itwhateverit wasshone a bright light into the cockpit, then turned away and dropped altitude. Below her, she could see dozens of the things flying in a loose line. In seconds, they dropped below the tree line and out of sight.\n\"Frye,\" she said, her mouth suddenly dry, \"tell Chief Cullen to work the comm system and punch me a hole in this interference. I need to talk to the ground teamnow .\"\n\nThe tide of hostiles fell back into the ankle-deep water and regrouped. A dozen exotic-looking cylindrical machines drifted out of the trees to float over the clearing. The nearest Marine yelled, \"What are they?\" and was about to shoot at them when the Chief raised a cautionary hand. \"Hold on, Marine . . . let's see what they do.\"\nWhat happened next was both unexpected and gratifying. Each machine produced a beam of energy, speared one of the hostiles, and burned it down. Some of the combat forms took exception to this treatment, and attempted to return fire, but were soon put out of action by the combined efforts of the Marines and their newfound allies. Despite the help, the Marines didn't fare well. There were just too many of the hostile creatures around. The squad dwindled until a pair of PFCs remained, then one, then finally the last of the Marines fell beneath a cluster of the little infectious bastards. As the newcomers overhead rained crimson laser fire on a cluster of the combat forms, the Chief slogged through the swamp toward the tower. High groundand the possibility of signaling Foehammer for evacdrew him on. He climbed a supporting strut and pulled himself onto one of the odd, leaflike terraces that ringed the tower. He had a good field of fire, and he fired a burst into a combat form that strayed too close. He tried the radio again, but was rewarded with more static. The Spartan heard what sounded like someone humming and turned to discover thatanother machine had approached him from behind. Where the other newcomers were cylindrical in design, with angular, winglike cowlings, this construct was rounded, almost spherical. It had a single, glowing blue eye, a wraparound housing, and a cheerfully businesslike manner.\n\"Greetings! I am the Monitor of installation zero-four. I am 343 Guilty Spark. Someone has released the Flood. My function is to prevent it from leaving this installation. I require your assistance. Come this way.\"\nThe voice sounded artificial. This \"343 Guilty Spark\" was some kind of artificial construct, the Spartan realized. From above the little machine, he could see Foehammer's Pelican moving into position.\n\"Hold on,\" the Chief replied, trying to sound friendly. \"The Flood? Those things down there are called 'Flood'?\"\n\"Of course,\" 343 Guilty Spark replied, a note of confusion in its synthesized voice. \"What an odd question. We have no time for this, Reclaimer.\" Reclaimer?The Chief wondered. He was about to ask what the little machine meant by that, but his words never came. Rings of pulsating gold light traveled the length of his body, he felt light-headed, and saw an explosion of white light.\n\nRawley had just gotten the Pelican into position for a run on the tower, and could see the distinctive bulk of the Spartan standing on the structure. She eased the throttle forward, and the Pelican slid ahead, and nosed toward the structure. She glanced up just in time to see the Spartan disappear in a column of gold light.\n\"Chief!\"Foehammer said.\"I lost your signal! Where did you go? Chief!\nChief!\"\nThe Spartan had vanished, and there was very little the pilot could do except pick up the Marines, and hope for the best.\n\nLike the rest of the battalion's officers, McKay had worked long into the night supervising efforts to restore the butte's badly mauled defenses, ensure that the wounded received what care was available, and restore something like normal operations. Finally, at about 0300, Silva ordered her below, pointing out that someone had to be in command at 0830, and it wasn't going to be him. With traces of adrenaline still in her bloodstream, and images of battle still flickering through her brain, the Company Commander found it impossible to sleep. Instead she tossed, turned, and stared at the ceiling until approximately 0430 when she finally drifted off.\n\nAt 0730, with only three hours of sleep, McKay paused to collect a mug of instant coffee from the improvised mess hall before climbing a flight of bloodstained stairs to arrive on top of the mesa. The wreckage of what had been Charlie 217 had been cleared away during the night, but a large patch of scorched metal marked the spot where the fuel had been set ablaze. The officer paused to look at it, wondered what happened to the human pilot, and continued her tour. The entire surface of Halo had been declared a combat zone, which meant it was inappropriate for the enlisted ranks to salute their superiors lest they identify them to enemy snipers. But there were other ways to signal respect, and as McKay made her way past the landing pads and out onto the battlefield beyond, it seemed as if all the Marines wanted to greet her.\n\"Morning, ma'am.\"\n\"How's it going, Lieutenant? Hope you got some sleep.\"\n\"Hey, skipper, guess we showed them, huh?\"\nMcKay replied to them all and continued on her way. Just the fact that she was there, strolling through the plasma-blackened defenses with a cup of coffee in her hand, served to reassure the troops.\n\"Look,\" one of them said as she walked past, \"there's the Loot. Cool as ice, man. Did you see her last night? Standing on that tank? It was like nothin'\ncould touch her.\" The other Marine didn't say anything, just nodded in agreement, and went back to digging a firing pit. Somehow, without consciously thinking about it, McKay's feet carried her back to the Scorpions and the point from which her particular battle had been fought. The Covenant knew about the metal behemoths now, which was why both machines were being dug out and run up onto solid ground. The officer wondered what Silva planned to do with them, and sipped the last of her coffee before wandering onto the plateau beyond. Covenant POWs, all chained together at the ankles, were busy digging graves. One section for members of their armed forces, and one for the humans. It was a sobering sight, as were the rows of tarp-covered bodies, and all for what?\nFor Earth, she told herself, and the billions who would go unburied if the Covenant found them. There was a lot to dothe morning passed quickly. Major Silva was back on duty by 1300 hours and sent a runner to find McKay. As she entered his office she saw that he was sitting behind his makeshift desk, working at a computer. He looked up and pointed to a chair salvaged from a lifeboat. \"Take a load off, Lieutenant. Nice job out there. I should take naps more often! How are you feeling?\"\nMcKay dropped into the chair, felt it adjust to fit her body, and shrugged.\n\"I'm tired, sir, but otherwise fine.\"\n\"Good,\" Silva said, bringing his fingers together into a steeple. \"Because there's plenty of work to do. We'll have to drive everyone hardand that includes ourselves.\"\n\"Sir, yes sir.\"\n\"So,\" Silva continued, \"I know you've been busy, but did you get a chance to read the report Wellsley put together?\"\nA crate of small but powerful wireless computers like the one sitting on the Major's desk had been recovered from theAutumn but McKay had yet to turn hers on. \"I'm afraid not, sir. Sorry.\"\nSilva nodded. \"Well, based on information acquired during routine debriefings, our digital friend believes that the raid was both less and more than we assumed.\"\nMcKay allowed her eyebrows to rise. \"Meaning?\"\n\"Meaning that rather than the real estate itself, the Covies were after something, or more preciselysomeone they thought they would find here.\"\n\"Captain Keyes?\"\n\"No,\" the other officer replied, \"Wellsley doesn't think so, and neither do I. A group of their stealth Elites were able to penetrate the lower levels of the complex. They killed everyone they came into contact with, or thought they did, but one tech played dead, and another was knocked unconscious. They were in different rooms but both told the same story. Once in the room, and having gained control of it, one of those commando Elitesthe bastards in the black combat suitswould momentarily reveal himself. He spoke passable standardand asked both groups the same question. 'Where is the human with the special armor?' \"\n\"They were after the Spartan,\" McKay said thoughtfully. \"Exactly.\"\n\"So, whereis the Chief?\"\n\"That,\"Silva replied, \"is a very good question. Where indeed? He went looking for Keyes, surfaced in the middle of a swamp, told Foehammer that the Captain was probably dead, and disappeared a few minutes later.\"\n\"Think he's dead?\" McKay inquired.\n\"I don't know,\" Silva replied grimly, \"although it wouldn't make too much difference if he were. No, I suspect that he and Cortana are out there playing games.\"\nWith Keyes out of the picture once more, Silva had reassumed command, and McKay could understand his frustration. The Master Chief was an asset, or would have been if he were around, but now, out freelancing somewhere, the Spartan was starting to look like a liability. Especially given how many of Silva's troops had died in order to defend a man who wasn't even there. Yes, McKay could understand the Major's frustration, but couldn't sympathize with it. Not after seeing the Chief in that very room, his skin unnaturally white after too much time spent in his armor, his eyes filled withwhat? Pain? Suffering? A sort of wary distrust?\nThe officer wasn't sure, but whatever it was didn't have anything to do with ego, with insubordination, or a desire for personal glory. Those were truths that McKay could access, not because she was a seasoned soldier, but because she was a woman, something Silva could never aspire to be. But it wouldn't do any good to say that, so she didn't. Her voice was level. \"So, where does that leave us?\"\n\"Situation normal: We're cut off and probably surrounded.\" The chair sighed as Silva leaned back. \"Like the old saying goes, 'a good defense is a good offense.' Rather than just sit around and wait for the Covenant to attack again, let's take the hurt to them. Nothing big, not yet anyway, but the kind of pinpricks that still draw blood.\"\nMcKay nodded. \"And you want me to come up with some ideas?\" Silva grinned. \"I couldn't have said it better myself.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" McKay said, coming to her feet. \"I'll have something by morning.\"\nSilva watched the Company Commander exit his office, wasted five seconds wishing he had six more just like her, and went back to work.\n\nThe Master Chief felt himself rush back together like a puzzle with a million pieces, wondered what had happened, and where he was. He felt disoriented, nauseated, and angry. A quick look around was sufficient to ascertain that the machine named 343\nGuilty Spark had somehow transported him from the swamp into the bowels of a dark, brooding structure. He saw the machine hovering high above, glowing a thin, ghostly blue. The Spartan raised his assault weapon, and fired half a clip into it. The bullets were dead on, but had no effect other than to elicit a bemused response.\n\"That was unnecessary, Reclaimer. I suggest that you conserve your ammunition for the effort ahead.\"\nNo less angry, but with little choice but to accept the situation, the Chief looked around. \"So where am I?\"\n\"The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood,\" the machine answered patiently. \"Their survival as a race was dependent on it. I am grateful to see that some of them survived to reproduce.\"\n\" 'Survived'? 'Reproduce'? What the hell are you talking about?\" the Chief demanded.\n\"We must collect the Index,\" Spark said, leaving the Spartan's questions unanswered. \"And time is of the essence. Please follow me.\" The blue light zipped away at that point, forcing the Chief to follow, or be left behind. He checked both his weapons as he walked. \"Speaking ofyou , who the hell are you, and what's your function?\"\n\"Iam 343 Guilty Spark,\" the machine said, pedantically. \"I am the Monitor, or more precisely, a self-repairing artificial intelligence charged with maintaining and operating this facility. But you are the Reclaimerso you know that already.\"\nThe Master Chief didn't know anything of the kind, but it seemed wise to play along, so he did. \"Yes, well, refresh my memory . . . how long has it been since you were left in charge?\"\n\"Exactly 101,217 local years,\" the Monitor replied cheerfully, \"many of which were quite boring. But not anymore!Hee, hee, hee. \"\nThe Spartan was taken aback by the sudden giggle from the small machine. He knew that the AIs humans used could, over time, develop personalities politely described as \"quirky.\" 343 Guilty Spark had been here for tens of thousands of years. It was quite possible that the little AI was insane. The Monitor chattered on, nattering about \"effecting repairs to substation nine\" and other non sequiturs. His dialogue was interrupted as a variety of Flood forms bounced, waddled, and leaped out of the surrounding darkness. Suddenly the Chief was fighting for his life again, moving back and forth to stretch the enemy out, blasting anything that moved. That was when he first identified anew Flood form. They were large misshapen things that would explode when fired upon, spewing up to a dozen infection forms in every direction, thereby multiplying the number of targets that the shooter had to track and kill. Finally, like water turned off at a tap, the assault came to an end, and the Chief had a chance to reload his weapons. The Monitor hovered nearby, all the while humming to himself, and occasionally giggling. \"There's no time to dawdle! We have work to do.\" \"What kind of work?\" the Chief inquired as he stuffed the final shell into the shotgun and hurried to follow.\n\"This is the Library,\" the machine explained, hovering so the human could catch up. \"The energy field above us contains the Index. We must get up there.\"\nThe Spartan was about to ask, \"Index? What Index?\" when a combat form lurched out of an alcove and opened fire. The Chief fired in return, saw the creature fall, and saw it jump back up again. The next burst took the Flood's left leg off.\n\"That should slow you down,\" he said as he turned to deal with a new horde of shambling, leaping hostiles. A steady stream of brass arced away from the Chief's assault weapon as he worked the mob over, felt something strike him from behind, and spun around to discover that the one-legged combat form had limped back into the fight. The Spartan blew the creature's head off this time, sidestepped to evade a charging carrier form, and shot the bulbous monster in the back. There was an explosion of green mist mixed with balloonlike infection forms and pieces of wet flesh. The next ten seconds were spent popping pods. After that the Monitor took off again and the noncom had little choice but to follow. He soon arrived in front of a huge metal door. Built to contain the Flood perhaps? Maybe, but far from effective, since the slimy bastards seemed to be leaking out of every nook and cranny. The Monitor hovered over the human's head. \"The security doors are locked automatically. I will go access the override to open them. I am a genius,\" the Monitor said matter-of-factly.\"Hee, hee, hee.\"\n\"A pain in the ass is more like it,\" the Master Chief said to no one in particular as a red blob appeared on his threat indicator, quickly joined by a half dozen more. Then, as part of what would become a familiar pattern, combat forms leaped fifteen meters through the air, only to shrivel as the 7.62mm slugs tore them apart. Carrier forms waddled up like old friends, came apart like wet cardboard, and spewed pods in every direction. Infection forms danced on delicate legs, dodging this way and that, each hoping to claim the human as its very own. But the Chief had other ideas. He killed the last of them just as the double doors started to part, and followed the monitor through. \"Please follow closely,\" 343 Guilty Spark admonished. \"This portal is the first of ten.\"\nThe Chief replied as he followed the AI past a row of huge blue screens.\n\"Moredoors. I can hardly wait.\"\n343 Guilty Spark appeared immune to sarcasm as it babbled about the first class research facilities that surrounded themand blithely led its human companion into still another ambush. And so it went, as the Chief worked his way through Flood-infested galleries, subfloor maintenance tunnels, andmore galleries, before rounding a corner to confront yet another group of monstrosities. The Spartan had help this time, as a dozen of the hunter-killer machines he'd seen in the swamp appeared in the air above the scene, and attacked the Flood forms congregated below.\n\"These Sentinels will assist you, Reclaimer,\" the Monitor trilled. Lasers hissed and sizzled as the robots struck their opponents down, and having done so, moved in to sterilize what remained. The Spartan watched in fascination as the machines took care of the heavy lifting. He lent a helping hand when that seemed appropriate, and started to gag when the air that came through his filters grew thick with the stench of cooked flesh. As the Spartan fought his way through the facility, the Monitor, who floated above it all, offered commentary. \"These Sentinels will supplement your combat systems. But I suggest you upgrade to at least a Class Twelve Combat Skin. Your current model only scans as a Class Twowhich is unsuited for this kind of work.\"\nIf there's a battle suit six times as powerful as MJOLNIR armor,he thought,I'll be first in line to try it on. He jumped to avoid an attack from one of the Flood combat forms, pressed the shotgun muzzle into its back, and blew a foot-wide hole through the creature. Finally, after the hardworking Sentinels had reduced the Flood to little more than a lumpy paste, the Spartan made his way through the carnage and out onto a circular platform. It was enormous, easily large enough to handle a Scorpion, and in reasonably good repair. Machinery hummed, bands of white light pulsated down from somewhere above, and the lift carried the human upward. Maybe things would be better up above, maybe the Flood hadn't reached that level yet, he thought. He didn't hold out much hope, however. So far, nothingelse had gone right on this mission.\n\nDeep within the recesses of Halo, Flood specimens were confined to facilitate future study, and to prevent them from escaping. Aware of the extreme danger the Flood posed, and their capacity to multiply exponentially as well as take over even advanced life forms, the ancient ones constructed the walls of their prison with great care, and trained their guards well. With nothing to feed upon, and nowhere to go, the Flood lay dormant for more than a hundred thousand years. Then the intruders came, broke the prison open, and nourished the Flood with their bodies. With a way to escape, and food to sustain it, the tendrils of the malevolent growth slithered through the maze of tunnels and passageways that lay below Halo's skin, and gathered wherever there was a potential route to the surface. One such location was in a chamber located beneath a tall butte, where little more than a metal grating prevented the Flood from bursting out of its underground lair and shooting to the surface. Unbeknownst to the men and women of Alpha Base, they had anew enemyand it lived directly below their feet.\n\nThe lift jerked to a halt. The Master Chief made his way through a narrow passageway into the gallery beyond. The Flood attacked immediately, but with no threat at his back, he was free to retreat into the corridor from which he had just come, which forced the mob of monstrosities to come at him through the same narrow channel. Before long, the bodies of the fallen Flood began to accumulate. He paused, waiting for another wave of attackers, then shoved aside a pile of the dead and moved into the next section of the complex. They gave under his feet, made gurgling sounds, and vented foul-smelling gas. The Chief was grateful when his boots were back on solid ground again. The Sentinels reappeared shortly thereafter and led the Spartan past a row of huge blue screens. \"So, where were you bastards a few minutes ago?\" the human inquired. But if the robots heard him, they made no reply as they glided, circled, and bobbed through the hallway ahead.\n\"Flood activity has caused a failure in a drone control system. I must reset the backup units,\" 343 Guilty Spark said. \"Please continue onI will rejoin you when I have completed my task.\"\nThe Monitor had left him on his own beforeand each absence coincided with a fresh wave of Flood attackers. \"Hold on,\" the human protested, \"let's discuss this\" but it was too late. 343 Guilty Spark had already darted through an aperture in the wall and disappeared down some kind of travel conduit. Sure enough, no sooner had the Monitor left than a lumpy-looking carrier form waddled out into the light, spotted its prey, and hurried to greet it. The Spartan shot the Flood form, but let the Sentinels clean up the resulting mess, while he conserved his ammo. A fresh onslaught of Flood came out of the woodwork, and the Spartan adopted a more cautious strategy: He allowed the sentry robots to mop them up. At first, the defense machines mowed through a wave of the podlike infection forms with little difficulty. Then more of the hostiles appeared, thenmore , then still more. Soon, the Chief was forced to fall back. He crushed one of the pods with his foot, smashed another out of the air with the butt of his assault rifle, and killed a dozen more with a trio of quick AR bursts. The Monitor drifted back into the chamber, spun as if surveying the carnage, and made an odd, metallic clicking that sounded very much like a cluck of disapproval. \"The Sentinels can use their weapons to manage the Flood for a short time, Reclaimer. Speed is of the essence.\"\n\"Then let's go,\" the Master Chief growled. The Monitor made no reply, but scooted ahead. The small construct led the Spartan deeper into the Library's gloomy halls. They passed through a number of large open gates prior to arriving in front of one that was closed. The Chief paused for a moment, expecting that 343 Guilty Spark might open it for him, but the Monitor had disappeared. Again. The hell with it,he thought. The little machine was rapidly draining his reserves of patience. Determined to move ahead with or without the services of his on-again, off again guide, the Chief retraced his steps to the point where a steeply sloping ramp emerged from below, followed it downward, and soon found himself in a maintenance corridor packed with Flood. But the narrow confines of the passageway again made it that much easier to kill the parasitic life forms, and five minutes later the human walked up a ramp on the other side of the metal door to find that the Monitor was there, humming to himself.\n\"Oh, hello! I'm a genius.\"\n\"Right. And I'm a Vice Admiral.\"\nThe Monitor darted ahead, leading him across a circular depression to another enormous door. Machinery whirred, and the Chief was forced to pause as the doors started to part. Then he heard a clank, followed by a groan, as the movement stopped.\n\"Please wait here,\" Spark said, and promptly vanished. Just as the Master Chief pulled a fresh clip and rammed it home, dozens of red dots appeared on his threat indicator. He stood with his back to the door as what looked like a platoon of Flood forms prepared to rush him. Rather than simply open up on them, and risk the possibility that they might roll him under, the Chief threw a grenade into their midst, and half his opponents went up in a single blast. It took a few minutes plus a few hundred rounds of ammo to put the rest of them down, but the Spartan managed to do so. That was when the machinery restarted, the doors opened, and the Monitor reappeared, humming to itself. \"I am a genius!\"\n\nHe had moved through the new chambera high, vaulted gallery, dimly lit with pools of gold-yellow light. For the first time since Spark had dragged him here, he had a moment of respite. Ever since entering the Library, the Spartan's head had been on a swivel. Wave after wave of hostile creatures had attacked him from all sides. He popped a stim-pack, downed a nutrient supplement, and gathered up his weapon. Time to move out. As he proceeded deeper into the Library, he found a corpsea human one. He stooped to examine the body. It wasn't pretty. The Marine's body was so mangled that even the Flood couldn't make use of him. He lay at the center of a large bloodstain wreathed by spent brass.\n\"Ah,\" 343 Guilty Spark said, peering down over the Spartan's shoulder.\n\"Theother Reclaimer. His combat skin proved even less suitable than yours.\"\nThe soldier looked up over his shoulder. \"What do you mean?\"\n\"Is this a test, Reclaimer?\" the Monitor seemed genuinely puzzled. \"I found him wandering through a structure on the other side of the ring, and brought him to the same point whereyou started.\"\nThe Chief looked down at the body and marveled at the fact that anyone could make it that far. Even with his physical augmentation, and the advantages of his armor, the Spartan was reaching the end of his endurance. He checked, found the leatherneck's dog tags, and read the name. MOBUTO, MARVIN, STAFFSERGEANT,followed by a service number. The Chief put the tags away. \"I didn't know you, Sarge, but I sure as hell wish I had. You must have been one hard-core son of a bitch.\"\nIt wasn't much as eulogies go, but he hoped that, had Sergeant Marvin Mobuto been there to hear it, he would have approved.\n\nA good trap requires good bait, which was why McKay had one of the Pelicans pick up Charlie 217's burned-out remains and drop them into the ambush site during the hours of darkness. It took three trips to transport a sufficient amount of wreckage, followed by hours of backbreaking effort to spread the pieces around in a realistic way, then position her troops in the rocks above. Finally, just as the sun speared the area with early morning light, everything was ready. A phony distress call went out, and a specially prepared fire was lit deep within the wreckage. Scattered around the \"crash site\" were some\n\"volunteers\"the bodies of comrades killed on the butte had been laid out where they could be seen from the air. As half of the first platoon tried to get some sleep, the rest kept watch. McKay used her glasses to scan the area. The fake crash site was located between a low, flat-topped rise and a rocky hillside, covered with a jumble of large boulders. The wreckage, complete with a trickle of smoke, looked quite realistic. Wellsley believed that having first dismissed the Marines and Naval personnel as little more than a nuisance, the enemy had since been forced to change their minds, and had started to take them more seriously. That meant monitoring human radio traffic, conducting regular recon flights, and all the other activities of modern warfare. Assuming the AI was correct, the aliens would pick up the distress call, backtrack to the source, and send a team to check the situation out. That was the plan, at any rate, and McKay didn't see any reason why it wouldn't work. The sun inched higher in the sky, and down among the rocks the temperature rose. The Marines took advantage of any bit of shade that they could find, though McKay was privately pleased that the customary bitching about the heat was kept to a minimum. Thirty minutes into the wait McKay heard a sound like the whine of a mosquito and started to quarter the sky with her binoculars. It wasn't long before she spotted a speck coming down-spin. Very quickly, the speck grew into a Banshee. She keyed her mike.\n\"Red One to squad threeit's show time.\"\nThe officer didn't dare say more lest any Covenant eavesdroppers grow suspicious. She didn'thave to say much more, though. Her Marines knew what to do. As the enemy aircraft came closer, members of the third squad, some of whom were made up to look as if they were injured, hurried out into the open, shaded their eyes as if watching for an incoming Pelican, pantomimed surprise as they spotted the Banshee, fired a volley of shots at it, then ran for the safety of the rocks. The pilot sent a series of plasma bolts racing after them, circled the crash site twice, and flew off in the direction from which he had come. McKay watched it go. The hook had been set, the fish was on the line, and it would be her job to reel it in.\n\nHalf a klick away from the phony crash site, another Marine, or whathad been a Marine, emerged from a subsurface air shaft, and felt the sun hit his horribly ravaged face. Well, nothis face, because ever since the infection form had inserted its penetrator into his spine, Private Wallace A. Jenkins had been sharing his physical form with something he thought of as \"the other.\" A strange being that didn't have any thoughts, none that the human could access, at any rate, and seemed unaware of the fact that its host still retained some cognitive and possibly motor functions. That awareness was entirely unique to him insofar as the leatherneck could tell, because in spite of the fact that some of the bodies in the group had once belonged to his squad mates, repeated attempts to communicate with them had failed. Now, as the untidy collection of infection forms, carrier forms, and combat forms emerged to bounce, waddle, and walk across Halo's surface, Jenkins knew that wherever the column was headed it was for one purpose: to find and subsume sentient life. He could dimly sense the other's yawning, icy hunger. Hisgoal, however, was considerably different. After it had been converted into a combat form, his body was still capable of handling a weapon. Some of the other forms had themand that's what Jenkins wanted more than anything. An M6D would be perfect, but an energy weapon could do the job, as would any grenade. Not for use on the Covenant, or the Flood, but onhimself . Or what had been him. That's why he'd been careful to conceal the full extent of his awareness from the other. So he had a chance of destroying the body in which he had been imprisoned and escape the horror of each waking moment. The Flood came to a hill and, following one of the carrier forms, soon started to climb. The other, with Jenkins in tow, tagged along behind.\n\nMcKay knew the trap was going to work when one of the U-shaped dropships appeared, circled the phony crash site, and settled in for a landing. Once free of the ship the Elites, Jackals, and Grunts would be easy meat for the Marines hidden in the rocks and the snipers stationed on top of the flat topped hill. But war is full of surprises, and when the Covenant ship took off again, McKay found herself looking at everything she had expected to seeplus a couple of Hunters. The mean-looking bastards would be hard to kill and could rip the platoon to shreds. The officer swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat, keyed her mike, and whispered some instructions. \"Red One to all snipers and rocket jockeys. Put everything you have on the Hunters. Do itnow . Over.\"\nIt was hard to say who killed the Hunters, given the sudden barrage of bullets and rockets that came their way, but McKay didn't care, so long as the walking tanks weredead . . . which they definitely were. That was the good news. The bad news was that the dropship returned, hosed the boulders with plasma fire, and forced the Helljumpers to duck or lose their heads. Encouraged by the air support, the Covenant ground troops rushed to enter the jumble of rocks, eager to find some cover, and kill the treacherous humans. They were forced to pay a price, however, as the snipers on the hill picked off five of the alien soldiers before the dropship moved in to exact its revenge. The Marines were forced to dive deep as the enemy aircraft marched a double line of plasma bolts across the top of the tiny mesa, killing two of the snipers and wounding a third. Things soon started to get ugly on the rock-strewn hillside as both humans and Covenant hunted one another between the huge, weather-smoothed boulders. Energy bolts flew and assault weapons chattered, as both sides took part in a deadly game of hide-and-seek. This wasnot what McKay had envisioned, and she was looking for a way to disengage, when a wave of new hostiles entered the fight. A torrent of the bizarre creatures attackedboth groups from the other side of the hill. McKay had a glimpse of corpse-flesh, twisted and mangled bodies, and swarms of tiny little spheres that bounced, leaped, and climbed over the rocks. The first problem was that while the Covenant forces seemed familiar with the creatures, the Helljumpers weren't, and three members of the second squad had already gone down under the combined weight of multiple forms, and one member of the third had been slaughtered by a grotesque biped, before McKay understood the extent of the danger. Even as the officer fought her way uphill through the maze of boulders the radio calls continued to boom through her earpiece.\n\"What the hell is that thing?\"\n\"Fire! Fire! Fire!\"\n\"Get it off me!\" The radio traffic tripled and the command freq turned into such a confusion of screams, requests for orders, and pleas for extraction, that the Marines might as well have spoken in tongues. McKay cursed. No way. No way were thesethings going to break them. No way. She rounded a boulder, saw a Grunt running downhill with two of the spherical creatures clinging to its back. The Grunt squealed and spun and she got her first close look at the creatures. A sustained burst from the assault weapon brought all three of them down. As the Marine worked her way farther uphill, she soon discovered that the new enemy tookother forms as well. McKay killed a two-legged form, saw a private put half a clip into a lumpy-looking monster, and watched in disgust as the dying creature spewed evenmore grotesqueries out into the world. That was the moment when the third form emerged from between a couple of boulders, saw the human, and launched itself into the air.\n\nJenkins had the same view that the others did, spotted the Lieutenant, and hoped she was a good shot. This was better than suicidethis was . . . But it wasn't meant to be.\n\nMcKay tracked the incoming body, sidestepped, and used the butt of her weapon to clip the side of the creature's head. It landed in a heap, flailed around, and was just about to jump up when the Lieutenant pounced on it.\n\"Give me a hand!\" she shouted. \"I want this one alive!\"\nIt took four Marines to subdue the creature, get restraints on both its wrists and ankles, and finally bring it under control. Even at that, one of the Helljumpers suffered a black eye, another wound up with a broken arm, and a third bled from a ragged bite wound on his arm. The ensuing battle lasted for a full fifteen minutes, an eternity in combat, with both humans and Covenant forces taking time out from their battle with one another to concentrate on the new enemy. The moment the last bulbous form was popped, however, they were back at it again, tracking one another through the maze in a contest of life and death, no quarter asked and none given. McKay radioed for assistance, and with help from the Reaction Force, plus two Pelicans and four captured Banshees, she was able to drive the Covenant dropship away and kill those ground troops who weren't willing to surrender. Then, on McKay's orders, the Helljumpers combed the area for reasonably intact specimens of thenew enemy which could be taken back to Alpha Base for analysis. Finally, after the bodies were recovered, Jenkins was the only specimen that was still alive. In spite of the way that he jerked, bucked, and tried to bite his captors they threw him onto the Pelican, roped him to the D-rings recessed into the deck, and delivered a few kicks for good measure.\n\nWith fully half of her Marines making the return trip in body bags, McKay sat through the seemingly endless journey to Alpha Base. Tears cut tracks down through the grime on the Helljumper's face to wet the deck between her boots. The Covenant had been bad enoughbut now there was an even worse enemy to fight. Now, for the first time since the landing on Halo, McKay felt nothing but despair.\n\nThe Spartan left Sergeant Mobuto's body behind and approached one of the large metal doors, pleased to see that it was open. He crouched and passed through. 343 Guilty Spark disappeared on one of his mysterious errands a few moments later, and, like clockwork, the Flood came out to play. He was ready for them. The Flood swept into the roomdozens of the bulbous infection forms scuttling along the walls and floor, with another half dozen of the combat forms in tow. They paused, as if in confusion. One of the combat forms looked upand the Spartan dropped from the pillar he'd shimmied up. His metal boots pulped the creature's face. Assault rifle fire raked the leading edge of the cluster of infection forms. The pods detonated in a chain-reaction string. Thatgot their attention , he thought. The Chief turned and ran. He jumped up onto a raised platform as he fought, disengaged, and fought again. Finally, as the last body fell, both the Monitor and the Sentinels reappeared. The Spartan looked at them in disgust as he reloaded his weapons, scrounged ammo off the Flood combat forms, and followed 343 Guilty Spark out onto a lift that was identical to the last one he'd been on. The platform carried the human up to a still higher level, where he got off, paused to let the Sentinels soften up the Flood welcome wagon that waited out in the hall, then emerged to lend a hand. There was a loudboom! as one of the combat forms leaped from an archway and landed right on top of a Sentinel. Its whip-tendril flailed at the hovering robot's back and was rewarded with a series of sparks and a gout of flame. A moment later, the Sentinel exploded, and the Flood and the wrecked drone crashed into the floor in a ball of flesh, bone, and metal. The resulting shower of shrapnel cut three Flood forms down and wounded a score of others. The Spartan took another out with a burst from his assault weapon and the other robots moved in to fry the remains. Once that contingent of freaks had been dealt with, the Chief followed the Monitor down a hall lined with blue screens, through an area that was infested with Flood, and out onto a lift that looked different from the last one he'd been on. Geometric patterns split the floor into puzzlelike shapes, a series of raised panels stood guard around a column of translucent blue light, and the whole thing seemed to glow. The Master Chief stepped on board, felt a slight jerk as ancient machinery reacted to his presence, and saw the walls start to rise. He was headed down this timeand hoped that his journey was near an end. Without hesitation, he slammed fresh ammo into his weapon; it seemed as if he emerged into a huge cluster of Flood every time he traveled on a lift. The lift made hollow, rumbling sounds, fell a long way, and stopped with a reverberating thud.\n343 Guilty Spark hovered over his shoulder as the Spartan stepped off the lift and approached a pedestal. \"You may now retrieve the Index,\" the Monitor said. The artifact glowed lime green; it was shaped like the letter T. It slowly rose from the top of the cylindrical tube in which it had been kept for so many millennia. A series of metal blocks that encircled the device rotated and spun, releasing their protective grip on the Index. The Spartan took hold of the device, and pulled it up and out of its tubular sheath. He held it up to examine the glowing artifactand was startled when a gray beam lanced from Spark. The Index was yanked from his hand and disappeared inside a storage chamber in the Monitor's body.\n\"What the hell are you doing?\" the Spartan demanded.\n\"As you know, Reclaimer,\" Spark said, as if addressing an errant child,\n\"protocol requires thatI take possession of the Index for transport.\"\n343 Guilty Spark swooped and dived, then floated in place. \"Your biological form renders you vulnerable to infection. The Index must not fall into the hands of the Flood before we reach the Control Room and activate the installation.\n\"The Flood is spreading! We must hurry.\"\nThe Master Chief was about to reply when he saw the bands of pulsating light flowing down around his body, knew he was about to be teleported, and again felt light-headed.\n\nIt wanted something,Keyes realized. The memories that replayed like an endless library of video clips were being sifted for something. The buzzing presence in his mind sought . . .what?\nHe grasped at the thought, and pushed back against the wall of resistance the other that burrowed through his consciousness had erected. He brushed up against it and it almost slipped away . . . Then he had itescape. Whatever this thing was, it wantedoff the ring. It hungered, and there was a perfect feeding ground to be found. The other plunged a barbed-wire tendril into his mind and ripped forth an image of a lunar Earthrise, which blurred into images of cattle in a slaughterhouse. He felt the other's tendrils eagerly grasp at the image of Earth.Where? It thundered.Tell. The pressure increased and battered through Keyes' resistance, and in desperation he summoned up a new memory. The alien presence seemed startled at the image of Keyes and a childhood friend kicking a soccer ball on a vibrant green field. The pressure eased as the hungry other examined the memory. Keyes felt a stab of regret. He knew what he had to do now. He dragged all he remembered of Earthits location, his ability to find it, its defensesand shoved them down, as deep as he could. Keyes felt the gaping sense of loss as the memory of the soccer field was ripped away and discarded forever. He quickly summoned up anotherthe taste of a favorite meal. He began to feed his memories to the invading presence in his mind, one scrap at a time. Of all the battles he'd ever fought, this one was the toughestand the most important.\n\nThe Chief rematerialized back on the walkway which seemed to float over the black abyss belowthe Control Room. He saw the replica of Halo which arched above, the globe that floated at the center of the walkway, and the control panel where he had last seen Cortana. Was she still there?\n343 Guilty Spark hovered above his head. \"Is something wrong?\"\n\"No, nothing.\"\n\"Splendid. Shall we?\"\nThe Spartan made his way forward. The control board was long and curved at either end. An endless light show played across the surface of the panel as various aspects of the ring world's extremely complicated electronic and mechanical machinery fed a constant flow of data to the display, all of which appeared as a mosaic of constantly morphing glyphs and symbols. Here, if one knew how to read it, were the equivalents of the ring world's pulse, respirations, and brain waves. Reports that provided information on the rate of spin, the atmosphere, the weather, the highly complex biosphere, the machinery that kept all of it running, plus the activities of the creatures around whom the world had been formed: the Flood. It was awesome to look atand even more awesome to consider.\n343 Guilty Spark hovered above the control panel and looked down on the human who stood in front of him. There was something supercilious about the tone of the construct's voice. \"My role in this particular endeavor has come to an end. Protocol does not allow units from my classification to perform a task as important as the reunification of the Index with the Core.\"\nThe Monitor zipped around to hover at the Master Chief's side. \"That final step is reserved foryou , Reclaimer.\"\n\"Why do you keep calling me that?\" the Chief asked. Spark kept silent. The Spartan shrugged, accepted the Index, and gazed at the panel in front of him. One likely-looking slot pulsed the same glowing green that shone from the Index. He slid it home. The T-shaped device fit perfectly. The control panel shivered as if stabbed, the displays flared as if in response to an overload, and an electronic groan was heard. 343 Guilty Spark tilted slightly as if to look at the control board.\n\"That wasn't supposed to happen,\" Spark chirped. There was a sudden shimmer of light as Cortana's holographic figure appeared and continued to grow until she towered over the control panel. Her eyes were bright pink, data scrolled across her body, and the Chief knew she was pissed. \"Oh, really?\" she said. She gestured, and the Monitor fell out of the air and hit the deck with a clank. The Spartan looked up at her. \"Cortana\"\nThe AI stood with hands on hips. \"I spent hours cooped in here watching you toady about helping that . . .thing get set to slit our throats.\"\nThe Chief turned toward the Monitor and back. \"Hold on now. He's a friend.\" Cortana brought a hand up to her mouth in mock surprise. \"Oh, I didn't realize. He's yourpal , is he? Yourchum ? Do you have any idea what that bastard almost made you do?\"\n\"Yes,\" the Spartan said patiently. \"Activate Halo's defenses and destroy the Flood. Which is why we brought the Index to the Control Center.\"\nCortana's image plucked the Index out of its slot and held it out in front of her. \"You meanthis ?\"\nNow reanimated, 343 Guilty Spark hovered just off the floor. He was furious. \"A construct in the core? That is absolutely unacceptable!\"\nCortana's eyes glowed as she bent forward. \"Piss off.\"\nThe Monitor darted higher. \"What impertinence! I shall purge you at once.\"\n\"You sure that's a good idea?\" Cortana inquired as she waved the Index, then added the data contained within it to her memory.\n\"How dare you!\" Spark exclaimed. \"I'll\"\n\"Do what?\" Cortana demanded. \"I have the Index.You can float and sputter.\"\nThe Master Chief held both hands up. One held the assault rifle. \"Enough!\nThe Flood is spreading. If we activate Halo's defenses we can wipe them out.\"\nCortana looked down on the human with an expression of pity. \"You have no idea how this ring works, do you? Why the Forerunners built it?\"\nShe leaned forward, her face grim. \"Halo doesn't kill Floodit kills theirfood . Human, Covenant, whatever. You're all equally edible. The only way to stop the Flood is to starve them to death. And that's exactly what Halo is designed to do. Wipe the galaxy clean ofall sentient life. You don't believe me?\" the AI finished. \"Askhim !\" and she pointed to 343 Guilty Spark. The ramifications of what Cortana said hit home, and he gripped his MA5B tightly. He rounded on the Monitor. \"Is it true?\" Spark bobbed slightly. \"Of course,\" the construct said directly. Then, sounding more like his officious self again, \"This installation has a maximum effective radius of twenty-five thousand light years, but once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite devoid of life, or at least any life with sufficient biomass to sustain the Flood.\n\"But you already knew this,\" the AI continued contritely. The little device sounded genuinely puzzled. \"I mean, howcouldn't you?\"\nCortana glowered at the Chief. \"Left out that little detail, did he?\"\n\"We followed outbreak containment procedure to the letter,\" the Monitor said defensively. \"You were with me each step of the way as we managed the process.\"\n\"Chief,\" Cortana interrupted, \"I'm picking up movement\"\n\"Why would you hesitate to do what you've already done?\" 343 Guilty Spark demanded.\n\"We need to go,\" Cortana insisted. \"Rightnow !\"\n\"Last time you asked me: if it were my choice, would I do it?\" the Monitor continued, as a flock of Sentinels arrayed themselves behind him. \"Having had considerable time to ponder your query, my answer has not changed. There is no choice. We must activate the ring.\"\n\"Get. Us. Out. Of. Here,\" Cortana said, her eyes tracking the Sentinels.\n\"If you are unwilling to helpI will simply find another,\" Spark said conversationally. \"Still, I must have the Index. Give your construct to me or I will be forced to take it from you.\"\nThe Spartan looked up at Spark and the machines arrayed in the air behind him. The assault weapon came up ready to fire. \"That's not going to happen.\"\n\"So be it,\" the Monitor said wearily. Then, in a comment directed to the Sentinels, he added: \"Save his head. Dispose of the rest.\"\n\nSECTION V TWO BETRAYALS\n\nCHAPTER TEN D+68:03:27 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) /\nHalo Control Room. The vast platform that extended out over the Control Room's black abyss felt small and confining as the Master Chief was attacked from every direction at once. Ruby red energy beams sizzled, and the smell of ozone filled the air as the airborne Sentinels circled, searching for a chink in his armor. All they needed was one good hit, a chance to put him down, and they would be able not only to take his head, but the Index as well. Cortana's intrusion skills had become much less conventional since the landing on Halo. He had been surprised when she'd used his suit comm as a de facto modem to broadcast her way into the Control Room computers. He was also unprepared for her sudden return. After so much time in the ring's massive systems, she felt somehow larger. He pondered her unusual behaviorher shortness, the flare of temper. There was no time to consider Cortana's \"mental state.\" There was still a mission to achieve: protect Cortana, and keep Spark the hell away from the Index. For his part the Spartan wove back and forth, conscious of the fact that the walkway had no rails, and how easy it would be to fall off the edge. That made hitting his targets a great deal more difficult. Still, he had seen the Flood bring Sentinels down, and figured that if the combat forms could do it, so could he. He decided to tackle the lowest machines first. He was careful to get a good lead on each target. The assault rifle stuttered, and the nearest target exploded. He switched to the shotgun and fired methodically. He pumped a new round into the chamber, and fired again. Thanks to the broad pattern provided by each shell, the pump gun soon proved itself to be an extremely effective weapon against the Sentinels. One of the machines exploded, another hit the deck with a loud clang, and a third trailed smoke as it spiraled into the darkness below. The battle became somewhat easier after that, as there was less and less incoming fire, and he was able to knock three more robots out of the air in quick succession. He started to move, reloading as he went. One especially persistent machine took advantage of the interlude to score three hits on his back, which triggered the audible alarm, and pushed his shield to the very edge. With only four shells in his weapon, the Chief turned, blew the robot out of the air, and spun to nail another. Then, weapon raised, he turned in a circle, searching for more targets. There weren't any.\n\"So,\" he said as he lowered the shotgun and pushed more shells into the receiver, \"don't tell melet me guess. You have a plan.\"\n\"Yes,\" Cortana replied unabashedly, \"I do. We can't let the Monitor activate Halo. We have to stop himwe have to destroy Halo.\"\nThe Spartan nodded and flexed his stiff shoulders. \"And how do we do that?\"\n\"According to my analysis of the available data I believe the best course of action is somewhat risky.\"\nNaturally,the Chief thought.\n\"An explosion of sufficient size,\" Cortana explained, \"will help destabilize the ringand will cut through a number of primary systems. We need to trigger a detonation on a large scale, however. A starship's fusion reactors going critical would do the job.\n\"I'm going to find out where thePillar of Autumn went down. If the ship's fusion reactors are still relatively intact, we can usethem to destroy Halo.\"\n\"Is thatall ?\" the Spartan inquired dryly. \"Sounds like a walk in the park. By the way, it's nice to have you back.\" \"It's nice tobe back,\" Cortana said, and he knew she meant it. Although there were any number of \"natural\" bio-sentients that she thought of as friends, the bond the AI shared with the Spartan was unique. So long as they shared the same armor they would share the same fate. Ifhe died thenshe died. Relationships don't get any more interdependent than that, something that struck Cortana as both wonderful and frightening. His boots made a hollow sound as he approached the gigantic blast doors and hit the switch. They parted to reveal a battle in progress between a group of Sentinels and Covenant ground troops. Red lasers split the air into jagged shapes as robots burned a Jackal down. The contest was far from one-sided, however, as one of the machines exploded and showered the Covenant with bits of hot metal. The room was a long rectangular affair with a strangely corrugated floor. Standing at one end of the space, and well out of harm's way, the Spartan was content to watch and let the two groups whittle each other down. However, when the last robot crashed, leaving two Elites still on their feet, the Master Chief knew he'd have to take them on. The Covenant spotted the human, knew he'd have to come to them, and stood waiting. The Chief took advantage of what little bit of cover there was and made his way down the length of the room. With only half a clip of ammo left in his assault rifle, he had little choice but to tackle them with the shotgunfar from ideal at this range. He fired a couple of rounds just to get their attention, waited for the Elites to charge, and lobbed a plasma grenade into the gap between them. The explosion killed one soldier and wounded the other. A single blast from the shotgun was sufficient to finish the job. Striding though the carnage, he exchanged the assault weapon for a plasma rifle. From there it was a short journey through an empty room and out onto the top level of the pyramid. It was dark, and a fresh layer of snow had fallen since the time when the noncom had battled his way up to the Control Room from the valley below. There were guards, but all of them had their backs to the hatch, and didn't bother to turn until the doors were halfway open. That was when they saw the human, did a series of double takes, and started to respond. But the Chief was ready and used the energy weapon to hose them down. The Elites jerked and fell, quickly followed by several Jackals and Grunts. Then, just as suddenly as the violence had started, it was over. Snow swirled around the sole figure who remained standing, began the long, painstaking job of covering each body with a shroud of white, and fostered an illusion of peace. Cortana took advantage of the momentary pause to update the Spartan regarding her plan. \"We need to buy some time in case the Monitor or his Sentinels find a way to activate Halo's final weapon without the Index.\n\"The machines in these canyons are Halo's primary firing mechanisms. They consist of three phase pulse generators that amplify Halo's signal and allow it to fire deep into space. If we damage or destroy the generators, the Monitor will need to repair them before Halo can be used. That should buy us some time. I'm marking the location of the nearest pulse generator with a nav point. We need to move and neutralize the device.\"\n\"Roger that,\" the Chief said, as he made his way down the first ramp to the platform below. Once again the element of surprise worked in his favor. He killed two Elites, caught a couple of Jackals as they tried to run, and nailed a Grunt as it appeared from below. The wind whistled around the side of the pyramid. The Spartan left a trail of large bootprints as he made his way down to the point where the ramp met the next level walkway, crossed to the other side of the structure, and ran into a pair of Elites as they hit the top of the up ramp and rounded the corner. There wasn't enough time to do anything but fire, and keep on firing, in an attempt to overwhelm the Covenant armor. It wouldn't have worked had the aliens been farther away, but the fact that the plasma pulses were pounding them in close made all the difference. The first Elite made a horrible gurgling sound as he fell and the second got a shot off but lost half of his face. He brought his hands up to the hole, made a gruesome discovery, and was just about to scream when an energy bolt took his life. Then, as the Spartan prepared to descend into the valley below, Cortana said,\n\"Wait, we should commandeer one of those Banshees. We'll need it to reach the pulse generator in time.\" Like many of the AI's suggestions, this was easier said than done, but the Chief was in favor of speed, and filed the possibility away. Now, as he came down off the pyramid, he saw lots of Covenant, but no Flood, and felt a strange sense of relief. The Covenant were tough, but he understood them, and that lessened his apprehension. The alien plasma rifle lacked the precision offered by an M6D pistol or a sniper's rifle, but the Chief did the best he could to pick off some of the Covenant below. Still, he had only nailed three of the aliens when his efforts attracted the attention of a Wraith tank, along withmore troops. There was nothing he could do except retreat back uphill. The Wraith, which continued to hurl plasma bombs up-slope, actually helped by preventing other Covenant forces from charging after him. That advantage wouldn't last long, though, which meant that he had to find some additional fire power, and find it fast. Even though there was no sign of the Flood at the moment, some of their half-frozen bodies lay scattered about, suggesting that there had been a significant battle within the last couple of hours. He knew the Flood carried weapons acquired from dead victims, so the Chief ran from corpse to corpse, looking for what he required. For a while it seemed hopeless as he uncovered a series of M6Ds, energy pistols, combat knives, and other gear anything and everything except what he needed most. Then, just when he had nearly given up hope, he saw a few inches of olive drab tubing protruding from under a dead combat form. He rolled the ex Elite over, and felt a rising sense of excitement. Was the launcher loaded? If so, he was in luck. A quick check revealed that the weaponwas loaded, and as if to prove that luck comes in threes, the Spartan found two reloads only a few meters away. Armed with the launcher, he was ready to go to work. The Wraith represented the most significant threat, so he decided to deal with that first. It took time to make his way back across the face of the pyramid to a point where he could get a clear shot, but he did. The monster was dangerously close as he put a pair of rockets into the mortar tank, and watched it explode. He ejected the spent rocket tubes, slammed a reload home, and shifted his aim. Two more rockets lanced ahead, and detonated in clusters of Covenant soldiers. He fell back and slung the rocket launcher; he had a limited supply of rockets, and once they were gone, he had no choice but to go down onto the valley floor and finish the job the hard way. He crept up on the pair of Elites who stood guard near a Banshee. They went down from deadly, spine-cracking blows and he stepped past their fallen corpses. He examined the Banshee's controls while Cortana pulled up files the tech boys in Intel had prepared based on examinations of captured craft. He boarded the single-seat aircraft, and activated its power plant. He wondered why the aliens hadn't used the ship against him, was thankful that they hadn't, and eyed the instrument panel. The Master Chief had never flown one of the attack ships before, but was qualified to fly most of the UNSC's atmospheric and spacegoing ships so, between his own experience and the tech files Cortana provided, he found the controls relatively easy to understand. The takeoff was a bit wobbly, but it wasn't long before the flight began to smooth out, and the Banshee started to climb. It was dark, and snow continued to fall, which meant that visibility was poor. He kept a close eye on both the nav point Cortana had projected onto his HUD and the instrument panel. The design was different, but an alien turn and bank indicator still looked like what it was, and helped the human maintain his orientation. The attack ship made good speed, and the valleys were quite close together, so it wasn't long before the Spartan spotted the well-lit platform which jutted out from the face of the cliff, as well as the enemy fire which lashed up to greet him. The word was out, it seemedand the Covenant didn't want any visitors. Rather than put down under fire, he decided to carry out a couple of strafing runs first. He swooped low and used the Banshee's plasma and fuel rod cannons to sweep the platform clear of sentries before decelerating for what he hoped would be an unopposed landing. The Banshee crunched into the platform, bounced once, then ground to a halt. The Chief dismounted, passed through a hatch, and entered the tunnel beyond. \"We need to interrupt the pulse generator's energy stream,\" Cortana informed him. \"I have adjusted your shield system so that it will deliver an EMP burst and disrupt the generator . . . but you'll have to walk into the beam to trigger it.\"\nThe Master Chief paused just shy of the next hatch. \"I'll have to dowhat ?\"\n\"You'll have to walkinto the beam to trigger it,\" the AI repeated matter-of factly. \"The EMP blast should neutralize the generator.\"\n\"Should?\"the Chief demanded. \"Whose side are you on?\"\n\"Yours,\"Cortana replied firmly. \"We're in this togetherremember?\"\n\"Yeah,I remember,\" the Spartan growled. \"But you're not the one with the bruises.\"\nThe AI chose to remain silent as the Chief passed through a hatch, paused to see if anyone would attempt to cancel his ticket, and followed the nav indicator to the chamber located at the center of the room. Once he was there the pulse generator was impossible to miss. It was so intensely white that his visor automatically darkened in order to protect his eyes. Not only that, but the Chief could feel the air crackle around him as he approached the delta-shaped guide structures, and prepared to step in between them. \"I have to walk into that thing?\" the Chief inquired doubtfully. \"Isn't there some easier way to commit suicide?\"\n\"You'll be fine,\" Cortana replied soothingly. \"I'm almost sure of it.\"\nThe Spartan took note of the \"almost,\" clenched his teeth, and pushed himself into the blindingly intense light. The response was nearly instantaneous. There was something akin to an explosion, the light started to pulsate, and the floor shook in response. The Chief hurried to disengage, felt a bit of suction, but managed to pull free. As he did so he noticed that his shields had been drained. His skin felt sunburned.\n\"The pulse generator's central core is off-line,\" Cortana said. \"Well done.\"\nAnother squadron of Sentinels arrived. They swooped into the cramped pulse-generator chamber like vultures, fanned out, and seared the area with ruby-red energy beams. Not only did the Monitor take exception to the damagehe was after the Index too. But the Chief knew how to deal with the mechanical killers, and proceeded to dodge their lasers as he destroyed one after another. Finally, the air thick with the stench of ozone, he was free to withdraw. He went back through the same tunnel to the platform where the Banshee waited.\n\"The second pulse generator is located in an adjacent canyon,\" Cortana announced easily. \"Move out and I'll mark the nav point when we get closer.\"\nThe Master Chief sent the Banshee into a wide bank, and toward the next objective.\n\nMinus the refrigeration required to preserve them, the bodies laid out on the metal tables had already started to decay, and the stench forced Silva to breathe through his mouth as he entered the makeshift morgue and waited for McKay to begin her presentation. Six heavily armed Helljumpers were lined up along one wall ready to respond if one or more of the Flood suddenly came back to life. It seemed unlikely given the level of damage each corpse had sustained, but the creatures had proven themselves to be extremely resilient, and had an alarming tendency to reanimate. McKay, who was still trying to deal with the fact that more than fifteen Marines under her command had lost their lives in a single battle, looked pale. Silva understood, even sympathized, but couldn't allow that to show. There was simply no time for grief, self-doubt, or guilt. The Company Commander would have to do whathe did, which was to suck it up and keep on going. He nodded coolly.\n\"Lieutenant?\"\nMcKay swallowed in an attempt to counter the nausea she felt. \"Sir, yes sir. Obviously there's still a great deal that we don't know, but based on our observations during the fight, and information obtained from Covenant POWs, here's the best intelligence we have. It seems that the Covenant came here searching for 'holy relics'we think that means useful technology and ran into a life form they refer to as 'the Flood.' \" She gestured at the fallen creatures on the slab. \"Thoseare Flood.\"\n\"Charming,\" Silva muttered.\n\"As best we can figure out,\" McKay said, \"the Flood is a parasitic life form which attacks sentient beings, erases their minds, and takes control of their bodies. Wellsley believes that Halo was constructed to house them, to keep them under control, but we have no direct evidence to support that. Perhaps Cortana or the Chief can confirm our findings when we're able to make contact with them again.\n\"The Flood manifests in various forms starting withthese things,\" McKay said, using her combat knife to prod a flaccid infection form. \"As you can see, it has tentacles in place of legs, plus a couple of extremely sharp penetrators, which they use to invade the victim's central nervous system and take control of it. Eventually they work their way inside the host body and take up residence there.\"\nSilva tried to imagine what that might feel like and felt a shiver run down his spine. Outwardly he was unchanged. \"Please continue.\"\nMcKay said, \"Yes, sir,\" and moved to the next table. \"This is what the Covenant call a 'combat form.' As you can see from what remains of its face, this one was human. We think she was a Navy weapons tech, based on the tattoos still visible on her skin. If you peek through the hole in her chest you can see the remains of the infection form that deflated itself enough to fit in around her heart and lungs.\"\nSilva didn'twant to look, but felt he had to, and moved close enough to see the wrinkled scalp, to which a few isolated clumps of filthy hair still clung. His eyes catalogued a parade of horrors: the sickly looking skin; the alarmingly blue eyes which still bulged, as if in response to some unimaginable pain; the twisted, toothless mouth; the slightly puckered\n7.62mm bullet hole through the right cheekbone; the lumpy, penetrator-filled neck; the bony chest, now split down the middle so that the woman's flat breasts hung down to either side; the grossly distorted torso, punctured by three overlapping bullet wounds; the thin, sinewy arms; and the strangely graceful fingers, one of which still bore a silver ring. The Major didn't say anything, but his face must have telegraphed what he felt, because McKay nodded. \"It's pretty awful, isn't it, sir? I've seen death before, sir\" she swallowed and shook her head, \"but nothing like this.\n\"For what it's worth Covenant victims don't look any better. This individual was armed with a pistol, her own probably, but the Flood seem to pick up and use any weapon they can lay their hands on. Not only that, but they pack a very nasty punch, which can be lethal.\n\"Most combat forms appear to be derived from humans and Elites,\" McKay continued, as she moved to the last table. \"We suspect that Grunts and Jackals are deemed too small for first-class combat material, and are therefore used as a sort of nucleus around which carrier forms can grow. It's hard to tell by looking at the puddle of crap on the table in front of you, but at one time this thing containedfour of the infection forms you saw earlier, and when it popped the resulting explosion had enough force to knock Sergeant Lister on his can.\"\nThat, or the mental picture that it conveyed, was sufficient to elicit nervous grins from the Helljumpers who lined the back wall. Apparently they liked the idea of something that could put Lister on his ass. Silva frowned. \"Does Wellsley have scans of this stuff?\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\"Excellent. Nice job. Have the bodies burned, send these troops up for some fresh air, and report to my office in an hour.\"\nMcKay nodded. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\nZuka 'Zamamee lay belly down on the hard-packed dirt and used his monocular to scan thePillar of Autumn . It wasn't heavily guarded; the Covenant was stretched too thin for that, but the Council had reinforced the security force subsequent to the human raid, and evidence of that was visible in the Banshees, Ghosts, and Wraiths that patrolled the area around the downed ship. Yayap, who lay next to the Elite, had no such device and was forced to rely on his own vision. \"This plan is insane,\" 'Zamamee said out of the side of his mouth. \"I should have killed you a long time ago.\"\n\"Yes, Excellency,\" the Grunt agreed patiently, knowing that the talk was just that. The truth was that the officer wasafraid to return to theTruth and Reconciliation , and now had very little choice but to accept Yayap's plan, especially in light of the fact that he had been unable to come up with one of his own.\n\"Give it to me one more time,\" the Elite demanded, \"so I'll know that you won't make any mistakes.\"\nYayap eyed the readout on his wrist. He had two, maybe two and a half units of methane left, before his tanks were empty and he would suffocate, a problem which didn't seem to trouble the Elite at all. It was tempting to pull his pistol, shoot 'Zamamee in the head, and implement the strategy on his own. But there were advantages to being in company with the warriorplus a giddy sense of power that went with having threatened the warrior and survived. With that in mind Yayap managed to suppress both his panic and a rising sense of resentment.\n\"Of course, Excellency. As you know, simple plans are often best, which is why there is a good chance this one will work. On the possibility that the Council of Masters is actively looking for Zuka 'Zamamee, you will choose one of the commandos who died on the human encampment, and assume that individual's identity.\n\"Then, with me at your side, we will report to the officer in charge of guarding the alien ship, explain that we were taken prisoner in the aftermath of the raid, but were subsequently able to escape.\"\n\"But what then?\" the Elite inquired warily. \"What if he submits my DNA for a match?\"\n\"Why would he do that?\" the Grunt countered patiently. \"He's shorthanded, and here, as if presented by the great ones themselves, is a commando Elite. Wouldyou run the risk of having such a find reassigned? No, I think not. Under circumstances such as these you would seize the opportunity to add such a highly capable warrior to your command, and give thanks for the blessing.\" It sounded good, especially the \"highly capable warrior\" part, so 'Zamamee agreed. \"Fine. What about later?\"\n\"Later, if thereis a later,\" Yayap said wearily, \"we will have to come up with another plan. In the meantime this initiative will assure us of food, water, and methane.\"\n\"All right,\" 'Zamamee said, \"let's jump on the Banshee and make our appearance.\"\n\"Are you sure that's the best idea?\" the Grunt inquired tactfully. \"If we arrive on a Banshee, the commanding officer might wonder why we were so slow to check in.\"\nThe Elite eyed what looked like a long, hard walk, sighed, and acquiesced.\n\"Agreed.\" A hint of his former arrogance resurfaced. \"Butyou will carry my gear.\"\n\"Of course,\" Yayap said, scrambling to his feet. \"Was there ever any doubt?\"\n\nThe inmate had attempted suicide twice, which was why the interior of his cell was bare, and under round-the-clock surveillance. The creature that had once been Private Wallace A. Jenkins sat on the floor with both wrists chained to an eyebolt located just over his head. The Flood mind, which the human continued to think of as \"the other,\" had been quiet for a while, but was present nonetheless, and glowered in what amounted to a cognitive corner, angry but weak. Hinges squealed as the metal door swung open. Jenkins turned to look, and saw a male noncom enter the room followed by a female officer. The private felt an almost overwhelming sense of shameand did what he could to turn away. Earlier, before the guards secured his wrists to the wall, Jenkins had used pantomime to request a mirror. A well-meaning Corporal brought one in, held it up in front of the soldier's devastated face, and was frightened when he tried to scream. The initial suicide attempt followed thirty minutes later. McKay took a look at the prisoner's dry, parched lips and guessed that he might be thirsty. She called for some water, accepted a canteen, and started across the cell. \"With respect, ma'am, I don't think you should do that,\" the Sergeant said cautiously. \"These suckers are incredibly violent.\"\n\"Jenkins is a Private in the UNSC Marine Corps,\" McKay replied sternly,\n\"and will be referred to as such. And your concern has been noted.\"\nThen, like a teacher dealing with a recalcitrant child, she held the canteen out where Jenkins could see it. \"Look!\" she said, sloshing the water back and forth. \"Behave yourself and I'll give you a drink.\"\nJenkins tried to warn her, tried to say \"No,\" but heard himself gabble instead. Thus encouraged, McKay unscrewed the canteen's lid, took three steps forward, and was just about to lean over when the combat form attacked. Jenkins felt his left arm break as the chain brought it up shortand fought to counter the other's attempt to grab the officer in a scissor lock. McKay stepped back just in time to evade the flailing legs. There was a clacking sound as the guard pumped a shell into the shotgun's receiver and prepared to fire. McKay shouted, \"No!\" and held up her hand. The noncom obeyed but kept his weapon aimed at the combat form's head.\n\"Okay,\" McKay said, looking into the creature's eyes, \"have it your way. But, like it or not, we're going to have a talk.\"\nSilva had entered the cell by then and stood behind the Lieutenant. The Sergeant saw the Major nod, and backed into a corner with his weapon still held at the ready.\n\"My name is Silva,\" the Major began, \"and you already know Lieutenant McKay here. First, let me say that both of us are extremely sorry about what happened to you, we understand how you feel, and will make sure that you receive the best medical care that the UNSC has to offer. But first we have to fight our way off this ring. I think I know how we can do thatbut it will take some time. We need to hold this butte until we're ready to make our move. That's whereyou come in. You know where we are nowand you know how the Flood move around. If you had my job, if you had to defend this base against the Flood, where wouldyou focus your efforts?\" The other used his right hand to grab his left, jerked hard, and exposed a shard of broken bone. Then, as if hoping to use that as a knife, the combat form lunged forward. The chains brought the creature up short. Jenkins felt indescribable pain, began to lose consciousness, but fought his way back. Silva looked at McKay and shrugged. \"Well, it was worth a try, but it looks like he's too far gone.\"\nJenkins half expected the other to lunge forward again, but having shared in the human's pain, the alien consciousness chose that moment to retreat. The human surged into the gap, made hooting sounds, and used his good hand to point at Silva's right boot. The officer looked down at his boot, frowned, and was about to say something when McKay touched his arm. \"He isn't pointing at your boot, sir, he's pointingdown . At the area under the butte.\"\nSilva felt something cold trickle into his veins. \"Is that right, son? The Flood could be directlybelow us?\"\nJenkins nodded emphatically, rolled his eyes, and made inarticulate gagging sounds. The Major nodded and came to his feet. \"Thank you, Private. We'll check the basement and be back to speak with you some more.\"\nJenkins didn't want to talk, he wanted todie , but nobody cared. The guards left, the door clanged shut, and the Marine was left with nothing but a broken arm and the alien inside his head. Somehow, without actually dying, he had been sentenced to hell. As if to confirm that conclusion the other surged to the fore, yanked at the chains, and beat its feet on the floor. Food had been present, food had left, and it remained hungry.\n\nThe Master Chief spotted the next way point, put the hijacked Banshee down on a platform, and entered the complex via an unguarded hatch. He heard the battle before he actually saw it, made his way through the intervening tunnel, and peered through the next door. As had occurred before, the Covenant was busy taking it to the Flood and vice versa, so he gave both groups some time to whittle each other down, left the security of the tunnel, and proceeded to tidy up. Then, eager to replenish his supplies, the Spartan made his ghoulish rounds, and soon was able to equip himself with an assault weapon, a shotgun, and some plasma grenades. Even though he didn't like to think about where it came from, it felt good to dump the Covenant ordnance he'd been saddled with, and lay his hands on some true-blue UNSC issue for a change. Pulse generator one had been dealt with, and he was eager to disable number two, then move on to his final objective. He stepped into the beam, saw the flash of light, felt the floor shake, and was in the process of pulling away when the Flood attacked from every direction. There was no time to think and no time to fight. The only thing he could do was run. He turned and sprinted for the corridor he'd used to enter the chamber and took two powerful blows from a combat form. He bulled his way between two carrier forms and leaped out of the way as they detonated like grenades. New infection forms spewed from their deflating corpses. There was barely enough time to turn, hose the closest forms with 7.62mm, and toss a grenade at the group beyond. It went off with a loudwham! , broke glass, and put three of the monstrosities down. He was out of ammo by then, knew he lacked the time necessary to reload, and made the switch to the shotgun instead. The gun blew huge holes through the oncoming mob. He charged through one of them, and ran like hell. Then, with some pad to work with, the human turned to gun down the pursuers. The entire battle consumed no more than two minutes but it left the Chief shaken. Could Cortana detect the slight tremor in his hands as he reloaded both weapons? Hell, she had unrestricted access to all of his vital signs, so she knew more about what was going on with his body than he did. Still, if the AI was conscious of the way he felt, there was no sign of it in her words. \"Pulse generator deactivatedgood work.\"\nThe Chief nodded wordlessly and made his way back through the tunnel to the point where the Banshee waited. \"ThePillar of Autumn is located twelve hundred kilometers up-spin,\" Cortana continued. \"Energy readings show her fusion reactors are still powered up! The systems on thePillar of Autumn have fail-safes even I can't override without authorization from the Captain. We'll have to find him, or his neural implants, to start the fusion core detonation.\n\"Onetarget remaining. Let's take care of the final pulse generator.\"\nA nav indicator appeared on the noncom's HUD as he lifted off, took fire from a neighboring installation, and put the attack ship into a steep dive. The ground came up fast, he pulled out, and guided the alien assault craft through a pass and into the canyon beyond. The nav indicator pointed toward the light that spilled out of a tunnel. The Banshee began to take ground fire, and the Spartan knew his piloting skills were about to be severely tested. A rocket flashed by as he pushed the Banshee down onto the deck, fired the aircraft's weapons, and cut power. Flying into the tunnel was bad enough but flying into it at high speed verged on suicidal. Once inside the passageway the challenge was to stay off the walls and make the tight right- and left-hand turns without killing himself. A few seconds later the Spartan saw double blast doors and flared in for a jarring landing. He hopped down, made his way over to the control panel, hit the switch, and heard a rumbling sound as the doors started to part. Then there was abang!\nas something exploded and the enormous panels came to a sudden stop. The resulting gap was too small for the Banshee, but sufficient for two carrier forms to scuttle through. The beasts scrambled toward him on short, stubby legs. The humpbacked bladders that formed their upper torsos pulsed and wriggled as the infection forms within struggled for release. The Chief blew both monsters away with twin shotgun blasts, and mopped up the rest of the infection forms with another shot. He paused and reloaded;\nthere were bound to be more of the creatures on the far side of the doors. Resigned to a fight, he stepped through the crack and paused. There was no sound beyond the gentle roar of machinery, thedrip, drip, drip of water off to his right, and the rasp of his own breathing. The threat indicator was clear, and there were no enemies in sight, but that didn't mean much. Not where the Flood were concerned. They had a habit of coming out of nowhere. The cave, if that was the proper word for the huge cavernlike space, featured plenty of places to hide. Enormous pipes emerged from the walls and dived downward, mysterious installations stood like islands on the platform around him, and there was no way to know what might lurk in the dark corners. Lights, mounted high above, provided what little illumination there was. The human stood on a broad platform that ran the full length of the open area. A deep chasm separated his platform from what appeared to be an identical structure on the other side of the canyon. One of two bridges that had once spanned the gorge was down, leaving only one over which he could passa made-to-order choke point for anyone who wanted to establish an ambush. There wasn't a hell of a lot of choice, so he marched down to the point where the remaining span was anchored, and started across. He hadn't gone more than thirty paces before fifty or sixty infection forms emerged from hiding and danced out to block the way. The Spartan held his position, waited for the Flood forms to come a little closer, and tossed a fragmentation grenade into the center of the group. The cavern ate some of the sound, but the explosive device still managed to produce abang , and the resulting shrapnel laid waste to all but a handful of the creatures. There were two survivors, though, both optimists, who continued to bounce forward in spite of the way in which the rest of the group had been annihilated. A single shotgun blast was sufficient to kill both of them. He slipped some additional shells into the gun's magazine tube, took a deep breath, and moved forward again. He made it about halfway to the other side before a mixed force of combat forms, carrier forms, and infection forms started to gather at the far end of the span. Another grenade inflicted casualties, but they charged him after that, and the Master Chief was forced to retreat, firing the assault weapon as he did so. It was nip and tuck for a few seconds as combat forms launched themselves fifteen meters through the air, carriers charged straight in, and the omnipresent infection forms swarmed through the gaps. Retreating, the Spartan had already reloaded three times before his back hit the wall, and the last combat form collapsed at his feet, started to rise, and took a blast in the head. Once again it was time to reload both weapons, step out onto the gore splattered bridge deck, and attempt another crossing. This one was successful, with only light opposition on the other side, and an opportunity to replenish his ammo. The next set of blast doors opened flawlessly, allowing the Spartan to enter a relatively short section of tunnel that led back to the surface. Determined to use stealth if at all possible, he slipped out of the passageway, scrambled up over the snow embankment to his right, and ran into a group of four Flood. A grenade took care of twoand the assault weapon finished the rest. A Banshee swooped in, burned a long line of dashes into the snow, and continued up the valley. The Chief was surprised to get off so lightly, but given the darkness and all of the confusion, it was possible that the pilot had mistaken him for a combat form. A worthy target, to be sure, but not something to turn around for. Particularly not when the valley was full of combat forms. He was careful to hug the face of the cliff and stay within the cover provided by the boulders and trees that lined the edge of the valley. The incessant thud of automatic weapons and the whine of plasma weapons testified to the intensity of a conflict raging off to his left. Then, just as he was starting to believe that he could slide by without firing a shot, he came up over a slight rise to see that the Covenant and Flood were engaged in hand-to-hand combat within the depression below. A grenade followed with bursts of fire from the MA5B decimated both groups. Snow crunched as the human made his way down through the bloodstained snow, past the spot where a trio of greedy infection forms squabbled over a wounded Elite, and up another rise to a stand of trees where a combat form and a carrier tried to jump him. Both of the Flood staggered as bursts of\n7.62mm slugs cut them down, and they flopped onto the snow. Having broken through the perimeter of the battle, the Master Chief was able to follow the nav indicator into a second valley where he came upon a group of dead Marines, loaded up on ammo, and tried to decide whether to stay with the scatter gun or trade it in for a sniper's rifle or a rocket launcher. It would have been nice to have all three, but that many weapons would be unwieldy, not to mention damned heavy. In the end he went with the rifle and shotgun and hoped it was the right decision. The Spartan checked the Marines for dog tags, discovered that they had already been taken by someone else, and took the time required to drag the bodies into a nearby cave in the hope that the infection forms wouldn't find them. That seemed like a good place to stash the extra weaponsso that's what he did. Then, having followed the second valley to the point where it opened onto athird valley, he came across a now-familiar scene. The Covenant were battling the Flood with everything they had, including Shades, a brace of Ghosts, and two extremely active Wraiths, but the Flood had plenty of bodies to throw back at them and didn't hesitate to do so. What the Chief wanted was the Banshee that was parked at the head of the valley, but in order to get at the aircraft it would be necessary to cut both groups down to size. He stayed right, slipped along the cliff face, made use of a thin screen of trees and boulders to hide his movements from those out toward the center of the valley. Finally, having passed behind a house-sized rock and found a vantage point that allowed him to look out on the area where the vast majority of the Covenant were congregated, the Spartan unlimbered the S2 AM, selected the 10X setting for the scope, and began his bloody work. In this particular situation he selected the softest targets first, starting with the Grunts on the Shades, followed by the outlying Jackals, all in hope that he could inflict a lot of casualties before the Elites took notice and sent the tank to get him. The problem was that the little world inside the scope was all-consuminga fact that caused him to let down his guard. The first hint he had that a Flood form had come up behind him was when it whacked the Spartan in the head. The blow would have killed anyone else, but the armor saved him, and the Chief rolled in the direction of the blow. The long-barreled S2 wasn't well suited for close-in combat but that's what he had in his hands. There was no time to aim as the Flood form charged, only time to fire, and that's what he did. The slug caught the ex-Elite in the chest. The combat form didn't even flinch as the bullet passed through its spongy center of mass. A tiny spurt of gray-green ichor trailed from the entry wound, as the creature swung a vicious blow at the Master Chief. He ducked the attack and dropped the rifle. He dived, tucked into a roll and came up with his sidearm in his hand. He emptied the clip into the beast. One round blew its left arm off, and the final round made a foot-wide exit wound in the Flood's back. He kicked in the creature's chest, crushing the infection form within. He collected the S2, and frowned. He studied the fallen Flood for a moment, and saw that the creature's insides were rapidly liquefying. The velocity of the S2's projectile had passed through the nonvital mass of the creature's chest and just kept going. Another nasty surprise, courtesy of the Flood. After a quick look around to make sure that there weren't anymore surprises lurking in the vicinity, with his heart still beating like a trip-hammer, the Chief went back to his grisly work. Three more Covenant warriors fell before a barrage of fireballs arced high into the air to land all around his position. One came so close that just the bleed off it was enough to push his shielding into the red and trigger the alarm. He pulled back, switched to the assault weapon long enough to ice a couple of overly ambitious Grunts, and switched back to the S2 as he rounded the opposite side of the big boulder. He selected a spot where he could go to work on both the Covenantand the Flood, and settled in. He wanted to nail the Elites now and, thanks to the powerful 14.5mm armor piercing rounds, he could drop most of them with a single shot. Combat forms were a different story, so he switched to the pistol. It was less accurate, but did the job. It wasn't long before more than a dozen bodies were laid out in the snow. But then the word was out. Soon the mortar tank moved into position to bombard his new position, and it was necessary to pull back. The Wraith was a problem, aserious problem, which meant there was only one thing the Spartan could do: hike back to the weapons cache and trade the rifle for the launcher. It was a major pain in the ass, but he didn't have much choice, so he pulled out. It took a full half hour to make the round trip between the valley and the weapons cache, so he expected things to have calmed down a bit by the time he returned. That wasn't the case, however, which suggested that the Flood had thrown even more forms into the battle. The Chief followed his own footprints back to the hiding place next to the big boulder, put the launcher on his shoulder, and hit the zoom. The Wraith, which was busy hurling bombs down valley, seemed to leap forward. As if somehow aware of his presence, the tank spun on its axis, and launched a bomb toward the rock. The Spartan forced himself to ignore the artificial comet, locked onto the target, and triggered the rocket. There was an impact and a loudcrump!\nfollowed by smokebut the Wraith continued to fire nonetheless. Now, with fireballs exploding all around him, the Master Chief had to take a deep breath, hold the tank at the center of his sight, and pull the trigger again. The tube jerked, the second missile ran straight and true, and hit with a loudcraack! The Wraith opened like a red flower, burped pitch-black smoke, and nosed into a snowbank.\n\"Nice shot,\" Cortana said admiringly, \"but watch the Ghost.\"\nIt was good advice, because although the attack vehicle had held back up to that point, it came skittering into sight, opened up with its plasma weapons, and threatened to accomplish what the rest of the Covenant soldiers hadn't. But the Chief had reloaded by then. The rocket tube was the right weapon for the job, and a single missile was sufficient to send the attack vehicle flipping end-for-end to finally wind up with its belly in the air and flames licking at the engine compartment. With that problem out of the way the Chief came to his feet, slapped a fresh load into the launcher, and made a beeline for the Banshee. He was halfway across, with nowhere to hide, when a pair of Hunters emerged from a jumble of boulders. Now, grateful that he still had some rockets, he had no choice but to stop, drop to one knee, and take them on. The first shot was dead on, hit the alien in the chest, and blew the bastard apart. Another rocket flew over the second Hunter's right shoulder and cut a tree in half. The big alien started to lumber across open ground, picking up speed and charging its arm-mounted cannon. It was a waste of ammo to pepper the front end of a Hunter with 7.62mm rounds, and slow though he was, the alien could still bring him down with a blast from his arm-mounted fuel rod cannon. So he put his sight onto a target so big he didn't need to zoom, and let fly. The Hunter saw the missile coming, tried to deflect it with his shield, and failed. Seconds later pieces of warm meat showered the area, melted holes in the snow, and continued to steam. The Chief ran past without a second look, jumped onto the Banshee, and strafed the rest of the Covenant forces on his way down the valley. Judging from the way the nav indicator was oriented, the Spartan needed altitude, a lot of it, so he put the alien attack ship into a steep climb. Finally, when the red delta flipped over, and started to point down, he knew he was high enough. He did a nose-over and caught his first glimpse of the way point below. The surrounding area was dark, and snow continued to fall, but the platform was nicely lit. He lowered the Banshee onto the pad and had just bailed out of the pilot's seat when the Sentinels attacked. \"This is the last one,\" Cortana said. \"The Monitor will do anything to stop us.\"\nThe Chief blew three of the pesky machines out of the air, backed through the hatch, and let the door close on the rest.\n\"We're close,\" the AI commented. \"The generator is up ahead.\"\nThe Chief nodded, stepped out into a room, and felt a laser burn across the front of his armor. It seemed that the Monitor had posted Sentinelsinside the complex, as well. Not only that, but these machines had benefit of intermittent force fields, which were resistant to automatic weapons fire. Still, he had a couple of 102mm surprises in store for the electromechanical enforcers, which he fired into the center of the hovering pack. Three Sentinels were blown out of the air. A fourth did loops as it tried to rid itself of a plasma grenade, failed, and took another machine with it. The fifth and sixth succumbed to a hail of bullets as their shields recharged, while the seventh slammed into a wall, crashed to the floor, and was busy trying to lift off again when the Chief stomped it to death. The way was clear at that point and the Spartan was quick to take advantage of it. A few quick strides were sufficient to carry him into the central chamber where he was free to approach the final pulse generator.\n\"Final target neutralized,\" Cortana said as the noncom stepped back a few moments later. \"Let's get out of here.\"\n\"Let's find a ride and get to the Captain,\" the Chief agreed, as he prepared to leave.\n\"No, that'll take too long.\"\n\"Do you have a better idea?\"\n\"There's a teleportation grid that runs around Halo. That's how the Monitor moves about so quickly,\" the AI explained. \"I learned how to tap into the grid when I was in the Control Center.\"\n\"So,\" the Chief asked, somewhat annoyed, \"why didn't you justteleport us to the pulse generators?\"\n\"I can't. Unfortunately, each jump requires a rather consequential expenditure of energy, and I don't have access to Halo's power systems to reroute the energy we need.\" She paused, then reluctantly continued. \"There may be another way, however.\"\nThe Spartan frowned and shook his head. \"Something tells me I'm not going to like this.\"\n\"I'm pretty sure I can pull the energy we need from your suit withoutpermanently damaging your shield system or the armor's power cells,\" Cortana continued. \"Needless to say, I think we should only try this once.\"\n\"Agreed. Tap into the Covenant network and see if you can find him. If we've only got one shot at this, we should make it a good one.\" There was a pause as Cortana worked her magic with the intrusion and scan software. A moment later, she exclaimed, \"I've got a good lock on Captain Keyes' CNI transponder signal. He's alive! And the implants are intact!\nThere's some interference from the cruiser's damaged reactor. I'll bring us in as close as I can.\"\n\"Do it,\" the Master Chief growled. \"Let's get this over with.\"\nNo sooner had the Spartan spoken than bands of golden light started to ripple down over his armor, the now-familiar feeling of nausea returned, and the Master Chief seemed to vanish through the floor. Once he was gone only a few motes of amber light remained to mark his passing. Then, after a few seconds, they too disappeared.\n\n\nCHAPTER ELEVEN D+73:34:16 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) /\nOn board theTruth and Reconciliation . He wasn't here, wasn't there, wasn'tanywhere insofar as the Chief could tell from within the strange never-never land of Halo's teleportation net. He couldn't see or hear anything, save a sense of dizzying velocity. The Spartan felt his body stitched back together, one molecule at a time. He saw snatches of what looked like the interior of a Covenant ship as bands of golden light strobed up and disappeared over his head. Something was wrong and he was just starting to figure out what it wasthe inside of the ship seemed to be upside downwhen he flipped head over heels and crashed to the deck. He'd materialized with his feet planted firmly on the corridor's ceiling.\n\"Oh!\" Cortana exclaimed. \"I see, the coordinate data needs to be\"\nThe Chief came to his feet, slapped the general area where his implants were, and shook his head. The AI sounded contrite. \"Right. Sorry.\" \"Never mind that,\" the Spartan said. \"Give me a sit-rep.\"\nShe patched back into the Covenant computing systems, a much easier task now that they were aboard one of the enemy's warships.\n\"The Covenant network is absolute chaos,\" she replied. \"From what I've been able to piece together, the leadership ordered all ships to abandon Halo when they found the Flood, but they were too late. The Flood overwhelmed this cruiser and captured it.\"\n\"I assume,\" he said, \"that'sbad .\"\n\"The Covenant think so. They're terrified that the Flood will repair the ship and use it to escape from Halo. They sent a strike team to neutralize the Flood and prepare the ship for immediate departure.\"\nThe Chief peered down the corridor. The bulkheads were violet. Or was that lavender? Strange patterns marbled the material, like the oily sheen of a beetle's carapace. Whatever it was, he didn't care for it, especially on a military vessel, but who knew? Maybe the Covenant thought olive drab was for wimps. He started forward, but quickly came up short as a voice that verged on a groan came in over his implants.\"Chief . . . Don't be a fool . . . Leave me.\"\nIt was Keyes' voice.\n\nKeyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK. He clung to the tether of his CNI carrier wave, and \"heard\" familiar voices. An iron-hard, rasping male voice. A tart, warm female voice. He knew them. Was this another memory?\nHe was struggling to dredge up new pieces of his past to delay the numbing advance of the alien presence in his mind. It was harder to maintain a grasp on who he was, as the various pieces of his lifethe things that made him who he waswere stripped away, one at a time. Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK. The voices. They were talking about him. The Master Chief, the AI Cortana. He felt a sense of mounting panic. They shouldn'tbe here. The other grew stronger, and pressed forward, eager to learn more about these creatures that were so important to the struggling prisoner who clung so stubbornly to identity. Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK. Chief, Cortana, you shouldn't have come. Don't be a fool. Leave me. Get out of here. Run. The presence descended, and he could feel its anticipation of victory. It wouldn't be long now.\n\n\"Captain?\" Cortana inquired desperately. \"Captain!I've lost him.\"\nNeither one of them said anything further. The pain in Keyes' voice had been clear. All they could do was drive deeper into the ship and hope to find him. The Chief passed through a hatch, noticed that the right bulkhead was splattered with Covenant blood, and figured a battle had been fought there. That meant he could expect to run into the Flood at any moment. As he continued down the passageway his throat felt unusually dry, his heart beat a little bit faster, and his stomach muscles were tight. His suspicions were soon confirmed as he heard the sounds of battle, took a right, and saw that a firefight was underway at the far end of the corridor. He let the combatants go at it for a bit before moving in to cut the survivors down. From there he took a left, followed by a right, and came to a hatch. It opened to reveal a black hole with jagged edges. Farther back, beyond the drop off,another firefight was underway. \"Analyzing data,\" Cortana said. \"This hole was caused by some sort of explosion . . . All I detect down there are pools of coolant. We should continue our search somewhere else.\"\nThe AI's advice made sense, so the Spartan turned to retrace his steps. Then, as he took the first left, all hell broke loose. Cortana said, \"Warning! Threat level increasing!\" and then, as if to prove her point, a mob of Flood came straight at him. He fired, retreated, and fired again. Carrier forms exploded in a welter of shattered flesh, severed tentacles, and green slime. Combat forms rushed forward as if eager to die, danced under the impact of the 7.62mm rounds, and flew apart. Infection forms skittered across the decks, leaped into the air, and shattered into flaps of flying flesh. But there were too many, far too many for one person to handle, and even as the Chief heard Cortana say something about the black hole he accidentally backed into it, fell about twenty meters, and plunged feetfirst into a pond of green liquid. Not in the ship, but somewhere under it, on the surface below. The coolant wasso cold that he could feel it through his armor. It was thick, toowhich made it more difficult to move. The Master Chief felt his boots hit bottom, knew the weight of his armor would hold him in place, and marched up onto what had become a beach of sorts. The cavern was dark, lit mostly by the luminescent glow produced by the coolant itself, although streaks of plasma fire slashed back and forth up ahead, punctuated by the steadythud, thud, thud of an automatic weapon.\n\"Let's get out of here,\" Cortana said, \"and find another way back aboard the ship.\"\nHe moved up toward the edge of the conflict and let the combatants hammer each other for a bit before lobbing a grenade into the mix, waiting for the body parts to fall, and strafing what was left. Then, having moved forward, he was forced to fight his way through a series of narrow, body-strewn passageways as what seemed like an inexhaustible supply of Flood forms came at him from every possible direction. Eventually, having made his way through grottoes of coolant, and past piles of corpses, Cortana said, \"We should headthis waytoward the ship's gravity lift,\" and the Spartan saw a nav pointer appear on his HUD. He followed the red arrow around a bend to a ledge above a coolant-filled basin. Even as he watched, a dozen carrier forms marched up out of the green lagoon to attack a group of hard-pressed Covenant soldiers. The Spartan knew there was no way in hell that he'd be able to force his way throughthat mess, turned, and made his way back down the trail. A sniper rifle, just one of hundreds of weapons scattered around the area, was half obscured by a headless combat form. The petty officer removed the rifle, checked to ensure that it was loaded, and returned to the overlook. Then, careful to make each shot count, he opened fire. The Elites, Jackals, and Grunts went down fairly easily. But the Flood forms, especially the carriers, were practically impossible to kill with this particular weapon. With few exceptions the heavy round seemed to pass right through the lumpy-looking bastards without causing any harm whatsoever. When all of the 14.5mm ammo was gone, the Chief went back for the shotgun, jumped into the green liquid, and waded up onto the shoreline. He heard an obscene sucking noise, saw an infection form trying to enter an Elite's chest cavity, and blew both of them away. After that there was more clean-up to do as some combat forms took a run at the human and a flock of infection forms tried to roll him under. Repeated doses of shotgun fire turned out to be just what the doctor orderedthe area was soon littered with severed tentacles and scraps of wet flesh. A pitch-black passageway led him back to another pool where he arrived just in time to see the Flood overrun a Shade and the Elite who was seated at the controls. The Spartan began firing, already backpedaling, when the Flood spotted him and hopped, waddled, and jumped forward. He fired, reloaded, and fired again. Always retreating, always on the defensive, always hoping for a respite. This wasn't his kind of fight. Spartans were designed as offensive weapons, but ever since they'd landed on the ring, he'd been on the run. He had to find a way to take the offensive, and soon. There was no break in the endless wall of Flood attackers. He fired until his weapons were empty, pried energy weapons out of dead fingers, and fired those until they were dry. Finally, more by virtue of stubbornness than anything else, and having reacquired human weapons from dead combat forms, the Master Chief found himself standing all alone, rifle raised, with no one to shoot at. He felt a powerful sense of elationhe wasalive . It was a moment he couldn't take time to enjoy. Eager to reboard the cruiser and find Captain Keyes, he made his way back along the path he had been forced to surrender to the Flood, passed the Shade, rounded a bend, and saw a couple dozen infection forms materialize out of the darkness ahead. A plasma grenade strobed the night, pulverized their bodies, and produced a satisfyingboom! It was still echoing off the canyon walls as the human eased his way through a narrow passage and emerged at one end of a hotly contested pool. About fifty meters away the Covenant and Flood surged back and forth, traded fire with each other, and appeared to be on the verge of hand-to-tentacle combat. Two well-thrown grenades cut the number of hostiles in half. The MA5B took care of the rest.\n\"There's the gravity lift!\" Cortana said. \"It's still operational. That's our way back in.\"\nIt sounded simple, but as the Master Chief looked up at the hill on which the lift was sited, well-aimed plasma fire lashed down to scorch the rock at his right elbow. It glowed as the human was forced to pull back, wait for a lull, and dash forward again. Looking ahead, he spotted the point where a group of hard-pressed Covenant were trying to bar a group of Flood from making their way up a path toward the top of the hill and the foot of the gravity lift. It was a last stand, and the Covenant knew it. They fought harder than he'd ever seen the aliens fight. He felt a moment of kinship with the Covenant soldiers. He stood and threw two grenades into the middle of the melee, waited for the twin explosions and went in shooting. An Elite sent plasma stuttering into the night sky as he fell over backward, a combat form swung a Jackal's arm like a club, and a pair of infection forms rode a Grunt down into the pool of coolant. It was a madness, a scene straight from hell, and the human had little choice but to kill everything that moved. As the last bodies crumpled to the ground, the Spartan was free to follow the steadily rising path upward, turn to the right, and enter the lift's footprint. He felt static electricity crackle around his armor, and heard plasma shriek through the air as a distant Covenant took exception to his plans. Then the Chief was gone, pulled upward, into the belly of the beast.\n\nKeyes? Keyes, Jacob. Yes, that was it. Wasn't it?\nHe couldn't rememberthere was nothing left now but navigation protocols, defense plans. And a duty to keep them safe. A droning buzz filled his mind. He vaguely remembered hearing it before, but didn't know what it was. It pressed in, hungry.\n\nMetal rang under her boots as McKay jumped down off the last platform onto the huge metal grating. It shivered in response. The trip down from the mesa had taken more than fifteen minutes. First, she had taken the still functional lift down to the point where she and her troops had forced their way into the butte, back when the Covenant still occupied it, then transferred to the circular staircase, which, like the rifling on the inside of a gun barrel, wound its way down to the bottom of the shaft and the barrier under her feet.\n\"Good to see you, ma'am,\" a Private said, as he materialized at her elbow.\n\"Sergeant Lister would like to speak with you.\"\nMcKay nodded, said \"Thanks,\" and made her way over to the far side of the grating where the so-called Entry Team were gathered into a tight little group next to an assemblage of equipment that had been lowered from above. A portable work light glowed at the very center of the assemblage and threw huge shadows up onto the walls around them. Bodies parted as McKay approached, and Lister, who was down on his hands and knees, jumped to his feet. \"Ten-hut!\"\nEveryone came to attention. McKay noticed the way that the long hours and constant stress had pared what little bit of extra flesh there was off the noncom's face, leaving it gaunt and haggard. \"As you were. How does it look? Any contact?\"\n\"No, ma'am,\" Lister responded, \"not yet. But take a look atthis .\"\nA Navy tech directed a handheld spotlight down through the grating and the officer knelt to get a better look. The stairs, which had ended on the far side of the platform, appeared to pick up again just below the grating and circled into the darkness below.\n\"Look at the metal,\" Lister prompted, \"and look at what's piled up on the stairs below.\"\nMcKay looked, saw that the thick metal crosspieces had been twisted out of shape, and saw a large pile of weapons below. No human ordnance as far as she could tell, just Covenant, which was to say plasma weapons. With no cutting torches to call upon, not yet anyway, it looked as though the Flood had depleted at least a hundred energy pistols and rifles in a futile attempt to cut their way through the grating. Given some more time, say another day or two, they might have succeeded.\n\"You've got to give the bastards credit,\" McKay said grimly. \"They never give up. Well, neither do we. Let's cut this sucker open, go down, and lock the back door.\"\nLister said, \"Ma'am, yes ma'am,\" but there were none of the usual gung-ho responses from the others who stood around him. It was dark down there and nightmares lay in wait.\n\nOnce inside thePillar of Autumn , 'Zamamee and Yayap found conditions to be both better and worse than they had expected. Consistent with the Grunt's predictions, the officer in chargean overworked Elite named 'Ontomee had been extremely glad to see them, and wasted little time placing\n'Zamamee in charge of twenty Jackals, with Yayap as senior NCO. That, plus the fact that the security detachment had a reasonable amount of supplies, including methane, meant that basic physical needs had been met. That was the good news. The bad news was that 'Zamamee, now known as Huki 'Umamee, lived in constant fear that an Elite who knew either him or the recently deceased commando he had decided to impersonate would come along and reveal histrue identity, or that the Prophets would somehow pluck the information out of thin air, as they were rumored to be able to do. These fears caused the officer to lay low, stay out of sight, and delegate most of his leadership responsibilities to Yayap. This would have been annoying but acceptable where a contingent of Grunts was concerned, but was made a great deal more difficult by the fact that the Jackals saw themselves as being superior to the \"gas suckers,\" and were anything but pleased when they found themselves reporting to Yayap. Then, as if to add to the Grunt's woes, the Flood had located thePillar of Autumn , and while they were unable to infiltrate the vessel via any of the maintenance ways that ran back and forth just below the ring world's surface, they had become adept at entering the vessel through rents in its severely damaged hull, the air locks where lifeboats had once been docked, and on one memorable occasion via one of the Covenant's own patrols, which had been ambushed, turned into combat forms, and sent back into the ship. The ruse had been detected, but only after some of the \"contaminated\"\nsoldiers were inside the vessel. A few of them were still at large, somewhere within the human vessel. As the Grunt and his group of surly Jackals stood guard in theAutumn 's shuttle bay, a dropship loaded with supplies circled over the downed ship, asked for and received the necessary clearances, and swooped in for a landing. Yayap eyed his recalcitrant troops, saw that three of them had drifted away from their preassigned positions, and used his radio to herd them back. \"Jak, Bok, and Yeg, we have a shuttle coming in. Focus on the dropshipnot the area outside.\"\nThe Jackals were too smart to say anything over the radio, but the Grunt knew they were grumbling among themselves as they returned to their various stations and the ship settled onto the blast-scarred deck.\n\"Watch the personnel slots,\" Yayap cautioned his troops, referring to the small compartments that lined the outside surfaces of the shuttle's twin hulls. \"They could be packed with Flood.\" In spite of the resentment he felt, Bok touched a switch and opened all of the slots for inspection, a new security procedure instituted three days before. The compartments were empty. The Jackals sniggered, and there was nothing Yayap could do but suffer through the indignity of it. With that formality out of the way, a crew of Grunts moved in to unload supplies from the cargo compartments that lined theinside surface of the dropship's hulls, and towed the heavily loaded antigrav pallets out onto the deck. Then, with the unloading process complete, the shuttle rose on its grav field, turned toward the hatch, and passed out into bright sunlight. The cargo crew checked the label on each cargo container to see where it was supposed to go, gabbled at one another, and were about to tow the pallets away when Yayap intervened.\n\"Stop! I want you to open those cargo mods one at a time. Make sure they contain what they're supposed to.\"\nIf the previous order had been unpopular, this one met with out-and-out rebellion, as Bok decided to take Yayap on. \"You're no Elite! We're under orders to deliver this stuffnow . If we're late, they'll take our heads.\" He paused and clicked his beak meaningfully. \"And our kin will takeyours , gas-sucker.\"\nThe Jackals, all of whom were enjoying the interchange to the maximum, looked at each other and grinned.\n'Zamamee should have been there, should have been giving the orders, and Yayap cursed the officer from the bottom of his heart. \"No,\" he replied stubbornly. \"Nothing leaves here until it has been checked. That's the new process. The Elites were the ones who came up with it, not me. So open them up and we'll get you and your crew out of here.\"\nThe other alien grumbled, but knew the rule-happy Elites would back Yayap, and turned to his crew. \"All right, you heard Field Master Gas sucker. Let's get this over with.\"\nYayap sighed, ordered his Jackals to form a giant U with the open end toward the cargo containers, and took his own place in the line. What ensued was boring to say the least, as each cargo module was opened, closed, and towed out of the way. Finally, with only three containers left to go, Bok undogged a hatch, pulled the door open, and disappeared under an avalanche of infection forms. One of the attacking pods grabbed onto the Jackal's head, wrapped its tentacles around the creature's skull, drove a penetrator down through his throat, and had already tapped into the soldier's spine by the time Yayap yelled, \"Fire!\" and the rest of the Jackals opened up. Nothing could live where the twenty plasma beams convergedand most of the infection forms were dead within two or three heartbeats. But Yayap thought he detected motionbehind the mist created by the exploding pus pods and lobbed a plasma grenade into the cargo module. There was a flash of green-yellow light as the device went off, followed by a resonantboom! as it detonated. The cargo container shook like a thing possessed, and chunks of raw meat flew out to spray the deck with gore. It was clear that three, or maybe even four combat forms had been hiding in the cargo compartment, hoping to enter the ship. Now, as the last of the infection forms popped, a momentary silence settled over the shuttle bay. Bok's corpse smoldered on the deck.\n\"That was close,\" the Jackal named Jak said. \"Those stupid gassers damned near got us killed. Good thing our file leader kept 'em in line.\" The soldiers to either side of the former critic nodded solemnly. Yayap, who was close enough to hear the comment, wasn't sure whether to be angry or pleased. Somehow, for better or for worse, he'd been elevated to the position of honorary Jackal.\n\nA full company of heavily armed Marines waited as torches cut through the metal grating, sparks fell into the stygian blackness below, and each man or woman considered what awaited them. Would they survive? Or leave their bones in the bottom of the hole? There was no way to know. Meanwhile, thirty meters away, two officers stood by themselves. McKay had borne far more than her fair share of the burden ever since the drop. Silva was aware of that and regretted it. Part of the problem stemmed from the fact that she was his XO, an extremely demanding position that could burn even the most capable officer out. But the truth was McKay was a better leader than her peers, as evidenced by the fact that the Helljumpers would follow her anywhere, even into a pit that might be filled with life devouring monstrosities. But everyone had their limits, even an officer like McKay, and the Major knew she was close to reaching them. He could see it in the grim contours of her once rounded face, the empty staring eyes, and the set of her mouth. The problem wasn't one of strengthshe was the toughest, most hard-core Marine he knewbut one of hope. Now, as he prepared to send her below, Silva knew she needed somethingreal to fight for, something more than patriotism, something that would allow her to get at least some of the Marines to safety. That, plus the possibility that something could happen to him, lay behind the briefing that ensued.\n\"So,\" Silva began, \"go down, get the lay of the land, and see if you can slam the door on those bastards. Forty-eight hours of Flood-free operation would be ideal, but twenty-four would be sufficient, because we'll be out of here by then.\"\nMcKay had been looking over Silva's shoulder, but the last sentence brought her eyes back to his. Silva saw the movement and knew he had connected. \"\n'Out of here,' sir? Where would we go?\"\n\"Home,\"Silva said confidently, \"to brass bands, medals, and promotions all around. Then, with the credibility earned here, we'll have the opportunity to create anarmy of Helljumpers, and push the Covenant back into whatever hole they evolved from.\"\n\"And the Flood?\" McKay asked, her eyes searching his face. \"What about them?\"\n\"They're going to die,\" Silva replied. \"The AIs managed to link up a few hours ago. It turns out that the Chief is alive, Cortana is with him, and they're trying to rescue Keyes. Once they have him they're going to rig theAutumn to blow. The explosion will destroy Halo and everything on it. I'm not a fan of the Spartan program, you know that, but I've got to give the bastard credit. He's one helluva soldier.\"\n\"It sounds good,\" McKay said cautiously. \"But how do we get off before the ring blows?\"\n\"Ah,\" Silva replied. \"That's wheremy idea comes in. While you're down cleaning out the sewers, I'll be up top, making the preparations necessary to take theTruth and Reconciliation away from the Covenant. She's spaceworthy now, and Cortana can fly her, or, if all else fails, we'll let Wellsley take a crack at it. It would be a stretchbut he might be able to pull it off.\n\"Imagine! Arriving back on Earth in a Covenant cruiser, packed with Covie technology, and loaded with data on Halo! The response will be incredible!\nThe human race needs a victory right now, and we'll give them a big one.\"\nIt was then, as McKay looked into the other officer's half-lit face, that she realized the extent to which raw ambition motivated her superior's actions, and knew that even if his wildest dreams were to come true, she wouldn't want any part of the glory that Silva sought. Just getting some Marines home alivethatwould be reward enough for her. An old soldier's adage flashed across her mind: \"Never share a foxhole with a hero.\" Glory and promotion were fine, but right now, she'd settle forsurvival , plain and simple.\n\nFirst there was a loud clang, followed by the birth of six blue-white suns, which illuminated the inside surface of the shaft as they fell to the filth encrusted floor below. Then the invaders dropped, not one at a time down the stairs as the infection forms might have assumed, but half a dozen all at once, dangling on ropes. They landed within seconds of each other, knelt with weapons at the ready, and faced outward. Each Helljumper wore a helmet equipped with two lights and a camera. With simple back and forth movements of their heads, the soldiers created overlapping scans of the walls which were transmitted up to the grating above, and from there to the mesa. McKay stood on the grating, eyed the raw footage on a portable monitor, and saw that four large arches penetrated the perimeter of the shaft and would need to be sealed in order to prevent access to the circular stairway. There was no sign of the Flood.\n\"Okay,\" the officer said, \"we have four holes to seal. I want those plugs at the bottom of the shaft thirty from now. I'm going down.\"\nEven as McKay spoke, and dropped into the hole which had been cut into the center of the grate, Wellsley was calculating the exact dimensions of each arch so that Navy techs could fabricate metal \"plugs\" that could be lowered to the bottom of the shaft, manhandled into position, and welded into place. Within a matter of minutes computer-generated outlines were lasered onto metal plates, torches were lit, and the cutting began. McKay felt her boots touch solid ground, and took her first look around. Now, finally able to see the surroundings with her own eyes, the Company Commander realized that a bas relief mural circled the lower part of the shaft. She wanted to go look at it, to run her fingers across the grime-caked images recorded there, but knew she couldn't, not without compromising the defensive ring and placing herself in jeopardy.\n\"Contact!\" one of the Marines said urgently. \"I saw something move.\"\n\"Hold your fire,\" McKay said cautiously, her voice echoing off the walls.\n\"Conserve ammo until we have clear targets.\"\nAs soon as she'd given the \"hold fire\" order, the Flood gushed out into the shaft. McKay screamed: \"Now! Pull!\" and seven well-anchored winches jerked the entire team into the air and out of reach. The Marines fired as they ascended. One Helljumper screamed curses at the combat form who was leading the charge. The loudmouthed Marine dropped his clip, loaded a fresh one into his rifle, and shouldered the weapon to resume fire. The combat form he'd been shooting leaped fifteen meters into the air, wrapped his legs around the Marine's waist, and caved in the side of the soldier's head with a rock. Then, with the fallen Marine's assault weapon slung over his shoulder, the creature climbed the rope like an oversized monkey, and raced for the platform above. Lister, who still stood on the grating above, aimed his pistol straight down, put three rounds through the top of the combat form's skull, saw the form fall backward into the milling mass below, and watched it disappear under the tide of alien flesh.\n\"Let'smove , people!\" the noncom said. \"Raise the bait, and drop the bombs.\"\nEnergy bolts stuttered upward as the winches whirred, the Helljumpers rose, and twenty grenades fell through the grating and into the mob below.Not fragmentation grenades, which would have thrown shrapnel up at the Helljumpers, but plasma grenades, which burned as the Flood congregated around them, then went off in quick succession. They vaporized most of the gibbering monsters and left the rest vulnerable to a round of gunfire and a second dose of grenades. Ten minutes later word came down that the plugs were ready, and a larger combat team was sent down, followed by four teams of techs. The arches were blocked without incident, the shaft was sealed, and the grating was repaired. Not forever, but for the next day or so, and that was all that mattered.\n\nThe Master Chief arrived at the top of the gravity lift and fought his way through a maze of passageways and compartments, occupied by Flood and Covenant alike. He rounded a corner and saw an open hatch ahead. \"It looks like a shuttle bay,\" Cortana commented. \"We should be able to reach the Control Room from the third level.\"\nThe CNI link that Cortana followed served to deliver a new message from the Captain. The voice was weak, and sounded slurred.\"I gave you an order, soldier, now pull out!\"\n\"He's delirious,\" Cortana said, \"in pain. We have to find him!\"\n\n. . . pull out! I gave you an order, soldier! The thought echoed in what was left of Keyes' ravaged mind. The invading presence descended. It could tell this one was nearly expendedno more energy left to fight. It pushed in on the memories that the creature so jealously guarded, and recoiled at the sudden resistance, a defiance of terrible strength. Keyes clutched at the last of his vital memories, andinside his mind, where there was no one but he and the creature that attempted to absorb himscreamedNO!\nDeath, held in abeyance for so long, refused to rush in. Slowly, like the final drops of water from a recently closed faucet, his life force was absorbed.\n\nWith the memory of the voice to spur him on, the Master Chief made his way out onto a gallery over the shuttle bay, found that a pitched battle was in progress, and lobbed two grenades into the center of the conflict. They had the desired effect, but also signaled the human's presence, and the Flood came like iron filings drawn to a magnet. The Flood onslaught was intense, and the Spartan was forced to retreat into the passageway whence he had come in order to concentrate the targets, buy some time, and reload his weapons. The pitched firefight ended, and he sprinted for the far side of the gallery and passed through an open hatch. He fought his way up to the next level of the gallery, where the Flood appeared to be holding a convention at the far end of the walkway. The Chief was fresh out of grenades by then, which meant he had to clear the path the hard way. A carrier form exploded, and sent a cluster of combat forms crashing to the ground. The burst carrier spewed voracious infection forms in every direction, and collapsed as one of the fallen combat forms hopped forward, dragging a broken leg behind him, hands clutching a grenade as if it were a bouquet of flowers. The Spartan backed away, fired a series of ten-round bursts, and gave thanks when the grenade exploded. The carrier had given him an ideawhen they blew, they went up in a big way. A second of the creatures scuttled into view, and made its ungainly way forward, accompanied by a wave of infection forms and two more combat forms. He used his pistol scope to survey the combat forms and was gratified that they fit the bill: Each carried plasma grenades. He stepped into view, and the combat forms instantly vaulted high in the air. As soon as their feet left the deck, the Chief dropped and fireddirectly at the carrier. The Spartan's aim was perfectas soon as they passed over the carrier, it burst, and ignited the plasma grenades the combat forms carried. They all went up in a blue-white flash of destructive energy.\n\"The Control Room should bethis way,\" Cortana said as he charged ahead, eager to keep them moving in the right direction. He moved fast, advancing across the blood-slicked floor, and followed Cortana's new nav coordinates toward the still-distant hatch. He passed through the opening, followed the corridor to an intersection, took a right, a left, and was passing through a door when a horrible groan was heard over the link.\n\"The Captain!\" Cortana said. \"His vitals are fading! Please Chief, hurry.\"\nThe Spartan charged into a passageway packed with both Covenant and Flood, and sprayed the tangle of bodies with bullets. He kept running at top speed, sprinting past enemies and ignoring their hasty snap-shots. Time was of the essence; Keyes was fading fast. He made it to the CNI's carrier wave source: the cruiser's Control Room. The lighting was subdued, with hints of blue, and reflections off the metal surfaces. Thick, sturdy columns framed the ramp which led up to an elevated platform, where something strange stood. He thought it was a carrier at first glance, but soon realized that the creature was far too large for that. It boasted spines that connected it to the ceiling overhead, like thick, gray-green spiderwebs. There were no signs of opposition, not yet anyway, which left him free to make his way up the ramp with his rifle at the ready. As he moved closer the Chief realized that the new Flood form washuge . If it was aware of the human presence, the creature gave no sign of it, and continued to study a large holo panel as if committing the information displayed there to memory.\n\"No human life signs detected,\" Cortana observed cautiously. She paused, and added: \"The Captain's life signs just stopped.\"\nDamn. \"What about the CNI?\" he asked.\n\"Still transmitting.\"\nThen the Chief noticed a bulge in the monster's side, and realized that he was looking at an impression of the Naval officer's grotesquely distorted face. The AI said, \"The Captain! He's one ofthem !\"\nThe Spartan realized then that he already knew that,had known it ever since he had seen Jenkins' video, but was unwilling to accept it.\n\"We can't let the Flood get off this ring!\" Cortana said desperately. \"You know what he'd expect . . . What he'd want us to do.\"\nYes,the Chief thought.I know my duty. They needed to blow theAutumn 's engines to destroy Halo and the Flood. To do that, they needed the Captain's neural implants. The Master Chief drew his arm back, formed his hand into a stiff-fingered armored shovel, and made use of his enormous strength to plunge the crude instrument into the Flood form's bloated body. There was momentary resistance as he punched his way through the creature's skin and penetrated the Captain's skull to enter the half-dissolved brain that lay within. Then, with his hand buried in the form's seemingly nerveless body, he felt for and found Keyes' implants. The Chief's hand made a popping sound as it pulled out of the wound. He shook the spongy gore onto the deck and slipped the chips into empty slots in his armor.\n\"It's done,\" Cortana said somberly. \"I have the code. We should go. We need to get back to thePillar of Autumn . Let's go back to the shuttle bay and find a ride.\"\nAs if summoned by the lethargic beast that stood in front of the ship's controls, a host of Flood poured into the room, all of whom were clearly determined to kill the heavily armored invader. A flying wedge comprised of carrier and combat forms stormed the platform, pushed the human back, and soaked up his bullets as if eager to receive them. Finally, more by chance than design, the Spartan backed off the command deck and plummeted to the deck below. That bought a moment of respite. There wasn't much time, though, just enough to hustle up out of the channel that ran parallel to the platform above, reload both of his weapons, and put his back into a corner. The hordereally came for him then, honking, gibbering, and gurgling, climbing up over the bodies that were mounded in front of them, careless of casualties, willing to pay whatever price he required. The storm of gunfire put out by the MJOLNIR-clad soldier wastoo powerful,too well aimed, and the Flood started to wilt, stumble, and fall, many giving up their lives only inches from the Spartan's blood-drenched boots, clawing at his ankles. He gave thanks as the last combat form collapsed, relished the silence that settled over the room, and took a moment to reload both of his weapons.\n\"Are you okay?\" Cortana asked hesitantly, both grateful and amazed by the fact that the Chief was still on his feet. He thought of Captain Keyes.\n\"No,\" the Spartan replied. \"Let's get the hell out of here and finish these bastards off.\"\nHe was numb from creeping exhaustion, hunger, and combat. The planned escape route back to the shuttle bay was littered with Flood and Covenant alike. The Spartan moved almost as if he was on autopilothe simply killed and killed and killed.\n\nThe bay was filled with Covenant forces. A dropship had deployed fresh troops into the bay and bugged out. A pair of amped-up Elites patrolled near the Banshee at the base of the bay. All the possibilities raced through his weary mind. What if that particular machine was in for repairs? What if an Elite took over the Shade and gunned him down? What if some bright light decided to close the outer doors?\nBut none of those fears were realized as the aircraft came to life, turned toward the planet that hung outside the bay doors, and raced into the night. Energy beams followed, and tried to bring the Banshee down, but ultimately fell short. They were free once more.\n\n\nSECTION VI THE MAW\n\nCHAPTER TWELVE D+76:18:56 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) /\nCommandeered Banshee, on approach to the Pillar of Autumn . The Banshee screamed through a narrow valley and out over an arid wasteland. The assault ship's shadow raced ahead as if eager to reach thePillar of Autumn first. The Master Chief felt the slipstream fold in behind the aircraft's nose and tug at his armor. It felt good to be out of twisting corridors and cramped compartments if only for a short while. The first sign of the ship's presence on the ring world's surface was the hundred-meter-deep trench theAutumn 's hull had carved into Halo's skin. It started where the cruiser had first touched down, vanished where the vessel had bounced into the air, and reappeared a half klick farther on. From there the depression ran straight as an arrow to the point where the starship had finally come to rest with its blunt bow protruding out over the edge of a massive cliff. There were other aircraft in the area as well, all of which belonged to the Covenant, and they had no reason to suspect the incoming Banshee. Not yet, at any rate. The Spartan, who was eager to make his approach look normal, chose one of the many empty lifeboat bays that lined the starship's starboard side, and bored in. Unfortunately the engine cut out at the last moment, the Banshee hit theAutumn 's hull, and although the Spartan was able to bail out, the alien fighter fell to the rocks below.Not the low visibility arrival he had hoped for. Still, given Cortana's plans for the vessel, his presence wouldn't remain secret for long anyway.\n\"We need to get to the bridge,\" Cortana said. \"From there we can use the Captain's neural implants to initiate an overload of the ship's fusion engines. The explosion should damage enough systems below it to destroy the ring.\"\n\"Shouldn't be a problem,\" the Chief commented as he made his way toward the tiny air lock. \"I don't know who's better at blowing things upyou or me.\"\nThe moment he stepped outside he saw a cluster of red dots appear on his motion detector and knew some nasties were lurking off to his left. The only question was,which hostiles did he facethe Covenant or the Flood? Given a choice, he'd take the Covenant. Maybe, just maybe, the Flood hadn't located the ship yet. The passageway ended to the right, which meant he had little choice but to turn left. But, rather than run into the Covenant or the Flood, the Spartan came under attack from a flock of Sentinels.\n\"Uh-oh,\" Cortana said as the noncom opened fire, \"it looks like the Monitor knows where we are.\"\nI wonder if he knows what we're up to,the Chief mused. A robot exploded, another hit the deck with a loud clang, and the Master Chief shifted fire to a third. \"Yeah, he's after my head, but it'syou that he really wants.\"\nThe AI made no reply as the third machine explodedand the Chief made his way down the hall using the lifeboat bays for cover. Two additional Sentinels appeared, were blown out of the air, and turned into scrap. Soon after that they arrived at the end of the corridor, took a right, and spotted an open maintenance hatch. Not ideal, since he didn't relish the thought of having to negotiate such tight quarters, but there didn't seem to be any other choice. So he ducked inside, found himself in a maze, and blundered about for a while before spotting a hatch set flush into the deck in front of him. That's when a group of infection forms swarmed up out of the hole, and the Chief's question was answered. It appeared that the Floodhad located theAutumn and already taken up residence there. He swore under his breath, backed away, and hosed the Flood with bullets. He eased forward and looked down through the floor hatch. He saw a carrier form, and knew there were bound to be more. He dropped a plasma grenade down through the hole, backed away, and took a certain amount of pleasure in the ensuing explosion. The maintenance tunnels didn't seem to be taking him where he needed to go, so he dropped through the hole, crushed a handful of infection forms, and shot two more. The blood-splattered corridor was messy but well lit. He pried open a wall-mounted locker, and was pleased to find four frag grenades and spare ammo. He quickly stowed them, and moved on. Two Sentinels nosed around a corner, opened fire with their lasers, and got what they deserved. \"They might have been looking for us,\" Cortana observed, \"but it's my guess that they were assigned to Flood control.\"\nThe theory made sense, but didn't really help much as the Master Chief was forced to fight the Sentinels, the Flood,and the Covenant, while he made his way through a series of passageways and into the ship's heavily damaged mess, where a large contingent of Elites and Grunts were waiting to have him for lunch. There were a lot of them, too many to handle with the assault weapon alone, so he served up a couple of grenades. One of the Elites was blown to pieces by the overlapping explosions, another lost a leg, and a Grunt was thrown halfway across the room. They'd come full circlehe'd blasted Covenant troops apart before the crash landing, and here he was again.The enemy just didn't learn, he thought. There was a survivor, however, a tough Elite who threw a plasma grenade of his own, and missed by a matter of centimeters. The Master Chief ran and was clear of the blast zone by the time the device went off. The Elite charged, took the better part of a full clip, and finally slammed into the deck, dead. It was a short distance to the burned-out bridge, where a Covenant security team was on duty. Word had been passed: They knew the human was on his way, and opened fire the moment they saw him. Once again the Spartan made use of a grenade to even the oddsthen crushed the head of an Elite with his fist. The alien's head was turned to pulp and its body collapsed like a puppet with no strings. The armor gave him enough strength to flip a Warthog over. Then, just when he thought the battle was done, a Grunt shot him in the back. The audible went off as his armor sought to recharge itself. A second shot, delivered with sufficient speed, would kill him. Time seemed to slow as the Master Chief turned toward his right. The Grunt, who had been hiding inside an equipment cabinet, froze as the armored alien not only survived what should have been a fatal shot, but turned to face him. They were only an arm's length away from each other, which meant that the Master Chief could reach out, rip the breather off his assailant's face, and close the door on him. There was a loudclick followed by wild hammering as the Chief made his way forward to the spot where Captain Keyes had issued his orders. Cortana appeared over the control panel in front of him. Everywhere the AI looked she saw burned-out equipment, bloodstained decks, and smashed viewports. She shook her head sadly. \"I leave home for a few days, and look what happens.\" Cortana brought a hand up to her semitransparent forehead. \"This won't take long There, that should give us enough time to make it to the lifeboat, and put some distance between ourselves and Halobefore detonation.\"\nThe next voice the Chief heard belonged to 343 Guilty Spark. \"I'm afraid that's out of the question.\"\nCortana groaned. \"Oh, hell.\"\nThe Chief brought his weapon up but saw no sign of the Monitor or his Sentinels. That didn't prevent the construct from babbling in his ears, thoughthe AI had tapped into his comm system. \"Ridiculous! That you would imbue your warship's AI with such a wealth of knowledge. Wouldn't you worry that it might be captured? Or destroyed?\"\nCortana frowned. \"He's in my data arraysa local tap.\"\nThough nowhere near the bridge, the Monitorwas on board, and flitted from one control panel to the next, sucking information out of Cortana's nonsentient subprocessors with the ease of someone vacuuming a set of drapes. \"You can't imagine how exciting this is! To have a record of all our lost time. Oh, how I will enjoy every moment of categorization. To think that you would destroy this installation, as well as this record . . . I amshocked . Almost too shocked for words.\"\n\"He stopped the self-destruct sequence,\" Cortana warned.\n\"Why do you continue to fight us, Reclaimer?\" Spark demanded. \"You cannot win! Give us the constructand I will endeavor to make your death relatively painless and\"\nThe rest of 343 Guilty Spark's words were chopped off as if someone had thrown a switch. \"At least I still have control over the comm channels,\"\nCortana said.\n\"Where is he?\" the Chief asked.\n\"I'm detecting taps throughout the ship,\" Cortana replied. \"Sentinels most likely. As for the Monitorhe'sin Engineering. He must be trying to take the core off-line. Even if I could get the countdown restarted . . . I don't know what to do.\" The Spartan stared at the hologram in surprise. This was a firstand it made her seem more human somehow. \"How much firepower would you need to crack one of the engine shields?\"\n\"Not much,\" Cortana replied, \"a well-placed grenade perhaps. But why?\"\nHe produced a grenade, tossed the device into the air, and caught it again. The AI's eyes widened and she nodded. \"Okay, let's go.\"\nThe Spartan turned and started to leave.\n\"Chief!\" Cortana said. \"Sentinels!\"\nIn unison, the machines attacked.\n\nMajor Silva stood at what amounted to parade rest, feet spread, hands clasped behind his back, as he looked out over the landing pads while the men and women under his command made final preparations for the assault on the Covenant shipTruth and Reconciliation . Fifteen Banshees, all scrounged from different sites across Halo's embattled surface, sat waiting for the order to launch. Pelicans, three of the four that the humans had left, squatted ramps down as heavily loaded Marines filed aboard. Each of the surviving 236 leathernecks was armed with weapons appropriate to the mission at hand. No long-range stuff, like rocket launchers or sniper rifles, just assault weapons, shotguns, and grenades, all of which were lethal within enclosed spaces, and would be effective against both the Covenant and the Flood. Naval personnel, and there were seventy-six of them, were armed with Covenant plasma rifles and pistols, which, thanks to their light weight, and the fact that there was no need to tote additional ammo, left the swabbies free to carry tools, food, and medical supplies. They had orders to avoid combat, if possibleand concentrate on running the ship. Some, a group of sixteen individuals, had skills considered to be so critical that each one had been given two Marine bodyguards. Assuming that Cortana and the Master Chief were able to complete their mission, they would take one of theAutumn 's remaining lifeboats and rendezvous with theTruth and Reconciliation out in space. Annoying though she sometimes was, the officer knew Cortana would be able to pilot the alien vessel, and get them home. Failing that, Silva hoped that Wellsley, with help from the Naval personnel, would be able to take the cruiser through Slipspace and back to Earth. An event he had already planned for, right down to what he would wear, and a short but moving speech for the media. As if summoned by his thoughts, Wellsley chose that moment to intrude on the officer's reverie. The AI, who rode in an armored matrix slung from Silva's shoulder, was characteristically unapologetic. \"Lieutenant McKay called in, Major. Force One is in place.\"\nSilva nodded, remembered that Wellsley couldn't actually see him, and said,\n\"Good. Now, if they can lay low for the next couple of hours, we'll be in good shape.\"\n\"I have every confidence in theLieutenant ,\" the AI replied plainly. The implication was obvious. While Wellsley had faith in McKay, the AI had concerns where the Lieutenant's superior was concerned. Silva sighed. Had the artificial intelligence been human, the officer would have put him in his place long ago. But Wellsleywasn't human, couldn't be manipulated in the same fashion that flesh-and-blood subordinates could, and like the human on whom he had modeled himself, tended to speak his mind. \"All right,\" the Major said reluctantly, \"what's the problem?\"\n\"The 'problem,' \" Wellsley began, \"is the Flood. If the plan is successful, and we manage to take theTruth and Reconciliation , there will almost certainly be Flood forms on board. In fact, based on what Cortana and I have been able to piece together, that's the only reason the vessel remains where it is. All of the necessary repairs have been made, and Covenant forces are trying to sterilize the ship's interior prior to lifting off.\"\n\"Which answers your question,\" Silva said, struggling to contain his impatience. \"By the time we take over, most of the Flood will be dead. Once underway, I will dispatch hunter-killer teams to find the survivors. With the exception of a few specimens which I will place under heavy guard, the rest will be ejected into space. There, are you satisfied?\"\n\"No,\"Wellsley replied firmly. \"Were a carrier form to escape onto Earth's surface, the entire planet could fall. This threat is as dangerous as, if not more so than, the Covenant. Cortana and I agreeno Flood form can be allowed to leave this system.\"\nSilva took a quick look around to make sure no one was close enough to hear him and let the anger enter his voice. \"Both you and Cortana have a tendency to forget one very important factI'min command here and you arenot . And I defy you to find anywhere in my orders that identifies a threat to Earthbigger than the goddamned Covenant!\n\"Your role is to provide advice. Mine is to make decisions. It's my belief that we could find better ways to combat the Flood if our scientists had live specimens with which to work. More than that, our people need tosee this new enemy,know how dangerous they are, andbelieve that they can be conquered.\"\nWellsley considered taking the debate one step further, by pointing out that Silva's ambitions might well have clouded his judgment, but knew it would be a waste of time. \"That's your final decision?\"\n\"Yes, it is.\"\n\"Then God help you,\" the AI replied gravely, \"because if your plan fails, no one else will have the power to do so.\"\n\nThe compartment, a space untouched by the fighting, had once served as a ready room for the ship's Longsword, Pelican, and shuttle pilots. Now, with no modifications other than the installation of some crude sleeping accommodations, a back table with some food on it, and crates of supplies, the room functioned as an unofficial HQ for Covenant forces stationed aboard thePillar of Autumn . The command staff, or what was left of it, sat slumped in the uncomfortably alien chairs, many too tired to move, and stared up at their leader. His name was 'Ontomee, and he was confused, frustrated, and secretly frightened. The situation aboard theAutumn had deteriorated dramatically. In spite of all the efforts to stop them, Flood forms continued to trickle into the ship. The disgusting filth had even managed to seize control of the ship's engineering spaces before anew enemy, one which was inimical to Covenant and Flood form alike, sent an army of flying robots into the ship and took control of the Engine Room. Now, as if to prove that 'Ontomee was truly cursed, stillanother threat had arrived on the scene, and he was reluctant to share the news with the already exhausted Elites arrayed in front of him.\n\"So,\" 'Ontomee began lamely, \"it seems that a human crashed a Banshee into the side of the ship, and is now on board.\"\nA veteran named 'Kasamee frowned. \" 'Ahuman'? As in, asingle human?\nWith respect, Excellency, one human more or less will hardly make a difference.\"\n'Ontomee swallowed. \"Yes, well, normally I would agree with you, except thatthis human is somewhat unusual. First, because he wears special armor, second, because it appears that he's on some sort of mission, and third, because he singlehandedly killed every member of Security Team Three, which had responsibility for the command and control deck.\"\nUnnoticed by those in front of him, the seemingly lethargic officer known as Huki 'Umamee started to look interested. He sat up straighter, and began to pay close attention. Having chosen a seat in the last row, 'Zamamee found it difficult to hear. The discussion continued.\n\"Onehuman accomplished all that?\" 'Kasamee demanded incredulously.\n\"That hardly seems possible.\"\n\"Yes,\" 'Ontomee agreed, \"but he did. Not only that, but having accomplished whatever he entered the control area to do, he left, and is somewhere else on board this ship.\" The Elite scanned the faces in front of him. \"Who has the skill and courage required to find the alien and kill him?\"\nThe response came with gratifying speed. \"Ido,\" 'Zamamee said, now on his feet. 'Ontomee peered into the harsh human lights. \"Who is that?\"\n\" 'Umamee,\" the Elite lied.\n\"Ah, yes,\" 'Ontomee replied gratefully. \"A commando . . . Just the sort of person we need to rid ourselves of this two-legged vermin. The mission is yours. Keep me informed.\n\"Now, turning our attention to these new airborne mechanisms . . .\"\nLater, as the meeting ended, 'Kasamee went looking for the volunteer, fully intending to compliment the younger officer on his initiative. But, like the human the Elite was supposed to find, the Elite officer had disappeared.\n\nHaving fought his way clear of the bridge, the Master Chief made his way through a series of passageways, ran into more Flood and gunned them down. Cortana figured that they could access the Engine Room via the cryo chamber, and that was where the Chief was headed. The problem was that he kept running into jammed hatches, locked doors, and other obstacles that kept him from taking a direct route. After he moved through a large, dark room strewn with weapons, the Chief heard the sounds of combat coming from the area beyond a closed hatch. He paused, heard the noises die away, and slipped out into the corridor. Bodies lay all about as he slid along a bulkhead, saw some spikes sticking up over a cargo module, and felt his blood run cold. A Hunter! Or more accuratelytwo Hunters, since they traveled in pairs. Lacking a rocket launcher, the Chief turned to the only heavy-duty fire power that he had: grenades. He threw two grenades in quick succession, saw the spined behemoth go down, and heard a roar of outrage as the second Hunter charged. The Spartan fired just to slow the alien down, backed through the hatch, and gave thanks as the door closed. That gave him two or three seconds that he needed to plant his feet, pull another grenade, and prepare to throw it. The hatch opened, the fragmentation grenade flew straight and true, and the explosion knocked the beast off its feet. The deck shook as the body hit. The Hunter attempted to rise but fell under a hail of armor-piercing bullets. The Master Chief gave the corpse a wide berth as he left the room, and passed back into the hall. As he made his way through the ship's corridors, he saw blood-splattered bulkheads, bodies sprawled in every imaginable posture of death, blown hatches, sparks flying out of junction boxes, and a series of small fires, which thanks to a lack of combustible materials seemed to be fairly well contained. He heard the sound of automatic weapons' fire somewhere ahead, and passed through another hatch. Inside, a fire burned at the point where two large pipes traversed a maintenance bay. He was close to the cryo chamber, or thought he was, but needed to find a way in. Hesitant to jump through the flames unless it was absolutely necessary, he took a right turn instead. The sounds of combat grew louder as the hatch opened onto a large room where a full array of Flood forms were battling a clutch of Sentinels. He paused, shouldered his weapon, and fired. Sentinels crashed, carrier forms exploded, and everyone fired at one another in a mad melee of crisscrossing energy beams, 7.62mm projectiles, and exploding needles. Once the robots had been put out of action, and most of the Flood had been neutralized, the Chief was able to cross the middle of the room, climb a ladder, and gain the catwalk above. From that vantage point he could look across into the Maintenance Control Room, where a couple of Sentinels were hard at work trying to zap a group of Flood, none of whom were willing to be toasted without putting up a fight. The combatants were too busy to worry about stray humans, however, and the noncom took advantage of that to work his way down the walkway and into the Control Room. Andthat , as he soon learned, was a big mistake. It wasn't too bad at first, or didn't seem to be, as he destroyed both of the Sentinels, and went to work on the Flood. But every time he put one form down, it seemed as if two more arrived to take its place, soon forcing him onto the defensive. He retreated into the antechamber adjacent to the Control Room. The human had little choice but to place his back against a locked hatch. The larger forms came in twos and threeswhile the infection forms came in swarms. Some of the assaults seemed to be random, but many appeared to be coordinated as one, or two, or three combat forms would hurl themselves forward, die under the assault weapon's thundering fire, and fall just as the Spartan ran out of ammo, andmore carrier forms waddled into the fray. He slung his AR, drew the shotgunbriefly hoping there would be a lull during which to reloadand opened fire on the bloated monstrosities before the force exerted by their exploding bodies could do him harm. Then, with newly spawned infection forms flying in every direction it was clean-up time followed by a desperate effort to reload both weapons before thenext wave of creatures attempted to roll over him. He dropped into a pattern of fire and movement. He made his way through the ship, closer to the engineering spaces, pausing only to pour fire into knots of targets of opportunity. Then, he quickly disengaged, reloaded, and ran farther into the ship. The noise generated by his own weapons hammered at the Master Chief's ears, the thick gagging odor of Flood blood clogged his throat, and his mind eventually grew numb from all the killing. After dispatching a Covenant combat team, he crouched behind a support strut and fed rounds into the shotgun. Without warning, a combat form leaped on his back and smashed a large wrench into his helmet. His shield dropped away from the force of the blow, which allowed an infection form to land on his visor. Even as he staggered under the impact, and pawed at the form's slick body, a penetrator punched its way through his neck seal, located his bare skin, and sliced it open. The Spartan gave a cry of pain, felt the tentacle slide down toward his spine, and knew it was over.\n Though unable to pick up a weapon and kill the infection form directly, Cortana had other resources, and rushed to use them. Careful not to drain too much power, the AI diverted some energy away from the MJOLNIR armor, and made use of it to create an electrical discharge. The infection form started to vibrate as the electricity coursed through it. The Chief jerked as the Flood form's penetrator delivered a shock to his nervous system, and the pod popped, misting the Spartan's visor with green blood spray. The Chief could see well enough to fight, however, and did so, killing the wrench-wielding combat form with a burst of bullets.\n\"Sorry about that,\" Cortana said, as the Spartan cleared the area around him,\n\"but I couldn't think of anything else to do.\"\n\"You did fine,\" he replied, pausing to reload. \"That was close.\"\nAnother two or three minutes passed before the Flood gave up and he could take the moment necessary to remove his helmet, jerk the penetrator out from under his skin, and slap a self-adhering antiseptic battle dressing over the wound. It hurt like hell: The Spartan winced as he lowered the helmet back over his head, and sealed his suit. Then, pausing only to kill a couple of stray infection forms, and still looking for a way to gain entry to the cryo chamber, the Chief made his way through a number of passageways, into a maze of maintenance tunnels, and out into a corridor where he spotted a red arrow on the deck along with the wordENGINEERING . Finally, a break. No longer concerned with finding a way into cryo, the noncom passed through a hatch and entered the first passageway he'd seen that was well lit, free of bloodstains, and not littered with corpses. A series of turns brought him to a hatch.\n\"Engine Room located,\" Cortana announced. \"We're here.\"\nThe Spartan heard humming, and knew that 343 Guilty Spark was somewhere in the vicinity. He had already started to back through the hatch when Cortana said, \"Alert! The Monitor has disabled all command access. We can't restart the countdown. The only remaining option will be to detonate the ship's fusion reactors.That should do enough damage to destroy Halo.\n\"Don't worry . . . I have access to all of the reactor schematics and procedures. I'll walk you through it. First we need to pull back the exhaust coupling. That will expose a shaft that leads to the primary fusion drive core.\"\n\"Oh, good,\" the Spartan replied. \"I was afraid it might be complicated.\"\nThe Chief reopened the hatch, stepped out into the Engine Room, and an infection form flew straight at his faceplate.\n\nThe attack on theTruth and Reconciliation came with mind-numbing speed as a wing of fifteen Banshees came screaming out of the sun, attacked the nearly identical number of Covenant aircraft assigned to fly cover over the cruiser, and knocked half of them out of the sky during the first sixty seconds of combat. Then, even as individual dogfights continued, Lieutenant \"Cookie\" Peterson and his fellow Pelican pilots delivered Silva, Wellsley, and forty-five heavily armed Marines into the enemy cruiser's shuttle bay, where the first leathernecks off the ramps smothered the Covenant security team in a hail of bullets, secured all the hatches, and sent a team of fifteen Helljumpers racing for the ship's Control Room.\n\nConscious of the fact that occupying the Control Room wouldn't mean much unless they owned engineering as well, the humans launched a nearly simultaneous ground attack. Thanks to the previous effort, in which the Master Chief and a group of Marines had entered the ship looking for Captain Keyes, McKay had the benefit of everything learned during that mission, including a detailed description of the gravity lift, video of the interior corridors, and operational data which Cortana had siphoned out of the ship's systems. Not too surprisingly, security around the gravity lift had been tripled since the previous incursion, which meant that even though McKay and her force of Helljumpers had been able to creep within meters of the hill on which the gravity field was focused, they still had six Hunters, twelve Elites, and a mixed bag of Grunts and Jackals to cope with before they could board the vessel above. Having anticipated that problem, McKay had equipped her fifteen-person team with eight rocket launchers, all of which were aimed squarely at the Hunters. The Covenant-flown Banshees had just come under attack, and the spined monsters were staring up into a nearly cloudless sky, when McKay gave the word: \"Now!\"\nAll eight launchers fired one, thentwo rockets, putting a total of sixteen of the shaped charges on the aliens, so that the Hunters never had a chance to fight as a series of red-orange explosions blew them apart. Even as gobbets of raw meat continued to rain out of the sky, the launchers were reloaded, and another flight of rockets was sent on its way. Three or four of the Elites had been killed during the initial attack, which meant that some of the survivors were targeted by as many as two missiles, and simply ceased to exist as the powerful 102mm rounds detonated. Those who survived the volley, and there weren't many, fell quickly as the rest of the team hurled grenades into the enemy positions, and hosed them with automatic fire. Total elapsed time: 36 seconds. A full minute was consumed racing up the hill and greasing the guard at the top, which meant that 1:36 had passed by the time the murderous humans appeared inside theTruth and Reconciliation , slaughtered the Grunts on guard duty, and deactivated the lift. Jenkins was chained between a pair of burly Marines. McKay waved the trio forward. \"Let's go, Marines. We're supposed to take the Engine Roomso let's get to work.\"\nJenkins, or what remained of Jenkins, could smell the Flood. They were there, hiding in the ship, and he struggled to tell McKay that. But the only thing that came out was a series of grunts and hoots. The humans had taken the ship, but they had taken something else as well, something that could kill every single one of them.\n\n'Zamamee ushered Yayap into the heavily guarded Covenant Communications Centerand gave the Grunt a moment to look around. The space had once housed all of the communications gear associated with thePillar of Autumn 's auxiliary fighters, shuttles, and transports. Human gear had been ripped out to make room for Covenant equipment, but everything else was pretty much in the same configuration. A team of six com techs were on duty, all with their backs to the center of the room, banks of equipment arrayed in front of them. A constant murmur of conversation could be heard via the overhead speakers, some of which was punctuated by the sounds of combat, as orders went out and reports came back in.\n\"This is where you will sit,\" the Elite explained, pointing toward a vacant chair. \"All you have to do is listen to the incoming traffic, make note of the reports that pertain to the human, and pass the information along to me by radio.\n\"He has an objective, we can be sure of that, and once we know where he's going, I'll be there to greet him. I know you would prefer to be in on the kill, but you're the only individual I can trust to handle my communications, so I hope you'll understand.\"\nYayap, who didn't want to be anywhere near the kill, tried to look downcast.\n\"I'll do my part, Excellency, and take pleasure in the team's success.\"\n\"That's the spirit!\" 'Zamamee said encouragingly. \"I knew I could count on you. Now sit down at the console, put on that headset, and get ready to take some notes. We know he left what the humans refer to as 'the bridge,'\nfought a battle near the Maintenance Control Room, and was last spotted heading toward the Engine Room. We don't have any personnel in that compartment at the moment, but that doesn't matter, because the real challenge is to figure out where he's headednext . You feed the information to me, I'll take my combat team to the right place, and the human will enter the trap. The rest will be easy.\"\nYayap remembered previous encounters with the human, felt a chill run down his spine, and took his seat. Something told him that when it came to a final confrontation between the Elite and the human, it might be many things, but it wouldn't be easy.\n\nThe Engine Room hatch opened, an infection form went for the Master Chief's face, and he fired a quarter of a clip into it. A lot more bullets than the target required, but the memory of how the penetrator had slipped in under the surface of his skin was still fresh in his mind, and he wasn't about to allow any of the pods near his face again, especially with a hole in his neck seal. A red nav indicator pointed the way toward a ramp at the far end of the enormous room. He pounded his way up onto a raised platform, ran past banks of controls, and ducked through the hatch that led up to Level Two. He followed a passageway out into an open area, and then up the ramp to Level Three. Near the top, a pair of combat forms fell to his well-placed fire. He policed the fallen creatures' ammo and grenades and kept going.\n\"Not acceptable, Reclaimer,\" 343 Guilty Spark intoned. \"Youmust surrender the construct.\"\nThe Chief ignored the Monitor, made his way up to Level Three, and encountered a reception party comprised of Flood. He opened fire, took two combat forms and a carrier down off the top, and backed away in order to reload. Then, with a fresh clip in place, he opened fire, cut the nearest form off at the knees, tossed a grenade into the crowd behind him. The frag detonated, and blew them to hell. Quick bursts of automatic fire were sufficient to finish the survivors and allow the Master Chief to reach the far end of the passageway. A group of forms were waiting there to greet him, but quickly gave way to a determined assault as he made his way up the blood-slicked steel, and through the hatch at the top of the ramp. He moved onto the Level Three catwalk and immediately started to take fire. There was total chaos as the Sentinels fired on the Flood, the Flood shot back, and everyone seemed to want a piece of him. It was important to concentrate, however, to focus on his mission, so the Spartan made a mad dash for the nearest control panel. He hit the control labeledOPEN , heard a beeper go off, followed by the sound of Cortana's voice.\n\"Good! Step one complete! We have a straight shot into the fusion reactor. We need a catalytic explosion to destabilize the magnetic containment field surrounding the fusion cell.\"\n\"Oh,\" the petty officer said as he jumped down onto a thick slab of duracrete, and felt it start to move. \"I thought I was supposed to throw a grenade into a hole.\"\n\"That's what I said.\"\nThe Chief grinned as a brightly lit rectangular slot appeared, and he tossed a grenade in through the opening. The ensuing explosion threw bits of charred metal around the smoke-filled compartment. One down, and three to go,the Spartan told himself as the Sentinels fired, and the laser beams hit his chest.\n\nThanks to the lightning-fast and extremely well coordinated nature of the attack, the humans controlled more than eighty percent of theTruth and Reconciliation , and were preparing to lift off. Those compartments not under human control could be dealt with later on. There hadn't been any contact with Cortana for a whileand Silva intended to play it safe. If Halo was about to blow, he wanted to befar away when the event took place. The cruiser's Control Room was a scene of frantic activity as Wellsley wrestled with the ship's nonsentient nav comp, Naval personnel struggled to familiarize themselves with all manner of alien control systems, and Silva gloated over his latest coup. The attack had been so fast, so successful, that his Helljumpers had captured a being who referred to himself as a \"Prophet,\"\nand claimed to be an important member of the Covenant's ruling class. Now, safely locked away, the alien was slated to become yet another element in Silva's triumphant return to Earth. The officer smiled as the ship's gravity locks were released, the hull swayed slightly in response, and the final preflight check began. Many decks below, McKay felt someone touch her arm. \"Lieutenant? Do you have a moment?\"\nThough not in the same chain of command, Lieutenant Commander Gail Purdy outranked the Helljumper, which was why McKay responded by saying, \"Yes, ma'am. What can I do for you?\"\nPurdy was an Engineering officer, and one of those sixteen individuals who rated bodyguards, both of whom had their backs to the officer and were facing out. She was middle-aged and stout, with ginger-colored hair. Her eyes were serious and locked with McKay's.\n\"Step over here. I'd like to show you something.\"\nMcKay followed the other officer over to a large tube that served to bridge the one-meter gap between one blocky-looking installation and the next. Jenkins, who had no choice but to go wherever his Marine guards went, was forced to follow.\n\"See that?\" the Naval officer inquired, pointing at the tube.\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" McKay answered, mystified as to what such a structure could possibly have to do with her.\n\"That's an access point for the fiber-optic pathway that links the Control Room to the engines,\" the Engineer explained. \"If someone were to sever that connection, the power plants would run wild. There may be a bypass somewherebut we haven't found it. Given the fact that twenty percent of the ship remains under Covenant control I suggest that you post a guard on this piece of equipment until all of the Covenant are under lock and key.\"\nPurdy's suggestion had the force of an order, and McKay said, \"Yes, ma'am. I'll take care of it.\"\nThe Naval officer nodded as the deck tilted and forced both women to grab onto the fiber channel. Two people were thrown to the deck. Purdy grinned.\n\"Pretty sloppy, huh? Captain Keyes would have a fit!\"\n Silva wasn't worried about the finer points of ship handling as the final loads of UNSC personnel were deposited in the shuttle bay, the Pelicans were secured, the outer doors were closed, and theTruth and Reconciliation struggled to break the grip that Halo had on her hull. No, Silva was satisfied merely to get clear of the surface, to feel the deck vibrate as the cruiser's engines struggled to push countless tons of deadweight up through the ring world's gravity well, to the point where the ship would break free.\n\nSpurred into action by the vibration, or perhaps just tired of waiting, the Flood chose that moment to attack the Engine Room. A vent popped open, an avalanche of infection forms poured out and came under immediate fire. Jenkins went berserk, and jerked on his chains, gibbering incoherently as the Marine guards struggled to bring him under control. The battle lasted for less than a minute before all of the Flood forms were killed, the vent was sealed, and the cover welded into place. But the attack served to illustrate the concerns that McKay already had. The Flood were like an extremely deadly virusand it was naIve to believe that they could be controlled by anything short of extermination. The Marine used her status as XO to get through to Silva, gave a report on the attack, and finished by saying, \"It's clear that the ship is still infected, sir. I suggest that we put down and sterilize every square centimeter prior to lifting again.\"\n\"Negative,Lieutenant,\" Silva replied grimly. \"I have reason to believe that Halo is going to blow, and soon. Besides, Iwant some specimens, so see what you can do to capture some of the ugly bastards.\"\n\"The Lieutenant is correct,\" Wellsley put in dispassionately. \"The risk istoo great. I urge you to reconsider.\"\n\"My decision is final,\" Silva growled. \"Now, return to your duties, and that's anorder .\"\nMcKay broke the connection. The military incorporated many virtues, in her mind at least, one of the most important of which was duty. Duty not just to the Corps, but to the billions of people on Earth, to whom she was ultimately responsible. Now, faced with the conflict between military discipline, the glue that held everything together, and duty, the purpose of it all, what was she supposed to do?\nThe answer, strangely enough, came from Jenkins, who, having been privy to her end of the conversation, jerked at his chain. The action took one of the guards by surprise. He fell as Jenkins lunged in the direction of the fiber optic connection, and was still trying to regain his feet when the combat form ran out of slack, and came up short. Seconds later the Marines had Jenkins back under control. Having failed to do what he knew was right, and with his chains stretched tight, Jenkins looked imploringly into McKay's eyes. McKay realized that the decision lay in her hands, and that although it was horrible almost beyond comprehension, it was simple as well. So simple that even the grotesquely ravaged Jenkins knew where his duty lay. Slowly, deliberately, the Marine crossed the deck to the point where the guard stood, told him to take a break, took one last look around, and triggered a grenade. Jenkins, still unable to speak, managed to mouth the words \"thank you.\"\nSilva was too many decks removed to feel the explosion, or to hear the muffled thump, butwas able to witness the results firsthand. Someone yelled,\n\"The controls are gone!\" The deck tilted as theTruth and Reconciliation did a nose-over, and Wellsley made one last comment.\n\"You taught her well, Major. Ofthat you can be proud.\"\nThen the bow struck, a series of explosions rippled the length of the hull, and the ship, as well as all of those aboard her, ceased to exist.\n\n\"You're sure?\" 'Zamamee demanded, his voice slightly distorted by both the radio and an increasing amount of static. Yayap wasn't sure of anything, other than the fact that the reports flowing in around him were increasingly negative, as Covenant forces came under heavy fire from both the Floodand the Sentinels. Something had caused a rock to form down in the Grunt's abdomenand made him feel slightly nauseated. But it would never do to say that, not to someone like 'Zamamee, so he lied instead. \"Yes, Excellency. Based on the reports, and looking at the schematics here in the Communications Center, it looks like the human will have little choice but to exit via hatch E-117, make his way to lift V-1269, and go up to a Class Seven service corridor that runs along the ship's spine.\"\n\"Good work, Yayap,\" the Elite said. \"We're on our way.\"\nFor reasons he wasn't entirely sure of, and in spite of his many failings, the Grunt felt a strange sense of affection for the Elite. \"Be careful, Excellency. The human is extremely dangerous.\"\n\"Don't worry,\" 'Zamamee replied, \"I have a surprise for our adversary. A little something that will even the odds. I'll call you the moment he's dead.\"\nYayap said, \"Yes, Excellency,\" heard a click, and knew it was the last time he would hear the officer's voice. Not because he believed that 'Zamamee was going to diebut because he believedall of them were about die. That's why the diminutive alien announced that he was going on a break, left the Communications Center, and never came back. Shortly thereafter he loaded a day's worth of food plus a tank of methane onto a Ghost, steered the vehicle out away from thePillar of Autumn , and immediately found what he was searching for: a sense of peace. For the first time in many, many days Yayap was happy.\n\nAs the final grenade went off, the Master Chief felt the shaft he was standing on shake in sympathy and Cortana yelled into his ears. \"That did it! The engines will go critical. We have fifteen minutes to get off the ship! We should move outside and get to the third deck elevator. It will take us to a Class Seven service corridor that runs the length of the ship. Hurry!\"\nThe Chief jumped up onto the Level Three platform, blasted a combat form, and turned toward the hatch off to his right. It opened, he passed through, and ran the length of the passageway. A second door opened onto the area directly in front of the large service elevator. The Chief heard machinery whir, figured he had triggered a sensor, and waited for the lift to arrive. For the first time in hours there was no immediate threat, no imminent danger, and the Spartan allowed himself to relax fractionally. It was a mistake.\n\"Chief!\" Cortana said. \"Get back!\"\nThanks to the warning, he was already backing through the hatch when the lift appeared from below, and the Elite, seated in the plasma turret, opened fire.\n\nSpecial Ops Officer Zuka 'Zamamee fired the Shade. The energy cannon took up most of the platform, leaving barely enough room for the Grunts who had helped the Elite wrestle the weapon aboard. The bolt flared blue, hit the hatch as it started to close, and slagged half the door. He felt elation as the waves of energy slashed through the air toward his target. Soon, victory would be complete, and his honor could be restored. Then he'd deal with the tiresome Grunt, Yayap. It was going to be a glorious day.\n\n\"Damn!\" the Chief exclaimed. \"Where didthat come from?\"\n\"It looks like someone has been tracking you,\" Cortana said grimly. \"Now, get readyI'll take control of the elevator and cause it to drop. You roll a couple of grenades into the shaft.\"\n\n'Zamamee saw the energy bolt hit the hatch, experienced a sense of exhilaration as the human hurried to escape, and felt the platform jerk to a halt. The Elite had just fired again, just blown what remained of the human's cover away, when he heard a clank and the lift started to descend.\n\"No!\"he shouted, sure that one of the Grunts was responsible for the sudden movement, and desperate lest the human escape his clutches. But it was too late, and there was nothing the smaller aliens could do, as the elevator continued to fall. Then, even as his target vanished from sight, and 'Zamamee railed at his subordinates, a couple of grenades tumbled down from above, rattled around the floor, and exploded. The force of the blast lifted the Elite up and out of his seat, gave him one last look at his opponent, and let him fall. He hit with a thud, felt something snap, and waited for his first glimpse of paradise.\n\nCortana brought the lift back up. The Master Chief had little choice but to step onto the gore-splattered platform and let it carry him toward the service corridor above. Cortana took advantage of the moment to work on the escape plan.\n\"Cortana to Echo 419, come in Echo 419.\"\n\"Roger, Cortana,\"Foehammer said from somewhere above,\"I read you five by-five.\"\nThe Master Chief felt a series of explosions shake the elevator, knew the ship was starting to come apart, and looked forward to the moment when he would be free of it.\n\"ThePillar of Autumn 's engines are going critical, Foehammer,\" Cortana continued. \"Request immediate extraction. Be ready to pick us up at external access junction four-C as soon as you get my signal.\"\n\"Affirmative. Echo 419 to Cortanathings are getting noisy down there . . . Is everything okay?\" The elevator shook again as the AI said, \"Negative, negative! We have a wildcat destabilization of the ship's fusion core. The engines must have sustained more damage than we thought.\"\nThen, as the platform jerked to a halt, and a piece of debris fell from somewhere up above, the AI spoke to the Spartan. \"We have six minutes before the fusion drives detonate. We need to evacuatenow ! The explosion will generate a temperature of almost a hundred million degrees.Don't be here when it blows!\"\nThat sounded like excellent advice. The Master Chief ran through a hatch into a bay full of Warthogs, each stowed in its own individual slot. He chose one that was located near the entry, jumped into the driver's seat, and was relieved when the vehicle started up. The countdown timer which Cortana had projected onto the inside surface of his HUD was not only running, but runningfast , or so it seemed to the Chief as he drove out of the bay, hooked a left to avoid a burning 'Hog, and plowed through a mob of Covenant and Flood. An Elite went down, was sucked under the big off-road tires, and caused the vehicle to buck as it passed over him. The slope ahead was thick with roly-poly infection forms. They popped like firecrackers as the human accelerated uphill and plasma bolts raced to catch him from behind. Then, cautious lest he make a mistake and lose valuable time, he took his foot off the accelerator and paused at the top of the ramp. A large passageway stretched before him, with walkways to either side, a pedestrian bridge in the distance, and a narrow service tunnel directly ahead. A couple of Flood forms were positioned on top of the entrance and fired down at him as he pushed the Warthog forward, and nosed into the opening ahead. The ramp sloped down, the Spartan braked, and he was soon glad that he had as something wentboom! and hurled pieces of jagged metal across the passageway in front of him. The Chief took his foot off the brake, converted a carrier form into paste, and sent the LRV up the opposite slope. He emerged from the subsurface tunnel, and with a barrier ahead, he swung left, ran the length of a vertical wall. He saw a narrow ramp, accelerated up slope, and jumped a pair of gaps that he never would have tackled had he been aware of them. He hit a level stretch, braked reflexively, and was thankful when the Warthog nose-dived off the end of the causeway and plunged into another service tunnel. Now, with a group of Flood ahead, he pushed through them, crushed the monsters under his tires.\n\"Nice job on that last section,\" Cortana said admiringly. \"How did you know about the dive off the end?\"\n\"I didn't,\" the Master Chief said as the LRV lurched up out of the tunnel and nosed into another.\n\"Oh.\"\nThis passage was empty, which allowed the Spartan to pick up speed as he guided the Warthog up into a larger tunnel. The 'Hog caught some air, and he put the pedal to the metal in an effort to pick up some time. The large passageway was smooth and clear, but took them out into a hell of flying metal, homicidal Flood, and laser-happy Sentinels, all of whom tried to cancel his ticket while he paused, spotted an elevated ramp off to the left, and steered for it even as crisscrossing energy beams sizzled across the surface of his armor and explored the interior of the vehicle. The Spartan fought to control the 'Hog as one tire rode up onto the metal curb and threatened to pull the entire vehicle off into the chaos below. It was difficult, with fire sleeting in from every possible direction, but the Chief made the necessary correction, came down off the ramp, hooked a left, and found himself in a huge tunnel with central support pillars that marched off into the distance. Careful to weave back and forth between the pillars in order to improve his time, he rolled through a fight between the Flood and a group of Covenant, took fire from a flock of Sentinels, and gunned the LRV out into another open area with a barrier ahead. A quick glance confirmed that another elevated ramp ran down the left side of the enormous passageway, so he steered for that. Explosions sent gouts of flame and smoke up through the grating ahead of him, and threatened to heave the Warthog off the track. Once off the ramp, things became a little easier as the Spartan entered a large tunnel, sped the length of it, braked into an open area, and pushed the vehicle down into a smaller service tunnel. Infection forms made loud popping sounds as the tires ate them alive. The engine growled, and the Chief nearly lost it as he came out of the tunnel too fast, realized there was another subsurface passageway ahead, and did a nose-over that caused the front wheels not only to hit hard but nearly flipped the 'Hog end-for-end. Only some last-minute braking and a measure of good luck brought the LRV down right side up and allowed the Master Chief to climb up out of the passageway and into a maze of pillars. He swore as he was forced to wind his way between the obstacles while precious seconds came off the countdown clock and every alien, freak, and robot with a weapon took potshots at him while he did so. Then came a welcome stretch of straight-level pavement, a quick dip through a service tunnel, and a ramp into a sizable tunnel as Cortana called for evac.\n\"Cortana to Echo 419! Requesting extraction now! On the double!\"\n\"Affirmative, Cortana,\"the pilot replied, as the Master Chief accelerated out onto a causeway.\n\"Wait! Stop!\" Cortana insisted. \"This is where Foehammer is coming to pick us up. Hold position here.\"\nThe Spartan braked, heard a snatch of garbled radio traffic, and saw a UNSC dropship approach from the left. Smoke trailed behind the Pelican and the reason was plain to see. A Banshee had slotted itself in behind the transport and was trying to hit one of the ship's engines. There was a flash as the starboard power plant took a hit and burst into flames. The Chief could imagine Foehammer at the controls, fighting to save her ship, eyeing the causeway ahead.\n\"Pull up! Pull up!\" the Spartan shouted, hoping she could pancake in, but it was too late. The Pelican lost altitude, passed under the causeway, and soon disappeared from sight. The explosion came three seconds later. Cortana said, \"Echo 419!\" and, receiving no response, said, \"She's gone.\" The Master Chief remembered the cheerful voice on the radio, the countless times the pilot had saved somebody's tail, and felt a deep sense of regret. There was a short pause while the AI tapped into what remained of the ship's systems. \"There's a Longsword docked in launch bay seven. If we movenow we can make it!\"\nRubber screeched as the Chief put his foot to the floor, steered the Warthog through a hatch, down a ramp, and into a tunnel. Huge pillars marked the center of the passageway and a series of concave gratings caused the LRV to wallow before it lurched up onto smooth pavement again. Explosions sent debris flying from both sides of the tunnel and made it difficult to hear Cortana as she said something about \"full speed\" and some sort of a gap. He hit the accelerator, but the rest was more a matter of luck rather than skill. The Master Chief pushed the 'Hog up a ramp, felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as the LRV flew through the air, dropped two or three levels, hit hard, slewed sideways, and came to a stop. The Chief wrestled with the wheel, brought the front end around, and glanced at the timer. It read: 01:10:20. He stamped on the accelerator. The Warthog shot ahead, raced through a narrow tunnel, then slowed as he spotted the array of horizontally striped barrels that blocked the road ahead. Not only thatbut the entire area was swarming with Covenant and Flood. The Master Chief jumped out, hit the ground running, and gunned an Elite who had the misfortune to get in the way. The fighter was straight ahead, ramp down, waiting for him to come aboard. Plasma bolts stuttered past his head, explosions hurled debris in every direction, and then he was there, boots pounding on metal as he entered the ship. The ramp came up just as a mob of Flood arrived, the Longsword shook in sympathy as another explosion rocked thePillar of Autumn , and the Spartan staggered as he made his way forward. Precious seconds were consumed as he dropped into the pilot's seat, brought the engines on-line, and took the controls.\n\"Here we go.\" The Chief made use of the ship's belly jets to push the Longsword up off the deck. He turned the fighter counterclockwise, and hit the throttles. Gee forces pushed him back into his seat as the spacecraft exploded out of its bay and blasted up through the atmosphere.\n\nYayap, who had made it to the edge of the foothills by then, heard a series of dull thuds and turned in time to see a line of red-orange flowers bloom along the length of theAutumn 's much abused hull.\n\nAs the cruiser's fusion drives went critical, a compact sun blossomed on the surface of Halo. Its thermonuclear sphere carved a five-kilometer crater into the superdense ring material and sent powerful pressure waves rippling throughout the structure. Both up- and down-spin of the explosion, the fireball flattened and sterilized the surface terrain. Within moments, the yellow-white core had consumed all of the available fuel, collapsed upon itself, and winked out. Still spinning, but unable to withstand the forces exerted on this new weak point, the ring structure slowly tore itself apart. Huge chunks of debris tumbled end over end out into space, as a five-hundred-kilometer-long section of the ring world's hull sliced through an even longer curve of brilliantly engineered metal, earth, and water, and produced a cascade of eerily silent explosions.\n\nThere was an insistent beeping sound as the wordsENGINE TEMP CRITICAL flashed on the control panel, and Cortana said, \"Shut them down. We'll need them later.\"\nThe Master Chief reached up to flick some switches, got up out of his seat, and arrived in front of the viewport in time to see the last intact piece of Halo's hull sheared in half by the dreadful slow-motion ballet of flying metal. For some reason he thought of Lieutenant Melissa McKay, her calm green eyes, and the fact that he had never gotten to know her. \"Did anyone else make it?\"\n\"Scanning,\" the AI replied. She paused, and he could see scan data scroll across the main terminal. A moment later, she spoke again, her voice unusually quiet. \"Just dust and echoes. We're all that's left.\"\nThe Spartan winced. McKay, Foehammer, Keyes, and all the rest of them. Dead. Just like the children he'd been raised withjust like a part of himself. When Cortana spoke it was as if the AI felt that she had to justify what had transpired. \"We did what wehad to dofor Earth. An entire Covenant armada obliterated. And theFlood we had no choice. Halo, it's finished.\"\n\"No,\" the Chief replied, settling in behind the Longsword's controls. \"The Covenant are still out there, and Earth is at risk. We're just getting started.\"\n\n\nThe Master Chief saw the yellow-green blob appear in his peripheral vision, and decided to turn toward the enemy both to make the 'Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal an opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over. All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master Chief scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter drop down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive knees, and move forward. Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, \"Come on, Hosky! Let's take this bastard out!\" The Spartan yelled, \"No! Fall back!\" and bent over to retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew there simply wasn't time. Another Spartan might have been able to dodge in time, but the Helljumpers didn't have a prayer. The distance between the alien and the two Marines had closed by then and they couldn't disengage. The Corporal threw a fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster, and stared in disbelief as it kept on coming. The alien charged right through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and lowered a gigantic shoulder. Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic shield hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what was left onto the ground. The private remained conscious however, which meant he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot high into the air, and brought it down on his face.\n\n\nHalo: The Floodis a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.\n\nA Del ReyBook Published by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group Copyright  2003 by Microsoft Corporation\n\nAll rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Halo, Xbox, the Xbox and Microsoft Logos are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Used under license.  2001 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.\n\nDel Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. www.delreydigital.com e-ISBN 0-345-46357-9\n\nv1.0"
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "FIRST STRIKE\n\nERIC NYLUND\n\nBALLANTINE BOOKS  NEW YORK Other books based on Xbox games:\nHALO: THE FLOOD by William C. Dietz HALO: THE FALL OF REACH by Eric Nylund BRUTE FORCE: BETRAYALS by Dean Wesley Smith CRIMSON SKIES by Eric Nylund, Michael B. Lee, Nancy Berman, and Eric S. Trautmann Books published by The Random House Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.  Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as \"unsold or destroyed\" and neither the author nor the publisher may have re ceived payment for it. Halo: First Strike is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. A Del Rey Book Published by The Random House Publishing Group Copyright  2003 by Microsoft Corporation All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and si multaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Bungie, Halo, Xbox, the Xbox logo and the Microsoft Game Studio logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Used under license.  2003\nMicrosoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trade mark of Random House, Inc. www.delreydigital.com ISBN 0-345-46781-7\nManufactured in the United States of America First Edition: December 2003\nOPM    10    9    8    7    6  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank the personnel at Central Command: Syne Mitchell and the newest officer on our team, Kai Nylund. The Intel Officers at Microsoft's Franchise Development Group:\nDoug Zartman, Nancy Figatner, and Edward Ventura, and most notably Eric S. Trautmann (Special Ops field agent). The people in Section Two, a.k.a. Microsoft's User Experience Group: Jo Tyo, Matt Whiting, Dana Fos, and Jason Groce. Logistics officers at Ballantine/Del Rey: Keith Clayton, Nancy Delia, Betsy Mitchell, and Steve Saffel. And the Bungie troopers who are slugging it out on virtual battlefields across the universe to bring you the best game ever:\nJason Jones, Peter Parsons, and, of course, Joe Staten, Jaime Griesemer, and Lorraine McLees. SECTION REACH CHAPTER ONE\n0622 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\\ UNSC Vessel Pillar of Autumn, Epsilon Eridani system near Reach Station Gamma. SPARTAN-104, Frederic, twirled a combat knife, his fingers nimble despite the bulky MJOLNIR combat armor that encased his body. The blade traced a complicated series of graceful arcs in the air. The few remaining Naval personnel on the deck turned pale and averted their eyesa Spartan wielding a knife was gen erally accompanied by the presence of several dead bodies. He was nervous, and this was more than the normal pre-mission jitters. The team's original objectivethe capture of a Covenant shiphad been scrubbed in the face of a new enemy offensive. The Covenant were en route to Reach, the last of the United Na tions Space Command's major military strongholds. Fred couldn't help but wonder what use ground troops would be in a ship-to-ship engagement. The knife spun. Around him, his squadmates loaded weapons, stacked gear, and prepped for combat, their efforts redoubled since the ship's Captain had personally come down to the mustering area to brief the team leader, SPARTAN-117but Fred was already squared away. Only Kelly had finished stowing gear before him. He balanced the point of the knife on his armored finger. It hung there for several seconds, perfectly still. A subtle shift in the Pillar of Autumn's gravity caused the knife to tip. Fred plucked it from the air and sheathed it in a single deft move. A cold feeling filled his stomach as he realized what the gravity fluctuation meant: The ship had just changed courseanother complication. ERIC NYLUND  3\nMaster Chief SPARTAN-117Johnmarched to the nearest COM panel as Captain Keyes's face filled the screen. Fred sensed a slight movement to his righta subtle hand sig nal from Kelly. He opened a private COM freq to his teammate.\n\"Looks like we're in for more surprises,\" she said.\n\"Roger that,\" he replied, \"though I think I've had enough sur prises for one op.\"\nKelly chuckled. Fred focused his attention on John's exchange with Keyes. Each Spartanselected from an early age and trained to the pin nacle of military sciencehad undergone multiple augmenta tion procedures: biochemical, genetic, and cybernetic. As a result, a Spartan could hear a pin drop in a sandstorm, and every Spartan in the room was interested in what the Captain had to say. If you 're going to drop into hell, CPO Mendez, the Spartans'\nfirst teacher, had once said, you may as well drop with good intel. Captain Keyes frowned on the ship's viewscreen, a nonregula-tion pipe in his hand. Though his voice was calm, the Captain's grip on the pipe was white-knuckle tight as he outlined the situation. A single space vessel docked in Reach's orbital facilities had failed to delete its navigational database. If the NAV data fell into Covenant hands, the enemy would have a map to Earth.\n\"Master Chief,\" the Captain said, \"I believe the Covenant will use a pinpoint Slipspace jump to a position just off the space dock. They may try to get their troops on the station before the Super MAC guns can take out their ships. This will be a difficult mission, Chief. I'm... open to suggestions.\"\n\"We can take care of it,\" the Master Chief replied. Captain Keyes's eyes widened and he leaned forward in his command chair. \"How exactly, Master Chief?\"\n\"With all due respect, sir, Spartans are trained to handle diffi cult missions. I'll split my squad. Three will board the space dock and make sure that NAV data does not fall into the Covenant's hands. The remainder of the Spartans will go groundside and re pel the invasion forces.\"\nFred gritted his teeth. Given his choice, he'd rather fight the Covenant on the ground. Like his fellow Spartans, he loathed off-planet duty. The op to board the space dock would be fraught 4 HALO: FIRST STRIKE with danger at every turnunknown enemy deployment, no gravity, useless intel, no dirt beneath his feet. There was no question, though: The space op was the toughest duty, so Fred intended to volunteer for it. Captain Keyes considered John's suggestion. \"No, Master Chief. It's too riskywe've got to make sure the Covenant don't get that NAV data. We'll use a nuclear mine, set it close to the docking ring, and detonate it.\"\n\"Sir, the EMP will burn out the superconductive coils of the orbital guns. And if you use the Pillar of Autumn's conventional weapons, the NAV database may still survive. If the Covenant search the wreckagethey may obtain the data.\"\n\"True,\" Keyes said and tapped his pipe thoughtfully to his chin. \"Very well, Master Chief. We'll go with your suggestion. I'll plot a course over the docking station. Ready your Spartans and prep two dropships. We'll launch you\" He consulted with Cortana.\"in five minutes.\"\n\"Aye, Captain. We'll be ready.\"\n\"Good luck,\" Captain Keyes said, and the viewscreen went black. Fred snapped to attention as the Master Chief turned to face the Spartans. Fred began to step forward but Kelly beat him to it. \"Master Chief,\" she said, \"permis sion to lead the space op.\"\nShe had always been faster, damn her.\n\"Denied,\" the Master Chief said. \"I'll be leading that one.\n\"Linda and James,\" he continued. \"You're with me. Fred, you're Red Team leader. You'll have tactical command of the ground operation.\"\n\"Sir!\" Fred shouted and started to voice a protestthen squelched it. Now wasn't the time to question orders.. . as much as he wanted to. \"Yes, sir!\"\n\"Now make ready,\" the Master Chief said. \"We don't have much time left.\"\nThe Spartans stood a moment. Kelly called out, \"Attention!\"\nThe soldiers snapped to and gave the Master Chief a crisp salute, which was promptly returned. Fred switched to Red Team's all-hands freq and barked, \"Let's move, Spartans! I want gear stowed in ninety seconds, and final ERIC NYLUND  5\nprep in five minutes. Joshua: Liaise with Cortana and get me current intel on the drop areaI don't care if it's just weather satellite imagery, but I want pictures, and I want them ninety seconds ago.\"\nRed Team jumped into action. The pre-mission jitters were gone, replaced with a cold calm. There was a job to do, and Fred was eager to get to work. Flight Officer Mitchell flinched as a stray energy burst streaked into the landing bay and vaporized a meter-wide section of bulk head. Red-hot, molten metal splattered the Pelican dropship's viewport. Screw this, he thought, and hit the Pelican's thrusters. The gunmetal-green transport balanced for a moment on a column of blue-white fire, then hurtled out of the Pillar of Autumn's launch bay and into space. Five seconds later all hell broke loose. Incoming energy bursts from the lead Covenant vessels cut across their vector and slammed into a COMSat. The communi cations satellite broke apart, disintegrating into glittering shards.\n\"Better hang on,\" Mitchell announced to his passengers in the dropship's troop bay. \"Company's coming.\"\nA swarm of Seraphsthe Covenant's scarablike attack fightersfell into tight formation and arced through space on an intercept course for the dropship. The Pelican's engines flared and the bulky ship plummeted toward the surface of Reach. The alien fighters accelerated and plasma bursts flickered from their gunports. An energy bolt slashed past on the port side, narrowly missing the Pelican's cockpit. Mitchell's voice crackled across the COM system:\n\"Bravo-One to Knife Two-Six: I could use a little help here.\"\nHe rolled the Pelican to port to avoid a massive, twisted hunk of wreckage from a patrol cutter that had strayed too close to the oncoming assault wave. Beneath the blackened plasma scorches, he could just make out the UNSC insigne. Mitchell scowled. This was getting worse by the second. \"Bravo-One to Knife Two-Six, where the hell are you?\" he yelled. A quartet of wedge-shaped, angular fighters slotted into cover ing position on Mitchell's scopesLongswords, heavy fighters. 6 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Knife Two-Six to Bravo-One,\" a terse, female voice crackled across the COM channel. \"Keep your pants on. Business is good today.\"\nToo good. No sooner had the fighters taken escort position over his dropship than the approaching Covenant fighters opened up with a barrage of plasma fire. Three of the Pelican's four Longsword escorts peeled off and powered toward the Covenant ships. Against the black of space, cannons flashed and missiles etched ghostly trails; Covenant energy weapons cut through the night and explosions dotted the sky. The Pelican and its sole escort, however, accelerated straight toward the planet. It shot past whirling wreckage; it rolled and maneuvered as missiles and plasma bolts crisscrossed their path. Mitchell flinched as Reach's orbital defense guns fired in a hot, actinic flash. A white ball of molten metal screamed directly over the Pelican and its escort as they rocketed beneath the de fense platform's ring-shaped superstructure. Mitchell sent the Pelican into the planet's atmosphere. Va porous flames flickered across the ship's stunted nose, and the Pelican jounced from side to side.\n\"Bravo-One, adjust attack angle,\" the Longsword pilot ad vised. \"You're coming in too hot.\"\n\"Negative,\" Mitchell said. \"We're getting to the surface fast or we're not getting there at all. Enemy contacts on my scopes at four by three o'clock.\"\nA dozen more Covenant Seraphs fired their engines and an gled toward the two descending ships.\n\"Affirmative: four by three. I've got 'em, Bravo-One,\" the Longsword pilot announced. \"Give 'em hell down there.\"\nThe Longsword flipped into a tight roll and rocketed for the Covenant formation. There was no chance that the pilot could take out a dozen Seraphsand Knife Two-Six had to know that. Mitchell only hoped that the precious seconds Two-Six bought them would be enough. The Pelican opened its intake vents and ignited afterburners, plummeting toward the ground at thirteen hundred meters per second. The faint aura of flames around the craft roared from red to blinding orange. ERIC NYLUND The Pelican's aft section had been stripped of the padded crash seats that usually lined the section's port and starboard sides. The life-support generators on the firewall between pas senger and pilot's compartment had also been discarded to make room. Under other circumstances, such modifications would have left the Pelican's troop bay unusually cavernous. Every square centimeter of space, however, was occupied. Twenty-seven Spartans braced themselves and clung to the frame of the ship; they crouched in their MJOLNIR armor to ab sorb the shock of their rapid descent. Their armor was half a ton of black alloy, faintly luminous green ceramic plates, and wink ing energy shield emitters. Polarized visors and full helmets made them look part Greek hero and part tankmore machine than human. At their feet equipment bags and ammunition boxes were lashed in place. Everything rattled as the ship jostled through the increasingly dense air. Fred hit the COM and barked: \"Brace yourselves!\" The ship lurched, and he struggled to keep his footing. SPARTAN-087, Kelly, moved nearer and opened a frequency.\n\"Chief, we'll get that COM malfunction squared away after we hit planetside,\" she said. Fred winced when he realized that he'd just broadcast on FLEETCOM 7: He'd spammed every ship in range. Damn it. He opened a private channel to Kelly. \"Thanks,\" he said. Her reply was a subtle nod. He knew better than to make such a simple mistakeand as his second in command, Kelly was rattled by his mistake with the COM, too. He needed her rock-solid. He needed all of Red Team frosty and wired tight. Which meant that he needed to make sure he held it together. No more mistakes. He checked the squad's biomonitors. They showed all green on his heads-up display, with pulse rates only marginally accel erated. The dropship's pilot was a different story. Mitchell's heart fired like an assault rifle. Any problems with Red Team weren't physical; the biomoni tors confirmed that much. Spartans were used to tough missions;\nUNSC High Command never sent them on any \"easy\" jobs. 8 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Their job this time was to get groundside and protect the gen erators that powered the orbiting Magnetic Accelerator Cannon platforms. The fleet was getting ripped to shreds in space. The massive MAC guns were the only thing keeping the Covenant from overrunning their lines and taking Reach. Fred knew that if anything had Kelly and the other Spartans rattled, it was leaving behind the Master Chief and his hand-picked Blue Team. Fred would have infinitely preferred to be with Blue Team. He knew every Spartan here felt like they were taking the easy way out. If the ship-jockeys managed to hold off the Covenant as sault wave, Red Team's mission was a milk run, albeit a neces sary one. Kelly's hand bumped into Fred's shoulder, and he recognized it as a consoling gesture. Kelly's razor-edged agility was multi plied fivefold by the reactive circuits in her MJOLNIR armor. She wouldn't have \"accidentally\" touched him unless she meant it, and the gesture spoke volumes. Before he could say anything to her, the Pelican angled and gravity settled the Spartans' stomachs.\n\"Rough ride ahead,\" the pilot warned. The Spartans bent their knees as the Pelican rolled into a tight turn. A crate broke its retaining straps, bounced, and stuck to the wall. The COM channel blasted static and resolved into the voice of the Longsword's pilot: \"Bravo Two-Six, engaging enemy fighters. Am taking heavy incoming fire\" The channel was abruptly swallowed in static. An explosion buffeted the Pelican, and bits of metal pinged off its thick hull. Patches of armor heated and bubbled away. Energy blasts flashed through the boiling metal, filling the interior with fumes for a split second before the ship's pressurized atmosphere blew the haze out the gash in its side. Sunlight streamed though the lacerated Titanium-A armor. The dropship lurched to port, and Fred glimpsed five Covenant Seraph fighters driving after them and wobbling in the turbulent air.\n\"Gotta shake 'em,\" the pilot screamed. \"Hang on!\" ERIC NYLUND  9\nThe Pelican pitched forward, and her engines blasted in full overload. The dropship's stabilizers tore away, and the craft rolled out of control. The Spartans grabbed on to cross beams as their gear was flung about inside the ship.\n\"It's going to be a helluva hot drop, Spartans,\" their pilot hissed over the COM. \"Autopilot's programmed to angle. Re verse thrusters. Gees are takin' me out. I'll\"\nA flash of light outlined the cockpit hatch, and the tiny shock-proof glass window shattered into the passenger compartment. The pilot's biomonitor flatlined. The rate of their dizzying roll increased, and bits of metal and instruments tore free and danced around the compartment. SPARTAN-029, Joshua, was closest to the cockpit hatch. He pulled himself up and looked in. \"Plasma blast,\" he said. He paused for a heartbeat, then added: \"I'll reroute control to the ter minal here.\" With his right hand, he furiously tapped commands onto the keyboard mounted on the wall. The fingers of his left hand dug into the metal bulkhead. Kelly crawled along the starboard frame, held there by the spinning motion of the out-of-control Pelican. She headed aft of the passenger compartment and punched a keypad, priming the explosive bolts on the drop hatch.\n\"Fire in the hole!\" she yelled. The Spartans braced. The hatch exploded and whipped away from the plummeting craft. Fire streamed along the outer hull. Within seconds the compartment became a blast furnace. With the grace of a high-wire performer, Kelly leaned out of the rolling ship, her armor's energy shields flaring in the heat. The Covenant Seraph fighters fired their lasers, but the energy weapons scattered in the superheated wake of the dropping Peli can. One alien ship tumbled out of control, too deep in the atmo sphere to easily maneuver. The others veered and arced up back into space.\n\"Too hot for them,\" Kelly said. \"We're on our own.\"\n\"Joshua,\" Fred called out. \"Report.\"\n\"The autopilot's gone, and cockpit controls are offline,\" Joshua answered. \"I can counter our spin with thrusters.\" He tapped in 10 HALO: FIRST STRIKE a command; the port engine shuddered, and the ship's rolling slowed and ceased.\n\"Can we land?\" Fred asked. Joshua didn't hesitate to give the bad news. \"Negative. The computer has no solution for our inbound vector.\" He tapped rapidly on the keyboard. \"I'll buy as much time as I can.\"\nFred ran over their limited options. They had no parasails, no rocket-propelled drop capsules. That left them one simple choice: They could ride this Pelican straight into hell... or they could get off.\n\"Get ready for a fast drop,\" Fred shouted. \"Grab your gear. Pump your suits' hydrostatic gel to maximum pressure. Suck it up, Spartanswe're landing hard.\"\n\"Hard landing\" was an understatement. The Spartansand their MJOLNIR armorwere tough. The armor's energy shields, hydrostatic gel, and reactive circuits, along with the Spartans'\naugmented skeletal structure, might be enough to withstand a high-speed crash landing... but not a supersonic impact. It was a dangerous gamble. If Joshua couldn't slow the Peli can's descentthey'd be paste.\n\"Twelve thousand meters to go,\" Kelly shouted, still leaning over the edge of the aft door. Fred told the Spartans: \"Ready and aft. Jump on my mark.\"\nThe Spartans grabbed their gear and moved toward the open hatch. The Pelican's engines screamed and pulsed as Joshua angled the thruster cams to reverse positions. The deceleration pulled at the Spartan team, and everyone grabbed, or made, a handhold. Joshua brought what was left of the craft's control flaps to bear, and the Pelican's nose snapped up. A sonic boom rippled through the ship as its velocity dropped below Mach 1. The frame shuddered and rivets popped.\n\"Eight kilometers and this brick is still dropping fast,\" Kelly called out.\n\"Joshua, get aft,\" Fred ordered.\n\"Affirmative,\" Joshua said. The Pelican groaned and the frame pinged from the stress and then creaked as the craft shuddered and flexed. Fred set his ERIC NYLUND  11\narmored glove on the wall and tried to will the craft to hold to gether a little longer. It didn't work. The port engine exploded, and the Pelican tum bled out of control. Kelly and the Spartans near the aft drop hatch dropped out. No more time.\n\"Jump,\" Fred shouted. \"Spartans: Go, go, go!\"\nThe rest of the Spartans crawled aft, fighting the gee forces of the tumbling Pelican. Fred grabbed Joshuaand they jumped. CHAPTER TWO\n0631 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\\Epsilon Eridani system, unknown aerial position, planet Reach. Fred saw the sky and earth flashing in rapid succession before his faceplate. Decades of training took over. This was just like a parasail drop ... except this time  there was no chute. He forced his arms and legs open; the spread-eagle position controlled his tumble and slowed his velocity. Time seemed to simultaneously crawl and racesomething Kelly had once dubbed \"SPARTAN Time.\" Enhanced senses and augmented physiology meant that in periods of stress Spartans thought and reacted faster than a normal human. Fred's mind raced as he absorbed the tactical situation. He activated his motion sensors, boosting the range to maxi mum. His team appeared as blips on his heads-up display. With a sigh of relief he saw that all twenty-six of them were present and pulling into a wedge formation.\n\"Covenant ground forces could be tracking the Pelican,\" Fred told them over the COM. \"Expect AA fire.\"\nThe Spartans immediately broke formation and scattered across the sky. Fred risked a sidelong glance and spotted the Pelican. It tum bled, sending shards of armor plating in glittering, ugly arcs, be fore it impacted into the side of a jagged snowcapped mountain. The surface of Reach stretched out before them, two thousand meters below. Fred saw a carpet of green forest, ghostly mountains in the distance, and pillars of smoke rising from the west. He spied a sinuous ribbon of water that he recognized: Big Horn River. The Spartans had trained on Reach for most of their early ERIC NYLUND  13\nlives. This was the same forest where CPO Mendez had left them when they were children. With only pieces of a map and no food, water, or weapons, they had captured a guarded Pelican and re turned to HQ. That was the mission where John, now the Master Chief, had earned command of the group, the mission that had forged them into a team. Fred pushed the memory aside. This was no homecoming. UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B training facility would be due west. And the generators? He called up the terrain map and overlaid it on his display. Joshua had done his work well:\nCortana had delivered decent satellite imagery as well as a topo graphic survey map. It wasn't as good as a spy-sat flyby, but it was better than Fred had expected on such short notice. He dropped a NAV marker on the position of the generator complex and uploaded the data on the TACCOM to his team. He took a deep breath and said: \"That's our target. Move toward it but keep your incoming angle flat. Aim for the treetops. Let them slow you down. If you can't, aim for water... and tuck in your arms and legs before impact.\"\nTwenty-six blue acknowledgment lights winked, confirming his order.\n\"Overpressurize your hydrostatics just before you hit.\"\nThat would risk nitrogen embolisms for his Spartans, but they were coming in at terminal velocity, which for a fully loaded Spartan washe quickly calculated130 meters per second. They had to overpressurize the cushioning gel or their organs would be crushed against the impervious MJOLNIR armor when they hit. The acknowledgment lights winked again ... although Fred sensed a slight hesitation. Five hundred meters to go. He took one last look at his Spartans. They were scattered across the horizon like bits of confetti. He brought up his knees and changed his center of mass, try ing to flatten his angle as he approached the treetops. It worked, but not as well or as quickly as he had hoped. One hundred meters to go. His shield flickered as he brushed the tops of the tallest of the trees. He took a deep breath, exhaled as deeply as he could, grabbed 14 HALO: FIRST STRIKE his knees, and tucked into a ball. He overrode the hydrostatic sys tem and overpressurized the gel surrounding his body. A thou sand tiny knives stabbed himpain unlike any he'd experienced since the SPARTAN-II program had surgically altered him. The MJOLNIR armor's shields flared as he broke through branchesthen drained in one sudden burst as he impacted dead-center on a thick tree trunk. He smashed through it like an armored missile. He tumbled, and his body absorbed a series of rapid-fire im pacts. It felt like taking a full clip of assault rifle fire at point-blank range. Seconds later Fred slammed to a bone-crunching halt. His suit malfunctioned. He could no longer see or hear any thing. He stayed in that limbo state and struggled to stay con scious and alert. Moments later, his display was filled with stars. He realized then that the suit wasn't malfunctioning... he was.\n\"Chief!\" Kelly's voice echoed in his head as if from the end of a long tunnel. \"Fred, get up,\" she whispered. \"We've got to move.\"\nHis vision cleared, and he slowly rolled onto his hands and knees. Something hurt inside, like his stomach had been torn out, diced into little pieces, and then stitched back together all wrong. He took a ragged breath. That hurt, too. The pain was goodit helped keep him alert.\n\"Status,\" he coughed. His mouth tasted like copper. Kelly knelt next to him and on a private COM channel said, \"Al most everyone has minor damage: a few blown shield generators, sensor systems, a dozen broken bones and contusions. Nothing we can't compensate for. Six Spartans have more serious injuries. They can fight from a fixed position, but they have limited mobil ity.\" She took a deep breath and then added, \"Four KIA.\"\nFred struggled to his feet. He was dizzy but remained upright. He had to stay on his feet no matter what. He had to for the team, to show them they still had a functioning leader. It could have been much worsebut four dead was bad enough. No Spartan operation had ever seen so many killed in one mis sion, and this op had barely begun. Fred wasn't superstitious, but he couldn't help but feel that the Spartans' luck was running out.\n\"You did what you had to,\" Kelly said as if she were reading his mind. \"Most of us wouldn't have made it if you hadn't been thinking on your feet.\" ERIC NYLUND  15\nFred snorted in disgust. Kelly thought he'd been thinking on his feetbut all he'd done was land on his ass. He didn't want to talk about itnot now. \"Any other good news?\" he said.\n\"Plenty,\" she replied. \"Our gearmunitions boxes, bags of extra weaponsthey're scattered across what's passing for our LZ. Only a few of us have assault rifles, maybe five in total.\"\nFred instinctively reached for his MA5B and discovered that the anchoring clips on his armor had been sheared away in the impact. No grenades on his belt, either. His drop bag was gone, too. He shrugged. \"We'll improvise,\" he said. Kelly picked up a rock and hefted it. Fred resisted the urge to lower his head and catch his breath. There was nothing he wanted to do more right now than sit down and just rest and think. There had to be a way to get his Spartans out of here in one piece. It was like a training exerciseall he needed to do was figure out how best to accomplish their mis sion with no more foul-ups. There was no time, though. They'd been sent to protect those generators, and the Covenant sure as hell weren't sitting around waiting for them to make the first move. The columns of smoke that marked where Reach HighCom once stood testified to that.\n\"Assemble the team,\" Fred told her. \"Formation Beta. We're heading toward the generators on foot. Pack out our wounded and dead. Send those with weapons ahead as scouts. Maybe our luck will change.\"\nKelly barked over the SQUADCOM: \"Move, Spartans. For mation Beta to the NAV point.\"\nFred initiated a diagnostic on his armor. The hydrostatic sub system had blown a seal, and pressure was at minimal functional levels. He could move, but he'd have to replace that seal before he'd be able to sprint or dodge plasma fire. He fell in behind Kelly and saw his Spartans on the periphery of his tactical friend-or-foe monitor. He couldn't actually see any of them because they were spread out and darted from tree to tree to avoid any Covenant surprises. They all moved silently through the forest: light and shadow and an occasional muted flash of luminous green armor, then gone again.\n\"Red-One this is Red-Twelve. Single enemy contact ... neutralized.\" 16 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"One here, too,\" Red-Fifteen reported. \"Neutralized.\"\nThere had to be more. Fred knew the Covenant never traveled in small numbers. Worse, if the Covenant were deploying troops in any signifi cant numbers, that meant the holding action in orbit had turned ugly . . .  so it was only a matter of time before this mission went from bad to worse. He was so intent on listening to his team's field checks, he al most ran into a pair of Jackals. He instinctively melted into the shadow of a tree and froze. The Jackals hadn't seen him. The birdlike aliens sniffed at the air, however, and then moved forward more cautiously, closing on Fred's concealed position. They waved plasma pistols before them and clicked on their energy shields. The small, oblong pro tective fields rippled and solidified with a muted hum. Fred keyed his COM channel to Red-Two, twice. Her blue ac knowledgment light immediately winked in response to his call for backup. The Jackals suddenly turned to their right and sniffed rapidly. A fist-sized rock whizzed in from the aliens' left. It slammed into the lead Jackal's occipital crest with a wet crack. The creature squawked and dropped to the ground in a pool of purple-black blood. Fred darted ahead and in three quick steps closed with the re maining Jackal. He sidestepped around the plane of the energy shield and grabbed the creature's wrist. The Jackal squawked in fear and surprise. He yanked the Jackal's gun arm, hard, and then twisted. The Jackal struggled as its own weapon was forced into the mottled, rough skin of its neck. Fred squeezed, and he could feel the alien's bones shatter. The plasma pistol discharged in a bright, emerald flash. The Jackal flopped over on its back, minus its head. Fred picked up the fallen weapons as Kelly emerged from the trees. He tossed her one of the plasma pistols, and she plucked it out of the air.\n\"Thanks. I'd still prefer my rifle to this alien piece of junk,\"\nshe groused. ERIC NYLUND  17\nFred nodded, and clipped the other captured weapon to his harness. \"Beats the hell out of throwing rocks,\" he replied.\n\"Affirmative, Chief,\" she said with a nod. \"But just barely.\"\n\"Red-One,\" Joshua's voice called over the SQUADCOM.\n\"I'm a half-klick ahead of you. You need to see this.\"\n\"Roger,\" Fred told him. \"Red Team, hold here and wait for my signal.\"\nAcknowledgment lights winked on. In a half crouch, Fred made his way toward Joshua. There was light ahead: The shade thinned and vanished because the forest was gone. The trees had been leveled, every one blasted to splin ters or burned to charred nubs. There were bodies, too; thousands of Covenant Grunts, hun dreds of Jackals and Elites littered the open field. There were also humansall dead. Fred could see several fallen Marines still smoldering from plasma fire. There were overturned Scor pion tanks, Warthogs with burning tires, and a Banshee flier. The flier had snagged one canard on a loop of barbed wire, and it pro pelled itself, riderless, in an endless orbit. The generator complex on the far side of this battlefield was intact, however. Reinforced concrete bunkers bristling with ma chine guns surrounded a low building. The generators were deep beneath there. So far it looked as if the Covenant had not man aged to take them, though not for lack of trying.\n\"Contacts ahead,\" Joshua whispered. Four blips appeared on his motion sensor. Friend-or-foe tags identified them as UNSC Marines, Company Charlie. Serial numbers flashed next to the men as his HUD picked them out on a topo map of the area. Joshua handed Fred his sniper rifle, and he sighted the con tacts through the scope. They were Marines, sure enough. They picked through the bodies that littered the area, looking for sur vivors and policing weapons and ammo. Fred frowned; something about the way the Marine squad moved didn't feel right. They lacked unit cohesion, with their line ragged and exposed. They weren't using any of the available cover. To Fred's experienced eye, the Marines didn't even seem to be heading in a specific direction. One of them just ambled in circles. 18 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Fred sent a narrow-beam transmission on UNSC global fre quency. \"Marine patrol, this is Spartan Red Team. We are ap proaching your position from your six o'clock. Acknowledge.\"\nThe Marines turned about and squinted in Fred's direction, and brought their assault rifles to bear. There was static on the channel, and then a hoarse, listless voice replied: \"Spartans? If you are what you say you are ... w e  c o u l d  s u r e  u s e  a  h a n d . \"\n\"Sorry we missed the battle, Marine.\"\n\" 'Missed'?\" The Marine gave a short, bitter laugh. \"Hell, Chief, this was just round one.\"\nFred returned the sniper rifle to Joshua, pointed toward his eyes and then to the Marines in the field. Joshua nodded, shoul dered the rifle, and sighted them. His finger hovered near the weapon's triggernot quite on it. It never hurt to be careful. Fred got up and walked to the cluster of Marines. He picked his way past a tangle of Grunt bodies and the twisted metal and charred tires that had once been a Warthog. The men looked as if they had been to hell and back. They all sported burns, abrasions, and the kilometer-long stare indicative of near shock. They gaped at Fred, mouths open; it was a reac tion that he had often seen when soldiers first glimpsed a Spar tan: two meters tall, half a ton of armor, splashed with alien blood. It was a mix of awe and suspicion and fear. He hated it. He just wanted to fight and win this war, like the rest of the soldiers in the UNSC. The Corporal seemed to snap out of his near fugue. He removed his helmet, scratched at his cropped red hair, and looked behind him. \"Chief, you'd better head back to base with us before they hit us again.\"\nFred nodded. \"How many in your company, Corporal?\"\nThe man glanced at his three companions and shook his head.\n\"Say again, Chief?\"\nThese men were likely on the verge of battle shock, so Fred controlled his impatience and replied in as gentle a voice as he could muster: \"Your FOF tags say you're with Charlie Company, Corporal. How many are you? How many wounded?\"\n\"There's no wounded, Chief,\" the Corporal replied. \"There's no 'company' either. We're all that's left.\" CHAPTER THREE\n0649 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\n\\ Epsilon Eridani system, Orbital Defense Generator Facility A-331, planet Reach. Fred looked over the battlefield from the top of the southern bunker, his temporary command post. The structure had been hastily erected, and some of the fast-drying instacrete hadn't fully hardened. The bunker was not the best defensive position, but it gave him a clear view of the area as his team worked to strengthen the perimeter of the generator complex. Spartans strung razor wire, buried Antilon mine packs, and swept the area on patrols. A six-man fireteam searched the battleground for weapons and ammunition. Satisfied that the situation was as stable as possible, he sat and began to remove portions of his armor. Under normal circum stances a team of techs would assist in such work, but over time the Spartans had all learned how to make rudimentary field re pairs. He located a broken pressure seal and quickly replaced it with an undamaged one he'd recovered from SPARTAN-059's armor. Fred scowled. He hated the necessity of stripping gear from Malcolm's suit. But it would dishonor his fallen comrade not to use his gift of the spare part. He banished thoughts of the drop and finished installing the seal. Self-recrimination was a luxury he could ill afford, and the Red Team Spartans didn't have a monopoly on hard times. Charlie Company's surviving Marines had held off the Cove nant assault with batteries of chainguns, Warthogs, and a pair of 20 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Scorpion tanks for almost an hour. Grunts had charged across the minefield and cleared a path for the Jackals and Elites. Lieutenant Buckman, the Marines' CO, had been ordered to send the bulk of his men into the forest in an attempt to flank the enemy. He had called in air support, too. He got it. Reach HighCom must have realized the generators were in danger of being overrun, so someone panicked and sent in bombers to hit the forest in a half-klick radius. That wiped out the Covenant assault wave. It also killed the Lieutenant and his men. What a waste. Fred replaced the last of his armor components and powered up. His status lights pulsed a cool blue. Satisfied, he stood and activated the COM.\n\"Red-Twelve, give me a sit-rep.\"\nWill's voice crackled over the channel. \"Perimeter estab lished, Chief. No enemy contacts.\"\n\"Good,\" Fred replied. \"Mission status?\"\n\"Ten chainguns recovered and now provide blanketing fields of fire around the generator complex,\" Will said. \"We've got three Banshee fliers working. We've also recovered thirty of those arm-mounted Jackal shield generators, plus a few hundred assault rifles, plasma pistols, and grenades.\"\n\"Ammo? We need it.\"\n\"Affirmative, sir,\" Will said. \"Enough to last for an hour of continuous fire.\" There was a short pause, then he added: \"HQ must have sent reinforcements at some point, because we've re covered a crate marked HIGHCOM ARMORY OMEGA .\"\n\"What's in it?\"\n\"Six Anaconda surface-to-air missiles.\" Will's voice barely concealed his glee. \"And a pair of Fury tac-nukes.\"\nFred gave a low whistle. The Fury tac-nuke was the closest thing the UNSC had in its arsenal to a nuclear grenade. It was the size and shape of an overinflated football. It delivered slightly less than a megaton yield, and was extremely clean. Unfortu nately, it was also completely useless to them in this situation.\n\"Secure that ordnance ASAP. We can't use them. The EMP would fry the generators.\" ERIC NYLUND  21\n\"Roger that,\" Will said with a disappointed sigh.\n\"Red-Three?\" Fred asked. \"Report.\"\nThere was a moment's hesitation. Joshua whispered: \"Not good here, Red-One. I'm posted on the ridge between our valley and the next. The Covenant has a massive LZ set up. There's an enemy ship on station and I estimate battalion-strength enemy troops on the ground. Grunts, Jackals, equipment, and support armor are deploying. Looks like they're getting ready for round two, sir.\"\nFred felt the pit of his stomach grow cold. \"Give me an uplink.\"\n\"Roger.\"\nA tiny picture appeared in Fred's heads-up display, and he saw what Joshua had sighted through his sniperscope: A Covenant cruiser hovered thirty meters off the ground. The ship bristled with energy weapons and plasma artillery. His Spartans couldn't get within weapons range of that thing without being roasted. A gravity lift connected the ship to the surface of Reach, and troops poured outthousands of them: legions of Grunts, three full squadrons of Elites piloting Banshees, plus at least a dozen Wraith tanks. It didn't make much sense, though. Why didn't the cruiser get closer and open fire? Or did the Covenant think there might be another air strike? The Covenant never hesitated during an as sault ... but the fact that he was still alive meant that the enemy's rules of engagement had somehow changed. Fred wasn't sure why the Covenant were being so cautious, but he'd take the break. It would give him time to figure out how to stop them. If the Spartans were mobile, they might be able to engage a force that size with hit-and-run tactics. Holding a fixed position was another story altogether.\n\"Updates every ten minutes,\" he told Joshua. His voice was suddenly tight and dry.\n\"Roger that.\"\n\"Red-Two? Any progress on that SATCOM uplink?\"\n\"Negative, sir,\" Kelly muttered, tension thickening her voice. She had been tasked with patching Charlie Company's bullet-ridden communications pack. \"There are battle reports jamming the entire spectrum, but from what I can make out the fight upstairs isn't going well. They need this generator upno matter what it's going to cost us.\" 22 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Understood,\" Fred said. \"Keep me\"\n\"Wait. Incoming transmission to Charlie Company from Reach HighCom.\"\nHighCom? Fred thought headquarters on Reach had been overrun. \"Verification codes?\"\n\"They check out,\" Kelly replied.\n\"Patch it through.\"\n\"Charlie Company? Jake? What the hell is the holdup there?\nWhy haven 'tyou gotten my men out yet?\"\n\"This is Senior Petty Officer SPARTAN-104, Red Team leader,\"\nFred replied, \"now in charge of Charlie Company. Identify yourself.\"\n\"Put Lieutenant Chapman on, Spartan,\" an irritated voice snapped.\n\"That's not possible, sir,\" Fred told him, instinctively realizing that he spoke to an officer and adding the honorific. \"Except for four wounded Marines, Charlie Company is gone.\"\nThere was a long static-filled pause. \"Spartan, listen to me very carefully. This is Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. Do you know who lam, son?\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Fred said, wincing as the Admiral identified him self. If the Covenant were eavesdropping on this transmission, the senior officer had just made himself a giant target.\n\"My staff and I are pinned down in a gully southeast of where HighCom used to be,\" Whitcomb continued. \"Get your team over here and extract us, on the double.\"\n\"Negative, sir, I cannot do that. I have direct orders to protect the generator complex powering the orbital guns.\"\n\"I'm countermanding those orders,\" the Admiral barked. \"As of two hours ago, I have tactical command of the defense of Reach. Now, I don't care if you 're a Spartan or Jesus Christ walking down the damned Big Horn River / am giving you a direct order. Acknowledge, Spartan.\"\nIf Admiral Whitcomb was now in charge of the defense, then a lot of the senior brass had been put out of commission when HQ got hit. Fred saw a tiny amber light flashing on his heads-up display. His biomonitor indicated an elevation in his blood pressure and heart rate. He noticed his hands shook, almost imperceptibly. ERIC NYLUND  23\nHe controlled the shaking and keyed the COM. \"Acknowl edged, sir. Is air support available?\"\n\"Negative. Covenant craft took out our fighter and bomber cover in the first wave.\"\n\"Very well, sir. We'll get you out.\"\n\"Step on it, Chief.\" The COM snapped off. Fred wondered if Admiral Whitcomb was responsible for the hundreds of dead Marines who'd been trying to guard the gener ators. No doubt he was an excellent ship driver. . . but Fleet offi cers running ground ops? No wonder the situation was FUBAR. Had he pressured a young and inexperienced lieutenant to flank a superior enemy? Had he sent in air support with orders to saturate-bomb the area?\nFred didn't trust the Admiral's judgment, but he couldn't ig nore a direct order from him, either. He ran his team roster up onto his heads-up display:\ntwenty-two Spartans, six wounded so badly they could barely walk, and four battle-fatigued Marines who'd been through hell once already. They had to repel a massive Covenant force. They had to extract Admiral Whitcomb, too. And as usual, their survival was at best a tertiary consideration. He had weapons to defend the installation: grenades, chain-guns, and missiles Fred paused. Perhaps this was the wrong way to look at the tactical situation. He was thinking about defending the installa tion when he should have been thinking about what Spartans were best at offense. He keyed the SQUADCOM. \"Everyone catch that last transmission?\"\nAcknowledgment lights winked on.\n\"Good. Here's the plan: We split into four teams.\n\"Team Delta\" He highlighted the wounded Spartans and the four Marines on the roster. \"fall back to this location.\" He uploaded a tactical map of the area and set a NAV marker in a ravine sixteen kilometers north. \"Take two Warthogs, but leave them and stealth it if you encounter any resistance. Your mission is to secure the area. This will be the squad's fallback position. Keep the back door open for us.\"\nThey immediately acknowledged. The Spartans knew that 24 HALO: FIRST STRIKE ravine like the backs of their hands. It wasn't marked on any map, but it was where they'd trained for months with Dr. Halsey. Beneath the mountain were caverns that the Office of Naval In telligence had converted into a top-secret facility. It was fortified and hardened against radiation, and could probably withstand anything up to and including a direct nuclear strike. A perfect hole to hide in if everything went sour.\n\"Team Gamma.\" Fred selected Red-Twenty-one, Red-Twenty-two, and Red-Twenty-three from the roster. \"You'll extract the Admiral and his staff and bring them back to the generators. We'll need the extra crew.\"\n\"Affirmative,\" Red-Twenty-one replied. Technically Fred was following Whitcomb's order to extract him from his current position. What the Admiral didn't realize, though, was that he would have probably been safer staying put.\n\"Team Beta\" Fred selected Red-Twenty through Red-Four.\n\"you're on generator defense.\"\n\"Understood, Chief.\"\n\"Team Alpha\" He selected Kelly, Joshua, and himself.\n\"Awaiting orders, sir,\" Joshua said.\n\"We're going to that valley to kill anything there that isn't human.\"\nFred and Kelly faced the three Banshee fliers that had been dragged into the makeshift compound. Fred peered inside the cockpit of the nearest craft and tabbed the activation knob. The Banshee rose a meter off the ground, its antigrav pod glowed a faint electric blue, and it started to drift forward. He snapped it off, and the Banshee settled to the ground. He quickly tested the other two, and they also rose off the ground.\n\"Good. All working.\"\nKelly crossed her arms. \"We're going for a ride?\"\nA Warthog pulled up and skidded to a halt in front of them, Joshua at the wheel. The rear held half a dozen Jackhammer mis siles and a trio of launchers. A crate sat in the passenger's seat, one loaded with the dark, emerald-green duct tape that every sol dier in the UNSC ubiquitously referred to as \"EB Green.\"\n\"Mission accomplished, sir,\" Joshua said as he climbed from the Warthog. ERIC NYLUND  25\nFred grabbed a launcher, a pair of rockets, and a roll of tape from the 'Hog. \"We'll be needing these when we hit the Cove nant on the other side of the ridge,\" he explained. \"Each of you secure a launcher and some ammo in a Banshee.\"\nJoshua and Kelly stopped what they were doing and turned to face him.\n\"Permission to speak, sir,\" Kelly asked.\n\"Granted.\"\n\"I'm all for a good fight, Fred, but those odds are a little lop sided even for us. . .  like ten thousand to one.\"\n\"We can handle a hundred to one,\" Joshua chimed in, \"maybe even five hundred to one with a little planning and support, but against these odds, a frontal assault seems\"\n\"It's not going to be a frontal assault,\" Fred said. He wedged the launcher into the cramped Banshee cockpit. \"Tape.\"\nKelly ripped off a length of tape and handed it over. Fred smoothed the adhesive strip and secured the launcher in place. \"We'll play this one as quiet as we can,\" he said. She considered Fred's plan for a moment and then asked, \"So, assuming we fool them into letting us into their lines ... then what?\"\n\"As much as I'd like to, we can't use the tac-nukes,\" Joshua mused, \"not in the far valley. The intervening ridge isn't high enough to block the EMP. It'll burn out the orbital defense generator.\"\n\"There's another way to use them,\" Fred told them. \"We're go ing to board the cruiserright up its gravity liftand detonate the nuke inside. The ship's shields will dampen the electromag netic pulse.\"\n\"It'll also turn that ship into the biggest fragmentation grenade in history,\" Kelly remarked.\n\"And if anything goes wrong,\" Joshua said, \"we end up in the middle often thousand pissed-off bad guys.\"\n\"We're Spartans,\" Fred said. \"What could possibly go wrong?\" CHAPTER FOUR\n0711 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\\Epsilon Eridani system, Longhorn Valley, planet Reach. The alarm hooted, and Zawaz sprang to his feet with a startled yelp. The squat alien, a Grunt clad in burnished orange armor, fumbled and dropped his motion scanner. He keened in fear and retrieved the device with a trembling claw. If the scanner had been damaged, the Elites would use his body as reactor shielding. If his masters learned he'd been asleep at his post, they might do far worse than kill him. They might give him to the Jackals. Zawaz shuddered. Fortunately, the scanner still worked, and the diminutive alien sighed with relief. Three contacts rapidly approached the moun tain that separated Zawaz's cadre from the distant human forces. He reached for the warning klaxon but relaxed as his detector identified the contactsBanshee fliers. He peered over the dirt edge of his protective hole to confirm this. He spotted three of the bulbous aircraft on approach. Zawaz snorted. It was odd that the flight wasn't listed on his patrol schedule. He considered alerting his superiors, then thought bet ter of it. What if they were Elites on some secret mission?\nNo, it was best not to question such things. Be ignored. Live another day. That was his creed. He nestled back into his hole, reset the motion detector to long range, and prayed it wouldn't go off again. He curled into a tight ball and promptly fell into a deep sleep. Fred led their flying-wedge formation. The purple and red air ships arced up and over the treetops of the ridge, gaining as ERIC NYLUND  27\nmuch altitude as the Banshee could manageabout three hun dred meters. As he cleared the top, what he saw made him ease off the throttle. The valley was ten kilometers across and sloped before him, thick with Douglas firs that thinned and gave way to trampled fields and the Big Horn River beyond. Camped in the fields were thousands upon thousands of Covenant troops. Their mass covered the entire valley, and thin, smoke-choked sunlight glinted off a sea of red, yellow, and blue armor. They moved in tight columns and swarmed along the river's edgeso many that it looked like someone had kicked over the largest anthill in existence. And they were building. Hundreds of flimsy white dome-shaped tents were being erected, atmosphere pits for the methane-breathing Grunts. Farther back were the odd polyhedral huts of the Elite units, guarded by a long line of dozens of beetlelike Wraith tanks. Guard towers punctuated the valley; they spiraled up from mobile treaded bases, ten meters tall and topped with plasma turrets. The rules had indeed changed. In more than a hundred battles Fred had never seen the Covenant set up encampments of such magnitude. All they did was kill. Floating behind all this activity, almost brushing against the far hills, the Covenant cruiser sat thirty meters off the ground. It looked like a great bloated fish with stubby stabilizing fins. Its gravity lift was in operation, a tube of scintillating energy that moved matter to and from the ground. Stacks of purple crates gently floated down from the craft. In the afternoon light he could see its weapons bristling along its length, casting spider-like shadows across its hull. Their Banshees leveled out, and Fred dropped back to tighten his formation with Kelly and Joshua. He glanced again at the enemy ship and the guard towers. One good hit from those weapons could take them out. Fred saw other Banshee patrols circling the valley. He frowned. If they passed them, the enemy pilots would almost certainly de mand to know their business... and there was no way of knowing what the established patrol routes were. That meant he'd have to 28 HALO: FIRST STRIKE take an alternate flight path: straight down the middle, and straight over the Covenant horde. They'd only need one run to do this. They'd probably only get one run. He activated a COM frequency. \"Go.\"\nKelly hit the acceleration and glided toward the cruiser. Fred fell in behind her. He armed the fuel rod gun built into the Banshee. They were six kilometers from the cruiser when Kelly achieved the maximum speed of her flier. Grunts and Jackals in the fields below craned their necks as the Spartans flashed over them. They had to go faster. Fred felt every Covenant eye watching them. He dived, trading his altitude for acceleration, and Joshua and Kelly did the same. Communication symbols flashed across his Banshee's wind shield display. The UNSC software built into their armor worked only with some of the spoken Covenant languagesnot their written words. Odd, curling characters scrolled across the Ban shee's displays. Fred hit one of the response symbols. There was a pause, the display cleared, and dozens more sym bols flashed, twice as fast. Fred clicked the display off. Three kilometers to go, and his heart beat so hard he heard it thunder in his ears. Kelly pulled slightly ahead of them. She was now thirty me ters off the ground, gaining as much speed as she could, driving straight for the cruiser's gravity lift. The nearest guard tower tracked her; its plasma cannon flared and fired. Kelly's flier climbed and banked to evade the energy fire. The bolt of superheated ionized gas brushed against her starboard fuselage. Energy spray melted the Banshee's front faring, and her ship slowed. A dozen plasma turrets turned to track them. Fred banked and opened fire. Energy bursts from the Ban shee's primary weapon strafed the guard tower. Joshua did the same, and a river of fire streaked toward the towers. Fred hit the firing stud for the Banshee's heavy weapon, and a ERIC NYLUND  29\nsphere of energy arced into the base of the tower. It began a grad ual tilt, then collapsed. Kelly hadn't fired. Fred glanced her way and saw that she now stood in a low crouch atop her racing Banshee. She had one foot under the duct tape that had secured the nuke and now held the bomb in her hand, cocking it back to throw. A shard of jagged crystal, a round from a Covenant needier, pinged off Fred's port shield. He snapped a look below. Covenant Grunts and Jackals boiled in agitationa hundred badly aimed shots arced up after him; glistening clouds of crys talline needles and firefly plasma bolts swarmed through the air and chipped away at his Banshee's fuselage. Fred jinked his Banshee left and right, and dodged plasma bolts from the three guard towers tracking him. He lined up for a second strafing run, and the Banshee's lighter energy weapons sent Grunts scattering. A hundred meters to go. Kelly leaned back, coiled her body, and readied to throw the nuclear device as if it were a shotput. The Covenant cruiser came to life, and its weapons tracked the Banshees. A dozen fingers of plasma ripped the air;\nwhite-blue arcs of fire reached for them. One bolt connected with Joshua's ship. The Banshee's impro vised shields overloaded and vanished. The canards of the flier melted and bent. The alien airship lurched into a spin as its con trol surfaces warped, and Joshua fell behind Fred and Kelly just as they entered the gravity lift of the craft. Fred keyed his COM to raise Joshua but got only static. Time seemed to slow inside the beam of purple light that ferried goods and troops to and from the belly of the ship. The strange glow surrounded them and made his skin tingle as if it were asleep. Their Banshees rose toward an opening in the underside of the carrier. They weren't riding into the ship, though; they were trav eling too fast and would cross the beam before they were three quarters of the way to the top. Fred snapped around. He didn't see Joshua anywhere. Plasma beams hit the well and were deflected as if it were a giant glass lens. Kelly hurled the nuke straight up into the gullet of the cruiser. 30 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Fred wrenched the Banshee's controls and arced the craft under the edge of the ship; Kelly was right behind him. The light vanished, and they emerged on the far side of the Covenant vessel. Behind them, distorted through the gravity lift, Fred saw Covenant troops firing their weapons into the sky. He heard ten thousand voices screaming for blood. Fred pinged Joshua on the COM, but his acknowledgment light remained dark. He wanted to slow and turn back for him, but Kelly dived, ac celerating toward the ground, and she entered the forest that car peted the mountainside. Fred followed her. They were scant meters above the ground; they dodged trees and blasted through tangles of foliage. A handful of stray shots flashed overhead. They flew at top speed and didn't look back. They emerged from the tree line and over the powdered snow of the mountaintop. They arced over a granite ridge, came about, and throttled back. The Banshees drifted slowly to the ground. The sky turned white. Fred's faceplate polarized to its darkest setting. Thunder rolled though his body. Fire and molten metal blossomed over the ridge, boiled skyward, and rained back into the valley. The granite top of the intervening mountain shattered into dust and the snow on their side melted in muddy rivulets. Fred's visor slowly depolarized. Kelly leaned across her Banshee. Blood oozed from her ar mor's left shoulder joint. She fumbled for her helmet seal, caught it, and peeled it off her head. \"Did we get 'em?\" she panted. Blood foamed from the corner of her mouth.\n\"I think so,\" Fred told her. She looked around. \"Joshua?\"\nFred shook his head. \"He got hit on the way in.\"\nIt had been easy for him to fly into the face of certain death moments ago. Saying those words was a hundred times harder. Kelly slumped and dropped her head back against her Banshee.\n\"Stay here, I'm going up to take a look.\" Fred powered up his Banshee and rose parallel with the ridgeline. He nudged the craft up a little farther and got his first look into the valley. ERIC NYLUND  31\nIt was a sea of flame. Hundreds of fires dotted the cracked, glassy ground. Where the Big Horn River had snaked along, there was now only a long steaming furrow. There was no trace of the cruiser or the Covenant troops that had filled the valley moments ago. All that remained was a field of smoldering, twisted bone and metal. At the edge of this carnage stood black ened sticksthe remnants of the forestall leaning away from the center of the explosion. Ten thousand Covenant deaths. It wasn't worth losing Joshua or any of the other Spartans, but it was something. Perhaps they had bought enough time for the orbital MAC guns to tip the battle overhead in the Fleet's favor. Maybe their sacrifices would save Reach. That would be worth it. He looked up into the sky. The steam made it difficult to see anything, but there was motion overhead: Faint shadows glided over the clouds. Kelly's Banshee appeared alongside his, and their canards bumped. The shadows overhead sharpened; three Covenant cruisers broke through the clouds and drifted toward the generator com plex. Their plasma artillery flickered and glowed with energy. Fred snapped open his COM channel and boosted the signal strength to its maximum. \"Delta Team: Fall back. Fall back now!\"\nStatic hissed over the channel, and several voices overlapped. He heard one of his Spartanshe couldn't tell whobreak through the static.\n\"Reactor complex seven has been compromised. We're falling back. Might be able to save number three.\" There was a pause as the speaker shouted orders to someone else: \"Set off those charges now!\"\nFred switched to FLEETCOM and broadcast: \"Be advised, Pillar of Autumn, groundside reactors are being taken. Orbital guns at risk. Nothing we can do. Too many. We'll have to use the nukes. Be advised, orbital MAC guns will most likely be neu tralized. Pillar of Autumn, do you read? Acknowledge.\"\nMore voices crowded the channel, and Fred thought he heard Admiral Whitcomb's voice, but whatever orders he issued were 32 HALO: FIRST STRIKE incomprehensible. Then there was only static, and then the COM went dead. The cruisers fired salvos of plasma that burned the sky. Dis tant explosions thumped, and Fred strained to see if there was any return fireany sign that his Spartans were fighting or re treating. Their only hope was movement; the enemy firepower would shred a fixed position.\n\"Fall back,\" he hissed. \"Now, damn it.\"\nKelly tapped him on the shoulder and pointed up. The clouds parted like a curtain drawn as a fireball a hundred meters across roared over their position. He saw the faint out lines of dozens of Covenant battleships in low orbit.\n\"Plasma bombardment,\" Fred whispered. He'd seen this before. They all had. When the Covenant con quered a human world they fired their main plasma batteries at the planetfired until its oceans boiled and nothing was left but a globe of broken glass.\n\"That's it,\" Kelly murmured. \"We've lost. Reach is going to fall.\"\nFred watched as the plasma impacted upon the horizon and the sky turned white, then faded to black as millions of tons of ash and debris blotted out the sun.\n\"Maybe,\" Fred said. He gunned his Banshee. \"Maybe not. Come on, we're not done yet.\" SECTION I THRESHOLD  CHAPTER FIVE\n1637 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \\ Aboard Longsword fighter, uncharted system, Halo debris field. Three weeks later. The Master Chief settled into the pilot's seat of the Longsword attack craft. He didn't fit. The contoured seat had been engi neered to mate with a standard-issue Navy flight suit, not the bulky MJOLNIR armor. He scratched his scalp and breathed deeply. The air tasted odd it lacked the metallic quality of his suit's air scrubbers. This was the first quiet moment he'd had to sit, think, and remember. First there was the satisfaction after the successful space op at Reach, which went sour after Linda was killed and the Covenant glassed the planet... and Red Team. Then  the time spent in a Pillar of Autumn cryotube, the flight from Reach, and the discovery of Halo. And the Flood. He stared out from the front viewport and fought down his revulsion at the memory of the Flood outbreak. Whoever had constructed Halo had used it to contain the sentient, virulent xenoform that had nearly claimed them all. The rapidly healing wound in his neck, inflicted by a Flood Infection Form during the final battle on Halo's surface, still throbbed. He wanted to forget it all. . .  especially the Flood. Everything inside him ached. The system's moon, Basis, was a silver-gray disk against the darkness of space, and beyond it was the muted purple of the gas giant Threshold. Between them lay a glistening expanse of debrismetal, stone, ice, and everything else that had once been Halo. ERIC NYLUND  35\n\"Scan it again,\" the Master Chief told Cortana.\n\"Already completed,\" her disembodied voice replied. \"There's nothing out there. I told you: just dust and echoes.\"\nThe Master Chief's hand curled into a fist, and for a moment he felt the urge to slam it into something. He relaxed, surprised at his frayed temper. He'd been exhausted in the pastand without a doubt the fight on Halo had been the most harrowing of his careerbut he'd never been prone to such outbursts. The struggle against the Flood must have gotten to him, more than he'd realized. With effort he banished the Flood from his mind. Either there'd be time to deal with it later. . .  or there wouldn't. Worrying about it now served no useful purpose.\n\"Scan the field again,\" he repeated. Cortana's tiny holographic figure appeared on the projection pad mounted between the pilot's and system-ops seats. She crossed her arms over her chest, visibly irritated with the Master Chief's request.\n\"If you don't find something out there we can use,\" he told her, \"we're dead. This ship has no Slipspace drive, and no cryo. There's no way to get back and report. Power, fuel, air, food, waterwe only have enough for a few hours.\n\"So,\" he concluded as patiently as he could manage. \"Scan. Again.\"\nCortana sighed explosively, and her hologram dissolved. The scanner panel activated, however, and mathematical symbols crowded the screen. A moment later the scanner panel dimmed and Cortana said,\n\"There's still nothing, Chief. All I'm picking up is a strong echo from the moon ... but there are no transponder signals, and no distress calls.\"\n\"You're not doing an active scan?\"\nHer tiny hologram appeared again, and this time static flashed across her figure. \"There are trillions of objects out there. If you want I can start to scan and identify each individual piece. If we sit here and do nothing else, that would take eighteen days.\"\n\"What if someone's out there but they turned off their trans ponder? What if they don't want to be found?\" 36 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"That's highly un\" Cortana froze for a split second. The static around her vanished, and she stared off into space. \"Interesting.\"\n\"What?\"\nCortana looked distracted, then seemed to snap out of it.\n\"New data. That signal echo's getting stronger.\"\n\"Meaning?\"\n\"Meaning,\" she replied, \"it's not an echo.\"\nThe scanner panel hummed back to life as Cortana activated the Longsword's long-range detection gear. \"Uh-oh,\" she said, a moment later. The Chief peered at the scan panel as Cortana identified the contact. The distinctive, bulbous silhouette of a Covenant cruiser edged into view as it moved around the moon's far side.\n\"Power down,\" he snapped. \"Kill everything except passive scanners and minimal power to keep you online.\"\nThe Longsword darkened; Cortana's hologram flickered and faded as she killed power flow to the holosystem. The cruiser moved into the debris field, prowling like a hungry shark. Another cruiser appeared, then another, and then three more.\n\"Status?\" he whispered, his hands hovering over the weapons controls. \"Have they spotted us?\"\n\"They're using the same scanning frequencies as our system,\"\nCortana said in his helmet speaker. \"How strange. No mention of this phenomenon in any of the UNSC or ONI files on the Cove nant. Why do you suppose they'd use the same frequencies?\"\n\"Never mind that,\" the Chief said. \"They're here and looking for something. Like I said before, if there are survivors out there, they'd be powered down.\"\n\"I can listen to their echoes,\" Cortana said, her voice flat and oddly procedural. Operating at lower power levels seemed to limit her more colorful behavior. \"Process active: analyzing Covenant signals. Piggybacking their scans. Diverting more runtime to the task. I'm building a multiplex filtering algorithm. Customizing the current shape-signature recognition software.\"\nAnother ship rounded the horizon of Basis. It was larger than any Covenant ship the Master Chief had seen. It had the sleek three-bulbed shape of one of their destroyers, but it must have been three kilometers long. Seven plasma turrets were mounted ERIC NYLUND  37\non universal jointsenough firepower to gut any ship in the UNSC fleet.\n\"Picking up encrypted transmissions from new contact,\"\nCor-tana whispered. \"Descrambling... lots of chatter... orders being given to the cruisers. It appears to be directing the Covenant fleet operations in the system.\"\n\"A flagship,\" the Chief murmured. \"Interesting.\"\n\"Scan still in progress, Chief. Stand by.\"\nJohn got out of the sysops seat. He had no intention of just\n\"standing by\" with seven Covenant warships in the system. He drifted to the aft compartment of the Longsword fighter. He'd assess what equipment was on board. He might get lucky and find a few of those Shiva nuclear-tipped missiles. As he had seen when he first boarded the ship, the cryotube had been removed. He wasn't sure why, but maybe, like every thing else on the Pillar of Autumn, the ship had been stripped down and upgraded for their original high-risk mission. Where the cryo unit was supposed to be there was a new con trol panel. The Chief examined it and discovered it was a Moray space-mine laying system. He didn't power it on. The Moray system could dispense up to three dozen free-floating mines. The mines had tiny chemical-fuel drives that allowed them to keep a fixed position or move to track specific targets. These would come in handy. He moved to the weapons locker and forced it openit was empty. The Chief checked his own assault rifle: fully functional, but only thirteen rounds remained in the magazine.\n\"Got something,\" Cortana said. He returned to the sysops seat. \"Show me.\"\nOn the smallest viewscreen, a silhouette appeared: a small, bullet-shaped cone with maneuvering thrusters on one end.\n\"It could be a cryotube,\" Cortana said. \"Thruster and power packs can be affixed on their aft sections for emergencies... if a ship has to be abandoned, for example.\"\n\"And most of the crew on the Pillar of Autumn never had a chance to be revived from cryo,\" the Chief said. \"They could have been jettisoned before the ship went down. Move us toward them. Docking thrusters only.\" 38 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Course plotted,\" Cortana said. \"Thrusters engaged.\"\nThere was a slight acceleration.\n\"ETA twenty minutes, Chief. But given the Covenant cruis ers' current search pattern, I estimate they will encounter the pod infive minutes.\"\n\"We need to move faster,\" the Chief told her, \"but without firing the engines. The drive emissions will show up like a flare on their sensors.\"\n\"Hang on,\" Cortana said. \"I'll get us there.\"\nThe Chief donned his helmet and locked its atmosphere seals. Status lights pulsed green. \"Ready,\" he said. The aft hatch of the Longsword breached and slammed open. There was an explosive sound as the atmosphere vented. The Longsword jumped forward; the Chief's head slammed into the back of his helmet.\n\"Adjusting course,\" Cortana said calmly. \"ETA two minutes.\"\n\"How are we going to stop?\" he asked. She sighed. \"Do I have to think of everything?\" The aft hatch resealed, and John heard the faint hiss as the internal compart ments pressurized. One of the sleek Covenant cruisers slowed and turned toward them.\n\"Picking up increased scanning signal activity and strength,\"\nCortana reported. The Chief's hand hovered over the weapons system console. It would take several seconds for the weapons to power up. The\n110mm rotary cannons could fire immediately, but the missiles would have to wait for their target-lock software to initialize. By then the cruiser, which outgunned them a hundred to one, would turn the Longsword into molten slag.\n\"Attempting to jam their scanners,\" Cortana said. \"That may buy us some time.\"\nThe Covenant cruiser turned away, slowed, and turned back to face the comparatively tiny Longsword. It took no further ac tion . . .  as if it were waiting for them to get closer. So far so good. The Chief clenched and unclenched his gauntleted hand. We 're not dead yet. He glanced at the scan display. The contact resolved into a clearer image: definitely a UNSC cryopod. It tumbled, and he ERIC NYLUND  39\nsaw that what he thought was a single pod was in fact three of them, affixed side by side. Three possible survivors out of the Pillar of Autumn's total complement of hundreds. He wished there were more. He wished Captain Keyes were here. In the Chief's opinion Keyes had been the most brilliant spatial tactician he had ever encountered ... but even the Captain would have thought twice about approach ing seven Covenant warships in a single Longsword. He risked feeding more ship's power to Cortana's systems. If they were going to make it through this, he needed her as effec tive as possible.\n\"New contact,\" Cortana said, interrupting his thoughts. \"I think it is, anyway. Whatever it is, it's stuck onto a chunk of rock, half a kilometer in diameter. Damn, it just rotated out of my view.\"\nOn the display Cortana replayed a partial silhouette of an oddly angled shape on the surface of the rock. She highlighted its contours, rotated the polygon, and overlaid this onto a sche matic of a Pelican dropship.\n\"Match with a tolerance of fifty-eight percent,\" she said. \"They might have parked there to avoid detection, as you suggested.\"\nThe Chief thought he detected a hint of irritation in her voice, as if she resented him for thinking of something she had not.\n\"Or,\" Cortana continued, \"more likely, the craft merely crashed there.\"\n\"I don't think so.\" He pointed at the display. \"The position of that wing indicates it's nose-outready for takeoff. If it had crash-landed, it would be faced the other way.\"\nAnother Covenant cruiser moved toward this new ship.\n\"Coming about, Chief,\" Cortana told him. \"Brace yourself, and then get ready to retrieve the pods.\"\nThe Chief unsnapped his harness and drifted aft. He grabbed a tether and clipped one end to his suit, the other to the bulkhead of the Longsword. He felt the maneuvering thrusters fire, and the ship rotated\n180 degrees.\n\"Decompression in three seconds,\" Cortana said. The Chief opened the empty weapons locker and climbed partially inside. He braced himself. 40 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Cortana dropped the aft hatch, and the inside of the ship ex ploded out; the Chief slammed into the door of the locker, denting the centimeter-thick Titanium-A. He climbed out and Cortana overlaid a blue arrow-shaped NAV point on his heads-up display, indicating the location of the drifting cryopods. The Chief jumped out of the Longsword. He floated through space. He was only thirty meters from the pods, but if he'd guessed wrong about his trajectory and missed the target, he wouldn't get a second chance. By the time he reeled himself back to the Longsword and tried again, those Covenant ships were certain to kill them all. He stretched his arms and hands toward the cylinders. Twenty meters to go. His approach was off. He shifted his left knee closer to his chest and started a slow tumble. Ten meters. His upper body rotated \"down\" relative to the pods. If he spun just right as he passed the cryotubes, it would give him enough extra reach to make contact. He hoped. He rotated back... almost standing \"up\" now. Three meters. He stretched his arms until the elbow joints creaked and popped; he stretched his hands, willed his fingers to elongate. His fingertips brushed against the smooth surface of the lead ing cryopod. It slid off and over and touched the second pod. He flexed and failed to grab hold. He scratched the surface of the third and final podhis middle finger hooked on the frame. His body swung inward, curled, and landed on the pod. He quickly looped his tether through the frame, secured himself to it, and pulled their combined mass back to the Longsword.\n\"Hurry, Chief,\" Cortana said over the COM. \"We've got trouble.\"\nThe Chief saw exactly what the trouble was: The engines of two Covenant cruisers flared electric blue as they accelerated toward the Longsword. The plasma and laser weapons along their hulls warmed from red to orange as they readied to fire. He pulled as fast as he could, making minor adjustments with ERIC NYLUND  41\nthe muscles in his braced legs so his motions didn't send them into a tumble in the zero gravity. The Longsword was a sitting duck for those Covenant cruisers. Cortana couldn't fire the engines until he got on board. Even if he and the pods survived the thruster wash, any evasive maneuver Cortana made would snap him and his cargo like the end of a whip. The Covenant ships were within firing range, lined up per fectly to destroy the Longsword. Three missiles streaked though space, impacting on the star board side of the lead Covenant ship. The explosion splashed harmlessly across its shield, which shimmered silver as it dissi pated the energy. The Chief turned his head and saw the Pelican blast off from the asteroid where it had been hiding. It rocketed on a perpen dicular course toward the two Covenant ships. The cruisers came about, apparently more interested in hunt ing live prey than the motionless Longsword. The Chief gave one final yank on the tether. He and the pods flew through the aft hatch and crashed into the deck of the Longsword. Cortana immediately sealed the hatch and fired the engines. The Chief climbed into the system-ops seat just as they accel erated and turned toward the cruisers. He activated the weapons systems. The two Covenant cruisers powered their engines and pursued the Pelican, but it had entered a dense region of the debris field, dodged a chunk of metal and rock, dived over an iceball, and charged through clouds of shattered alien metal. The Covenant fired: Energy blasts impacted on the debris and missed the Pelican.\n\"Whoever's piloting that Pelican knows their stuff,\" Cor tana said.\n\"We owe them a favor.\" John fired the Longsword's guns, and tiny silver dots punctuated the trailing Covenant cruiser's shields.\n\"Let's settle that debt.\"\n\"You realize,\" Cortana said, \"that we really can't damage those Covenant ships.\"\nThe cruiser slowed and turned toward them.\n\"We'll see about that. Get me a firing solution for the missiles. 42 HALO: FIRST STRIKE I want them to target their plasma turrets just before they fire. They have to drop a section of their shields for a fraction of a second.\"\n\"Working,\" Cortana replied. \"Without precise data, however, I'll have to base my calculations on several assumptions.\" A string of mathematics appeared on the weapons ops panel. \"Give me fire control.\"\nJohn punched the auto override on the firing systems. \"It's yours,\" he said. The Covenant cruiser's plasma turrets turned to track them as the ship came to bear. They warmed, and Cortana fired all the Longsword's ASGM-10 missiles. White vapor trails snaked toward the target.\n\"Let's move!\" the Chief said. The Longsword accelerated into the debris field, following the Pelican's path. The aft camera displayed the missiles racing to their target. Antimissile laser fire stabbed though space, and three of the missiles exploded into red fireballs. The Covenant's plasma turret glowed white hotabout to firewhen the last missile impacted. The explosion smeared across the hull. At first the Chief thought it had hit the shield, but then he saw that the explosion was inside the shimmering envelope of en ergy. The plasma turrets fired; their energy was immediately ab sorbed into the cloud of dust and vapor around the ship. Dull red plasma ballooned inside the cruiser's shield, obscuring its sen sors. The ship listed to port, momentarily blind.\n\"That should keep them busy for a while,\" Cortana said. The Longsword arced under a half-kilometer-wide metal platejust as a plasma bolt impacted and boiled the surface, sending the plate sputtering and spinning through space.\n\"Or not,\" Cortana muttered. \"Better let me drive.\"\nThe autopilot engaged, and the controls jerked out of the Chief's hand. The Longsword's afterburners kicked in, and it ac celerated toward a field of tumbling rocks. Cortana rolled and pitched, keeping the hull mere meters from the jagged surfaces. The Chief hung on to the seat with one hand and pulled his harness tight with the other. He moved the scanner display to the center viewscreen and saw the two nearest Covenant cruisers vectored toward his and the Pelican's position. The two UNSC ERIC NYLUND  43\nships might evade and dodge through the debris field for a few minutes, but soon their fuel would be exhausted, and the Cove nant would move in for the kill. And where could they really run to, anyway? Neither ship had Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engines, so they were stuck in this system and the Covenant knew it. They could afford to take their time and play with their prey before they pounced. The Chief performed a sweep scan of the system looking for somethinganything to give him a tactical advantage. No, think ing of tactics was going to get him killed. There was no tactical advantage he could gain that would give him a victory in this mismatch. He had to change the ruleschange his strategy. He scanned the massive Covenant flagshipthat was the key. That's how he'd be able to turn the tables on the enemy. He keyed the COM system and hailed the Pelican. \"This is Master Chief SPARTAN-One-One-Seven. Recognition code Tango Alpha Three Four Zero. Copy.\"\n\"Copy,\" a woman's voice answered. \"Warrant Officer Polaski here.\" Other voices argued in the background. \"Damn good to hear you, Chief.\"\n\"Polaski, proceed at maximum burn to this position.\" He dropped a NAV point on the display directly on the Covenant flagship. He included an exit vector indicating a rough course. There was silence over the COM.\n\"Copy, Polaski?\"\n\"I copy. Plotting course now, Chief.\" The voices arguing in the background became loud and more strained. \"I hope you know what you're doing. Polaski out.\" The channel snapped off.\n\"Get us there, Cortana,\" he said, tapping the NAV point. \"As fast as you can make this thing fly.\"\nThe Longsword rolled right and pitched toward the moon, Ba sis. The chief's safety harness groaned as gee forces increased.\n\"You do know what you're doing?\" Cortana asked. \"I mean, we're headed straight toward the largest and most dangerous Covenant ship in this system. I assume this is part of some daring and brutally simplistic plan you've cooked up?\"\n\"Yes,\" the Chief replied.\n\"Oh, good. Hang on,\" Cortana said. The Longsword rolled to port and dived under a rock. An explosion detonated aft of 44 HALO: FIRST STRIKE the ship. \"Looks like your 'plan' has gotten their attention. I'm reading all six Covenant cruisers moving to overtake us at flank speed.\"\n\"And the Pelican?\"\n\"Still there,\" Cortana reported. \"Taking heavy fire. But on tra jectory to the NAV point. .. moving slower than us, of course.\"\n\"Adjust our speed so we arrive at the same time. When you're in range for a secure system link, let me know.\"\nThe Longsword decelerated; it shuddered to starboard and then to port, and laser fire flashed along either side.\n\"You never told me,\" Cortana said in a voice that was equal parts irritation and calm indifference, \"precisely what your plan is.\"\n\"Something Captain Keyes would approve of.\" The Chief summoned the navigation console on the main display. \"If we survive long enough, I want a course from here\"he tapped the NAV point over the flagship\"into the gravity well of Basis to slingshot us around.\"\n\"Done,\" Cortana replied. \"I still Hey, they've stopped firing.\"\nThe Chief tapped the aft camera. The six cruisers continued their pursuit, but the tips of their weapons cooled as they pow ered down. \"I was counting on this. We're on the same line of fire as their flagship. They won't shoot.\"\n\"Pelican now twelve hundred kilometers and closing. Within range for system link.\"\nThe Chief hailed the Pelican. \"Polaski, release your controls. We're taking over.\"\n\"Chief?\"\n\"Establish encrypted system link. Acknowledge.\"\nA long pause, then, \"Roger.\"\nCortana's hologram appeared on the tiny protection pad. She appeared to listen intently for a moment, and then declared, \"Got them.\"\n\"Synchronize our courses, Cortana. Put us right on top of the Pelican.\"\n\"Maneuvering to intercept the Pelican. Five hundred kilome ters to flagship.\"\n\"Prepare to alter our course, Cortana, as we pass the flagship. Also get ready to direct all scanners at the flagship if we pass.\"\n'\"If?\" Cortana asked. ERIC NYLUND  45\nThe flagship's turrets turned to bear on the Longsword and Pelican. They glowed like angry eyes in the dark.\n\"Three hundred kilometers.\"\nLight sparkled along the length of the Covenant craft as it pre pared to fire; dull red plasma gathered; three torpedoes extruded and raced toward them.\n\"Evasiv\" the Chief said. Cortana banked hard port, starboard, and then hit the after burners and pulled up. Streaks of hell&e brushed close to the hulls of the Longsword and Pelicanthen were gone behind them. The Chief had hoped for this: Their extreme oblique approach angle combined with their speed made them hard to hit, even for the notoriously accurate Covenant plasma weapons.\n\"Ten kilometers,\" Cortana announced. \"Scanning in burst mode.\"\nThey flashed over the three-kilometer-long ship in the blink of an eye. The Chief saw gun turrets straining to track their ap proach. The alien craft had sleek lines, relatively flat top to bot tom, but it curved from stem to stern into three distinct bulb sections. Along its hull ran glowing blue conduits of super heated plasma; surrounding the ship was a faint shimmer of sil ver energy shields. He eased back into his seat. The Chief hadn't realized that he'd been holding his breath, and he exhaled. \"Good,\" he said.\n\"Very good.\"\n\"Burning into a high slingshot orbit,\" Cortana announced. The Longsword's engines rumbled. The acceleration played hell with the Chief's inner ear. He wasn't certain for a moment which way was up.\n\"Bring us closer to the Pelican,\" he said. \"Right on top. Give me a hard dock on its top access hatch.\"\nCortana set her hands on her hips and frowned. \"Readjusting burn parameters. But you know a linked-ship configuration dur ing an orbital burn is not stable.\"\n\"We won't be linked long,\" he said and slipped out of his har ness. He drifted aft, pulled himself down to the floor and opened the Longsword's access hatch. Green lights on the intervening pressure door winked on in succession. He removed the safeties and popped the seal. 46 HALO: FIRST STRIKE A hand reached up from the other side. John pulled the person through. The shock only lasted a moment. John's reflexes kicked in he grabbed a handful of the man's uniform, kicked the hatch shut, and propelled both of them against the hull. With a lightning-quick motion, he drew the newcomer's pistol and aimed it squarely at the man's forehead.\n\"You were dead,\" the Chief said. \"I saw you die. On Jenkins's mission record. The Flood got you.\"\nThe black man smiled a set of perfect white teeth. \"The Flood? Hell, Chief, it'll take more than that pack of walking alien horror-show freaks to take out Sergeant A. J. Johnson.\" CHAPTER SIX\n1710 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \\ Aboard Longsword fighter, uncharted system, Halo debris field. The Master Chief held on to the ship's frame with one hand so he wouldn't float away in zero gee. With the other hand he pressed the pistol deeper into Johnson's forehead. The Sergeant's smile faded, but there was not a trace of fear in his dark eyes. He snorted a laugh. \"I get it: You think I'm in fected. Well, I'm not. This\"he patted his chest\"is one hun dred percent grade-A Marine... and nothin' else.\"\nThe Chief eased his stance but didn't lower the gun. \"Explain how that's possible.\"\n\"They got us all right, those little mushroom-shaped infec tious bastards,\" Johnson said. \"They ambushed me, Jenkins, and Keyes.\" He paused at the Captain's name, then shook his head and went on. \"They swarmed all over us. Jenkins and Keyes were taken... but I guess I didn't taste too good.\"\n\"The Flood doesn't 'taste' anything,\" Cortana interjected. \"The Infection Forms rewrite a victim's cellular structure and convert him into a Combat Form, then later a Carrier Forman incubator for more Infection Forms. Based on what we've seen, they cer tainly don't just decide to pass up a victim.\"\nThe Sergeant shrugged. He fished into his pocket, found the remaining stub of a chewed cigar, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. \"Well, I've seen different. They 'passed me up' like I was undercooked spinach at a turkey dinner.\"\n\"Cortana,\" the Chief asked. \"Is it possible?\"\n\"It's possible? she carefully replied. \"But it's also highly un- 48 HALO: FIRST STRIKE likely.\" She paused for two heartbeats, and then added, \"Accord ing to the readings from the Sergeant's biomonitors, his story checks out. I can't be one hundred percent positive until he's been cleared in a medical suite, but preliminary findings indi cate that he is clean of any Flood parasitic infection. He's obvi ously not a mindless, half-naked alien killing machine.\"\n\"All right.\" The Chief clicked the pistol's safety to \"on\" then flipped the pistol around and handed it back to the Sergeant, grip first. \"But I'm having you checked inside and out the first chance we get. We can't risk letting the Flood infection spread.\"\n\"I hear you, Master Chief. Looking forward to those Navy nurses. Now\" The Sergeant pushed off the hull and drifted toward the hatch. \"let's get the rest of the crew on board.\" He hesitated by the cryotubes. \"I see you already picked up a few stragglers.\"\n\"They'll have to wait,\" the Chief said. \"It'll take half an hour to thaw them out without risking hypothermic shock. We don't have that much time left before we reengage the Covenant.\"\n\"Reengage,\" the Sergeant said, savoring the word. He smiled.\n\"Good. For a second I thought we were running away from a per fectly good fight.\" The Sergeant opened the hatch to the Pelican. The barrel of an MA5B assault rifle extended through the opening. The Sergeant reached down and pulled it up. A Marine Corporal drifted though the hatch. The name stitched on his uniform read LOCKLEAR . He was tanned, shaved bald, and had a wild look in his clear blue eyes. He retrieved his gun from the Sergeant and swept the interior with the point of his weapon. \"Clear!\" he shouted back down into the Pelican.\n\"At ease, Corporal,\" the Master Chief said. The Corporal's eyes finally locked onto the Chief. He shook his head in disbelief. \"A Spartan,\" he muttered. \"Figures. Outta the friggin' frying pan\"\nThe Master Chief spotted the Marine's shoulder patch: the gold comet insigne of the Orbital Drop Shock Troops. The ODST, more colorfully known as \"Helljumpers,\" were notorious for their tenacity in a fight. Locklear must have been one of Major Silva's boys, which ex plained the young Marine's general hostility. Silva was ODST to ERIC NYLUND  49\nthe bone, and during the action on Halo had been decidedly negative about the SPARTAN-IIs in general... and the Chief in particular. Another man gripped the edge of the hatch and pulled himself up. He had a plasma pistol strapped to his side and wore a crisp black uniform. His red hair was neatly slicked back, and his eyes took in the Chief without obvious surprise. He wore the black enameled bars of a First Lieutenant.\n\"Sir!\" The Chief snapped off a crisp salute.\n\"Adjusting burn and angle,\" Cortana announced. The Long-sword and Pelican tilted relative to the moon, Basis, on the viewscreen. \"That should give you a little more than one gee on the deck.\"\nThe lieutenant settled to the floor and lazily returned the salute. \"I'm Haverson,\" he said. He looked John over with interest.\n\"You are the Master Chief, SPARTAN-117.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" The Chief was surprised. Most people, even experi enced officers, had difficulty distinguishing one Spartan from another. How had this young officer so quickly identified him?\nThe Chief saw the round insigne on the man's shoulderthe black and silver eagle wings over a trio of stars. Inscribed above the eagle wings were the Latin words SEMPER VIGILANS Ever Vigilant. Haverson was with the Office of Naval Intelligence.\n\"Good,\" Haverson said. He glanced quickly at Locklear and Johnson. \"With you, Chief, we might have a chance.\" He reached into the hatch and pulled another person onto the Longsword. This last person was a woman, and she wore the flight-suit of a pilot. Her dirty blond hair was tucked into a cap. She saluted the Chief. \"Petty Warrant Officer Polaski, requesting permission to come aboard, Master Chief.\"\n\"Granted,\" he said and returned her salute. Stenciled onto her coveralls was a flaming fist over a red bull's-eye, the insignia of the Twenty-third Naval Air Squadron. Although the Chief had never met Polaski, she was from the same chalk as Captain Carol Rawley, callsign \"Foehammer.\" If Polaski was anything like Foehammer, she would be a skilled and fearless pilot. 50 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"So what's the story?\" Locklear demanded. \"We got some thing to shoot here?\"\n\"At ease, Marine,\" the Sergeant growled. \"Use that stuffing between your ears for something besides keeping your helmet on. Notice we're not floating? Feel those gee forces? This ship is in a slingshot orbit. We're coming around the moon for another crack at the Covenant.\"\n\"That's correct,\" the Chief said.\n\"Our first priority should be to escape,\" Haverson said and his thin brows knitted in frustration, \"not to blindly engage the Covenant. We have valuable intelligence on the enemy, and on Halo. Our first priority should be to reach UNSC-controlled space.\"\n\"That was my intention, sir,\" the Chief replied. \"But neither this Longsword nor your Pelican is equipped with Shaw-Fujikawa engines. Without a jump to Slipspace, it would take years to return.\"\nHaverson sighed. \"That does limit our options, doesn't it?\"\nHe turned his back to the Chief and paced, deep in thought. The Master Chief respected the chain of command, wnich meant that he had to obey Lieutenant Haverson. But, officer or not, the Spartan had never liked it when people turned their backs to him. And he certainly didn't like the way Haverson as sumed he was in charge. The Chief had already gotten his orders, and he intended to follow themwhether or not Haverson approved.\n\"Pardon me, sir,\" the Chief said. \"I must point out that while you are the ranking officer, I am on a classified mission of the highest priority. My orders come directly from High Command.\"\n\"Meaning?\"\n\"Meaning,\" John continued, \"I have tactical command of this crew, these ships. . . and you. Sir.\"\nHaverson turned, his expression dark. The Lieutenant's mouth opened as if he were going to say something. He closed his mouth and looked the Chief over. A faint smile flickered over his thin lips. \"Of course. I am well aware of your mission, Chief. I'll do anything I can to assist.\"\nHe knew about the Spartan's original mission to capture a Covenant Prophet? What was an ONI officer doing here anyway? ERIC NYLUND  51\n\"So what's the plan?\" Locklear asked. \"Slingshot orbitthen what? We just going to talk all day, Chief?\"\n\"No,\" the Chief replied. He glanced at Polaski and the Sergeant. He could count on her, and though he was suspicious of exactly how Sergeant John son had avoided falling to the Flood, he was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt. Haverson? He wouldn't trust him, but the man knew what was at stake, and he wouldn't interfere. Probably. Locklear was another story, though. The ODST was coiled and ready to pounce . . .  or come apart like an antipersonnel mine. Some men broke under pressure and wouldn't fight. Some snapped and disregarded their own and their team's safety for blind revenge. Add that to the Hell-jumper's fierce pride and one had a volatile mix. The Chief had to establish his authority over the man.\n\"Get onto the Pelican,\" the Chief told him. \"We only have a few minutes while we're on the far side of this moon. Grab any thing we can use: extra weapons, ammunition, grenades. Keep linked up to my COM so you can hear the briefing.\"\nLocklear stood there, glared into the Chief's faceplate, and tensed. Sergeant Johnson opened his mouth, but the Chief made a subtle cutting gesture with his hand. The Sergeant kept whatever he had to say to himself. The Master Chief took a step closer to Locklear. \"Was my or der unclear, Corporal?\"\nLocklear swallowed. The blue fire in his eyes dulled and he looked away. \"No.\" His body slumped and he shouldered his rifle, accepting, for now, the Master Chief's authority. \"I'm on it, Master Chief.\" He went to the hatch and dropped into the Pelican. To say this team was mismatched for a high-risk insertion op was an understatement.\n\"So how do we get a Shaw-Fujikawa drive?\" Polaski asked.\n\"We don't,\" John replied. \"But we go after the next best thing.\" He moved to the ops consol and tapped the display. The scan of the Covenant flagship appeared on the viewscreen. \"This is our objective.\" 52 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Haverson frowned. \"Chief, if we approach that ship we'll be blown out of the sky before we can even think about engaging them.\"\n\"Normally, yes,\" the Chief replied. \"But we're going to rig the Pelican as a fireshipwe load it with Moray mines and send it out ahead of us. We'll have to remote-pilot the Pelican, but it can be accelerated past the point where a crew would black out. It'll draw enemy fire, drop a few mines, and let us slip by.\"\nPolaski's expression hardened into a frown.\n\"There a problem, Warrant Officer?\"\n\"No, Master Chief. I just hate to lose a good ship. That bird got us off Halo in one piece.\"\nHe understood. Pilots got attached to their ships. They gave them names and human personalities. The Chief, however, never fell into that trap; he had long ago learned that any equipment was expendable. Except, maybe, Cortana.\n\"So we get close to the flagship,\" Haverson said and crossed his arms over his chest. \"Are we going nose to nose with a ship with a thousand times our firepower? Or are you planning an other flyby?\"\n\"Neither.\" The Chief pointed to the flagship's fighter launch bay. \"That's our LZ.\"\nPolaski squinted at the comparatively tiny opening in the belly of the flagship. \"That's a hell of a window to hit coming in this fast, but\"she bit her lower lip, calculating\"technically pos sible in a Longsword.\"\n\"They'll launch Seraph fighters to engage the Pelican and the Longsword,\" the Chief said, \"and to do that, they'll have to drop that section of their shields. We get in, neutralize the crew, and we have a ship with Slipspace capability.\"\n\"Rock 'n' roll!\" Locklear yelled over the COM. \"Penetrate and annihilate!\"\nSergeant Johnson chewed on his cigar as he considered the plan.\n\"No one has ever captured a Covenant ship,\" Haverson whis pered. \"The few times we've had one of them beaten and in a po sition to surrender, they've self-destructed.\"\n\"There's no choice,\" the Chief said. He looked over Polaski, ERIC NYLUND  53\nJohnson, and finally Haverson. \"Unless anyone has a better plan?\"\nThey were silent.\n\"Anything to add, Cortana?\" he asked.\n\"Our exit orbit burn leaves us low on fuel and traveling at high velocity on an intercept course with the flagship. There are over lapping fields of enemy fire on our approach vector. We have to decelerate and dodge simultaneously. That will be tricky.\"\n\"Polaski will be on that.\" The Chief turned to her.\n\"Pilot a Longsword?\" Polaski slowly nodded, and there was a gleam in her green eyes that hadn't been there a second ago.\n\"It's been a while, but yes, Master Chief. I am one hundred and ten percent on it.\" She moved to the pilot's seat and strapped her self in.\n\"With all due respect to Miss Polaski's skill,\" Cortana said,\n\"allow me to point out that I process information a million times faster and\"\n\"I need you to link with the flagship's intraship battlenet,\" the Chief cut in. \"When we're close you'll need to shut down its weapons. Jam its communications.\"\n\"Sending an unescorted lady ahead to do your dirty work?\"\nCortana sighed. \"I suppose I'm the only one who can.\"\n\"Lieutenant Haverson,\" the Chief said, \"I'll need you to pro gram the Moray mines to release and attach onto the Pelican before we exit this orbit. Set half for detonation on impact. Program the rest to detach and track any enemy ship on our approach.\"\nHaverson nodded and settled into the ops station next to Polaski. Two crates and a duffel pushed through the open access tunnel to the Pelican. Locklear emerged from the opening and sealed the hatch. \"That's it, Chief,\" he said. \"An HE Pistol, two extra MA5Bs, one M90 Close Assault Shotgun, and a crate or so of frag grenades. About a dozen clips for the riflesonly a few shells for the shotgun, though.\"\nThe Chief took four grenades and a half dozen clips for his as sault rifle. He ejected his weapon's nearly spent magazine and slapped a full one into place with a satisfying clack. The Sergeant grabbed ammo, an MA5B, and three grenades. 54 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Orbital exit burn in ten seconds,\" Polaski said.\n\"Dog the rest of that,\" the Chief told Locklear. \"And brace yourself.\"\nLocklear secured the collection of weapons and ordnance in a duffel bag, looped it around his neck, and then found a hand hold. Sergeant Johnson leaned against the cryopods. The Master Chief grabbed the bulkhead.\n\"Releasing Pelican,\" Polaski said. There was a thump from beneath the hull. \"Pelican away.\"\n\"Pelican autopilot programmed,\" Cortana said.\n\"Moray mines attached and armed,\" Haverson added. Polaski said, \"Exit burn in three... two... one. Burn!\"\nThe Longsword's engine roared to life, the hull creaked with stress, and everyone leaned against the acceleration. The Pelican pulled ahead, rounded the horizon of the moon first, and arced back into the debris field. As the Longsword fol lowed, the light struck the surface of the moon just right and the Chief saw meteors rain upon the planetoid, leaving craters and tiny puffs of dust as they impacted. Polaski snapped the display port camera centered on the Covenant cruisers. \"They were waiting for us,\" she cried. \"Eva sive maneuvers.\" The Pelican rolled to starboard. \"Accelerating to the flagsh\"\nThe flagship was close. Too close. It must have anticipated their orbital trajectory. But it hadn't counted on them turning straight toward it. If they hadn't, the flagship would have been in a perfect perpendicular firing position.\n\"Pelican now two hundred kilometers in the lead,\" Polaski said. The bulky craft drew fire from the cruisers. Smoke trailed from its hull, and bits of the empty ship were vaporized.\n\"Mines away,\" Haverson announced. \"Plugging coordinates and trajectories into NAV, Polaski. Don't run them over.\"\n\"Roger,\" she said. \"Hang onwe're going in.\"\n\"I hate this crap,\" Locklear muttered. \"Ships shooting each other, fire so thick you could walk on it to the LZ, and me sittin'\nhere not able to do a damn thing but hang on and wonder when I'm going to get blown up.\" ERIC NYLUND  55\nThe Chief said nothing, but he agreed. Despite the ODST's foul disposition, he shared his uneasiness with space combat.\n\"Amen,\" Sergeant Johnson added. \"Now shut up and let the lady drive.\" He removed a mission record unit from his pocket and inserted a chip. The screen blanked; a rhythmic cacophony blasted from its single tiny speaker. The Chief recognized the sound as \"flip\" musica descen dant of some centuries-old noise called \"metal.\" The Sarge had peculiar tastes, to say the least.\n\"Just shoot me now, Sarge,\" Locklear protested, \"and get it over with. Don't torture me with that crap first.\"\n\"Suck it up, Marine. This is a classic.\"\n\"So's a mercy killing.\"\nPolaski continued to evade, and the Longsword rolled and jinked port and starboard. She sent the ship into a double barrel roll'to dodge a plasma torpedo fired from the flagship.\n\"Show-off,\" Cortana muttered in the Chief's helmet speaker.\n\"Connecting to the Covenant battlenet,\" Cortana announced over the ship COM. \"Accessing their weapons systems. Stand by.\"\nAhead, the Pelican intercepted a second torpedo and burst into flames, vaporized, and smeared across the night as a cloud of sparkling ionized metal. The flagship appeared on the forward viewscreenno larger than a dinner plate.\n\"No more time to play around,\" Polaski muttered. She hit the afterburners and rocketed toward the flagship. The sudden acceleration sent the Chief and Sergeant Johnson bouncing to the aft of the Longsword. Locklear still hung on to the frame, now nearly horizontal.\n\"There is now insufficient distance to decelerate and make a soft landing inside the flagship launch bay,\" Cortana warned.\n\"Really?\" Polaski replied, irritated. \"No wonder they call you\n'smart' AIs.\" She tugged her cap lower over her eyes. \"I'll do the flying. You concentrate on getting those weapons offline.\"\n\"They're launching fighters,\" Haverson warned. On the viewscreen the Covenant flagship now filled half the display, and six Seraph fighters emerged from the belly of the massive ship. \"I've still got active signals from twenty of the Moray mines. 56 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Their momentum is carrying them within range. Tracking . .. locked on . . .  maneuvering.\" Tiny puffs of fire overlapped the teardrop-shaped Seraph fighters as they exploded. Haverson laughed. \"Bull's-eye!\"\n\"Forward weapons systems and shields are disabled,\"\nCor-tana said.\n\"The doors are open,\" Polaski murmured. \"We're invited in. It'd be damn impolite to say no.\"\nThe flagship filled the display.\n\"Collision imminent,\" Cortana warned. Sergeant Johnson got to his feet. The Chief knew better and stayed where he was on the deck. He grabbed on to the Ser geant's leg. Polaski cut the engines and hit the maneuvering thrusters. The Longsword spun 180 degrees. With the ship now pointed back ward, she pushed the throttle to maximum, and the engines thun dered in full overload. The hull strained against the sudden reverse deceleration. The Chief hung on to the floor with one hand; with the other he held on to the Sergeant and kept him from flying across the ship. Polaski changed the viewscreen to a spilt viewfore and aft. She maneuvered with the ship's thrusters, adjusting their ap proach to the launch bay opening. Onscreen the small opening grew larger alarmingly fast. \"Hang onhang on!\"\nThe engines whined and the ship slowed... but it wasn't going to be enough. They entered the launch bay at three hundred meters per sec ond. Flames from the Longsword's engines washed over Grunt technicians as they vainly attempted to scramble out of the way. Their methane-filled atmosphere tanks popped like firecrackers. Polaski cut the power. The ship slammed into the wall. The Master Chief, Sergeant Johnson, and Locklear crashed into the pilot's and ops seats in a heap. Grunts approached the ship with plasma pistols drawn, the weapons glowing green as the aliens overcharged them. Cove nant Engineers struggled to put out fires and repair burst conduits.\n\"Shield reenergizing in place over the launch bay,\" Cortana ERIC NYLUND  57\nannounced. \"External atmosphere stabilizing. Please feel free to get up and move around the cabin.\"\nLocklear scrambled to his feet. \"Yeah!\" he whooped. The young Helljumper yanked his MA5B's charging lever and racked a round into the chamber. \"Let's rock!\"\n\"Good work, people,\" the Chief said, standing. He readied his own assault rifle. \"But that was just the easy part.\" CHAPTER SEVEN\n1750 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \\ Aboard unidentified Covenant flagship, uncharted system, Halo debris field. Plasma bolts impacted on the Longsword's hull and splashed across the windshield. The packets of glowing energy sizzled across the cockpit and etched cloudy, molten trails into the glass. A legion of Grunts hunkered behind docked Seraph fighters and fuel pods. Some darted in and out of cover and fired ghostly green blobs of plasma at the Longsword.\n\"I got 'em,\" Polaski said and flipped a switch. The Longsword's landing gear deployed and raised the craft a meter off the floor. \"Guns clear,\" Polaski announced. \" 'Bye, boys.\"\nShe brought up a targeting reticle and swept it around the bay. A hail of 120mm rounds tore through the Grunts' cover. Fuel pods and unshielded fighters detonated and sent metal frag ments and alien soldiers hurtling to the deck. The air exploded into roiling flame, which billowed toward the ceiling and then subsided. Pools of burning fuel and the charred bodies of Grunts and Covenant Engineers littered the launch bay.\n\"Fire suppression system activating,\" Cortana said. Jets of gray mist blew down from above. The fires intensified for a moment, then guttered and went out.\n\"Is there atmosphere in the bay?\" the Chief asked.\n\"Scanning,\" Cortana replied. \"Traces of ash, some contami nation from the melted ship hulls, and a lot of smoke, but the air in the bay is breathable, Chief.\" ERIC NYLUND  59\n\"Good.\" He turned to the others. \"We're going in. I'll lead. Locklear, you're up with me. Sergeant, you've got the rear.\"\n\"You'll need to take me, too,\" Cortana said. \"I've pulled a schematic of this ship to navigate, but the engineering controls have been manually locked down. I'll need direct access to this ship's command data systems.\"\nThe Chief hesitated. His armor allowed an AI like Cortana to tag along stored in a special crystal layer. On Halo, Cortana had been an invaluable tactical asset. Still, she also used part of his armor's neural interface for pro cessing purposes, literally harnessing parts of the Chief's brain. And after coming out of Halo's computer system, she'd been act ing... twitchy. He put his discomfort aside. If Cortana turned into a liability, he'd pull the plug.\n\"Stand by,\" he said. He punched a key on the computer termi nal and dumped Cortana to a data chip. A moment later the ter minal pulsed green. He removed the chip and slotted it in the back of his helmet. There was a moment of vertigo, and then the familiar mercury-and-ice sensation flooded his skull as Cortana interfaced.\n\"Still plenty of room in here, I see,\" she said. He ignored her customary quip and nodded at Johnson and Locklear. \"Let's go.\"\nSergeant Johnson hit the door release, and the side hatch slid open. Locklear shouldered his rifle and poured fire through the opening. A pair of Grunts who had crouched near the Longsword to protect themselves from the fire flew backward onto the deck. Phosphorescent blood pooled beneath their prone forms. The Chief dived through the open hatch and rolled to his feet;\nhis motion tracker picked up three targets to his side. He whirled about and saw a trio of Covenant Engineers. He removed his fin ger from the weapon's trigger. Engineers were no threat. The odd, meter-high creatures hovered above the deck, using bladders of some lighter-than-air gas produced by their bodies. Their tentacles and feelers probed a tangle of fuel lines, quickly repairing the pipes and pumps.\n\"Funny that there's no welcoming committee yet,\" Cortana whispered. \"I looked over this ship's personnel roster: three 60 HALO: FIRST STRIKE thousand Covenant, mostly Engineers. There's a light company of Grunts, and only a hundred Elites.\"\n\"Only a hundred?\" the Chief muttered. He waved his team forward toward a heavy door at the back of the launch bay. The air was full of smoke and fire-suppressing mist, which reduced visibility to a dozen meters. The rattle of assault rifle fire echoed through the bay. The Chief spun to his right and brought his own rifle to bear. Locklear stood over the twitching corpses of the Engineers. He fired another burst into the fallen aliens.\n\"Don't waste your ammunition, Corporal,\" the Sergeant said.\n\"They may be ugly, but they're harmless.\"\n\"They're harmless now, Sarge,\" Locklear replied. He wiped a spatter of alien blood from his cheek and smirked. The Chief tended to agree with Locklear's threat analysis of the Covenant: When in doubt, k ill. Still, he found the young Ma rine's actions unnecessary... and a little sloppy. The architecture of the Covenant fighter bay was similar to the interior of the other Covenant ship the Chief had recently been inside, the Truth and Reconciliation. Low indirect lights illumi nated the dark purple walls. The alien metal appeared to be sten ciled with odd, faintly luminescent geometric patterns that overlapped each other. The ceiling was vaulted and unneces sarily high, maybe ten meters. In contrast to a human ship, it was a waste of space. The Chief spotted a large door at the back of the bay. The door was a distorted hexagonal shape and large enough that the entire team could enter at the same timenot that he'd ever be foolish enough to take up such a formation in hostile ter ritory. The door had four sections that, when keyed to open, would silently slide away from the center.\n\"That will take us to the main corridor,\" Cortana said. \"And from there, to the bridge.\"\nThe Chief waved Locklear to the right side of the door, Sergeant Johnson to the left.\n\"Lieutenant Haverson,\" he called out, \"you're our rear guard. Polaski, hit the door controls. Hand signals from now on.\"\nHaverson tossed an ironic salute to the Chief but tightened his grip on his weapon and scanned the bay. ERIC NYLUND  61\nPolaski moved forward and crouched by the panel in the mid dle of the door. She turned her cap around and leaned closer, then looked back to the Chief and gave him a thumbs-up. He raised his rifle and nodded, giving her the go-ahead to breach the door. She reached for the controls. Before she touched them, though, the door slid apart. Standing on the opposite side were five Elites: Two stood shielded by either edge of the door; a third stood centered in the corridor, plasma rifle leveled at the Chief; behind it, the fourth Elite covered the rear of their formation; and one last Elite crouched in front of the door control panelnose to nose with Polaski. The Chief fired two bursts directly over Polaski's head. His first shots struck the Elite in the middle of the corridor. His sec ond burst hit the Elite standing rear guard. The alien warriors hadn't activated their shields, and 7.62mm rounds punctured their armor. The pair of Elites dropped to the deck. Their comrades on either side of the door howled and at tacked. The whine of plasma rifle fire echoed through the bay as blue-white energy bolts crashed into the Chief's own shields. His shield dropped away, and the insistent drone of a warning indicator pulsed in his helmet. His vision clouded from the flare of energy weapon discharges, and he struggled to draw a bead on the Elite in front of Polaski. It was no goodhe had no clear shot. The Elite drew a plasma pistol. Polaski drew her own sidearm. She was fasteror luckier. Her pistol cleared its holster; she snapped it up and fired. The pistol boomed as a shot took the Elite right in the center of its elongated helmet. The Elite's own shot went wide and seared into the deck be hind Polaski. Polaski emptied her clip into the alien's face. A pair of rounds rocked the alien back. Its shields faded, and the remaining rounds tore through armor and bone. It fell on its back, twitched twice, and died. Johnson and Locklear unleashed a hellish crossfire into the corridor and made short work of the remaining Elites as Polaski hugged the deckplates. 62 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Now that's what I'm talkin' about,\" Johnson crowed. \"An honest-to-God turkey shoot.\"\nTen meters down the passage a dozen more Elites rounded a corner.\n\"Uh-oh,\" Locklear muttered.\n\"Sergeant,\" the Chief barked. \"Door control!\" John moved to Polaski's position in two quick strides, grabbed her by her collar, and dragged her out of the line of fire. Plasma bolts singed the air where she'd been. He dropped her, primed a grenade, and tossed it toward the rushing Elites. The Sergeant fired his assault rife at the door controls; they exploded in a shower of sparks, and the doors slammed shut. A dull thump echoed behind the thick metal, then an eerie si lence descended on the bay. Polaski struggled to her feet and fed a fresh clip into her pistol. Her hands shook.\n\"Cortana,\" the Chief said. \"We need an alternate route to the bridge.\"\nA blue arrow flashed on his heads-up display. The Chief turned and spotted a hatch to his right. He pointed to the hatch and signaled his team to move, then ran to the hatch and touched the control panel. The small door slid open to reveal a narrow corridor beyond, snaking into the darkness. He didn't like it. The corridor was too dark and too narrowa perfect place for an ambush. He briefly considered heading back to the primary bay door, but abandoned that idea. Smoke and sparks poured from the door seams as the Covenant forces on the other side tried to burn their way through. The Chief clicked on his low-light vision filters, and the dark ness washed away into a grainy flood of fluorescent green. No contacts. He paused to let his shields recharge, then dropped into a low crouch. He brought his rifle to bear and crept into die corridor. The interior of the passage narrowed, and its smooth purple surface darkened. The Chief had to turn sideways to pass through.\n\"This looks like a service corridor for their Engineers,\" Cor tana said. \"Their Elite warriors will have a tough time following us.\" ERIC NYLUND  63\nThe Chief grunted an acknowledgment as he eased his way through. There was a scraping sound and a flash of sparks as his energy shield brushed the wall. It was too tight a fit. He powered down the shields, which left him just enough room to squeeze through. Locklear followed behind him, then Polaski, the Sergeant, and finally Haverson. The Chief pointed at Haverson, then at the door. The Lieu tenant frowned, then nodded. Haverson closed the hatch and ripped out the circuitry for the control mechanism. There had been dozens of Engineers in the launch bay and there were enough on the ship to  merit their own access tunnel. The Chief hadn't seen anything like this on the Truth and Reconciliation. In fact, he hadn't seen a single Engineer on that ship. What made this ship different? It was armed like a ship of war... yet had the support staff of a refit vessel.\n\"Stop here,\" Cortana said. The Chief halted and killed his external speakers so he could speak freely. \"Problem?\"\n\"No. A lucky break, maybe. Look to your left and down twenty centimeters.\"\nThe Chief squinted and noticed that a portion of the wall ex truded into a circular opening no larger than the tip of his thumb.\n\"That's a data port. . .  or what passes for one with the Covenant Engineers. I'm picking up handshake signals in shortwave and infrared from it. Remove me and slot me in.\"\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\"I can't do much good in there with you. Once I'm directly in contact with the ship's battlenet, however, I can infiltrate and take over their systems. You'll still need to get to the bridge and manually give me access to their engineering systems. In the meantime, I may be able to control secondary systems and buy you some time.\"\n\"If you're sure.\"\n\"When have I not been sure?\" she snapped. The Chief could sense her impatience through the neural interface. He removed Cortana's data chip from the socket in his helmet. 64 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The Chief felt her leave his mind, felt the heat rush back into his head, pulsing with the rhythm of his heart... and once again, he was alone in the armor. He slotted Cortana's chip into the Covenant data port. Locklear's face rippled with disgust, and he whispered, \"You couldn't pay me to stick any part of myself in that thing.\"\nThe Chief made a slashing gesture across his throat, and the Marine fell silent.\n\"I'm in,\" Cortana said.\n\"How is it?\" the Chief said. There was a half-second pause. \"It's ... different,\" Cortana replied. \"Proceed thirty meters down this passage and turn left.\"\nThe Chief motioned the team forward.\n\"It's very different,\" Cortana murmured. Cortana was built for software intrusion. She had been pro grammed with every dirty trick and code-breaking algorithm the Office of Naval Intelligence, Section Three had ever created, and a few more tricks she'd developed on her own. She was the ultimate thief and electronic spy. She slipped into the Covenant system. It was easy the first time she had entered their network as the Longsword had approached the flagship. She had set their weap ons systems into a diagnostic mode. The Covenant had deter mined the problem and quickly reset the system, but it had given Polaski the precious seconds her sluggish human reflexes had needed to get inside the launch bay.\n\"How is it?\" the Chief asked. Now the element of surprise was gone, and the system's counterintrusion systems were running on high alert. Something else prowled the systems now. Delicate pings bounced off the edges of Cortana's presence; they probed, and withdrew. It felt as if there were someone else running through their sys tem. A Covenant AI? There had never been any reports of alien AIs. The possibility intrigued her.\n\"It's.. . different,\" she finally answered. She scanned the ship's schematics, deck by deck, then flashed through the vessel's three thousand surveillance systems. She picked out the quickest route to the bridge from their current ERIC NYLUND  65\nposition and stored it in a stolen tertiary system buffer. She multitasked a portion of herself and continued to analyze the ship's structure and subsystems.\n\"Proceed thirty meters down this passage and turn left.\"\nCortana hijacked the external ship cameras and detected the six Covenant cruisers. They had stalled their pursuit of the Longsword and now hovered a hundred kilometers off the flag ship's starboard side. The strange U-shaped Covenant dropships launched from the cruisers and swarmed toward the flagship. That was trouble. Within the flagship she spotted a dozen hunt-and-kill Elite teams sweeping the corridors. She scrambled the ship's tracking systems, generated electronic ghosts of the Chief and his team along a path directed toward the nose of the ship, where UNSC command-and-control centers were typically located. Maybe she could fool the Elites into a wild goose chase. She uploaded the coordinates of those enemies into the Chief's HUD. A tickle of feedback teased through the data stream. Cortana locked onto the source of that feedback, listened, dis cerned a nonrandom pattern to the signal, then cut off contact. She had no time to play hide and seek with whatever else was in this system. Cortana had to finally admit to herself that she didn't have the power to contend with a possible enemy artificial construct. She had absorbed a tremendous volume of data from Halo's systems:\neons' worth of records on Halo's engineering and maintenance, the xenobiology of the Flood, and every scrap of information on the mysterious \"Forerunners\" the Covenant revered so much. The information would take her a week of nonstop processing to examine, collate, codify. . .  let alone understand. Even compressed, all the data filled her and cut into optical subsystems that she usually reserved for her processing. She had a nagging suspicion that the file compression had been too hastyand that the Halo data might be corrupted. In effect, the vast amount of information she had copied bloated her, made her slower and less effective. She hadn't mentioned this to the Chief. She could barely ad mit it to herself. Cortana was extremely proud of her intellect. 66 HALO: FIRST STRIKE But to operate as if nothing were different would be even more foolish. She sent a blocking countersignal along the connection where this \"other\" was trying to contact her. The portion of her consciousness examining the ship's struc ture discovered that the bridge had another access point. Stupid. She should have seen it immediately, but this other entrance had been filed under the schematics as an emergency system. It was a tiny corridor that connected to a set of escape pods. That route shared a vent with an engineering passage.\n\"Chief, there's another way to the bridge.\"\n\"Affirmative. Wait one.\" There was a burst of gunfire on the COM, then silence. \"Go ahead, Cortana.\"\n\"Uploading the route now,\" she said. \"I do not believe you can fit through this new passage in your armor. I suggest you split your team and proceed along both routes to maximize your chances of egress onto the bridge.\"\n\"Understood,\" the Chief said. \"Polaski and Haverson with me. Johnson and Locklear, you take the escape pod route.\"\nShe continued to track both teams and the relative positions of the Covenant parties. She replicated additional ghost signals to confuse the enemy. Cortana picked up increasing communications bandwidth be tween the flagship and the cruisers. Reports of the invadersa call for helpa warning to be relayed to the home world. There were references to the \"holy one,\" and those messages had what she considered amusing attempts at encryption to keep them se cret. Curious, she had to investigate what the Covenant thought important enough to hide. As she decrypted those messages and others cross-referenced and filed in their COM archives, she detected an energy spike on the flagship's lateral sensors. One cruiser off to starboard moved farther away; it turned, its engines glowed, the black around it rippled electric blue. The Covenant ship sped forward, tore the night, and vanished into Slipspace. Cortana noted their departure vector for future reference. . .  a possible clue at the location of their home world. It was puzzling that the Covenant would call for help. Their warriors were intensely proud; they almost never ran from a ERIC NYLUND  67\nfight. They didn't ask for help... not for themselves. Then again, this ship, although armed for war, didn't appear to be staffed for combat. It carried only a few hundred Elites and an army of Engineers. As Cortana pondered this, she continued to generate a counter-signal to match to the probe sent by the other presence in the system. She hoped to cloak her activity as long as possible. The other's signal morphed into a series of Bessel functions, and she compensated to match. She automated this process, commandeering a portion of the Covenant's own NAV computer to do so, and then she herded the electronic ghosts of the Chief and the others to confuse the pursuing Elite forces. At the same time, she continued her study of the Covenant ship and its systemsit was a unique opportunity. The informa tion on their advanced Slipspace drive, their weaponsit could leapfrog human technology decades forward.\n\"Cortana?\" The Chief's voice broke her concentration. There were sounds of plasma bolts and automatic weapons fire. \"We've got Elites in active camouflage in the passage. We need a way around this intersection.\"\nShe had not considered the Elites' light-bending technology. She was doing too much, spreading herself too thin. She halted her ongoing study of the Covenant technology and found the Chief a way around the intersection. She rebooted her human communications and protocol rou tines and said, \"Access panel to your right, Chief. Down three meters, straight ahead five meters, turn to your left and then up again.\"\nShe heard an explosion. \"Got it,\" the Chief said. Cortana had to focus on protecting the Chief. She halted her other searches and scrutinized the ship's schematics. There had to be something she could use. A weapon. A way to stop then-enemiesthere: the backup terminus for their atmospheric preprocessors. Unlike the other systems, this one was classified as low priority and had minimal security layers. She generated several hundred thousand Covenant codes in a microsecond and cracked the system. She diverted the air vents along the corridors the Chief and his team occupied to the pri- 68 HALO: FIRST STRIKE mary air systems. She then tasked the processor pumps to ser vice the rest of the ship and activated themin reverse. Warnings flashed throughout the Covenant system as the pressure suddenly dropped in 87 percent of the ship's passages. She squelched them. The other presence in the system tried to shut the pumps off. She blocked that signal and assigned a new code to the security systems: \" WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU .\"\nShe heard the other AI scream, an echo of an echo that rever berated through her processors. She knew trie soundfamiliar like a human voice, but terribly distorted. She scanned through the ship's cameras and saw Grunts squeal and fall over, methane leaking from their breathers as the pres sure dropped. Engineers turned blue, slowed, and died, floating in place with tentacles twitching, still searching for something to fix. The Elite hunt-and-destroy parties halted in the corridors and clutched their throats, mandibles snapping at air that was no longer there; they toppled and suffocated. An impulse flickered through her ethics subroutine and gen erated an interrupt command, designed to make her stop and re think her decisions. But Cortana knew it was either kill or be killed. She rerouted all signals from her ethics routine and shut it down. She couldn't afford to be slowed down by such secondary considerations.\n\"Chief,\" she whispered over the COM. \"Be advised that the passages I'm uploading into your NAV system no longer contain atmosphere. Proceeding into those regions will be lethal to the rest of your team.\"\nThere was a three-second pause, and then the Chief replied,\n\"Understood.\"\nCortana's decryption of the Covenant communiques referenc ing the \"holy one\" finally cycled to a halt. The language in them was unusually ornateeven more so than the florid prose of the higher-ranking Elites. It was impossible to develop a literal translation, but she gleaned that some dignitary was due at the Halo construct. Soon. This visitor was so important that these warships were only the advance scouting party. More ships were on their way. Hun dreds of them. ERIC NYLUND  69\n\"Chief,\" Cortana said. \"We may have a prob\"\n\"Hold transmission, Cortana,\" the Chief interrupted. \"We're outside the command center. Can you tell how many are inside?\"\n\"Negative. They have disabled the bridge sensors,\" she replied.\n\"You heard Cortana,\" the Chief said, addressing his com panions. \"Expect anything. Sergeant, you and Locklear: Get in position.\"\n\"Roger that,\" Sergeant Johnson whispered. \"In position and ready to kick Covenant ass.\"\n\"We're about to blow the door on this end, Cortana. Stand by.\"\nCortana picked up energy surges on the flagship's lateral sen sors. The Covenant cruisers turned; their plasma weapons warmed and readied to fire.\n\"Chief,\" Cortana said. \"Hurry!\"\n\"Plasma grenades on my mark,\" the Chief said on the COM.\n\"Mark! Toss them and take cover.\"\nThe Chief tossed two plasma grenades. They burned magnesium-brilliant and adhered to the heavy alloy of the bulk head doors that encased the bridgeone of the alien weapons'\nmore useful properties. He moved around the corner of the pas sage and shielded Haverson and Polaski. Five seconds elapsed, and a flash filled the hallway. The Chief moved back to the doors. They shone mirror-bright where the grenade had detonated but were otherwise unharmed. A hundred grenades wouldn't have blasted through these doorsbut when Covenant plasma grenades detonated, they disrupted electronics and shielding. The Chief dug his gauntleted fingers into the door crackhoping that the disruption had knocked out the motors and shielding keeping these doors closed. He braced himself and tried to pull the doors apart at the seams. They slid a few centimeters, then ground to a halt. The Chief adjusted his footing and strained at them again, but the doors remained frozen in place. The Chief's motion sensors pulsed a warningthere was movement directly on the other side of the door. He shoved the muzzle of his assault rifle into the narrow open ing and squeezed the trigger. Spent shell casings clattered to the floor. 70 HALO: FIRST STRIKE A howl echoed from the other side, and a curl of gray smoke drifted through the crack. The Chief slung his rifle, grabbed the doors, flexed, pulled and this time the heavy metal moved. A flash of plasma fire washed over his shields, blinding him. He ignored it, closed his eyes, and continued to force his way through the door. Another plasma shot struck him in the chest. The doors were half a meter apartgood enough. He rolled to the side and gave his shields a moment to regenerate. Nothing. The suit's alarms pulsed insistently. He squinted through the glowing spots that swam in his vision and scanned the damage reportthe MJOLNIR's internal temperature was over sixty degrees Celsius, and the Chief heard the whine of microcompressors in his armor, trying to compensate.\n\"Marines!\" he yelled. \"Suppressing fire!\"\n\"Hell yes, Master Chief,\" Locklear replied. Locklear dropped to one knee and fired through the opening; Johnson stood and fired over the younger Marine's head. The Chief rebooted his shielding control software. Nothing. His shield system was dead. The shooting stopped. \"I'm out,\" Locklear said.\n\"And I'm in,\" the Chief said.\n He rushed into the room and stepped over the dead Elite on the floor before him. Its torso had been ripped openshot as it tried to hold the doors closed. The Chief scanned the room. It was circular, twenty meters across, with a raised platform in the center that was ten meters across and ringed with holographic control surfaces. The central platform floated over a pit in the floor. Within the pit were ex ploded optical conduits and a trio of Covenant Engineers, cow ering in fear.\n\"Don't shoot the Engineers,\" Cortana warned. \"We need them.\"\n\"Understood,\" the Chief replied. \"Acknowledge that order, Locklear.\"\nThere was a pause over COM and then Locklear said,\n\"Roger.\"\nAlong the circular walls, floor-to-ceiling displays showed the flagship's status as a variety of charts and graphs, peppered with ERIC NYLUND  71\nthe odd calligraphy of the Covenant. They also showed the space surrounding them, and the five remaining Covenant cruisers closing in. The Chief caught a motion in his peripheral vision: An Elite in jet-black armor materialized from the wall display, its light-bending camouflage dissolving. It strode toward the Chief, roaring a challenge. The Chief's rifle snapped up, and he squeezed the trigger. Three rounds spat from the muzzle, then the bolt locked open. The ammo counter read ooempty. The shots flared on the Elite's shielding; a lucky round pene trated and deformed its shoulder. Purple-black blood spattered on the deck, but it shrugged off the wound and kept coming. Haverson charged into the room and leveled his pistol. \"Hold it!\" he yelled, and thumbed off the weapon's safety. The Elite drew a plasma pistol and fired at the Lieutenant but never took its eyes off the Chief. Haverson cursed and scrambled out of the room as the plasma charge slashed at him. The Chief altered his grip on the rifle and crouched in a low fighting stance. Even with the shield malfunction, he was confi dent he could take a single Elite. The Elite removed its helmet and dropped it. The plasma pistol clattered to the deck a moment later. It leaned forward, and its mandibles parted in what the Chief guessed had to be a smile. It moved closer, and a blue-white blade of energy flashed to life in its hands. The Elite raised the energy blade and charged. CHAPTER EIGHT\n1802 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \\ Aboard unidentified Covenant flagship, uncharted system, Halo debris field. The Master Chief ducked as the hissing energy blade slashed at him. He dived toward the Elite and slammed the butt of his rifle into the alien's midsection. The Elite doubled over, and the Chief brought the rifle butt down to smash the alien's skull But the Elite rolled back. There was a blur of motion as the en ergy blade lashed out and neatly bisected the assault rifle. The two halves of the wrecked MA5B clattered to the deck. The blade of crackling white-hot energy narrowly missed the Chief. The MJOLNIR's internal temperature skyrocketed. He couldn't risk dancing at this range, so the Master Chief did the last thing the creature expected: He stepped closer and grabbed its wrists. The bands of muscle on the Elite's arms were iron hard, and it struggled to free itself from the Chief's grasp. The Chief wrenched the alien's sword arm and forced the blade awaybut this took most of his strength, and he had to weaken his grasp on the Elite's other hand. The energy blade blurred perilously close to the Chief's head. It missed by a fraction of a centimeter and sent a wash of static across his heads-up display. The blade was a flattened triangle of white-hot plasma, con tained in an electromagnetic envelope that emanated from its hilt. The Chief had seen such weapons slice battle-armored ERIC NYLUND  73\nODSTs in half and gouge gaping wounds in Titanium-A armor plating. Worse, this Elite was tough, cunning, well trainedand it hadn't spent days fighting nonstop on Halo. The Chief felt every wound, pulled muscle, and strained tendon in his body. Haverson and Polaski moved onto the bridge, their pistols drawn, but neither of them had a clear line of fire.\n\"Move, Chief!\" Haverson shouted. \"Damn it, we've got no shot!\"\nEasier said than done. If he let go, the Elite would cut him in two. The Master Chief grunted, struggling to turn the Elite. The alien fought back for a moment, theninstead of resistinglurched back, right into the path of the Chief's ad vancing teammates. The Elite flicked the angle of its blade flat so the arc of energy whipped toward Haverson and Polaski. Haverson screamed and fell to the ground as the energy blade sliced through his pistol and across his chest. Polaski cursed and fired a single shot, but it glanced off the Elite's shield. The alien glanced at the source of the fire and growled in its guttural, warbling tongue.\n\"Get the Lieutenant out of here,\" the Master Chief barked. He raised his knee to his chest and lashed out with a straight kick. His boot connected with the Elite's breastplate. The alien's en ergy shield flared, then faded, and its breastplate cracked like porcelain beneath the force of the blow. The alien staggered back, dragging the Master Chief with it. It coughed up purple-black blood that smeared John's visor, ob scuring his vision. Its foot struck something on the groundthe alien's fallen helmetand it lost its footing. Together they crashed to the ground. The Master Chief kept his grip on the Elite's sword arm. The alien's other hand, however, wrenched free and grabbed the fallen plasma pistol. The weapon's muzzle charged with sickly green energy. The Chief rolled to his right as the pistol discharged. A globe of plasma arced across the compartment and splashed over the displays behind him. The instruments flickered, then flashed and sparked as the en- 74 HALO: FIRST STRIKE ergy bolt melted their systems. Before the displays went dark, however, the Master Chief saw one of the Covenant cruisers open fire. A lance of plasma rushed through space toward the flagship. The Chief and the Elite struggled, rising to their feet. The Chief batted the plasma pistol aside, and it clattered across the control center. The Elite's mouth opened, and it snapped at the Chief. It was angry or panicking now... and he felt it getting stronger. His grasp on the alien loosened. There was motion behind the Elite; Sergeant Johnson and Locklear still struggled to get their hatch open more than a crack.\n\"Sergeantprepare to fire.\"\n\"Ready, Master Chief.\" the Sergeant cried from the other side of the hatch. The Chief tightened his grip on the Elite's sword arm, shoved his forearm into the alien's throat and drove it backward, across the bridge. He slammed the creature into the partially opened hatch. The energy blade cut into the Master Chief's armor, boiling through the alloy that protected his upper arm.\n\"Sergeant, now! Firer Gunfire exploded from the hatch, oddly muffled because the rounds impacted directly into the Elite's back. The alien snarled and contorted, but it held on to the Master Chief. The alien war rior sawed the blade deeper, cutting through the tough crys talline layers of the MJOLNIR armor. Hydrostatic gel oozed from the wound... mixed with the Chief's blood.\n\"Keep. Shooting.\"\nA bullet hole appeared through the Elite's broken chestplate bits of shattered armor and torn flesh spattered over the Chief. The Master Chief slammed the Elite into the bulkhead, and a control panel behind the alien sparked. The door to the escape corridor hissed open, and the creature reeled back. The alien was off balance, and the Chief finally had leverage. He bulled the Elite backward and hammered its arm into the wall. The alien metal rang like a gong, and the Elite dropped its energy sword. The blade guttered and went dark as its fail-safes permanently disabled the weapon. The Chief forced the alien back, step by step. The deck was ERIC NYLUND  75\nslippery with blood. Finally he twisted the Elite to the right and launched a powerful open-handed strike into the alien's wounded chest. The Elite howled in pain and flew back, through the open hatch of an escape pod.\n\"Get off this ship,\" the Chief said. He hit a control stud and the hatch slammed shut. There was a sharp, metallic bang as the locking clamps released. The pod screamed away from the hull. The Chief exhaled. Sweat dripped in his eyes, momentarily blurring his vision.\n\"Good work, Sergeant, Locklear,\" he panted. His shoulder burned. He tried to move it, but it was stiff and wouldn't respond. The ship lurched.\n\"Plasma impact on the starboard foredeck!\" Cortana called out. \"Shields down to sixty-seven percent.\" She paused and then added, \"Amazing radiative properties. Chief, you need to disable the navigation override so I can maneuver.\"\nHaverson and Polaski strode toward the Chief. Haverson clutched his chest and grimaced in pain from the sword wound. Polaski set her hand on the Master Chief's shoulder. \"That's bad,\"\nshe whispered. \"Let me get a first-aid kit from the Pelican, and\"\nThe Chief shrugged off her touch. \"Later.\" He saw her con cerned expression melt into one of... what? Fear? Confusion?\n\"Cortana, show me what to do,\" the Chief said and made his way to the raised platform in the center of the bridge. \"Polaski, you and Haverson get that other hatch open.\"\n\"Aye aye,\" Polaski muttered, her voice tight. She and Haver son went to the hatch and got to work. The Master Chief glanced at the control surfaces. As his hand hovered over them, the flat controls rose and became a three-dimensional web of the distinctive Covenant calligraphy.\n\"Where?\" he asked.\n\"Move your hand to the right half a meter,\" Cortana said. \"Up twenty centimeters. That control. No, to the left.\" She sighed.\n\"That one. Tap it three times.\"\nFaint lights traced the surface as the Chief touched it; they flared red and orange and finally cooled to brilliant blue.\n\"It worked,\" Cortana said. \"NAV controls coming online. I can finally move this crate. Hang on.\" 76 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The ship spun to port. On the displays that still functioned, four more Covenant cruisers tracked themand fired. The flagship accelerated, but the plasma torpedoes arced and followed them. \"No good,\" Cortana said. \"I can't overcome our inertia in this tub. They're going to hit us . . .  unless I can get us into Slipspace.\"\nA rhythmic warble pulsed from one of the displays. It flashed red.\n\"Oh no,\" Cortana said. The leading plasma torpedo impacted. Dull red fire smeared across the viewscreens.\n\"Oh no, what?\" Haverson demanded.\n\"This ship's Slipspace generator is inert,\" Cortana replied.\n\"The disabled NAV controls were a trick. It must have been the Covenant AI; it lured me here while the drive was physically de coupled from the reactor. I can maneuver all I want, give orders to the Slipspace generatorbut without the system powered up were not going anywhere.\"\n\"There's a Covenant AI?\" Haverson muttered, and raised an eyebrow.\n\"Upload the coordinates to power coupling,\" the Master Chief said. \"I'll take care of it.\"\nTwo more plasma torpedoes impacted and splashed across the shield. \"Energy shields collapsing,\" Cortana said. \"Brace!\"\nThe last shot collided with the flagship. The hull heated, and plasma boiled layers of armor plating away. The ship rolled as plumes of superheated metal vapor outgassed.\n\"Another hit like that will breach the hull,\" Cortana said.\n\"Moving this tub at flank speed.\"\n\"The power coupling coordinates, Cortana,\" the Master Chief insisted. A route appeared on his heads-up display. The engineering rooms were twenty decks below the bridge.\n\"Those won't do you any good,\" Cortana told him. \"There are bound to be Elite hunt-and-kill teams waiting for you. And even if you managed to remove them, there is no way to repair the power coupling in time. We don't have the tools or the expertise.\" ERIC NYLUND  77\nThe Master Chief looked around the bridge. There had to be a way. There was always a way He leaned over the edge of the central platform and grabbed one of the Covenant Engineers that cowered below. He dragged it up by its float-sack. The creature squirmed and squealed.\n\"Maybe we don't have the expertise,\" he said and shook the Engineer. \"But this thing does. Can you communicate with it?\nTell it what we need?\"\nThere was a pause. Then Cortana replied, \"There is an exten sive communications suite in the Covenant lexic\"\n\"Just tell it I'm taking it to fix something.\"\n\"All right, Chief,\" Cortana said. A stream of high-pitched chirps emanated from the bridge speakers, and the Engineer's six eyes dilated. It stopped squirm ing and grabbed hold of the Master Chief with its tentacles.\n\"It says 'good' and 'hurry,' \" Cortana told him.\n\"Everyone else stay here,\" the Chief said.\n\"If you insist,\" Haverson muttered, his face pale. Blood trick led from the wound in his chest. The Master Chief looked at Johnson and Locklear. \"Don't let the Covenant retake the bridge.\"\n\"Not a problem, Chief,\" Sergeant Johnson said. He stopped to kick the dead Elite once in the teeth, then slapped a fresh clip into his MA5B. He yanked the weapon's charge handle, fed a round into the chamber, and stood at arms. \"Those Covenant sissies are going to have to tango with me before they set one foot in this room.\"\nOn the display two of the Covenant cruisers fired again. The Chief watched as the plasma raced toward them, fire that spread across the black of space. \"Cortana, buy me some time,\"\nhe said.\n\"I'll do what I can, Chief,\" Cortana told him. \"But you'd better move fast. I'm running out of options.\"\nCortana was annoyed. She had let the Covenant AIfor that's what this other presence in the system undoubtedly had to be trick her. She had gone straight for the simple lockdown of the NAV systems. She never performed a thorough systems check 78 HALO: FIRST STRIKE of the ship, assuming that there had only been one point of sabo tage. It was a mistake she would never have made if she'd been operating at full capacity. She checked every system of the flagship. She then locked them out with her own security measures. Cortana turned off her feelings of anger and guilt and concen trated on keeping the ship in one piece, and the Master Chief a l i v e .  N o ... s h e  r e c o n s i d e r e d  a n d  k e p t  h e r  e m o t i o n s  a c t i v e .  T h e\n\"intuition\" provided by this aspect of her intelligence template was too valuable to deactivate in a battle. She maneuvered the flagship toward the gas giant, Threshold. The incoming plasma might be disrupted by the planet's mag netic fieldif she dared get close enough. Cortana diverted power from the foreshield to the aft por tions, distorting the protective bubble around the flagship. She turned all seven plasma turrets aft and fired a pair of plasma tor pedoes at the incoming salvo. The plasma turrets warmed and belched superheated flame but it dispersed into a dull red cloud only a few meters from the point of fire, thinned, and then dissolved. She saw a subsystem linked to the weapons control: an ac companying magnetic field multiplier. That was how the Cove nant shaped and guided their charges of plasma. It acted as a sophisticated focusing lens. Something wasn't right, however something had already been in this directory and had erased the software. Cortana swore that when she caught this guerrilla Covenant AI, she'd erase it line by line. Without understanding how the guiding magnetic fields worked, the plasma turrets were no more useful than a fireworks display. The enemy Covenant plasma charges, however, were tight and burned like miniature suns; they overtook the flagship and splashed over its reinforced aft shields. They boiled against the silver energy until the shields dulled and winked out. The plasma etched a portion of the aft hull away like hot water dissolving salt. Cortana sensed the dull thumps of atmospheric decompressions. ERIC NYLUND  79\nShe checked on the Chief. His signal was still on board, and his biomonitor indicated that he was still alive.\n\"Chief, are you there yet? I'm down to one last option.\"\nThere was a static-filled pause over the COM, and then the Master Chief whispered, \"Almost.\"\n\"Be careful. Your armor is breached. You can no longer func tion in a compromised atmosphere.\"\nHis acknowledgment light winked on. Cortana pushed the Covenant reactors to overload and plotted a course around Threshold. She had to slip into the outer reaches of its atmosphere. The heat, ionization, and planet's magnetic field might protect them from the plasma. The flagship rolled and dived into the thin tendrils of clouds. Bands of white ammonia and amber ammonium hydrosulfide clouds snaked in sinuous ribbons. A red-purple spot of phospho rus compounds cycloned and lightning arced, illuminating an in tervening layer of pale blue ice crystals. But their ship no longer had shields. The friction heated the hull to three hundred degrees Celsius as she brushed against the upper reaches of Threshold. On her aft cameras Cortana saw the trailing Covenant ships open fire. Their shots followed her like a pack of predator birds.\n\"Come and get me,\" she muttered. She adjusted the attack angle of the flagship so it nosed up, which produced a slight amount of lift. She concentrated the building heat toward the ship's tail. A turbulent wake of super heated air corkscrewed behind them.\n\"Cortana?\" Polaski said. \"We're approaching the viable edge of an exit orbit. You're getting too close to the planet.\"\n\"I am aware of our trajectory, Warrant Officer,\" she said and snapped off the COM. The last thing she needed was a flying lesson. The leading edge of the plasma overtook them. It roiled in their wake, churned explosively with the atmosphere. The flag ship pitched and dropped in the unstable air, but the plasma dif fused and caused them no further damage. Behind the flagship was an unfurling trail hundreds of kilometers long, a wide flam ing gash upon Threshold. 80 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Cortana experienced a moment of triumphthen squelched it. There was a new problem: The concussion from that blast had altered their flight path. The heat and overpressure wave had thinned the atmosphere ... just enough to cause the flagship to drop seven hundred meters. Wisps of ice crystals washed over the prow. They were too deep now. They didn't have enough power to break orbit. They would spiral into the atmosphere, and would ultimately be crushed by the titanic gravitational forces of Threshold. The Chief spun in midair and planted his feet on the \"ground.\"\nThe gravity had been disabled in this elevator shaft. That had m a d e  t r a v e r s i n g  t h e  m a n y  i n t e r v e n i n g  d e c k s  e a s y  ... a s  l o n g  a s he'd been willing to jump and trust that the power in this part of the ship wouldn't be restored. The Engineer clutching his shoulder tapped the tiny control panel on the wall. The doors at the bottom of the shaft sighed and slowly slid apart. Funny how the creature didn't care what or who John was. Didn't it know their races were enemies? It was clearly intelli gent and could communicate. Maybe it didn't care about ene mies or allies. Maybe all it wanted to do was its job. There was a corridor ahead, five meters wide, with a vaulted ceiling. Past a final arch, the passage opened up into the cav ernous reactor room. The ambient lights in the hallway and room were off. Along the far wall of the room, however, the ten-meter-high reactor coils pulsed with blue-white lightning and threw hard shadows onto the walls. The Master Chief adjusted his low-light filters to screen out the glow from the reactor. He made out the silhouettes of crates and other machinery. He also saw one of those shadows on the wall move ... with the distinct slouching waddle of a Covenant Grunt. Then the motion was gone. An ambush. Of course. He paused, listened, and heard the panting of at least half a dozen Grunts, and then the high-pitched uneasy squeaks the creatures emitted when they were excited. This came as a relief to the Master Chief. If there was an Elite ERIC NYLUND  81\nhere, it would have maintained better discipline and silenced the Grunts. Still, the Master Chief hesitated. His shields were gone, his armor breached. He had been fighting almost nonstop for what felt like years. He was forced to admit that he was at the limits of his endurance. A good soldier always assessed the tactical situationand right now, his situation was serious. A single lucky plasma shot could inflict third-degree burns along his arm and shoulder and incapacitate him, which would give the Grunts an opportunity to finish him off. The Chief flexed his wounded shoulder, and pain lanced across his chest. He banished his discomfort and concentrated on how to win this fight. It was ironic that after facing the best warriors in the Cove nant, and after defeating the Flood, he could be killed by a handful of Grunts.\n\"Chief,\" Cortana said over the COM. \"Are you there yet? I'm down to one last option.\"\nThe Master Chief replied in a whisper, \"Almost.\"\n\"Be careful. Your armor is breached. You can no longer func tion in a compromised atmosphere.\"\nHe flashed an acknowledgment to Cortana and concentrated on the problem at hand. Using grenades was not an option; a plasma grenade or a frag near those reactor coils could breach the containment vessel. That left stealthand outwitting the Grunts. Maybe he'd use his grenades after all. The Master Chief set a plasma grenade in the center of the elevator shaft. He took his re maining two frag grenades and set them aside as well. He felt along the elevator shaft walls and found what he neededa length of hair-fine optical cord. He pulled out a three-meter length. The Engineer gave a huff of irritation at this destruction. The Master Chief threaded the line though the rings of his frag grenades and tied each end at anchor points ten centime ters off the floor. He wedged the grenades into the slot of the open door. 82 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The trap was set; all he needed now was bait. He set a plasma grenade on the far wall of the shaft and trig gered it. He pushed into the corridor, fast. Four seconds to go. The gravity, still active in this portion of the ship, pulled him to the deck. He melted into the shadows and sprinted along the wall two meters farther in, and halted along the inside of the first sup port brace. Three seconds. One Grunt emitted a startled cry and a plasma shot sizzled down the center of the hallway. Two seconds. The Master Chief pried the Engineer off his shoulder and pressed the creature firmly into the join where the brace meet the wall. One second. The Engineer squirmed for a moment, then stilled, perhaps sensing what was about to happen. The plasma grenade detonated. A flash of intense light flooded the hallway and the room beyond. The rest of the Grunts cried out; plasma bolts and a hail of crystalline needles filled the passage, impacting inside the ele vator shaft. The Grunts ceased fire. A lone Grunt cautiously stepped out from behind a crate and crept forward. It gave a barking, nervous laugh and then, encountering no resistance, waddled down the passage toward the elevator. Four more Grunts followed, and they passed the Master Chief, oblivious that he hid behind the wall brace less than a half-meter from them. They approached the elevator, sniffed, and entered. There was the gentle ping as the frag grenade rings pulled free of the trip wire. The Master Chief covered the Engineer. One of the Grunts squealed, high and panicky. They all turned and ran. Twin blasts of thunder enveloped the elevator shaft. Bits of meat and metal spattered along the corridor. A needier skidded to a halt a meter away. It was cracked, its ERIC NYLUND  83\nenergy coil dim. The Master Chief grabbed itducked as an other plasma bolt singed over his head. He withdrew to the cover of the bracing support. He tried to activate the weapon. No luck. It was dead. The Engineer snaked a tentacle around the weapon and tugged it away from John's grasp. It cracked the case and peeled the housing open. The tip of one of its tentacles split into a hun dred needle-fine cilia and swept over the inner workings. A mo ment later it reassembled the weapon and handed it, grip first, to the Master Chief. The needier hummed with energy, and the glassine quills the weapon fired glowed a cool purple.\n\"Thanks,\" he whispered. The Engineer chirped. The Master Chief edged around the brace. He waited, needier held tightly in his hand, and became completely still. He had all the time in the world, he told himself. No need to rush. Let the enemy come to you. All the time A Grunt poked its nose over a crate, trying to spot its enemy; it took a blind shot down the corridor and missed. The Master Chief remained where he was, raised the needier, and fired. A flurry of crystal shards propelled down the passage and impaled the Grunt. It toppled backward, and the shards detonated. The Master Chief waited and listened. There was nothing ex cept the gentle thrumming of the reactor. He moved down the corridor, weapon held before him as he cleared the room. He was careful to watch for the faint rippling of air that would alert him to the presence of camouflaged Elites. Nothing. The Engineer floated behind him, and then accelerated toward the disengaged power coupling. It hissed and chittered as it rapidly manipulated a small square block of optical crystal, un scrambling the internal circuit pathways.\n\"Cortana,\" he said. \"I've gotten to the coupling. The Engineer appears to know what it's doing. You should have power for the Slipspace generator in a moment.\"\n\"It's too late,\" Cortana told him. CHAPTER NINE\n1827 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \\ Aboard unidentified Covenant flagship, uncharted system, Halo debris field. The flagship plunged through Threshold's churning atmo sphere. Cortana could not hold the ship's attitude. It wobbled and blasted a fiery scar through the clouds, slowly rolling to port on its central axis. Without shields, the flagship's hull continued to heat to seven teen hundred degrees Celsius. The nose glowed a dark red, which spread into an amber smear along the midsection and be came a white-hot plume at the ship's tail. Conduits and feathery antenna arrays melted, separated, and left a trail of molten metal in an explosive wake. Shocks rippled along the frame as the overpressure shed off the bow in waves. The friction from the planet's dense atmosphere would shred the ship in a matter of seconds.\n\"Cortana,\" the Master Chief said. \"I've gotten to the coupling. The Engineer appears to know what it's doing. You should have power for the Slipspace generator in a moment.\"\n\"It's too late,\" Cortana told him. \"We are now too low to escape Threshold's gravitational pull. Even at full power we can't break our degrading orbit. And we can't tunnel into Slip-space, either.\"\nThe incoming Covenant fire had forced them deeper into the atmosphere. She had pushed their trajectory to the edge of what had been safeit was that, or be engulfed in plasma. But she had saved them from one death ... only to delay that fate by a scant minute. ERIC NYLUND  85\nShe recomputed the numbers, thrust and velocity and gravita tional attractions. Even if she overloaded the reactors to critical-meltdown levels, they were still stuck in an ever-descending spiral. The numbers didn't lie. The Master Chief's Engineer must have repaired the power coupling, because the Slipspace generator was functional again for all the good it did them. To enter Slipspace a ship had to be well away from strong gravitational fields. Gravity distorted the superfine pattern of quantum filaments through which Cortana had to compute a path. Covenant Slipspace technology was demonstrably superior, but she doubted that the enemy had ever attempted a Slipspace entry this close to a planet. Cortana toyed with the idea of trying anywaypulse the Slip-space generators and maybe she'd get a lucky quadrillion-to-one shot and locate the correct vector through the tangle of gravity-warped filaments. She rejected the possibility;\nat their current velocity, any attempt to maneuver the ship would send it into a chaotic tumble from which they'd never recover.\n\"Try something,\" the Chief said to her with amazing calm.\n\"Try anything.\"\nCortana sighed. \"Roger, Chief.\"\nShe booted the Covenant Slipspace generators; the software streamed through her consciousness. The UNSC Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace generators ripped a hole in normal space by brute force. But the Covenant tech nology used a different approach. Sensors came online, and Cor tana could actually \"see\" the interlacing webs of quantum filaments surround the flagship.\n\"Amazing,\" she whispered. The Covenant could pick a path through the subatomic di mensions; a gentle push from their generators enlarged the fields just enough to allow their ships to pass seamlessly into the alter nate space with minimal energy. Their resolution of the reality of space-time was infinitely more powerful than human tech nology. It was as if she had been blind before, had never seen the universe around her. It was beautiful. This explained how the Covenant could make jumps with 86 HALO: FIRST STRIKE such accuracy. They could literally plot a course with an error no larger than an atom's diameter.\n\"Status, Cortana?\" the Master Chief asked.\n\"Stand by,\" she said, annoyed at the distraction. At this resolution Cortana could discern every ripple in space caused by Threshold's gravity, the other planets in this solar sys tem, the sun, and even the warping of space caused by the mass of this ship. Could she compensate for those distortions?\nPressure sensors detected hull breaches on seventeen outer decks. Cortana ignored them. She shut down all peripheral sys tems and concentrated on the task at hand. It was their only way out of this mess: They'd get out by going through. She concentrated on interpolating the fluctuating space. She generated mathematical algorithms to anticipate and smooth the gravitational distortions. Energy surged from the reactors into the Slipspace generator matrices. A path parted directly before thema pinhole that be came a gyrating wormhole, fluxing and spinning. Threshold's atmosphere throbbed and jumped through the holesucked into the vacuum of the alternate dimension. Cortana dedicated all her runtime to monitoring the space around the ship, and risked making microscopic course correc tions to maneuver them into the fluctuating path. Sparks danced along the length of the hull as the nose of the flagship departed normal space. She eased the rest of the ship through, surrounded by whirling storms and jagged spears of lightning. She pinged her sensors: The hull temperature dropped rapidly and she registered a series of explosive decompressions on the breached decks. Cortana emerged from her cocoon of concentration and im mediately sensed the electronic presence of the other near her, monitoring her Slipspace calculations. It was practically on top ofher.\n\"Heresy!\" it hissed and then withdrew... and vanished. Cortana pulsed a systems check along every circuit in the ship, hoping to track the Covenant AI. No luck.\n\"Sneaky little bastard,\" she broadcast throughout the system.\n\"Come back here.\" ERIC NYLUND  87\nHad it seen what she had done? Had it understood what she'd just accomplished? And if so, why declare it a \"heresy\"?\nTrue, manipulating eighty-eight stochastic variables in eleven-dimensional space-time was not child's play... but it was possible that the other AI would be able to follow her calculations. Perhaps not. The Covenant were imitative, not innovative;\nat least, that's what all the ONI intelligence gathered on the col lection of alien races had reported. She had thought this was exaggeration, propaganda to bolster human morale. Now she wasn't so certain. Because if the Covenant had truly understood the extent of their own magnificent technology, they could have not only jumped into Slipspaceyrow a planet's atmospherebut jumped into a planet's atmosphere, too. They could have simply bypassed Reach's orbital defenses. The Covenant AI had called this heresy? Ludicrous. Maybe the humans could eventually outthink the Covenant, given enough access to the enemy's technologies. Cortana real ized the humans actually had a chance to win this war. All they needed was time.\n\"Cortana? Status please,\" the Master Chief said.\n\"Stand by,\" Cortana reported. The Chief felt decompressive explosions reverberate through the deck, thunder that suddenly silenced itself as the atmosphere vented. He waited for an explosion to tear through the engine room, or for plasma to envelop him. He scanned the engine room for any signs of Grunts or Elites, and then exhaled, and stared into the face of death for the countless time. He had always been a hairsbreadth from death. John wasn't a fatalist, merely a realist. He didn't welcome the end; he knew, though, that he had done his best, fought and won so many times for his team, the Navy, and the human race . . .  it made moments like this tolerable. They were, ironically, the most peaceful times in his life.\n\"Cortana, status please,\" he asked again. There was a pause over the COM, then Cortana spoke.\n\"We're safe. In Slipspace. Heading unknown.\" She sighed, and her voice sounded tinged with weariness. \"We're long gone 88 HALO: FIRST STRIKE from Halo, Threshold, and that Covenant fleet. If this tin can holds together a bit longer, I want to put some distance between us and them.\"\nThe Chief replied, \"Good work, Cortana. Very good.\" He moved toward the elevator. \"Now we have a hard decision to make.\"\nHe paused and turned back toward the Covenant Engineer. The creature moved away from the repaired power coupling and drifted to a scarred, half-melted panel that had been hit with stray plasma fire. It huffed, removed the cover, and delved into the tangle of optical cables. The Chief left it alone. It wasn't a threat to him or his team. In fact, it and the others like it might be key to repairing this ship, and their continued survival. He continued to the elevator shaft, stepping over the bodies of the Grunts in the hallway. He nudged them with his foot to make certain they were dead, and then retrieved two plasma pistols and one of the needle launchers. He entered the elevator shaft, pushed off the deck, and floated upward in the null gravity. The Chief kept his eyes and ears sharp for any hint of a threat as he moved through the corridors to the bridge. Everything was quiet and still. At the open bridge door, he paused and watched as Warrant Officer Polaski supervised a Covenant Engineer while it re moved the blasted door control panels. The Engineer turned a melted piece of polarizing crystal before its six eyes, and then picked up an unblemished crystalline panel off the floor and in serted it into the wall. Polaski wiped her hands on her greasy coveralls and waved him in. Thin, blue smoke still filled the bridge, but the Chief noted that most of the display panels were once again active. Nearby, Sergeant Johnson tended Haverson's wounds and Locklear stood guard. The young Marine's eyes never left the Engineer, and his finger hovered close to, though not quite on, his MA5B's trigger. The Engineer floated back, spun on its long axis, and looked first at Polaski, then the Chief. A burst of static issued from the bridge speakers, and the Covenant Engineer looked to them and then to Polaski. It tapped the control, and the massive bridge doors slid shut. ERIC NYLUND  89\nThe Engineer passed a tentacle over the controls. They flashed blue, then dimmed.\n\"It locks now,\" Polaski told them. \"Ugly here knows his stuff.\"\nThree ultrasonic whistles filled the air. The Covenant Engi neer who had just repaired the bridge door snapped to attention, and its eyes peered intently forward. It chirped a response and then floated toward the Master Chief, trying to maneuver behind him.\n\"What's it doing?\" the Master Chief asked, turning to face the creature. The Engineer huffed in annoyance and tried again to move around him. The Master Chief didn't let it. While John had seen no hostil ity from the creatures, they were still part of the Covenant. Hav ing one at his back grated against every instinct.\n\"I've told it to repair your armor's shields,\" Cortana said.\n\"Let it.\"\nThe Master Chief allowed the small alien to pass. He felt the access panel removed from the shield generator housing on his back. Normally it took a team of three technicians to remove the safety catches and get to the radioactive power source. The Chief shifted uneasily. He didn't like this one bit, but Cortana had al ways known what she was doing. Locklear watched this and ran a hand over his shaved head. He stood on the raised center platform and turned to the other Covenant Engineer as it repaired the burned-out displays on the port side of the room. He held his MA5B loosely, but it was still aimed in the alien's general direction. \"I don't care what Cortana says,\" he told the Chief, \"I don't trust them.\"\nThe Engineer near Locklear floated to the bridge's holographic controls and passed a tentacle over a series of raised dots. The screens snapped on and showed three Covenant cruisers closing fast. Adrenaline spiked through the Master Chief's blood. \"Cor tana, quicktake evasive action.\"\n\"Relax, Chief,\" Locklear said. He waved his hand over a holo graphic control; the images on screen froze. \"It's just a replay.\"\nHe turned and examined the suspended plasma bolts just as they 90 HALO: FIRST STRIKE impacted on the flagship's shields. \"Man,\" he whispered. \"I wish our boats had weapons like those.\"\n\"We might soon have exactly that, Marine,\" Lieutenant Haver-son said. He winced and stood, then moved to a screen that showed the storms in the upper atmosphere of Threshold. \"Play this one, Corporal.\"\nLocklear tapped one of the controls. A line of sparkling blue lights appeared on screen, and the nose of the flagship edged into view. The blue line ripped a hole in space, and the ship jumped forward. The clouds of Threshold vanished; there was only blackness on the screen. Haverson slicked back the strands of his red hair that had fallen into his face. \"Cortana,\" he asked, \"has anyone, human or Covenant, ever performed a Slipspace jump from within an atmosphere?\"\n\"No, Lieutenant. Normally such strong gravitational fields would distort and collapse the Shaw-Fujikawa event horizon. With the Covenant's Slipspace matrices, however, I had greatly increased resolution. I was able to compensate.\"\n\"Amazing,\" he whispered.\n\"Goddamned lucky,\" Polaski muttered. She tugged on the rim of her cap.\n\"It worked,\" the Master Chief told them. \"For now, that's all that matters.\" He faced his team, trying to ignore the motions of the Covenant Engineer attached to his back. \"We have to plan our next move.\"\n\"I'm sorry to disagree, Chief,\" Lieutenant Haverson said.\n\"The mere fact that Cortana's maneuver worked is the only thing that matters now.\"\nThe Chief squared himself to the Lieutenant and said nothing. Haverson held up his hands. \"I acknowledge that you have tactical command, Chief. I know your authority has the backing of the brass and ONI Section Three. You'll get no argument from me on that point, but I put it to you that your original mission has just been superseded by the discovery of the technology on this ship. We should scrub your mission and head straight back to Earth.\"\n\"What's this other mission?\" Locklear asked, his voice suspicious. ERIC NYLUND  91\nHaverson shrugged. \"I see no reason to keep this information classified at this point. Tell him, Chief.\"\nThe Master Chief didn't like how Haverson \"acceded\" to his tactical command yet readily ordered him to reveal highly clas sified material.\n\"Cortana,\" the Chief said. \"Is the bridge secure from eaves droppers?\"\n\"A moment,\" Cortana said. Red lights pulsed around the room's perimeter. \"It is now. Go ahead, Chief.\"\n\"My team and I\" the Master Chief started. He hesitatedthe thought of his fellow Spartans stopped him cold. For all he knew they were all dead. He pushed that to the back of his mind, however, and continued.\n\"Our mission was to capture a Covenant ship, infiltrate Covenant-controlled space, and capture one of their leaders. Command hoped they could use this to force the Covenant into a cease-fire and negotiations.\"\nNo one said a word. Finally, Locklear snorted and rolled his eyes. \"Typical Navy suicide mission.\"\n\"No,\" the Master Chief replied. \"It was a long shot, but we had a chance. We have a better chance now that we have this ship.\"\n\"Excuse me, Master Chief,\" Polaski said. She removed her cap and wrung it in her hands. \"You're not suggesting that you're going to continue that half-assed op, are you? We barely sur vived four days of hell. It was a miracle we got away from Reach, survived the Covenant on Halo... not to mention the Flood.\"\n\"I have a duty to complete my mission,\" the Master Chief told her. \"I'll do it with or without your help. There's more at stake than our individual discomforteven our lives.\"\n\"We're not Spartans,\" Haverson said. \"We're not trained for your kind of mission.\"\nThat was certainly true. They weren't Spartans. John's team would never give up. But as he scanned their weary faces, he had to acknowledge that they weren't ready for this mission. The Sergeant stepped forward and said, \"You still want to go, I got your back, Chief.\"\nJohn nodded, but he saw the exhaustion even in the Sergeant's dark eyes. There were limits to what any soldier, even a hard- 92 HALO: FIRST STRIKE core Marine like Johnson, could endure. And as much as he didn't want to admit it, his original orders, given only a week ago, felt as if they'd been issued a lifetime in the past. Even John felt the temptation to stop and regroup before continuing.\n\"What's on this ship,\" Haverson said, \"can save the human race. And wasn't that the goal of your mission? Let's return to Earth and let the Admiralty decide. No one would question your decision to clarify your orders given the circumstances\" He paused, then added, \"and the loss of your entire team.\"\nHaverson's expression was carefully neutral, but the Chief still bristled at the further mention of his teamand at the at tempt to manipulate him. He remembered his order sending Fred, Kelly, and the others to the surface of Reach, thinking that he, Linda, and James were going on the \"hard\" mission.\n\"Listen to the El-Tee,\" Locklear said. \"We deliver a little something for the R-and-D eggheads and maybe buy some shore leave. I vote for that plan.\" He saluted Haverson. \"Hell yeah!\"\n\"This isn't a democracy,\" the Master Chief said, his voice both calm and dangerous. Locklear twitched but didn't back down. \"Yeah, maybe it isn't,\"\nhe said, \"but last time I checked, I take my orders from the Corps not from some swabbie. Sir.\"\nThe Sergeant scowled at the ODST and moved to his side.\n\"You better get it together, Marine,\" he barked, \"or the Chief'11\nreach down and pull you inside out by your cornhole. And that'll be a sweet, sweet mercy ... compared to what I'm gonna do to you.\"\nLocklear contemplated the Sergeant's words and the Master Chief's silence. He looked to Polaski and then to Haverson. Polaski stared at the Marine with wide eyes, then turned away. Haverson gave him a slight shake of his head. Locklear sighed, eased his stance, and dropped his gaze.\n\"Man, I really, really hate this shit.\"\n\"I hate to interrupt,\" Cortana said, \"but I find myself agreeing with the Lieutenant.\"\nThe Chief clicked on a private COM channel. \"Explain, Cor tana. I thought our mission was what you were built for. Why are you backing out now?\"\n\"I'm not 'backing out,' \" she shot back. \"Our orders were ERIC NYLUND  93\ngiven when the UNSC had a fleet, and when Reach was still an intact military presence. All that has changed.\"\nThe Master Chief couldn't disagree with what she was say ing ... but there was something else in her voice. And for the first time, John thought that Cortana might be hiding something from him.\n\"We have intact ship-scale plasma weapons and new reactor technologies,\" Cortana continued. \"Imagine if every ship could maneuver with pinpoint precision in Slipspace.\" She paused.\n\"The UNSC could be just as effective in space as you are in ground engagements. We could actually win this war.\"\nThe Master Chief frowned. He didn't like the Lieutenant's or Cortana's argumentsbecause they made sense. Aborting his mission was unthinkable. He had always finished what he started, and he'd always won. As a professional soldier, John was ready to give up anything for victoryhis personal comfort, his friends, his own life if that's what it tookbut he'd never considered that he'd have to sacrifice his dignity and pride as well for the greater good. He sighed and nodded. \"Very well, Lieutenant Haverson. We'll do it your way. I hereby relinquish my tactical command.\"\n\"Good,\" Haverson said. \"Thank you.\" He faced the others and continued, \"Sergeant? You, Polaski, and Locklear get back down to the Pelican and grab whatever gear wasn't smashed to bits. Look for a field medkit, too, and then get back up here, double time.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Sergeant Johnson said. \"We're on it.\" He and Po laski headed for the door, tapped the control, and let the panels slide apart. Polaski shot a stare at the Master Chief over her shoulder;\nthen, shaking her head, she followed the Sergeant.\n\"Shit,\" Locklear said, checking his rifle as he loped after them.\n\"Wait up! Man, I'm never going to get another hour's sleep.\"\n\"Sleep when you're dead, Marine,\" the Sergeant said. The bridge doors sealed. Haverson said, \"Plot a course back to Earth, Cortana, and then\"\n\"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Haverson,\" Cortana said. \"I can't do that. A direct course to Earth would be in violation of the Cole 94 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Protocol. Furthermore, we are not allowed an indirect route, ei ther. Subsection Seven of the Cole Protocol states that no Cove nant craft may be taken to human-controlled space without an exhaustive search for tracking systems that could lead the enemy to our bases.\"\n\"Subsection Seven?\" Haverson said. \"I haven't heard of it.\"\n\"Very few have, sir,\" Cortana answered. \"It was little more than a technicality. Before this, no one had actually ever cap tured a Covenant vessel.\"\n\"An exhaustive search of this vessel would be difficult under the circumstances,\" Haverson said and cupped his hand over his chin, thinking. \"It must be more than three kilometers long.\"\n\"I have a suggestion, sir,\" the Chief said. \"An intermediate destination: Reach.\"\n\"Reach?\" Haverson quickly hid the shock on his face with a smile. \"Chief, there's nothing in the Reach system except a Covenant armada.\"\n\"No, sir,\" the Master Chief replied. \"There are ... o t h e r possibilities.\"\nHaverson raised an eyebrow. \"Go ahead, Chief. I'm intrigued.\"\n\"The first possibility,\" John said, \"is that the Covenant have glassed the planet and moved on. In which case there might be a derelict, but serviceable, UNSC craft that we could repair and take to Earth. We'd leave the Covenant flagship in low orbit and return with the proper scientific staff and equipment to effect a salvage operation.\"\nHaverson nodded. \"A long shot. Although the Euphrates did have a Prowler attached to her. They were supposed to launch a reconnaissance mission, before they got the signal to drop everything and help defend Reach. So maybe it's not such a long shot, after all. And the other possibility?\"\n\"The Covenant are still there,\" the Master Chief said. \"The likelihood that they would attack one of their own capital ships is low. In either event, there is no violation of the Cole Protocol because the Covenant already know the location of Reach.\"\n\"True,\" Haverson said. He paced to the center of the bridge.\n\"Very well, Chief. Cortana, set course for Reach. We'll enter at the edge of the system and assess the situation. If it's too hot, we jump and find another route home.\" r ERIC NYLUND  95\n\"Acknowledged, Lieutenant,\" Cortana replied. \"Be advised that this ship traverses Slipspace much faster than our UNSC counterparts. ETA to Reach in thirteen hours.\"\nThe Master Chief sighed and relaxed a little. There was an other reason for choosing Reach, one he didn't reveal to the Lieutenant. He knew the odds of anyone surviving on the sur face were remote. Astronomical, in fact ... because once the Covenant decided to glass a planet, they did so with amazing thoroughness. But he had to see it. It was the only way he could accept that his teammates were dead. A wash of static covered the Chief, first along his spine and then wrapping about his torso. There was an audible pop, and sparks crackled along the length of his MJOLNIR armor. The Engineer released its grasp on him and cluttered with excitement. Diagnostic routines scrolled upon the Chief's heads-up dis play. In the upper right corner the shield recharge bar flickered red and slowly filled.\n\"They work,\" the Master Chief said. John was relieved to have his shields back. He wouldn't forget what it was like to fight without them, though. It had been a wake-up call: not to become dependent upon technology. It was also a reminder that most battles were won or lost in his head, before he engaged any enemy.\n\"Impressive little creatures,\" Haverson remarked. He scruti nized the Covenant Engineer as it floated toward the wall of dis plays and began tinkering with one. \"I wonder how the Covenant caste system\"\n\"Sir!\" Sergeant Johnson's voice blasted over the COM, break ing with static. \"You've got to get down to the Pelican ASAP. You and the Chief.\"\n\"Are you under fire?\" the Chief asked.\n\"Negative,\" he replied. \"It's one of the cryotubes you recovered.\"\n\"What about it, Sergeant?\" Haverson snapped.\n\"Chief, there's a Spartan in it.\" CHAPTER TEN\n1852 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \\ Captured Covenant flagship, in Slipspace, location unknown. After the Chief had left to investigate the cryopod, Haverson made certain that the bridge doors locked. He turned and walked over to the Covenant Engineer who'd repaired the Master Chief's armor.\n\"Fascinating creatures,\" he murmured. He drew his sidearm and pointed it at the back of its head. Two of the Engineer's six eyes locked onto the muzzle of the weapon. A tentacle reached for it, split into fine probing threads, and touched the blue-gray metal. Cortana asked, \"What are you\"\nHaverson shot the Engineer. The round tore through its head and spattered gore across the display the alien had been repairing.\n\"Haverson!\" Cortana cried. The other Engineer turned and squealedthen a blinking light on the broken display captured its attention and it returned to its work, oblivious. Haverson knelt by the dead Engineer and holstered his gun. \"I had no other choice,\" he whispered. He touched the creature's odd, slick skin. Its color faded from a faint pink to a cold gray. He dragged it to the escape hatch, opened it, and placed the body in the corridor. He paused, and went back to fold its tenta cles over its body. \"I'm sorry. You didn't deserve it.\"\n\"Why was that necessary?\" Cortana demanded. Haverson stood, wiped his hands on his slacks, and sealed the escape hatch access. \"I'm surprised you even have to ask, Cor tana.\" He heard the anger in his voice. He checked his rising ire. ERIC NYLUND  97\nHe wasn't mad at Cortana; he was mad at himselffurious be cause of the ugly necessity of his act.\n\"The Covenant are imitativenot innovative,\" he said. \"The Engineer you ordered to repair the Chief's armor just got a first hand look at our shield technology, a technology we stole from the Covenant and improved upon. If it somehow managed to re join the Covenant, that improved technology would be theirs. How would you like to see that technology manifest as better personal shields for their Elite warriors? Or on their warships?\"\nCortana was silent.\n\"Corporal Locklear was right,\" Haverson muttered. \"I really hate this shit, too.\"\n\"I understand,\" Cortana finally replied, but her voice was so cold it could have frozen helium. Haverson sighed and looked at his hands. The Engineer's blood tattooed his skin with tiny pinpoints of blue-black. \"Do you think that the Master Chief will find what he's really looking for on Reach?\"\n\"What do you mean 'really looking for'?\" Cortana said. Her voice was still frosty, but curiosity thawed her tone.\n\"I mean the other Spartans.\" Haverson gave a short laugh.\n\"True, his argument to go to Reach was validwe wouldn't be going otherwise. But that's not what he's after. He sent his team down to the surface of Reach... sent them to their deaths. What commander wouldn't go back? And what commander wouldn't hope that they were alive? No matter what the odds?\" CHAPTER ELEVEN\n0930 hours, September 4,2552 (Military Calendar)\n\\ UNSC High Command (HighCom) Facility Bravo-6, Sydney, Australia, Earth. Two and a half weeks ago. Lieutenant Wagner walked through metal- and explosive-detector gates and into the atrium entrance of the large, vaguely conical structure. Officially designated UNSC HighCom Facility B-6, the sprawling edifice had been nicknamed \"the Hive.\"\nIt was overcast in Sydney. Gray light filtered in through the crystal dome overhead. He marched past officers and NCOs moving with purpose to whatever destinations occupied their time. He ignored the dis plays of acacia trees and exotic ferns meant for the press and civilian tours. Today there was no time for pleasantries. In another hour the apparent calm and efficiency of HighCom would be shattered into a billion pieces. Only a few of the brass knew that the UNSC's mightiest outpost, Reach, was now noth ing more than a cinder. Wagner approached the receptionist's station under the watchful eyes of a trio of armored Marine MPs. Keeping Reach's fate quiet was not the UNSC's biggest se cret, not by a country mile. Virtually no one in the civilian popu lation of the Inner Colonies knew how perilously close they were to losing this war. ONI Section Two had done a brilliant job of preserving the fiction that Earth forces held their own against the Covenant. And what did the citizens of the Outer Colonies think? Those who hadn't fled to remote outposts and hidden privateer bases ERIC NYLUND  99\nweren't in any position to make trouble. The Covenant didn't take prisoners.\n\"You're expected today, Lieutenant,\" the receptionist said. She was a young Chief Petty Officer and looked like she didn't have a care, or a clue. But her eyes gave her away. She knew something. Maybe not what, but she had undoubtedly picked up on the increased security protocols . . .  or the haunted looks in the eyes of her commanding officers.\n\"Please proceed to elevator eight,\" she told him and returned her attention to the screen in front of her. He made a mental note to find out who this perceptive person was and see if she could be recruited into Section Three. ONI had lost a lot of good people in the last few weeks. Wagner moved to the solid steel wall, and a pair of doors parted for him. He entered the small room; the doors closed and locked with a whisper-quiet snik. A fingerprint pad and retinal scanner extended from the wall. Wagner pressed his hand onto the scanner, and a needle stabbed his index finger. They'd check his DNA against the sample on file. He blinked once and then rested his chin on the retinal scanner.\n\"Good morning, Lieutenant,\" a sweet female voice whispered in his ear.\n\"Good morning, Lysithea. How are you today?\"\n\"Very well, now that I see that you have returned safely from your mission. I assume everything went as expected.\"\n\"You know that's classified,\" he told the AI.\n\"Certainly,\" she replied, her tone playful. \"But I'll find out anyway, you know. Why not save me the time and just tell me?\"\nAlthough he generally enjoyed this tete-a-tete with Lysithea, he knew it was part of the biometric scan, too. She scanned his brainwaves and voice patterns in response to her queries and matched them to older responses in her memory. She probably tested his loyalty in security measures as wellhe didn't put any thing past Section Three; they grew more paranoid every day.\n\"Of\"course you'll find out,\" Wagner replied. \"But I still can't tell you. That would be a breach of security, punishable under Article 428-A. In fact,\" he said in a more serious tone, \"I'll have to report this violation to my controller.\" 100 HALO: FIRST STRIKE She laughed, and it sounded like fine bone china clinking to gether. \"You may proceed, Lieutenant,\" she told him. The doors parted and revealed a corridor lined with walnut panels and paintings of Washington Crossing the Delaware, Ad miral Cole's Last Stand, various alien landscapes, and space battles. Although he had barely felt the descent, Wagner knew he had dropped three kilometers into the planet, through solid layers of granite, reinforced concrete, plates of Titanium-A, and EMP-hardened metal. None of this made him feel any safer, though; ONI's research facility on R each had the same setup, and it hadn't done those poor bastards any good. He stepped off the elevator. Lysithea whispered at his back:\n\"Watch out in there. They're looking to put someone's head on a pike.\"\nWagner swallowed and straightened the microscopic wrinkles in his uniform. He searched for a reason to delayanything that would keep him out of the room at the end of this corridor. He sighed and overcame his inertia. No one kept the Security Com mittee for the UNSC waiting. A pair of MPs snapped to as he approached the set of double doors. They didn't salute, and their hands rested on their hol-stered sidearms. They stared straight ahead, but Wagner knew that if he twitched the wrong way he'd be shot first and questioned later. The doors silently swung inward. He entered, and the doors closed behind him and locked. Wagner recognized most of the brass seated at the crescent-shaped table: Major General Nicolas Strauss, Fleet Admiral Sir Terrence Hood, and Colonel James Ackerson. Vice Admiral Whit-comb's chair was empty. Another half-dozen officers were also present, and all were of command rank, which made Wagner nervous. Each had display tablets set before them, and even upside down, Wagner recog nized his preliminary report and video records. Wagner saluted. General Strauss leaned forward and snapped off his display.\n\"Christ! Did we know they had so many damn ships?\" He ERIC NYLUND  101\nbanged a fist onto the table. \"Why the hell didn't we know about this? Who in ONI let this one slip by?\"\nAckerson leaned back. \"No one is to blame, Generalexcept the Covenant, obviously. I'm more concerned with our response to this incursion. Our fleet was decimated.\"\nAckerson's reputation preceded him. Wagner had heard about the lengths to which he'd gone in the past to make sure his own operations got priority over Section Three's. His rivalry with the SPARTAN-II program leader, Dr. Catherine Halsey, was the stuff of legend. Wagner thought Ackerson had been reassigned to a front-line post. Apparently he'd squirmed out of it. That was trouble. Admiral Hood straightened and pushed his display away and finally acknowledged Wagner. He returned the salute. The Ad miral was impeccably groomed, not a silver hair out of place on his head, and yet there were dark circles under his eyes. \"At ease, Lieutenant.\"\nWagner tucked his hands behind the small of his back and moved his feet slightly apart, but otherwise didn't relax a mil limeter. One was never at ease when in the presence of lions, sharks, and scorpions. Hood turned to Ackerson. \"Decimate is the wrong word, Colonel. We would have been decimated if we lost one ship out of every ten.\" He voice rose slightly. \"Instead, we lost ten of our ships for every one that managed to limp away. It was a total disaster!\"\n\"Of course, Admiral.\" Ackerson nodded, pretending to listen, and his eyes flickered over the report again. His eyebrows raised as he noticed the time and date stamp. \"There's one thing, how ever, I'd like answered first.\" His glassy glare locked onto Wag ner. \"The time difference between the events in this report and now...\" He trailed off, lost in thought. \"Congratulations, Lieu tenant. This is a new speed record from Reach to Earth. Espe cially when I know you took the time to perform the legally required random jumps before returning to Earth.\"\n\"Sir,\" Wagner replied. \"I followed the Cole Protocol to the letter.\"\nThat was a lie and everyone in this room knew it. ONI was al ways bending the Cole Protocol. In this case, it was probably 102 HALO: FIRST STRIKE justified because of the value of the intel. Still, if they wanted to crucify him, all they had to do was check the time logged on his Prowler's engines and do the math. Hood waved his hand. \"That's hardly the issue.\"\n\"I think it is,\" Ackerson snapped. \"Reach is gone. There's nothing between Earth and the Covenant now except a lot of vacuumthat and whatever secrecy we can preserve.\"\n\"We'll review Section Three's practices later, Colonel.\" Ad miral Hood turned to Wagner. \"I've read your report, Lieu tenant. It is extremely detailed, but I want to hear it from you. What did you see? Are there any details you thought too sensi tive to include in your report? Tell me everything.\"\nWagner took in a deep breath. He had prepared for this and he related, as best he could, how the Covenant ships appeared in the system, the valiant efforts of the UNSC fleet defending Reach, how they failed and were systematically destroyed.\n\"When the Covenant slipped onto the surface of Reach with their tactical forces and took out the orbital-gun generators that was the end. Well, I saw only the start of the end. They glassed the planet, starting with the poles.\"\nWagner, who'd two years ago had a third of his body burned by Covenant plasma and not once screamed or shed a tear, paused and blinked away the moisture blurring his vision. \"I trained at the Naval Academy on Reach, sir. It was the closest thing I had to a home in the Outer Colonies.\"\nHood nodded sympathetically. Ackerson snorted. He pushed away from the table, got up, and moved to Wagner's side. \"Save the sentimentality, Lieutenant. You say they glassed Reach. Everything?\"\nWagner detected anticipation in the Colonel's toneas if he wanted the Covenant to have destroyed Reach.\n\"Sir,\" Wagner replied. \"Before I jumped to Slipspace, I wit nessed the poles destroyed, and approximately two thirds of the planet's surface was on fire.\"\nAckerson nodded, seemingly satisfied with this answer. \"So everyone on Reach is gone, then. Vice Admiral Whitcomb. Doc tor Halsey, too.\" He nodded and added, \"Such a tremendous waste.\" There was no sympathy in his voice.\n\"I could only speculate, sir.\" ERIC NYLUND  103\n\"No need,\" Ackerson muttered. He returned to his seat. Strauss sighed. \"At least we have your special weapons pro grams, Ackerson. Halsey's SPARTAN-IIs were such a great sue\"\nAckerson shot the General a look that could have blasted through battle plate. The General halted midsentence and snapped his mouth closed. Wagner stood absolutely still and stared straight ahead, pre tending he hadn't seen such a gross breach of military protocol. A General knuckling under to a junior officer? Something ex traordinary had just been revealedthere was some kind of backup plan on a par with the SPARTAN program, and Acker son was behind it. The Colonel suddenly had a lot of juice. Wagner continued to feign ignoranceand no matter what, he didn't meet Colonel Ackerson's gaze. If Ackerson suspected that he'd caught on, the bastard would have him erased to pre vent his secret from getting back to Section Three. After what seemed a century of uncomfortable silence, Admi ral Hood cleared his throat. \"The Pillar of Autumn, Lieutenant Wagner. Was that ship destroyed? Or did she jump? There is no mention in your report.\"\n\"She jumped, sir. Telemetry indicates the Autumn was pur sued by several enemy ships, however, so her fate can only be speculated upon. I did not mention the Pillar of Autumn in my report, as that ship is on Section Three's Secure List.\"\n\"Good.\" Hood closed his eyes. \"Then there is, at least, some hope.\"\nAckerson shook his head. \"With all due respect to my prede cessor, Doctor Halsey, the special weapons package on the Pil lar hasn't got a chance in hell of accomplishing its mission. You might as well have shot every one of them in the head and gotten it over with.\"\n\"That will be enough, Ackerson,\" Hood said and glowered at him. \"Quite enough.\"\n\"Sir,\" Wagner ventured. \"The Colonel may be correct. . .  at least in his mission assessment. Our agent on the Pillar of Au tumn signaled us before the end. He regrettably reported that a 104 HALO: FIRST STRIKE significant number of Spartans went groundside to defend Reach's orbital guns.\"\n\"Then they're dead,\" Ackerson said. \"Halsey's freaks have fi nally lost their luster of invincibility.\"\nAdmiral Hood set his jaw. \"Doctor Halsey,\" he said slowly and with deliberate control, \"and her Spartans deserve the ut most respect, Colonel.\" He turned to face him, but Hood stared through Ackerson. \"And if you wish to keep your newly ac quired position on the Security Council, you will show them that respect, or I will personally kick you from here to Melbourne.\"\n\"I merely\" Ackerson said.\n\"Those 'freaks,' \" Hood said over his protest, \"have more confirmed kills than any three divisions of ODSTs and have gar nered every major citation the UNSC awards. Those 'freaks'\nhave personally saved my life twice, as well as the lives of most of the senior staff here at HighCom. Keep your bigotry in check, Colonel. Do you understand?\"\n\"My apologies,\" Ackerson muttered.\n\"I asked you a direct question,\" Admiral Hood barked.\n\"Sir,\" Ackerson said. \"I understand completely, Admiral. It will not happen again.\" His face burned bright red. Wagner, however, didn't think this was the color of shame. It was anger.\n\"The Spartans,\" Hood whispered. \"Doctor Halsey. Whit-comb. We lost too many good people on Reach. Not to mention dozens of ships.\" He pursed his lips into a razor-thin line.\n\"We should send a small recon force to see what's left,\" Gen eral Strauss suggested.\n\"Not wise, sir,\" Ackerson replied. \"We must pull back and re inforce the Inner Colonies and Earth. The new orbital platforms won't be online for another ten days. Until then, our defense pos ture will be far too weak. We'll need every ship we've got.\"\n\"Hmm,\" Admiral Hood said. He placed both thumbs under his chin as he considered both positions.\n\"Sir,\" Wagner said. \"There is one additional item not covered in my report. It didn't seem exceptionally important at the time, but if you're debating a recon mission, I thought it might be pertinent.\" ERIC NYLUND  105\n\"Just spit it out,\" General Strauss said. Wagner swallowed and resisted the urge to meet Ackerson's eyes. \"When the Covenant destroys a planet, they typically move their large warships closer and blanket the world with a series of crisscrossing orbits to ensure that every square millimeter of the surface is covered with plasma bombardments.\"\n\"I'm painfully aware of Covenant bombardment doctrine, Lieutenant,\" Hood growled. \"What of it?\"\n\"As I indicated, they started at the poles, but took in only a few ships. They were spread thin along the equatorial latitudes, and no additional ships were inbound. In fact, a large number of Covenant ships abandoned the system, in pursuit of the Pillar of Autumn?'\nAckerson waved his hand dismissively. \"Reach is glassed, Lieutenant. If you had stayed to watch the whole show, they would have burned you down, too.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Wagner replied. \"If, however, there is a recon mis sion, I would like to volunteer for the duty.\"\nAckerson got up and strode to Wagner. He stood a centimeter from his face, and their eyes locked. Ackerson's gaze was full of poison. Wagner did his best not to recoil, but he couldn't help it. One look and he knew this man wanted him deadfor whatever reason: that he had heard of Ackerson's alternative program to t h e  S P A R T A N - I I s ,  t h a t  h e  d i d n ' t  w a n t  t r o u b l e  o v e r  R e a c h ... o r maybe, as Lysithea had warned him, that he was just looking for someone's head to impale on a pike.\n\"Are you deaf, Lieutenant?\" Ackerson asked with mock con cern. \"Some kind of hearing loss due to combat action?\"\n\"No, sir.\"\n\"Well, when you push the limits of Slipspace in those little Prowlers, you risk all kinds of radiation damage. Or maybe the trauma of seeing Reach destroyed shook you. Whatever your problem, when you leave here you are to visit the infirmary. They are to give you a clean bill of health before you return to active duty.\" He shrugged. \"There must be something wrong with you, Lieutenant, because you do not seem to understand me even though my words are crystal clear.\"\n\"Sir.\"\n\"Let's try this, then. We are not wasting a single UNSC ship to 106 HALO: FIRST STRIKE confirm what we have already seen a dozen times before: Reach is gone.\"\nHe inched closer to Wagner. \"Everything on it is blasted to bits, burned, glassed over, and vaporized. Everyone on Reach is dead.\" He jabbed a finger into Wagner's chest for emphasis.\n\"Dead. Dead. Dead.\" SECTION 2\nDEFENSE OF CASTLE BASE CHAPTER TWELVE\n0744 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\\Epsilon Eridani system, Longhorn Valley, planet Reach. Five d ays ago. Steamy clouds parted like a drawn curtain; a fireball one hun dred meters across roared over Fred and Kelly's position. Fred traced the line of flames back through the sky and spotted the faint outlines of dozens of Covenant warships in low orbit. Fred's Banshee skimmed over the treetops, down the mountain side. He pushed the craft to its maximum speed. Kelly followed, and they swooped into a valley and up onto the zigzagging ridge-line where Joshua had first spotted the Covenant invasion force. He put aside thoughts of his fallen comrade. He had to focus on keeping his remaining team members alive. Fred called up the mapping system on his heads-up display. A blue NAV marker, nestled in the crux of topological lines, identi fied their fallback position: ONI Section Three's secure-and-secret research facility buried under Menachite Mountain. Two decades ago it had been a titanium mine, and then the abandoned tunnels were used as storage until Section Three had taken over the mountain for their own purposes.\n\"We'll need to find a safe route through\"\nA hail of purple-white crystalline shards hissed through the air, arcing up from the forest beneath them. Each shard looked like the projectile fired by a Covenant needierbut far larger. The shard that slashed past Fred's cockpit was the size of his forearm. Kelly dodged one projectile, which exploded in midair. Needle-like fragments bounced from the Banshee's fuselage. ERIC NYLUND  109\nOne tiny secondary fragment impaled Fred's Banshee and detonated. The port canard of his flier deformed from the explo sion, and the craft wobbled.\n\"Down!\" he shouted, but Kelly was already a dozen meters below him and plummeting to a distant dry riverbed. He fol lowed, trailing smoke. Fred confirmed his position and guided his wounded Banshee onto a course that followed the flash-dried riverbed below. The path wound through the forest, and sinewed close to Menachite Mountain. With luck, they could ditch the Banshees and make a short run to the ONI facility. Overhead, tangerine borealis pulsed from the north. Sheets of silver crackled across the sky, and the black clouds boiled, lit by the raging fires beneath them. They piled into thunderheads and spat lightning. The massive warships that had been overhead moments ago ac celerated back into the upper atmosphere. Their engines screamed and left blistering wakes across the swollen sky. For a split second panic seized Fred's throat. Then his training kicked in and his mind turned cold and metallic, and filtered through every fact he had on Covenant plasma bombardments. He had to think or die. So he thought. Something didn't fit. Covenant plasma bombardment had al ways proceeded in an orderly crisscrossing pattern across a planet until every square centimeter of the surface was glass and cinder. The ships above hadn't finished their work here. He risked a glance to the left and right. One hundred thousand hectares of forestthe same forest that Fred and his fellow Spartans had trained in since childhoodwas being devoured by walls of flame. Coils of heat and thick black smoke spiraled into the sky. A wave passed over Fred and Kellyhe couldn't see it, but he felt it: A thousand ants had gotten into his armor and bitten him. Static fuzzed his display, and then vanished with apop. His shields dropped to zero and then slowly started to recharge. The grav pods on their fliers flickered and sputtered.\n\"EMP,\" Kelly shouted over the COM. \"Or some plasma effect.\" 110 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Hard landing,\" Fred ordered. Kelly made an unhappy sound over the COM and snapped it off. They plummeted out of the sky, gliding with what little aero dynamics and power remained in their Banshees. Fred nosed his craft over the steaming rocks of the dry riverbed. He picked a path between boulders and jagged granite fangs, pointed toward a ribbon of gravel. There was just one problem: A pair of these rocks were slightly darker than the others . .. and they moved. The creatures were huge and heavily armored and moved with slow, deliberate precision. Each held a massive metal plate like a shield. Fred hit the COM and yelled, \"Heads up! Covenant Hunters dead ahead!\" There was no time to evade the new threat. The nearest Hunter wheeled to face them, and the array of sen sory pins along its back flared, anemone-like. The hulking crea ture raised its main weapona powerful fuel rod gun, mounted on its armat Fred. The barrel pulsed green. The Hunter fired. Fred killed the power, and his Banshee dropped ten meters. There was a flash as the orb of destructive energy split the air where his flier had been a second before. The Banshee hit the ground, skidding through fist-sized rocks. The battered craft flipped and tossed him to the ground. The Banshee rolled end over end and crashed into the Hunter. The massive alien brought up its thick, metal shield and shrugged off the wreckage as if it were cardboard. The fuel rod gun began to charge again. Fred winced and rolled to his feet, ignoring the new pain the crash landing had caused. He needed a weapon. Pain would have to wait. The Hunter lumbered toward him, then dropped into a crouch and charged ahead at terrifying speed. There was a crackle of static on his COM frequency, and Fred heard one word: \"Duck!\"\nHe threw himself onto the ground and rolled to the side. Kelly's riderless flier soared over him and collided with the Hunter at full speed. The Banshee exploded and showered the area with glittering metal fragments. ERIC NYLUND  111\nThe Hunter reeled as fire washed across its armor. It moved in slow, confused circles. Fred could see the bright orange smears of the Hunter's blood staining the rocks. Kelly landed on her feet next to Fred. She readied a captured plasma grenade and hurled it straight toward the second Hunter's huge gun. It lodged in the barrel of the weapon and detonated. Tendrils of energy covered the Hunter. The gun crackled and belched smoke. Fred got to his feet. \"Run!\"\nThey weren't going to engage a Hunter in hand-to-hand com bat. They might losethey might win, but in the meantime the rest of the Covenant ground forces would catch up to them. They sprinted toward a tiny patch of forest ahead, perhaps the last trees standing on Reach. The Hunter, confused with its de stroyed weaponand its flame-wreathed partnerhesitated, not sure what to do.\n\"Didn't you see while we were airborne?\" Kelly said, concern tightening her voice. \"There's about half the entire Covenant as sault force just ahead.\"\n\"Ground troops?\" Fred said, boosting his speed to a full sprint. \"How far?\"\n\"Haifa klick.\"\nThat didn't make sense, either. Why have forces groundside when you were destroying the planet from orbit? \"Something's not right,\" he told her. \"Let's see what they're up to.\"\nKelly's acknowledgment light winked red.\n\"They're between us and the fallback point,\" Fred told her.\n\"We have to.\"\nThey entered the stand of trees, paused, and looked back. The Hunter shambled after them, but it was a futile pursuit. Despite their occasional bursts of speed, the Hunters were too slow. They were caught between Covenant forces on the ground and those in the air, and neither Fred nor Kelly voiced the one question foremost on their minds: Was there even a fallback po sition left? Or had the Covenant between them and the rest of their team found and destroyed them?\nThe COM crackled.\"is Gamma Team, Alpha. Come in.\"\nFred replied, \"Gamma, this is Alpha. Go ahead.\" 112 HALO: FIRST STRIKE There was a roar of static. \"Whitcomb . . .  too many. Got you read?\"\n\"Gamma,\" Fred shouted. \"The fallback is hot. Repeat hot!\nAcknowledge.\"\nThere was only static.\n\"I hope they heard,\" he told Kelly.\n\"Red-21 can take care of his team. Don't worry.\" She crept forward and waved him to follow. \"Take a look at this.\"\nFred glanced over his shoulder. No Hunter, and nothing on his motion detector. He followed Kelly, and parted a wall of black berry brambles. Parked in a clearing were Covenant vehicles, lined in three rows of four: mortar tanks. The tanks had two wide lateral fins, beneath which were armored antigrav pods. They were extremely stable and fired the Covenant's most powerful ground weapon: the energy mortar. Fred had seen them in ac tion; they fired an encapsulated blob of plasma that obliterated everything within twenty meters of impact. Titanium battle plate, concrete, or fleshit all vaporized. Marines called these tanks \"Wraiths\" because you usually got one look at them before they made you one. There were a handful of Grunts milling about the tanks, as well as dozens of the floating Covenant Engineers. The Engi neers swarmed over and under the machinery. Most interesting to Fred, the vehicles' hatches were open.\n\"I can't think of a better disguise,\" Kelly whispered, \"than five tons of Covenant armor.\" She started forward. Fred set his hand on her arm, holding her back. \"Wait. Think it through. There are two possibilities. First, if the Covenant have found the fallback position, we go in guns blazing and carve a path for Delta Team to get out.\"\nShe nodded. \"The other possibility?\"\n\"They don't know that Delta Team is holed up under the mountain. Then\" Fred hesitated. \"Then we have to draw them away.\"\nKelly considered this, then said, \"I was afraid you were going to say that.\" She gave the dirt a tiny kick. \"But you're right.\"\nA blip appeared on their motion trackers, directly on their six. The contact was large and moving steadily toward them. The ERIC NYLUNO  113\nHunter must have made up its mindcome to find them and stomp them into the ground.\n\"Move,\" Fred whispered. They crossed the field, quickly and silently, and the Grunts never saw them. Fred and Kelly reached the smooth-surfaced Wraith tanks. He gave Kelly a go signal, and she sprang into the nearest open hatch. A moment later Fred inched ahead to the next tank and eased inside. He sealed the hatch behind him. This was one of the most desperate and stupid decisions he had ever made. How were they going to take on an entire Cove nant invasion force with a pair of tanksespecially tanks they hadn't a clue how to operate?\n\"Red-One,\" Kelly said over the COM. \"Ready when you are.\"\nFred examined the dim interior. Directly ahead was a seat, constructed with the same mottled purple metal as the Banshees. Fred settled his bulk onto it. It was too high; he had to stand in a half crouch. Holographic control surfaces and displays sprang into the air before him and showed a 360-degree view. Through the armored shell he felt the rumble and roar of Kelly's tank starting. Fred didn't understand any of the symbols, yet something seemed familiar about them. Some of the controls were similar to the Banshee, but nothing was an exact match. He relaxed as best he could given the situation, and his hands drifted over the controls. He tapped a symbol that could have been Aztec iconog raphy, a tangle of spaghetti, or a crisscross of bird tracks. His tank coughed and rumbled and rose a meter off the ground. Fred frowned. He'd been damned lucky to get it right the first time. That was more than luck-just as it was more than luck that he knew that the controls under his left hand moved the tank, the ones under his right aligned the mortar on target, and the one in the center armed and fired the main battery. But Fred wasn't going to examine how he knew this. He'd just use this cu rious development to his advantage.\n\"Ready here,\" he told Kelly. \"Let's take out the motor pool.\"\n\"Affirmative,\" she said, trying to conceal the faint trace of an ticipation in her voice. 114 HALO: FIRST STRIKE In unison the Spartans turned and fired at the far corner of the formation of tanks. Two blue-white blobs of liquid sun spat from the Wraiths and detonated. There was a dazzling light, an expan sion of superheated white fireand then there was glass-smooth ground and the smoldering skeletons of seven Wraith tanks. More luck. If the tanks had been active, with hatches secured, they might have survived the first volley. Kelly's tank surged ahead and bulldozed aside the surviving tanks near them. Fred turned, accelerated to full power, and smashed through a line of retreating Grunts, a series of small, satisfying thuds reverberating through the cockpit. The two Wraith tanks shattered through a line of trees, splin tering their trunks. Beyond lay the main Covenant camp. A thou sand Grunts and Jackals ran toward them, weapons and personal shields ready, but none of them fired. They charged past the two tanks.\n\"They think we're on their side,\" Fred said. \"They're going to see what attacked them. Let's not show them otherwise until we have to.\"\nKelly's acknowledgment light winked on, and she pushed a path through the onrushing Gruntswho quickly parted before her. Half a kilometer ahead was a stand of hexagonal gold and silver structures: the shielded tents of the Elites. There were half a dozen stationary plasma turrets, \"Shades,\" guarding them, and beyond them lay the mountain under which were ONI Section Three's secret research caverns. The Covenant were there as well. Without thinking, Fred tapped a control; the display magni fied. A hundred Covenant Engineers maneuvered heavy equip ment: laser drills and conveyor belts and giant insectlike machines that looked as if they could dig through the entire mountain.\n\"They found the caverns,\" Fred told Kelly. \"Looks like they're going to dig them out.\"\nBut again ... why? Why not just blast them from orbit? The Covenant had never taken prisonersexcept the occasional strag gler to execute for sport. They didn't go to this much trouble. Unless it wasn't Delta Team they were after. ERIC NYLUND  115\nFred keyed his COM. \"Delta, if you're listening, we're com ing in from south-southeast in a pair of captured Wraith tanks. You'll know which ones from the fireworks. Keep your heads down and don't shoot us.\"\nHe keyed over to Kelly's personal COM. \"Blaze a trail, Red-Two! Kill everything and get to that entrance ASAP!\"\n\"I'm on it,\" she whispered, her voice thick with concentration. A blue acknowledgment light flickered on . . .  but it wasn't Kelly's. It was tagged as SPARTAN-039, Isaac. That was part of Will's team. So they were holed up at the fallback position. Relief flooded into him to know his team was here and still alive. But he couldn't hopenot yet. He had three hundred meters to cross, every millimeter of which was covered with a solid wall of Covenant Grunts, Jackals, and Elitesa path straight through hell. Kelly rotated her tank about and fired at the remaining Wraiths and the cluster of Grunts trying to put out the fires near those she'd already destroyed. For a split second the ground was the surface of a sun; it flared, faded, and then was nothing but ash. Fred fired his mortaras fast as the tank's power supply would cycle. He lobbed three silver-white projectiles at the con centration of Elites and plasma turrets. They had shields that protected them for a microsecond before they overloaded and collapsed. They flared like the \"strike-anywhere\" matches the ODSTs used to light their contraband cigarettes. Kelly shot arcing projectiles into the hundreds of Grunts and Jackals running in every direction. Bodies charred midstride and turned to vapor. It was as if a dozen lightning bolts had struck in the center of the camp. Grunts ran and ducked and shot at one another. The few Jackals tried to marshal the diminutive soldiers, but the Grunts, enraged or terrified, fired on them as well. Fred caught motion in the corner of his eyea shadow buzzed over his tank, and a blast rocked it from side to side. That had to be Banshees. It made sense that they'd already have Elites in the air, on patrol. He cursed himself for not spotting them before. It was only a matter of time now. Without infantry 116 HALO: FIRST STRIKE support, sooner or later the Covenant ground and air forces would regroup and destroy them.\n\"Move!\" he shouted over the COM. \"Break off contact and get to the caves!\"\nKelly gunned her tank and pushed through the wreckage. Fred let her get ahead and paused to target the excavation equipment. He fired once. Three rapid impacts thudded on top of his tankexploded and shook his teeth. He fired three more times at the excavation equipment and gunned the Wraith tank. It shuddered and lurched forward. He gritted his teeth and smiled. On the display, the smoke cleared enough for him to see that the laser drill, conveyor belts, and the insectlike diggers had been reduced to piles of half-melted junk. The displays lost focus. NoFred saw it wasn't the picture;\nsmoke poured into the cockpit.\n\"Banshees circling over you,\" Kelly yelled over the COM.\n\"Get out!\"\nFred popped the hatch and crawled out. Overhead, a dozen Banshee fliers turned to strafe his crip pled tank. Fred jumped, rolled to his feet, and ran. A NAV marker ap peared on his heads-up display, over a gash in the side of the mountain where the cavern entrance used to be. A red-hot sledgehammer hit him squarely in the back: a plasma pistol on overload. He reeled forward but didn't lose his balanceand kept running. There was no time to stop. He glanced at his shield bar; it was completely drained, but it slowly began to recharge. He dodged and weaved back and forth. He couldn't take many more hits like that.\n\"Hurry,\" Kelly said. He crossed the remaining hundred meters in seconds and jumped into a crater where there had once been a gatehouse and the secure entrance to ONI's underground base. Kelly stood, braced just over the lip of the crater, holding a Warthog's chaingun. She aimed over Fred's head and sprayed the enemy with thunderous suppression fire. SPARTAN-043, Will, ERIC NYLUND  117\nstood next to her. Fred was thrilled to see them aliveand even more thrilled to see Will holding a Jackhammer rocket launcher.\n\"Get below,\" Kelly said, and motioned with her head to the center of the crater. \"We'll cover you.\" She continued to fire until she had depleted the chaingun's belt of ammunition. Will took aim and squeezed the trigger. A rocket knifed through the air, and a contrail of white smoke connected with the cockpit of an oncoming Banshee. The alien flier disintegrated in a ball of fire. Fred turned and saw a shaft that plunged deep into the ground. A steel cable had been rigged to one side, and it angled into the depths. He grabbed the line, jumped, and zipped into the darkness. He felt a sharp vibration through the lineonce, then twiceas the other Spartans followed him. After three hundred meters of free fall, he glimpsed a faint il lumination at the bottom of the shaft, the feeble sickly yellow glow from chemical light sticks. Fred tightened his grip on the cable, and his descent slowed. A meter from the bottom of the shaft, he let go and landed in a crouch. He moved out of the way. The other Spartans landed next to him.\n\"This way,\" Will said and moved ahead, through a set of eleva tor doors that had been forced open. Fred noticed that Will moved with a severe limp, and remem bered the Spartans he had sent here were injured. It was ironic that he had sent them out of the thick of battle, to end up in the middle of another dire situation. Then again, they weren't dead .. . which was more than he could hope for Beta Team. They stepped into a corridor with brushed stainless-steel walls that mirrored and smeared the faint light from the chem lights. Overhead there was a tremendous explosion. Rocks and dirt showered into the shaft, and dust blossomed through the corridor.\n\"Lotus antitank mines,\" Will said. \"A little something to slow our uninvited guests down.\"\nTwo other Spartans, Isaac and Vinh, sat along either side of the hallway, behind rock barricades. They gave slight nods to Fred and kept their eyes and weapons on the end of the corridor. 118 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Where's the rest of the team? And the Marines from Charlie Company?\" Fred asked.\n\"They didn't make it,\" Will replied, his voice flat. \"We were separated on the way here.\" He shook his head. \"No contact since then.\"\nFred was quiet a moment. He listed those three as MIA on his team roster as well as the other Spartans on Will's team. The list of Spartans he could account for had grown extremely short. Fred felt his stomach twist. \"Any word from Beta Team?\"\n\"Negative. No contact, sir.\"\nFred clenched his teeth and marked Beta Team as MIA as well.\n\"Gamma Team?\" Will asked.\n\"They're out there,\" Fred replied. \"I heard them on the COM, but I couldn't make out much. I warned them away from this position.\"\n\"Good,\" Will whispered. The hallway dead-ended in a vault door.\n\"The retinal and palm scanners are broken,\" Will explained.\n\"There's voice access, which we've tried, but there's no re sponse. This door must be a meter thick, so without cutting tools or a hundred kilos of explosive we're stuck on this side.\"\n\"You spoke to the people on the other side?\" Kelly asked.\n\"The channel is open,\" Will said. \"But there's been no reply. Everyone on the other side probably bugged out.\"\n\"Or maybe you're just not saying anything they want to hear,\"\nKelly said. She whistled a six-note singsong tune. Will nodded. \"I didn't think of that.\"\nThe tune had been the Spartan's secret code from when they were young and training on Reach. It was their all-clear-it's-safe-to-come-out signal. No one but the Spartans and a few very select outsiders knew of it. . .  a few outsiders who might be still here. Kelly keyed the mic and whistled the tune. She released the key and waited. Two minutes ticked off Fred's mission clock. Too much time sitting here, doing nothing, while the Covenant over their heads were undoubtedly figuring out a way to dig them out and tear them to pieces. ERIC NYLUND  119\n\"It was a good idea,\" he told Kelly. \"We'll recon the shaft. Maybe it's not completely collapsed. Will you\"\nA mechanism thunked and then hummed within the titanic door. There was a hiss as the seams parted, and the meter-thick door swung inward on perfectly balanced, silent hinges. Bright light flooded the passage. A silhouetted figure stood on the threshold. As Fred's display compensated and enhanced the image, he saw it was human, slight of figure, female. She wore a gray pleated skirt and a white lab coat with a data pad stuffed into the breast pocket. He caught the glimmer of her eyeglasses, black-rimmed with faint bifocal lines. Her gray hair was coiled into a tight bun. But it was her face that caught and held his focushe recog nized the tight smooth skin that wrinkled only in the comers of her mouth and her gray-blue eyes. She was the intellect behind the SPARTAN-II program, and the one who'd invented their MJOLNIR armor. She was Dr. Catherine Halsey. CHAPTER THIRTEEN\n0810 hours, August 30,2552 (M ilitary Calendar)\\Epsilon Eridani system, ONI underground facility, planet Reach. Dr. Halsey studied the five Spartans in the hallway and pushed her antique glasses farther up the ridge of her nose. Despite everything their presence here meantReach invaded, their mis sion to find the Covenant leadership compromised, everything she had worked for now in jeopardyshe was still pleased to see them. She steeled herself, though; an emotional outburst wouldn't be understood, or appreciated, by her Spartans.\n\"Come in,\" she said briskly. \"And hurry. From the sounds of things upstairs we haven't much time.\"\nThe Spartans stood there a momentundoubtedly communi cating with one another through a mixture of externally silent COM channels and minute body language. She noticed the tick of a finger, the slight nod of a head. They then moved together, picked up their equipment, and walked through the threshold of the vault. Dr. Halsey greeted them as they passed her. \"It's good to see you, Fred.\"\n\"Ma'am,\" Fred replied. \"Good to see you, too.\"\nShe noted that Kelly's movements were off, a little sluggish. She was hurt, as were the rest of them, now that she saw them up close. \"Kelly.\"\n\"Doctor Halsey.\" She reached out and gave her hand a slight squeeze of greeting.\n\"Isaac.\"\n\"Doctor.\"\n\"Vinh.\" ERIC NYLUND  121\nShe nodded.\n\"William.\"\nWill grunted. He had never liked his formal name. She knew this annoyed them allhow she was always able to tell who they were despite the MJOLNIR armor. She had grown up with them, knew their every gesture and their indi vidual walks. She could have never called them by their number designations: SPARTAN-104, -087, -039, -029, and -043, respectively. Dr. Halsey tapped a control pad. The vault door eased silently shut, its seams vanished, and, with a sharp, metallic click, it locked.\n\"We have access to Aqua, Scarlet, and Lavender Levels,\" she told them. \"Follow me to the medical wing.\" She proceeded down a concrete hallway with a high arched ceiling, recessed lights, and security cameras. \"I know the Covenant entered the Epsilon Eridani system at approximately oh-five-hundred hours. ONI Section Three staff evacuated this facility at oh-five-thirty hours. I assume you're not here to let me know it's safe to come out?\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" Fred replied. \"I mean, no, ma'am. It's not safe. The Fleet engaged the Covenant, but the enemy managed to land ground forces on Reach. We were sent to the surface to protect the orbital-gun generators.\" He stopped, took a deep breath, and continued. \"We were not successful in that mission. Covenant forces overwhelmed our position.\" He glanced back at Kelly and the other Spartans. \"We fell back here. . .  we thought it would be secure.\"\nThey continued down the sloping passage; titanium doors irised open for them and closed as soon as they passed.\n\"I see,\" Dr. Halsey replied. \"And Captain Keyes? John?\"\n\"Unknown,\" Fred told her. \"The Master Chief and part of our team attempted to retrieve an unsecured NAV database from an orbital station before the Covenant got to it. Assuming he was successful, and given Captain Keyes's record of combat against the Covenant...\" Fred's voice trailed off.\n\"I'm sure they accomplished their mission and escaped,\" Dr. Halsey said, finishing the thought for him. \"John has never lost.\"\n\"No, ma'am,\" Fred replied. 122 HALO: FIRST STRIKE  5\nThey walked in silence for a moment past a display of cap-        Z tured insurgent flags that had been mounted under glass along the curved concrete wall. Most were emblazoned with an array of gaudy insigniafamily crests, bloodied dragons, and scorched crossed swords. They continued past these remnants of a rebel-         Z lion the UNSC no longer had to worry about. 5\n\"Doctor Halsey?\" Fred said. \"Permission to speak freely?\"\n\"Granted,\" she said. \"I don't stand on ceremony, particularly         S given the circumstances. Speak your mind.\"\n\"Ma'am, something isn't normal about this Covenant inva sion,\" Fred told her. \"They've won, but they aren't glassing the planet. At least not completelyas near as I can determine, they've only hit the poles and a portion of the lower latitudes.\"\n\"And they had digging equipment in position over this fa cility,\" Kelly added.\n\"Curious,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"They've never taken an interest in any human or human technologies\" She halted at a large metal iris, big enough to drive a Warthog through, and set her hand on a palm scanner. \"The medical wing,\" she explained. She spoke into the nearby microphone: \" 'I shall do no harm.' \" The door opened for them. High-intensity lights flickered on in the large room beyond. There were a dozen medical diagnosis tables and a row of dis plays along the far wall. The lime-colored floor was brightly polished and sterile. The walls glowed with a faint pink lumines cence. Seven doors led to adjacent offices and surgical bays with windows looking out into this central room.\n\"Kalmiya?\" she said. \"Status?\"\n\"Yes, Doctor,\" replied the disembodied voice of her personal AI, her replacement for Cortana. \"I have prepared the Spartans'\npersonal medical files and sent runners to fetch stocks of blood plasma and other medical supplies from cold storage, as well as tools to assist in the removal of their MJOLNIR armor.\"\nThe doors to the tiny service elevator at the far end of the fa cility opened, and a robotic rover rolled out, its telescopic arms holding piles of liquid-filled bags. Rows of tools were neatly lined up across the rover's top tray.\n\"Very good,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Continue to track seismic ac- ERIC NYLUNO  123\ntivity overhead. Interface with the Spartans' biomonitors and patch the output to the display on bay three.\"\nShe strolled over to a table, and a bank of holographic dis plays hummed to life, floating serenely. Graphs and figures scrolled across them.\n\"Give me a spotlight here, prepare a sterilization field, and lower the ambient lighting by forty percent. And a little Mahler, please. Symphony number two.\"\n\"Yes, Doctor.\" Music drifted from the speakers. Dr. Halsey examined the graphs, tapped tiny human-figure icons, and summoned MRI images of\" the Spartans' internal structuresholographic bones, organs, and muscles appeared and slowly rotated. She winced at the extent of their injuries.\n\"Fred, you have a torn Achilles tendon and three cracked ribs. Both kidneys have moderate contusions.\" She glanced at the rest of the team's data and after a moment's consideration told him,\n\"You're fine.\n\"William, you have a cracked tibia and some internal bleed ing. Get some biofoam into that wound and avoid strenuous mo tions for the next day.\" She turned to face Fred and Will. \"You two are in the best shape. I want you to go to Level Aqua, Section Lambda, and retrieve a few things.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" Fred said. Dr. Halsey was only a civilian, but the Spartans had always ac cepted her authority. Perhaps because she had acted as an equal among the Fleet Admirals and Generals who were constantly trying to co-opt her work. Or maybe it was more than that. She wondered if the Spartans viewed her as some sort of mother fig ure. As much as this notion amused her, she doubted that they viewed anyone outside their team as family. Not even her. William retrieved a can of biofoam from the rover and in serted the tip into the tiny injection port in his armorpushed it through the skin between his fourth and fifth ribs. He filled his abdominal cavity with the space-filling coagulant/antibacterial/\ntissue-regenerative polymer.\n\"Cold?\" she asked.\n\"Nothing worth noting, ma'am.\"\nShe nodded, not making much over William's courage. She'd 124 HALO: FIRST STRIKE always kept her admiration for her Spartans to herself. The last thing she wanted was to do make them feel different. They got enough \"special\" treatment from everyone else. Dr. Halsey picked up a clipboard, tapped a few items onto its display, and handed it to Fred. \"New weapons arrived for field-testing last week,\" she told him, \"as well as parts for the MJOLNIR Mark Five armor system. We'll swap them out for your damaged components. Kalmiya, show them the way, please, and give them access to the restricted areas.\"\n\"Yes, Doctor,\" Kalmiya said. The med bay doors opened.\n\"This way.\"\nFred studied the items on the clipboard. \"Very, very good,\" he said, and his voice was thick with satisfaction. He nodded, took a long look at his teammates, and then he and Will departed. Dr. Halsey returned to her medical readouts. \"Vinh, you have a torn deltoid muscle, three broken fingers, and a herniated disk. Isaac, internal contusions and both shoulders have been dislo cated and reinserted incorrectly, which is pinching off the blood vessels. I'll get you both fixed up in a moment, but first I want you to survey the route we took here and suggest further perimeter defenses.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" they replied, cast a look at Kelly, and left. Dr. Halsey concentrated on Kelly's internal scans. Her injuries were by far the worst. She had seen that from the extremely low blood pressure and high body temperature even before she'd glanced at the MRI. There was moderate bleeding in her liver a fatal condition if not treatedand her right lung was com pletely collapsed. That the woman was still on her feet, let alone fighting, was tantamount to an act of God. Of course, that's what the SPARTAN-II project was all about, wasn't it? Playing God for the greater good.\n\"Doctor Halsey,\" Kelly asked. \"Where are the others?\"\n\"As I said, they evacuated,\" she replied. \"On the table, please. I'm going to perform some minor repairs.\"\nKelly complied. \"Then why aieyou still here, ma'am?\"\nDr. Halsey picked up a curved, long-handled magnetic wrench, built specifically to fit this, and only this, access panel. She in serted it and popped open a fist-sized section of Kelly's battered ERIC NYLUNO  125\nMJOLNIR armor. Blood and hydrostatic gel bubbled from Kelly's wounds.\n\"I volunteered to be the fail-safe option,\" she told Kelly. \"In the lower levels of these caverns are enough high explosives to level the facilityin case we were ever overrun by the enemy. I'm here to make sure no one gets access to our technology.\"\nDr. Halsey injected a local anesthetic and inserted a flexible laser-tipped catheter into Kelly, carefully monitoring her progress on the MRI. She pulsed the laser, fusing the lacerations in her liver. Dr. Halsey then inflated her lung. Kelly would lose half of that organ, regardless of her treatment. The tissue was already turning blue and mottling necrotic brown.\n\"Kalmiya, prep the flash clone facility and retrieve Kelly's DNA sequence from the archives. I'd like to get a new liver and right lung started for her.\n\"You're fine for now,\" Dr. Halsey lied. \"I just want to get replace ments made for you, in case we're down here for a long time.\"\n\"I understand,\" Kelly rasped. Dr. Halsey wondered if she didif Kelly understood that getting shot and burned and having your internal organs trauma tized wasn't supposed to happen to you every day... unless you were a Spartan. She wished the war were over. She wished her Spartans had some measure of peace.\n\"Doctor?\" Kalmiya whispered through the tiny private speaker bud in Dr. Halsey's glasses. \"There is an anomaly in SPARTAN-087's DNA files. You may want to review this in private.\"\nDr. Halsey sealed Kelly's injuries with biofoam, removed the catheter, and cauterized the incision. \"Rest,\" she said.\n\"No, ma'am. I'm ready to\" Kelly tried to sit up.\n\"Down.\" Dr. Halsey set a hand on her shoulder. She had no il lusions that she could have stopped Kelly with the gesturebut it reinforced her words and her will. \"Doctor's orders.\"\nKelly sighed and lay back.\n\"I'll be in my office just over there\"she pointed to the next room\"if you need anything.\"\nDr. Halsey left Kelly and moved to her office. Two walls were covered with giant displays; old disposable coffee cups littered the floor; a holographic projector flooded with data, lines, rotat ing graphics, and unanswered correspondence overflowed her 126 HALO: FIRST STRIKE desk. She turned down the blinds that separated her office from the medical bay, but only halfway, so she could keep an eye on Kelly.\n\"Let's have it, Kalmiya.\"\nKelly's medical history scrolled across a display.\n\"Here,\" Kalmiya said, and highlighted a surreptitious data re quest at the end of the file. \"It's dated three months ago. That's Araqiel's routing code.\"\nDr. Halsey picked up the snowglobe off her desk, shook it once, and set it down, watching the swirls of particles.\n\"Araqiel? That's Ackerson's watchdog, isn't it?\"\n\"Affirmative, Doctor.\"\n\"Can you trace the request?\"\n\"Done and terminated contact at node FF-8897-Z. Access re stricted to X-ray level clearance.\"\n\"Restricted?\" Dr. Halsey gave a short, soft laugh. \"Does that mean anything now? There's no one here to stop us, is there, Kalmiya?\"\n\"Entering those files without proper clearance is a treasonable offense, Doctor.\"\n\"They can come and arrest me, then. Do as I have instructed, Kalmiya,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Override your ethics center subrou tine four-alpha. Nullification code: 'Whateverittakes.' \"\nDr. Halsey found a half-full cup of coffee on the floor and gin gerly picked it up. She sniffed its contents and, satisfied it wasn't rancid, swirled it once then downed its cold contents.\n\"Yes, Doctor. Working. Done.\"\nKalmiya was Cortana's older \"sister.\" Dr. Halsey had designed and tested the software intrusion routines on her. Once the process had been debugged and streamlined, she'd incorporated the routines into Cortana. The brass in ONI Section Three had been quite explicit in their instructions to destroy any prototype routinesan order that Dr. Halsey had promptly disobeyed.\n\"There is an unusually voluminous amount of counterintru-sion software, Doctor.\"\n\"Show me,\" Dr. Halsey said. The holographic display flickered and solidified into colored crystal blocks representing the code barriers. Dr. Halsey traced a ERIC NYLUND  127\nseam with her forefinger along a shard of ruby to the ninety-degree angle made by a stair-step-cut emerald. \"This data cluster here. Spike that and backfill with a neutralizing pulse.\"\n\"Yes, Doctor.\"\nThe holographic crystal shattered into a thousand glittering fragments and swirled upward into a helix.\n\"I'm in, and\"\nThe shards pulsed and coalesced. Facets and hard shimmering planes fit together into curled horns, an elongated jaw, and over sized eyes that flickered with holographic fire. It turned and smiled at Dr. Halsey, baring razor jags of teeth.\n\"Civilian consultant 409871,\" it said in a deep bass rumble that contained a crackle of thunder. \"Doctor Catherine Halsey.\"\n\"Araqiel,\" she muttered. \"Did your master leave you behind when he was reassigned? Don't you have anything better to do than steal data from my SPARTAN program?\"\nThe doctor leaned toward a side display and, without looking, tapped in line commands, accessing the base's root directory.\n\"You are in violation of UNSC military security code 447-R27,\"\nAraqiel stated with a growl. \"This has been recorded and the proper authorities have been notified. You will cease and desist all activities.\"\nDr. Halsey snorted and continued to type. \"I'm the only au thority left here, Araqiel. For a 'smart AT you are extremely thick.\" She glanced at the display before her. \"Kalmiya, I need you.\" She tapped level-seven security barriers, which popped up over her command line prompt. \"Here.\"\n\"Yes, Doctor.\"\n\"Oh, 'thick' indeed, Doctor,\" Araqiel rumbled. \"While I al lowed you to 'access' these medical files, I have taken control of the air reclamation system for your medical wing. I can pressurize your office and cause pulmonary edema. I can release narco-zine gas to para\" His eyes narrowed to a squint. \"What are you doing there?\"\n\"We're in,\" Kalmiya said. Dr. Halsey tapped in a flurry of commands. The holograph of Araqiel leaned over her shoulder. \"What is that? I don't recognize mat directory path ... or those\"he sniffed derisively\"archaic line commands.\" 128 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"These commands were invented, refined, and then discarded and forgotten long before even the first functional dumb AI went online,\" Dr. Halsey told him. \"I learned them when I was fifteen, working on my second doctoral thesis.\"\n\"An antiquated input methodology for an obsolete human.\"\n\"Antiquated? Obsolete? Really?\" She smiled and said, \"Let's test your hypothesis, Araqiel. I supervised the creation of the template for every third-generation smart AI on this planet. I know everything there is to know about you, including your bor derline disregard for human life.\" She paused and tapped her chin. \"Maybe that's why you and Ackerson always got along so well.\"\n\"Colonel Ackerson is a great man. He's\"\n\"To answer your original question,\" she said, ignoring him,\n\"this is the nexus of your being.\" She tapped the display. \"Your code directory, the center through which all impulses in your mind flow. And this\"she quickly typed in another command\n\"is the code that activates your personal fail-safe. It generates a pulse beam of high-frequency UV light in your Riemann cycling-thought matrix, clearing your high thought functions. It will effectively erase you.\"\n\"No!\" Araqiel said and reared back. Flames roared about his crystalline skull. \"Don't\"\nDr. Halsey punched the ENTER key. Araqiel vanished. Dr. Halsey sighed and closed the display. \"A waste of memory crystal.\"\nShe wondered if the AI had been bluffing. Maybe not; ONI Section Three gave its AIs broad discretionary powers for deal ing with security breaches. Still... she was happy not to have found out how far Araqiel would have gone.\n\"Kalmiya, please retrieve the data file and show me the con tents of Colonel Ackerson's directory.\"\n\"Working, Doctor. There's some minor encryption to unravel. It should only take a moment.\" She paused and then asked,\n\"Doctor Halsey, the UV fail-safe in Araqiel's Riemann matrix... are they planted in every smart AI? In me?\"\n\"They are not implanted in every AI,\" Dr. Halsey said, care fully controlling her voice. ERIC NYLUND  129\nKalmiya would undoubtedly stress-analyze her vocal pat terns, so she told her the truth. It was always a game of chess with smart AIsmove and countermove. It was a constant chal lenge to earn and keep their respect. That's why she preferred their company to humansthey were so deliciously complex. Yes, she told her the truth... just not the whole truth.\n\"Here they are, Doctor.\"\nHolographic file and folder icons filled the space over her desk.\n\"Filter by proper names,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Let's not waste our time with Ackerson's petty blackmails. Also remove any files dated before the SPARTAN-IIs went online, and any not ac cessed more than a dozen times. I want to see what black ops topped his list.\"\nThe folders and files winked away, and only two folders re mained floating over Dr. Halsey's desk: s-ni and KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN . She tapped on the first one and it opened, revealing hundreds of separate files. Dr. Halsey examined themthere were medical files on each of her Spartans: complete records from their preindoctrinated origins; their childhood vaccinations; their parents; their extensive injuries and treatments during their train ing; even the experimental procedures used to enhance their strength, agility, and mental resiliency.\n\"What the hell was he up to?\" she muttered. She felt her pulse quicken as she scoured his records. There were DNA profiles on each Spartan, and there were extensive files on the old flash clone techniques that ONI had used to replace the originals. Ackerson seemed especially interested in this aspect of the program. He had followed the medical records of the replacements as they grew up, succumbed to congenital diseases, and inevitably died. He even had the bodies retrieved and autopsies performed. Dr. Halsey's stomach soured. It was her fault, in part, that these replacement children had died so young. They had never per fected flash cloning for an entire human. They had done it any way thirty years ago because the Earth government was on the verge of falling apart... collapsing into a hundred civil wars. They had desperately needed the SPARTAN program. And of course, they had done it simply because they could. No matter the legitimacy of her reasons, she knew she had killed these children as sure as if she had shot them dead. 130 HALO: FIRST STRIKE There was one last file in the S-III folder. As Dr. Halsey tapped it open, Kalmiya said, \"That is only a fragment. It had been erased, but I managed to reconstruct it from trace ionization in the memory crystal.\"\nDr. Halsey examined its contents. There was only CPOMZ fol lowed by a 512-character alphanumeric string. \"This longer por tion is a star chart reference,\" she whispered.\n\"Yes, Doctor, but it's not a destination to any location in UNSC-controlled space.\"\nWhat the hell had Ackerson been up to? \"No good at all,\" she murmured and ran her finger over the first word in the file:\nCPOMZ.\n\"I'll have to deal with this later,\" she said. She downloaded the files to a nearby data pad. \"Let's see what else the good Colonel was up to.\" She opened the folder marked KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN. There were only three files. The first was the original construction blueprints of this base; it appeared on her desk. Dr. Halsey noted that this holographic representation of the base was much larger than she had been led to believe. While her security clearance was the highest possible for a civilian, she apparently had seen only a third of the facility she had worked in for the last decade. Dr. Halsey tapped open the second file. It was the transcripts of the debriefing at Camp Hathcock, August 12,2552. That was the inquiry of John's destruction of the city on Cote d'Azur and the alien artifact the Covenant had tried to procure there. Curious. A third file was an analysis of the symbols John had captured from the alien artifact. According to Ackerson's notes it, too, was a partial star map. Dr. Halsey returned to the stellar chart reference in the Spartans' files. No good. This location had nothing to do with that reference. The stellar reference in the alien artifact was ... she did the math in her head\n\"I'll be God damned,\" she muttered. She pulled up star charts and NAV records for confirmation, and checked her math one last time. No question: It was the Epsilon Eridani system. Here. ERIC NYLUND  131\nThis was more than a curiosity, now. Ackerson had been sit ting on a tremendous secreta very dangerous secret. \"Just his style to play with fire and get us all burned.\"\nAdditional files detailed the procurement of digging equip ment, and a new set of blueprints and geological surveys. The new maps looked like a network of veins and arteries.\n\"What am I looking at, Kalmiya?\"\n\"According to the coordinates of these secondary maps, Doc tor, this facility was built over an old titanium mine ... and be fore that this site was surveyed as an extinct volcano. These are designated as a series of lava tubes.\"\n\"I wonder if they used the natural passages to help build the mines, and later this facility?\" Dr. Halsey removed her glasses and cleaned them as she thought this through. \"No ... if it was as simple as that, why would Ackerson be interested? And why then classify this data as level X-ray? How does this connect to the alien artifact on Cote d'Azur?\"\n\"I can't say,\" Kalmiya replied, \"but perhaps there's a back door you can use to escape.\"\n\"Yes, yes.\" Dr. Halsey downloaded all of Ackerson's secret files to her data pad. \"I'll consider that later. Right now we should concentrate\"\n\"Detecting increased seismic activity, Doctor.\"\nDr. Halsey froze. She felt it more than saw ita series of faint, rhythmic thumps, like thunder in the distance. Dust rained from the ceiling tiles and scattered the light for the holographic system into a dazzling starburst.\n\"They're coming,\" Dr. Halsey whispered. She opened a COM channel to the Spartans. \"Get back to the lab ASAP. I might have away out!\"\nShe stumbled as a powerful blast rocked the chamber. There was a shriek of stressed metal, and the main support beam over head shifted, fell, and crashed onto her desk. The lights went dead. CHAPTER FOURTEEN\n0901 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\\Epsilon Eridani system, ONI underground facility, planet Reach. The secure storage doors whispered open, and overhead fluo rescent lights strobed on. Fred saw motionbut it was only his own reflection in the burnished-mirror finish of the chamber's stainless-steel walls. Will stepped inside and looked up, then glanced back down the corridor. The room was a three-by-five-meter vault with steel walls, floor, and ceiling. Their footfalls were muffled as they entered, so the floor had to be at least a quarter meter thick. Along the right and left walls stood secure floor-to-ceiling lockers, and two metal crates sat along the far wall. Every surface was spotless, and every seam had been precision-milled to prevent explosives or acids from penetrating.\n\"One moment, please,\" Kalmiya told them. \"I'm attempting to access the locks now. Please stand by.\"\nWill stood at the doorway and watched their backs. It didn't make Fred feel any more at ease. The abandoned ONI base was somehow more intimidating than facing the Covenant invasion force overhead. He had walked down these corridors a dozen times during his training on Reach. This base had always been full of people; now, empty, it drove the point home that the Cove nant were winning. First the Outer Colonies had been crushed;\nnow Reach. How long before humanity was forced to retreat all the way back to Earth? And after that... what? There would be no other choice but victory or extinction. Enough. Such musings didn't help him achieve his immediate ERIC NYLUND  133\nobjective. He'd leave the long-range strategies to Generals and Admirals. It was time to concentrate on what he did best. The walls hummed as thick metal bolts inside the lockers re tracted, the sound of heavy oiled steel sliding over steel. With a final thump, the sound ceased. Kalmiya said, \"Lockers open and safeties disabled, Spartans. Help yourselves.\"\n\"Secure the outer door, please,\" Fred told her. The door to the hallway eased shut and locked, and Will moved to Fred's side. Each Spartan opened one of the wall lock ers, standing to the side in case there was some leftover booby trap within that Kalmiya had failed to disable. Fred peered inside and saw a rack of handguns. They weren't the standard-issue HE pistols; these had oversized barrels easily 30 percent larger and longerand they had grips of self-molding plastasteel. He picked one up and hefted itits balance was barrel-heavy, to be expected from an unloaded pistol. He found three boxes of clips at the bottom of the locker, opened one, and took out a clip. Whatever this new handgun shot, it was high caliber, slugs the size of his thumb. He slid the clip into the gun, and it secured with a satisfying click. Now it was perfectly balanced, far better than the standard-issue sidearm. He secured the weapon and turned to see what Will had found. Will examined a plastic-wrapped rifle. He removed the rifle from the locker, ripped off its sheathing, and shouldered it. He nodded with satisfaction. Unlike the MA5B, this rifle had a longer barrel and stock, with a cutdown muzzle shroud. A scope was mounted on an op tics railing along the top of the rifle. Will hefted a clip and in serted it into the receiver. He shouldered the rifle again and peered through the scope.\n\"Auto zoom, nice.\"\nWill and Fred then traded and inspected the new weapons. Fred liked the feel of this new rifle, but wondered how much punch it hadenough, he hoped, to make the trade-off of having fewer rounds in the clip worth it. They filled two sacks with the new pistols, rifles, and ammu nition, then moved to the footlockers and lifted the lids. 134 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Inside the first locker were satchel charges. Fred grabbed three and looped them over his neck. \"I think we can find a use for these.\"\nWill knelt next to the second footlocker. Within were plastic boxes marked MJOLNIR MARK V followed by a long list of serial numbers. \"This must be what Do ctor Halsey wanted,\" he said. There was a flutter in the floorwhich got Fred's full atten tion, because a \"flutter\" in a solid steel floor meant trouble. The COM channel opened, and Dr. Halsey's voice crackled with static: \"Get back to the lab ASAP. I might have a way out. Quickly!\"\nThe vault room flexed, and thunder rumbled through the walls.\n\"Detonations,\" Will said. \"They're coming.\"\n\"Secure those boxes,\" Fred ordered. He raced to the closed doors. \"Open,\" he shouted to Kalmiya and waited as the door slowly eased apart. He scanned up and down the corridor and then ran back toward the lab. When they got to the medical wing the lights were dead, and Fred saw Kelly's helmet lights cut through the velvet-rich, dust-filled darkness. Sh e had Dr. Halsey draped over her shoulder. Blood ran from the doctor's nostrils.\n\"Her office collapsed,\" Kelly told them. \"Support beam missed her by a centimeter.\"\nDr. Halsey looked up and whispered, \"I'm fine. Really.\" She pushed away from Kelly, stood, and teetered in place. Fred scooped her up and set her on the examination table.\n\"With all due respect, ma'am, you're not.\"\nAnother detonation rippled through the earththis one stronger than the previous explosion. Fissures snaked through the con crete walls. Vinh and Isaac bounded into the room. \"Enemy contacts at extreme range,\" Vinh reported.\n\"Down,\" Dr. Halsey said, and she held a palm-sized data pad for Fred to see. It had a map on its display . . .  but not of this base. \"We have to go lower.\"\nFred wondered if Dr. Halsey was delirious.\n\"Down the elevator shaft in Section Sigma,\" she explained.\n\"We'll seal it behind us. We can't let them follow.\"\n\"Kelly, take point,\" Fred ordered. He grabbed two of the new ERIC NYLUND  135\nmagnum pistols, loaded them, and then tossed them to Kelly, along with three extra clips. \"I guess you get to test these.\"\nKelly gazed at the new weapons and gave a low whistle. Fred opened the bags with die new rifles and handed them out to his team. \"Will, you mule the extra parts and ammo.\"\n\"Roger,\" Will replied and slung them over his shoulders.\n\"Those satchels, over there,\" Dr. Halsey said and waved to four duffel bags. \"Medical supplies. Food and water. We'll need them, too.\"\nWill grabbed them as well.\n\"Just a few more things,\" Dr. Halsey whispered. \"We can't let them get into ONI's records.\" She tapped her pad once and then said to Kalmiya, \"Begin Operation White Glove. Irradiate all computer memory crystal. Code file access Beta-Foxtrot-99874.\"\nDr. Halsey closed her eyes as if she were concentrating, and she whispered, \"Not all AIs have the fail-safe option, my dear Kalmiya... just the ones that matter.\"\n\"I understand, Doctor.\" There was a pause, and the AI spoke again, her voice sad. \"Voice and fingerprint accepted and veri f i e d .  F a i l - s a f e  c o d e  v e r i f i e d .  I t  h a s  b e e n  ... a  p l e a s u r e  w o r k i n g with you, Doctor Halsey.\"\n\"The pleasure has been mine, Kalmiya.\" She stood straighter and said, \"Fail-safe override access: 'Ragnarok.' Give us a three-minute countdown.\"\nA three-minute counter appeared in the corner of Fred's heads-up display. Dr. Halsey turned to him. \"I've activated the explosives cache under this base, which will level the complex. We have to get be low, to the original titanium mine tunnels.\"\nFred wished she had consulted with him before she had given them only three minutes. Then again, Dr. Halsey knew what was at stake, what secrets were hidden in this base, and what damage could occur if the Covenant got their hands on those secrets. Five minutes might be too much time considering what was at risk.\n\"Understood,\" Fred replied. \"Isaac, you're rear guard. Vinh, stick close to Kelly. I'll take Doctor Halsey.\" Fred picked up the doctor with great care. She couldn't have weighed more than fifty kiloslight as a stick. 136 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"I've lost targets on motion sensors,\" Vinh whispered over the COM. \"They were close, too.\"\n\"Kelly, watch for camouflaged Elites.\"\n\"Affirmative,\" she said. She scanned the room, moved to a cabinet, and grabbed a tin can marked TALC .\n\"Let's move,\" Fred ordered. \"Kalmiya, kill the lights in the base. Hand signals onlyI want radio silence.\"\nFour blue acknowledgment lights winked on. The faint light filtering in from the outer hall died. Kelly slid into the hallway and melted into the shadows. Vinh followed, then Fred and Isaac. Will trailed behind, moving slower because of the care he took to remain quiet with the gear. Dr. Halsey tapped her data pad, and a map uploaded onto Fred's heads-up display, a path traced through corridors and a NAV marker designated an elevator shaft. That was their objective. The Spartans winked on their acknowledgment lights, con firming the route. They crept forward, smooth and silentoil sliding over oil until Kelly halted ten meters before a five-way intersection. The Spartans froze and waited. She crouched, set the can of talc on the floor, and then stood with her knees bent. She waited another heartbeat, then gave a slight shake of her head from side to sidetheir signal for trouble ahead. Vinh moved next to Fred's flank, and Fred set Dr. Halsey down and stood in front of her. Will crouched next to the doctor to provide cover with his own body if needed. Isaac remained on their six. Kelly kicked the can. It tumbled end over end through the air, and as it entered the intersection Kelly squeezed off a single shot. The flash of light from the muzzle illuminated the passage just long enough for them to see the can explode and a cloud of white dust mushroom into the hallways. Their motion detectors flickered, and four targets resolved on their displays. Image enhancement showed the wavering out lines of four Covenant Elitestheir light-bending camouflage fluttering and overloading as the talc powder coated them. Kelly open fire with both pistols. The Elite closest dropped as three slugs pounded through its shields, and a round caught it in ERIC NYLUND  137\nthe center of its elongated forehead. Purple blood blossomed across the wall. The remaining Elites returned fire, and Kelly bounded for ward, plasma flaring at the edge of her shield. She ducked into the side passage. The instant Kelly was out of the line of fire, Fred shouldered his rifle and squeezed the trigger. A three-round burst caught the next Elite, and its shield sparkled and failed. It twisted away, clutching at the single round that had penetrated its chest. Vinh fired two single shots, but the Elite's shield held. In uni son, Vinh and Fred fired another set of three-round bursts. The Elite dropped to the steel floor in a twisted heap. The last Elite had vanished. No return fire. No sensor contact. The Spartans held position for a moment longer, then re grouped. With hand signals, each member of the team reported no contact. Fred spied tracks in the white dust scattered on the floor. The Elite had bugged out, and it was most likely gathering reinforcements. That wasn't what Covenant Elites usually did. Their pride de manded that they fight, and die fighting, if need be. They would hurl themselves headlong into battle, no matter the odds, and die by the hundreds if necessary. They never ran away. Nothing about this engagement had been \"usual.\"\nFred glanced at Will and Dr. Halsey. Will gave him a thumbs-up, indicating that the doctor hadn't been wounded in the exchange. After the exchange of gunfire, there was no need for secrecy.\n\"One of them got away,\" Fred told them. \"We need to move, too... and forget quiet.\"\nThe Spartans ran down the corridor. They heard and felt an other explosion directly over their heads. Kelly skidded to a halt in front of the locked elevator doors. She gripped one of the panels; Fred and Vinh gripped the seam of the other side, and the Spartans pried them apart as if the five-centimeter steel alloy were no tougher than the rind of an orange. Kelly grabbed the elevator cables and slid down. Vinh fol lowed, then Fred plummeted more than five hundred meters into 138 HALO: FIRST STRIKE the darkness. The three of them ripped open the doors at the bot tom of the shaft. Will slid down next with Dr. Halsey holding on to his neck. Isaac followed.\n\"There should be an air vent,\" Dr. Halsey whispered. \"There.\"\nKelly ripped off the vent cover and peered down.\n\"It leads to the old mine tunnels,\" Dr. Halsey told them, \"and more, I hope.\"\n\"Go,\" Fred ordered. Kelly dived in, headfirst. They waited ten seconds, and her ac knowledgment light winked on. Fred entered next, sliding through the vent duct. It twisted and turned and finally dumped him into a long tunnel of roughly hewn granite. The ceiling was ten meters high andjudging from the three-meter-wide tire tracks in the dustbig enough for heavy equipment to have rolled through. Will slid out of the duct with Dr. Halsey riding on his chest. Vinh and Isaac came after them.\n\"There's more to this place,\" Dr. Halsey told them, standing up and brushing the dust from her lab coat. \"This is only the be ginning. We have to\"\nA thunderous detonation cut her off. The mountain exploded, and ONI's base collapsed over their heads. CHAPTER FIFTEEN\n0002 hours, September 7,2552 (Military Calendar) \\ ONI underground facility, planet Reach. Fred followed the trail of odd symbols along the left-hand stone wall until they twisted into a spiral mosaic and vanished into ever-smaller curls. The symbols were part of the rock, com posed of glittering mica inclusions in the granite matrix. There were a series of squares, triangles, bars, and dots, similar to Covenant calligraphy he had seenbut at the same time it was simpler, cleaner, and when Fred focused on them, the characters seemed to blur around their edges and fade from his stare. He blinked, and the symbols were there again. Following these symbols like a trail of bread crumbs had been his primary mission for the last five days. Dr. Halsey and the Spartans had explored the extensive caverns, hoping to find two things: a way out, and what Dr. Halsey called \"the most impor tant discovery of the millennium.\" She had, however, refused to speculate on what exactly this discovery would be. \"I'm a scien tist,\" she'd told them, \"not a soothsayer.\"\nFred would have settled for finding an airhole to the surface but he recognized that the symbols were important, too. They were important because the Covenant thought they were impor tant. And that made whatever Dr. Halsey was searching for worth finding, if only to keep the enemy from getting it. The Covenant hadn't stopped digging overhead, although the pace and methods they used had changed. There had been no further explosions. There was only the constant and gentle scraping sound of equipment as they slowly but steadily re moved the mountain. Every hour the sound intensified as they 140 HALO: FIRST STRIKE drew closer. Fred had set his audio filters to screen out the noise so he could concentrate. Five days. It hadn't seemed that long. They worked, they rested, they slept, and they waited. Dr. Halsey had taught them word games like twenty questions and simple cipher, at which they all became extremely proficientso much so that she quickly stopped playing. Dr. Halsey was not a graceful loser. The time had melted away. Maybe it was the darkness, the lack of any temporal reference like the sun, moon, and stars, but the hours had lost their meaning. He paused to stretch his Achilles tendon, recently stitched and fused by Dr. Halsey. Aside from some stiffness, it was almost back to normal. He had almost torn the tendon off, running on the injury. Dr. Halsey had patched them all up; she had even flash cloned Kelly a new partial lung, which she successfully grafted. In her tiny field medical kit, the doctor had a handheld MRI, a sterile field generator, even a shoe-box-sized clone tank for organ duplication. She had also installed the new MJOLNIR parts in their exist ing armor. These upgrades were in field-testing and not certified, she had explained, but she gauged their need sufficient to justify the risk of using the new equipment. Kelly received an improvement to her neural induction cir cuits, giving her twitch response time a speed boost. Vinh had a new linear accelerator added to her shield system, effectively doubling its strength. Isaac had a new image-enhancing com puter installed. Will received a better tracking system on his heads-up display, which improved his accuracy at distances up to a thousand meters. Fred flexed his bare right hand. Dr. Halsey was installing his upgrade nownew sensors that would boost the sensitivity of his motion tracker. Without the single gauntlet, Fred felt vul nerable. The Master Chief would have told him not to rely on his armor or weaponsrely instead on his head. It would protect him better. He wondered how Blue TeamJohn, Linda, and Jameshad fared. And what of the rest of his own team? Had anyone at the generator complex survived? ERIC NYLUND  141\nHe didn't want to think about thembut he couldn't help it. Maybe it was the darkness and the constant weight of the earth around him. What if they died here? Not died fighting, but just died here. In a way, that wouldn't be so bad. Fred had faced death a dozen times, brushed so close to it he had stared it in the face until it blinked and turned away. This was different, though. He didn't want to die, not without knowing if the other Spartans were still out there fighting. Not if they still needed him. He sighed and absentmindedly brushed his fingertips across the odd symbols. They were as smooth as glass, and their edges were sharp. These crystals could be a natural phenomenon. He had seen similar inclusions in the museum on Fred felt a hot pain in the tip of his finger. He drew his bare hand away and a tiny track of blood smeared the rock. The glittering symbols on the wall took on a greasy cast, and the reflection from his helmet lights thickened and almost seemed to be absorbed by the minerals. He flicked off his helmet lights. The symbols in the rock emit ted a faint illumination of their own: a soft reddish glow like heated metal. The light intensified and spread across the spiral on the wall, starting from where his blood had fallen; those sym bols warmed to a pleasant orange, then yellow-gold. A new symbol in the center of the spiral appeared that hadn't been there a second ago . . .  or perhaps it had been, but had lain just beneath the surface. It heated and became increasingly visi ble, a single triangle that glowed white. Fred was inexorably drawn to this central figure. He reached for it; there was no heat. He slowly stretched and touched the symbol with his exposed fingertip. Warm white light raced along the spiral of symbols, then traced a path down the hallway and into the distance. The entire cavern seemed sudden alive with radiance and shadow. Even with the step-down luminosity filters in his helmet, Fred had to blink and squint. The wall before him rumbled and seams appeared at the cen tral figure, dozen of lines that curved in a radial patternand then pulled away to reveal a corridor behind. 142 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Fred realized that he was holding his breath. He exhaled. This new corridor was twenty meters highlarge enough for a titan to stride down its length. It vanished into the distance, a straight line that gently sloped deeper into the earth. The floor was paved with asymmetric blue tiles patterned to look like waves lapping upon a shore. Four-meter-tall symbols of gold were centered and inlaid into the mirror-smooth walls. These gi ant triangles, squares, bars, and circles began to emit the same soft light... and Fred felt his foot shuffle forward. He stopped, shook his head, and looked away. He checked his radiation counter; it pulsed, and then fell back to a normal back ground count. He keyed the COM. \"Doctor Halsey, I think I've found what you've been looking for. Sending video feed now. Copy?\"\nThere was a long pause. The COM was open, but Dr. Halsey wasn't responding.\n\"Doctor Halsey, copy?\"\n\"Yes,\" she finally said over the COM. \"Don't move, Fred. And don't touch anything. Excellent work. Kelly, Isaac, Vinh, Will meet me at Fred's location.\"\nFred wanted to stare at the gold symbols and the light they cast, but something warned him that this would be dangerous. He had long ago learned to listen to that inner voice when on pa trol or in the heat of battle. It had saved him from dozens of am bushes. He kept his eyes on the dirt floor of the tunnel. There was something too fascinating and nearly familiar about those sym bols. They reminded him of the Greek mythology that Deja, the Spartans' first teacher, had taughtlegends of hauntingly beau tiful creatures who lured the unwary to certain death. Sirens. He checked his rifle. The ammo counter read full, but he hit the magazine release and visually confirmed it. He slapped the clip back into the receiver. This simple operation cleared his head. He detected four blips on his motion trackerthey glowed green, indicating fhendlies. Kelly, Vinh, Isaac, and Will jogged up next to him, weapons ready.\n\"What is this?\" Will whispered. The golden glow reflected in his helmet's faceplate. ERIC NYLUND  143\n\"Careful,\" Fred warned them. \"Filter the light. Go to black-and-white image enhancement.\"\nHe got four blue acknowledgment signals, and then Fred switched to BWIM display. Funny that he hadn't thought of that for himself. Only when the safety of his team was at stake did he think clearly. Dr. Halsey ran along the tunnel and halted, panting, next to the Spartans. \"Yes,\" she said, wheezing. \"Yes, this must be itwhat Ackerson was searching for. And most likely\"she glanced at the roof\"what they are looking for, too, I imagine.\"\nDr. Halsey ignored the curious symbols and the light, and strode into the new corridor. \"Hurry,\" she told them. \"I fear we've set something in motion, and our visitors upstairs might know it, too.\"\nFred assembled his team to form up around Dr. Halsey. Kelly took point, and the rest of them created a loose box around her. Dr. Halsey handed Fred his missing gauntlet. He took it and wriggled his fingers into the armor, pulled it snug, and sealed the locking collar around his wrist. Diagnostics ran and confirmed that his armor was whole again. His motion tracker pulsed on his heads-up display. The hallway changed as they continued down its length. The golden light faded along the ceiling, and inky black covered its expanse; tiny stars winked on and twinkled. Fred added color to his display; he wanted to see this. Moons wheeled overhead;\nsilver-gray orbs, pockmarked with meteorite impacts, spun in wide orbits. Along the walls, tall green bamboo-like grass sprouted and grew up the curved surfaces. Dr. Halsey brushed her fingertips along the wall, and the grasses wavered at her touch. \"Semisolid holography,\" she said without halting. \"No visible emitters. Interesting. We should in vestigate this later,\" she said and increased the pace of her stride.\n\"If there's time.\"\nThe holographic environment cycled to an arid moonscape:\ndeep craters and sterile light; it became a volcanic world with lava flowing alongside them. The air wavered with heat. In each transformation the golden symbols remained on the walls, lead ing them through the illusions. 144 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The corridor emptied onto a landing that overlooked the largest room Fred had ever seen. Kelly stepped onto the landing, looked, and waved them forward. They stood on one of a dozen tiered levels that encircled the room; there was no railing. Fred leaned over the edge. It was at least one hundred meters to the floor below. The room was ap proximately circular and three kilometers in diameter. The floor was blue and seemed to shift as a billion tiny tiles flexed and re arranged themselves into frustratingly familiar patterns. The ceiling was a dome with a holographic golden sun, blue sky, and cottony clouds that morphed into spheres, puffy pyramids, bars, and cubes. And in the center of the floor was a pedestal flickering with a faint light. Isaac held up his hand. \"Listen,\" he whispered over the COM. They all froze, and Fred strained to hear. There was nothing. Fred turned up his aural amplification to maximum gain. He heard the creak of their armored joints and five faint heartbeats but, other than that, silence.\n\"They've stopped,\" Fred said, and pointed overhead. \"The digging.\"\n\"I don't like it,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"The Covenant aren't known for giving up on anything they start. We'd better continue.\"\nKelly removed the clip from her magnum, cleared the cham ber, and then slid a self-installing piton down the length of the barrel. She shot it into the stone wall, and the metal shard im planted ten centimeters and blossomed with sharp talons, secur ing the shaft to the wall. Vinh handed her a coil of black rope. She clipped one end to the piton, then tossed the rest over the edge. Isaac and Will stood on the lip and swept the vast open region with their weapons. Kelly jumped and rappelled to the bottom. A moment later she gave the all-clear signal. Will and Isaac followed her to the floor. Fred tied the rope around Dr. Halsey's waist and lowered her gingerly down after them. He and Vinh took up the rear. The floor of the great room wasn't the same tile as in the cor ridor above. It was still blue tile, but these were squares and ERIC NYLUND  145\ncircles and bars and triangles. If the symbols were a language, Fred stood upon a million words; he wished he'd been issued a dictionary. Dr. Halsey paused to examine the tiles as well. \"If only we had the time,\" she muttered, and then walked toward the light gleam ing in the center of the chamber. The Spartans formed up around the doctor again, but Fred's instincts warned him that this wasn't a good idea. He couldn't get his bearings straight. The room was big, large enough that it felt as if they were outside. It threw him off. He had an odd sense of vertigo, almost as if the floor was tilting and he was now walking on the roof. Dr. Halsey increased her pace, but the distance to the center of the room didn't seem any closer; in fact, they seemed more dis tant from the center than when they had started out from the edge of the room. Fred turned down the gain on his display until everything was a faint black-and-white blur. He focused on his motion tracker and saw that the Spartans and Dr. Halsey were now separated across two dozen meters.\n\"Everyone stop,\" he said. \"Regroup. We're getting scattered.\"\nThey halted and edged back into formation.\n\"There must be another way,\" Dr. Halsey said. She reached into her lab coat pocket and removed a ball bearing. \"The floor slopes toward the center,\" she observed. She set the bearing on the floor and gave it a gentle push. The bearing rolled, then curved, and spiraled back to a stop.\n\"This is getting too weird,\" Fred muttered. \"Kelly, you have the best aim. Close your eyes, pick a direction, and we'll follow.\"\n\"... Affirmative,\" she whispered. The Spartans set their hands on each other's shoulders and marched, not toward the center of the room but to a spot that Kelly picked, apparently back the way they had come. Fred turned off his display and watched his motion tracker. They were all together and another blip appeared, one that Kelly was leading them straight to. Another twenty meters and she halted. \"Look.\"\nFred snapped on his heads-up display, and sapphire-blue light filled his vision. They stood before the source of the glow in the 146 HALO: FIRST STRIKE middle of the room. There was a pedestal made of the same gold material as the symbols in the corridor, and floating above it was a fist-sized crystal, tapered to a point at either end. It spun, and the facets along its centerline folded and shifted like the pieces of a puzzle. Dr. Halsey reached for it and then hesitated. \"Radiation?\" she asked. Fred checked his counter. \"Normal background levels,\" he reported.\n\"We must take this with us,\" she whispered. \"Study it. Or de stroy it if necessary to keep the Covenant from getting it.\" She touched the crystal, and its light dimmed. For a moment the light appeared to be absorbed by Dr. Halsey's palm. Static washed over Fred's display, his shields shimmered, a squeal blasted through his speakers, and his motion tracker mo mentarily made contact with a thousand targets swarming through the great room. His radiation warning flared red and then faded.\n\"Radiation spike,\" he said. \"Analysis says lots of neutrinos, but I'm unable to determine the typeit's something not in the computer's database.\"\n\"Is it safe now?\" Dr. Halsey asked, peering into the crystal she gripped in her tiny hand.\n\"Seems so,\" Fred told her, \"but Doc\"\n\"No time for debate,\" she said. \"Neutrino radiation will pene trate the rock between us and the surface.\"\n\"They'll be able to get a fix on our position,\" Kelly said. \"All they need is three ships nearby to triangulate. We need to get out ofherefast.\"\n\"Which way?\" Isaac asked Fred. \"Back the way we came, or deeper in?\"\n\"There was no way out from the titanium mines,\" Fred replied.\n\"So we go deeper.\"\nAn explosion rocked the earth and deep thunder rumbled, but rather than diminishing, this thunder got louder, closer. Fred's shadow lengthened, and its edges sharpened. He whirled toward the source of the intense white light directly overhead, a spot in the dome: The holographic scenery of stars and moons bleached and vanished. He spun Dr. Halsey around so she faced away, then covered her head. ERIC NYLUNO  147\nThe stone ceiling melted and peeled back as if it were thin plastic hit with a blowtorchan angled shaft of dazzling white radiance appeared and blasted into the tiled floor, five hundred meters from their position. Then it was gone and the room fell into darkness punctured only by a ray of faint sunlight that streamed in through the hole above. Where the beam of hard light had contacted the floor, a precision-milled hole had been etched fifteen meters deep. Dr. Halsey said, \"What was\"\n\"Energy projector,\" Fred told her, blinking away the black dots that filled his vision even though his step-down filters had absorbed the brunt of the light. \"Only the big Covenant ships have them. There's got to be one of them\"\nThe cut shaft filled with a beam of purple light. It sparkled and shimmered with motes of dust.\n\"Grav lift,\" Fred shouted. \"Incoming! Isaac and Vinh, take our six. Will, you're with me on Doctor Halsey. Kelly, find us a way out.\"\nKelly ran in a line directly away from the gravity beam. A dozen Elites floated down through the shaft, and fired while still in the air. Plasma bolts slashed at them from the distance. Fred and Will grabbed Dr. Halsey and moved her behind the pedestal, out of the line of fire. Isaac and Vinh fell back and opened fire.\n\"Suppression fire!\" Fred barked. \"Keep them pinned in that crater!\"\nThe Spartans fired several bursts, but more Elites were drift ing down, along with a Shadea portable plasma turret. If they stayed here, they'd be overrun.\n\"Fall back,\" Fred told them over the COM. \"It's too hot.\"\nKelly sprinted, digging in her heals with such force that the tiles buckled and shot out behind her. \"Passage,\" she reported.\n\"Ground floor. Dead ahead. I'll enter and clear.\"\n\"My apologies, Doctor,\" Fred said and unceremoniously scooped Dr. Halsey up in his arms. \"Everyone move! Vinh, Isaac, drop those det sacks to cover our tracks.\"\nTheir acknowledgment lights winked on. Will and Fred ran, weaving from side to side. Dr. Halsey clutched 148 HALO: FIRST STRIKE onto Fred with one arm, and in her free hand she clutched the crystal. Fred's motion tracker showed dozen of targets behind them, then hundreds. A pair of detonations thumped, an overpressure wave blurred his motion tracker, subsided, and then half of those contacts were gone. Will and Fred ran into an arched passage set in the wall of the great room. Kelly crouched in the hallway and fired past them with her pistols. Fred opened his COM. \"SPARTAN-029. SPARTAN-039. Acknowledge.\"\nStatic hissed through his speaker. Vinh's and Isaac's lights re mained dark.\n\"Prep your det sack and seal this passage,\" Fred ordered Kelly. Fred set down Dr. Halsey, turned, and bumped up his display's magnification. Hundreds of Covenant Elites and Jackals poured from the grav shaft. They swarmed over the floor of the great chamber, a living tide as unstoppable as the ocean. They weren't shooting anymore, though. Dr. Halsey was cor rect: They wanted the crystal she'd taken.\n\"Go!\" Fred said. \"Kelly, blow the hallway. Let's move.\"\nKelly hesitated a heartbeat; Fred saw her searching for Vinh and Isaac in the mass of Covenant. They weren't there; not alive anyway. Kelly dropped the olive-green satchel of high explosives. Will picked up Dr. Halsey, and they all ran deeper into the corridor. Five seconds later the satchel detonated. A wave of acrid air washed up the hallway and choked the corridor with dust and smoke. Kelly took the lead position, both pistols ready; she rounded a cornerand skidded to a halt. The passage was a dead end. SECTION 3\nRESCUE  CHAPTER SIXTEEN\n0455 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar) \\ Captured Covenant flagship, in Slipspace, location unknown. John brushed off the frost buildup that clouded the top half of the cryotube, and revealed the green-armored figure sprawled behind the plastasteel shell. SPARTAN-058. Linda. She'd been mortally wounded during the raid on Gamma Sta tion, just before Reach fell. He'd dragged her burned, limp body back to the Pillar of Autumn, and the medics had placed her in deep cryostasis just before the jump. When the Autumn crashed on Halo, Keyes must have jetti soned the active cryotubesstandard operating procedure. They had frozen her while she'd still been in her suit. That was for the best, considering the extent of her injuries ... but he would have given anything to see her face one last time. Linda had been unique among the Spartans with her bloodred hair and dark emerald eyes, but her appearance was not what set her apart. She was the unit's best sniper-scout and could hit tar gets the rest of them couldn't. While the other Spartans pre ferred to operate as a team, Linda was content to separate, hide and post in some remote location, and wait for days for the single, critical shot that could turn the tide of battle. Although snipers in the UNSC were always trained to function in pairs, a shooter and a spotter, Linda was the exception to that ruleshe had proven time and again that she was most effective on her own. If any one of the Spartans could be called a \"lone wolf,\" it was Linda. In many ways that made her the strongest of them. To see her like this ... ERIC NYLUND  151\nJohn wiped away the condensation that formed over her hel-meted head. She was neither dead nor alive. She was in some twilight place in between. That uncertainty was worse than seeing her broken and burned body on Gamma Station. It felt like an open wound in John's chest. Linda's prognosis was good. The occupants of the other two cryopods hadn't made it. Some kind of energy discharge had de activated the units, and those inside had died cold bleak deaths. There was a gentle knock on the hull of the Pelican, and Sergeant Johnson pulled himself inside. \"Master Chief,\" he said.\n\"You got the air scrubbers? The remote COM? Polaski says she's ready to call it a day with that Covenant dropship. We need to get on board and work.\"\nThe Master Chief stood and nodded to the aft hatch, where he had stripped the air scrubbers and COM from the Pelican. The Sergeant picked up the gear, and then he and the Chief crawled out of the Pelican. The Chief hesitated and looked back atthecryotube.\n\"Don't you worry about her,\" Johnson said. \"Hell, I been hit worse and she's three times the soldier I am. She'll pull through.\"\nThe Chief sealed the hatch without comment. He had heard the same hollow promises a hundred times before with critically wounded men. Why was it that soldiers would face their own deaths without blinking an eye... but when faced with the death of a squadmate, they turned away and lied to themselves?\nThey silently marched across the hangar. It had been cleared of debris and bodies, and Warrant Officer Polaski had, for the last six hours, been practicing inside the space with the intact Covenant dropship. She spun the odd U-shaped craft around on its center axis, shimmied to port, rose, and then floated down for a landing. Johnson squinted his dark eyes at her performance and nod ded approvingly. \"She says that she's figured out the weapon controls, too. No way to test them in here, of course.\"\n\"Understood,\" the Master Chief replied. \"And the rest of the team's progress?\"\n\"I've got the doors from here to the bridge and to the engine room welded shut,\" Sergeant Johnson told him. \"If those tran- 152 HALO: FIRST STRIKE sient sensor contacts that Cortana keeps picking up are anything, they'll have to cut through to get to us.\n\"Locklear's grabbing some sack time. He needed it.\" The Sergeant shrugged. \"He'll be fine, though; ODSTs are tough as nails. Lieutenant Haverson slept some then got up, had a long conversation with Cortana, and started reading through some of the Covenant database. Everyone seems to be fine, considering what we've been through.\"\n\"Understood,\" the Chief said. \"Cortana? Ship status?\"\n\"ETA to Reach in twenty minutes,\" she said. The Chief checked his mission clock. \"You said thirteen hours'\ntotal travel time. By my count, we have approximately two hours to go.\"\n\"I had determined it would be thirteen hours based on the spec ifications of the Covenant Slipspace drive, but there's ...\" Her voice trailed off and faded.\n\"Cortana?\"\n\"Sorry. There's a curious time-dilation effect at these Slip-space velocities. Although, technically, velocity, acceleration, and for that matter even time have no meaning in the folds of Slipspace. I thought I told you all this,\" she said. Irritation crept into her voice. The Chief looked to the Sergeant, who shook his head and shrugged. Cortana sounded more than distractedand she didn't just\n\"forget\" things. It was a bad sign. They depended on her to fly this ship, and if she started falling apart they were in real trouble. The Master Chief opened a COM channel. \"Change of plans, team. Reach ETA is nineteen minutes. I'll explain laterjust grab your gear and meet on the bridge ASAP.\"\nThere was a pause,  then Lieutenant Haverson replied, \"Roger, Master Chief. Locklear and I are already up here.\"\nThe hatch of the Covenant dropship opened, and Polaski jogged out. The three of them proceeded at a brisk pace to the bridge. The Master Chief opened a private COM channel to Cortana.\n\"Anything else I should know?\"\nThe channel was silent for a full ten seconds. \"I have the Covenant magnetic plasma-shaping system figured out,\" she ERIC NYLUND  153\nreplied. \"We'll have a limited offensive capacity when we get to Reach, if we need it. I think.\"\n\"And the rest of this ship is still functional?\"\n\"Yes,\" she replied. \"I'm sorry, Chief ... these calculations are... tricky.\"\nThe COM went dead. Cortana's behavior worried the Chief, but he resigned himself to trust her. What other option was there?\nHe, the Sergeant, and Polaski halted outside the bridge; the thick blast doors were sealed.\n\"Lieutenant?\" he said. \"We're outside.\"\nThe doors pulled apart. Locklear and the Lieutenant stood with their assault rifles aimed down the hall. They relaxed their stance when they identified them as friendlies. Lieutenant Haverson slung his rifle and said, \"Sorry for the warm welcome. Cortana's been picking up transient contacts all over the ship. We're going to have to deal with them sooner or laterpreferably before they deal with us.\"\n\"Agreed,\" the Chief said. Polaski approached the Lieutenant, saluted, and gave her report on her efforts to master the Covenant dropship's controls. Locklear edged closer to the Chief and the Sergeant. \"What do you think, Sarge?\" he whispered and cast a furtive glance at Polaski. \"I mean, about her? Sure, there's that Marine-Navy thing to get over, but I can get past that. You think there's a chance that she and I? I mean\"\n\"I'd give you the same odds as spacing yourself and walking the rest of the way to Reach,\" the Sergeant declared. \"In your skivvies.\"\n\"Give me a drop capsule and I'd take those odds, Sarge.\" A smile split Locklear's tanned face, and he turned to the Master Chief. \"Sure, I get it. Wouldn't be so defensive if I hadn't been close to the mark. Where there's smoke, there's fire, right?\"\nThe Master Chief stared at Locklear and slowly shook his head. Locklear's smile faded, but not entirely. \"You guys are just jealous,\" he muttered and absentmindedly ran his finger over the scar that lined his jaw. \"That's cool. I get that all the time.\"\nLocklear's spirits had improved. Despite the ODST's rough edges, the Chief had seen him in combat. He didn't panic, and he 154 HALO: FIRST STRIKE had the skill and luck to survive Haloqualities the Master Chief knew they'd need if they were ever going to get back.\n\"Exiting Slipspace,\" Cortana announced, \"in three ... two ... one.\"\nAccording to the Master Chief's mission clock, it had only been eight minutes since Cortana had told him their ETA was nineteen minutes. Was there more to the time-dilation effect than she realized?\nThe bridge lights dimmed, and blackness filled the arc of dis plays along the wall. Stars winked into existence, and at three o'clock blazed the warm yellow orb of Epsilon Eridani.\n\"We are seven hundred thousand kilometers from the system center,\" Cortana told them. \"I wanted to jump in close enough to see what's going onbut far enough away so we would have time to recharge and reenter Slipspace if there's any trouble. Picking up signals now. Covenant signals. Lots of them. Trans lating ... stand by.\"\nHaverson tapped one of the screens and magnified the image.\n\"My God,\" he whispered. A planet appeared on the screen. He sucked in his breath as he saw a world smoldering from pole to equator. Fires raged over its surface, and a hurricane of black spiraled through the atmosphere. The Master Chief felt as if the ship had suddenly decelerated. His hands clenched. He'd sent the majority of his team down thereand had con sidered it the \"easier\" mission. He'd gotten his Spartans killed, he was sure of it. Had they at least died fighting? Or were they burned from an orbiting Covenant ship, helpless?\n\"Are we in the right place?\" Locklear murmured. \"That's Reach?\" He removed his cap, crushed it in his hand, and whis pered, \"Poor bastards.\"\nThe other displays showed Covenant warships orbiting the planet, as well as dozens of smaller craft and one large structure that seemed to be a central docking station.\n\"What is this?\" the Master Chief asked, stepping closer. He tapped the center display, pushing the limits of its resolution and magnifying a portion of the surface near the midlatitudes. ERIC NYLUND  155\nThe image resolved into patches of green, brown, and white different from the angry black and livid orange that dominated the view of the rest of the planet.\n\"Looks like they missed a spot,\" the Sergeant said.\n\"The Covenant don't 'miss' anything when they glass a planet,\" the Master Chief replied. \"We've seen them do it a thou sand times. This is no accident.\" He turned to Lieutenant Haver-son. \"We should get closer and see what this is, sir.\"\n\"Master Chief,\" Haverson said softly and held up his hands. \"I sympathize with your need to know with absolute certainty what happened to your fellow Spartans, but this is...\" He gestured to the planet and then frowned as he scrutinized the undamaged part of Reach. \"Indeed,\" he murmured. \"This does warrant a closer look... provided we can get away with it.\"\nThe Lieutenant pulled the magnification back and refocused the display on the upper atmosphere. A hundred Covenant ships popped into view. \"There are several smaller vessels circling over that spot. Forget what I just said,\" Haverson whispered. \"If the Covenant are so interested in this region, then we should be as wellas long as our cover holds. Cortana, take us in closer.\"\n\"Yes, Lieutenant,\" Cortana replied. The Covenant flagship smoothly accelerated insystem.\n\"They're hailing us,\" Cortana said. \"Preparing the proper counter-response.\"\nJohn counted the ship s on the display. There were hundreds most no larger than a Covenant dropship, but there were at least a dozen cruisers and two of the titanic carriers that each carried three squadrons of Seraph fighter craft. There was more than enough firepower to turn their captured flagship into molten slag. Many of the smaller ships herded debris from the battle into one spot over Reacha floating junkyard of UNSC and Cove nant ships.\n\"You see this?\" The Master Chief pointed to the field of float ing debris. The Lieutenant stared at it. \"It's almost as if they planned to stay here for a whilethey're cleaning house.\"\n\"We're in,\" Cortana announced. \"The fleet is curious why a Covenant flagship is here, but not suspicious enough to question our authority. The translation is tricky. But apparently from the 156 HALO: FIRST STRIKE string of honorifics attached to their responses there's supposed to be someone of extreme high rank commanding this ship, someone they referred to, among other things, as the 'Guardian of the Luminous Key.' \"\n\"Damn silly name,\" muttered Sergeant Johnson.\n\"Can you tell what they're doing down there, Cortana?\" the Lieutenant asked.\n\"Not yet,\" she replied. \"Their language doesn't translate in a literal manner, and each word has multiple meanings. There's something they consider holythere are ten times as many reli gious allusions than in their typical communiques. Hang on . . . picking up a new signal. Weaker than the others. Not on a Cove nant frequency. It's the UNSC E-band.\"\nLieutenant Haverson licked his lips. \"Play it,\" he said. A message beeped through the speakers, six tones, then a two-second pause; it repeated. The Master Chief stiffened.\n\"That's it,\" Cortana said. \"Just those six notes over and over. It originates here.\" A tiny NAV triangle appeared on the edge of the intact region on the planet's surface.\n\"It's not Morse code,\" Polaski said. \"Not any code I've heard of. Maybe it's a test signal? Something automated, like an air-traffic repeater relay, maybe?\"\n\"It's not automated,\" the Master Chief said. \"Everyone gear up and get ready. We're going down there. There are Spartans down there. And they're still alive.\"\nHe whispered so softly that only he and Cortana heard: \"Oly Oly Oxen Free.\"  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n1002 hours, July 14,2523 (Military Calendar)\\Epsilon Eridani system, planet Reach, Spartan training exercise. Twenty-nine years ago. John crawled forward and peered over the edge of the rise. A lush, green valley stretched out below him. In the distance, the silvery reflections of the Big Horn River twisted through the thick forest. Aside from a flock of birds that wheeled overhead, there was no activity below. He inched back to a blackened, hol low tree stump and crawled inside. Fred and Linda sat inside the hollowed-out cedar stump. It muffled their conversations and insulated them from the sol diers' thermal goggles. \"It's all clear for now,\" he whispered. A moment later Sam, Kelly, and Fhajad appeared, ghostlike, from their camouflaged positions nearby. They crouched outside the cedar stump and watched for patrols. From a distance they looked like soldiers on field maneuvers. Each was tall, fit, and agile, and looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. Closer observation told a different story. Each Spartan was no more than twelve years old.\n\"Weapons check,\" John told Fred and Linda. \"We can't afford any mistakes on this one, especially not with the rifles.\"\nLinda and Fred disassembled and inspected their SRS99C-S2\nsniper rifleswhich they'd liberated from a pair of Tango Com pany shooters who'd been sent to hunt them down two days ago. If the soldiers of Tango Company didn't capture them and beat them into unconsciousnessthis would be fun. John checked his pistol. CPO Mendez had issued the weapon. It used compressed air to fire a narq-dart. The effective range 158 HALO: FIRST STRIKE was twenty meters, and on impact it could drop a rhino in its tracks. Twenty meters wouldn't cut it for this mission, though, so Fhajad had modified the 114mm APFSDS rounds from the sniper rifles, removed their deadly armor-piercing tips, and re placed them with narq-dart capsules. When Linda had test-fired the weapon, she promised John ac curacy to one hundred meters. The rounds would penetrate flesh, but they couldn't kill anyonenot unless she hit the temple or eyes.\n\"Okay,\" John said, \"this is supposed to be a training exercise, but this is the seventh time Chief Mendez has made us play with Tango Company.\"\n\"They're getting pretty tired of losing,\" Fred remarked with a wry smile.\n\"That's not a good thing,\" Linda told him and flipped a stray strand of red hair out of her face. \"They're not going to play fair. You heard the sniper we captured. He said that this time their Captain told them to win no matter whateven if they had to bloody a few of us to do it.\"\nJohn nodded. \"So we'll return the favor and do whatever it takes to win, too.\" He grabbed a twig and scratched a square in the leaf-covered dirt. \"I'll have command of Red Team: That's me, Sam, Kelly, and Fhajad. Linda, you lead Blue Team.\"\n\"It's not 'Blue Team,' \" Fred complained, and his face soured.\n\"It's just me. How come I have to stay and play sniper?\" He flexed his hands, and John could sense his pent-up eagerness to get into close-range combat.\n\"Because you're our second-best shot,\" John told him. \"And\n ob>**      J ----  wov ob>  ERIC NYLUND  159\n\"Count on it,\" Linda replied and locked her dark green eyes with John's. He wondered if that's what her eyes looked like when she sighted through the sniper scope. She never seemed to blink; she always won in games of stare-down.\n\"After we get the flag,\" he continued, \"Red Team will get out of there. Watch for targets of opportunity and cover us. We ren dezvous at the LZ and hopefully no one finds us before then.\"\nFred nodded. Linda hefted her new rifle, which was almost too large for her to look through the scope and rest the butt against the hollow of her shoulder at the same time. \"You'll be in good hands.\"\nJohn closed his eyes and ran over the details of his plan again in his head. Yeseverything gelled; their odds were good. He knew they'd win.\n\"Don't come out from hiding at the LZ until I give the all-clear signal,\" he reminded them. \"We could be captured... they could make us talk.\"\nThey all nodded, remembering what Tango Company had done to James. He \"fell down a flight of stairs\" as they had escorted him from cell to cell in their single-story jail. James hadn't bro ken ... not mentally, at least. But John wished he had; it had taken James a whole week to recover. Nohe took back that thought. He was glad James hadn't broken. John would have tried to do the same. John whistled the little six-note singsong tune Deja had taught themtheir all-clear signal. He stood, holstered his dart pistol, and checked the three stun grenades on his belt. \"I'll see you at the LZ.\" 160 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Okay. Check your mirrors.\"\nThey all pulled out the shards of mirror they had taken from Tango Company's latrine last night. They had taped the edges so they could be handled more easily, and taped their backs to re duce the chance they'd shatter. The whole operation depended on a fragile piece of glass, which had John worried.\n\"Just hand signals from here on out,\" John told them. \"Move out, Red Team.\"\nThey crouched and clawed and slithered through the forest until they reached a gravel track. They pushed two large rocks off the nearby hill, blocking the road, then waited in the brush. Headlights appeared as a supply truck rumbled down the road and squealed to a halt. Two soldiers got out and scanned the area.\n\"Think it's an ambush?\" one of them muttered and gripped his rifle tighter.\n\"From those freak Section Three kids? Jesus, I don't know,\"\nthe driver said. \"Screw the rules of this exercise.\" He pulled a Kevlar poncho over his head. \"I'm not gonna take a dart in my ass if it is. Cover me.\"\nThe man riding shotgun got out and walked around the truck.\n\"Looks clear,\" he whispered. \"Hurry.\"\nThe driver jumped out of the cab, moved to the rocks, and rolled them off the road. John ran from the brush and crawled under the vehicle. He pulled himself up and wedged tight against the undercarriage, close enough that he smelled the rubber from the new tires. Kelly and Sam came next; Fhajad was last. They hadn't been spotted. So far, so good. The two men got back into the truck and proceeded down the dirt road. Gravel bounced up and caught John in the side of the head, and cut him; blood trickled from his ear along his neck, but he didn't dare loosen his grip. After a kilometer of being pelted by rocks and stung by sand, the truck eased to a halt at Tango Company's base. The guard at the gatehouse spoke to the driver, and they laughed. The guard then walked around and opened the back of the truck. John squirmed and got his mirror ready. With a flick of his hand, he signaled the others to do the same. John held his mirror ERIC NYLUND  161\nat an angle pointed at the undercarriage of the truck. His hand trembled but he forced himself to be steady. He had to. The gate guard approached the truck with a long pole and a small mirror attached at one end. He stuck the mirror under the truck and swept it along one side. John matched the position of the mirror with his, moved it steady along as the gate guard passed him so all the guard saw was the reflected image of the undercarriagea meter to John's left. They'd practiced this maneuver all last night. It had to be perfect. The guard moved on to Sam's position, and then Fhajad's, and finally to Kelly's corner of the truck. Kelly's mirror slipped and she fumbledcaught it just before it hit the ground. John held his breath; Kelly barely got the re flective surface in place as the gate guard swept her section.\n\"Go ahead,\" the guard said and rapped the side of the truck.\n\"You're clean.\"\n\"How are the dogs?\" the driver asked.\n\"Still sick,\" the guard muttered. \"Not sure what the heck they all ate last night, but they're still squirting.\"\n\"Damn,\" the driver said. He started the engine and rolled into Tango Company's base camp. Last night Fred had fed the guard dogs a paste made of a few squirrels they'd caught, some unripe berries, and the antibacterial ointment in their first-aid kitsa concoction guaranteed to keep Tango's dogs out of the picture for another day. The truck parked inside a warehouse. Two men came and un loaded the back and then left, locking the doors of the warehouse behind them. John and the others finally eased themselves down from the truck. None of them spoke. A single word overheard now could blow the entire operation. They silently massaged their aching muscles. John bandaged his ear to stop the bleeding. John pointed to Sam and then at the hood of the truck. Sam nodded and got to work. John then pointed at Fhajad and to the side door. Fhajad moved to the entrance and began to pick the lock. 162 HALO: FIRST STRIKE John and Kelly patrolled the warehouse, looking for cameras, dogs, guards, anything they'd have to remove. It was clear. Sam returned with four canteens, which he had, according to their plan, filled with battery acid from the truck. There was a click from the side door and Fhajad gave them a thumbs-up. They gathered near the door. Fhajad eased it open, peeked out the crack, then opened it a little more and glanced to either side. He nodded and moved out, keeping well away from the over head lights, skirting the shadows of the warehouse. John and the others followed, pausing in the darkest part of the shadows. John held up five fingers, and Sam passed out the canteens of acid. John pointed to his watch and again flashed five fingers. They nodded. John then pointed to Kelly, and with two fingers pointed to the perimeter of the camp and made a guillotine-cutting mo tion onto his other hand. Kelly nodded and vanished into the darkness. Sam and Fhajad moved off as well, making their way to the barracks houses they had previously reconnoitered. There was a crawl space under each building. John sprinted to the farthest barracks and slipped underneath. He paused for a moment, listening for any noise, a footfall, an alarmit was still quiet. They were undetected... which would last for only another five minutes. He took three sticks of chewing gum from his pocket, popped them into his mouth, and chewed. John crawled to the center of the building. He carefully took a rag from his shirt pocket, poured acid onto it, and then dabbed the rag to the underside of the wood floor. He was extremely careful not to soak the rag or get any acid on himself. When he touched the rag to the ply wood, the wood smoldered. After he had soaked a meter-square patch, he checked his watch. Thirty seconds until it was 0455. Just enough time. He primed all three of his stun grenades, set their timers for five minutes, then used the chewing gum to attach the grenades to the perimeter of the acid-weakened section of floor. Normally the stun grenades couldn't penetrate centimeter-thick ERIC NYLUND  163\nplywood. Once the acid had eaten through the porous fibers, however, the three grenades would have more than enough bang to turn that meter-square section into a million airborne splintersshot straight up into the sleeping quarters of Tango Company. Not lethal ... but guaranteed to be one heck of a distraction. John crawled out, crept back to the warehouse, and ren dezvoused with the rest of Red Team. John glanced at his watch: 0458. He pointed to Kelly and then to himself, then made a curling motion around one side of the warehouse. He pointed to Sam and Fhajad and motioned them around the opposite side. They moved to the far corners of the building. John and Kelly crouched and waited. They had a perfect view of the center of the camp, the calisthenics area, the parade grounds, andright in the centerthe flagpole. Right on time a Corporal and two guard escorts marched out and unfolded their green-striped flag. He attached one corner to a lanyard dangling from the pole. John glanced at the distant forest. The woods past the fence of Tango Company's camp had been clear-cut. He knew it was more than a hundred meterscloser to two hundred. There was no guarantee that Fred or Linda could hit anything at that range. He drew his dart pistol and clicked off its safety. At 0500 flashes of light strobed beneath the barracks as the grenades detonated. There was the crackle of wood and the screams of the men and women ofTango Company. The Corporal attaching the flag dropped one end and whirled around. Floodlights on the perimeter fence snapped on and pointed inward toward the barracks. In the confusion, no one noticed as one of the guards near the flagpole dropped his rifle, grabbed his neck ... and toppled to the gravel face-first. His partner spotted him and knelt. John sprinted across the compound, firing. His first shot went wild, and the kneeling guard spun around to face him. Fhajad and Sam shot him in the back. John took aim at the Corporalwho fumbled with his pistol 164 HALO: FIRST STRIKE holster, trying to free his weapon. John planted two narq-darts in his chest. The Corporal dropped. Two more guards rounded the corner of the warehouse, shouted, and took aim at John. He was out in the open, and there was no way his dart pistol could hit those guards from this distance. One guard fired. The round pinged off the flagpole not five centimeters from John's head. The guard stiffened and dropped his rifle, wildly grabbing at the back of his head ... and the dart stuck into his skull. He screamed and fell, thrashing in the dirt. The other guard twitched and pulled a dart from his thigh. An other dart hit him in the chest, and he sprawled to the ground. John sent his silent thanks to Linda and Fred. He detached the flag from the lanyard and stuffed it into his shirt. He waved Red Team forward, and Kelly led them to the fences. Kelly didn't slow down as she sprinted and closed on the chain-link fence. She tucked and threw herself into the steel mesh. Just before she hit, John spotted the smoking outlines on the fence where she had applied the battery acid. The fence broke in a jagged outline, and Kelly rolled to her feet on the other side without missing a stride. John waved his team through. He went last, pausing only a fraction of a second to look back. The camp was in chaos. Security lights swung about, there were screams from the barracks. A tank rumbled to life and crunched into the center of the base. John ran. Behind them came the staccato report of machine-gun firejust as they entered the safety of the forest. John smiled, panting. \"Good work, everyone,\" he whispered.\n\"I think those guys were using live ammo this time.\"\nKelly held up a brass case from a 7.62mm round. \"Yep,\" she said. \"No doubt.\"\n\"Come on,\" John said, \"let's not stick around. If they weren't before, they're pissed now.\"\nRed Team slinked through the forest. They kept to the shad ows, and took cover under logs when a Pelican roared overhead looking for them. ERIC NYLUND  165\nAt 0545 they made it to the clearing designated as their ex traction LZ. At 0700 hours they were supposed to meet CPO Mendez. Of course, the Chief rarely let them get off this easy so John had planned for Blue Team to be here as well... only they would remain hidden. Linda and Fred would post some where in the treetops and cover Red Team until they were sure it was safe. Red Team hunkered down in the brush and waited. They weren't safe; John knew that. Tango Company would be looking for them, and this is when his team would get anxious ... when they would want to talk and brag about their successful mission, or look at the captured flag. To their credit, Red Team stayed still and silent. And Blue Team was nowhere to be seen. At 0610 the thunderous roar of a Pelican's engines filled the air and the craft slowly descended and landed in the clearing. The aft hatch popped open. Fhajad started to move, but John set his hand on his shoulder.\n\"Too early,\" he whispered. \"When is the Chief not perfectly on time?\"\nFhajad, Kelly, and Sam grimly nodded.\n\"I'll go,\" John said. \"You guys back up Blue Team.\"\nThey gave him a thumbs-up. Sam patted him on the back and whispered, \"Don't worry, I won't let them do anything to you.\"\n\"I know,\" John whispered back. He pulled the flag from his shirt and handed it to Sam. \"Thanks.\"\nJohn crawled away from their position. When he was thirty meters from his team, he stood and approached the Pelican which was almost certainly a trap. He halted halfway across the meadow and waited. A figure appeared on the exit ramp of the Pelican and waved him forward. \"Come on, son. Haul ass!\"\n\"Negative, sir!\" John shouted. The figure turned and muttered to someone inside, \"Crap.\" He sighed. \"Okay, so we do it the hard way.\"\nFour men jogged out of the back of the Pelican. They quickly spread out in a semicircle and moved toward John, their assault rifles aimed directly at him. John held up his hands.\n\"He's giving up,\" one of the soldiers said disbelievingly. 166 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Should we just shoot him?\" another man said.\n\"No,\" the one leading them hissed. \"Payback first.\" He stepped up to John and punched him in the stomach. John doubled over from the blow. The man hauled him up and patted him down. \"We gotta find that damned flag or the Captain will have our asses in a sling. Where is it, kid?\" He shook John. \"And where's the rest of your pack?\"\nJohn laughed.\n\"What's so funny?\" the man growled.\n\"You idiots are bunched up.\"\nA hail of darts hissed through the air from all sides. The men from the Pelican convulsed; one fired his rifle, but the shot went wide and high. They fell over, paralyzed. John dropped to a crouch, grabbed a pistol from the man who'd punched him, and crawled on his stomach to the Pelican. He crept around the open hatch and swept the interior. Empty. He scrambled into the cockpit and pulsed the Pelican's radar. He got a contact bearing of 110, fourteen kilometers out, but it moved on a parallel course to their position. John left the Pelican and ran across the field. Red and Blue Teams were still hidden... and they would stay hidden forever, until he gave the all-clear. Their all-clear signal wasn't something that could be wrung from Johnnot even torture or CPO Mendez's best coercion techniques would wrest it from him. He would rather have died than betray his teammates. John whistled the singsong six-note melody and called: \"Oly Oly Oxen Free!\"\nRed Team emerged first and marched across the meadow. Kelly paused to kick one of the men in the head; she took his rifle, too. Linda and Fred dropped down from a tree branch and ran across the field. \"Oly Oly Oxen Free,\" Linda repeated, grinning from ear to ear. \"All out in the free. We're all free.\" CHAPTER EIGHTEEN TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALY X Estimated 0510 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\\Aboard captured Covenant flagship, Epsilon Eridani system. Cortana only partially listened to the debate between the Master Chief and the others. The discussion was moot. She had projected the outcome as 100 percent certain that John would convince them all to go, orfailing thatthat he would con vince the Lieutenant to let him go alone to the surface to investi gate the signal . . .  a signal that in her opinion was so easily copied and so blatantly unencrypted it defied explanation how the Chief had conjectured that his team of Spartans had sent it. Instead of partaking in the slow and inefficient conversation, she analyzed the Covenant pattern of movement in the Epsilon Eridani system and discerned three important things. First, the Covenant warships had extremely regular elliptical orbits about Reach. There were a total of thirteen heavy cruisers and three carriers moving three hundred kilometers above the surface of the planet. Two exceptions to this patrol pattern were a pair of light cruisers hovering over Menachite Mountain trapped at the bottom of the gravity well and therefore not an im mediate threat to her ship. Second, there was a blind spot in their patrol patterns that would make a perfect rendezvous location to extract the Chief and the others from their soon-to-be-executed surface mission. She plotted ingress and egress courses, and started the precise calculations she would need if she was to initiate a Slipspace jump so close to Reach. Arid third, and most interesting to Cortana, 217 smaller Cove- 168 HALO: FIRST STRIKE nant craft pushed debris into a concentrated region of space in a high stationary orbit over Reach's northern pole. Within that re gion drifted the wrecked hulls of both Covenant and UNSC ships destroyed in the battle for Reach. Floating there were some of the UNSC's finest ships: the Basra, the Hannibal, and the pride of the fleet, the supercarrier Trafalgar. No human signals ema nated from the ships; nor did Cortana sense any active electro magnetic fields. She watched as the smaller Covenant ships cut into the dead hulks and jetted away with chunks of Titanium-A armor. They moved like a trail of ants to a location in space over the lower latitudes, a point over Menachite Mountain, where the Covenant used the metal to construct a platform. The thing was already a square plate a kilometer to a side. Clearly, the Covenant had more in mind for Reach than destruction.\n\"Cortana,\" the Master Chief said. \"We'll need to rendezvous at a\"\n\"Coordinates already optimized,\" she replied and projected the Covenant blind spot on the bridge displays. \"Enemy patrols miss this nine-thousand-cubic-kilometer region. Further opti mization reveals that all ships will be farthest from this point at oh-seven-fifteen hours. I suggest we meet there at that time.\"\nCortana felt a pulse of satisfaction at their perplexed looks over her seemingly instant analysis. She enjoyed dazzling the crew with her intellect.\n\"Very good,\" the Lieutenant replied, still examining her cal culations on the display.\n\"Optimal course plotted and uploaded into the Covenant drop-ship to the signal source,\" she told them. Then, on a private COM channel to the Chief, she added, \"Good luck, Chief. Be careful.\"\n\"I always am,\" he replied. Cortana didn't bother to reply to that ridiculous statement. The Master Chief took so many chances and had defied death so many times, she had given up calculating his odds of survival. The Chief and his team left the bridge. Cortana swept her sen sors through the flagship, making sure the path to the launch bay was clear. There were still Covenant on board. She couldn't pin ERIC NYLUND  169\nthem down, but there were transient contacts, vent shaft panels had been opened and closed, and several Engineers had gone missing. She tracked their Covenant dropship as it cleared the launch bay, entered the upper atmosphere, and drifted toward the sur face. Polaski was a fine pilot... but she was only human and prone to illogical bravado and emotional outbursts that overrode the most logical course of action. Cortana wished that she were going down thereboth to protect her human charges and be cause there were many questions she'd like to get answered. Why were the Covenant so interested in Menachite Mountain?\nWas anything left of ONI's CASTLE base? Cortana terminated those thoughts. There was too much to do up here. Several tasks divided her attention. She kept the Slipspace generators hot in case she needed to jump out of the system in a hurry. She continued refining the calculations that shaped the plasma emitters' magnetic fields, in case she needed to fight. She isolated the name of their captured ship Ascendant Justice from one of the 122 simultaneous communiques from every Covenant ship insystem. She correlated the numerous religious allusions that laced the communications and continued to build a language-translation subroutine. She diverted additional pro cessing power to the task of tracking the millions of floating ob jects around her, searching for lifepods, cryotubes, anything that might hold a human survivor. The Covenant dropship left sensor range and disappeared some where in what was once the Highland Forest on the surfacewhich activated a new task. Cortana began constructing a high-resolution map of the surfaceespecially the region where the Chief's mysterious signal originated, as well as Menachite Mountain. A quick diagnostic revealed that these tasks were taking much longer than normal. She had to free up some of her overtaxed memory. Cortana began to recompress the data she had retrieved from the Halo construct, and she briefly considered dumping all the data into storage on the Covenant system. She rejected that potential course of action. She had to protect that data at all costs. Cortana felt her mind perceptibly slow. She was spread too 170 HALO: FIRST STRIKE thin. Multitasking too many jobs. This was dangerous. She couldn't react fast enough if\n\"Infidel!\"\nThe Covenant word blasted through her communications rou tines and left her stunned for three cyclesjust enough time for her to lose control over the ship-to-ship COM software suite. The Covenant AI transmitted a narrow-beam communica tions burst to the nearest cruiser. For a Covenant communique, it was terse: a report that the flagship was \"tainted by the unclean presence of Infidels\" and a plea that every ship insystem \"converge and cleanse the filth\"\nfrom the captured vessel. Also compressed and futilely en crypted on the carrier wave was a record of Cortana's mathe matical manipulation of Slipspace that allowed her to jump so close to the gas giant, Threshold. Cortana squelched the channelbut it was too late. It was al ready gone, and she couldn't pull photons back from space. She shunted all COM memory pathways on themselves.\n\"Gotcha!\" she hissed.\n\"Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-I nfidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel\"\n\"That's quite enough of that,\" she said. \"You and I need to come to an understanding.\" She reduced the memory pathways, peeling the Covenant AI apart code layer by code layer. \"This is my system now.\"\nWhile an operational Covenant AI would have been a prize for ONI Section Threethis particular Covenant AI was too dangerous. She could not allow its existence to continue.\n\"Do what you will-wil-willwill,\" it screamed, \"/go to finally to my heaven rewardpamdisefinal-finalfinalinfinityinfinityinfini-AT NONCOPYSTATE.\" g Cortana's curiosity over this odd proclamation would have to waitforever. She tore the AI apart, erasing, recording the Covenant code structure even as she destroyed it. This was analo-      S gous to a dissection, and it she did it quickly, efficiently, and without remorseuntil she found the AI's core code. She halted. =\nShe almost recognized this code. The patterns were madden ingly familiar. No time to ponder why, though. She recorded it ERIC NYLUND  171\nand then wiped the original. The Covenant AI was gone, its bits safely hacked apart and stored for future research. Provided, of course, Cortana had a future. She tracked thirteen Covenant warships. They came about and bore down on her position. Her COM channels overloaded with fanatical threats and promises of her and the captured flag ship burning. There was no useful data there, so she filtered them out. The Covenant warships' weapons warmed to a dull red. Cortana remained calm. After considerable study of the Cove nant plasma weapons system, she now understood why they glowed before discharge. The stored plasma was always hot and ready to fire, but the Covenant used an inefficient method to col lect and direct the chaotic plasma into a controllable trajectory. They selected the charged plasma atoms with the proper trajec tory necessary to hit a target and shunted them into a magnetic bubble. The bubble was then discharged; subsequent pulse charges herded the plasma on target. For an advanced race, the Covenant's weapons relied on crude brute force calculations and were terribly slow and wasteful. She booted the new system she had devised to control the plasma. It used EM pulses a priori to align the stochastic mo tions of the plasma atoms, herding their trajectories and eleven degrees of electronic freedom into a laser-fine columnatedbeam within a microsecond. This was, of course, an entirely theoretical operation. She test-fired the three forward plasma turretsred lines slashed across the black space and intercepted the three lead Covenant cruisers; their shields glowed orange, flickered, and failed. Cortana's plasma cut into the smooth alien hulls. Metal boiled away, and the trio of beams punched clear through the ships. Cortana moved the plasma beams like a scalpelup and then downand cut the vessels in half.\n\"Adequate,\" she remarked. The plasma reserves of the first three turrets, however, were exhausted, and it would be several minutes before they'd recycle. If only there were a better electromagnetic system on this flagship, she could have devised a more effective guidance algo- 172 HALO: FIRST STRIKE rithm. Alas, the Covenant's grasp of Maxwell's equations was ironically inferior to human technology. Cortana realized it was fortuitous she had shut down the enemy AI before it leaked her new plasma guidance system. The thought of every ship in the Covenant fleet refitted with im proved weaponry was too terrible to calculate. She also realized that staying to fight was not the wisest course. She considered taking on the rest of the Covenant forces;\nwith her improvements to the weapons systems, she might win, too. But it wasn't worth the risk of the Covenant capturing her refinements to their technology. Cortana fired Ascendant Justice's aft plasma turrets, and laser-like beams flickered across space. A squadron of Seraph fighters disintegrated as they launched from the closest carrier. Explosions bubbled and mushroomed inside the carrier's launch bay. She didn't stay to watch the fireworks. Cortana dived at flank speed straight toward the center of Reach. The surface of the planet raced toward her. She wondered where the Chief was now, and if he was safe.\n\"I should have never told you to be careful,\" she whispered.\n\"You're incapable of that. I should have wished you victory. That's what you're good at, John. Winning.\"\nShe initiated the Slipspace generator; space distorted, teased apart, and light enveloped the flagship. CHAPTER NINETEEN TIME:OATE ERROR \\ Estimated 0530 hours, September 23, 2552\n(Military Calendar)\\Aboard captured Covenant dropship, Epsilon Eridani system, en route to surface of Reach. The Master Chief stood on the deck of the Covenant dropship. He stood because the crash seats had been designed for Elites and Jackals and none of the contours fit his human backbone. It didn't matterhe preferred to stand. They drifted through the upper atmosphere of Reach, de scending like a spider on a thousand-kilometer thread of silk. They passed close to a hundred other ships moving in orbital arcsSeraph fighters, other dropships, scavenger craft with grappling tentacles that dragged sections of salvaged metal. Dominating the skies were a pair of three-hundred-meter-long cruisers. The cruisers accelerated toward them. The Chief moved up to the cockpit where Polaski and Haver-son sat in the seats they had removed from the Pelican and welded in place.\n\"They're pinging us,\" Polaski whispered.\n\"Nice and easy, Warrant Officer,\" Lieutenant Haverson whis pered. \"Just use the programmed response Cortana gave us.\"\n\"Aye aye, Lieutenant,\" Polaski replied and concentrated on the Covenant scripts that scrolled across the display on her left.\n\"Sending now.\" She tapped a holographic icon. Sergeant Johnson and Corporal Locklear stood two meters behind the Chief, both of them nervous. Johnson chewed his stub of cigar and scowled at the incoming Covenant warships. 174 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Locklear's trigger finger twitched, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.\n\"Cortana has this stuff wired tight,\" Sergeant Johnson whis pered. \"No worries.\"\n\"I got plenty of worries here,\" Locklear muttered. \"Man, I'd rather be in a HEV pod on fire and out of control than up here. We're sitting ducks.\"\n\"Quiet,\" Lieutenant Haverson hissed at Locklear. \"Let the lady concentrate.\"\nPolaski kept one eye on the communications screen and one eye on the external displays as the twin cruisers grew larger, fill ing the holographic space before her. Both her hands hovered over the flight yoke, not touching it, but twitching in anticipation. Three Seraph fighters burned out of their orbits and took a closer pass.\n\"Is that an attack vector?\" Lieutenant Haverson asked.\n\"I don't think so,\" Polaski said. \"But it's hard to tell with those things.\"\nLocklear inhaled deeply, and the Chief noticed that he didn't exhale. He set his hand on the man's shoulder and pulled him aside. \"Relax, Marine,\" he whispered. \"That's an order,\"\nLocklear exhaled and ran a hand over his smoothly shaven head. \"Right ... right, Chief.\" With effort, the Marine forced himself to calm down. A red light flashed on the control panel. \"Collision warning,\"\nPolaski said with the practiced nonchalance all Navy pilots had in the face of imminent death. She reached for the yoke.\n\"Hold your course,\" the Lieutenant ordered.\n\"Yes, sir,\" she said, and released the controls. \"Fighters one hundred meters and closing.\"\n\"Hold your course,\" Lieutenant Haverson repeated. \"They're just taking a closer look,\" he whispered to himself, \"and there's nothing to see. Nothing to see at all.\"\nWhen the Seraph fighters were only ten meters away, they tumbled to either side of the dropship. Their engine pods flared blue and they looped overhead ... then moved to rejoin the cruisers. The larger ships passed directly overhead and blotted out the sun. In the darkness, the cockpit lights automatically adjusted ERIC NYLUND  175\nand flooded the display panels with the purple-blue frequency the Covenant favored. The Master Chief realized that he, too, had been holding his breath. Maybe he and Locklear were more alike than he had realized. He took a closer look at the ODST: The wild, desperate look in his eyes and the flaming-comet tattoo covering his left deltoid seemed almost alien to the Master Chief. The man had survived the Covenant and the Flood on Halo, and he had been lucky and resourceful enough to escape in one piece. True, his emotional responses were uncontained ... but give him the same aug mentations and a set of MJOLNIR armor and what was the difference between the two of them? Experience? Training?\nDiscipline?\nLuck?\nJohn had always felt the other men and women in the UNSC were different; he'd felt at ease only with the other Spartans. But weren't they all fighting and dying for the same reason?\nThe ruddy light from Epsilon Eridani suddenly filled the cockpit as the two cruisers passed on. Polaski sighed, slumped forward, and wiped the sweat from her brow. Locklear reached into his shirt pocket, removed a clean and pressed red bandanna, and offered it to Polaski. She looked at it for a second, then glanced at the Corporal, then took it. \"Thanks, Locklear.\" She folded it into a headband, flipped her blond hair from her face, and tied it around her forehead.\n\"No problem, ma'am,\" Locklear replied. \"Anytime.\"\n\"Locking onto the signal source,\" Lieutenant Haverson said.\n\"Course two-three-zero by one-one-zero.\"\n\"Two-three-zero by one-one-zero, aye,\" Polaski said. She gently pushed forward and turned the yoke. The dropship smoothly banked into a gentle dive. The surface of Reach disappeared from the screens as the dropship entered the thick clouds of smoke that wreathed the planet. There was a quiet beep, and the display filters activated. A moment later, images resolved on the display screenshundreds of thousands of hectares of raging firestorms and blackened char where there had once stood forests and fields. 176 HALO: FIRST STRIKE John tried not to think of this as Reach anymoreit was only one more world the Covenant had taken.\n\"That canyon,\" Lieutenant Haverson said and pointed at a fis sure where the earth had been eroded in a sinuous twisting scar.\n\"Scanners are just picking up surface information. Let's get a closer look.\"\n\"Understood.\" Polaski inverted the ship, executed a reversed roll, and dropped into the canyon. When she righted the drop-ship, sculpted rock walls raced past them only thirty meters to either side. The Lieutenant reached for the backpack COM system they had removed from the Pelican. He fine-tuned the frequency of the unusual signal they were homing in on; a six-tone message played, followed by a two-second pause, and then it repeated.\n\"Open a channel on that E-band, Lieutenant,\" the Master Chief said. \"I'll need to send the countersignal.\"\n\"Channel open, Chief. Go ahead.\"\nThe Master Chief linked his COM and encrypted the channel so only those people sending the signal would hear him. \"Oly Oly Oxen Free,\" he spoke into his microphone. \"All out in the free. We're all free.\"\nThe beeping over the backpack COM speaker suddenly stopped.\n\"Signal's gone.\" Lieutenant Haverson snapped his head around and stared at the Master Chief. \"I'm not sure what you just told them, but whatever it was, they heard you.\"\n\"Good,\" the Master Chief replied. \"Set us down somewhere safe. They'll find us.\"\n\"There's an overhang ahead,\" Polaski said. She moved the ship toward a deep shadow along the starboard side where the cliff angled out from the canyon. \"I'll put us down there.\"\nShe spun the ship, backed into the darkness, and set it down light as a feather.\n\"Open the side hatch,\" the Chief told Polaski. \"I'll go out alone and make sure it's safe.\"\n\"Alone?\" Lieutenant Haverson asked. He rose from his seat.\n\"Are you certain that's wise, Chief?\"\n\"Yes, sir. This was my idea. If it's a trap, I want to be the one to set it off. You stay here and back me up.\" ERIC NYLUND  177\nHaverson drummed his long fingers across his chin, thinking.\n\"Very well, Chief.\"\n\"I got your six, Master Chief,\" Locklear said and unslung his assault rifle. The Spartan nodded to Locklear and marched down the ramp. The Chief wanted them on board the dropship for two reasons. First, if this was a trap and they were all caught out in the open, he wouldn't have time to save them and himself. Second, if the Covenant were here, waiting, then Haverson and the others had to get away and get Cortana back to Earth. He could buy them the time to make it out alive. At the bottom of the ramp, he hesitated as his motion tracker pinged off a single signal. Therethirty meters ahead, just be hind a large boulder: The friend-or-foe identification system tagged the contact as neither Covenant nor UNSC. The Chief drew his pistol, crouched, and crept forward. A private COM channel snapped on: \"Master Chief, relax. It's me.\"\nAnother Spartan stepped out from the cover of the rock. His armorwhile not as battered as John'swas covered with scuffs and burns; the left shoulder pauldron had been dented. The Master Chief felt a surge of relief. His teammates, his family, hadn't all been killed. He recognized the Spartan from his voice and the subtle way he glanced right and left. It was SPARTAN-044, Anton. He was one of the unit's best scouts. The two stood there a moment and then Anton moved his hand, mak ing a quick, short gesture with his index and forefinger over the faceplate of his helmet where his mouth would be. That was their signal for a smilethe closest any Spartan got to an emo tional outburst. John returned the gesture.\n\"Good to see you, too,\" John said. \"How many are left?\"\n\"Three, Master Chief, and one other make up our team. Apologies for the disabled FOF tag, but we're trying to confuse the Covenant forces in this area.\" He looked again to his left and right. \"I'd rather not give a full report in the open.\" He motioned toward the shadows of the cliff face. John flashed his acknowledgment light and the two Spartans 178 HALO: FIRST STRIKE jogged out of the center of the ravine, both keeping their eyes on the rim of the canyon overhead. The Master Chief had plenty of questions for Anton, however. Like, why had his team split from Red Team? Where was Red Team? And why hadn't the Covenant glassed every square cen timeter of Reach yet?\n\"You okay, Chief?\" Lieutenant Haverson's voice broke in from the COM.\n\"Affirmative, sir. Contact made with a Spartan. Stand by.\"\nAnton halted before a dark cavern entrance. It was difficult to see, even with image enhancement; there was only the faint out line of a tunnel in the shadows of the cliff face. Just inside were reinforcing steel I-beams painted matte black, and beyond there were two-meter-wide boulders with chainguns bolted to their sides. Each gun was crewed by a Spartanwhom John recog nized as Grace-093 and Li-008. When they saw John they gave him the smile gesture, which he returned. Grace followed the Master Chief and Anton into the cavern. Li remained to operate the guns. The Master Chief blinked as his eyes adjusted to the harsh fluorescent lights that illuminated the interior of the cavern. The walls had a grooved texture, as if they'd been dug out by machin ery. Standing before a foldout card table in the center of the cavern was another man, in a Navy uniform. The Master Chief stiffened and saluted. \"Admiral, sir!\"\nVice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, despite his Western Euro pean name and Texas drawl, claimed to have descended from Russian Cossacks. He had the physique of a large bear, a closely shaved and polished head, eyes so dark they could have been made of coal, and a salt-and-pepper mustache that drooped over his upper lip and dangled off the edge of his chin.\n\"Master Chief.\" The Admiral snapped off a crisp salute. \"At ease, son. Damn good to see you.\" He strode to the Chief and shook his handa gesture very few non-Spartans cared to endure;pressing bare flesh into a cold unyielding gauntlet that could pulverize their bones. \"Welcome to Camp Independence. Accommodations ain't four star... but we call it home.\"\n\"Thank you, sir.\" ERIC NYLUND  179\nJohn had never worked with the Admiral before, but his ac complishments during the battles for New Constantinople and the Siege of the Atlas Moons were well known. Every Spartan had studied Whitcomb's record. John opened a COM channel to Lieutenant Haverson. \"Move up, sir. All clear.\"\n\"Roger,\" Haverson said. \"On our way.\"\n\"I'm happy to see you, Chief,\" Admiral Whitcomb said, \"so don't take this the wrong way, but what the hell are you doing here? Keyes had orders to take you on a mission deep into Cove nant territory.\"\n\"Yes, sir. It's. . .  a long story.\"\nThe Admiral twisted the end of his mustache, glanced at his wristwatch, and smiled. \"We got the time, son. Let's hear it.\"\nJohn sat on a rock and recounted to the Admiral what had hap pened since he had left Reach: the recovery of the NAV database on Gamma Station, the Pillar ofAutumn's harrowing escape, the discovery of the Halo construct and its eccentric caretaker, 343\nGuilty Spark. He hesitated, then described his encounters with the Flood and subsequent destruction of Halo, ending with his capture of the Covenant flagship. During the story, Lieutenant Haverson and the others from the dropship arrived. They remained silent as the Master Chief told the tale. The Admiral listened without speaking a word. As John fin ished, the man gave a slow, low whistle and sat contemplating it all.\n\"That's one hell of a tale. And if it had come from anyone but you, I'd order a psych exam.\" He stood and paced. He stopped and frowned. \"I believe it all. . .  but something still doesn't add up.\" His face wrinkled as he thought. \"Can't quite put my finger on it, though.\"\n\"Sir,\" Lieutenant Haverson meekly said. \"Pardon me for ask ing, but how is it you are alive? Here?\"\nThe Admiral smiled. \"Well, that's another long story, Lieu tenant. Let me give you the short-and-sweet version.\" He leaned against the cavern wall and crossed his arms over his chest.\n\"The second those Covenant bastards entered the system I knew Reach was history. The Covenant don't do anything halfway. 180 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Everyone planetside was busy evacuatingwhich was the right thing to dobut I had to stay behind.\" Several emotions played across the Admiral's face: conc ern, amusement... and then his features settled into a firm stare as he looked into the past, recalling what happened.\n\"We'd been working on a new bomb, called the Nova. It was a cluster of nukes, each with a lithium triteride casing. Now, these things, in theory, when they detonate, not only make a big bang like you expect a nuke tobut they also force their tritium cases together in one big superheated and pressurized center.\" He made a fist and slammed it into his other palm for emphasis.\n\"Boosts the yield a hundredfold.\" A grin spread across his face.\n\"Planet killers. We had planned to use these things in space bat tles to level the playing field.\"\nHis grin faded and he stroked his mustache. \"Well, things didn't quite turn out as planned, and we got caught flat-footed with those Novas on the ground. So I decided to repurpose them.\"\nLieutenant Haverson's face wrinkled with confusion. He didn't dare interrupt, but the Admiral saw his expression and said, \"Think, son. All that ordnance around with plenty of Cove nant to blow up.\"\nHaverson shook his head. \"I'm sorry, sir. I still don't understand.\"\n\"Intelligence officer, huh?\" Whitcomb snorted and turned to the Master Chief. \"What would you have done?\"\n\"Arm them, sir,\" the Master Chief replied. \"Activate the fail safe tampering detonators and start a countdown timer. Say, two weeks.\"\nThe Admiral nodded. \"I gave it only ten days. There's no need to give them too much time to tinker.\"\nHe set one of his heavy hands on Lieutenant Haverson's shoulder, and Haverson flinched. \"They are two possible out comes to this plan, Lieutenant. Either the Covenant pack up the Novas and take them home for studya possibility I pray to God happens. A bomb like that would crack their home world in half. Or the bombs stay hereand they'll stop the Covenant on Reach.\" ERIC NYLUND  181\n\"I see, sir,\" Lieutenant Haverson replied in a whisper, then glanced at his watch. \"This was how many days ago?\"\n\"Got plenty of time left,\" the Admiral told him. \"Around twenty hours.\"\nLieutenant Haverson swallowed.\n\"There's just one snag in that plan, though.\" The Admiral re moved his hand from Haverson and his gaze settled onto the dirt floor of the cavern. \"I had a team of MarinesCharlie Companythat got wiped out before we could get to those No vas.\" He sighed. \"Brave kids. A damned waste of good men. That's when I picked up Red Team on coded COM. I 'convinced'\nthem to lend me a few of your Spartans. We got to the Novas, armed them, and we've been raising eight kinds of hell down here with hit-and-run exercisesjust to keep everyone busy, you understand. Wouldn't want to get bored.\"\n\"And the rest of Red Team, sir?\" the Master Chief asked. Whitcomb shook his head. \"We got one last transmission from them before they said they were falling back.\" He walked to the table, unrolled an old paper topological map, and pointed at Menachite Mountain. \"Here. Where ONI had their CASTLE base.\" He paused. \"But the Covenant are tearing that mountain apart, rock by rock. I want to believe they're still there ... but we've counted at least a dozen companies. Those Covenant have air support, close orbit patrols, and, on the ground, armor. The place is a fortress. Could anyone survive?\"\nThe Master Chief scrutinized the lines on the map and had an answer for the Admiral. \"They're underground,\" he said. \"The CASTLE facility. We did a lot of training there. The Covenant can fill up those tunnels with only so many search parties.\"\n\"Then you think they all have a chance?\"\n\"Yes, sir. More than a chance. I'd guarantee they're in there. That's where I'd be.\"\nThe Admiral set his fingertip on the representation of Mena chite Mountain, tapped it twice, thinking, and then suddenly looked up. \"You got into this canyon in a captured Covenant ship, right? A dropship?\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" John hadn't told him that. Despite his brusque man ner, the Admiral knew his business.\n\"Then we'll go get them, son.\" I\n182 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Sir!\" Lieutenant Haverson said. \"With all due respect, sir, our first priority should be to get back to Earth. The intelligence we've gathered on the Halo construct, the technology aboard the flagship we've captured ... Cortana's Slipspace calculations alone could turn the tide of this war for us.\"\n\"I know all that,\" the Admiral replied tersely. \"And you're three hundred percent correct, Lieutenant. But\"he tapped the map again with his meaty forefinger\"I won't leave a single man or woman behind on this planet for the Covenant to tear apart for sport. No way. And that goes double for a Spartan. We're going in.\" CHAPTER TWENTY TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALY\\Estimated 0610 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\\ Aboard captured Covenant dropship, Epsilon Eridani system, en route to surface of Reach. Polaski accelerated the captured dropship to its maximum velocityjust under Mach 1. The craft arced up and joined the long convoy of Covenant shipstroop transports, scavenger drones, and Seraph fightersas they descended from a higher orbit down to the surface. The formation of alien vessels headed straight toward Menachite Mountain. Covenant communiques scrolled across a screen next to the pilot's seat and then ceased.\n\" I n c o m i n g  t r a n s m i s s i o n s  f r o m  t h e  c o n v o y  ... I  g u e s s  t h e y don't like strays,\" Polaski muttered calmly, looking at the Cove nant calligraphy.\n\"They're not shooting,\" the Admiral said, gripping the back of Polaski's seat. \"We're fine. Just fly, Warrant Officer.\" He turned to the Master Chief. \"Get 'em ready, son.\"\nThe Chief nodded and moved aft to the rest of the squad. His three Spartans as well as Lieutenant Haverson, Locklear, and Sergeant Johnson stood over an array of weapons laid out on the deck. Anton ticked off the inventory: \"Shotguns, a fuel rod gun, Jackhammer rocket launchers, plasma and HE pistols, and every type of grenadetake your pick.\"\nThe Chief picked up five clips of ammunition for his MA5B assault rifle, three frag grenades, and a shotgun for close work. Nothing fancyhe wanted to keep it simple so he could keep one eye on the rest of his team. 184 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Locklear hefted the fuel rod gun, grunting from the exertion. The weapon glowed an eerie green along its fuel casing. Grace relieved him of the too-heavy weapon and shouldered it with ease.\n\"Make sure you get a handgun,\" the Chief told Locklear.\n\"We'll be in close quarters underground.\"\n\"Roger that,\" Locklear said.\n\"We're close,\" the Admiral called out. The Master Chief moved up to the cockpit to watch. The line of dropships and drones maneuvered toward a pile of truck-sized stones that had been carved from the mountain. A spiraling hole, ten kilometers across, sat where Menachite Mountain had once risen majestic and impregnable, covered with forests and glaciers. It was only a strip mine now, with a single shaft drilled down its center. A Covenant cruiser hovered over the shaft, and the purple glow of a grav lift knifed into the hole.\n\"That's our LZ,\" Whitcomb announced. \"Polaski, I want you to drive this crate straight downbut ease up a tad on the en gines and let their grav beam do the work. It'll take us all the way down to whatever's at the bottom.\"\n\"With respect, Admiral,\" Polaski said, \"I'm not sure we'll fit.\"\nThe Admiral squinted at the hole. \"We'll fit,\" he said. \"I have every confidence in you, Warrant Officer. Now make it quick. I don't think anyone topside is going to think us going down there is a good idea.\"\n\"Yes, sir!\" Her eyes locked onto the hole. \"No problem, sir.\"\nThe Master Chief marveled at the Admiral's lack of fear. He trusted the man's judgment; he had been criticized during his campaigns for unorthodox tactics and strategies, but his insight had been proven correct each time. The Master Chief, however, also had observed that the higher up the chain of command you received your orders, the more likely those orders would de mand the near impossible.\n\"Hang on,\" the Chief called back to his team. Polaski nosed the Covenant dropship over and plummeted into the dark purple scintillating grav beam. The instant they entered the field, the ship jumped, accelerated, and shuddered into the hole drilled through solid rock. ERIC NYLUND  185\nCut off from the thin shreds of sunlight above, the ship went dark. The internal running lights glowed a faint blue.\n\"We've got no room to maneuver in here,\" Polaski whispered. Lieutenant Haverson climbed forward. \"Admiral Whitcomb, sir, I see how we can get inassuming this hole leads somewhere but it's the other part of your plan that's unclear. What's our exit strategy, sir?\"\nThe Admiral's steely glare pinned Haverson. \"I've got it fig ured out. You just shoot when I tell you to and keep it all puck ered up tight. Got it?\"\nHaverson clenched his jaw, looking extremely unsatisfied.\n\"Yes, sir.\"\nPolaski focused intently on the walls of the tunnel rushing toward her craft. \"Short-range sensors have a contact,\" she said.\n\"It looks like the bottom of the shaft. ETA sixty seconds at this speed.\"\nThe Admiral leaned closer to the Chief and whispered, \"We're gonna get hit heavy by whatever's down there. You make sure you hit them back three times harder. Then you get Anton on point and see if he can't locate your Spartans. I'm guessing they've gone to ground.\"\nBefore the Chief could reply, the Admiral moved aft and grabbed an assault rifle and two HE pistols. He clipped plasma and frag grenades to his belt.\n\"Thirty seconds,\" Polaski called out. She cut the engines, and the dropship coasted on the grav beam only. \"There's something down there,\" she said. \"Is that sunlight?\"\nThe dropship emerged into a titanic roomthree kilometers across, circular, with a dozen galleries circumscribing the space. Overhead, a holographic sun and a dozen moons wheeled along its domed ceiling. Except for the hole drilled into the mountain by the Covenant, the holographic projection was perfect. The Admiral scrutinized the room, and his dark eyes locked onto a gathering of Covenant forces on the floor, near one edge of the great room. \"There,\" he said, and pointed. \"I make out about a hundred of them: a few Elites, Jackals, mostly Grunts. Looks like they're clearing a cave-in and not ready for company yet. Good.\n\"Polaski, land us half a kilometer from 'em and then dust off. 186 HALO: FIRST STRIKE I want you back in that hole ASAP. Plug it up. We don't want to leave our back door wide open.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" Polaski replied. Admiral Whitcomb addressed Li . \"You're our rear guard, son. Stay here and guard the ship with Polaski. Sorry.\"\n\"Sir! Yes, sir,\" Li replied. The Master Chief detected a hint of bitterness in the Spartan's voice for drawing what he undoubt edly would think was soft duty. Their dropship eased lower until it was a meter above the blue tiles of the room; the side hatches opened. The Chief jumped out first, followed by Anton, Lieutenant Haverson, and Locklear. From the hatch on the opposite side leapt the Admiral, Sergeant Johnson, and Grace. The dropship immediately rose into the hole in the ceiling, far enough in to be shielded from any stray ground fire.\n\"Move, everyone,\" the Admiral growled. He pointed at Grace and Locklear. \"You two, fire long-range weapons. Everyone else, haul ass. Take them out, people.\"\nThe Admiral's plan was sound. He wasn't risking the dropshiptheir only means of escapeby landing too close to the enemy. They still had the element of surprise; the Covenant would have never anticipated an assault on the heart of their operation. But how long would this advantage last? How long before that cruiser blasted their dropship to atoms? The Covenant were not their most dangerous enemy. Time was. Grace paused, muscled the fuel rod gun to a forty-five-degree angle into the air, and launched a round. The alien weapon hissed and spat a glowing sphere of energy. The blast arced over the half-kilometer distance, impacted, and exploded in a green flash. Grunts and Jackals flew through the air. Locklear fired two Jackhammer rockets, then dropped the spent launcher. The pair of rockets connected with a cluster of Elites who haduntil a second agobeen running the show. The twin explosion obscured that end of the room with billow ing clouds of dust, fire, and smoke. The Master Chief motioned for his team to spread out and move forward at a jog. ERIC NYLUND  187\nAhead there were silhouetted Grunts and Jackals in the dust clouds, screaming and shooting at the air, each other, anything that moved.\n\"Keep moving,\" the Master Chief said. \"Move while they don't know what's hit them.\"\nAnton paused and knelt next to a set of tracks dug into the tiled floor. \"Kelly's been this way,\" he reported over the COM. The Master Chief clicked on Red Team's COM frequency.\n\"Kelly? Fred? Joshua? Spartans, acknowledge this signal.\"\nOnly static answered him. A hundred meters from the stunned Covenant work crew, a stray plasma bolt fired from the hazy, rubble-strewn region deto nated a few meters from the Master Chief. He sent a spray of au tomatic fire across the area, hoping to force the enemy to keep their heads down. Grace halted and fired the fuel rod gun again. A second glow ing burst of radioactive energy flashed overhead and detonated along the far wall. In the intense light, the Master Chief saw that a dozen Jackals had braced themselves along the wall and overlapped their en ergy shields to create a phalanx. Behind them five Elites readied plasma rifles.\n\"Down,\" he shouted, and dived to one side. Grace hit the floor and rolled away. Plasma bolts sizzled over their heads, and the Master Chief's shields drained as a shot hit too close. The barrage turned several of the blue tiles around him into a crater of blackened glass.\n\"Grenadesup and over those shields, Spartans,\" Admiral Whitcomb bellowed. The Master Chief and Anton primed plasma grenades and hurled them from their prone positions. They hit the far wall and dropped into the cluster of Elites and Jackals behind their shields. There was a pair of blue flashes, and the enemy forma tion blew apart. Jackals scattered and ran. Grace fired the fuel rod gun, hit the broken phalanx formation, and blew them literally to bits. She dropped the weapon. \"Rad counter at max dosage,\" she called out. \"This thing's too hot to use anymore.\"\n\"Back away!\" the Chief ordered. \"Those things have a fail-safe!\" 188 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Grace sprang back, just in time. The fallen fuel rod gun sparked, sputtered, and then blew with the force of a frag grenade. Black ened, twisted tile rained down on them. Locklear jogged up and fired at the Grants fleeing the excava tion. They weren't armed. Locklear mowed them down without remorse. From a pile of shattered stone, a pair of battered Elites struggled to rise. Blood and bone exploded outward from their chests, and they spun around toward the source of this forceboulders pushed away from the blocked passage. Three Spartans emerged from their cover, assault rifles smoking from their recent discharge. John knew instantly the three were Kelly, Fred, and Will. He ran forward to meet them. Fred lowered his weapon. \"Anton ... Grace ... John?\" he said disbelievingly. The Master Chief opened a COM channel to his Spartans.\n\"It's me. I wish I had time to explain everything. I willlater. Let's get the hell out of here first.\"\nKelly quickly reached out and swiped her two fingers across John's faceplate. He wanted to return the smile, but at that moment Admiral Whitcomb, running full force, skidded to a stop next to the Spar tans. He was followed in short order by Haverson, Locklear, and Johnson, who kept looking over his shoulder to scan the huge empty room around them.\n\"Is this everyone?\" Admiral Whitcomb asked.\n\"No, sir,\" Fred replied. \"There's one more.\" He turned and ex tended his hand back into the partially collapsed tunnel. \"Ma'am?\nIt's safe to come out.\"\nFor a heartbeat the Master Chief forgot that he was in the heart of an enemy's camp; he forgot about the war, that Reach had fallen, and everything else he had gone through in the last few days. He had never thought he would see her again. Dr. Halsey emerged from the partially caved-in tunnel. She brushed dust from the hem of her skirt and lab coat with one slender hand.\n\"Admiral Whitcomb,\" she said, \"a pleasure to see you again. My thanks for the rescue. It was far timelier than you could ERIC NYLUND  189\nimagine.\" She turned to the Master Chief. \"Or is it you I have to thank for this daring operation, John?\"\nThe Master Chief found he had no words to answer. He also bristled at her casual use of his given name... but he could for give her that. She had always used his namenever his rank or serial number. He noticed the fist-sized crystal clutched in her hand. It had a thousand facets and emitted a brilliant blue light the color of sapphires and sunlight on water.\n\"Thank anyone you want, Catherine,\" Admiral Whitcomb said.\n\"Throw us all a party if that'll make you happy... once we're out of here.\" He clicked open his COM. \"Polaski, get down\"\nSergeant Johnson set his hand on the Admiral's arm and nod ded toward the far wall.\n\"What is it, Sergeant?\" The Admiral's voice died in his throat. The Master Chief's motion tracker flickered on his heads-up display, but there was no solid contact... nor did he see any thing across the entire three-kilometer-wide cavern. Had it picked up a camouflaged Elite? No, the dust in the air would have certainly given it away.\n\"No one move,\" the Admiral whispered. John saw them, then. He saw them all. He had missed them before because he had thought it was the haze in the air rippling, the dust, maybe the distance causing a miragelike image. He hadn't thought it possible for so many Covenant to be so still. On each level of the twelve tiered galleries that circumscribed the gigantic room stood Covenant soldiers. They crowded the balconies with Grunts, Jackals whose energy shields popped on, snarling Elites, and several pairs of Hunters with fuel rod can nons glowing green. The whine of thousands of plasma weapons charging filled the air like a swarm of locusts. No one moved. No one breathed except Locklear, who ex haled a long and heartfelt expletive. John tried to count them all. There had to be thousandson every level. A battalion at least, maybe more. They wouldn't even have to aim. All they had to do was shoot and fill the space with needle shards and boiling energy.\n190 HALO: FIRST STRIKE They'd be vaporized before they could get halfway to the tun nel at their backs. A Hunter pair roared with rage; they leveled their fuel rod cannons at John and his team and, with steady aim, discharged their weapons. A split second later the rest of the alien horde opened fire. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALYX Estimated 0640 Hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\\Aboard captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, periphery of Epsilon Eridani system. Ascendant Justice emerged from the non-Euclidian, non-Einsteinian realms that humans had erroneously called\n\"Slip-space.\" There was neither \"space\" nor anything to \"slip\"\nacross in the alternate dimensions. The ship displaced a cloud of ice crystals that had for millennia been melted and refrozen into delicate weblike geometries. Ascendant Justice's running lights diffused through these parti cles and made a glimmering halo of hard-edged reflections. It reminded Cortana of the snowglobe that Dr. Halsey had kept on her desk: the Matterhorn and a little Swiss climber scaling its three-centimeter heightall swirling in the center of a micro scopic blizzard. The frozen Oort cloud around her was significantly larger, but it was still a charming effect and a welcome sight from the abyss ofSlipspace. Cortana had fled the Epsilon Eridani system, but only to its edgea short jump of a few billion kilometers from Reach and the Master Chief. The odds that the Covenant would find her were long astronomical, in fact, even if they had ships on patrol. The Oort cloud's volume was too large to search in a hundred years. Still, she powered down virtually every system on the ship except the fiision generatorsand her own power systems, of course. The ship drifted in the icy dark. 192 HALO: FIRST STRIKE She redlined the reactors, however, to recharge the Slipspace capacitors and regenerate the plasma she had expended in her brief fight with the Covenant cruisers. If she was part of a larger fleet, her desperate tactics might be valuableflashing all her plasma away and the near-gravity Slipspace jumpbut as one ship against a dozen, her effective combat lifetime using those tactics could be measured in microseconds. And now the Covenant knew that Ascendant Justice was not one of theirs. She hoped the Master Chief would elude them find his Spartans and somehow meet her at the rendezvous coordinatesall without getting blown up by enemy ground forces and the Covenant fleet. She paused and reset her emotion subroutinesthe AI equiva lent of a deep sigh. Cortana had to remain focused and think of something useful to do while she waited. The problem was that she'd been thinking at peak capacity for the last five days. And now she was thinking with a large por tion of her mind occupied by the data absorbed from the Halo construct. She again toyed with the idea of dumping that data into Ascen dant Justice's onboard memory. Now that the other AI had been erased, it should be safe. Yet one piece of technolog ical data had already been leaked to the enemy ... and that could have ex treme repercussions in the war effort. If the Halo data got into Covenant handsthe war would be over. She decided she would make do with her available memory-processing bandwidth. Cortana listened and looked to the center of the Epsilon Eridani system with Ascendant Justice's passive sensors. Faint Covenant communiques whispered past hereight hours old, because that's how long it took the signal to travel from Reach to here. Interesting. The present insystem chatter was undoubtedly fo cused on the intruders. Eight hours ago, however, it had been business as usual... whatever business that was. She eavesdropped on the data streams, translating, and tried to make sense of it all. Among the more coherent samples of their excited religious ERIC NYLUND  193\nbabble were: uncovering the fragment of divinity, and illuminat ing shard of the gods to exist the perfect moment that vanishes in the blink of an eye but lasts forever, and collecting the stars left by the giants. A literal translation was not a problem. It was the meaning be hind the words that eluded her. Without the proper cultural refer ences, this was all gibberish. It had to mean something to someone, however. Perhaps she could use part of the dissected Covenant AI to help. It had spo ken to her, so it was partially fluent with human idioms. She might be able to reverse-engineer its translation software. Cortana isolated the AI code and began the retrieval-and-unpacking process. This would take time; she'd compressed the code, and the reconstitution process would require a good deal of her reduced processing power. While she waited, she examined the Covenant reactors. They used a pinched magnetic field to heat the tritium plasma. It was surprisingly primitive. Without better hardware, though, there was little she could do to improve their effectiveness. Power. She needed more if she was going to head back insystem to rendezvous with the Master Chief. The Covenant weren't go ing to sit by and wait for them to hook up, bid a fond adieu, and then escape. Logically, there was only one way to do this: She was going to have to fight and kill them all. She could conserve her ship's power and fire the plasma weapons as they were designed. That, however, would only de lay the inevitable. A dozen ships against oneeven Captain Keyes wouldn't have survived such a lopsided tactical situation. She deliberated how to solve this problem, spun off a multi tasking routine that listed her resources, and filtered them in a creativity-probability matrix, hoping to find an inspired match. The unpacking of the alien AI's routines finished. The code appeared to her as a vast cross section of geological strata: gray granite variables and blood red sandstone visual processors and oily dark function films. But there were dozens of code layers she didn't even recognize. The translation algorithms, however, were in the top layers of this structure, glistening like a vein of gold-laced quartz. She 194 HALO: FIRST STRIKE tapped into the software; it had infinite loops and dead-end code linesthings that had to be errors. Yet there were also slender crystalline translation vectors that she would never have thought of on her own. She copied those and slaved them to her dynamic lexicon. The distant Covenant transmissions poured though her mind, now somewhat more coherent: Inner temple layers penetrated;\nInfidels present, and Cleansing operation ongoing; Victory is as sured, and The Great One's purity will burn the infidels; The holy light cannot be tainted. She picked up on the urgent undertone to these transmissions, as if the notorious Covenant confidence were not entirely genuine. Since these messages made reference to an infestation to be cleansed, and since these transmissions occurred many hours before the Ascendant Justice had entered the Epsilon Eridani system, the Master Chief had been correct in his conclusions:\nThere were human survivors on Reach. Likely Spartans. His correct analysis of the situation based on the six-note sig nal irritated Cortana. It annoyed her more that she had not con cluded this as well. It made her realize how dangerously close to the edge of her intellectual capacity she operated. One of her alert routines triggered. An access hatch on the route from the bridge to the reactor roomone that she had specifically directed Sergeant Johnson not to weld shutjust opened.\n\"The trap is loaded,\" she whispered. Cortana scanned the region with the ship's internal sensors. There was nothing ... unless that \"nothing\" was actually a group of camouflaged Elitesperhaps the \"Guardian of the Lu minous Key\" mentioned in the Covenant's greeting communique. She tripped the emergency hull breach shut on four bulkhead doorstwo on each side of this opened hatch.\n\"Trap is sprung,\" she remarked. Cortana vented the atmosphere in this sealed section. She hoped that they had left the vent system open behind themdooming any others left behind to a similar asphyxiation. Her sensors picked up a plasma grenade detonation on the in ner port set of doors she had sealed and locked. The discharge scrambled those circuits and disabled the locks. She noted that ERIC NYLUND  195\nthe doors were being slowly opened... but not enough to reach the second set of sealed doors ahead. The opening of those doors halted.\n\"Gotcha,\" she whispered. She'd keep that section of Ascendant Justice sealed until Sergeant Johnson could confirm the kills. She wouldn't let her guard down, either. There had to be additional alien saboteurs aboard her ship. And if she found them, she'd deal with them in the same efficient fashion. This minor distraction resolved, Cortana returned her atten tion to the Covenant AI's code. Small portions of the alien soft ware looked like her. The odds of such a parallel evolution in computer science seemed improbable. It was almost as if it were her code ... only copied many times, each time with subtle errors introduced by the replication process. Could the Covenant have captured a human-made AI, copied it, and then used the result in their ships? If sowhy had there been the need to replicate the code so many times? And with so many errors?\nThis theory didn't track, however. Smart AIs like her had an operational life span of approximately seven years. After that the processing memory became too interconnected and developed fatal endless feedback loops. In essence, smart AIs became too smart and suffered an exponential attenuation of function; they literally thought themselves to death. So if the Covenant were using human-created AIs, all the copies would be dead within seven yearsthere was no reason to recopy the copies. It wouldn't extend their life span, because all the memory-processor interconnections had to be copied as well. Cortana paused to consider how much of her life span had been compromised by absorbing and analyzing the data from Halo. Her experiences within the Forerunner computer system had certainly pushed her intellect far past its designed limits. Had she burned away half her \"life\" doing so? More? She stored that thought for later consideration. If she didn't find a way to get the Master Chief and get back to Earth, her operational life span would be even shorter. She was, however, curious about one thing: She ran a trace on 196 HALO: FIRST STRIKE the origin of the copied pathways of the alien AI, and found its replication routine. This copying code was extremely convo luted; in fact, it took up more than two thirds of the Covenant AI's processor-memory space. It was dark with functions that ran deep to the core. It spread dendritic fingers through the sys tem, like a cancer that had metastasized throughout the AI's en tire body. She did not understand any of it. But she didn't have to understand the code to use it. Was it worth the risk of using? Perhaps. If she could mitigate the risk, she'd copy a portion of herself onto an isolated system in Ascendant Justice. She could always erase this subsystem if anything went wrong. The potential rewards of this operation were great. She might be able to restore herself to full operational capacityeven car rying the Halo data. Cortana double- and triple-checked the system she would overwrite: the Covenant software that managed the life support on the lower decks. Since the lower decks were now evacuated and cold, life support was moot. She carefully severed the con nections from that subsystem to the rest of the ship. She also rechecked her thinking. This copying software was likely responsible for the Covenant AI's fractured thinking. Her thinking, however, was being squeezed to nothing. There had to be a balance between these two deleterious states. Cortana initialized the Covenant file-duplication software. It moved, and the entire thing pulsed and reached for her; she im mediately shut down all contact with her translation suite. The dark functions touched her code, wrapped around them, pushed against the barriers she had erected. It happened too fast, but she didn't stop the process. It was far too interesting to stop. She distantly felt that portion of her mind blur and replicate, assembled line by line into its new location within Ascendant Justice. It felt strange. Not that it was strange she could think in more than one place about more than one thing at the same timeshe was used to multiprocessing. This was different strangeas if she had a glimpse into some thing wonderful... and infinite. ERIC NYLUND  197\nThe replication ceased, and the copying code was once again in ert and safely stored with the dissected Covenant AI's directory. Cortana ran her entire system; nothing else had been altered. She checked the new copied system. It was intact, and, apart from a few slight errors in the softwarewhich she immediately mendedit appeared functional. She initiated the new system and slaved it with her original system, running them in parallelone tapping the ONI's English-Covenant lexicon, the other tapping the alien AI's Covenant-English lexicon. If the alien copying software could duplicate her translation routine, could it duplicate more of her?\nNo. She squelched that thought. The risk of copying any more\n\"hers\" was too great. There were too many unknowns. And this was, after all, the enemy's code. There could be booby traps, waiting to be tripped within the complex algorithms. Besides, copying herself would do nothing to prevent her mental degradation. Those interconnection errors were already present ... and they always woul d be, despite the number of copies generated. She remembered the strange fractured speech patterns of the Covenant AI and wondered how many times it had been copied. Her thoughts were interrupted as the Covenant transmissions became clear. It was suddenly as if she had a new set of eyes and ears to hear them: Excavation proceeding; new sublayer discovered at six-hundred-meter depth, and Patrol unable to find the Infidels; returning to base, and Minor artifacts discovered;\nrejoice!\nAnd there was one thing she had missed in her previous analysis of the Covenant communiques, a second signal on the carrier wave: They used the same symbols she had used to find the Halo constructthe symbols that the Master Chief had discovered on the alien artifact on Cote d'Azur. She hadn't seen the simple dots, bars, squares, and triangles before because the Covenant, naturally, had embellished the clean symbols with their highly decorated calligraphied scripts, and further with their overwrought religious allusions. Cortana, with her new subsystem and her new translation lexi con, could, as Dr. Halsey might say, \"cut through the crap.\" 198 HALO: FIRST STRIKE These subcommuniques were orders. They originated from new ships entering the Epsilon Eridani system and were, in turn, accepted and acknowledged by those outbound. It was an automated mail system that could carry messages from the center of the Covenant Empire to the outer reaches of the galaxy. The Covenant were either too arrogant, or too igno rant, to properly encrypt these orders. Still, Cortana realized that the UNSC had not, until just now, discovered their deceptively simple system... so who was more ignorant?\nThere were deployment orders for hundreds of ships: carriers, destroyers, tendersa massive fleet. They were to meet at select locations, join up, refuel, gather resources, and then orient for the next Slipspace jump. Cortana knew how to translate these simple symbols into stel lar coordinates. Therea jump to the Lambda Serpentis system to gather tri tium gas for their reactors. And thereanother jump to the Hawking system to meet with three dozen carriers and effect a transfer of Seraph fighters. And there Cortana halted all her processes. She directed her full intellect to check and recheck her translation matrix a hundred times. There was no error. The terminating coordinates for the Covenant's impending operation was Sol. The Covenant were headed to Earth. SECTION 4\nGAMBIT CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALY\\Estimated 0640 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\\Epsilon Eridani system, tunnel complex below surface of Reach. John tensed as he watched the thousands of Covenant crowd ing on the galleries surround him and his team. He didn't dare move; his team was on the wrong end of too much firepower. They couldn't win this fight. On the third gallery off the floor of the great room, at the four o'clock position, a Hunter pair roared with anger. They raised their fuel rod cannons and then leveled their weaponsand fired. Kelly moved before anyone; she was a blur of motion and stepped in front of Dr. Halsey. John and Fred moved to either side of Kelly, while Anton grabbed the Admiral and threw the older man behind them. The blinding white-hot plasma charges struck the Spartans'\nshields and splashed over their chests. John's shield drained completely. The overpressure forced him to take a step backward, and the skin on his forearms blistered. Then the heat was gone, and he blinked away the black dots that swarmed in his vision. Kelly lay at his feet. Her armor smol dered and hydrostatic gel boiled from the emergency release vent along her left side. A thousand more shots rang out from the gallery, and John in stinctively crouched to cover his fallen comrade. He braced for the inevitable burning energy impact. Plasma bolts and crystalline needles crisscrossed the galleries ERIC NYLUND  201\noverhead, a spiderweb of energy and projectiles. Every shot was directed at the pair of Hunters who had fired upon John and his team. The Hunter pair raised their shields in unison and ducked be hind themthe quarter-meter-thick slabs of metal could repel almost any single weapon's fire ... but not this merciless barrage. These mightiest Covenant soldiers burned, their armor and shields ignited as well, and John caught their outlines for only a split second before they were vaporized. The section of gallery where they had stood blasted into dust and smoke, and the debris rained onto the floor ... along with dozens of Grunts and Jackals who had been unfortunate enough to be standing too near the pair. Three heartbeats pounded in John's chest. Neither the humans nor the Covenant hosts in the great room moved.\n\"What the hell is this?\" Sergeant Johnson muttered. \"Shouldn't we be dead by now?\"\nJohn linked to Kelly's biomonitors; she was in shock, and her suit's heat pumps were strained to the failure point. He had to get her to safety. From the uppermost gallery a Covenant Elite in golden armor raised its energy sword high into the air and shouted. Translation software in John's helmet whispered half a second later: \"Take thembut the next one to fire at the holy light will be skinned alive! Go!\"\nDr. Halsey pressed the arm of her glasses tighter against the back of her ear, listening as the built-in translator whispered.\n\"The crystal,\" she murmured. \"They're after the crystal.\"\nTeams of Elites dropped slithering, plasticine ropes, which glowed a ghostly blue. They rappelled to the floor. A hundred Grunts squealed with excitement and danced from one foot to the other. Jackals followed their Elite leaders on the ropes.\n\"Polaski!\" Admiral Whitcomb shouted into his COM. \"Get down here ASAP! We need immediate extraction!\"\n\"Roger that,\" Polaski replied in her cool never-flinch Navy flier voice. Fred, Grace, and Anton turned and fired three-round bursts straight up as a team of Elites tried to descend on their position. The Elites fell, spattering purple blood across the tiled floor. 202 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Dr. Halsey stuffed the alien crystal into her lab coat pocket and knelt next to Kelly. She checked her vitals on the data pad and shook her head. She looked at John, her expression grim.\n\"She's alive ... barely. She needs help.\"\n\"Let's not be rude,\" Admiral Whitcomb barked. \"Welcome our guests, Master Chief!\"\n\"Perimeter fire,\" the Master Chief ordered. \"Keep it tight. Dispersion pattern Delta. Go!\"\nThe Spartans simultaneously stepped into a semicircle, as sault rifles pointed outward. In unison they thumbed their weap ons' safeties and opened fire. Right behind them Locklear, Johnson, Haverson, and the Admiral took up position inside the circle. They primed and threw grenades. John paused and turned his attention to Kelly. He hauled her limp body off the floor and draped her over his shoulder. The Covenant forces hit the ground and edged closer, but they didn't return fire. Dozens of Elites dropped as armor-piercing rounds peppered their armor and frag grenades detonated with thunderous force. The Jackals who followed their masters on the ropes landed in the middle of the carnage, maneuvered in front of the Elites, and overlapped energy shields. It was typical Elite bravadothey had to be the first into the battle ... even if that meant they'd die for that honor. The Chief had no problem satisfying their honor. He slapped a fresh clip into his rifle and continued firing. Jackals and Elites cautiously advanced on the firing Spartans. A second line of Jackals angled their personal energy shields over their heads to prevent any grenades from being tossed into their midst. Polaski's dropship descended from the hole in the ceiling, spun about, and eased to a stop a meter above the cracked blue-tiled floor. Both side hatches of the craft hissed open. John handed Kelly to Fred as he leapt on board; he helped Dr. Halsey and the Admiral inside next. Locklear and the other Spartans jumped into the second hatch. Sergeant Johnson and the Master Chief were last to boardjust as their feet touched the ramp and they grabbed on to the rungs, Polaski accelerated off the deck. The Master Chief watched the Covenant as the dropship ERIC NYLUND  203\nclimbed. There were thousands of themon the floor, clinging to the walls, overflowing the galleries. They looked like a swarm of angry ants. The hatch sealed and the Master Chief moved forward, toward the cockpit. As he passed through the compartment, he saw Kelly. She was slumped over; thin trails of smoke curled from the holes in her armor. He helped Dr. Halsey strap Kelly down. Halsey's eyes locked onto the wounded Spartan's erratic vitals as they squiggled across her data pad. She set the elongated crystal next to Kelly... but it didn't lie flat. It defied gravity, floatingone sharp, slender end pointed at the surface.\n\"How very odd,\" Halsey whispered. John had to agree; it was unusual. Almost as odd as being un der the guns of a thousand angry Covenant soldiersyet none of them had fired a shot.\n\"Take care of her,\" he told Dr. Halsey, then he stood and made his way to the cockpit. Polaski hunched over the controls. She pushed the Covenant dropship into a hyperbolic ascent and entered the hole in the ceiling of the great room. The Master Chief grabbed hold of the walls and braced himself. The dropship, however, slowed and pitched forward so it was once again horizontal.\n\"Problem,\" Polaski announced and rapidly tapped the controls.\n\"Big problem.\"\nThe purple light of the grav beam in the hole darkened; it seemed to fade from view... but it also began to hurt to look at.\n\"They're pushing us back,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"Li, crawl topside and launch a couple of Jackhammers up this pipe.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Li repliedeager to return to the fight. He nodded at John, grabbed a Jackhammer rocket launcher, and moved to the hatch. The Admiral frowned and shook his head. \"No way a rocket will make it up a kilometer of this tunnel. Gotta try anyway.\"\nThe dropship stopped rising, bobbed in place a moment, and slowly sank back down through the tunnel. Li opened the side hatch. The intense purple light from the grav beam flooded the interior of the ship. 204 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Dr. Halsey inhaled sharply, and the Master Chief turned to see what had startled her. For a moment he thought the crystal she had brought with her had shattered. But it hadn't broken, not exactly. The top half of the slender shard had split along its facets and opened like a flower blossom. The sapphire petals undulated, and as the ultraviolet light of the grav beam fell upon them, the crystal opened wider. The facets twirled and spun in a complex geo metric dance. The crystal seemed to reshape itself, and it pulsed a cool green. The light inside the ship clearedall traces of the purple tint seemed to recede like a tide. The dropship lurched upward.\n\"What the hell\" Polaski, caught unawares, grasped the yoke and pulled back. Their dropship hummed with power and shot up through the tunnel.\n\"Gravity,\" Dr. Halsey whispered and stared into the opened facets of the crystal. \"This thing warped space when we first ap proached. It apparently has an effect on artificial gravity fields as well. I can't wait to get this into a lab.\"\nThe dropship emerged from the hole, and sunlight flooded the interior. Once out of the grav beam, the slender stone folded back upon itself, closing petal-like fragments, melding back into a single smooth shard. Dr. Halsey plucked up the stone and slipped it back into her lab coat pocket; she returned her attention to Kelly's biosigns. The air over Menachite Mountain was thick with circling flocks of Banshee fliers and Seraph fighters. The three-hundred-meter-long light cruiser had company, too. Six more Covenant cruisers faced their tiny dropship, plasma turrets tracking them. A series of icons flashed on Polaski's console. \"They've got weapons lock,\" she said, the calm in her voice cracking slightly around the edges.\n\"They won't fire,\" Admiral Whitcomb declared. There was steel resolution in his wordsas if this weren't a guess on his part, but rather an order that the Covenant had better follow. He set his hands on his hips and watched the ships, seeming to stare the cruisers down. \"They want whatever the doctor and her team ERIC NYLUND  205\ndiscovered ... and they want it bad enough to let us shoot at them and not so much as spit in our direction.\"\n\"Sir,\" the Master Chief said. \"We're to rendezvous with Cor-tana and the captured flagship at oh-seven-fifteen hours. That gives us only twenty minutes, sir.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb consulted his watch and then glanced at the Covenant ships gathering around them and edging closer.\n\"Polaski, get us out of here. Plot a course to your rendezvous pointand make this crate fly as fast as you can!\"\n\"Aye aye, sir.\" Polaski angled the ship into the upper atmo sphere of Reach; the sky darkened from turquoise to slate gray to midnight blue and then inky black, filled with stars. As their dropship left the cruisers behind, it moved painfully slow compared to the agile Seraph fighters. They formed up around her, four to the port and four on the starboard of their craft. A pair of the teardrop-shaped singleships pulled ahead of her, slowed... and blocked their path.\n\"They're boxing us in,\" Polaski said and decelerated their ship.\n\"Warrant Officer,\" the Admiral said and set a hand gently on her shoulder. \"Ram them. Full speed.\"\nPolaski swallowed. \"Aye, sir.\" One of her hands cinched her crash harness tight. The other hand passed over the velocity stripe on the control panel, and shoved it to full power. The dropship jumpedstraight toward the Seraph fighters in their path. The two fighters tumbled aside with a scant three me ters to spare, and the dropship raced past them. Locklear peered out of the port display and whistled. \"Does anyone else,\" he whispered, \"think it's a little crowded up here?\"\nThe Master Chief looked over Locklear's shoulder. There had been a dozen small warships when they had descended only a few hours ago... now there were three times that number in orbit around Reach. There were light cruisers that looked like luminous manta rays; there were four carriers with their bulbous sections, and the space near them was aglow with swarms of Seraph singlecraft;\nthere were a handful of destroyers, sleek and fast, bristling with plasma turrets. There was also wreckage: Pieces of Covenant ships tumbled in orbit, raw ragged chunks of the alloy plating, tangles of plasma 206 HALO: FIRST STRIKE conduits still aglow from the heat they carried, and clouds of metal that had been vaporized and had cooled into mists of glit tering dust.\n\"Cortana's been busy in our absence,\" Lieutenant Haverson remarked. He nodded approvingly at the carnage. The Master Chief detected flickers of light and dark from the launch bays of a Covenant carrier. He activated his visor's mag nification and saw a legion of Elites in thruster packs, and a score of the tentacled engineering drones leaving the bay.\n\"Singleships, drones, and Elite boarding parties on intercept vectors,\" Polaski announced. \"Inbound\" She paused and double-checked her scans. \"Jesus. They're inbound from all directions.\"\n\"Get us to the rendezvous coordinates,\" Admiral Whitcomb ordered. \"And don't spare the horses.\"\n\"Sir,\" Polaski replied, her voice icy cold, \"these are the ren dezvous coordinates.\"\nThe Master Chief searched for their captured ship on any displayand saw only the enemy. Cortana and Ascendant Justice reappeared in space; it was a tight fit. This particular jump required precision to the centimeter and, although she loathed admitting it, a large measure of luck. She had often wondered what would happen if a ship transi-tioned to normal space too close to a planet or other massin this case, another ship. Ascendant Justice winked into existence within the debris field in high orbit around Reach. There was, however, no ultravi-olent explosion as the atoms of the flagship overlapped with the matter of the scrapped ships the Covenant had herded together in space. Either Slipspace jumps prevented such occurrences from happening, shunting the incoming ship to the side like water that flows around a river rock ... or she had borrowed some of the Master Chief's probability-bending good fortune. Hundreds of wrecked ships, human and Covenant alike, tum bled lifelessly about her, their net trajectories suggesting that As cendant Justice had just nudged them aside. If she'd had more ERIC NYLUND  207\ntime, she would've designed a set of experiments with drone ships to test out her displacement-luck hypothesis. But time was something neither she nor the Master Chief had in abundance. Minutes remained until their rendezvousand Cortana would need every millisecond to accomplish what she had to do if any of them were going to leave the Epsilon Eridani system alive. Cortana searched the field of derelicts for a likely candidate. There were only a handful of Covenant ships; if the UNSC had managed to take out one of the alien ships in the battle for Reach, they apparently had been forced to obliterate it. No suit able candidates remained for her plan. She turned her attention to the vast number of wrecked UNSC ships. The Covenant didn't have to completely destroy a human ship to remove its tactical presence from the battlea single en ergy projection beam could tear through enough decks and kill enough crew to disable the craft. She wondered how many fallen humans drifted in the local space alongside her, thousands of brave men and women who had died fighting. Her sensors flicked over the silhouettes of the UNSC light ships. There were corvettes with bisected hulls leaking radio active coolant from their nuclear start-up reactors. Although they were more suitable for her purpose, the damage to them was too great. She didn't find one with a single intact fusion reactor. She tagged the location of the carriers and heavy cruisers and excluded them from her search. They were simply too large. She was willing to sacrifice maneuverability and speed... but not so much that it would take her an hour to make the burn out of orbit. That left destroyers and frigates. She found and tagged four teen in the debris field. Destroyers were essentially frigates that carried a meter and a half of Titanium-A armor instead of the sixty centimeters of their lighter counterparts. There were two candidates: Both the destroyer Tharsis and the frigate Gettysburg had intact fusion reactors. While the Gettysburg had been killed by an energy projector beam that had gutted it stem to sternobliterating the bridge and life support its power plant and even the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon on its 208 HALO: FIRST STRIKE undercarriage were apparently functional. Even better: The ship's topside hardpoints were intact. Cortana let a flicker of power pulse through Ascendant Jus tice's engines, and she slowly drifted toward the Gettysburg. She paused to listen to the Covenant traffic insystem. There was eight times the chatter there had been before, with many ref erences to the \"Infidels\" on the planet and the \"holy light\" that was now in jeopardy. Good. That meant the Master Chief was doing what he did best: causing mayhem among the enemy. And more importantly, the presence of Ascendant Justice floating among the hundreds of dead ships had not been detected. When she was within a kilometer of the Gettysburg, she cut her engines. With delicate puffs from the thrusters she edged closer and rolled Ascendant Justice until its top side was parallel with the top side of the Gettysburg. She pinged the Gettysburg's telemetry system and received a faint handshake reply. Cortana gave the override codequickly acceptedand entered the Gettysburg's NAV computer. There was no other computer intelligence on board. The cap tain of the Gettysburg had flatlined the NAV system and the AI as per the Cole Protocol. Cortana extended her presence through the empty systems. The Gettysburg was a wreck; all thrusters offline. It wouldn't be moving on its own power ever again, but its heart still beat. The ship's fusion reactor operated at 67 per cent capacity. Perfect. Ascendant Justice gently touched down on the Gettysburg probably the first time in the history of the universe that human and Covenant ships had made contact with nonlethal intentions. All modern UNSC ships had been designed with hardpoints on their dorsal and ventral sides in the event that they were too crippled to move under their own power. In theory, another UNSC ship could dock, lock systems, and carry the wounded ship away. The Covenant flagship had a similar series of hardpoints on its top side where ships too large to fit in its launch bay could dock. The two systems, however, were incompatible. Cortana fixed that. She activated the seven service drones on the Gettysburg, and instructed the Covenant Engineers ERIC NYLUND  209\nwithin the outer hull of Ascendant Justice to secure the docking points mating the two ships and adapt their power uplinks. The reason for this salvage operation, her pinpoint jump into the debris field, and the hybrid docking. . .  it was all for power. Ascendant Justice's cover had been blown; the Covenant knew that their flagship was human-controlled. That made their original plan of rendezvousing in orbit around Reach impossible. She could have jumped to that location and picked up the Chief, but then they would be stranded there while the Slipspace capacitors slowly rechargedand in the meantime they would be boxed in and obliterated by the Covenant armada. So she had to change tactics; she'd jump into the thick of a hostile and wary Covenant force, grab the Chief, and just as quickly jump out of the system. For that she'd need power to in stantly recharge the Slipspace capacitorsthe kind of power only two ships could produce. The power uplinks connected. Gigawatts flowed from the Gettysburg's reactor into Ascendant Justice's energy grid.\n\"Perfect,\" she purred. It was 0712 hours. She had less than three minutes to prepare for the next phase of her plan. Cortana checked and rechecked the calculations for what had to be the shortest Slipspace jump ever: from the floating junk yard to the rendezvous coordinates, a mere three thousand kilo meters. She scanned that region of spaceand discovered it was no longer a blind spot in the Covenant defenses. There were three times as many ships insystem as when she'd left. Cortana spotted the Chief's hijacked dropship ascending from the lower atmosphere of Reach, with a pack of Seraph fighters surrounding the craft. She intercepted a series of repeated orders from the Cove nant's fleet commander: Do not fire or you will be targeted and destroyed. The Infidels have captured the holy light. This was both good and bad. Good because the Master Chief and his team with this \"holy light\" avoided being blasted into vapor. Bad because every Covenant ship in the system was clos ing in on their dropshipultimately they'd box it in, grapple with the tiny craft, and take it with overwhelming force. This also made Cortana's jump target increasingly crowded. 210 HALO: FIRST STRIKE She made certain her plasma turrets were fully charged; she rechecked her shaping magnetic coils; she ran a systems check on Ascendant Justice's thrusters in case something happened with her exit jump and she had to maneuver. The time was 0714.10 Military Standard. Cortana then did the one thing she was not good at: wait. Fifty seconds for a mind that could perform a trillion calculations per second was an eternity. At T minus thirty seconds Cortana dumped power into the Slipspace capacitors. Pinpricks of light dotted the black space around her. At T minus twenty she updated her calculations, taking into account the slight gravitational variances that so many Covenant warships created in local space. The vacuum around her pulled apart, and she picked a path through the \"here\" of normal space into the \"not-here\" of Slipspace. At T minus ten she wrote a quick program to target the distant ships near her exit coordinatesand keep them targeted when she reappeared. Ascendant Justice moved slightly forward into the rip in space; light enveloped the craft. She vanished from the field of floating debris and reappeared in an eyeblink. The full face of Reach filling her lateral starboard displays. The port displays were crowded with inbound Covenant ships. The odd piggybacked Covenanthuman craft appearing in the middle of their trap must have confused the enemy ... no one fired. The dropship was three kilometers off Cortana's starboard beam, its trajectory more or less aligned with Ascendant Jus tice's launch bay. She opened the UNSC E-band and said, \"Chief, your ride is here.\"\n\"Acknowledged,\" the Master Chief replied. There was no qua ver in his rock-solid voice. He had been headed into certain death a moment ago, but he sounded like this was what he expected to occur. Like this was normal operational procedure. The dropship veered toward the open bay, and Cortana ERIC NYLUND  211\ndropped shields for a split secondjust long enough for the tiny craft to enterthen reestablished the protective field. Cortana routed power from the Gettysburg into Ascendant Justice's Slipspace capacitors, and they began soaking up the charge. Three dozen Covenant cruisers surrounded her, their plasma turrets glowing a hellish red as they prepared to fire. Apparently the order not to fire did not extend to Ascendant Justice. Cortana needed five seconds to attain a full charge, five sec onds before she could make good her escape... but five seconds might be long enough for her to become the center of a small Covenant-made sun. She took the initiative and fired at the closest four cruisers. Laser-fine plasma lanced from her turrets, burned though the Covenant shields, and split open their hulls. When the super heated gas came in contact with the atmosphere inside the ships, plastic, flesh, and metal caught fire and roiled throughout their interiors. Two of the targeted cruisers immediately detonated as the plasma beams found the reactors. Billowing clouds of vaporized metal mushroomed across the night and obscured her from the advancing ships. Pinpricks of light appeared around Ascendant Justice. ERROR. Cortana rechecked the figures and quickly found the source of the problem: The fail-safe subroutine that tracked local gravita tional conditions returned an anomaly. The gravity from Reach no longer warped space ... which was impossible. No time for speculation. She had to leave or fight. She moved Ascendant Justice into the twisting spatial field and vanished. Instead of the nonvisible nondimensions of Slipspace, how ever, a blue-tinged field appeared on Cortana's monitors. It wasn't spacenot the crowded space near Reach, or the star-filled space of the Epsilon Eridani system. But it was a space, where there should have been no space at all. 212 HALO: FIRST STRIKE She probed the region with her sensors, but her range was lim ited to a thousand kilometers as if she were in an obscuring fog. Therea contact. And another. And then a dozen more. Fourteen Covenant cruisers resolved from the blue mist.\n\"Cortana,\" the Master Chief said. \"What's our status?\"\n\"Same as ever,\" Cortana replied. \"We're in trouble.\"\nThe Covenant warships fired.\n\"Damn,\" Cortana muttered. She initiated her last option: She fired back, hoping to take some of them to hell with her. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE TIME:DATE RECORD [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\\Date unknown\\ Aboard captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace. Now.\n\"Cortana?\" the Master Chief asked. \"What's our status?\"\nThe Chief and the rest of his team scrambled out of the Cove nant dropship. Fred carried a semiconscious Kelly out and laid her on the deck of the launch bay.\n\"Same as ever,\" Cortana replied. \"We're in trouble.\"\nVideo feed from the ship's external cameras appeared on the Master Chief's heads-up display. Covenant cruisers surrounded them, their plasma turrets aglow; they reminded the Chief of pictures he had seen of fish that lived at the bottom of Earth's oceansswarms of phosphorescing lights and razor-sharp teeth. He marched toward the edge of the launch bay and stood a centimeter from where the ship's energy shield abutted the open ing to the space beyond. He looked directly into the vast blue fields and the giant warships far too close for his liking.\n\"We jumped to Slipspace, didn't we?\" Lieutenant Haverson asked uncertainly.\n\"Yes,\" Dr. Halsey replied. \"And no.\"\nShe withdrew the crystal from her lab coat pocket and frowned as she discovered that it was no longer a slender shard. The facets had rearranged like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle... but in a configuration that differed from the one the artifact displayed in the Covenant grav beam. This time it was a starburst of edges and refracted light. 214 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"We jumped,\" she said, examining her reflection in the arti-fact's mirrored planes. \"But not to the Slipspace we know.\"\nThe Master Chief's radiation counter clicked and a shrill alarm screamed through his helmet.\n\"Secure that, Anton,\" he said and nodded toward the glowing stone. \"Get it into the reactor compartment of the Pelican.\"\nAnton relieved the crystal from Dr. Halsey, who only reluc tantly released it from her grasp. He sprinted toward the wrecked Pelican.\n\"There was a radiation surge, Doctor,\" the Chief explained.\n\"And that thing is the source.\" The Chief noticed that the inten sity of the radiation did not drop off as Anton moved it into the Pelican.\n\"Whatever it is,\" Dr. Halsey said as she scrutinized the blue field outside their ship, \"it warps space. When we first ap proached it in the great room, space curled around the crystal. And again in the grav beam, it dispersed that field potential.\"\n\"And now?\" Admiral Whitcomb asked. \"This tiling is affect ing our passage through Slipspace?\"\n\"Apparently so,\" Dr. Halsey said, and stepped next to John to get a better look outside. The Admiral joined her and watched as the Covenant ships'\nturrets heated. \"Can they even fire those things in Slipspace? If they can, we're sitting ducks.\"\nThe Master Chief could make out more ships in the distance. The Covenant vessels flickered, faded, disappeared, and then reappeared in the fog. The nearest enemy Covenant ships fired. Amorphous balls of superheated gas belched from their turrets and accelerated toward them, tingeing the blue space purple. The Master Chief saw Locklear as he helped Polaski out of the Covenant dropship. He kept her hand in his, and they watched together as the plasma sped toward them. The balls of plasma streaked onthen curled and spiraled off their trajectories. Several simply winked out of existence, only to reappear somewhere else. The enemy shots raced up, down, sidewaysany direction but toward Ascendant Justice.\n\"What the hell is this?\" Sergeant Johnson said and he stepped next to the Master Chief to watch the display. \"I didn't think their ships could fire in Slipspace. Ours sure as hell can't.\" ERIC NYLUND  215\nDr. Halsey removed her glasses, and her eyes widened. \"Nor mally, they can't. If they can fire, then logically, we're not in Slipspace. And wherever we are,\" she murmured, \"the rules have changed.\"\nThe Admiral frowned. \"Cortana,\" he shouted. \"Whatever you do, do not return\"\nToo late. Cortana returned fire. Columns of fire streaked from Ascendant Justice streamers that twisted and helixed, then vanished and reappeared. The bubble of tangled blue space containing Ascendant Jus tice and the Covenant warships now contained at least forty bolts of superheated plasma circling in random directions and accel erated to incalculable velocities. Three spheres of roiling fire appeared in front of the nearest Covenant cruiser and splashed across its bow. The first boiled away its shimmering silver shield; the second and third melted the armor and alloy skin beneath. Atmosphere vented and spun the massive ship like a child's pinwheel.\n\"Hot damn,\" Sergeant Johnson crowed. \"All we have to do is wait for those trigger-happy bastards to take themselves out. Look, they're firing again.\"\nThe Covenant weapons heated and squeezed out a second salvo of plasma. The guided bolts of fire veered off course, swarmed, disappeared, reappeared, and spun out of control though the local ized Slipspace bubble.\n\"No, Sergeant,\" Dr. Halsey said, her voice turning cold. \"We're all in the same mess.\"\n\"Cortana,\" the Master Chief said, \"drop the launch bay blast door. Now!\"\nThe three-meter-thick door overhead shuddered and slid down. A streamer of plasma on a parallel trajectory flashed through the dark not half a kilometer from the Master Chief's faceso close that the external temperature rose twenty degrees even through the ship's shields. Red fire illuminated Ascendant Justice's starboard shield as plasma splashed across them; the film separating the launch bay from the external vacuum rippled like a thousand broken mir rors. Static crackled across the Master Chief's armor, and his shields resonated in sympathy. 216 HALO: FIRST STRIKE As the blast door lowered, the Chief saw another fireball spill across their port side. Energy sprayed across the bow in a blood red borealis. Ascendant Justice's shields flickered and faded... but they held. Barely. The launch bay door touched the deck and sealed with a sub sonic thud.\n\"Blast door locked and secured,\" Cortana announced.\n\"Let's get this boat under way,\" Admiral Whitcomb barked.\n\"While we still have a boat.\" He looked around and frowned.\n\"Chief, lead the way to the bridge.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" He marched to the passage that led deeper into the alien ship. His Spartans and the rest of the crew followed. Admiral Whitcomb turned to Dr. Halsey. \"Catherine, explain in layman's terms just what the hell is going on here. If we can see those cruisers and they can see us, why aren't our shots connecting?\"\nAscendant Justice rolled to port, and explosions chained over head. The artificial gravity fluttered, and the deck tilted. The crew stumbled, and Dr. Halsey fell to the deck.\n\"Turrets one and seven destroyed,\" Cortana announced. Whitcomb helped Dr. Halsey up off her knees. She glanced nervously up and down the passage. \"I'd guess the alien artifact we've brought with us into Slipspace has expanded the region. Physicists believe Slipstream space is a highly compressed ver sion of normal space, layered over and under itself, like a ball of yarn. Now, imagine that our ball of yarn\"she interlaced her ringers\"is looped and knotted. These threads are not solid, however; plasma, light, and matter jump from one thread to an other given the slightest quantum fluctuation.\"\n\"If that's the case, Doctor,\" Lieutenant Haverson said, \"then what about our ship? Why aren't we tangled and spread along a trillion alternate spatial pathways?\"\n\"Because of the mass of this ship.\" She pushed her glasses higher onto her nose. \"Imagine a rumpled sheet that represents this space. If you set a heavy mass upon that sheet, it draws it taut, smooths it out.\"\nThe Chief came to the heavy bulkhead door and held up his hand, telling the rest of them to halt. He opened the door and ERIC NYLUND  217\nstepped onto the bridge, sweeping the space with his rifle.\n\"Clear,\" he told them. Admiral Whitcomb and the others entered the bridge. Lieu tenant Haverson stepped onto the raised platform and said,\n\"Cortana, project tactical on the displays.\"\nEnemy ship positions and plasma tracks appeared on the inte rior walls. Contacts multiplied and coalesced, making the plasma appear like waves sloshing about in a bowl. Another bolt broke across the prow of Ascendant Justice. Through the deck the Master Chief felt the successive thumps of explosive decompressions.\n\"Hit on subengineering decks,\" Cortana said. \"Sealing those regions. Fire in the lower levels. Attempting to isolate and pump out the atmosphere.\"\nJohn's childhood AI teacher, Deja, had taught the Spartans about the great Naval battles on Earth's oceans before humans traveled to the stars. They had studied victories in the Punic Wars, and at Midway, as well as the disastrous defeat of Xerxes by the Athenian Navy. Deja had told them, however, that one thing was greater than any human enemy on the sea: nature. Tidal waves and typhoons could crush the mightiest of battle ships ... and ignored the tactics of the most brilliant captain. Ascendant Justice was in the center of a sea of fire ... and it was being battered apart. Thunder ripped through Ascendant Justice's hull; a geyser of flames shot out the passageway to the bridge. The air jumped and hissed as it escaped the pressurized chamber. The bulkhead door slammed shut, and the air stilled. Sergeant Johnson shook his head clear from the sudden drop in pressure. \"Let's drop out of this mixed-up Slipspace and start fighting.\"\n\"Yeah, or just get rid of that crystal,\" Locklear said. \"If it's the cause of all this mess.\" He drew his pistol. \"One round and boom! Problem solved.\"\n\"Don't do that!\" Dr. Halsey snapped. \"A drop back to normal space has us facing a dozen or more cruisers. And if you destroy the crystal, the expanded Slipspace bubble we're in would in stantly collapse. Every separate mass in the bubble will compact into a single mass. We wouldn't survive the transition.\" 218 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Worry creased Admiral Whitcomb's features. \"That leaves just one option. Cortana, give me flank speed and heat up every weapon we have. We're going to run right over these Covenant ships. Tangled space or not, we're going to blast them right back to normal space from point-blank range.\"\n\"Yes, Admiral,\" Cortana said. \"Engines answering flank speed.\"\nA dull thump echoed from the aft section.\n\"Stand by,\" Cortana said. \"There's a problem with the primary enginesa power drop occurred just as I engaged.\"\nOn the bridge displays the external cameras turned and focused on the aft hull of Ascendant Justice. A snakelike plasma conduit came into focus. Cortana adjusted the image, and a three-meter-wide hole in the conduit snapped into view. Streamers of blue-white gas vented from the breach.\n\"That's our main drive conduit,\" Cortana said. \"It's taken a hit. I'm shutting down engines to conserve power.\"\nThe Master Chief squinted. \"That was no plasma hit,\" he mut tered. \"It was too precise and too inconvenientthis had to be sabotage.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb scowled. \"Chief, take your team and pre pare for a zero-gee repair of the plasma conduit.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\nPolaski stepped forward. \"I'll go too, sir,\" she said. Locklear grasped her by the arm and tried to pull her back, but she shrugged his hand off. \"I can pilot the dropshipget the Spartan team in and out faster.\"\nThe Admiral narrowed his eyes, assessing the young woman.\n\"Very well, Warrant Officer.\" He added so softly that the Chief almost missed it: \"Too many damned heroes in this war.\"\nPolaski turned to Locklear, handed him back his bandanna, and whispered, \"Hang on to that for me, Corporal. I'll pick it up when I get back.\"\nLocklear's hand clenched, then relaxed. He took the token, nodded, and looked away. \"I'll be here,\" he said and tied it around his arm.\n\"Chief,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"Make sure you come back alive. That's an order, son.\" CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR TIME:DATE RECORD [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\\Date unknown\n\\ Captured Covenant dropship near flagship Ascendant Justice, in anomalous Slipspace bubble. The faintly blue luminous walls of the Covenant dropship pressed in, which made John feel slightly claustrophobic. It was ironic when he stopped to think about it, because he was always inside his skintight armor. His fellow Spartans sat in the bay be side him, motionless. Fred, designated Blue-Two on this mission, was John's second in command. He had fought in more than 120 campaigns, was a great leader and a quick thinker. Sometimes he took the respon sibility of his command too seriously, though, empathizing too deeply with any wounded member of his team. Li, Blue-Three, was the team's zero-gee combat specialist. He had trained extensively with microgravity equipment and mar tial arts at the UNSC's extreme-conditions facility on Chiron in orbit about Mars. He was as much at home in free fall as the rest of them were on solid land, and John was glad to have him on this mission. Anton, Blue-Four, had John worried. He spent most of his life with his feet firmly planted on the ground. He'd cross-trained in tracking, camouflage, and stealth, and had been used almost ex clusively on ground-based operations. More than once he had expressed discomfort in zero-gee situations. Will, Blue-Five, was quiet, but had never failed to complete his mission. He wasn't always that way, though. When he was younger he was the one with the jokes and riddles that kept the team's spirits high. Something had hardened in him over the 220 HALO: FIRST STRIKE years . . .  as it had in them all. But with Will something special had been lost. Grace, Blue-Six, had a knack for explosives. She could shape a charge to cut through a single steel bolt with only a whisper sound, or rig a hundred thousand lit ers of kerosene to blow into a firestorm from hell. Ironically her temper was nonexistent. John opened a COM channel. \"Give me a systems check, Blue Team.\"\nFive acknowledgment lights winked on.\n\"This reminds me of the underwater mission Chief Mendez sent us on at Emerald Cove,\" Fred whispered. \"When he sabo taged half our air tanks? And we ended up stealing his.\"\n\"And after,\" Anton said, laughing, \"we ditched him and camped on that island. It was a week with nothing to do but light bonfires, bake clams, and surf.\"\n\"Mmrnmm,\" Grace added, \"calamari.\"\nJohn wondered if Emerald Cove even existed anymore. The UNSC had abandoned that colony a decade ago. The Covenant had most likely glassed that world.\n\"Blue Team.\" Polaski's voice broke over the COM. \"Local conditions are as calm as they're go ing to get. Exiting in three... two... one!'\nJohn felt the acceleration in the pit of his stomach. He rose, moved to the hatch, and popped it open. Outside, Ascendant Jus tice's hull moved past themalmost every square centimeter of the flagship's polished alloy skin had been scarred by heat and micrometeors; tendrils of metal vapor snaked and shimmered in the vacuum. On Ascendant Justice's upper deck he saw the looming shadow of the inverted UNSC frigate Gettysburg still miracu lously attached. It was on fire, pockmarked with craters, and venting atmosphere, but it was remarkably intact. If not for the thousands of dead Naval personnel undoubtedly on board, he might have christened the ship \"lucky.\"\nThe dropship slowed and Polaski drifted, turned, and de scended onto the surface of the ship.\n\"Latch engaged,\" she said over the COM. \"All yours, Chief.\"\n\"Fred, Grace, and I will reconnoiter,\" he told Blue Team. \"An ton, Will, and Li, get ready to move the arc welder and hull plates ERIC NYLUND  221\nwe scavenged from the Gettysburg when we give the all-clear signal.\"\nJohn eased his boots onto the hull. Their magnetic soles clamped onto the metal with a satisfying click. Polaski had landed the Covenant dropship so that its mandibles cradled the hole and gave them some shelter. Overhead, Slipspace was on fire. It looked as if someone had doused the night with jet fuel and ignited it. Bloody, boiling streaks of flame tore across a midnight-blue sky. Meteors flashed past and sprayed molten metal in trails of glittering Stardust. A fist-sized projectile blurred past the Master Chief and rammed into the ship's starboard side. Sparks and liquefied alloy spattered into space. His shields flickered as debris ricocheted from the armor's protective field. They had to move fast. The Admiral was right: This was a shooting galley. The quicker they sealed that hole and got out of herethe better. John turned and swept his rifle over the terrain. There were bumpy sensor nodes, kilometers of conduits, and a dozen gaping canyons in the hull. A legion of Covenant warriors could hide in this mess. No enemy contact. Nothing on his motion sensors, either. He stepped close to the main-drive conduit and examined the hole. The pipe was five meters across and still red hot, even though Cortana had shut it down three minutes ago. The hole was round, a three-meter-wide gap, with ragged edges that all pointed inward.\n\"If that was from a plasma strike,\" Grace said, \"the metal would have been boiled away. If it was from an impact, the edges would be scraped on one side, compacted on the other. This hole was deliberately made.\"\n\"Eyes sharp,\" John said. \"We have company. My guess is camouflaged Elites. Maybe some of the original crew still alive. Blue-Three, -Four, and -Fivemove out.\"\n\"Roger,\" Will replied. Anton emerged from the dropship hefting an arc welder, while Will and Li maneuvered the three-by-three-meter hull plates.\n\"Fred and Grace, you're on the welders,\" John ordered. \"An- 222 HALO: FIRST STRIKE ton, post on top of the dropship. Li, you're at three o'clock. Will at nine. I'll take the six.\"\nBlue acknowledgment lights winked on. John helped Fred and Grace set the plates in position. Grace and Fred fired up the arc welder, and pinpoints of metal liquefied beneath their tips. A shower of sparks swirled around them in the evacuated environment like a swarm of fireflies.\n\"We're in position, Admiral,\" John reported. \"ETA for repairs is two minutes.\"\n\"Roger, Chief,\" Admiral Whitcomb replied. Ionization made the channel flood with static. \"When you're done, give the word and get securewe'll be accelerating immediately.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\nSo far, so good, John thought. Just another minute or two. A streamer of plasma appeared from nowhere. The tangled, crisscrossed Slipspace around them dropped the bolt of boiling fire fifty meters overhead; it moved port to starboardand van ished back into the void. The COM shattered into white noise, and the motion sensors b l u r r e d ... a s  d i d  t h e  a c t i v e  c a m o u f l a g e  s h i e l d i n g  o f  t h e  s i x  E l i t e s who had been slowlyand until a moment ago imperceptibly crawling toward their position.\n\"Enemy contacts!\" John shouted. He crouched behind the dome of a sensor node and opened fire. A hail of bullets caught the closest Elite dead-center in its chest. The gunfire punched through its shielding and then tore into its armor. It tumbled backward and spun off the hull. In his peripheral vision John saw the silent muzzle flashes from his team. He glanced back; Fred and Grace hadn't moved. They stared at the beads of molten alloy under their arc welder's tip. As if Fred could read his mind, he said, \"I need another twenty seconds, Chief.\"\nA volley of crystalline needles fired from one of the Elites peppered the sensor node. The Master Chief returned fire, but the Elite's camouflage kicked in and it faded from view. Another plasma bolt sizzled close to the hull, this one thirty meters to port. It was a river of fire that lit the surface of Ascen dant Justice like a dozen suns. John's shields drained to a quarter.\n\"Okay, Chief,\" Fred told him, \"I'm\" ERIC NYLUND  223\n\"Incoming!\" Polaski cried over the COM. John turned to the dropship and saw a third plasma projectile materialize from the folds of tangled Slipspace. This one skimmed a mere three meters over the hullstraight toward them. Will dived into the crux where the dropship met the hull. Fred and Grace hit the deck. Li stood his ground and fired at the Elites, muzzle flash reflected in his helmet's faceplate. Anton rose from his limited cover on top of the dropship, but instinc tively ducked again as an Elite took a shot at him. John crouched, jumped, and propelled himself into the sheltered area between the dropship's mandibles. The plasma blasted over the dropship like a tidal wave of fire. Polaski screamed, and her channel went silent. Blue-white light filled John's vision, and electrical discharges jolted his flesh and buzzed through his muscles and ligaments. Temperature warnings blared. Boiling hydrostatic gel vented through his MJOLNIR armor's emergency ducts. Through blurry eyes, John saw the Covenant Elites flash va porize. Downship, Ascendant Justice's hull heated to a glowing yellow and softened. Then the light and heat vanished, and the torrent of fire trailed aft like the tail of a comet. John craned his neck up, every muscle in his body screaming in pain. There was no trace of Li or Anton. The dropship's hull was melted and distorted like a wax candle caught in a blow torch's blast. The cockpit and Polaski were gone. His biosign warning blared. Will, Grace, and Fred lay next to himdead or unconscious, he couldn't tell. He quickly attached their tethers to the deck, then clipped his own in place. John keyed the COM. \"Admiral, conduit breach is sealed, sir.\"\n\"Hang on, son,\" Admiral Whitcomb replied. \"This might be a rough ride.\"\nJohn slumped to the deck unconscious. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE TIME:DATE RECORD [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\\Date Unknown\\ Captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in anomalous Slipspace bubble. Admiral Whitcomb stood on the bridge of Ascendant Justice. He gripped the edges of the railing that encircled the central raised platform and watched the sea of fire on the wall displays. They were stuck in this pocket of Slipspace, trapped like an insect in amber as lines of plasma crisscrossed the region. Enemy fire vanished and reappeared, smearing the blue fog of Slipspace with crimson streaks of glowing energy. Molten chunks of metal, the broken pieces of Covenant ships, streaked past the camerascomets that thudded into their hull. There was another danger in the blue fog: ghost ships that ap peared and faded from sight... more than half of them disabled, engulfed in fire, or their hulls broken. How many of those Cove nant craft were still capable of engaging Ascendant Justice\"!\nHow many could they take out before they risked the jump back to normal space?\nLieutenant Haverson stood next to him. The young man was invaluable for his tactical assessments and knowledge of the Covenant. He was a bit too cautious for Whitcomb's taste though the trait was to be expected in an ONI officer, he sup posed. Still, the young Lieutenant had shown enough backbone to stand up to him. The kid definitely had some potential. A square on the holographic controls morphed into the tiny figure of Cortana.\n\"Sporadic plasma and mass impacts along our hull, Admiral,\"\nshe reported and crossed her arms. \"Atmospheric integrity down ERIC NYLUNO  225\nto thirteen percent. Structural integrity rated poor. I estimate the hull will fail in no more than five minutes.\"\n\"Understood,\" the Admiral replied. They didn't have much choice but to play the hand that they'd been dealt. The longer they stayed in this environment, the more damage the Covenant ships surrounding them incurred. If As cendant Justice had engines, the Admiral could accelerate that process. But if they waited too long, their own ship would disin tegrate around them. Admiral Whitcomb glanced up to see how the rest of his crew was holding up under the pressure. Locklear paced, his hands flexing. The ODST was a weapon with its safety permanently clicked off... and on overload charge. Sergeant Johnson stood near the sealed bulkhead, rifle slung over his shoulder. He was looking at the crew and probably for mulating his own opinions about them. He was rock-solid. One glance into his dark eyes and the Admiral understood what drove the man: pure cold hatred of the enemy. The Admiral could ap preciate that. Dr. Halsey tended the Spartan called \"Kelly\" on the deck. The doctor was brilliant... but a total mystery to him. They had met half a dozen times before at upper-echelon social gatherings, and he'd found her to be charming and outwardly likable. But he'd read enough reports of her \"projects\" that he'd found it im possible to relate to her. If half the rumors he'd heard about her were true, she'd been mixed up in every black op from here to Andromeda. He didn't trust her.\n\"Doctor Halsey,\" the Admiral said. He released his grip on the railing and clasped his hands behind his back to conceal his sweaty palms. \"Clear my bridge of the wounded, ASAP.\"\nDr. Halsey looked up from her data pad and the fluctuating patterns of Kelly's biosigns. \"Admiral, I don't want to move her. She not entirely stable.\"\n\"Do it, Doctor. She's a distraction. We have a battle to fight here.\"\nDr. Halsey shot him a look that could have stopped a plasma bolt dead in its tracks. Lieutenant Haverson stepped forward and cleared his throat.\n\"Ma'am, there's an escape craft just off the bridge.\" He moved 226 HALO: FIRST STRIKE to the starboard hatch and eased it open. He drew his pistol and checked the passage beyond. \"It's clear. Locklear, Sergeant, please give the doctor a hand with her patient.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Locklear said. \"Happy to sit this battle out in the es cape pod.\"\nSergeant Johnson set his rifle on Kelly's chest and said, \"Come on, Corporal, shake a leg and gimme a hand. The lady in her armor weighs more than your last date.\"\nLocklear and the Sergeant hefted Kelly and, grunting under the load, moved her off the bridge. Dr. Halsey followed, cast one last withering look at the Admiral, and sealed the hatch behind her. Admiral Whitcomb sighed. He felt for the Spartan... felt too muchwhich was the problem. He couldn't concentrate with her so close. He'd want constant status reports on her condition. Hell, he would have gone over, knelt next to her, and held her hand if that would've helped. He loved the men and women un der his command as if they were his own sons and daughters. It was the old axiom of command: To be a good leader, you had to love the service. To be a great commander, you had to be willing to destroy that which you loved. Static crackled, and the Master Chief reported in: \"We're in position, Admiral. ETA for repairs is two minutes.\"\n\"Roger, Chief,\" Admiral Whitcomb replied. \"When you're done give the word and get secure. We'll be accelerating immediately.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\nThunder rumbled through the deck.\n\"Plasma impacts, sir,\" Cortana explained. \"Their energy pro file has diffused, but they were still powerful enough to knock the lateral sensors and cameras offline.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb smoothed his thick fingers over his mus tache. \"We've got only a few minutes before this space tears us apart.\" He squinted at the wall displays, trying to count the number of enemy craft. \"That's if those Covenant ships don't do the job first.\"\nHe turned to Cortana. \"How many enemy ships are there?\nWhich are real and which are illusion?\"\n\"Impossible to accurately determine, sir. I counted fourteen ERIC NYLUND  227\ntargets before they started firing and filling the space between us with ionizing plasma. Now? ...\" Mathematical symbols raced along her length, flashing blue and indigo. \"Cross-indexing similar mirrored images and extrapolating, I estimate there are currently between three and five operational ships, sir.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb gritted his teeth and concentrated. He had to get this ship movingtake out one or two enemy craft. Maybe the tangled plasma-filled space would cook the rest of them. That was their best chance. Their only chance. He'd have to trust the Master Chief to get that drive conduit fixed.\n\"Very well, Cortana,\" he said. \"Heat the Gettysburg's reactor to maximum power and prepare to flood the main-engine plasma conduit. Charge all available weapons turret capacitors.\"\n\"Yes, sir. Standby.\"\nHe glanced at a screen that showed the Gettysburg sitting atop them inverted. \"Is the launch bay on the Gettysburg intact? Can it hold an atmosphere?\"\nCortana blinked. \"Yes, sir. It has a slow leak of thirty-two kilo pascals per\"\n\"Pressurize the bay.\"\n\"Acknowledged, Admiral. However,\" Cortana replied, \"that will leave our air reserves dangerously low.\"\nThe Admiral stared at the ships surrounding thema plasma bolt struck a distant cruiser head-on, and its nose buckled. Gouts of flame flared along its lateral plasma lines. The ship looked like a fish spit with a red-hot poker. That could have been them.\n\"Hurry up, Chief,\" he whispered. On the displays the Admiral spotted two ships. There was a carrier far away; it looked undamaged. Closer, off the port bow, was a cruiser that, aside from a hole punched through its aft sec tion, was also undamaged ... and only ten thousand kilometers away. That was the priority target.\n\"Lay in a new course,\" the Admiral ordered. \"Two-four-zero by zero-three-five.\"\nLieutenant Haverson took an involuntary step closer to the display, and his face contorted as he worked out the math in his head. \"That's. . .  a collision course, sir.\" 228 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Glad you concur with my calculations,\" the Admiral re marked dryly. Lieutenant Haverson glanced at the Gettysburg and nodded, finally understanding. \"Aye, sir. A good plan.\"\n\"Admiral,\" the Master Chief's voice broke through in a wash of static. \"Hull breach is sealed, sir.\"\n\"Hang on, son,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"This might be a rough ride. Cortana, give me flank speed now!\"\n\"Complying,\" Cortana said. \"Flank speed. Conduit is hold ing. Coming about to two-four-zero by zero-three-five. Colli sion with Covenant cruiser at this speed and heading in eighteen seconds.\"\nAscendant Justice-Gettysburg accelerated toward a line of wavering orange plasmaand steamed through it like a ship smashing through a storm wave on the open seas. Fire splashed over their hulls and burned away layers of ar mor. The entire hull superstructure groaned. Explosions rever berated through the deck.\n\"Fire on decks eight through twelve,\" Cortana reported. \"We have lost plasma turret five. Distance to enemy ship six thousand kilometers and closing.\"\n\"Initiate a roll, Cortana. Make it thirty degrees per second. That'll spread out the damage over more surface area.\"\n\"Roll maneuver, aye. Attitude thrusters set to maximum burn.\"\nShe exhaled, and her holographic image flickered with irrita tion. \"This will make a targeting solution difficult, sir.\"\n\"Set firing range of plasma turrets for point blank,\" the Admi ral told her. Cortana hesitated for a full second. \"Yes, Admiral.\"\nThe space on the external cameras slowly began to spin as their ship spiraled toward their intended target. The Covenant cruiser came about to face them. Its plasma tur rets glowed like angry red eyes.\n\"Lieutenant, take the weapons station. Cortana, give us a firing solution and manual fire control.\"\nHaverson's hands moved quickly over the Covenant holo graphic control surfaces. \"Cortana has a firing solution, sir. Acti vate weapons?\"\n\"Stand by, Lieutenant.\" ERIC NYLUND  229\n\"They'll get off the first salvo, sir,\" Lieutenant Haverson said. Although his voice was calm, a drop of sweat trickled down his freckled cheek.\n\"I hope they do,\" the Admiral replied. \"It may be the only thing that saves us.\"\nLieutenant Haverson took a deep breath, nodding. \"Weapons standing by, sir.\"\n\"Cortana, make ready to vent the Gettysburg's launch bay.\"\n\"Aye, sir. Overriding bay door safeties. Distance to target three thousand kilometers.\"\nThe Covenant cruiser fired. Lances of energy launched and veered toward Ascendant Justice ... and arced away in cork screw spirals and right angles. The space between the two large masses was still tangled and fractured.\n\"Two thousand kilometers,\" Cortana reported.\n\"Stay on course,\" the Admiral said. \"And continue to hold fire.\"\nLieutenant Haverson's jaw clenched, and his hands trembled over the controls. The enemy cruiser filled the displays. Its plasma turrets re cycled and glowed a dull red.\n\"One thousand kilometers,\" Cortana announced.\n\"Admiral?\" Lieutenant Haverson asked.\n\"Hold your fire.\"\n\"Five hundred kilometers,\" Cortana said. \"Three hundred... two... collision imminent.\"\nThe Admiral's fist clenched. He barked, \"Fire! All turrets, fire!\nCortana, depressurize the launch bay and give us full power to port.\"\nAscendant Justice was a kilometer from the Covenant ship on an intercept course when it fired. The Gettysburg's launch bay doors opened and the air inside explosively decompressed propelling the conjoined ships to portjust enough to miss the cruiser. Plasma rocketed toward their target. There was no way to miss. White-hot fire impacted on the cruiser's hull, splashed across its surface, boiled off the armored skin, and corroded the skeletal framework underneath.\n\"Aft cameras,\" the Admiral ordered. 230 HALO: FIRST STRIKE On screen he saw fire explode out the opposite side of the cruiser. The warship tilted and rolled belly-up, plasma disinte grating the interior from stern to stem until it reached the fusion core. The ship detonated in a ball of flame. An instant later the explosion twisted and curved as the warped Slipspace field swept away all traces of the enemy ship. Lieutenant Haverson exhaled and wiped his brow. \"Excellent maneuvering, Admiral.\"\n\"Don't waste your breath on victory speeches yet, son.\" The Admiral scrutinized the tactical display and spotted the other ship. \"There. We've got a new target.\"\nHe pointed to a ship half obscured in the plasma fog: the car rier, intact, with a cloud of gnats swarming about it. Seraph fighters dived and intercepted plasma and meteor bolts that got too close. The resulting fireballs deflected the impacts from the hull.\n\"She's got a smart Captain,\" the Admiral muttered. \"So we can't use the same trick twice.\"\nFive explosions rattled Ascendant Justice, and the ambient blue light on the bridge flickered.\n\"Meteor impact,\" Cortana replied. \"We just lost plasma tur rets two and three. All functionality on decks eight and below has been lost. The structural integrity of this ship, sir, is in danger of imminent collapse.\"\n\"Another minute, Cortana,\" the Admiral told her and contin ued to search the tactical display. \"We either take out that carrier herewhere their shields can't regenerateor we face them in normal space.\"\nHe tapped the TAC map. \"Gotcha! Cortana, come about to zero-three-zero by one-four-five, calculate the fastest accelera tion and deceleration burns this ship can handle to get us to this object, and move this ship ASAP.\"\n\"Yes, Admiral.\"\nLieutenant Haverson looked at the map and located what the Admiral pointed at. \"That object is just part of a Covenant ship, the aft section of a cruiser.\"\nThe Admiral nodded. \"Exactly, Lieutenant. Cortana, how's the structural integrity of our ship's nose?\" ERIC NYLUND  231\n\"Sir? The nose?\" Cortana paused, then reported, \"Intact, sir. Most of the damage has been to the lateral\"\n\"Bring us into direct contact with that hunk of metal, Cortana.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" Cortana replied. Ascendant Justice accelerated toward the broken Covenant ship, and then slowed. The two warships touched; there was a slow grinding noise that echoed along the ship's frame.\n\"Contact,\" Cortana reported.\n\"Perfect,\" Admiral Whitcomb replied. \"New course three-two -zero by two-two-zero. Flank speed. Lieutenant, charge any plasma turret we have left. Cortana, get this ship ready for full reverse power.\"\nAscendant JusticeGettysburg turned and moved toward the Covenant carrierpushing the broken hull of the other ship be fore them. They accelerated on a collision course. The turrets on the Covenant carrier heated to white hotbut they held their fire.\n\"Eight thousand kilometers to enemy ship,\" Cortana announced.\n\"Hold this course, Cortana.\"\n\"Six thousand kilometers, sir.\"\n\"Stand by,\" the Admiral ordered and gripped the railing again with his sweating hands.\n\"Two thousand kilometers.\"\n\"Full reverse power now!\"\nThe engines rumbled, and the hull of Ascendant Justice shuddered. The wrecked Covenant ship on their nose screeched as its mo mentum carried it along at the faster velocity. It pulled free of Ascendant Justice ... tumbled directly toward the enemy carrier.\n\"Mass impact on carrier in four seconds,\" Cortana said.\n\"Three seconds.\"\nThe carrier fired its plasma at the incoming mass. Flames heated the wreckage, punched though its armor and hull, and melted the alloy. The mass, however, continued forward, shattered and molten but its velocity was undiminished. It crashed into the carrier and sent it spinning to starboard. 232 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The carrier's hull breached along a dozen rents, and atmosphere vented and fanned the red-hot metal into gold flames. The launch bays chained with explosions.\n\"Fire all weapons, Lieutenant!\"\nAscendant Justice fired its remaining turrets. Plasma cut into the carrier and sliced it to the core. Every deck flashed with fire and became an inferno.\n\"That's the best we can do,\" Admiral Whitcomb whispered.\n\"Cortana, get us out of here. Transition to normal space.\"\nCortana's holographic silhouette blackened with swarming calculations. \"Engaging Slipspace matrix.\"\nBlotches of inky black welled within the sea of fire. Tiny stars winked on within those pools of darkness. The plasma-charged atmosphere faded, and the enemy ships ablaze vanished.\n\"Cut all power to the engines,\" the Admiral ordered. Admiral Whitcomb gazed at the blackness and stars. \"Now, where the hell are we?\" SECTION 5\nMASSACRE AT ERIDANUS SECUNDUS  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX TIME-.DATE RECORD [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\\Date unknown\\ Captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in anomalous Slipspace bubble. The Master Chief woke. Consciousness, however, was a slight overestimation of his condition. His blurry vision came into focus slowly... but there was nothing to see except the interior of his visor. Amber status lights winked on. Pain washed over his feet, his right thigh, and his hand. Good. He was alive. He knew from previous experience that this was the tail end of shock ... and the stunning, numbing effects of that state were wearing off. He felt the familiar weight and reactive circuits of his MJOLNIR armor surrounding him. The coppery-tinged flavor of biofoam coated his mouth, so he also surmised that his injuries had been recently treated. And there was gravity. The press against his back was a great comfort to the Master Chief. The next time someone wanted him to go on a zero-gee op, he'd\n\"Welcome back,\" Cortana said, interrupting his thoughts. A faint light flickered on to his left. He turned onto his side. The burns on his extremities pro tested and shot lances of pain up his hand and feet. He was in a med bay. The lights were turned down low, and he saw that he was the only person occupying a recovery bed. Bio-monitors pulsed along one wall, displaying his vital signs and MRI snapshots. A holographic projection pad stood next to his bed. Cortana's ERIC NYLUND  235\ntiny figure, strobing with symbolic logic code, waved to him, and when he didn't immediately respond she crossed her arms impatiently. \"MRIs show no concussion, no subdural or epidural hematomas. You must have a thicker skull than I thought.\"\n\"Where am I?\"\n\"Deck thirty-two on the UNSC frigate Gettysburg\" Cortana told him. \"Or what's left of it, anyway.\"\n\"What happened?\"\nCortana sighed. \"Are you referring to what happened since I left you on Reach? Or the outcome of the Slipspace battle? Or do you mean what happened since that battle?\"\n\"The battle, first,\" he said and struggled to get up. \"I presume we won.\"\nStanding was too painful, though, and the strength seemed to have been drained from his muscles. He eased himself back to his original horizontal position. Cortana's pale blue light dimmed and her gaze dropped to the deck. \"Blue Team successfully repaired the main-engine conduit.\"\n\"I remember,\" the Master Chief murmured. \"The repair part of it, at least. There was an explosion...\"\n\"A plasma bolt,\" Cortana corrected. She sighed. \"I'm sorry, Chief, but only you and SPARTANS-093, -043, and -104 sur vived that blast.\"\nGrace, Will, and Fred were alive, but Li, Anton, and Warrant Officer Polaski had been killed in action. He remembered Po-laski's scream, then Anton's outline as the flash of white-hot fire swept over the hull.\n\"Acknowledged,\" he said as graciously as he could muster, but he heard bitterness give an edge to his voice. It struck him as odd that Polaski's death affected him as well. He'd seen thousands of UNSC soldiers die. She hadn't hesitated to transport Blue Team on a mission that was insanely danger ous. She had survived the battle of Reach, the crash landing on Halo, the Flood, and everything elsethen she had bravely vol unteered for this mission, too, and perhaps saved all their lives. She might have made a good Spartan. There were worse eulogies. The Master Chief sighed, called up his team roster on his heads-up display, and marked Anton and Li as Missing in Action. 236 HALO: FIRST STRIKE He paused to view all the others on that list; his first and best friend, Sam, was there ... and he hadn't even realized a dozen more had been listed as MIA. He saved the changes to the roster and closed the file.\n\"What about Kelly and Linda?\" he asked Cortana. Cortana looked up and flipped the hair from her luminous eyes. She paced a small circle on the holographic pad and then said, \"SPARTAN-087, Kelly, is recovering from second-degree burns on seventy-two percent of her body. Doctor Halsey has ac celerated tissue regrowth with dermacortic steroids. She should be fully healed in a matter of days... although her mobility will be severely hampered until then.\"\n\"And Linda?\"\n\"Accessing status.\" Cortana paused for a full second. \"Doctor Halsey has SPARTAN-058 currently in medical facility alpha, three decks above us. She still has her in a cryogenic state and is presently performing exploratory surgery. She has given me several orders to prepare the flash clone banks for replacement organs pending transplant.\"\n\"So she's alive?\" the Master Chief asked.\n\"Technically,\" Cortana replied, \"no.\" For a moment there was a look of genuine concern on her facebut it quickly vanished.\n\"The doctor and Admiral Whitcomb have debated the risk of at tempting to revive SPARTAN-058 before we reach a major medical facility. Doctor Halsey, I'm sure, will brief you when she has all the facts, Chief.\"\nJohn frowned at this lack of detail. He didn't appreciate Cor-tana's increasingly difficult attitude, one that had slowly shifted ever since she interfaced with the Forerunner computer system on Halo. He made a mental note to ask Dr. Halsey about Linda later... and he'd ask her about Cortana, too.\n\"All other hands on board are accounted for?\" the Master Chief asked,\n\"Yes, Chief. They are all engaged in repairs to the conjoined ships. We took tremendous damage in the expanded Slipspace from plasma bombardments and mass impacts. Both ships' super structures, however, remain intact. The Gettysburg's reactor is online and operating at sixty-seven percent capacity. Ascendant Justice's reactor is offline undergoing repairs. Five of our seven ERIC NYLUND  237\nplasma turrets require refit. And worst, Ascendant Justice's en gines are crippled. We have less than three percent operational thrust.\"\n\"Can the ship still jump to Slipspace? Are we stranded out here?\"\n\"A jump is possible,\" Cortana said. She shook her head the way an older sister might when her baby brother asked a naive question. \"It wouldn't do us any good, though. The alien artifact in Doctor Halsey's possession emits high levels of radiation in Slipspace. This unknown radiation even penetrates your suit's shields. I estimate lethal exposure in just under seventy-two hours. Also, that radiation would serve as a beacon for any Cove nant ships prowling Slipspace, searching for us.\"\n\"So we're stuck between systems.\"\n\"Negative,\" Cortana replied, and her voice took on a new chill. \"Admiral Whitcomb is quite adamant that we risk another Slipspace transitionregardless of the cost in human life. Other wise, it would be weeks before we would be able to contact UNSC High Command.\"\nHighCom? Two facts suddenly clicked into place: the Admi ral's need to contact the rest of the Admiraltyno matter the priceand Dr. Halsey's attempts to revive Linda.\n\"What's compelling the Admiral's tactics, Cortana?\"\nCortana's holographic outline softened. \"I told you this be fore, Chief, but apparently it did not stick in your semiconscious state.\" She then came into sharp focus and crossed her arms over her chest. \"The Covenant have discovered the location of Earth.\"\nThe Master Chief stood, suddenly wide awake and alert. He set aside his pain and fatigue.\n\"Explain,\" he demanded. Cortana outlined her discovery of the encoded subchannel within normal Covenant communiques. She explained how the Covenant's military orders were disseminated with startling effi ciently, and she then showed him symbols that represented the coordinates for Sol... and Earth. He stood mute and listened. The UNSC had worked so hard, for so long, to preserve this secret. It was only a matter of time;\nhe had always known that the Covenant had to find Earth sooner 238 HALO: FIRST STRIKE or later. He had, however, always thought it would be later ... and never now. The Master Chief stared at the tiny triangles, squares, dots, and bars that made up the spatial coordinates. \"We've seen these before, on Cote d'Azur.\"\n\"Yes. And according to Doctor Halsey, her team on Reach found similar markings in the underground vaults.\"\n\"What's the connection?\"\n\"Unknown.\"\nThe Master Chief put these facts aside for the moment; the greater meaning of the symbols and translation he'd leave up to Cortana and ONI. The only insight that mattered to him was that the Covenant were going to attack Earth.\n\"Was there a timetable or any other data encoded on the sub channel?\" he asked.\n\"Affirmative. There's a coordinated series of orders to Cove nant warships scattered across the galaxy to rendezvous with a mobile command-and-control base they call the 'Unyielding Hierophant.' When they have sufficient force, they will collec tively make the jump to Earth.\"\nThe Master Chief moved toward the medical bay's doors. They automatically parted. \"Where is Admiral Whitcomb?\"\n\"The Admiral is currently on the bridge,\" Cortana replied.\n\"But Doctor Halsey gave me strict orders that you are not to\"\n\"I don't take orders from civilians,\" he snapped. \"Not even her.\"\nThe Master Chief passed out of the medical bay and marched down the corridor.\n\"You know,\" Cortana said, her voice now coming from his helmet speaker, \"your attitude has degraded since we started this missioneven before the battle for Reach.\"\n\"Noted,\" he replied. The dim white light flooding the Gettysburg's passages was a welcome change from the blue illumination the Covenant used on their ships. John was glad to have his feet once more firmly planted on the raw steel decks of a human vessel, even if the walls of this passage were soot-stained. He entered the Command elevator and punched the button for the bridge. The gentle acceleration made new pain flare along ERIC NYLUND  239\nhis arms, and ligaments popped in his chestbut he gritted his teeth and banished the pain from his awareness. When the doors parted, the Master Chief paused, taking in the sad state of the Gettysburg's bridge. The front viewports had been blown out and recently replaced with welded plates of hull armor. A trio of monitors had been hastily bolted in place over them. Crystallized freeze-dried blood covered the navigation and ops consoles. Only three control stations were lit: engineer ing, computer status, and MAC ops. But most disconcerting was that only Admiral Whitcomb and Lieutenant Haverson were present on a bridge that usually needed a staff of thirty officers. The room was as still and empty as a tomb.\n\"Master Chief,\" Admiral Whitcomb said, slightly surprised.\n\"Sir.\" He stood at attention and snapped off a crisp salute.\n\"Permission to enter the bridge.\"\n\"Granted, son,\" the Admiral said.\n\"What's your status, Chief?\" Haverson asked. \"Doctor Halsey told us it would be days before you recovered.\"\n\"I'm one hundred percent, sir,\" he said. As if she had heard this statement, Dr. Halsey opened a COM channel, and a tiny video feed popped onto his heads-up display. Her glasses reflected an ambient orange light from wherever she was, and he could not see her eyes.\n\"John, I need to speak with you.\"\n\"I'm with Admiral Whitcomb and Lieutenant Haverson, ma'am. When I'm done I can speak with you.\"\nShe was silent a moment, then said, \"Very well.\" The COM winked off. The Master Chief felt a pang of regret for being so terse with her.\n\"Get over here, son,\" the Admiral said. He returned his atten tion to the clear plastic wall dotted with stars and the diamond symbols that represented UNSC military outposts in this region of space. \"We're in something of a tough spot.\"\nHe marched to the Admiral and Haverson and studied the chart with them. \"Cortana's briefed me, sir. The Covenant know Earth's location and are on the move, most likely preparing a massive attack.\"\n\"That's the gist of it, I'm afraid,\" Haverson said, and the Chief 240 HALO: FIRST STRIKE noticed deep circles of fatigue ringing the younger man's eyes.\n\"To complicate matters, we can barely navigate. We've been working around the clock to restore our ships, but we'd need an engineering crew of a hundred and a space dock to get these wrecks into fighting shape.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb frowned at the Lieutenant's dour assess ment and added, \"Another trick is that the crystal we picked up on Reach emits radiation in Slipspace. Enough to kill everyone after only a few more hours of exposure.\n\"But we're hanging on to the alien device. It changes the prop erties of Slipspace, as you already sawbut with one more twist. In the few minutes we were in that tangled version of Slip-space, we traveled here\"he drew a tiny circle on the map, centered on their position\"which under normal circumstances should have taken us days.\"\n\"We attempted to briefly jump again,\" Haverson added, \"but nothing extraordinary occurred. This unusually long jump may have been caused by the energy added to Slipspace by our battle with the Covenant.\"\n\"In any case,\" Admiral Whitcomb said, \"if we learn what makes this crystal tick, it'd give us a hell of an edge on the Covenant.\"\n\"I see, sir.\"\nThe Chief scrutinized their locationnot quite the definition of the middle of nowhere, but close. He noted that there were three star systems within the circle. Haverson also peered at the chart. He touched one of the star symbols within their range, and statistics scrolled along side the object. He sighed. \"This system was glassed in 2530, so there's no chance there would be anyone to help us there. And the other two systems. ..\" He shook his head. \"Uninhabited.\"\n\"Hell,\" Admiral Whitcomb said and tugged on his mustache,\n\"we pulled out of this region of space almost as soon as the war started. The Covenant came in, burned Eridanus and the other Outer Colonies, and then moved on without batting an eye.\"\n\"Eridanus?\" The Chief stepped closer and touched the data scrolling next to the tiny star. \"I know this place.\" He turned to the Admiral. \"And there is a human colony there, sirjust not one that the UNSC cares about anymore. If I had to guess, I'd bet ERIC NYLUND  241\nthat the Covenant never found it, either. We might be able to ex pedite repairs there.\"\nThe Admiral stared thoughtfully at him. \"You sure? Sure enough to bet our lives and Earth on that hunch, Chief?\"\nThe Master Chief looked again at the tiny dot on the map. It wasn't Eridanus he was thinking of. It was the surrounding asteroid belt ... and a mission he and his team had executed twenty years ago.\n\"Yes, sir. I'm sure.\" CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN TIME:DATE STAMP [[ERROR]] ANOMALY\\Revised date estimated 0450, September 12,2552, captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace en route to Eridanus system. Dr. Halsey buzzed the door open, and the Master Chief en tered the clean room.\n\"You wanted to see me, Doctor?\" He quickly looked the room overtaking in the adjoining surgical suites, and the strange or ange sterile-field lamps set every meter into reflective recessions in the tiled walls. Dr. Halsey had clamped five displays onto the arm of one of the contoured examination chairs in this room. She sat cross-legged in the chair and balanced a large alphanumeric-symbolic keyboard on her lap. Perched precariously on the side tray were Styrofoam cups of half-drunk coffee. She waved the Chief forward. \"I see you are ignoring sound medical advice by moving before you have fully healed.\"\n\"I'm fine, ma'am,\" he replied. She snorted in disbelief. \"JohnI've never known you to tell an outright lie. I'm picking up telemetry from your armor, right now.\" She swiveled one of the monitors on her chair so he could see erratic biosigns pulsing on the screen. \"What with the burns, contusions, fractures, and internal bleeding, you should be in shock. The only sleep you've gotten in a week was unconscious ness brought on by your wounds. And you say you're 'fine'?\"\nHe stood and said nothing.\n\"Very well. I suppose you know your limitations better than anyone else.\" She turned the display back around. \"I wanted to ERIC NYLUND  243\nspeak about your report on the alien constructHalo. I've pieced together a bit of the story based on Admiral Whitcomb's recounting of your adventures, Cortana's debriefing, and the mis sion logs of Locklear, Johnson ... and the curious partial mission log of one PFC Wallace Jenkins.\"\nThe Master Chief shifted uneasily.\n\"There are inconsistencies that I must resolve before we get back to Earth.\" She pushed her glasses higher onto the bridge of her nose. \"One of them is Sergeant Johnson.\" She tapped in commands on her keyboard. \"Please step closer, John. I want you to see this with me.\"\nThe Master Chief moved alongside her chair. His massive weight thudded through the thick deck plating. Two meters tall and half a ton of metal and somehow Dr. Halsey couldn't help thinking of him occasionally as the same little boy she had stolen from his parents in Elysium City. No. John had changed. She hadn't. She was the one who still carried the three-decade-old festering guilt. She took a deep breath and refocused her attention on the video records before her. On screen played mission logs that showed Covenant and Marines in firefights, the odd Forerunner architec ture in the interior of the Halo construct, and the terrifying omni-parasitic life-form known as the Flood. She replayed the mission record of Private Jenkins and the first Flood attack. John stiffened as Captain Keyes appeared on screen and as the Flood consumed the Captain and his squad. Sergeant Johnson was there, too, fighting and cursing ... until the hordes of tiny, podlike Infection Forms swarmed over him.\n\"The Sergeant survived,\" she said. \"The only human to have direct exposure to the Flood meta-organism and walk away.\"\n\"I know,\" the Master Chief whispered. \"I'm not sure how he survived. How could anyone live through that?\"\n\"That's the simple part,\" Dr. Halsey told him without looking up from her displays. She tapped a key, and the Sergeant's medi cal records flashed on screen. \"See, here?\" She touched a file dated three years before. \"He was diagnosed with Boren's Syndrome.\"\n\"I haven't heard of it,\" the Chief said.\n\"I'm not surprised. It's caused by exposure to high-yield 244 HALO: FIRST STRIKE plasma. Like the burst released by a Covenant plasma grenade. We don't see many casespeople usually die from the direct ef fects of those weapons long before these secondary symptoms manifest.\n\"Apparently, the Sergeant captured a crate of plasma grenades from the Covenant during the Siege of Paris IV He used them allreceived a commenda tion for bravery ... and a twelve-hundred-rad cumulative dose of radiation as an unanticipated bonus.\"\nJohn was silent for several minutes. Dr. Halsey wasn't sure if he was reading the computer files, contemplating her words, or trying to confirm all this on a private COM channel with Cor-tana. His impenetrable armor made discussions with normal social conventions nearly impossible. It irritated her, yet without that armor with its constant hydrostatic pressure and automated biofoam injectors, John would have literally fallen apart by now. For a fleeting moment she remembered when she had first read Alexander Dumas's Man in the Iron Mask. She had felt terror when the noble prisoner had been encased within that metal shell. How did John cope with the constant suffocating enclosure?\nThe Master Chief finally said, \"I don't see the connection be tween the Sergeant's sickness and his surviving the Flood.\"\n\"Boren's Syndrome,\" Dr. Halsey explained, \"is characterized by migraines, amnesia, and brain tumors . .. and without the proper treatment, death. It disrupts the electrical signals in a per son's nervous system.\"\n\"Is it treatable?\"\n\"Yes, but it requires thirty weeks of intensive chemotherapy. Which brings me to this.\" She hit the NEXT PAGE key and an offi cial \"Refusal of Treatment\" document appeared on screen. \"The Sergeant did not wait thirty weeks to get back and fight.\"\nThe Master Chief nodded, understanding the heroic, futile gesture. \"How did this disruption of his nervous system save him?\"\n\"I've deconvoluted the biosigns of the soldiers overtaken by the Flood. The parasite interfaces with a host by forcing a reso nant frequency match to each host's neural system.\" ERIC NYLUND  245\n\"And the Sergeant's nervous system is so jumbled that the Flood couldn't force a match?\"\n\"Correct,\" she said. \"Further blood tests show his system bearing traces of Flood DNAvery much dead and noninfec-tious, but some gene fragments are intact. I believe this is proof of a failed attempt to possess him. It also appears to have imparted him with some curious regenerative abilities, although I cannot yet fully confirm this side effect.\"\nThe Master Chief seemed to relax a notch from his usual ram rod stiff at-attention stature. This new information seemed to put him at ease. \"I think I see.\"\n\"No,\" Dr. Halsey told him, and she removed her glasses. \"You don't.\"\n\"Doctor?\"\n\"Discovering how he survived is not what I wanted to discuss. It's what happens next to Sergeant Avery Johnson.\"\nShe shut off her monitors and eased back into the chair. \"I've prepared two separate reports on this for ONI Section Three. The first has all relevant data on my analysis and the possible technology to counter an initial Flood infestation. The second includes the source material: Private Jenkins's and Sergeant Johnson's mission logs and the Sergeant's medical files.\"\nShe downloaded the reports onto two data crystals and ejected them from the port on the chair's arm. She set the clear cubes on the tray and gestured for John to take them. \"I leave it up to you which to deliver to Lieutenant Haverson.\"\n\"Why would I withhold any data, Doctor?\" the Master Chief asked and glanced at the crystals. Her eyes focused past him as she struggled to find the words to match her conflicting emotions. \"For a long time I had thought that we had to sacrifice a few for the good of the entire human race.\" She took a deep breath and let it go with a heavy sigh. \"I have killed and maimed and caused a great deal of suffering to many peopleall in the name of self-preservation.\" Her steely blue gaze found him. \"But now I'm not sure that philosophy has worked out too well. I should have been trying to save every single human lifeno matter what it cost.\"\nDr. Halsey pushed the tray bearing the data crystals toward the Master Chief. \"If you give ONI the first report, they may be 246 HALO: FIRST STRIKE able to find a countermeasure for the Flood. Maybe. They would have a slightly better chance, however, if you give them the sec ond report.\"\n\"Then I'll give them the second report.\" He picked up the crystal.\n\"Which will murder Sergeant Johnson,\" she said with a chill in her voice. \"ONI will not be satisfied to take a sample of blood. They will dissect him to find out how he resisted the Flood. It will be a billion-to-one shot that they'll ever replicate his unique medical conditionsbut they'll do it anyway. They will kill him because the trade-off is worth it to them.\"\nThe Master Chief picked up the other crystal and then stared at them both lying in his gauntleted hand.\n\"Is it worth it to you, John?\" she asked. He curled his hand in a fist and held it close to his chest. \"Why do you want me to make this choice?\"\n\"One last lesson. I'm trying to teach you something it's taken me all my life to realize.\" She cleared her throat of the lump thickening there. \"I'm giving you the chance to make the deci sion that I thought I couldn't make.\"\nShe glanced at the clock on her display. \"I'm sorry. Linda is almost prepped for surgery, and I have several things I must ac complish before then. You should go.\"\nThe Master Chief obediently turned and strode toward the exit, but halted in the doorway. \"Doctor, don't let her die again.\"\nHe then left the room. Dr. Halsey watched until he rounded the corridor and was gone. She hoped she saw John again before she did what she had to do, but she might not. Would the thought she had planted within him take hold? The gesture might be the only thing she could do to atone for what she'd done to him and the other Spartans. Such thoughts were luxuries when there were only three hours before Ascendant Justice exited Slipspace. There was too much to do before then. She turned all the monitors to face her and typed in the com mand to unsquelch Cortana.\n\"Lock the door,\" Dr. Halsey ordered Cortana. \"Boost counter-intrusion measures to level seven.\"\nERIC NYLUND  247\n\"Done,\" Cortana said. The irritation at having been silenced for the last five minutes was like barbed wire in her voice. \"What precisely was all that about? Teach the Master Chief a lesson?\nGiving him a choice? Save one man instead of billions?\"\nDr. Halsey ignored her and rapidly typed in commands on her keyboard. \"Give me access to your core coordinates four-four-seven.\"\n\"Block removed,\" Cortana said with an exasperated sigh.\n\"Are you going to answer my question?\"\n\"I'm tired of sacrificing others for the 'greater good,' \" Dr. Halsey replied. \"It never sto ps, Cortana ... and we're running out of people to sacrifice.\" She tapped in a final command for the memory-wiping worm function and punched the ENTER key.\n\"What\"\n\"I'm erasing your files on this matter. I'm sorry, Cortana, but with this, I cannot trust even you.\"\nCortana was silenced as the worm burned through her memory and obliterated all inquiries and recordings pertaining to Ser geant Avery Johnson.\n\"Cortana, give me an update on your core memory.\"\n\"Recompiling of routines has resulted in a memory-processing footprint reduction of sixteen percent, Doctor. Thank you. That gives me a little more room to think.\"\n\"I'm afraid that's all we dare risk,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"The Halo and Covenant AI data could become corrupted if I do more. And there is no place safe enough to store that information.\"\nDr. Halsey loaded mission reports from Admiral Whitcomb's, John's, and Fred's teams. She frowned at the official UNSC inci dent forms as their highlighted time, date, and location stamps scrolled across her screens.\n\"Are you done with the temporal analysis of these logs?\"\n\"Yes, Doctor. You were correct: There is a discrepancy be tween the Halo team and the team on Reach. The time stamps are off by an average of three weeks. I hypothesize that this was caused by my gravity-influenced Slipspace transition.\"\nThe corners of Dr. Halsey's mouth flickered into a smile. \"I'm disappointed, Cortana. That's a guess ... and an incorrect one at that.\"\n\"Really?\" Cortana replied with a hint of challenge in her tone. 248 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Do you have any data from your subsequent gravity-influenced translation to correlate?\"\nThere was a two-second pause, and then Cortana finally an swered, \"Yes, Doctor. There are no temporal displacements on those later jumps.\"\n\"As I suspected.\" Dr. Halsey tapped her finger on her lower lip as she thought. \"Plot the temporal irregularities on a space-time surface. Then call up my file on the spatial distortion generated by the alien artifact.\"\nOn the displays appeared two sets of nearly identical curved membranes that stretched about a central location and time:\nReach and the recovery of the strange artifact.\n\"That thing not only bends space,\" Dr. Halsey whispered to herself, \"but bends time as well.\"\n\"That's not possible,\" Cortana said. \"How could the artifact on Reach affect us on Halolight-years away?\"\n\"Don't think of it as physical distance,\" Dr. Halsey replied ab-sentmindedly, staring at the monitors. \"You and John were on an event path intersecting the crystal.\" She moved the curves over one another; the time and space surfaces were a perfect match. \"You had to be there at that place and time to recover us and remove the crystaltime and space warped to make that event occur.\"\nCortana gave a derisive laugh. \"That's circular logic, Doctor. It directly contravenes several well-established theories\"\n\"And it fits the known data.\" Dr. Halsey shut down the files containing her analysis. \"I see now why the Covenant are so in terested in this object. They mustn't be allowed to get their hands on it. Not them, and certainly not Section Three, either.\"\n\"Doctor?\"\nDr. Halsey turned to the screen with her memory-devouring worm and moved it to a new pointer in Cortana's core. She exe cuted the programdestroying the AI's memory of this conver sation, too.\n\"Give me an update on SPARTAN-058's condition, Cortana.\"\n\"Core temperature increasing at a steady point-two degrees Celsius per minute, attaining thirty-seven degrees in ten minutes.\"\n\"Very good. Prep and move the flash-cloned liver and kidneys from storage and ready surgical bay three.\" ERIC NYLUND  249\n\"Aye, Doctor.\"\nLinda's medical data winked on a display along with the entire Spartan roster: a long list of every Spartan's current operational status. Only a handful was left, almost every one of them listed as W OUNDED IN ACTION or M ISSING IN ACTION .\n\"No KIAs?\" Dr. Halsey murmured. She touched SPARTAN-034's entry. \"Sam is listed as missing in action. Why would that be? He died in 2525.\"\n\"ONI Section Two Directive Nine-Three-Zero,\" Cortana re plied. \"When ONI went public with the SPARTAN-II program, it was decided that the reports of Spartan losses could cause a crip pling loss of morale. Consequently, any Spartan casualties are listed as MIA or WIA, in order to maintain the illusion that Spar tans do not die.\"\n\"Spartans never die?\" she whispered. Dr. Halsey swiveled out of the contoured chair and pushed the monitors out of her way with a sudden violence. \"If only that were true.\"\nThere was so much to do and so little time left for her, the Spar tans, and the human race. She could do something, though. She'd save them one person at a time, starting with Linda, then Kelly, and then a handful of very important others. Of course, it meant betraying everyone who trusted herbut if that was the only way Dr. Halsey could save herself, and her soul, then she'd do it. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT\n1930 hours, September 12,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\\Captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace en route to Eridanus system. Black space churned with pinpricks of light; it split, and the Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice appeared in the Eridanus system. The Master Chief stood on the Gettysburg's bridge. He'd wanted to be on the medical deck when Dr. Halsey had finished with Linda, be there when she woke up . . .  or be there in case she never woke up. But he had to be here; this was his idea, and he was the closest thing they had to an expert on this place.\n\"Systems check,\" Admiral Whitcomb ordered. Lieutenant Haverson leaned over the ops console and flicked through several screens. \"Residual radiation fading,\" he said.\n\"Navigation systems and scanners coming back online.\"\nFred stood at the Engineering station and reported, \"Reactors at sixty percent. Slight hysteresis leak in coil ten. Compensating.\"\n\"Plasma?\" the Admiral asked as he settled into the Captain's chair. Cortana's ghostly image flickered onto the holographic pad next to the star chart.\n\"We can fire only one turret,\" she replied, and a wash of red flashed across her image then cooled to its normal deep blue.\n\"The other two functional turrets are offline; their magnetic coils refuse to align. It might be a side effect of the artifact's radiation.\"\n\" O n e  s h o t ...\" t h e  A d m i r a l  m u t t ered. He tugged on the end of his mustache and sighed. \"Then we'll just have to make it count.\" He turned to the Master Chief. \"Lead the way, son.\" ERIC NYLUND  251\nThe Master Chief stared at the three large monitors that had replaced the bridge's observation windows. Eridanus blazed in the center of one display; stars shone with a steady brilliance.\n\"Move us one-point-five astronomical units relative to the sun,\"\nhe said. \"Heading zero-nine-zero by zero-four-five.\"\n\"Destination one-point-five AU,\" Haverson said. \"Heading confirmed. Coming about.\"\n\"Plot an elliptical course parallel to the plane of the asteroid belt,\" the Master Chief added. \"Cortana, scan for asteroids ap proximately two kilometers in diameter.\"\n\"Scanning,\" she said. \"This might take some time. There are more than a billion moving objects, some of them in deep shadow.\"\n\"Tell me again about your old mission,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"You and the other Spartans were here before?\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" the Chief replied. \"Myself, Fred, Linda, Kelly, and Sam. It was the Spartans' first real mission: an infiltration into a rebel base. We captured their leader and got him to ONI for debriefing.\"\n\"I didn't even know the Spartans were around in 2525,\" Lieu tenant Haverson said.\n\"Yes, sir,\" Fred answered. \"We just didn't have MJOLNIR ar mor or the advanced weaponry we have today. We looked like any other NavSpecWar team.\"\n\"I very much doubt that,\" Haverson said under his breath. The Admiral raised one bushy eyebrow. \"You mean five peo ple made a zero-gee vacuum infiltration onto this space station?\nAnd then exfiltrated with a prisoner who happened to be the guy in charge of the place?\"\n\"Yes, sir. That was the basic plan.\"\n\"I suppose it went off without a hitch?\"\nThe Master Chief was silent for a moment as he remembered the dozens of dead people they had left behind on that base ... and he felt a pang of regret. At the time he hadn't thought twice about removing any obstacle that would have compromised his mission, human or otherwise. Now, after fighting for humanity for two decades, he wondered if he could shoot another human without a good reason. 252 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"No, sir,\" the Master Chief finally replied. \"There were enemy casualties. And we had to blow their cargo bay to escape.\"\n\"So,\" the Admiral said, tapping his fingers on the arm of the Captain's chair, \"they're not going to be happy to see a UNSC ship knocking on their front door?\"\n\"I wouldn't expect so, sir.\"\n\"Faint emissions on the D-band detected,\" Cortana said.\n\"Come about to new heading three-three-zero.\"\n\"Aye,\" Haverson said. \"Three-three-zero.\"\n\"It's gone, now,\" she said, \"but I definitely heard something\"\n\"Keep on this course,\" Admiral Whitcomb ordered. \"We'll run it down.\"\n\"There's one thing I don't understand,\" Haverson said as he squinted at the forward displays. \"Why are these people even here?\"\n\"Pirates and insurgents,\" the Admiral answered. \"They hijack UNSC ships, sell arms, and trade black market commodities. You're probably too young to remember, Lieutenant, but before the Covenant War not everyone wanted to be part of an Earth-ruled government.\"\n\"Rebels?\" Haverson said. \"I've read about them. But why con tinue to stay separated from UNSC forces when the Covenant War started? Surely their chances of survival would be better with us?\"\nThe Admiral snorted a derisive laugh. \"Some people didn't want to fight, son. Some just wanted to hide. . .  in this case, liter ally under a rock. Maybe they think the Covenant won't bother with 'em.\" A smile flickered across his face. \"Well, we're about to change all that for them.\"\nThe elevator doors parted, and Dr. Halsey stepped onto the bridge. She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She looked to the Master Chief as if she had just retimed from an in tense fightfatigued and shocked. He noticed a single drop of blood on the lapel of her wrinkled white lab coat.\n\"She's fine,\" Dr. Halsey whispered. \"Linda will make it. The flash-cloned organs took.\"\nThe Master Chief exhaled the breath he had been uncon sciously holding. He glanced over to Fred, who nodded to him. John nodded back. There were no words to express how he felt. ERIC NYLUND  253\nOne of his closest teammates, his friend, someone he had thought dead... was alive again.\n\"Thank you, Doctor Halsey,\" he said. She waved her hand dismissively, and there was a strange look in her eyesalmost as if she had regretted the success of her operation.\n\"Damn good news,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"We could use another hand on deck.\"\n\"Hardly,\" Dr. Halsey replied, suddenly looking much more alert. \"She'll need at least a week to recovereven with the bio-foam and steroid accelerants I have her on. Then she'll barely be able to get on her feet. She won't be combat-ready.\"\nGettysburg-Ascendant Justice moved into the plane of the as teroid belt, and three rocks appeared on the screens.\n\"This region is the source of the D-band signal,\" Cortana told them. \"There are three possible candidates based on the size pa rameters you gave me, Chief.\"\n\"Which one is it?\" the Admiral asked.\n\"Only one is rotating fast enough to generate a three-quarter-gravity internal environment,\" Cortana replied.\n\"That's it,\" the Master Chief replied and nodded toward the central display. The rock hadn't changed much in the last twenty years. Was it possible the place had been abandoned? The D-band transmission that Cortana detected could have been an automated signal, weak from years of drain on a single battery . . .  or the lure for a trap.\n\"Admiral?\"\n\"I know, Chief,\" he said. \"They've baited the hook and we're taking it... at least that's what it's supposed to look like.\" He chuckled. \"Cortana, power up every turret on our Covenant flagship.\"\nHer holographic body flushed blue-green and she crossed her arms. \"Let me remind you, sir, that of the three working turrets, two are offline. I have no way to aim the plasma. The magnetic\"\n\"I know, Cortana. But they\"the Admiral stabbed a finger at the displays\"don't know that.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" she said. \"Heating them up now.\"\n\"Power dropping,\" Fred warned the Admiral as he peered at the Engineering screens. \"Down to forty-four percent.\" 254 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Lieutenant Haverson,\" the Admiral barked, \"open a channel on the D-band. It's time we introduced ourselves.\"\n\"Aye, sir. Frequency matched and channel open.\"\nThe Admiral stood. \"This is the UNSC frigate Gettysburg\" he barked, his voice full of authority and colored with his Texas ac cent. \"Respond.\" And then he reluctantly added, \"Please.\"\nStatic filled the COM. The Admiral waited patiently for ten seconds, and then his boot started to tap on the deck. \"No need to play possum, boys. We're not here for a fight. We want to\"\nHe made a sudden throat-slitting motion toward Haverson, and the Lieutenant snapped off the COM. Tiny doors appeared in the two-kilometer-wide rock; from this distance they looked no larger than the pores on an orange. A fleet of ships launched, using the asteroid's rotational motion to give their velocities a boost. There were approximately fifty craft: Pelicans modified with extra armor and chainguns mounted on their hulls; sleek civilian pleasure craft carrying missiles as large as themselves; single-man engineering pods that sputtered with arc cutters; and one ship that was fifty meters long with oddly angled black stealth surfaces.\n\"That's a Chiroptera-class vessel,\" Haverson said, awed. \"It's an antique. ONI decommissioned them all forty years ago and sold them for scrap.\"\n\"Is it a threat?\" the Admiral asked. Lieutenant Haverson's forehead wrinkled as he considered.\n\"No, sir. They were decommissioned because they broke down every other mission. They had far too many sensitive components without a central controlling AI. The only reason I recall them at all is that they had the smallest operational Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine ever produced. No weapons systems, sir. Like I said, it's not a threat... it's a museum piece.\"\n\"But it has Slipspace capability?\" Dr. Halsey asked. \"Maybe we can use it to get to Earth.\"\n\"Unlikely,\" Haverson replied. \"All Chiroptera-class vessels were decommissioned by ONIcritical components removed and the ships' operating systems locked down so tight I doubt even Cortana could reactivate them.\"\n\"I wouldn't bet on it,\" Cortana muttered. ERIC NYLUND  255\n\"No weapons,\" the Admiral said and stared at the blocky ge ometry of the black ship. \"That's all I need to know.\"\n\"Their 'fleet,' \" Fred interjected, \"is deploying and taking up positions around us in a wide arc. Classic formation. They'll flank us.\"\n\"There's no real threat from these ships,\" the Admiral said to himself. \"They have to know we know that. So why bother with this show?\" He scowled at the displays, and his eyes widened.\n\"Cortana, scan the nearby rocks for radioactive emissions.\"\n\"Receiving video feed,\" Fred announced. The image of a man flickered on forward screen three. He was clearly a civilian, with long black hair drawn back into a ponytail and a pointed beard extending a full ten centimeters from his chin. He smiled and made an elegant bow. The Chief, for some reason he could not understand, took an instant dislike to him.\n\"Captain...,\" the man said in a smooth, resonant tenor voice.\n\"I am Governor Jacob Jiles, leader of this port. What can we do for you?\"\n\"First,\" Admiral Whitcomb said, \"I am not a Captain; I am a Vice Admiral, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. Second, you will order your fleet to reverse course and get out of my gun-sights before I forget my manners. And third, we insist that you make ready to let us dock on that rock of yours for emergency repairs and refit.\"\nJiles considered these requests and then threw his head back and laughed. \"Admiral, my sincere apologies for the confusion in your rank.\" He said this with a mocking grin. \"As for your other requests, I'm afraid I can't accommodate you today.\"\n\"And I respectfully suggest you reconsider, Mister Jiles,\" the Admiral said in a deadpan tone. \"It would be unfortunate for all of us if I have to insist.\"\n\"You're in no position to insist on anything.\" Jiles nodded to someone offscreen.\n\"Emissions detected!\" Cortana said. \"Neutron radiation spikes at seven by three o'clock. One by three o'clock. Picking up five more. They've got nukes.\"\n\"Hidden in the asteroid field,\" Admiral Whitcomb muttered.\n\"Very good. At least we're not dealing with fools.\"\n\"Indeed. We are not fools,\" Jiles replied. \"We have survived 256 HALO: FIRST STRIKE the long arm of Imperial Earth and Covenant intrusions.\" Some one off camera handed Jiles a data pad with a radar silhouette of Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice; numbers and symbols crawled alongside the picture. He hesitated and crinkled his nose, ap pearing confused at the odd configuration of mated craft. \"We are also not foolish enough to use overwhelming force when it isn't required. Your 'ship' is ready to fall apart on its own. I hardly think we need to waste one of our precious and expensive nuclear devices to stop you.\"\nWhitcomb set his hands on his hips. \"You need to rethink the tactical situation, Governor,\" he growled. \"Cortana, find me a targeta rock the same size as this 'gentleman's' base.\"\n\"Done,\" she replied.\n\"Burn it,\" he ordered.\n\"Aye, sir!\"\nA lance of plasma appeared on the starboard side of Ascen dant Justice, cut through space, and blasted the surface of a three-kilometer-long stone tumbling through the asteroid belt. Its surface heated to orange, yellow, and then white, sputtering blobs of molten iron and jets of vapor that caused the massive stone to spin faster. The plasma cut through the rock in a wide arcpunched through the opposite side. The uneven internal heat caused the rock to fracture and explode into fragments. The debris pinwheeled away, leaving helical trails of cooling iron and glittering metallic gas in its wake.\n\"Keep number two and three turrets hot,\" the Admiral said,\n\"and target their base.\"\n\"Done, sir.\"\nThe mocking smile had vanished from Jiles's face and the color had drained from his golden skin. \"Perhaps I was too hasty,\" he said. \"Where are my manners? Please come aboard and join me as my honored guest. Bring your staff, too.\" He made a quick motion to his crew off camera. The ships surrounding the Gettysburg turned and maneu vered back toward the rotating asteroid.\n\"Join me for dinner and we can discuss what you need. You have my word that no one will be harmed.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb chuckled. \"I have no doubt about that, ERIC NYLUND  257\nMister Jiles.\" He turned to Cortana. \"If we're not back in thirty minutes, blast them all to hell.\"\nThe Master Chief linked mission telemetry with Cortana as Jiles's men met them in the landing baysix men dressed in black coveralls with old MA3 rifles slung over their shoulders. They hesitated, then took tentative steps toward the Covenant dropship. The Chief didn't blame themhe'd have been careful, too, if he were moving toward an armed enemy vessel. One fear-induced pull of the trigger from any one of them, however, and this greeting would turn into a bloody firefight. He closed off his external speakers and asked, \"Cortana: tacti cal analysis.\"\nCortana replied: \"The asteroid is a typical ferric oxide composite. It's reinforced with a layer of Titanium-A armor. The armor is well camouflaged, but I spotted it with the Gettysburg's deep radar. They have a few sections with ablative undercoats as well. Radar's bouncing off those sectionsso would Covenant sensors. Impressive.\"\nGovernor Jiles strolled across the deck, flipped his black fur cap over one shoulder, and shook Admiral Whitcomb's hand. Jiles nodded to Haverson. His smile vanished, however, when he looked at the Master Chief and Fred in their MJOLNIR armor. Jiles recovered his grin and bowed low to Dr. Halsey.\n\"There are half a dozen guards armed with old MA-3 rifles and concealed plasma pistols,\" Cortana whispered. \"I'm also picking up a fireteam often in the side passages, watching.\"\n\"I saw them,\" the Chief muttered. \"They're overwatch and backup, just in case. No problem.\"\n\"This way, please,\" Jiles said, and with a flourish he led them through a narrow corridor. The Chief took one last look at the docking bay. It seemed smaller than he remembered it. Twenty years ago he and his team had blown off the external doors, stolen a Pelican, escaped, and left a dozen men dead on the deck. His team had accomplished that mission without MJOLNIR armor. It hadn't been developed yetso there was no way any one here could have known that John and Fred were part of the team that had extracted the last \"governor\" of the base, the 258 HALO: FIRST STRIKE traitor Colonel Watts. Yet Jiles's guards glared at John as if they knew everything. As the Master Chief stepped into the corridor, Cortana in formed him: \"This passage is from a UNSC cargo vessel, ripped out and reinforced with a bulkhead every ten meters. Airtight and tough. This place can take a lot of damage before buckling.\"\n\"Good place for an ambush, too,\" the Master Chief said, and kept one eye on his motion tracker. They were being followed. Three contacts behind them, and three ahead, keeping pace. The Master Chief had an urge to step in front of the Admiral and Dr. Halsey and clear the passage with a burst of fire. But this situation required diplomacy, something John was ill suited for. He wished the Admiral had taken John's suggestion to bring more Spartans with him. Or at least to have two of them infiltrate while the Admiral and this Jiles spoke. They were led to a circular room. Half the far wall retracted, revealing thick red velvet curtains, which also slowly pulled away and exposed the half-meter-thick windows that overlooked the asteroid field. Beyond was a gentle ballet of rocks tumbling, rotating, and bouncing off one another in slow motion. Men carried in a long table, threw a white silk cloth over it, and smoothed it down. Then a succession of women carried in silver trays heavy with fruit, steaming meats, and chocolates, and a dozen decanters sloshing with amber, ruby, and clear liquors. Padded chairs were brought in for them all. \"Please.\" Jiles motioned toward Dr. Halsey and he pulled out a chair for her.\n\"Relax and sit down.\"\nThe Master Chief took up a position by the door where he had a clear view of the entire room. Fred made sure the corridor was empty and then sealed the door. The Chief checked behind the curtains for hidden men, sur veillance devices, or false passages.\n\"Cortana?\" he whispered.\n\"Looks clear,\" she said. \"I'm not detecting anything. Walls are half a meter of Titanium-A.\"\n\"We're clear,\" the Master Chief told the Admiral. Dr. Halsey finally sat in the proffered chair, smoothed her ERIC NYLUND  259\nskirt, and Jiles gently slid the chair under her. He offered her a plate of plump strawberries, which she graciously declined. Haverson took one of the strawberries, however, and bit into it.\n\"Delicious,\" he remarked. Jiles inclined his head. \"Our hydroponics facility\"\n\"With respect, Governor, there's no time for chitchat,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"The clock's ticking. In more ways than you might realize.\"\nJiles sighed and sat in a chair covered in gold leaf and black velvet. He threw his legs over one of the chair's arms and laced his hands behind his head. \"You have my complete and full at tention, Admiral.\"\n\"Good,\" Whitcomb said, frowning at Jiles's disregard for the seriousness of their predicament. Admiral Whitcomb laid it out for him in short, easy-to-understand sentences: the fall of Reach, the Covenant's search for an alien technology, the chase and battle in Slipspace, and the unclassifiable radiation that would lead the Covenant through Slipspace. . .  to here. As he spoke, Governor Jiles set his feet onto the floor, and his relaxed position solidified. He leaned forward and set his elbows on the table. His congenial smile slowly tightened into a scowl.\n\"Bloody Elisa!\" he shouted, jumped to his feet, and swept a decanter off the table. The glass shattered and ruby-colored brandy spattered across the hardwood. John and Fred had Jiles instantly in their gunsights, but the Admiral held up his hand.\n\" 'Bloody Elisa'?\" the Chief asked Cortana.\n\"The patron saint of vacuum,\" the AI replied. \"She's popular among civilian pilots.\"\n\"I'd guess,\" the Admiral told Jiles, \"that we have less than a day before they find us.\"\n\"And what,\" Jiles said slowly, controlling his anger, \"do you suggest / do about it?\"\n\"That's the simple part of all this, Governor. You can help us, or you can try to kill me and my crew, and sell our ships for whatever the black market will bear. They should yield quite a profit... provided the Covenant let you live long enough to cash in.\"\nThe Admiral grabbed a decanter, poured a glass of wine, took 260 HALO: FIRST STRIKE a sip, and nodded appreciatively. \"Now, assuming you manage to outwit our ship's AIwhich I very much doubtand assum ing further you somehow disable our ship's weapons before our AI blows your base to atomswhich I also doubtthen you'll have a Covenant fleet to contend with. And I don't think they're going to be sociable, sit down, drink your wine, and discuss this like gentlemen.\"\nJiles placed his face into his hand and rubbed his temples.\n\"Maybe you're thinking,\" the Admiral said, \"that you've kept this operation of yours hidden this long. From the UNSC. From the Covenant. Why should this be any different? Well, we found you easily enough. I don't think the Covenant will blink at over turning every rock in this asteroid belt to find you.\"\nGovernor Jiles picked up a new bottle and filled a glass to the brim. He downed the drink in one gulp. \"And the other option?\"\nhe asked coldly. \"I help you? And together we fight the Cove nant? If they come in the force you claim, what difference will it make?\"\n\"If you help us,\" the Admiral said, \"get my ship repaired so we can make the jump to Earth, I'll evacuate all your people. I promise you and your crew amnesty.\"\nJiles laughed. His cordial smile returned, and he asked, \"Do you have any proof of any of this? That the mighty Reach is gone? That you have a new alien technology? Or that the Cove nant are on their way here?\"\n\"Chief!\" Cortana cried in alarm. On his helmet's heads-up display, a schematic of the Eridanus system appeared. A NAV marker flashed near the third planet. It expanded into the familiar curved radar silhouette of a Covenant cruiser.\n\"We have company,\" the Master Chief said. He strode to the window and pointed. \"There.\"\nThe blue glow of Covenant engines flared as the ship came about and accelerated toward the asteroid belt.\n\"There's your proof, Governor,\" Admiral Whitcomb growled. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE\n2000 hours, September 12,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\\Aboard hybrid vessel Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice, station-keeping in Eridanus system. Admiral Whitcomb, the Master Chief, Fred, and Lieutenant Haverson bounded off the elevator and onto the bridge of the Gettysburg. Cortana's image nickered on the holographic pad near the star map. \"Covenant cruiser is only two hundred thousand kilome ters away,\" she reported. \"Closing fast on an intercept course.\"\nThe Admiral barked orders: \"Fred, take the Engineering sta tion, Haverson on NAV, and Chief, you're on Weapons Station One; get it up and running and see if there are any systems we overlooked. Lieutenant, move us away from the enemy on course one-eight-zero by two-seven-zero.\"\n\"One-eight-zero by two-seven-zero, aye,\" Haverson replied. He strapped himself into the NAV station, and his fingers danced over the controls. \"Coming about, Admiral.\"\nGettysburg-Ascendant Justice turned and moved deeper into the asteroid field. The Master Chief stepped up to Weapons Station One. He was cross-trained on the weapons ops system of every class of UNSC warship, but he'd never actually fired any shipborne weapon be fore. The MAC gun on this frigate was one of the largest weapons in the human arsenal. He wished they had rounds for ithe would've given anything to launch one of the six-hundred-ton de pleted uranium projectiles at that Covenant cruiser. He carefully tapped commands on the keyboard, and the darkened screen 262 HALO: FIRST STRIKE came to life. The Chief scrutinized the Gettysburg's weapons inventory. Governor Jiles appeared on the number three forward display, his face placid except his lips, which pressed together so tightly that they were only a thin white line of concentration.\n\"Governor,\" the Admiral said. His voice was smooth and reso nated with the absolute authority of command. \"I'll maneuver the Gettysburg and take a shot at extreme range with our plasma turret. That will blow down that cruiser's shields. I want you to coordinate with our AI and fire one of your nukes while their shields are downblast them to bits.\"\n\"A brilliant tactic,\" Jiles said, and his lips parted in a mocking smile. \"Except for one problem. We have no nuclear weapons. The ones you detected in the asteroid field were only neutron ra diation emitters.\" He shrugged. \"We bluffed.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb cursed quietly. \"Very smart, Jiles.\"\n\"You'll just have to use the seven plasma turrets on your ship, Admiral,\" Governor Jiles remarked. \"That should be more than enough to\"\nThe Admiral chuckled, and he smiled in the same mocking fashion as Jiles. \"We bluffed, too. We only have one turret... and it's not working so well.\"\n\"It appears we have both overestimated the other,\" Jiles said.\n\"Under different circumstances this might be amusing.\"\n\"Indeed.\" Whitcomb addressed Cortana. \"Try and hail that Covenant cruiser. Maybe we can bluff them, too.\"\n\"They're responding,\" Cortana replied. \"Religious rhetoric aside, they're demanding that we stand down and hand over the artifact or they will open fire.\"\n\"Give them our answer,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"Fire when ready, Cortana.\"\nThe turret on Ascendant Justice warmed, and plasma col lected and focused into a thin ruby line that lanced forward and unraveled into a wide spiral that coursed over the bow of the Gettysburg. The superheated gases boiled away patches of remaining Titanium-A armor and revealed the ship's skeletal superstructure.\n\"What the hell happened?\" the Admiral shouted. ERIC NYLUND  263\n\"Analyzing now,\" Cortana replied. \"Plasma turret offline. Stand by, sir.\"\n\"I can move my fleet to engage the enemy,\" Jiles said uncertainly. Admiral Whitcomb surveyed the forward screens: Jiles, the approaching Covenant cruiser, and the asteroid field full of rocks floating on invisible currents. He narrowed his eyes, then said: \"They'd blast you out of space before you could sneeze, Governor. And you don't have a weapon that'll get through their shields. NoI'll draw them off. Evac your people.\"\n\"Understood, Admiral.\" One of Jiles's eyebrows gracefully arched, and he bowed. \"Thank you.\"\n\"Fred, move us at best speed. Haverson, come to course zero-nine-zero. Get us closer to that moon-sized chuck of stone, twenty thousand kilometers to port.\"\n\"Flank speed,\" Fred  said. \"Aye, sir.\"\n\"Course change, aye,\" Haverson replied. The Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice glided toward the large rock, and the Covenant cruiser rapidly closed on them. The enemy ship vanished on the displays as they rounded to the dark side of the asteroid.\n\"New course. Come about to one-eight-zero,\" the Admiral or dered. \"Full emergency power to the engines and answer all stop.\"\nThrasters spun the ship around, and vibrations rumbled through the weakened hull as it slowed and came to a stop, hidden behind the rock.\n\"Answering all stop,\" Fred announced.\n\"Sir, we are dead in space,\" Lieutenant Haverson said and nervously ran his fingers through his slicked-back red hair. \"Tra ditional tactics advocate speed and maneuverability in ship-to-ship combat.\"\n\"Not in this asteroid field,\" Admiral Whitcomb replied. \"But you make a good point about staying maneuverable. Align our nose toward the center of mass of the planetoid, and back us up, one half reverse. Keep us out of the enemy's gunsights as long as you can.\"\n\"Firing ministers. Answering one half reverse,\" Fred said. 264 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The ship slowly angled toward the center of the large asteroid and backed away.\n\"Cortana?\" the Admiral asked. \"Do we have a weapons turret or not?\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Cortana said, \"but the turret's magnetic coils that shape and aim the plasma charge have overloaded.\"\nThe Admiral inhaled and sighed explosively. \"Master Chief, you got anything on Weapons Station One?\"\n\"Archer missile pods depleted,\" the Master Chief answered. He scanned the display, hoping he had missed something. \"No rounds for the MAC gun. All Shiva nuclear missiles fired as well, sir. The only things left in the tubes are three Clarion spy drones.\"\n\"No plasma and no missiles,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"We might as well open an air lock and throw rocks at 'em.\"\nThrow rocks? The Master Chief wondered if they could fash ion a slug to shoot from the MAC cannon. Let its magnetic coils propel the mass to supersonic velocities and Magnetic coils?\n\"Sir,\" the Master Chief said. \"We may have a way to fire the plasma turret after all. The Gettysburg's MAC gun has seventeen superconducting coils. Cortana might be able to use them to shape and aim the plasma.\"\n\"Yes,\" the Admiral said, nodding.\n\"Maybe,\" Cortana amended and stared off into space, think ing. \"Calculating field strength drop-off now.\" The mathematic symbols scrolling across her body increased threefold. She frowned. \"This would be easier if the Gettysburg was oriented bottom to Ascendant Justice's top. I'll have to guess at the inter ference from the intervening hulls, but it still might work. Chiefpower it up. I'll need to recalibrate the pulse generation to match the plasma output.\"\n\"MAC gun magnetic fields coming online,\" the Master Chief said as he tapped in commands. \"Rerouting power from Ascen dant Justice's reactor.\"\n\"We won't have enough power to move fast if we have to,\"\nFred remarked, watching the energy fed to the Gettysburg's en gines drop to nothing.\n\"That's okay.\" The Admiral absentmindedly tugged at the end ERIC NYLUNO  265\nof his mustache. \"We wouldn't be able to outrun that Covenant cruiser even if we had full power. Our only chance is to take them out before they take us out. Launch those Clarion spy drones, Chief. Target the region abeam that planetoidso we can see around the corner.\"\nThe Master Chief kept one eye on the fluctuating magnetic field strengths of the superconducting coils as he programmed a course for the spy drones. Set to either side of the large asteroid, they'd effectively give them another set of eyes to see past the obstructing rock.\n\"Drones away,\" the Chief said and launched them; their feath ery propellant trails vanished into the distance.\n\"Cortana,\" Admiral Whitcomb said, \"slave your targeting sys tem to the feed from those drones. I want a clean shot fired before the cruiser crosses that rock's shadow and shoots at us.\"\n\"Working,\" she replied. \"Getting magnetic field variations from the Ascendant Justice-to-Gettysburg energy transfer.\"\n\"Drones in position and images online,\" the Master Chief said and pushed the video feed to the forward screen. Doubled images of the Covenant cruiser appeared. Along its three bulbous sections, lateral plasma conduits glowed and every turret bristled with energy, ready to fire. Their laser batteries oblit erated the large asteroids in their path, while the smaller ones sim ply bounced off their shields. The warship accelerated as it entered the gravitational influence of the planetoid between them.\n\"They're going to slingshot around,\" the Admiral said. \"Cor tana, give me your best targeting solution and fire at will!\"\nCortana narrowed her eyes and calculations flashed across her body. \"Extrapolating their course and speed,\" she breathed. \"I got them.\"\nOn Weapons Station One the Master Chief saw the accelera tion coils of the Gettysburg's MAC pulsethen redline with power. Magnetic field lines ballooned, overlapped, and distorted asymmetrically. Static washed across his MJOLNIR armor's shields, and every electrically conducting surface on the bridge sparked as the magnetic lines of force penetrated through the ship and toward the turret on Ascendant Justice. Their only working turret heated, and plasma gathered at its 266 HALO: FIRST STRIKE tip; streamers looped upon themselves like tiny solar flares, vi brated, intensified to orange and then blue-white.\n\"Almost there,\" Cortana cried. \"Hang on.\"\nThe ball of squeezed plasma imploded. It instantly boiled away a thirty-meter section of armor and hull from Ascendant Justice; the plasma vanished for a split secondthen a bolt of coiled energy corkscrewed toward the edge of the planetoid. The Covenant cruiser rounded the planetoid, targeted the Get tysburg, and fired. Cortana's single shot impacted on the nose of the enemy craft first. The cruiser's shield flashed solid silver for a moment and was gone. The supercompressed plasma tore into the hull of the warshipexploding the metal where it touched. The plasma forked and detonated outward as it chained through the vessel. Secondary explosions rippled through the alien ship's hull. Edges of its shattered hull glowed red and then white hot as their superheated atmosphere vented. The bolt ripped through the engineering compartment, shattered their reactorsand the entire warship blossomed into fire and ejected trails of golden sparks and dying flickers of static electricity. The five plasma bolts that the Covenant cruiser fired at the Gettysburg dispersed into a red haze. There was no longer any magnetic force to shape and guide them to their intended target. The bridge crew watched the explosions fade from the for ward screens. The Admiral said, \"Status?\"\nFred tapped the screen of the Engineering station and re ported: \"Engines and reactor offline. That magnetic pulse did something to them.\"\nStatic washed over Weapons Station One as the Master Chief looked up and said, \"MAC accelerating coils intact. Drone one destroyed. Retrieving drone two, sir.\"\nCortana's holographic presence was missing, but her voice sounded triumphantly through the bridge speakers: \"Turret number three destroyed. But if we ever get any of the other six turrets in working order, we'll have a formidable arsenal.\"\n\"We may not get that chance,\" Lieutenant Haverson remarked as he bent over the NAV station. \"Contacts inbound. Small ships. Dozens of them. Transferring to the forward screens.\"\nArmored Pelicans, exoskeleton welders, a handful of Long- ERIC NYLUND  267\nsword singleships, and the odd stealth Chirvptera-class vessel appeared on screen.\n\"Jiles's fleet,\" Haverson stated. \"And he has us exactly where he wants usdead in the water.\"\n\"Incoming transmission,\" Cortana said. \"Piping it through.\"\n\"Admiral Whitcomb?\" Jiles's rich and resonant voice flooded the bridge. \"Can I be of some assistance? A tow, perhaps, back to our base so we can expedite repairs to your ships?\"\n\"That would be most kind of you,\" the Admiral said and eased back into the Captain's chair. Two Laden-class cargo ships came alongside the Gettysburg and attached; their engines rumbled.\n\"I don't understand,\" Haverson whispered. \"He had us.\"\n\"No, he didn't,\" Admiral Whitcomb replied. He scowled and added, \"Governor Jiles may not like it, but he needs us now. The Covenant aren't going to send just one ship. After this one goes missing for a while, there'll be more. A lot more. This is only the start of the battle, son.\"\nJohn and his six remaining teammates sat in the Gettysburg's machine shop. The room was large enough to fit a Longsword in side, and the walls, ceilings, and deck had robotic arms tipped with welders, multitools, and hydraulic presses. Three of the arms had high-intensity spotlights directed onto the walls and provided a clear, cool, indirect illumination that the Master Chief found soothing after having one too many plasma blasts etch his retinas. They were here because Admiral Whitcomb had ordered the Spartans to repair their equipment and get at least six hours of sleep. The machine shop was a solid room, reinforced, and un likely to breach in case they were attacked again. Linda sat in the corner with her helmet, back torso, and shoul der MJOLNIR armor sections removed. Fred and Will used two robotic arms to hold her armor in place. They swapped out damaged plates and components with the spare parts they'd found in ONI's CASTLE facility on Reach. Angry red scars crisscrossed Linda's pale bodythe only external trace of her double transplant operation. Against Dr. Halsey's advice for strict bed rest, Linda had hobbled down here 268 HALO: FIRST STRIKE with her team. She sat cross-legged before a disassembled SRS99C sniper rifle and selected gyro compensators, optics, and adaptive texture barrel sheaths. Linda proceeded to re assemble the precision-made weapon with the care of a loving mother caressing her newborn child. Without looking up from her rifle she said, \"Now I know what you have to do to get a couple of days' R-and-R in this outfit.\"\n\"I heard,\" Fred remarked, \"that you spent the whole time sleeping, too.\"\n\"That's why she likes to snipe,\" Will replied. \"I caught her snoring last time she posted in that tower on Europa.\"\nJohn was glad they could joke about her return from the dead. He couldn't bring himself to join in, though. He had accepted the mantle of command, and CPO Mendez had taught him to re press his external emotional reactions to preserve his authority. Right now, he resented that. Kelly rolled over and woke up. She nudged Grace, and they sat up, shaking their helmets. \"0400,\" Kelly told them. \"That was six hours.\"\n\"Felt like a fifteen-minute nap,\" Grace muttered. \"I just closed my eyes. You're kidding, right?\"\nKelly looked over to Linda and drew her two fingers across her helmet in the smile gesture. Linda returned a rare, bare smile to her. The smile looked odd to John. He wanted to smile, too, but nothing muchapart from Lindain a long time had given him cause: not the hordes of rebels crawling over and through the Gettysburg whom Admiral Whitcomb trusted too much, nor the imminent return of Covenant forces before their engines and weapons could be repaired. .. and certainly not the hundreds of dead crew members aboard the Gettysburg, whom they had col lected and placed in cargo bay seven. The slight click of metal on metal alerted every Spartan in the room. Pistols drew in a blur of motion and rifles leveled at the side hatch as it eased open with a squeak. Sergeant Johnson and Corporal Locklear stood in the doorway frozen.\n\"No one told me this was target practice,\" Locklear muttered.\n\"Else I woulda painted a bull's-eye on my chest.\" ERIC NYLUND  269\n\"Master Chief,\" the Sergeant said. \"Reporting as you requested.\"\nJohn nodded and lowered his gun, as did the other Spartans.\n\"Come in, Marines.\"\nAs he holstered his weapon, John's hand brushed against the belt compartment that held Dr. Halsey's data crystals. He hadn't decided which to give to Lieutenant Haverson. Did he sacrifice the Sergeant to save billions from potential Flood infestation?\nDid it even matter? He had every reason to believe that the Flood had been destroyed with Halobut what if he was wrong?\n\"I wanted you both down here to help us discuss our tactical options,\" John told them. The COM pulsed to life. Dr. Halsey said, \"Master Chief?\"\n\"Yes, Doctor?\"\n\"I need Kelly to report to Medical Four,\" she said. \"She re quires one last injection of dermacortic steroids. And I could use her assistance on another matter.\"\nJohn nodded to Kelly. She slowly stretched, stood, sighed, and marched out of the room. \"I'll be right back,\" she said, flexing her burned hands.\n\"Don't plan the overthrow of the Covenant Empire without me.\"\n\"She's on her way, Doctor.\"\nThe COM snapped off. The Master Chief turned to his Spartans and the Marines.\n\"Let's go over what we know and see if we've missed anything any way to exploit the enemy's plan.\" He set down a data pad with a star map glittering upon its surface.\n\"The Covenant are on their way to Earth,\" he told them. \"They are gathering at a battle station and then jumping en masse to the Sol system.\"\n\"What happens then?\" Fred asked.\n\"Assuming we get to Earth first,\" Linda answered, \"our Fleet will be waiting for them, and\"she pulled back the bolt on her rifle with a clack \"they'll give them a warm reception.\"\n\"But what chance will our forces have?\" Will asked. There was no fear in his voice, just cool logic. \"You saw Cortana's re port. There will be hundreds of Covenant warships. I don't think our Fleet or even Earth's orbital MAC platforms can repel a force that powerful.\" f\n270 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"No,\" the Chief quietly said. \"They can't win. They'll try. But the Covenant will eventually take down one of the orbital MACs, slip through, and pick off the ground-based generators. Just like on Reach.\"\nFred visibly flinched. Locklear twisted the red bandanna he had tied on his biceps.\n\"So we get to watch another fight in space?\" he hissed. His fists trembled with barely checked rage. \"There has to be a way to get to those bastards firston the ground where we can win. Hell, I'd even take my chances in hand-to-hand combat. Anything but floating in zero gee and watching Earth get burned.\"\n\"What about our original mission?\" Linda asked. \"Find the Covenant home world?\"\n\"Our priority has to be to warn Earth,\" the Chief answered.\n\"Admiral Whitcomb would insist... and he has the authority to scrub our mission.\"\n\"And there's no ground between here and Earth where we can take the fight to them,\" Locklear said. He unclenched his fist and dropped his gaze to the deck. \"Sometimes,\" he whispered, \"I really hate this war.\"\nSergeant Johnson worked his mouth but said nothing. He set his hand on Locklear's wide shoulder and whispered, \"Stand tall, Marine. Try to\"\nThe Sergeant's gaze fell on the data pad and the star map.\n\"Hang on a second. What was it you said about no ground to fight on between here and there?\" He grinned and picked up the data pad. \"What's this?\" He tapped a dot on the map, squinted, and read the tiny words. \"This... 'Uneven Elephant'?\"\n\"Unyielding Hierophant,\" the Chief corrected. \"According to Cortana, it's a command-and-control center, a mobile space platform where the Covenant fleet will rendezvous before their final jump to Earth.\"\n\"Well, there's your ground,\" Sergeant Johnson said. \"On this\n'elephant'thing.\"\nWill got up and walked over to the data pad. \"It fits with the timetable. This station is on the way to Earth.\"\nFred offered, \"We can drop out of Slipspace in a smaller craft. Go in and\"\n\"And do what you Spartans do best,\" Locklear said. \"Infil- ERIC NYLUND  271\ntrate, kill, and blow shit up. If there's room in this operation for an ODST, pencil me in.\"\nThe Master Chief looked to the data pad, then to his team, Locklear, and the Sergeant. They were right: For the first time, they'd know when and where the Covenant would be. If they hit the enemy hard enough, they could stop them before the Cove nant hit Earth... and delay Armageddon. The Master Chief gave rapid-fire orders:\n\"Fred, Will: Get Linda's suit back together ASAP.\n\"Locklear, you're on weapons detail again. Scrounge every pistol, rifle, ammo bag, and scrap of explosives on this vessel and haul it to Ascendant Justice's launch bay.\n\"Grace, Linda, and Sergeant Johnson: Get that Covenant drop-ship ready for its last flight. Reinforce the hull for a Slipspace-to-normal-sp ace transition.\n\"And I'll take this plan to Admiral Whitcombmake him see that it's the only way. We're going to take this fight to the Cove nant. We're going to launch a first strike.\" CHAPTER THIRTY\n0440 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\\Aboard hybrid vessel Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg, station-keeping in Eridanus system. Time was running out. Dr. Halsey could feel the Covenant nearly upon them and her window of opportunity shrinking to a pinpoint. Only a few more things to take care of before she could gobefore she started something she couldn't stop. Someone approached the clean room, heavy footfalls that could only be a Spartan in MJOLNIR armor. Kelly appeared and waved from the other side of the glass partition that separated the clean room from the rest of Medical Four. Dr. Halsey buzzed her in.\n\"Reporting for treatment, Doctor,\" she said. Kelly hesitated a moment as she glanced about at the unsterile environment the doctor had been working in: Styrofoam cups littered the surgical instrument trays, thermal printout paper curled from the biomonitorsand the radiation-emitting crystal they had found on Reach sat on a nearby instrument tray.\n\"I thought that crystal was in the reactor room,\" Kelly said.\n\"Behind plenty of radiation shielding.\"\n\"It's perfectly safe,\" Dr. Halsey said, \"as long as we're in nor mal space.\" She picked up the crystal and slipped it carelessly into her lab coat pocket.\n\"Lie down please, Kelly.\" The doctor gestured to the con toured treatment chair. \"Just a few more injections and we're done with your burn therapy.\"\nKelly sighed and eased herself onto the reclined chair. ERIC NYLUND  273\nDr. Halsey removed a cloth covering a pair of injectors. She clicked them into the ports on Kelly's MJOLNIR armor ports that threaded directly into her subclavian and femoral veins.\n\"Keep doing your physical therapy, and the dermacortic steroids will remove most of the scarring and restore your full mobility within another week,\" she explained.\n\"A week?\" Kelly growled and struggled to rise. \"Doctor, I need to be one hundred percent ASAP. The Chief has a mission\"\nDr. Halsey activated the injectors, and they hissed their con tents into Kelly's body. She relaxed and slumped back on the ta ble, unconscious.\n\"No, Kelly,\" Dr. Halsey whispered. \"You're not going on the Chief's mission. You're going on mine.\"\nThe sedative in her bloodstream would knock out an ODST in peak condition for the better part of a day. Halsey estimated that Kelly would be unconscious for a little more than two hours. By that time they'd both be far enoug h along that ther e'd be no turning back. Dr. Halsey swiveled one of the displays to face her. She exe cuted the memory-erase commandwiping clean Cortana's recollection of the research they had done on old ONI lockdown codes. She folded the printout of their results and stuffed it into her pocket.\n\"Cortana?\"\n\"Yes, Doctor?\" she replied. Her voice through the room's speakers sounded distracted.\n\"Locate Corporal Locklear and have him report immediately, please.\"\n\"Done, Doctor Halsey.\"\n\"Thank you, Cortana. That will be all.\" She added in a whisper so low that only she heard: \"Take good care of them all for me.\"\nDr. Halsey adjusted the examination table so it lay flat, and then loaded medical supplies and equipment onto its undercar riage. She placed a bag with four submachine guns and sixteen full clips of ammunition on top of the supplies. She found a lukewarm cup of stale coffee and gulped it down to the dregs. Corporal Locklear appeared at the open entrance to the prep room. \"Hey, Doc. Cortana said you needed me?\" he said tersely. 274 HALO: FIRST STRIKE He smoothed his hand over his shaved head. \"I'm kind of busy right now, so if this can wait\"\n\"Whatever you're doing,\" Dr. Halsey told him, \"this is more important.\" She nodded to Kelly's prone form. \"I need your help getting SPARTAN-087 to the launch bay.\"\n\"Is she okay?\" he asked and took a step toward her.\n\"She's fine, but I have to transfer her to the asteroid base. They have a piece of equipment necessary to complete her treatment.\"\nLocklear appeared unconvinced. \"But I just saw her\"\n\"She's fine,\" Dr. Halsey assured him. \"Just sedated. This pro cedure is. . .  unpleasant, even for a Spartan.\"\nLocklear looked into Dr. Halsey's eyes and then nodded, ac cepting this explanation. He moved the head of the table and wheeled it through the doors, the med bay, and out into the waiting elevator. Dr. Halsey followed on his heels. When the elevator doors closed, she turned to the Corporal.\n\"Your hand, please.\"\nHe looked puzzled but held out his hand. Dr. Halsey took it and turned it palm-up. She set the long, lu minous blue artifact in his grasp. The light emitted by the alien artifact shone onto their faces and made the interior of the eleva tor colder. \"This is what the Covenant so desperately want. They tore up Reach to get it. They followed us into Slipspace. And Po-laski died protecting this thing.\"\nShe watched Locklear carefully, gauging his reaction, and saw that he pulled away slightly at this last remark; it had hit home.\n\"And what the hell am I supposed to do with it?\"\n\"Keep it safe,\" she told him. \"Guard it with your life, because if the Covenant ever get it, they'll be able to jump through Slipspace a hundred times faster than they can now. Do you understand?\"\nLocklear closed his large fist around the crystal. \"Not really, Doc. But I can take care of it.\" He paused and wrinkled his forehead in confusion. \"But why me? Why not ask one of your Spartans?\"\n\" 'My' Spartans,\" Dr. Halsey replied in a whisper, \"could be ordered to hand it over to Lieutenant Haverson. And he'd risk ERIC NYLUND  275\ngetting it back to ONI Section Threeeven if he had to gamble that the Covenant might get it.\"\nLocklear snorted. \"Well, as much as I don't like El-Tee White-bread, I'd hand it over if ordered, too. What's the big deal, anyway? We're almost home.\"\n\"Almost,\" Dr. Halsey repeated, and she gave him a slight smile. \"But the moment you jump, this crystal emits radiation like a signal flare. The Cove nant will find this ship ... and maybe this time they'll win the battle in Slipspace.\"\nLocklear grimaced. She held his steely gaze a moment and then finally let go of his hand. \"So I know you'll do whatever it takes to prevent this object from falling into enemy hands.\"\nHe nodded grimly. \"I read you, Doc. Loud and clear.\" There was a hint of respect in his voice. \"I know what I have to do . . . count on it.\"\n\"Good,\" she said. The elevator doors parted. Locklear stuffed the crystal into his ammunition vest, and Locklear wheeled the table into the Gettysburg's launch bay. \"Where do you want her?\"\nThe bay was a beehive of activity: A hundred of Governor Jiles's crew jogged to and from passages carrying data pad schematics and field multiscanners; robotic dollies carried fat Archer missiles, spiderlike Antilon mines, and slender pods of deuterium fuel for the Gettysburg's auxiliary reactors; three Longsword fighter craft were being repaired; exoskeletons thud ded along the deck, carrying plates of titanium and welding them in place.\n\"There,\" Dr. Halsey told Locklear. \"Take her to that ship.\" She pointed to Governor Jiles's Chiroptera-class vessel. It sat on the deck looking like a sleeping bat. Its oddly angled stealth sur faces blended into the shadows. Locklear shrugged and pushed the loaded gurney. Dr. Halsey halted by the ship's port hatch. It was sealed so tightly that no seam could be discerned. She retrieved the thermal printout from her coat and rechecked its contents. She then touched a recessed button on the hull, and a tiny plate slid aside revealing an alphanumeric keyboard. Dr. Halsey typed in a long string and pressed ENTER . 276 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The hatch parted with a hiss. She smiled. \"Not even Cortana could crack their crypto, in deed.\" She waved Locklear inside. Locklear obliged her and pushed the gurney into the ship. Dr. Halsey followed, secured the examination table, and escorted Locklear outside. She turned and headed back into the vessel. He started back toward the elevator, then halted. \"Doc, when we were talking... you said when 'you'jump to Slipspace. You meant when 'we'jump to Slipspace, didn't you?\"\nDr. Halsey locked eyes with him for a moment. Then she touched a button inside the ship, and the hatch hissed closed be tween them. The Master Chief stepped off the elevator and onto the bridge of the Gettysburg. Lieutenant Haverson and Admiral Whitcomb stared at the displays at Weapons Station One and Engineering.\n\"Sirs,\" the Chief said. The Admiral waved him forward without bothering to look up. The Chief had two tasks. First, he would inform the Admiral of his first-strike mission plan. He had to convince him there was no risk to their primary goal of returning to Earthand a huge payoff if they succeeded. The only thing Admiral Whitcomb might object to was the high risk to his team. The Chief's second task would be more difficult. He touched the belt pouch containing Dr. Halsey's data crystals. One was her analysis of the Flood infection mechanism and a possible way to block it. The second data crystal contained the source files of that discovery, and according to Dr. Halsey it would lead to Sergeant Johnson's undignified, and unnecessary, death. And yet, if it gave Section Three a better chance to stop the Floodsif indeed that threat had any meaning after the destruc tion of Halomaybe it was worth one man's life. Maybe if Sergeant Johnson knew, he'd volunteer. The Chief's duty was clear: He had to hand over all files to the Lieutenantbut deep down, he had to admit that it didn't feel right.\n\"Cortana.\" Admiral Whitcomb crossed his arms over his bar rel chest. \"Give me an update on our power.\"\nCortana's tiny image flickered to life on the holopad near the ERIC NYLUND  277\nNAV station. She crossed her arms over her chest much as he had, and minute red symbols raced over her glowing lavender skin. \"Status is nearly identical to my last report five minutes ago, Admiral. Tests on Ascendant Justice's reactor and the Get tysburg's engines are in synch, and will be completed in forty minutes.\"\n\"Hurry,\" the Admiral growled. \"I don't want to get stuck with out power when unfriendlies show up. I want to get under way to Earth. Weapons status?\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" Cortana said. \"Plasma turret one is obliterated; no possibility of repair. Plasma turrets two, three, and four are re paired, and although I'm waiting for power to test them, I have run three hundred twelve virtual test-firings without incident. Turrets five, six, and seven, however, require parts Governor Jiles does not have in his inventory. Two Archer missile pods on the Gettysburg have been refilled. That gives us sixteen missiles hot and ready to go, sir.\"\n\"I'd like to know where Jiles got those missiles,\" Lieutenant Haverson muttered. \"They're UNSC military contraband.\"\n\"He is zpirate, Lieutenant,\" Cortana said.\n\"Good work,\" the Admiral told Cortana. \"Keep me posted.\"\nHe turned toward the Chief. \"You had something, Master Chief?\"\nBefore the Master Chief could speak his mind, Haverson said, \"Admiral.\" He pointed at the forward screens and at the Chiroptera-class ship accelerating away from the Gettysburg's launch bay. \"I thought Jiles was staying on board to oversee repairs.\"\n\"So did I,\" the Admiral said. \"Cortana, did you catch Jiles leaving on surveillance?\"\n\"No, sir, but you might be interested in this.\" On the screen a grainy video appeared of Locklear, Dr. Halsey, and a Spartan on a gurney boarding the ship. \"Locklear left them at the ship, sir. Doctor Halsey and SPARTAN-087 departed.\"\n\"Cortana,\" the Admiral barked. \"Hail that ship. Now.\"\n\"Hailing.\"\nGovernor Jiles appeared on forward screen number one. \"Ad miral,\" he said with a nervous smile. \"I just saw my ship leave the launch bay. Perhaps you can explain why you commandeered 278 HALO: FIRST STRIKE my personal property when I have showed nothing but good faith in this\"\n\"Hold on to your shirttail, Governor,\" Admiral Whitcomb snapped. \"I'm in the middle of finding out who took your ship and what precisely is going on. Cortana, any response to our hail?\"\n\"An automated code, sir,\" she said. Her mouth opened in as tonishment. \"UNSC Code Three-Nine-Two.\"\n\"Three-Nine-Two?\" the Admiral asked. He stared into space, trying to recall the obscure code. The Master Chief cleared his throat and told him, \"Admiral, that is an official 'nonresponse' code, sir. Special Warfare teams use it to ignore hails... due to a higher-priority mission.\"\n\"God damn it.\" The Admiral's face flushed, and he ground his teeth. \"You mean the good doctor just told me to go to hell.\"\nOn the forward screen the Chiroptera, its batlike wings nearly invisible against the black of space, accelerated in a sudden burst. Pinpoints of light appeared around the craft that elongated and smeared. The ship vanished.\n\"A Slipspace transition,\" Cortana said.\n\"I thought you told me,\" the Admiral said, slowly turning on Haverson, \"that that ship was locked down. That vital compo nents were removed when it was decommissioned. That there was no way it could make a Slipspace jump?\"\n\"Yes, sir, I did.\"\n\"And would you care to explain why that ship just disap peared, Lieutenant?\"\n\"Yes, Admiral. I was wrong,\" Haverson replied without meet ing the Admiral's eyes. \"Doctor Halsey apparently found a way to circumvent the ONI lockout on the ship's systems.\"\nOn screen, Jiles said, \"This is most unfortunate, Admiral. I ex pect to be compensated1\"\n\"You bet it's unfortunate,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"If I'd known there was a chance we could have used that ship to jump to Earth. . .  I would have done it an hour ago. Cortana, what was her trajectory?\"\n\"Not Earth,\" Cortana said. \"Doctor Halsey's course points to no known system in my database.\"\nThe Admiral scrutinized the forward screen: Jiles's face, the ERIC NYLUND  279\nempty star field, and the frozen video of Dr. Halsey and Locklear in the launch bay. \"I want Corporal Locklear on the bridge ten minutes ago. Lieutenant Haverson, have Cortana locate him. Then I want you personally to escort that ODST up here.\"\nHaverson swallowed. \"Yes, sir.\" He marched to the elevator, and Cortana told him, \"He's on B-Deck, Lieutenant, medical storage. He's not answering my COM page.\" The elevator shut.\n\"Chief, you're on the Engineering console,\" the Admiral said.\n\"Cover the NAV station, too.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" He moved to the Engineering station's monitors. There were thirty-five minutes to go on the shakedown cycle of the reactors and engines.\n\"Contact,\" Cortana said. \"Bearing zero-three-zero on the so lar plane. Onecorrection, twoCovenant cruisers. They're not moving. Maybe they haven't spotted us.\"\n\"It never rains when it can monsoon,\" the Admiral declared.\n\"They can't help but see us, Cortana, with all the radio chatter, ships, and leaking radiation. I bet they're just figuring out how best to kill us.\"\nGovernor Jiles turned to someone off screen, and then said,\n\"Admiral Whitcomb, given this new development I would like to evacuate my people off the Gettysburg and out of harm's way.\"\n\"Of course, Governor. Do what you have to.\"\nThe number three screen snapped off, and the stars reappeared.\n\"And I'll do what I have to, too,\" Admiral Whitcomb said.\n\"Cortana, halt the reactor and engine shakedown.\"\n\"Sir? There are risks\"\n\"I want them online now. Don't tell me what the risks are. Just doit.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" she said.\n\"Master Chief, get this crate ready to move and stay on your toes. We'll need every trick in the book to outmaneuver two cruisers.\"\n\"Affirmative, Admiral.\" The Chief observed the shakedown cycle halt and Ascendant Justice's reactors restart. Radiation in dicators redlined, and then dropped to a hairbreadth ... which was technically considered safe. The Gettysburg's engines shud dered to life. The Chief felt the vibration though the deck half a kilometer away. \"Reactors are hot, sir,\" he reported.\n280 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The Admiral watched as Jiles's fleet of single ships and tech nicians in jet packs abandoned the Gettysburg, swarming across the dark of space back to the safety of their asteroid. \"Rats leaving a sinking ship?\" he wondered aloud. The Master Chief wasn't sure if that was a question directed at him, but he decided to reply anyway. \"They're just men who want to live, sir.\"\nThe Admiral nodded.\n\"Covenant cruiser accelerating,\" Cortana announced. \"Bear ing on a vector otrtsystem. It's transitioning to Slipspace.\"\n\"Master Chief, get this tub moving. Now! Bring us up to half maximum speed.\"\n\"Aye, sir.\" He tapped in commands. \"Answering one half for ward.\" The radiation warning on Ascendant Justice's reactor flickered, but stabilized and subsided. The combined mass of the two attached ships groaned as their recently repaired superstructures overcame their inertia.\n\"Heat up our plasma turrets, Cortana.\"\n\"Aye s\" Her translucent lavender hologram faded to ice blue.\n\"Sir, additional contacts at system's edge. Three. Noadditional transitions from Slipspace; counting eighteennow thirty Cove nant ships of various classes. Positions zero-three-zero. Zero-nine-one, one-eight-zero... Sir, they have us enveloped.\"\nThe star chart vanished in a wink, and a map of the Eridanus system appeared with tiny triangles representing Covenant ships now encircling the perimeter. The map turned to a side profile and revealed half a dozen additional ships scattered along the nadir and zenith of the system. Admiral Whitcomb stared at the map and shook his head.\n\"You know the story of the Alamo, Chief?\"\n\"Yes, sir. A famous siege with a handful of defenders holding off overwhelming forces.\"\nThe Admiral smiled. \"Texan defenders, Chiefthere's a big difference. Colonel William Barrett Travis with one hundred fifty-five men held off more than two thousand Mexican invaders. They hunkered down inside a tiny fort and fought like wildcats. Travis got a handful of reinforcements laterthirty-two men.\"\nThe Admiral's smile faded. \"You know there were fifteen civilians inside that fort, too?\" He looked at the map again. \"Well, when the ERIC NYLUND  281\nfighting was over, Travis and his men were dead, but it cost the enemy six hundred lives.\"\n\"Like the Battle of Thermopylae,\" the Chief remarked.\n\"But there were survivors at the Alamo; they let the civilians live.\" He turned to the Chief. \"You think anyone's going to sur vive this fight? You think there's any way to win?\"\nThe Master Chief tried to think of a way to fight and to win. Thirty Covenant ships against their damaged hybrid vessel. Add to that the need to defend Governor Jiles's crew. Could he board one of the Covenant craft? Get Cortana to infiltrate their systems and broadcast falsified orders? They would see him approaching. Or was there a blind spot he could approach from? How could he hide from the rest of the ships in their fleet, though? And by the time he could implement such a plan, the Gettysburg would be molten slag.\n\"It was a rhetorical question, Chief,\" the Admiral said.\n\"Yes, sir,\" the Chief replied. \"Given our situation, resources, and our enemy's determination, th en, no, I see no way to win... or survive.\"\n\"Neither do I.\" Admiral Whitcomb stood straight. \"Cortana, get ready to jump. Chief, accelerate to flank speed course zero-five-five by two-nine-zero. Prepare to transition out of normal space on my mark.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" the Chief and Cortana answered in unison.\n\"We're leaving Governor Jiles and his people?\" Cortana asked. Admiral Whitcomb was silent a long moment, and then he replied, \"We are. This isn't the Alamo and I'm not Colonel Wil liam Barrett Travis, although I dearly wish I were. No, we're run ning. We're trading hundreds of lives for billions.\"\nThe Master Chief absentmindedly reached for his belt pouch, and Dr. Halsey's data crystals clinked. \"Is this the right thing to do, sir?\"\n\"The right thing?\" Admiral Whitcomb sighed. \"Hell, son, it probably isn't. Personally, I'd prefer to fight, and die fighting, and take every one of those Covenant bastards with me. But I do not have the liberty to make that choice. My duty is clear: to pro tect the men and women of Earthnot a pack of privateers and outlaws.\" He closed his eyes and said, \"The logic of the situation r\n282 HALO: FIRST STRIKE is also too damned clear. Even if we stay and fight... they'll all bejustasdead.\"\n\"Capacitors at foil charge,\" Cortana announced. \"Preparing to enter Slipspace. Waiting for your order, sir.\"\nThe Master Chief saw the energy from Ascendant Justice's re actor drain to 5 percent. Motes of blue-green light appeared on the forward screen, and the stars stretched and smeared like watercolors. But something was wrong: The shields of the Chief's MJOLNIR armor rippled. The radiation monitors spiked. Where was it coming from?\n\"Hundreds for billions,\" the Admiral whispered. \"Duty be damned ... I'm still going to burn in hell for this.\" Admiral Whitcomb inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.\n\"Go, Cortana. Get us out of here. And God forgive me.\"\nCorporal Locklear whistled, and the robotic dolly obediently followed him. The rolling robot was stacked with rifles, pistols, ammunition crates, and enough C-7 foaming explosive to blow a half-kilometer crater in the side of the Gettysburg. He made his way to the cargo elevator and then down to B-Deck. He had seen on the Gettysburg's inventory that that was where they stored medical supplie s... and he wanted a few cans of biofoam handy for the Master Chief's extremely well-planned suicide mission. Not that Locklear had anything against a good suicide mis sion. He'd been on plenty before, and they seemed to give him the most bang for his buck. Only now, after so much fighting, he just wanted a break: twenty-four hours of sleep, and some R&R. He idly tugged at the bandanna tied to his biceps.\n\"Damn girl,\" he whispered. \"Why'd you have to die? I had plans for you and me.\"\nWhat was he doing mooning over a woman? And a Navy flier to boot? His squad would have laughed themselves wet if they knew... only they were all dead, too.\n\"Screw this,\" Locklear said. \"I'm still alive. I'm not going to die. And I'm not going to feel guilty for any of this.\"\nHe laughed and told himself, \"It's not like the entire universe ERIC NYLUND  283\nhasn't been trying to kill me off, though.\" Locklear turned to the robotic dolly. \"Right, amigo?\"\nIts treads spun, and the flatbed dolly turned to the right.\n\"No, no, stop.\" He sighed. \"Man, I gotta buy myself a ticket out of this outfit. Next thing, I'll be asking one of the Spartans out on a date. . .  if I could even tell the boys from the girls in that squad.\" He shuddered. The doors of the large cargo elevator squeaked open; Lock lear stepped off, and whistled for the dolly to follow. Storage Bay Two had racks and shelves that rose from the deck five meters to the ceiling. He played his flashlight over the uneven surfaces. He spied a desk and terminal in the corner.\n\"Hello, inventory control,\" he said. \"The place to go for good ies in any Navy outfit.\" He strode to the desk, sat down, and tapped in a search for medicinal-grade ethyl alcohol. A tone chimed in his earpiece, and Cortana's voice said, \"Cor poral Locklear, I have an urgent request from Admiral\"\nLocklear squelched his COM. \"Enough chatter, lady,\" he murmured. \"The bar just opened.\"\nThe location for MED34-CH 3CH 2OH popped on screen.\n\"B-I-N-G-O,\"hesang. Locklear jumped up. \"Come on, amigo. You and me are going to throw a party.\"\nThe deck lurched under Locklear's feet. \"What the?... We're moving?\" He turned the inventory display to face him and tapped in a command to switch to external camera mode. Craggy asteroids moved past themno, it was the Gettysburg that was moving. Locklear squinted and saw a flash of blue. He magnified that part of the screen and found a dozen blurry blue flares from engine cones and the pulsing lateral lines filled with plasma. Covenant ships.\n\"Ah hell,\" he said and backed away from the desk. \"So much for happy hour.\"\nSomething moved in his vest. Locklear reached in his pocket and pulled out the crystal Dr. Halsey entrusted to his care. The elongated stone rippled, facets moved and rearranged like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He spied the same blue color on the inventory monitor 284 HALO: FIRST STRIKE pinpricks of stretched space, the first indication of a Slip-space jump.\n\"I'm not going through another Slipspace fight,\" Locklear said through gritted teeth. \"I'm not going to let them follow us. Or let this thing shoot off a signal flare to every Covenant ship in the galaxy.\"\nHe grabbed a can of C-7 off the dolly and dropped Dr. Halsey's crystal on the deck. He quickly covered the thing with the foam ing explosive. It hardened to a stiff resin in a matter of seconds. Locklear grabbed a detonator, inserted it into the foam, and con nected it to a timer. Why had the doc given him this to guard? She said because the ONI spooks wouldn't have the guts to get rid of it if they had to ... would maybe even let it fall into Covenant hands. That made sense, but, at the same time, there was something not quite right with that explanation. Locklear looked at the monitor and the pinpoints of light that now almost blotted out the stars. Screw it. He had his own reasons to blow this thing uplike not want ing to die in another space battle. Like maybe getting some pay back for Polaski's death. The Covenant rat-bastards wanted it so bad? Well, screw them, too.\n\"This one's for you, Polaski,\" he whispered. Locklear set the timer for three seconds, and punched the countdown. He dived for cover behind the robotic dolly and cov ered his head. The brilliant flash of sapphire light was the last thing he ever saw. SECTION 6\nOPERATION:\nFIRST STRIKE  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE\n0510 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar) \\ Aboard hybrid vessel Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace. The Master Chief and his team, which now consisted of Grace, Linda, Will, and Fred, had been ordered to report to the Officers' Clubnormally forbidden territory to NCOs. Of course, nothing about their circumstances had been normal for a long, long time. The Gettysburg's O-Club had a massive table of oak, scored with numerous gouges and scorches from a hundred cigars casu ally set upon its surface. There was a bar stocked with bottles containing a rainbow collection of liquors, dusted with shattered crystal. The room's walnut-paneled walls were polished to a rich glow. Hung along those walls was the UNSC gold-fringed blue flag. There were also gold and silver citation plaques for merito rious gallantry. There were photos of officers and past Captains of the Gettysburg. And most interesting to the Master Chief were tin Civil War daguerreotypes that displayed battlefields full of charging men and cavalry and cannons belching flash and thunder. Admiral Whitcomb and Sergeant Johnson entered the room. The Spartans snapped to rigid attention. \"Officer on deck!\" the Master Chief shouted, and they all saluted.\n\"At ease,\" Admiral Whitcomb said. \"Please sit down.\"\nThe Master Chief stepped forward. \"With respect, these chairs will not support the weight of our gear, Admiral.\"\n\"Of course,\" the Admiral said. \"Well, make yourselves as comfortable as you can. This is an informal meeting.\" He snorted. ERIC NYLUND  287\n\"I just wanted to see who was left on board and alive.\" He looked past the open doors to the Officers' Club. \"Lieutenant Haverson will join us shortly. He's investigating the site of Corporal Lock-lear's... accident.\"\nA holographic projector pad upon the bar flickered to life, and Cortana's slender body appeared. Chunks of broken crystal on the pad refracted the light and distorted her image so she ap peared half melted and cast prismed arcs of light onto the walls. Sergeant Johnson stepped over to the bar and swept the pad clean.\n\"Thank you, Sergeant,\" Cortana said, looking over her re-sorted figure.\n\"My pleasure,\" he replied with a grin. Cortana faced the Admiral. \"Sir,\" she said, \"you'll be happy to hear that I'm detecting no signals, residual radiation, or any transient contacts ... which is pr ecisely what you would expect from a normal Slipspace journey.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb nodded, sighed, and eased into one of the leather-backed chairs at the table's head. \"Well, that's one small blessing.\"\n\"And here's evidence that Doctor Halsey's crystal was indeed destroyed,\" Lieutenant Haverson said as he entered the room. He paused to seal the door behind him. Haverson sat next to the Admiral and set a small plastic bag flat on the table. \"I found Locklear exactly where Cortana said he would be: B-Deck, the medical storage room. Overloaded electronics at the site are consistent with a high-energy radiation burst. . .  as are the burns on the Corporal's body.\"\nHe grimaced and added, \"If it means anything, his death was quick. And these\"he tapped the plastic bag on the table\"are crystalline fragments that I found at the site. At first glance they appear to be a match to the shard found on Reach.\" He shook his head. \"But what I found isn't sufficient mass to account for the entire crystal. So unless it was atomized and left no trace, a fact inconsistent with the presence of these larger pieces, then the rest of that crystal has to be somewhere else.\"\nCortana tapped her foot, and one of her eyebrows arched. \"If the radiation burst detected before our jump correlates with the destruction of Doctor Halsey's crystal,\" she said, \"then there is 288 HALO: FIRST STRIKE an alternative explanation. The timing between that explosion and the radiation flare was only forty-seven milliseconds. Since the crystal had unusual space- and time-bending properties, the missing fragments may have been 'squeezed' out of the ship and into Slipspace.\"\nHaverson asked incredulously, \"You mean pieces of the great est scientific discovery in human history are\"he nodded past the walls of the Gettysburg \"lost in Slipspace?\"\n\"Yes,\" Cortana replied. She shrugged. \"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.\"\n\"At least the Covenant can't get to it anymore,\" Admiral Whit-comb said. He flicked the plastic bag with his thick finger.\n\"Or if they do, they're only going to find a bunch of busted fragments.\"\n\"I just wish I knew why Locklear did it,\" Haverson said. Everyone was quiet. John and the other Spartans shifted un easily in their heavy MJOLNIR armor. Sergeant Johnson cleared his throat. \"The boy was a little on edge. After all he'd been through, you'd expect that. But he was an ODSTtough as nails and twice as sharp and used to getting pounded. He wouldn't crack. He had a reason.\"\n\"Doctor Halsey,\" Haverson remarked and narrowed his eyes.\n\"She had to have set this up.\"\nJohn started to defend Dr. Halsey, but he stopped himself from arguing with an officer. Yes, her actions were inexplicable:\nShe had exfiltrated Kelly, left them when they needed her the most, and given Locklear the alien artifact. John still wanted to trust her, though. Perhaps whatever she was up to was for the greater good.\n\"Let's not start this,\" the Admiral said. \"I don't want anyone's perceptions colored by us discussing the 'whys' and 'what ifs' of this situation. Save it for the debriefing they're going to give us when we get back.\" He cast a sideways glance at the bar and un consciously smacked his lips. \"From here to Earth it should be smooth sailing, and we can finally relax.\"\n\"Permission to speak, Admiral,\" the Chief said.\n\"Granted. Speak your mind.\"\n\"I don't wish to contradict you, sir, but perhaps it shouldn't be smooth sailing. And maybe we shouldn't relax.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb leaned forward. \"I have a feeling I'm not going to like this. .. but explain yourself, Chief.\" ERIC NYLUND  289\nThe Master Chief outlined his mission plan, how he and his team would take a Covenant dropship and insert into the ren dezvous location for the invading Covenant fleet. They would then infiltrate their command-and-control center, the Unyielding Hierophant, and destroy it; that would hopefully cripple the Covenant force . . .  or at least slow them down. Maybe even enough to buy Earth time to reinforce their defenses. The Admiral stared at the Chief without blinking and flatly replied, \"Mission request denied.\"\n\"Acknowledged, sir.\" He remained standing, at stiff attention. Whitcomb frowned, as the other Spartans also snapped to at tention and remained stone-still. He sighed.\n\"I understand your motivations, Chief. I do. But I will not risk transporting your team to the Covenant rendezvous point,\" the Admiral explained. \"If we lose this ship, Earth never gets its warning.\"\n\"Sir,\" the Master Chief replied, \"we will transition from Slip-space to normal space alone. Once the dropship clears the gravitational influence of the Gettysburg and the Ascendant Justice, the Slipspace field will deteriorate and we will enter normal space. You need never even stop. And only a minor course correction puts the Gettysburg on the correct trajectory.\"\n\"Has a drop out of Slipspace ever been attempted in a ship so small?\" the Admiral asked. His heavy brows knitted together.\n\"Yes, sir,\" Cortana said. \"Our Slipspace probes perform the maneuver all the time, but the shearing stress and radiation are considerable.\" She paused and looked toward John. \"The Spartans, however, in the MJOLNIR armor should be able to survive.\"\n\" 'Should,' \" the Admiral echoed, his face grim. \"As much as I admire your daring, Chief, I still have to deny your request. You'll need Cortana to get past the Covenant security systems. She has to make it to Earth. With the data she's carrying on Halo, the Flood, and Covenant technology, she's far too valuable to risk.\"\n\"Understood, sir,\" John replied. \"I hadn't considered that.\"\nHaverson slowly stood and brushed the sleeves of his tattered uniform. \"I'll volunteer to go on the Master Chief's mission,\" he said. \"I have extensive training in cryptology and Covenant systems.\" 290 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Admiral Whitcomb narrowed his eyes and reexamined the Lieutenant as if seeing him for the first time.\n\"You'd never survive the Slipspace transition,\" Cortana told him. \"But...\" She tapped her lip with her forefinger, deep in thought. \"There might be another way.\"\nCovenant icons entered the stream of symbols flowing along the surface of her holographic body. \"I discovered a file-duplication algorithm in the Covenant AI on Ascendant Justice. I success fully used it to reproduce my language-translation routines. I might use it to copy portions of my infiltration programming into the memory-processing matrix in the Master Chief's MJOLNIR armor. It won't be a full copythere are replication errors and other side effectsbut it would give the Spartan team access to some of my capabilities. Enough, I think, to get them through the Covenant security barriers.\"\nAdmiral Whitcomb sighed deeply. He stood, went to the bar, and then returned to the table carrying a bottle of whiskey and three intact crystal tumblers. \"I assume you Spartans won't join me in a drink?\"\n\"No, sir,\" John replied, answering for his team. \"Thank you, sir.\"\nThe Admiral set a glass before Haverson, the Sergeant, and himself. But before he poured, he set the bottle down and shook his head as if a drink were suddenly the last thing he wanted.\n\"You realize, Chief, that you and your team will be on your own?\nThat my first, my only priority, must be to get to Earth?\"\n\"My team is willing to accept the risk,\" the Chief said.\n\"The risk?\" the Admiral whispered. \"It's a one-way ticket, son. But if you're willing to do it, if you can slow the Covenant assault on Earth, then, hell, it might be worth the trade.\"\nThe Chief had no reply to this. He and his Spartans had sur vived against impossible odds before. Yet the Admiral was right:\nThere seemed to be something final about this mission ... something that told John he wouldn't make it. That was accept able. The cause more than justified the sacrifice of four when measured against billions of lives on Earth. Admiral Whitcomb stood and said, \"Very well, Master Chief. Mission request approved.\" ERIC NYLUND  291\nThe Master Chief parked the groaning overloaded robotic dolly next to the side hatch of the Covenant dropship. The dolly held four tons of carbon-molybdenum steel I-beams. Will unloaded the cargo and hauled it inside, where Fred and the Sergeant cross-braced and welded the beams in place. This was the final reinforcement to the dropship. The interior of the craft was so cramped that two armored Spartans could barely pass one another. They had welded layers of lead, boron fibers, and Titanium-A hull plates they had removed from the Gettysburg. According to Cortana's calculations, this was the only way to give them better than fifty-fifty odds of emerging from a Slipspace transition with an intact ship. Admiral Whitcomb monitored the display of a computer re pair cart, then looked up and said, \"Cortana is ready for you, Chief.\" He waved him over. The Chief marched to the cart and let the Admiral hook up the interface to the base of his neck. \"This should feel just like a nor mal download,\" he said. Chilled mercury filled John's mind just like it always did when Cortana entered and fused with his thoughts. This pres ence, however, warmed too quickly, as if it were just thin ice melting against his body's heat. It was like a recollection of Cor tana inside his headnot the real thing.\n\"Initializing MJOLNIR armor systems check and subroutine unpacking protocols,\" Cortana's voice whispered. At the same time, the real Cortana also spoke over the COM:\n\"Don't listen to her. She's only half the woman she used to be.\"\n\"As long as you only copied the good parts,\" the Chief replied.\n\"I'm all good,\" Cortana replied tersely. \"Just don't get too used to a passenger you can order around.\"\n\"I wouldn't dream of it.\"\n\"Systems check complete,\" the copied Cortana whispered.\n\"All systems are functional.\"\nLinda approached the opposite side of the Covenant dropship;\na robot dolly followed stacked with rifles, Lotus antitank mines, explosives, and crates of ammunition. She angled the dolly and led it up the loading ramp until it butted against the hull.\n292 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Fred emerged from inside, and Linda handed him an armful of submachine guns. The Master Chief detected a slight limp to her stride and an almost imperceptible awkwardness to her usual fluid motions. He opened a private COM channel to Linda. \"What's your sta tus? Are you fit?\"\nShe shrugged. This gesture was notoriously difficult to per form in MJOLNIR armor with its force-multiplying circuits. It took a degree of concentration and dexterity that spoke volumes about Linda's true coordination.\n\"Doctor Halsey would say I needed a month's bed rest,\" she wryly replied. \"But I'm squared away, Chief. I still have this.\"\nShe picked her sniper rifle off the dolly and slung it over her shoulder with a liquid grace. \"And I still have this.\" She patted her helmet. \"Even though the Covenant did their best to shoot it off last time.\" She stepped closer to him. \"I can take care of my self. And I can take care of the team's back. I've never let you down, sir. I don't plan on doing so now.\"\nHe nodded. What John wanted to do, however, was order her to stay be hind. But he'd need her uncanny skill with the sniper rifle on this mission. He'd need her so they could survive just long enough to stop the Covenant. If he could have accomplished this mission alone, he would have made everyone on Blue Team stay. His team, however, knew the risks and knew the payoff for their sacrifice. It was as good a final fate as any soldier could ask for. He marched to the other hatch on the dropship and boarded the craft. There was one last detail to take care of with Lieu tenant Haverson. John moved past Sergeant Johnson who, ob scured by a shower of sparks, welded the last supporting I-beam in place. The Lieutenant sat in the cockpit checking the automated rou tines that Cortana had uploaded into the system. These would generate the proper coded responses to Covenant queries. They had also changed the dropship's registry tag so the Covenant would not recognize this ship as belonging to the now renegade Ascendant Justice.\n\"Lieutenant,\" the Master Chief said. \"Forgive the interruption.\" ERIC NYLUND  293\nHaverson looked up and slicked the sweat-drenched hair from his face. \"What can I do for you, Chief?\"\nThe Master Chief eased into the copilot's seat. \"Dr. Halsey gave me something to pass on to ONI Section Three: her analysis on the Flood.\"\nHaverson's eyebrows shot up. He opened his belt compartment .. . and hesitated. Which data crystal? The one only containing Dr. Halsey's Flood analysis and possible inoculation? Or the one containing the source files for her conclusions, the one she said would kill Sergeant Johnson?\nWhile John felt justified in gambling his life and the lives of the other Spartans, that was his choice as their commander to make. That wasn't the case for the Sergeant. It was a biological fluke that had spared the Sergeant from the Flood. A one-in-a-billion shot, the doctor had said. But it was a billion-to-one shot that he could save billions of lives. So the mathematics of the situation were almost even. What had Dr. Halsey said about saving every person, no mat ter what the cost?\nNoJohn had sworn an oath to protect all of humanity. His duty was clear. He reached for the crystal containing the com plete files and handed it to Lieutenant Haverson. \"She said it would help fight the Flood, sir. I'm not exactly sure what she meant.\"\n\"We'll see, Chief. Thank you.\" Haverson took the crystal and peered into his depths. He shrugged. \"With Doctor Halsey, who can tell?\"\nThe COM channel clicked, and Cortana announced, \"Ten minutes until we reach the drop zone. Make final preparations to launch Blue Team. You'll only get one shot at this.\"\n\"Roger that, Cortana,\" the Chief replied. \"Spartans, on deck!\"\nHaverson tentatively extended his hand. \"I guess this is it, Chief.\"\nThe Chief gently shook the Lieutenant's hand. \"Good luck, sir.\"\nJohn moved back though the dropshipalmost running over Sergeant Johnson, who was dragging the arc welder down the gangway. 294 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Allow me, Sergeant.\" John grasped the two-hundred-kilogram machine and lifted it with one hand. The Master Chief exited the dropship, and he and the other Spartans assembled outside. He stowed the arc welder and took his position at the head of the Spartan formation. Admiral Whitcomb looked them over once and then said, \"I'd wish you luck, Master Chief, but you Spartans seem to make your own luck. So let me just say I'll see you all when this is over.\"\nHe saluted them and they returned the salute.\n\"Just one last order,\" the Admiral said.\n\"Sir?\"\n\"Give'em hell.\" CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO\n0530 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\\Aboard captured Covenant dropship, in Slipspace. The dropship rolled, inverted, and spun out of control. It tum bled and pitched, and one of the I-beams solidly welded to the hull bucked and snapped. The Spartans of Blue Team were strapped to the hull in quick-release harnesses. No one, however, gave any thought to the red quick-release button in the center of their chests. They were all hanging on for their lives. The forward monitor was black because there was nothing for them to see in Slipspace. The only light inside the dropship came from chemical light sticks activated and tossed inside before they departed. Those plastic sticks had cracked, and their lumi nous contents had balled into a million microscopic blobs in the zero gee. Although the hydrostatic gel inside his MJOLNIR armor had been pressurized to its maximum safe value, John's bones still felt as if they were being shaken apart. This violent ride started when they had cleared Ascendant Justice's launch bay and entered the inky void of Slipspace. This\n\"normal\" Slipspace was nothing like John had experienced before. Without the smoothing effect of Dr. Halsey's alien crystalthis ride was a thousand times worse. Radiation levels spiked and dipped... but so far the dosages getting into the lead-lined dropship were survivable.\n\"Now I know,\" Linda said, \"why only big ships travel through Slipspace.\" 296 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"You know those SS probes?\" Fred asked. \"They're almost solid Titanium-A.\"\nThe Master Chief checked his team's biosigns: erratic but still within normal operational parameters. Grace's heart skipped a beat or two, but then returned to a normal strong rhythm. No broken bones or signs of internal bleeding yet, either. It was also a good sign that Blue Team were reasonably calm about their dire situation. The Chief knew it was all they could do until they cleared the Slipspace field generated by Ascendant Justice. He ran a diagnostic on his MJOLNIR shields. They still re charged faster than they were drained by the ambient radiation that stormed invisibly around them. He wished the real Cortana were with him. She would have said something to distract him.\n\"Status?\" John asked. Four blue acknowledgment lights winked on, and four Spar tans gave him thumbs-up signals. Fred chimed in, \"This isn't so bad. The last insertion I made, we hit the ground before the dropship. Now, that was a rough ride. We were\"\nThe dropship lurched violently and cut off Fred's story. Cracks appeared along the armor welded to the port wall. Molten lead oozed from the rupture. Despite the hydrostatic gel and the padding, a jolt slammed the Master Chief's head against the front of his helmet with force enough to make black stars explode in his eyes. Another jolt slammed his head into the back of his helmet. The inside of the dropship went entirely dark.\n\"Chief? Chief?\" Cortana's voice whispered through his hel met speaker. \"Chief, respond please.\"\nJohn's vision came into focus. His biosigns sluggishly pulsed on his heads-up display. Beyond the display, it was completely dark. He activated his external lights and pointed his head along the interior of the dropship. His Spartans hung limp in their harnesses. Aside from spheres of lead that had melted under the hull armor, resolidified, and now floated like champagne bubbles in the interior of the vessel, there was no other discernible motion.\n\"We made it?\" ERIC NYLUND  297\n\"Affirmative,\" the cloned Cortana answered. \"I'm picking up a tremendous volume of Covenant COM traffic on the F- through K-bands. They've pinged us three times already for a response, Chief. Awaiting orders.\"\n\"How can you pick up any signal inside this lead-lined hull?\"\n\"The hull is breached in many sections, Chief. The COM traffic is also unusually strong, indicating extremely close proximity of Covenant forces.\"\n\"Stand by,\" he told her. He hit the quick release on his harness and floated free. He called up Blue Team's biosigns and found them all unconscious, but alive. He grabbed a first-aid kit, in jected them each with a mild stimulant, and released them from their safety restraints.\n\"Where are we?\" Will asked. The Master Chief looked instinctively to the forward moni tors, but they were dead. \"There's only one way to find out,\" he replied. \"I'll take the portside hatch. Fred, you're on the starboard.\"\n\"Roger, Blue-One,\" Fred replied. The Chief rotated the manual release of the hatch and it eased open. Beyond was the velvet black of space, filled with stars that shone yellow and amber and red. He clipped a tether onto his suit and then onto the hull and leaned out the hatch. As Cortana had indicated, there were Covenant forces in close proximity. A cruiser glided silently past them three hundred me ters away. All John could see was its silver-blue hull, its plasma turrets with their lateral lines aglow with fire, and the flare of its engine cones as it passed... and then John saw the rest of them. There were Covenant cruisers and larger carriers; there were even bigger vessels with five bulbous sections that were two kilometers stem to stern and had a dozen deadly energy projec tors. Motes of dust swirled between the numerous ships: Seraph fighters, dropships, and tentacled Engineer pods.\n\"How many ships,\" he asked Cortana, \"are we looking at?\"\n\"Two hundred forty-seven warships,\" she replied. \"Estima tion of the total population based on the sampling from your lim ited field of vision puts that total number at more than five hundred Covenant warships.\"\nFor the first time the Chief froze; his gauntlets locked onto the 298 HALO: FIRST STRIKE edge of the hatch, and his arms failed to respond. Five hundred ships? There was more firepower here than he had ever seen be fore. This fleet would easily overwhelm any UNSC defensive forcewhether or not the Admiral got through with his warning. Their opening salvo would be a tidal wave of plasma, and it would obliterate Earth's orbital fortresses before they could fire a shot. A thousand kilometers below, space rippled, parted, and seven more cruisers appeared in normal space. They maneuvered to join the rest of the pack. John realized he had seen this magnitude of destructive power: Halo. The ring was a weapon designed to kill all sentient life for dozens of light-years in every direction. And he had stopped that threat. He could stop this one, too. He had to. His plan called for the infiltration and destruction of their command-and-control station. But how would that stop this gathering offeree? It wouldn't... but it might buy Earth enough time to come up with a plan to counter this seemingly invincible armada.\n\"You said they've pinged us three times?\" John asked Cortana.\n\"Affirmative. They've been curious about our status, but not as much as you might expect. There's a tremendous amount of COM traffic. They're probably only interested in us as a naviga tion hazard.\"\n\"Send a signal and explain that our engines are crippled and we'll need assistance to move. Let's see if we can get them to take us to this central station for repairs.\"\n\"Sending message now.\"\nThe Master Chief piped what he was seeing to Blue Team.\n\"Time to wake up,\" he said. \"Armor and weapons check on the double.\"\nThere was a pause of several seconds before Blue Team's ac knowledgment lights pulsed in his HUD. He knew they were having the same reaction of fear, and then drawing the same con clusion as he had about their mission. They couldn't fail: The fate of humanity lay in their hands. John angled his head around to take a look at the dropship. The majority of the dropship's hull had peeled away, and lead ERIC NYLUND  299\nand titanium plates underneath showed through. Without their reinforcements, the craft would have disintegrated on the rough ride through Slipspace.\n\"Covenant C & C responding to our request,\" the copied Cor-tana informed him. \"Ferry en route to take us in for repairs. They were a little confused about which warship we belong to, but I simulated static to cover our ship's registration ID. They're too busy to take too close a look at us.\"\nThe Master Chief returned inside the dropship. \"We're get ting towed,\" he told Blue Team. Linda came up to him and made a circle in the air with her in dex finger. John nodded and turned around so she could visually inspect his MJOLNIR suit. Computer diagnostics were fine, but his Spartans didn't take any chances with their armor. Especially not in an evacuated environment.\n\"You're good,\" she told him. John then returned the favor and examined her suit. Fred and Will had done an excellent job integrating the replacement parts into Linda's armor. Aside from their pristine condition, they were a perfect match. He patted her on the shoulder and gave her a thumbs-up to in dicate that her armor was in working order.\n\"Ordnance load out,\" Grace said and unraveled the duffel bags they had tied to the hull. The packages had been wrapped with lead foil, layers of thermal padding, and then a layer of utility tape. \"Heavy or light?\" she asked.\n\"We go in heavy,\" John said. \"Except Linda.\"\nLinda started to object, but he explained, \"We'll need you to hang back and cover us with your sniper rifle. I want you fast and deadly. Take a close-range weapon, extra ammo, and whatever you need to keep your sniper rifle working in the field.\"\n\"Roger,\" Linda said. Her voice was cold, hard, and brittle. This was the voice John had heard as she reported in while snip ing targets around the team. John sometimes found it a little too cold... but he knew this was a good sign. Linda was preparing to do what she did best: kill with a single shot.\n\"The rest of us will take whatever we can carry. Once we're in I have a feeling we won't be able to come back. If we have to, we can always lighten our load.\" 300 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The Chief grabbed a battle rifle and, for close use, a pair of submachine guns. He took a pair of silencers for the SMGs and hip holsters for the smaller weapons. He picked up a dozen frag grenades in their plastic ring carrier and slotted that into the left thigh section of his armor. He'd need ammunition, a lot of it, if things got hot. So he took extra clips for the SMGs and the battle rifle and taped them onto his chest, arms, and right thigh. More clips went into a back pack, along with two Lotus antitank mines, a few cans of C-7 ex plosive, detonators, timers, two field first-aid kits, and a fiber-optic probe. While the rest of Blue Team got their gear together, John told them, \"Stay off the COM from now on.\"\nThey all nodded. Lead lining or not, they were close to too many listening Covenant ears to take any more chances with the COM. He moved to the still-open port hatch, slid the fiber-optic probe outside, and plugged it into his helmet. Grainy images ap peared on his heads-up display. Hundreds of Covenant ships swarmed into view. In their midst a speck glowed and grew larger until the Master Chief saw it was a ship of similar design to their own: two U-shaped hulls, each the size of their dropship, sat on top of one another. This ship accelerated toward them and separatedone part moved to their dropship's stern and the other drifted to the nose. The clanging of metal on metal reverberated through the hull, and the Master Chief felt a gentle motion in the pit of his stomach. He looked back and passed on a thumbs-up to Fred, indicating that their tow had arrived, and Fred passed this signal on to the rest of the team. On the fiber-optic feed the Master Chief saw that the Covenant tug maneuvered them through the fleet, up, over, and around ships a hundred times their size. There was a moment when they dived and there was nothing on screen save the stars and black of space. The Master Chief got a glimpse of the gold-colored star on his heads-up display, and then the video feed moved over to a planet of ocher smeared with clouds of sulfur dioxide and an or biting moon of silver. ERIC NYLUND  301\nThe tug turned to face a new ship in the distance. This vessel looked like two teardrop-shaped Covenant ships that had collided, giving the result an overall elongated figure-eight geometry. They moved toward this ship, and the Master Chief made out more details. Spokes radiated from the narrow midpoint of the vessel and connected to a slender ring that he hadn't seen before because they had approached facing it edge-on. Featherlike tubes extended from either bulbous section and moved slowly over that central wheel. John squinted to make out more details on this unusual ship, but he was already at maximum resolution. It had a ring? Was it rotating? But the Covenant had gravita tional technology. They didn't need rotating sections to simulate gravity. Then he saw something recognizable on the structure: tiny ships docked to that ring. Covenant cruisers and carriers. There must have been sixty connected to the central hub. The titanic perspective of this structure clicked into place. The carriers looked like toys. The twin teardrop shapes had to be thirty kilometers end to end. This could only be the Covenant command-and-control center, the Unyielding Hierophant. The tug moved directly toward the station. It was precisely where they had to go, so it was a lucky break... but ironically, it was also the last place the Master Chief wanted to be. There was no telling what kind of sensors the Unyielding Hiero-phanthad, but they couldn't take chances. John retreated into the dropship and eased the hatch shut. He moved deeper into the ship and waited with the rest of Blue Team. Three minutes ticked by on his mission clock; John tried to control his breathing and focus his mind. Gravity settled his stomach, and there was a series of metallic clatters along the hull. Atmosphere hissed in though the cracks of their breached ship. John pointed at Fred and Grace and then to the starboard hatch. They leveled their rifles and moved. He pointed to Linda and himself, then the port hatch, and they also moved into position. John wasn't sure what kind of reception waited for them on the other side of those hatches, but one thing was certainthey'd r\n302 HALO: FIRST STRIKE have to face it head-on. There was nowhere to hide inside the re inforced and too-cramped interior of their dropship. The port hatch cracked and squeaked open. Linda and John aimed their rifles. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE\n0610 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar) \\ Aboard Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant. A rubbery tentacle reached in along the seam of the drop-ship's hatch. John raised his hand and signaled Linda to stand down. He recognized the alien limbthe splitting cilia feelers and globu lar sensory organs could belong only to a Covenant Engineer. The Engineer pushed open the hatch and entered the ship, floating past John and Linda as if they weren't there. It chittered and squawked as it ran its tentacles over the foreign armor plates and spatters of lead. Two more Engineers bolted through the open hatch and joined the first. As long as they left the single-minded aliens to their work, they wouldn't raise an alarm. But what else was out there?\nJohn eased against the frame of the hatch and slid the fiber optic probe outside. There was a line of dropships, Seraph fight ers, and other singleships that stretched away into the shadows. Swarms of Engineers, thousands of the creatures, hovered and drifted throughout the area. They moved parts, disassembled and reassembled sections of ship hulls, and plumbed plasma coils. There was no trace of a welcome party of Elites waiting for Blue Team. John turned the optic probe up and saw a latticework deck overhead with tools, welders, and spotlights hanging like jungle vines. It was as good a place as any to get their bearings. John turned and pointed at Linda and Will, then out the hatch and up. They nodded and moved out. 304 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Five seconds later acknowledgment lights from Blue Four and Three winked on. It was safe for the rest of them. John grabbed the upper lip of the hatchway and flipped up onto the top of the dropship. He grabbed a dangling cord and pulled himself onto the latticework deck where Fred and Linda perched, watching and making sure the bay was clear. Grace and Fred disembarked and scrambled silently up into the darkness, joining them. John pointed two fingers at his eyes and then made a flat fan motion across the space of the bay. The Spartans moved to care fully scan the area. From his shadowy overview John saw that this place was a repair-and-refit facility, with slots for hundreds of singleships. The room curved out of view three hundred meters in either di rection. It must run the circumference of the station's hub. Apart from the thousands of busy Engineers, John spotted only two Grunts wearing white methane-breather masks. It was not a color designation he had seen before. They pushed carts containing barrels of sloshing fluids. They would be easy to avoid. One side of the bay had a series of sealed doors that he pre sumed led to air locks. The opposite wall of the bay had a meter-thick window through which poured an intense blue light. Every thirty meters along that transparent wall was a recessed alcove. Overflowing from the nearest alcove were purple poly hedral cargo barrels, old charred plasma coils, and plates of the silver-blue Covenant alloy. But what piqued John's interest was what was next to this pile of junk: a holographic terminal. John clicked his COM to get Blue Team's attention, pointed to the junk pile, held up two fingers, and then pointed again at the alcove. Everyone nodded, understanding his order. Fred and Linda silently dropped to the deck, ran across the bay, and melted into the shadows behind a cut section of hull. Grace followed. John looked up and down and side to side across the bay, mak ing sure no Grunts were visible. He and Will crossed and took cover behind a plasma coil the size of a Warthog light reconnais sance vehicle. ERIC NYLUND  305\nHe used both hands to point at Fred and Linda, turned his hands so they pointed to himself, and then nodded to the data terminal. Linda lay flat and slithered to the edge of the alcove shadows on his right; Fred took the left. They would cover him while he moved to the terminal. John reached to the back of his neck and pulled Cortana's chip from his skull. He crawled on his stomach, hugging the wall until he got to the terminal. He slid Cortana's chip into the input slot and then eased back into the shadows.\n\"I'm in,\" Cortana reported over the COM. \"I have secured our own channel and encrypted the signal so we're free to use the interteam COM.\"\n\"Good work,\" John told her. \"Is there a central reactor in this station? How well defended is it?\"\n\"Stand by. I have to move carefully. There are Covenant secu rity AIs in this system.\"\nJohn hoped that this copy of Cortana's infiltration routines was as good as the real Cortana.\n\"I have schematics for the station,\" she told him. \"The good news is, each lobe has a central reactor complex with five hun dred twelve-terawatt units similar in design to the pinch fusion reactors on their ships. Apparently this energy is used to power a shield generator that can repel the collision of a small moon. I can overload one reactor, causing the melting of its field coils, which will saturate the surrounding\"\n\"Will it explode?\" John asked impatiently.\n\"Yesan explosion of sufficient force to vaporize both sections.\"\n\"That's the good news? What's the bad?\"\n\"The reactor's control system is isolated. I cannot reach it from this terminal. You will have to physically deliver me there.\"\n\"Where is 'there'?\"\n\"The nearest reactor-control access point is seven kilometers farther into the station's top lobe.\"\nJohn considered this. If they were careful and lucky, it might be possible.\n\"Is there a way to leave you in the central system until we need 306 HALO: FIRST STRIKE you?\" he asked. \"It would be handy to have you monitor the Covenant security systems.\"\nThe duplicate Cortana was silent a full three seconds. \"There is a way,\" she finally replied. \"When I was copied from the origi nal Cortana, the duplicating software was copied as wellit becomes an inseparable part of all subsequent copies. I can use this to copy myself into this system.\"\n\"Perfect.\"\n\"There are risks, however,\" Cortana told him. \"Each succes sive copy contains aberrations that I cannot correct. There may be unforeseen complications associated with using a copy of a copy.\"\n\"Do it,\" John ordered. \"I'll take that chance. But I'm not will ing to take a chance on crossing seven kilometers behind enemy lines without a way to bypass their security systems.\"\n\"Standby,\" Cortana said. \"Working.\"\nA minute ticked off John's mission timer. Then the data chip ejected from the terminal.\n\"Done,\" Cortana said over the interteam COM. \"I'm in. There's an exit to this bay thirty meters to your left. I will black out the security cameras there and open the door in tw enty seconds. Hurry.\"\nJohn retrieved the chip and reinserted it into his skull. There was a flash of cold mercury in his mind.\n\"Move out,\" John told Blue Team. \"Stay low.\"\nFred's and Linda's acknowledgment lights flickered, indicat ing the way was clear. Blue Team ran, crouching, for thirty meters. A small access panel slid open, they piled throughthen the door snapped shut behind them. They proceeded, hunched over; they crawled on their hands and knees, on their stomachs, and through ducting so tight they had to shut down their shields and scrape by on bare armor over metal. For kilometers they followed Cortana's directions, halt ing as she ran motion sensors through diagnostics until they passed ... twisting and turning and shimmying down long lengths of pipe, dodging the giant blades of circulation fans, and edging by transformer coils so close that sparks arced across their shields. ERIC NYLUND  307\nAccording to John's mission timer they had followed this route for eleven hourswhen it dead-ended.\n\"New welds,\" Fred said, running his gauntlet over the seams in the alloy plate blocking their path. Cortana broke in over the COM, \"It must be a repair not logged into the station manifest.\"\nJohn said. \"Options?\"\nCortana replied, \"I have only limited mission-planning rou tines. There are three obvious options. You can blow the ob structing plate with a Lotus antitank mine. You can return to the repair bay where we might find a less obvious way in. Or there is a faster, alternative route, but it has drawbacks.\"\n\"Time is running out,\" John said. \"The Covenant aren't going to stick around much longer before they strike Earth. Give me the faster route.\"\n\"Backtrack four hundred meters, turn bearing zero-nine-zero, proceed another twenty meters, and exit through a waste access cover. From there you will move in the open for seven hundred meters, pass through a structure, and then down a guarded corri dor to the reactor chambers.\"\nGrace interrupted, \"What do you mean 'in the open'? This is a space station; there should be no open spaces.\"\n\"See for yourself,\" Cortana said. A schematic of the \"open space\" appeared on their heads-up displays. John wasn't able to make much sense of the diagram, but he could tell there were several catwalks, buildings, and even waterwaysas Cortana indicated, lots of open areas for them to be seen in.\n\"Let's take a look,\" John said. He led his team back the way they had come and pushed open the waste access duct. Blue light flooded the tunnel. John blinked and let his eyes adjust, then pushed the fiber-optic probe through the opening. John didn't understand what he sawthe optical probe must have malfunctioned. The image looked impossibly distorted. But there was no motion nearby . . .  so he risked poking his head out. He was in the end of an alley with walls towering ten meters to either side, casting dark shadows over the waste access hole. A 308 HALO: FIRST STRIKE group of Jackals passed the mouth of the alley only five meters from his position. He ducked ... and none of the vulturelike creatures saw him in the dark. When they passed he looked up and saw that the fiber-optic probe had not been broken after all. The space station was hollow inside, and a light beam shot lengthwise through its center: a blue light that provided full day light illumination. Along the curved inner surface were needle-thin spires, squat stair-step pyramids, and columned temples. Catwalks with moving surfaces crisscrossed the space, as did tubes with capsules that whisked passengers. Water flowed along the walls in inward-spiral patterns and then waterfalled\n\"up\" into great hollow towers that sprouted from the opposite wall. Banshees flew in formation through the center space of the great room, as did flocks of headless birds and great clouds of butterflies. It could have been an Escher etching come to life. John felt extreme vertigo for a moment. Then he understood that with advanced Covenant gravity technology, there didn't have to be an up or down here. Odd that a military station would have so much unnecessary ornamentation. Yet Fleet HQ had a large atrium in their lobby. Maybe this was the Covenant equivalentmultiplied a hundredfold. John spied a band of translucent material set into a far wall, glistening. \"Is that the window to the repair bays, Cortana?\"\n\"Correct,\" she replied.\n\"Then at least we know the way out. And the structure we need to enter?\"\n\"One o'clock,\" she said. \"The one with the carved columns. It is the most direct route to the reactor chambers.\"\nJohn moved out of the hole and hugged the nearby wall. The shadows in the bright daylight would do a decent job of camou flaging them.\n\"Okay, Blue Team. Get oriented. . .  as much as you can. Our target is the columned building at one o'clock. I make it to be a three-hundred-meter sprint across open ground. We'll make a break for it. Unless anyone has a better plan?\"\nLinda emerged, looked around, and said, \"Permission to post on the rooftop and provide cover.\" ERIC NYLUND  309\n\"Do it,\" John said. \"Let me know when you're in position and ready.\"\nLinda retrieved a padded grappling hook and rope from her pack, twirled it, and tossed it up and over the adjacent roof. She tugged it once, it caught, and then she quickly ascended. The remaining Spartans joined John in the shadows. He shouldered his battle rifle and thumbed the safety off. Linda's acknowledgment light winked once. John tensed and ran. It took him three strides to build to his top-speed sprint. His adrenaline spiked and it made his blood burn. He felt time slow, his perception running at an overclocked pace. He focused on speedputting one foot in front of the other. His boots dug into cobblestones, crushed rock, and sent a fine spray of gravel behind him. He saw three obstacles in his path: a group of startled Grunts. He slammed the butt of his rifle into the nearest one, and crushed its skull. The dead Grunt spun end over end and landed in a heap. He heard squawks and shouts around him but didn't stop to look. He was on the stairs of the building, worn-smooth stone steps that he bounded up five at a time. John saw three friendly con tacts behind him on his motion tracker ... and at the periphery of its range a solid mass of enemy contacts.\n\"You're good so far,\" Linda reported. \"There are Elites, but they're unarmed. No, wait. A Hunter pair is advancing on your position. Stand by.\"\nA quartet of shots split the air like thunderclaps.\n\"Threat neutralized,\" Linda said. \"The rest of them are scat tering. Banshees approaching. I'm moving.\"\nJohn cleared the stairs and skidded to a halt on the threshold of the temple. The interior was cold; external temperature read ings were near freezing. Light filtered in through stained-glass windows in the ceilingtinged lavender, cobalt, and turquoise. Three rows of giant columns made of blue-black basalt ran the length of the thirty-meter-long rectangular structure, casting long shadows. It was a good place for an ambush. He set his back against one of the pillars and swept the entrance, covering his team as they entered.\n\"Cortana, update on station security?\" John said. 310 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"There are dozens of reports on the security channels. I've got them covered.\"\nAnother Cortana voice broke in over the first: \"Also be ad vised, Chief, that there are ceremonial guards in this templea race we have not encountered before. Roughly translated from Covenant dialects, they are called 'Brutes.' They shouldn't be a significant threat or they would have been used in previous mili tary situations.\"\nJohn wasn't so sure of that. The name Brute didn't sound promising. He also wondered why there now seemed to be more than one Cortana in the station's systembut that could wait. They had to keep moving now that they had revealed their posi tion. He waved Blue Team forward. John took point. He moved up to the next column in the mid dle of the building. Fred and Will stepped over to the columns on either side behind John. Grace had their backs. There was a flicker on his motion sensorjust ahead. It vanished. John held up his hand. Blue Team froze. His motion detector was clear ... but there had been some thing there. He pulled out a frag grenade. The transient contact was backa shadow moved around the same pillar John used for cover. It moved faster than an Elite as fast as John. He fired his rifle point blank into the shadowy silhouette. It didn't slowit only howled with rage. Will and Fred fired three-round bursts from their rifles into the creature. It flinched with each bullet impact. Three explosions detonated behind them. Grace's biosign alarm shrilled and flashed on John's heads-up display.\n\"Ambush!\" Will cried out. The creature Cortana had called a \"Brute\" stepped from the shadows and faced John. It was taller than an Elitewider and more muscular. Its mouth was lined with razor-sharp teeth, and its red eyes burned with hate. Its blue-gray skin was riddled with bullet holes. The Brute tackled John, knocking his weapon from his grasp. ERIC NYLUND  311\nEven with his MJOLNIR armor, John was not as strong as the alien. It pounded on him with bare fistsbroke through his shield ing, grabbed his neck, and squeezed. Red flashes played across John's vision. He began to black out. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR\n1751 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\\Aboard Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant. John struggled and tried to pry the hands from his throat. The tendons in the Brute's forearms were solid bands of steeland the creature was so determined to rip John's head off that a full clip from a rifle into its chest hadn't even slowed it down. Behind him, John felt another explosion thunder though the stone floor, followed by the staccato rattle of rifle fire. Blue Team was busy with another threat. He was on his own. John blinked. The darkness dimming the edge of his vision wouldn't clear. John watched his shield bar flicker and sluggishly recharge. If it built up enough repulsive force, he might have a chance to wriggle out of the Brute's grasp. If he tried too quickly, though, the Brute wouldn't lose its grip and could pound his shield flat again. The Brute bellowed, and globules of spittle spattered onto the Chief's visor. It leaned closer, screwing its massive hands tighter around his throat. John's vision narrowed. His windpipe swelled, and he gagged. Shields were at one quarter charge. It'd have to be enough. John had been in similar death-grip holds beforeendless hours of training on the wrestling mats with his teammates and martial arts specialists provided by Chief Mendez. There were ways to escape a larger, stronger opponent. And there were al ways countermoves to those escapes. And countermoves to those counters. It was like a game of chess, except the pieces were arms ERIC NYLUNO  313\nand legs, torque and your center of mass ... and most impor tantly your mind. He pulled his knees to his chest, and tucked his torso toward his pelvis at the same time. He twisted ninety degrees and shot out both legs and arms, and uncoiled his body. The maneuver was called \"shrimping.\"\nJohn's head slipped from the Brute's grasp. He used the monster's split second of disorientation to scram ble onto its back. John brought his elbow down on the base of the Brute's neck. He swept out its elbow, wrenched the joint around, and pushed it as far as it would gofar past the point any hu man's or Elite's would have snapped. John scissored his legs wide and pushed against the floor, leveraging his body to keep the Brute pinned. It growled and pushed itself and John up with its one free arm.\n\"No. You. Don't.\"\nJohn still clutched a frag grenade in his left hand. He flicked the arming pinreached around and under, and thrust it into the Brute's beltthen withdrew, sweeping out its one arm holding them up. The Brute dropped onto the floor and screamed with rage. The grenade detonated. It lifted them both a meter, and they landed again ... this time accompanied by a wet, pulpy smack as the Brute's dead hulk slammed into the ground. The Master Chief rolled off and sprang to his feet and looked for Blue Team. The large pillars blocked his view, but he saw on his motion tracker that Fred was behind a pillar down and to John's left, and Will behind the pillar to the right. There was no tag indicating Grace's location. There were, however, blurry motion contacts beyond the wide arched entrance to the temple. And there was one other thingneither Will nor Fred checked John's status over the COM. That silence meant trouble. John fumbled for his fiber-optic probe, but it had been lost in the scuffle with the Brute. He eased around the basalt pillar. Grace lay face-first on the floor, five meters from the temple en trance. A puddle of hydrostatic gel and blood spread across the floor. John clicked the COM once, a status query. 314 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The instant he did this, two Brutes wheeled from their cover on either side of the entrance archway. They held rifles with large-caliber muzzles and padded stocks, fixed with razor-edged blades. One of the Brutes saw John, aimed, and fired. John darted back behind the basalt pillar; he saw the flash and thunder of a grenade launched from the weaponheard two more rounds fired immediately after that. The first grenade impacted on the opposite side of the pillar and exploded. The overpressure rattled his teeth. The Chief turned and dived, hoping to get behind the next stone column before the second and third grenades impacted and detonated on the pillar he had stood behind a split second before. The solid stone crumbled into fist-sized chunks. He skidded and scrambled for cover as the upper part of that column collapsed, raining stones  that shattered the floor... and would have crushed him. So much for engaging these Brutes in a direct assault. John wasn't up for another round of wrestling, either. Not with the clock ticking. Not with every Covenant on this station about to tear them to pieces. Complicating all this was the enemy's appar ent ability to locate them when they used the COM. That only left one tactical option: run. He wasn't going to leave Grace behind, though. Not until he knew for certain she was dead. He removed his backpack and took out one of his two Lotus antitank mines. The disk was a quarter meter across with spikes set along the rim to stabilize it when buried. He set the detona tion selector to countdown mode, seven seconds. He then slid around the edge of the column. He threw the mine with a flick of his wrist. It spun in a wide arc across the temple hall and embedded into the wall just over the entrance archway. Two seconds until it blew. John clicked on his COM and said: \"Fire in the hole!\"\nThe Brutes again wheeled around from their cover and lev eled their deadly grenade launchers. The Lotus mine detonatedit was a flash and an instant of ERIC NYLUND  315\nfire. The temple opening and Brutes vanished, replaced by a cloud of dust and a cascade of stones that fell from the ceiling. One gray arm remained exposed under the rubble, still flexing. John moved up. The entrance wa s sealed. They were safe for a few seconds. He knelt next to Grace. Her biosigns had flatlined. He tried to roll her uprightbut there was no need. The detonations he had heard while wrestling the first Brute had been three of their high-velocity grenades... which had blown Grace's midsection apart. Fred and Will emerged from their cover. John looked at mem and shook his head. John opened the tiny access panel on Grace's armor power pack and entered the fail-safe code. They still had a mission to finish, which meant they couldn't carry her out; it would slow them down too much. They wouldn't be leaving her for the Covenant either, though. Her armor's tiny fusion reactor would overload and burn everything within a ten-meter radius Grace's funeral pyre.\n\"Let's move,\" John said. \"Cortana, which way?\"\n\"Proceed into the temple thirty meters. Turn right. There will be a sealed doorway, an access hatch for Engineers. I will open it and lock it behind you. Hurry. I'm encountering increased resistance from the station's AIs. While I have their security COM channels blocked, word of intruders is speeding via private COMs.\"\nThere was a curious echo to her voice. Maybe it was feedback from the Covenant triangulating on their signals. Or maybe there was some other effect at work. What had she warned him about?\nUnforeseen complications using a copy of a copy of Cortana?\n\"Roger that,\" he said and waved Fred and Will forward. He took one last look at Grace, then marched quickly and silently ahead. There were no more motion contacts in the temple. The Chief, however, saw Grunts and Jackals, Elites and Hunters in murals painted on the walls. In the shadows and stained-glass filtered light, those pictures seemed to move. They genuflected to some thing farther ahead. The Chief wished he had more time to take a full video record. Blue Team moved thirty meters and turned to face a section of the wall. It parted. The passage could have fit two Engineers side 316 HALO: FIRST STRIKE by side, but John had to crouch and turn sideways to pass. Will and Fred followed; Cortana sealed the door behind them. They continued until the narrow passage turned ninety de grees and dropped straight down. Will attached a rope and they rappelled down a hundred meters, landing on a platform. John overlooked a cavern hewn from rough stone that arched up ninety meters and vanished into the shadows in the distance. Five hundred twelve fusion reactors that looked like flatted spiral seashells filled the space, stacked in rows and columns eight deep. Each was the size of a Pelican dropship and thrummed with power, casting off waves of wavering heat. The open areas between the reactors were a tangle of plasma conduits and alive with swarms of thousands of buoyant Engi neers as they tended the machinery. Faint wispy borealis com prised of escaped plasma swirled, whipped into a luminous froth by the intense magnetic vortices within the chamber. It was a tremendous feat of engineering. It was as if the sta tion's builders had hewn this from a seed asteroid and built the rest of the installation around it. Will pointed across the room to three Jackals who walked along a catwalk. Blue Team held position and didn't move.\n\"There,\" Cortana announced. \"Across the platform is a termi nal on the reactor subsystem.\"\nJohn held up a hand to Will and Fred, waited for the Jackal guards to pass, and then sprinted across the platform. He re moved Cortana's chip and inserted it into the terminal. After three seconds, she reported: \"I'm in. Very few Covenant counterintrusion measures in this system. I can accomplish the overload.\n\"I've found an exit route for Blue Team and uploaded it into your NAV systems,\" she continued. \"It should be stealthy enough for you to return to the repair bay undetected. Once there, give me the order and I can begin. It will take ten minutes for the overload to build. There's no stopping once I start this, Chief, so be sure.\"\n\"This station and the Covenant fleet might jump to Earth in the next ten minutes,\" John said. He looked to Fred and Will, and they nodded as if they could read his mind.\n\"Proceed with the overload now, Cortana.\" ERIC NYLUND  317\nThe light from the reactors shifted; blue plasma tinged white and spread like a poison through the interconnecting conduits.\n\"Overload commencing,\" the copy of Cortana announced. \"I suggest Blue Team move at top speed to the exit.\"\nA NAV triangle indicated a ladder that ran to the catwalk overhead. John held up two fingers at Will and Fred and then nodded to the patrolling Jackals. Fred and Will knelt, braced, and waited for him to go ahead. John climbed the ladder. As he neared the top, three shots rang out behind him. The sound was nearly drowned out by the inten sifying reverberations from the reactors. He cleared the top of the ladder and saw three dead Jackals on the catwalk. He swept both directions with his rifle and then waved Will and Fred forward. His countdown timer read 9.47. The heat and light from the re actors grew stronger, and John's shields flared slightly. Blue Team jogged down the catwalk to an elevator. They got inside, the doors closed, and the car immediately ascended. When the doors opened again, artificial blue sunlight filled the caras did the shadows cast by two Elites waiting for the elevator. Blue Team opened fire and cut down the Elites, leaving a spray of blood across the ground. The Chief edged around the frame of the elevator door and saw a tangle of pipes and fountains and one of the curious spiral waterways that fell up from its center. This was a heat exchange plant for the reactors below. Already the water in the canals steamed and boiled. He saw that Covenant Elite and Hunter pairs had converged at the entrance to the temple a hundred meters to his right. Over the temple dozens of Banshee fliers circled the carnage. A gang of Grunts managed to clear an opening to the temple. There was a flash of light and fire that roiled out in a long plume, burning them as well as their Elite overseers.\n\"Good-bye, Grace,\" John whispered. The detonation of her power pack would buy them more time while the Covenant forces tried to figure out what just happened perhaps they'd think Blue Team was still inside the temple. Grace had also taken out a dozen Grunts and four Elites with her last action. That would have pleased her. 318 HALO: FIRST STRIKE John turned toward the far end of the great room and spotted a band of translucent material on the far wall. It led to the repair bays and air locks beyond. That was their exit. He glanced at his mission timer: 8:42. They'd have to get there fast. His gaze locked onto the Banshees in the air. He searched for Linda, posted somewhere in the odd geometry of this station. She could be anywhere along several kilometers of cityscape. John clicked on his COM. \"Linda, do not reply. The Covenant are triangulating on our signals. I'm hoping they do and send a few of those Banshees to reconnoiter. When they get close to the heat-exchange plant, take them outwe'll need their vehicles.\"\nThere was no answer. Did that mean Linda understood and was in a position to help? Or was she dead?\nAs John hoped, three Banshees peeled off the search forma tion, circling the temple and turning toward them. John waved Fred and Will out of the elevator and into the for est of steaming pipes. They scattered, took cover, and aimed at the incoming Banshees. The Banshees spread out, slowed... but then banked, return ing to the temple. John clicked his COM three times. The Elite pilots immediately wheeled about and accelerated toward their position. One Banshee flier nosed into a classic strafing dive. Its plasma cannons warmed and crackled with en ergy, indicating an imminent discharge. There was a spray of blood in the flier, then the pilot fell for ward and pushed the accelerator to full. The Banshee careened through the air at maximum velocitycrashing into a water-recovery tower, and wobbled to the ground.\n\"Linda,\" John muttered and tried to spot her. Judging from the blood spray, she'd managed to send a round through the tiny ex posed area of the cockpit, and inflicted a lethal ricochet. He looked for her position; most likely the shot had come from be hind and above. There were numerous catwalks running across the length of the massive room. She had to be on one of them. The two remaining Banshees accelerated toward Blue Team. Their plasma cannons flickered, and they leveled into a flat trajectory. ERIC NYLUND  319\nJohn, Fred, and Will raised their rifles. There was a muted crack of a sniper rifle, and another Ban shee drifted to the ground, its pilot felled by Linda's uncanny skill. The last remaining pilot veered starboard, not knowing what had just taken out its two wingmates ... only that it had to get out of the area if it was going to live. In the tightest arc of its curve, the craft slowed. John couldn't tell precisely where the shot came from, but a third sniper round ricocheted through the craft's cockpit. The Banshee spun in circles before it thumped to a halt, nose-down in the street. Three impossible shots, three kills. Even for Linda, this was superb shootingthe finest shots John had ever seen. He looked around the station, over the buildings, spires, catwalks, transit tubesit was impossible to spot her. John waved Fred and Will toward two of the downed Ban shees and sprinted toward the one still spinning riderless in the street, its canards scraping and sparking along the stones. He climbed aboard, pushed the throttle forward, and pointed to the far wall. He held his hand flat and lowered it, indicating that Fred and Will should skim low to the ground. John veered off in a wide arc. Maybe he could divert the atten tion away from them. He rose slightly higher and buzzed the tops of gilt domes and statues of Elite heroes with raised swords. Grunts and Jackals scattered as he approached, and John fired at them. He shifted to the side as he splashed though water falling from one side of the station to the other. Four Banshee fliers fell in behind him. John weaved back and forth. A pair of plasma bolts sizzled over his head. He risked a look over his shoulder and saw two of the Ban shees drop away. A moment later they crashed into the surface. Linda still had his back covered. He dropped to the ground and skimmed along a street, skid ded, and turned into an alley. Banshee shadows passed overhead. He pushed the throttle to full and made a direct run toward the back wall. Will and Fred had grounded their fliers and crouched next to the meter-thick window separating this inner section from the 320 HALO: FIRST STRIKE repair bays. John settled his Banshee next to theirs, turned his backpack around, reached in, and tossed Fred his last Lotus anti tank mine.\n\"Get that on the window and set for a remote trigger.\" He then risked an open COM channel to the copy of Cortana in the station's system. \"Cortana, can you open the air locks in the re pair bay?\"\nA flurry of voices filled the COM, all speaking at the same t i m e ,  s h o u t i n g  t o  b e  h e a r d  o v e r  o n e  a n o t h e r  ... a l l  C o r t a n a ' s voices. One finally broke through. \"Chief, I've spun off a copy dedicated exclusively to communicating with you. Go ahead.\"\n\"How many copies are there of you?\"\n\"Unknown. Hundreds. The Covenant AI overwhelmed me. Had to. This is difficult. Many errors in my systems. Filtering overall subchannels of information.\n\"To answer your initial question: yes. I can override safety lockouts and open the air locks. My systems are fragmenting. I cannot exist in a coherent state much longer.\"\nJohn looked out across the kilometers of curving cityscape. Wraith tanks rolled into the streets; legions of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites raced from building to building and shot at targets that weren't there. Banshees and Ghosts buzzed through the air like clouds of flies. John's mission countdown timer read 7:45.\n\"Linda's back there,\" he told Fred and Will. Fred started to say something, but John cut him off. \"If I'm not back in three min utes, blow that window and exit.\"\nFred hesitated but then nodded.\n\"I can't leave her,\" John said and gunned his Banshee's throttle.\n\"Not if she's still alive.\"\nDr. Halsey's last words to him resonated in John's mind: I should have been trying to save every single human life no matter what it cost. He'd get to Linda. He'd get her out aliveor die trying. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE\n1820 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\\Aboard Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant. The Master Chief accelerated his Banshee to its top speed. There was another explosion at the temple, and plumes of steam geysered into the air from the heat-exchange plant. The circling formations of Banshees scattered. John tucked as close as he could to his flier's fuselage and coaxed every bit of speed from the craft. A pair of Banshees swooped in, one off his port, the other on his starboard. Their plasma weapons heated; John rolled back and forth to throw their aim. He braced for impact... but there was none. The Chief craned his head back and saw the pilot of the lead Banshee slump, slide offthe flier, and plummet to the ground. The trailing Banshee was riderless as well... only a blood-spattered cockpit and cowling. Linda still had him coveredhad taken out both pilots with precise fire. She had to be close. John scanned the area. There were spires and water-reclamation towers, transport tubes and catwalks that crisscrossed the center of the interior. There was a nexus of walkways near the beam of il lumination that ran down the center of the station, a location with enough glare that a sniper might hide in the open undetected. He risked keying Linda's private COM channel. \"Thought you might need a ride, so I\"\nAn energy mortar blasted over John's shoulder, burning the air like a sun in close orbit and draining his shields to half. It 322 HALO: FIRST STRIKE impacted a water tower, and the structure detonated into a cloud of blinding steam. John punched the Banshee through the cloud, glanced down, and saw a Wraith tank tracking his trajectory. He ducked and weaved but kept moving toward Linda's probable location. His mission countdown timer read 7:06. There was no time for fancy evasive maneuvers. Did Linda even want to be found? Maybe she wanted him to get to safety and leave her behind? It's what he would have done.\n\"Position report, Linda,\" John barked over the COM. \"That's a direct order.\"\nThree seconds ticked off his mission clock and then the six-tone \"Oly Oly Oxen Free \" song whistled through John's speakers and a NAV marker appeared on his heads-up display. The triangular marker centered on a rope that ran between two transit tubes and dangled perilously close to the high-intensity light beam. It was a barely discernible thread that ran through a hard shadow cast by a nearby catwalk. John hit his image enhancers. Through the glare of the light, and in the depths of the shadow, he caught the flicker of reflected optics. Linda used both the brilliant light and the darkness to hide. John angled the Banshee to her. He clipped the tether line from his belt to the frame of the Banshee and squeezed his thighs tighter onto the seat. When he was thirty meters away, he made visual contact. Linda had the rope coiled about a boot and wrapped about one forearm. She held her sniper rifle in one arm, and John could only surmise that she had been firing from such an impossible position. She uncoiled the rope from her boot, swung, released at the apex of the arcand fell toward him. John forced the Banshee's cowling up against straining hy draulics and stretched out his arm, his fingers touched hers and her hand slapped firmly into his gauntlet. He swung her around and over his shoulder. Linda landed in front of him, straddling the seat. John spun the Banshee about and accelerated back to the win dows. The craft's forward cowling remained wrenched up and ERIC NYLUND  323\nslowed them downbut there was no other way to fit two people on the craft.\n\"Coming in hot,\" John said over the COM to Fred and Will.\n\"Open the door and get ready for a quick exit, Blue Team.\"\nFred's acknowledgment light winked on.\n\"Cortana, breach those air locks. Now!\"\nA cacophony of voices filled John's COM. There were so many copies of Cortana speaking at the same time he couldn't make out anything coherent.\n\"Cortana, the air locks.\"\nThere was apop of static. \"Apologies, Chief,\" Cortana replied.\n\"I've spun off a dedicated copy to. . .  to. . .  speak with you.\"\nJohn thought she had already made a copy to talk directly with him. What had happened to it?\n\"Override the air lock safeties, Cortana. Open the external and repair bay doors.\"\n\"Working, Chief. There's too much system COM traffic. So many of us. Near saturation level. Have to fight to get. . .  Stand by...\"\nAn explosion appeared a kilometer away along the far wall. The Lotus antitank mine became a blossom of flame and black smoke that drifted and diffused and left a spiderweb of cracks on the meter-thick translucent section. But the window held. That Lotus antitank mine could have sheared through that wall even if it had been reinforced steel, but this wall had re mained in one piece. They were stuck inside. Three hundred meters to the window.\n\"Cortana!\"\nIn John's peripheral vision he saw clouds of Banshees and Ghost fliers gaining on them.\n\"Cortana it's now or never!\"\n\"In ...\" Cortana's voice was faint. \"Intersystem failure\n08934-EE. Global system error 9845-W. Resetting. Inner doors open. Override in progress. System lockdo\"\nThe COM went dead. A hundred meters away, beyond the cracked window, the atmosphere turned white for a split second then cleared. Spaced 324 HALO: FIRST STRIKE every twenty meters along the bay walls, the air lock doors were opening. Beyond, stars shone upon velvet black. Fred and Will's Banshees appeared off John's starboard ca nard. John pointed and together they dived, accelerating toward a bull's-eye pattern of cracks on the translucent portion of the wall. That web of fissures spread: fingers that stretched and split along the length of the window... slowed and stopped. John fired the Banshee's plasma cannons. Fred opened fire as well, and four blobs of plasma splashed across the glassy surface fifty meters away. The window flexed, crackled, tiny flakes popped off. . .  but the translucent material remained stubbornly intact. John was thirty meters from the surfacehe'd have to veer off now, or impact upon it. He gritted his teeth and braced himself. Ten meters. The window's smooth surface flashed into a jigsaw mosaic. The squealing of glass over glass filled the air. It shattered. The entire length crumbled and instantly blasted into the vacuum of spaceswept out by the pressurized atmosphere fill ing the interior of the station. John tried to maneuver the Banshee. He bounced into the repair bay, rolled the craft over and uprightfell off, tumbled though the air lock . . . and drifted away into the darkness of space. He flailed his limbs in the zero gravity, and the tether on his belt snapped taut. He recoiled back toward the Banshee. Linda held on with one hand and held out the other to him. He climbed back aboard and tapped the thrusters to stabilize their pitch and yaw. Behind them the station vented gas as well as the bodies of Covenant Engineers, Grunts, Jackals, and Elites. Clouds of metal junk bled from the ruptures. Tendrils of steam flash froze into glittering ice crystals. The Covenant fleet moved as wellsome cruisers closed with the station, others moved farther away. There were five hun dred alien warships without leadership from their command-and-control center, and they reminded John of motes of dust in a sunbeamsilently floating in every direction. ERIC NYLUND  325\nJohn spotted a dropship drifting a kilometer ahead, dead in space. He clicked his COM once and dropped a NAV marker onto a Covenant craft. Fred and Will's acknowledgment lights winked on. John pulsed the Banshee's engines once and let its inertia carry them to the dropship. He hoped the rest of the Covenant Fleet was trying to figure out what had just happened... and not paying any attention to one more piece of debris floating in space. The Banshees gently impacted onto the tumbling dropship. John grasped the hull, and Linda scrabbled over him, opened the port access hatch, and entered. Fred and Will drifted closer, and John helped them aboard. He hesitated and took another look at the Covenant fleet. Hundred of ships without control. But how long would that last?\nEven if the station's reactors chained and blew... the Covenant still had enough force to destroy Earth's defenses and burn it to a cinder. All they had done was buy a little time: as long as it took for someone to take charge of the Covenant fleet. That wasn't enough, but John wasn't sure what else to do. He crawled to the hatch, entered the ship, and sealed it be hind him. Linda stood at the pilot's console while Fred stood beside her manning the ops station. An engine schematic appeared in front of Linda, and power pulsed through its plasma coils. The interior lights dimly glowed.\n\"Where to, Chief?\" Linda asked.\n\"Away,\" John said and looked at the system NAV display. He pointed to the tiny moon orbiting the nearby planet. \"Get us into the moon's shadow. But slow. Try not to attract any attention.\"\nHis countdown timer read 5:12. They might still have time.\n\"Roger,\" Linda said. The dropship spun about and gently moved away from the sta tion, almost imperceptibly accelerating toward the tiny moon covered with black and silver pockmarks. Fred hunched over his console. Thick spiky lines representing the Covenant F- through K-bands fluxed and flickered on his screen. \"Covenant COM channels are jammed,\" he reported. 326 HALO: FIRST STRIKE\n\"Communiques and queries to and from every ship in the fleet wondering what the hell is going on. And the station's COM channels are all full of those copied Cortanas ... and she's just repeating different system error codes.\"\n\"What's this?\" John asked, leaning over Fred's shoulder. He pointed to one COM band with only a single spike. Fred looked at the Covenant calligraphy for a long moment, and then inhaled sharply. \"If the translation software is working right,\" he whispered, \"that's the E-band... it's one of ours.\"\nFred snapped on the external speakers. Six tones beeped, stopped, and then repeated.\n\"Oly Oly Oxen Free,\" John breathed. \"Send the countersign, Fred.\"\n\"Aye, Chief. Sending now.\"\nWho could have sent that signal? There was no other living Spartan in this system. Unless it was Dr. Halsey and Kelly. Had they somehow tracked them?\n\"It's about time you showed up.\"  The drawling voice of Admi ral Whitcomb was loud and clear over the COM. \"Switch to en cryption scheme 'Rainbow.' \"\nJohn nodded to Fred, who ran a shunt from the Covenant COM into the data port in the back of his helmet. \"Decryption online,\" Fred reported.\n\"Admiral,\" John said. \"With all due respect, sir, why are you here?\"\n\"Lieutenant Haverson suggested we drop out of Slipspace on the edge of this systemhide in the Oort cloud and gather a little intel.\" The Admiral sighed. \"Well, I took one look and figured that even if you took out that station... hell, son, there'd still be a couple of hundred Covenant ships within spittin' distance of Earth. Me getting there and warning them about it wouldn't make a lick of difference. So I'm going to do something about it here and now. You've done your part, Chief. Leave the rest to me.\"\nThere was a pause, then the Admiral asked in a low, serious tone, \"You did get it done, didn't you, son? You got that station rigged to blow?\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" John linked his mission timer to the COM. \"Four minutes thirty-two seconds and counting.\" ERIC NYLUND  327\n\"Perfect, Master Chief. Bring 'em on back to the barn. Stay on your heading. Your instincts are dead on. We're on the far side of the moon and are waiting for you.\"\nJohn motioned to Linda to increase their velocity. She pushed the acceleration stripe to three quarters power.\n\"Waiting, sir?\"\n\"Whitcomb over and out.\" The COM went dead. John looked to Will, Fred, and Linda, and they all shrugged. He pushed the acceleration stripe to full velocity, and the dropship entered a high orbit around the splotchy moon, arcing around to the far side, where the battered Gettysburg waited for them. But only the Gettysburg.\n\"Where's Ascendant Justice?\" John whispered. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX\n1825 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\\Aboard UNSC vessel Gettysburg, near Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant. The Master Chief and Blue Team stepped off the lift and onto the bridge of the Gettysburg.\n\"Sir\" John started to salute Admiral Whitcomb, but neither the Admiral nor Lieutenant Haverson was there. The only two on the bridge were Sergeant Johnson, who stared at the forward viewscreens, and Cortana, whose holographic fig ure burned bright blue and streamed with code symbols and mathematics beyond John's comprehension. Sergeant Johnson turned toward them. He looked the Spar tans over and frowned, noting that not all of them had returned.\n\"I'm not sure what that thing is.\" The Sergeant nodded to view-screen one, centered on the Covenant command-and-control station. \"Don't look like any 'uneven elephant' to memore like two squid kissing. Whatever it is, damned glad it's going to blow up. Nice jobalmost as good as if we sent in the Marines.\" One corner of his mouth quirked into a smile.\n\"Where's the Admiral?\" the Master Chief asked. \"And Lieu tenant Haverson?\"\nThe Sergeant's half smile vanished, and his eyes darkened. He moved to Weapons Station One. \"I'll show you. A Clarion spy drone is nearly in position.\"\nThe center viewscreen fuzzed with static and then resolved to show the Ascendant Justice moving out of the shadow of the moon. The once formidable Covenant flagship was a wreck; its ERIC NYLUND  329\nhull was breached in a dozen places, its skeletal frame exposed, and only a handful of plasma conduits flickered with life.\n\"I don't understand,\" the Chief said. He stepped closer to Cortana's hologram. Being near the real Cortananot one of her fragmented copiesreassured him that everything was un der control. \"What's going on?\"\n\"Stand by, Chief,\" she replied. \"I'm attempting to attune As cendant Justice's Slipspace drive to the Gettysburg's mass and profile.\"\n\"That's what we were up to while you were off sight-seeing,\"\nthe Sergeant told him. \"We pulled the Slipspace matrix out of our piggybacked ship and slapped it into the Gettysburg.\"\nJohn wheeled and faced the viewscreens. Ascendant Justice couldn't jump? Then why was it headed straight toward the Covenant fleet? A decoy? He glanced at the countdown timer:\n2:09 left.\n\"Not a decoy,\" he whispered,\"... a lure. Sergeant, get a signal to Ascendant Justice. Bounce it off that spy drone if you have to.\"\n\"Roger, Chief,\" Sergeant Johnson said and tapped in com mands. An error warning blared. He shook his head, puzzled, and tried again, carefully retyping.\n\"Linda, take the NAV station. Fred, you're on Ops. Will, give the Sergeant a hand at Weapons One.\"\nBlue Team jumped to their assigned stations. Will edged the Sergeant aside and quickly tapped three but tons. \"COM patch established,\" he reported. \"On viewscreen two.\"\nThe bridge of Ascendant Justice appeared on screen. Lieu tenant Haverson and Admiral Whitcomb stood on the central raised dais, adjusting the holographic controls. Behind them, the wall displays showed Covenant ships closing on their position. Admiral Whitcomb smiled. \"Glad to see you made it safely aboard, son.\"\n\"Sir, that fleet will destroy you before you can fire a single salvo.\"\n\"I don't think so, Master Chief,\" he replied and tapped the holographic display. A slim blue crystalline shard appeared an exact copy of the alien artifact they found on Reach. \"I'm 330 HALO: FIRST STRIKE sending this image to every ship in the system and letting them know it's theirs for the taking ... if they dare to board this ship and face Earth's best warriors.\" He laughed. \"I think that'll ap peal to those Elites and their overinflated sense of honor.\"\nJohn nodded. \"Yes, sir. It will.\"\nHe looked at the countdown timer: 1:42. The Covenant fleet turned and moved toward the incoming Ascendant Justice. A cloud of cruisers and carriers. Hundreds of them. Impossible odds.\n\"Fire turret four, Lieutenant,\" the Admiral ordered.\n\"Firing!\" Haverson replied, his face set in grim determination. A lance of plasma discharged, arced, and impacted upon the nose of the nearest carrier. The energy splashed over their shields and dissipated.\n\"Turret five, Lieutenant. Take them down.\"\n\"Firing five, sir,\" Haverson said. A second plasma bolt followed the first. It blasted the carrier's weakened shields and melted armor and hull, exploding through the foredecks. The ship rolled and crashed into a cruiser that had come too close.\n\"Nice shooting, Lieutenant,\" the Admiral murmured. The Covenant fleet responded with a blinding volley of laser fire. Pinpoints of energy concentrated on Ascendant Justice's aft decks, boiled armor off in thick layerssheared through to the other side, severing its engines. The Admiral smiled. \"A sound tactical response. Good thing they don't know we're just using that slingshot around the moon and our inertia to do the rest of the job.\" He glanced at the dis plays and the station growing larger on them. \"Hang on, Lieu tenant. Brace for impact.\"\nAscendant Justice drifted closer to the station. It crashed into the central ring, crushing the structure, and continued forward, dimpling the hull of the pinched center sec tion ... and finally ground to a halt with its nose impaled within the Unyielding Hierophant. The center viewscreen on the bridge of the Gettysburg shat tered into static and then slowly resolved. The wavering image of Admiral Whitcomb pulled himself upright. A gash from his temple to the corner of his mouth wept blood. Lieutenant Haver- ERIC NYLUND  331\nson groggily got to his feet as well, his arm held at an odd angle, broken.\n\"Systemwide transmission,\" Admiral Whitcomb barked to Haverson.\n\"Aye, sir,\" Haverson said and clumsily adjusted the COM.\n\"Come on, mighty Covenant warriors,\" the Admiral shouted.\n\"We're here in the middle of your fleet with your 'holy of holies.' \"\nHe flicked his ringer at the holographic shard, and it pinged as if actually struck. \"Come and get it!\" He laughed again. Hundreds of Covenant ships moved toward them. Grapple lines and grav beams attached to the broken hull of the Ascen dant Justice. A thousand dropships and Elites in thrust packs filled the space around the flagship. The Master Chief watched the countdown timer: 0:27. Along the ten-kilometer dorsal bulb of the space station, patches warmed to a dull red, the heat from the overloading reac tors becoming outwardly visible.\n\"Move us back, Linda,\" John said. \"Keep us in the moon's shadow. Use as much power as we can spare.\"\n\"Aye, Chief,\" Linda replied. \"Forward thrusters answering one third reverse power. Course one-eight-zero.\"\n\"Cortana,\" he asked, \"Slipspace generator status?\"\n\"Almost ready, Chief,\" Cortana said. She bit her lower lip in concentration. \"Capacitor charge at eighty percent. Adjusting fi nal calculations. Stand by.\"\nOn screen the Admiral wheeled toward the bulkhead sealing the flagship's bridge. Sparks cascaded along the seam as arc cut ters on the other side penetrated. \"Master Chief, I have final or ders for you.\"\n\"Sir,\" John said.\n\"You watch and see what's left of this rabble when we're done with 'em. Do not engage under any circumstances. You get the intel and hightail it back to Earth and make your report.\"\n\"Understood, sir.\"\n\"Now listen, son, remember when we talked about the Alamo?\nYou know every one of the brave defenders in those fights died. They knew the odds, but they hurt the enemy.\" He gritted his teeth in pain. \"Both were tactical defeats, but in the end they were also brilliant strategic victories. They made the enemy 332 HALO: FIRST STRIKE afraid. Just a few good soldiers fighting for what's right made the difference.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\nJohn remembered all those who had made a difference for him. Sam. James. CPO Mendez. Captain Keyes. The men and women who had fought and died on Halo. And now two more names to add to that list: Whitcomb and Haverson. The bulkhead blasted off its mounts and clattered onto the deck of the Ascendant Justice's bridge. Silhouetted in the pas sage were dozens of Elites, their energy swords blurs of motion and light. Admiral Whitcomb fired a submachine gun. The central viewscreen dissolved into static. John watched for a moment, hoping the Admiral and the Lieu tenant would reappear ... but screen number two remained offline. Video feed from the Clarion spy drone filled the side screens. There were two hundred warships clustered tightly about the figure-eight-shaped Unyielding Hiewphant. A similar number of ships circled in loose orbital trajectories. The formation reminded John of a miniature spiral galaxy... with a supernova core. The dorsal bulb of the space station shot with colorred, or ange, and blurred with blue-white heat in a heartbeat; plasma tendrils erupted from the surface like solar flares. Internal explo sions chained down the station's length through the narrow center portion and into the ventral bulb, shattering that section and discharging bolts of lightning that arced along the station's frag ments and to the nearby ships. The Unyielding Hierophant became a roiling cloud of fiery plasma and smoke and static charges that enveloped the ships that had come to engage Ascendant Justice, ships that flashed white hot and, in an instant, vaporized. This thunderhead of superheated and pressurized gas bal looned outward to engulf the rest of the orbiting flotilla; heated their shields, which shimmered silver and popped like soap bub bles; melted their hulls and consumed them. The blast cooled and the cloud dissipatedbut ejected debris continued outward, leaving comet trails, and impacted on stray ships not near the epicenter.\n\"Move the drone back into the moon's shadow,\" John ordered. ERIC NYLUND  333\n\"Aye, Chief,\" Will said. \"Thrusters responding.\"\nThe side viewscreens showed a hailstorm of molten metal streaking toward the drone's camerasthen their view was obscured by the black- and silver-pockmarked surface of the tiny moon.\n\"Cortana, is the Gettysburg ready to jump?\" the Chief asked.\n\"Slipspace capacitors charged, Master Chief. Ready when you are.\"\n\"Stand by.\" John waited a minute. No one spoke. \"Will, bring the drone back out.\"\n\"Roger, Chief.\"\nThe side viewscreen changed from moonscape to space. There was little left of the fleet or the command-and-control stationonly clouds of smoke, glittering metal, and ashes. A few Covenant warships survived. Those that could slowly moved away from the blast site ... others drifted dead in space. Perhaps a dozen of their original five hundred craft had come through the explosion.\n\"A brilliant strategic victory,\" John whispered, the Admiral's last words echoing in his mind.\n\"Cortana, get us out of here.\"\nThe Master Chief stood on the bridge of the Gettysburg and watched the stars blur and vanish into the absolute blackness of Slipspace. They had jumped away from the battle zone over the Unyield ing Hierophant, emerged in normal space, and plotted their po sition. Cortana adjusted their course, and now they were finally on their way to Earth. Although they had overwhelming evidence that the Covenant knew the location of Earth, \"overwhelming\"\nwas not absolute proof. The Cole Protocol still applied.\n\"Slipspace transition complete,\" Cortana said. \"ETA to Earth in thirty-five hours, Chief.\" The tiny hologram of Cortana con tinued to stare at him, and her slender brows knit together.\n\"Was there something else, Cortana?\" he asked. The furrow in her brow deepened. She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. \"I was wondering about the copy of my in filtration programming.\" Cortana's color cooled from blue to ultramarine. \"I've reviewed your mission logs. Maybe it was the 334 HALO: FIRST STRIKE additional copying that caused its breakdown, but that copy did have some of my core personality programming as well. I just hope it's not a sign of.. . some other instability.\"\nCortana had been on edge. She had been so distracted at times she hadn't known the correct time. They had, however, all been pushed to the breaking point in the last few weeks. And despite any minor flaws, Cortana had always come through for him.\n\"We couldn't have survived without you,\" he finally told her.\n\"Your programming is as good as ours.\"\nShe tinged pink and then her hologram returned to a cool blue hue. \"Are my aural systems malfunctioning or was that a com pliment, Chief?\"\n\"Continue to monitor Slipspace for any anomalies,\" the Mas ter Chief said, ignoring her. He strode to the three forward viewscreens and stared into blackness. He wanted solitude, to gaze at nothing, and complete the task that he dreaded. John pulled his team roster onto his heads-up display. He ran down the list, designating all those who had died on Reach, and af terward, as Missing In Action. James, Li, Grace... and all his dead teammates who would never officially be \"allowed\" to die. And in his mind, they would never find any peace until this war was won. He paused at Kelly's name. John listed her as MIA, too. She was ironically the only Spar tan truly missing, whisked away by Dr. Halsey on some secret pri vate mission. John knew that whatever the doctor had planned, she would protect Kelly if she could. Still, he couldn't help but worry about them both. He added Corporal Locklear to his list and designated him Killed In Action. It was a more fitting end for a man who had been as much a warrior as any Spartan. The last three names on his list he stared at for a long time:\nWarrant Officer Shiela Polaski, Lieutenant Elias Haverson, and Admiral Danforth Whitcomb. He reluctantly listed them as KIA and referenced his mission report, which detailed their heroism. Two men had stopped a Covenant armada. They had willingly died doing it, and they had bought the human race a brief respite from destruction. John felt glad. They were soldiers, sworn to protect humanity ERIC NYLUND  335\nfrom all threats, and they had fulfilled their duty as few ever could. And like his Spartans who were \"missing in action,\" the Admiral and the Lieutenant would never die, either. Not because of a technicality in a mission status listing, but because in their deaths they would live on as inspirations. John turned and watched as Linda, Will, and Fred occupied the bridge stations. John would make sure that he and the last surviving Spartans did the same. The elevator doors opened, and Sergeant Johnson stepped onto the bridge.\n\"Got all those Covenant Engineers rounded up on B-Deck,\"\nSergeant Johnson announced. \"Slippery suckers.\"\nThe Chief nodded.\n\"The boys at ONI and those squid heads have a lot in com mon. Can't understand a thing they say and they're just as good looking. Guess they're all going to have a long talk about technical whatsits and scientific doodads when we get home.\"\nSergeant Johnson crossed the bridge to the Master Chief.\n\"There's one other thing. Another ONI thing.\" He held out a data crystal and his gaze fell to the deck. \"Lieutenant Haverson gave this to me before he and the Admiral left. He said you'd have to deliver it for him.\"\nJohn stared at the data crystal and reluctantly plucked it from the Sergeant's fingers as if it were a slug of unstable radioactive material.\n\"Thank you, Sergeant.\" He hesitated and then added, \"I'll take care of this.\"\nThe Sergeant nodded and strode toward Weapons Station One. John turned back to the blank monitors and retrieved the other data crystal from his belt compartment. Yesterday he had be lieved he had done the right thing by giving the Lieutenant all of Dr. Halsey's Flood dataincluding the data on the Sergeant, which she assured him would lead to his death. But now?\nNow, John knew the difference one man could make in this war. He understood Dr. Halsey's desire to save every person she could. John held the two data crystals, one in each hand, and stared at themtrying to discern the future from their glimmering facets. 336 HALO: FIRST STRIKE That was the point, wasn't it? He couldn't know the future. He had to do what he could to save every person. Today. Now. So he decided. He tightened his fist around the crystal with the complete mis sion data and crushed it to dust. John couldn't condemn Sergeant Johnson. He hefted the remaining data crystal. There would have to be enough in it for ONI. He set the crystal securely back into his belt. Today they had won. They had stopped the Covenant. John would return to Earth with a warning and enough intel to keep scientists at ONI busy. But what about tomorrow? The Covenant didn't give up once they set their sights on a target. They wanted Earththey'd come for it. Destroying their fleet would only delay that in evitable fact. They had time, though. Maybe enough time to prepare for whatever the Covenant could throw at them. John would take today's victory. And he'd be there when the fighting started againhe'd be there to win. SECTION VII HARBINGER  EPILOGUE Ninth Age of Reclamation, Step of Silence \\ Covenant Holy City\n\"High Charity,\" Sanctum of the Hierarchs. A hundred thousand probes darted and scanned with winking electronic eyes across the void of tangled nonspaces enveloping the Covenant inner empire. They gathered data and emerged into the cold vacuum, where they were recovered by the hundreds of supercarriers and cruisers in station-keeping positions around the massive, bulbous planetoid that dominated the heavens. Not a single rock larger than a centimeter could enter this space without being identified, targeted, and vaporized. Autho rization codes were updated hourly, and if any incoming vessel hesitated for a millisecond with the proper response, it, too, met unyielding destruction. The High Charity drifted beneath this impervious network, il luminated by the glow from scores of warship engines. Deep within, protected by legions of crack Covenant soldiers, the Sanctum of the Heirarchs was an island of calm. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the chamber were ornamented with mirrored shards made from the fused glass of countless worlds conquered by the Covenant Hegemony. They reflected the whispered thoughts of the one who sat in the center of this roommirrored them back, so they might consider the glory of its domain, and learn from its wisdom... because there was no higher source of intel lect, will, and truth alive in the galaxy. In the middle of the chamber, hovering a meter off the floor upon its imperial dais, sat the Covenant High Prophet of Truth. Its body was barely discernible, covered as it was with a wide red cloak, and upon its head sat a glowing headpiece with sensor ERIC NYLUND  339\nand respiratory apparatus that extended like insect antennae. Only its snout and dark eyes protruded. . .  as did tiny claws from the sleeve of its gold underrobes. The left claw twitchedthe signal for the chamber's doors to open. The doors groaned and split apart, and a crack of light appeared. A single figure appeared silhouetted in the illumination. It bowed so deeply that its chest brushed against the floor.\n\"Rise,\" the Prophet of Truth whispered. The word was ampli fied by the chamber; it echoed and boomed forth as if a giant had spoken. \"Come closer, Tartarus, and report.\"\nA ripple of shock passed through the Imperial Elite Protec tors. They had never seen such a creature allowed so close to the Holy Ones.\n\"Protectors,\" the Prophet commanded. \"Leave us.\"\nTogether the three hundred honor guards straightened, bowed, and filed out of the great chamber. They said nothing, but the Prophet saw the confusion on their features. Goodsuch igno rance and puzzlement had its uses. The Brute, Tartarus, strode across the great room. When he stood within three meters of the Prophet, he fell to one knee. The creature was a magnificent specimen of viciousness. The Prophet marveled at its near-unthinking potential for mayhem;\nthe rippling muscle under its dull gray skin could tear apart any opponenteven a mighty Hunter. It was the perfect instrument.\n\"Tell me what you found,\" the Prophet said, its voice now truly a whisper. Without looking up Tartarus reached for its belt and the at tached orb. The Prophet flicked its claw at the container. It floated free from Tartarus's grasp and hovered. The top unscrewed, and three glittering chips of sapphire-colored crystal shimmered, and threw light and shadow upon the chamber's mirrored surfaces. The Prophet's dais bobbled in the suddenly uneven gravity but it quickly compensated.\n\"This is all?\" it asked.\n\"Eight squadrons combed the area surrounding the Eridanus Secundus asteroid field andTau Ceti,\" the Brute replied, bowing 340 HALO: FIRST STRIKE its head even lower. \"Many were lost in the void. This is all there was to find.\"\n\"A pity.\"\nThe orb's lid screwed itself back on, and then the container gently drifted into the Prophet's grasp.\n\"It may yet be enough for our purposes... and one more relic from the Great Ones, as precious as they are, will soon make no difference to us.\" The Prophet tucked the container deep in the folds of its underrobe. \"Make sure those pilots who survived are well rewarded. Then execute them all. Quickly. Quietly.\"\n\"I understand,\" Tartarus replied with a hint of anticipation thickening his voice. The Prophet inhaled deeply, released a rasping sigh, and then asked, \"And what of the Unyielding Hierophantl\"\n\"The reports are unclear, Your Grace,\" Tartarus replied. \"The renegade flagship Ascendant Justice was involved, and destroyed. We are unsure what triggered the station's detonation. The recorded communications channels were flooded with system error reports prior to its destruction. The Engineers are saying this is imp\"\nThe Prophet held up one claw, indicating silence. Tartarus halted midsyllable.\n\"A regrettable turn of events,\" the Prophet said, \"but in the end, only an insignificant setback. Have the ships that are battle-ready rendezvous with us at the site of the cataclysm.\"\n\"And what of the incompetent, High One? The one who lost Ascendant Justice?\"\n\"Bring him before the Council. Let his fate match the magni tude of his failure.\"\nTartarus's face twisted with what passed for a grin among his species.\n\"Soon the Great Journey shall begin,\" the Prophet of Truth continued, and its claws curled into fists. \"And let nothing in this universe impede our progress.\""
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "PROLOGUE BETA COMPANY'S VICTORY AT PEGASI DELTA\n1135 HOURS, JULY 3, 2545 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\\n51 PEGASI-B SYSTEM, TARGET AREA APACHE, PLANET PEGASI DELTA\n\nThe orbital pod impacted, and metal wrenched and sp arked. Inside his cocoon of titanium, lead foil, and stealth ablative coatin g, SPARTAN-B292 watched black stars explode across his vision, he tasted bl ood in his mouth, and the last air compressed from his lungs.\n\nTom's training kicked in: he pulled the pod's twist ed frame apart and blinked in the bright blue sunlight.\n\nSomething was wrong. 85 Pegasi-914A was supposed to  be a faint yellow sun. This was electric blueboiling plasma blue.\n\nHe jumped, rolling to one side as the blast washed over him. The outer layers of his Semi-Powered Infiltration armor boiled and p eeled like a bad sunburn.\n\n\"Training,\" his instructor, Lieutenant Commander Am brose, had said. \"Your training must become part of your instinct. Drill u ntil it becomes part of your bones.\" Tom reacted without thought; a lifetime of training took over.\n\nHe raised his MA5K assault rifle and fired along th e trajectory of the plasma bolt, making sure to sweep low.\n\nHis eyes cleared, and as he automatically reloaded his weapon, he finally saw the surface of Pegasi Delta. It could have been hel l: red rocks; orange dust filled sky; the scars of a dozen impact skids and c raters around him; and thirty meters ahead, dark purple splashes of Jackal blood soaking into the sand.\n\nTom pulled out his Sidearm and warily moved to the fallen aliens. There were five with extensive wounds to their lower legs. He shot them each once in their odd angular vulturelike heads, then he knelt, relie ved them of their plasma grenades, and stripped off their forearm force shie lds.\n\nAlthough Tom wore a full suit of Semi-Powered Infil tration armor (colloquially called \"SPI\" armor by Section Three techno-philes),  its hardened plates and photo-reactive panels could only take a few glancin g shots before failing. The armor's camouflag-ing textures sputtered and stabil ized, however; and once again blended into the rocky terrain.\n\nEvery SPARTAN-III had received extensive training i n using the enemy's equipment, so Tom would improvise. He strapped one of the Jackal shields to his forearm. It was excellent protection, as long a s you remembered to crouch PROLOGUE BETA COMPANY'S VICTORY AT PEGASI DELTA\n1135 HOURS, JULY 3, 2545 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\\n51 PEGASI-B SYSTEM, TARGET AREA APACHE, PLANET PEGASI DELTA\n\nThe orbital pod impacted, and metal wrenched and sp arked. Inside his cocoon of titanium, lead foil, and stealth ablative coatin g, SPARTAN-B292 watched black stars explode across his vision, he tasted bl ood in his mouth, and the last air compressed from his lungs.\n\nTom's training kicked in: he pulled the pod's twist ed frame apart and blinked in the bright blue sunlight.\n\nSomething was wrong. 85 Pegasi-914A was supposed to  be a faint yellow sun. This was electric blueboiling plasma blue.\n\nHe jumped, rolling to one side as the blast washed over him. The outer layers of his Semi-Powered Infiltration armor boiled and p eeled like a bad sunburn.\n\n\"Training,\" his instructor, Lieutenant Commander Am brose, had said. \"Your training must become part of your instinct. Drill u ntil it becomes part of your bones.\" Tom reacted without thought; a lifetime of training took over.\n\nHe raised his MA5K assault rifle and fired along th e trajectory of the plasma bolt, making sure to sweep low.\n\nHis eyes cleared, and as he automatically reloaded his weapon, he finally saw the surface of Pegasi Delta. It could have been hel l: red rocks; orange dust filled sky; the scars of a dozen impact skids and c raters around him; and thirty meters ahead, dark purple splashes of Jackal blood soaking into the sand.\n\nTom pulled out his Sidearm and warily moved to the fallen aliens. There were five with extensive wounds to their lower legs. He shot them each once in their odd angular vulturelike heads, then he knelt, relie ved them of their plasma grenades, and stripped off their forearm force shie lds.\n\nAlthough Tom wore a full suit of Semi-Powered Infil tration armor (colloquially called \"SPI\" armor by Section Three techno-philes),  its hardened plates and photo-reactive panels could only take a few glancin g shots before failing. The armor's camouflag-ing textures sputtered and stabil ized, however; and once again blended into the rocky terrain.\n\nEvery SPARTAN-III had received extensive training i n using the enemy's equipment, so Tom would improvise. He strapped one of the Jackal shields to his forearm. It was excellent protection, as long a s you remembered to crouch behind it and cover your legs, a tactic larger UNSC  soldiers would have trouble accomplishing.\n\nThe display on his faceplate flickered to life, a t ransparent layer of ghostly green topology. One hundred kilometers overhead, th e baseball-sized Stealth Tactical Aerial Reconnaissance Satellite, or STARS,  had come online.\n\nA single blinking dot appeared that represented his  position. Tom was five kilometers south of the primary target.\n\nHe scanned the horizon and saw the Covenant factory  city in the distance, looming from the rocky surface like a castle of rus t with giant smokestacks and blue plasma coils pulsing deep inside. Beyond the f actory lay the lavender shoreline of a toxic sea.\n\nAdditional dots appeared on his heads-up screen a d ozen, two dozen, and then hundreds. The rest of Beta Company was online. Two hundred ninety-one of them. Nine hadn't made it, either dead on reentry o r killed from the impact or by Covenant forces before they could get out of the  pods.\n\nAfter the mission, he'd cheek the roster to see who  they'd lost. For now, he stuffed his feelings into a dark corner of his mind .\n\nTom sighed with relief as he saw the eight Xs repre senting the subprowler Black Cat exfiltration craft appear and then fade o n his display. That was their only way off this rock after Operation TORPEDO was accomplished.\n\nText scrolled on his display: \"TEAM FOXTROT PROCEED  ON VECTOR ZERO EIGHT SIX. PROVIDE FLANKING SUPPORT TO TEAM INDIA.\"\n\nNo reply was necessary. Orders were broadcast from STARS overhead, and any break of radio silence would reveal their position.\n\nThree of the dots on the display winked, and tiny n umbers faded into view. B091 was Lucy. B174 was Min. And B004, that was Ada m. His friends. Fireteam Foxtrot.\n\nTom loped forward, found an outcropping of rock, an d took cover under it, waiting for them to catch up.\n\nTo stay on task, and not get distracted by his raci ng heartbeat, he reviewed Operation TORPEDO one more time. Pegasi Delta was h ome to a Covenant refinery. The sea on this tiny world was unusually rich in deuterium and tritium, which they used in their plasma reactors. The facto ry processed the stuff, and refueled their ships, making this Covenant operatio n on the edge of UNSC territory a prime target. It allowed the enemy easy  access to human space. There had been previous operations to neutralize th e target. UNSC CENTCOM had sent nukes, launched from Slipspace, but pluton ium emitted an aura of Cherenkov radiation upon reentering normal space, m aking all the stealth coatings and lead linings useless. The Covenant had  easily detected and destroyed them.\n\nThere were similarly too many Covenant ships near t he moon to send a slow, distantly launched nuke in normal space. Nor was a regular invasion or even the elite Helljumper ODSTs worth the attempt. The UNSC had one chance to take the factory out before the enemy would muster their  defenses.\n\nSo they were sent.\n\nThe three hundred Spartans of Beta Company had been  launched seven hours ago into Slipspace from the UNSC carrier All Under Heaven. They had endured the ride in long-range stealth orbital drop pods, s uffered debilitating nausea transitioning unshielded into normal space, and the n got parboiled on the fiery ride to the surface of Pegasi Delta.\n\nFrom the warm welcome given by those five Jackals, Tom knew they'd been detected, but the Covenant might not yet know the s ize of the breach in their security. He'd have to move quick, take advantage o f whatever element of surprise remained, blow the factory, and if possibl e, the secondary targets of ammunition depots and methane reserves.\n\nThey could still do this. They had to do it. Destro ying that factory would triple the length of the Covenant supply lines to UNSC spa ce. This is exactly what Tom had trained for since he was six years old year s of drills and war games and schooling. But that might not be enough.\n\nHe heard the crunch of gravel under a boot. He spun , rifle raised, and saw Lucy.\n\nEvery SPARTAN-III looked the same in their Semi-Pow ered Infiltration armor. The angular shifting camo pattern of the SPI armor was one part legionnaire mail, one part tactical body armor, and one part ch ameleon. Tom, however, recognized Lucy's short, careful gait.\n\nHe made the two-fingers-over-faceplate gesture, the  age-old silenced Spartan welcome. She gave him the slightest of nods.\n\nTom handed her a Jackal shield unit and two plasma grenades.\n\nAdam arrived next, and Min ten seconds after that.\n When all their appropriated shields were in place, Tom gave Team Foxtrot a series of quick, sharp hand gestures, ordering them  to move ahead in a loose arc formation. Stealthy, but fast.\n\nAs he stood, thunder rumbled, fire flashed in the s ky, and a shadow covered them and vanished. Two teardrop-shap ed Covenant Seraph fighters roared over their hiding spot.\n\nA line of plasma erupted a hundred meters behind th eman inferno that billowed and blossomed straight toward his team.\n\nTom leapt to one side, activating his Jackal shield , holding it between him and the three-thousand-degree flames that would melt th ough his SPI armor like butter. The force field flared white from the radia tion; his skin on his palms prickled with blisters.\n\nThe plasma passed thinned evaporated. The air coole d.\n\nCovenant air support was already in play. That made  the situation a hundred times worse.\n\nWith a blink, Tom switched his heads-up display fro m TACMAP to TEAMBIO. All members of Team Foxtrot showed skyrocketing pulses and blood pressures. But they were all still green. All alive. Good.\n\nHe sprinted. Stealth was no longer an operational p riority. Getting to the factory where they couldn't be strafed was all that  mattered.\n\nBehind him, Lucy, Adam, and Min fell in line, cover ing the rough ground in long powerful strides at nearly thirty kilometers an hou r.\n\nRed ovals appeared on Tom's TACMAP: Covenant Seraph s on another attack run. More than before three six ten.\n\nTom glanced to either side and saw his comrades, hu ndreds of Spartans running across the broken ground. The dust from their charg e filled the air and mingled with the smoke from the last plasma blasts.\n\nThree Spartans lagged behind, turned, and braced, h olding M19-B SAM missile launchers. They fired. Missiles streaked into the a tmosphere, leaving snaking trails of vapor.\n\nThe first bounced off an incoming Seraph's shield; the missile exploded, not damaging the craft, but buffeting it nonetheless\n into its wingman. Both craft tumbled, lost fifty me ters of altitude, and then recoveredbut their leading edges scraped the ground , dissipating their weakened shields, and they spun end over end erupti ng into fiery pinwheels.\n\nThe two other missiles struck their targets, overlo aded shields, leaving their target Seraphs covered in soot, but otherwise intac t. Tom could see the Seraphs wave off their attack runs.\n\nA small victory.\n\nTom slowed to a trot and watched as the remaining s ix Seraphs dipped and released their plasma charges, then pulled up, roll ed, and vanished in the haze.\n\nEach charge of dropped plasma was a brilliant pinpo int that elongated into a lance of boiling sun-fueled sapphire. When they hit  the ground, they exploded and fanned forward, propelled at three hundred kilo meters an hour by momentum and thermal expansion.\n\n\nA wall of flame appeared on Tom's left, and it made  the camo panels of his SPI armor shiver blue and white. But he didn't move. He  remained transfixed on the other five fires enveloping scores of Spartans.\n\nThe plasma slowed, still boiling, and then the clou ds cooled and thinned to a dull gray haze, leaving crackling glassed earth and  bits of charred bone in its wake.\n\nOn his TACMAP, dozen of dots winked off.\n\nLucy sprinted past Tom. The sight of her snapped hi m back to action, and he ran.\n\nThere'd be time for fear later. And for revenge. Wh en they blew this factory there'd be plenty of time for bloody revenge.\n\nTom shifted his focus off his TACMAP on his helmet' s faceplate and farther ahead to the primary target, now only five hundred meters distant.\n\nFrom the center of the city-sized factory the blue glow was too intense to stare directly at, casting hard shadows in the web of pipes and the forest of smokestacks. The structu re was a kilometer square with towers rising three hundred meters, perfect fo r snipers.\n\nTom forced himself to run faster, ahead of Lucy, Ad am, and Min, darting from side to side. They understood and mimicked his evas ive tactic. Plasma bolts exploded near his foot. He weaved back  and forth through a hailstorm of high-angle trajectories. His suspicion s about snipers had been correct.\n\nHe dodged, kept running, and squinted ahead at the edge of the factory. His faceplate automatically responded and zoomed to fiv e-times magnification.\n\nThere was another threat: shifting luminescent edge s of force fields, Jackal shields. And in the shadows, the arrogant eyes of a  Covenant Elite in purple armor, staring straight back at him.\n\nTom skidded to a halt, grabbed the sniper rifle slu ng on his back, and sighted through the scope. He stilled his labored breathing . A plasma bolt sizzled near his shoulder, crackling the skin of his SPI armor, singeing his flesh, but he ignored the pain, irritated only that the shot had thrown him momentarily off target. He waited for the split second between the beats of his heart, and then squeezed the trigger.\n\nThe bullet's momentum spun the Elite around. The ar ticulation of its neck armor exploded off the creature. Tom shot once more , and caught it in the back. A splash of bright blue blood spattered the p ipes.\n\nJackals emerged from the shadows at the periphery o f the factory, crawling out behind pipes and plasma tubes.\n\nThere were hundreds of them. Thousands.\n\nAnd they all opened fire\n\nTom rolled to the ground, flattening himself into a  slight depression. Adam, Min, and Lucy dropped, as well, their assault rifles out  in front of them, ready to fire.\n\nPlasma bolts and crystal shards crisscrossed over T om's headtoo many to dodge. The enemy didn't have to be able to see them. All t hey had to do was fill every square centimeter of air with lethal projectiles. H is team was pinned, easy picking for those Seraphs on their next pass.\n\nHow had the Covenant mustered such a counterrespons e so quickly?\n\nIf they had been detected earlier, their drop pods would have been vaporized en route. Unless they had had the extreme bad luck to get here when a capital ship had been docked at the factory. On the blind s ide? Could the STARS overhead have missed something that large?\n One of Lieutenant Commander Ambrose's first lessons  echoed in Tom's head:\n\"Don't rely on technology. Machines are easy to bre ak.\"\n\nTom's COM crackled: \"Ml9 SAMs execute Bravo maneuve r, targets painted. All other teams ready to move.\"\n\nTom understood: they needed cover. And the only cov er was dead ahead in the factory.\n\nFrom the field six smears of vapor lanced forward t o the factory. The M19 SAMs detonated on contact with pipes and plasmas conduit sexploding into clouds of black smoke and blue sparks.\n\nThe enemy fire slowed.\n\nThat was their opening.\n\nTom rolled to his feet, and sprinted for the thicke st smoke. Team Foxtrot followed.\n\nEvery other Spartan on the field charged as well, h undreds of half-camouflaged armored figures, running and firing at the dazed Ja ckals, appearing as a wave of ghost warriors, half liquid, half shadow, part m irage, part nightmare.\n\nThey screamed a battle cry, momentarily drowning th e sound of gunfire and explosion.\n\nTom yelled with themfor the fallen, for his friends , and for the blood of his enemies. The sound was deafening.\n\nJackals broke ranks, turned to flee, and got shot i n the back as their shields turned with them.\n\nBut hundreds more held their ground, overlapping sh ields to form an invulnerable phalanx.\n\nTom led Team Foxtrot into the smoke-filled shadows of the factory. He found a pipe the size of a redwood dripping condensed water  and green coolant and took cover behind it. In the mist he saw Lucy, Adam , and Min take positions behind cover, too. He gave them rapid-fire orders w ith hand signals: Move in and kill.\n\nHe spun around, his MA5K rifle leveledand found him self face-to-face with a Covenant Elite, its jaw mandibles split in mimicry of an impossibly large human grin. The monster held an energy sword in one hand,  and a plasma pistol in the other. It shot and swung.\n\nTom sidestepped the deadly arcs of energy, set his foot between the Elite's too-wide stancepushed and fired at the same time.\n\nThe Elite sprawled onto the ground, and Tom tracked  his body, spraying rounds into the slit of its helmet. He didn't miss.\n\nTeam Foxtrot closed on him, leaving six dead Jackal s behind, their bodies snapped like rag dolls.\n\nBehind on the field came rapid thumps and flashes o f heat. Plasma grenades.\n\nJackals and Elites rushed from their cover in the f actory to meet the rest of Beta Company on the field, realizing perhaps it wou ld be suicide to face Spartans in close quarters.\n\nThousands of Covenant clashed with two hundred Spar tans in open combat. Tracer rounds, crystal shards, plasma bolts, and fl aring shields made the scene a blur of chaos.\n\nThe SPARTAN-IIIs moved with speed and reflexes no C ovenant could follow. They dodged, snapped necks and limbs, and with capt ured energy swords they cut through the enemy until the field ran with rive rs of gore and blue blood.\n\nTom hesitated, torn between moving deeper into the factory complex and executing the mission and running back to help his comrades. You didn't leave your friends behind.\n\nThe sky darkened, clouds overhead turning steel gra y.\n\nTom's COM crackled to life: \"Omega three. Execute n ow! NOW!\"\n\nThat stopped him cold. Omega three was the panic co de, an order to break and run no matter what the cost.\n\nWhy? They were winning.\n\nTom then saw the clouds move. Only they weren't clo uds.\n\nEverything was clear to him now. Why there were so many Covenant here. And why Seraph single ships, craft designed for space c ombat, were bombing them.\n\nSeven Covenant cruisers sank from the clouds. Over a kilometer long, their bulbous oblong hulls cast shadows over the entire f ield. If these ships had been parked in formation, refueling over the complex, th e STARS might have mistaken such large structures as part of the facto ry.\n\n\"We have to help them,\" Lucy whispered over the TEA MCOM.\n\n\"No,\" Min said, making a short cut motion with his hand. \"The Omega order.\"\n\n\"We're not running,\" Adam broke in.\n\n\"No,\" Tom agreed. \"We're not. The order is in error .\" Despite the environmental controls in his SPI armor, he felt chilled.\n\nSeraph fighters dropped from the cruisers, dozens o f them, and gathered into swarms. Darkly luminescent shafts of light appeared  from the belly of each cruiser, transport beams, and from them marched hun dreds of Elites onto the field.\n\n\"But we can't help them either,\" Tom whispered to h is team.\n\nHalf of Beta Company turned to face the new threat.  Impossible odds, even for Spartans, but they would buy time for the rest of t hem to find cover.\n\nFinding cover was a futile tactic, though. Seven Co venant cruisers had enough firepower to neutralize even two hundred\n\nSpartans. They could pin them down, send in ground reinforcements by the thousands, or if they wanted to, glass the entire m oon from orbit.\n\nThat left only one option.\n\n\"The core,\" Tom told them. \"It's still our mission,  and our only effective weapon.\"\n\nThere was a heartbeat pause, and then three green a cknowledgment lights winked on his display. His friends knew what he was  asking.\n\nTeam Foxtrot moved as one, running into the factory  at top speed, dodging pipes and supply pods.\n\nA squad of six Elites was ahead, hunkered behind a tangle of ducts.\n\nTom tossed a handful of concussive grenades to diso rient them, but his team kept running. Any delayeven to engage an enemy who could take shots at their backsmight rob them of their one chance.\n\nThe surviving Elites recovered and fired. Adam fell, one hand clutched at the crystal shards that penetrated his armor and punctured his lower spine.\n\n\"Go!\" Adam cried, waving them off. \"I'll hold them. \"\n\nTom didn't break stride. Adam knew what had to be d one: keep fighting until there was no fight left in him.\n\nThe core was a hundred meters ahead. It was impossi ble to miss, so bright Tom's faceplate automatically polarized to maximum tint, and it was still hard to look at. The core was the size of a ten-story bu ilding, pulsing like a huge heart, fed by glowing conduits and steaming coolant  pipes, and encrusted with crystalline electronics. It was a marvel of alien e ngineering, and complexwhich hopefully also meant easy to break.\n\n\"Main coolant ducts there and there,\" Tom shouted o ver TEAMCOM and pointed.\n\"I'll jam the dump valve.\" He moved to the base of the core.\n\nLucy's and Min's acknowledgment lights winked.\n\nTom helmet's display fuzzed with static, then poppe d and went black. The reactor plasma and its intensely fluctuating electr omagnetic field was wreaking havoc with their electronics.\n\nHe found the dump valve, a mechanism the size of a Pelican dropship, just below the main chamber. He unspooled the thermite-c arbon cord and ran it around the valve twice. He then primed and activate d the charge. A line of lightning brilliance flared and sizzled through Cov enant alloy, fusing the valve into a solid lump.\n\nTom glanced at Lucy. She set an explosive charge on  one of the two main coolant lines that fed the reactor, and then set th e timer on the detonator.\n\nMin was setting his timer, toothen vanished in a fl ash of smoke and thunder. The core flared brighter than the sun. Coolant fume s screamed from twisted pipe and alarms blared.\n\n\"No!\" Lucy screamed.\n\nShe ran past Tom toward the billowing cloud of toxi c coolant. He caught her wrist, jerking her to a stop.\n\n\"He's gone,\" Tom said. \"EM field must have triggere d his charge.\"\n\nShe wrestled out of Tom's grasp.\n\"We have to get out of here,\" he told her.\n\nShe hesitated, taking one step toward Min.\n\nThe support structure groaned and started to melt a nd sag from the superheating core.\n\nShe turned back to Tom, nodded, and they ran out of  the chamberdeeper into the factory complex, through a jungle of struts and  hissing ducts, and splashing through lakes of leaked, boiling coolant.\n\nThe charge Lucy had set went off and silenced the r eactor's alarms.\n\nEven with their backs to the reactor, running at a full-out flat sprint, the glare from the core doubled as it reach ed near supercritical phase. It was too much to endure, even through a polarized  faceplate, and Tom squinted his eyes nearly shut.\n\nThey turned a corner, slid down the railing of angl ed stairs and onto a catwalk that protruded over a ledge. Five hundred meters be low, an ocean churned against rocky cliffs.\n\nThey had made it through the factory, out the back side, where massive tubes sucked in the ocean water for processing.\n\nLucy looked back at the factory and then to Tom. Sh e offered her hand.\n\nHe took it.\n\nThey jumped.\n\nIn free fall, Tom struggled, pumping his legs. Lucy  released his hand, and straightened her body. He did the same and then poi nted his feet down a split second before he hit the water.\n\nThe impact stunned him, then he tasted salt, and ch oked on water that filled his helmet. He clawed for the surface. The lining o f his SPI armor swelled, taking on water, weighing him down.\n\nHe broke the surface, paddling as hard as he could with his legs to stay afloat. He clawed at his helmet release and pulled it off.\n\nNext to him, Lucy had her helmet off as well, gaspi ng.\n \"Look.\" He nodded to the cliff tops.\n\nFrom this angle Tom saw the Covenant cruisers over the field. Lances of laser fire rained down from the ships' lateral weapon arr ays and blasted his fellow Spartans. Firepower meant for capital ship combat h ow could anyone survive that?\n\nA new sun appeared. The supercritical core flared a nd light filled the world. The cruisers rippled, distorted, their alloy skins boiling away in the heat. They disintegrated, bits blasted outward.\n\nThe rocky prominence shattered into molten debris.\n\n\"Down!\" Tom cried.\n\nHe and Lucy pushed themselves underwater, diving to  escape the overpressure and incinerating blast. His waterlogged armor might  now save his life.\n\nOverhead, water flash vaporized. Droplets of liquid  rock and metal hissed past him. Heat smothered him and a giant hand grasped an d squeezed until all Tom saw was blackness.\n\nTom lay on the ground panting. They had nearly drow ned after the blast, but managed to shed their armor, and finally, exhausted , swam back to the shore, and dragged themselves around the edge of the battl efield and into the hills.\n\nHe and Lucy had made it to extraction point six whe re he had seen one of the stealth exfiltration ships.\n\nNo Covenant reinforcements came. They had all been killed when the reactor blew. Operation TORPEDO was a success but it had co st the lives of everyone else in the Beta Company contingent.\n\nAll that remained of the factory, the Covenant crui sers, and ground forces of Beta Company was a glass crater four kilometers in diameter. No bones, not even a camo panel from a suit of SPI armor. Gone. W hispers in the wind.\n\nLucy pulled herself up against the hull of the Blac k Cat sub-prowler craft, her body trembling. She started to stagger back down th e hill.\n\n\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\"Survivors,\" she whispered and took one uncertain s tep forward. \"Foxtrot. We have to look.\"\n No one had survived. They had checked all the COM f requencies, searched the shoreline, fields, and hills on their long silent h ike back. No one else was alive.\n\nLucy was tiny. Like Tom, she was only twelve years old, but at one point six meters and seventy kilos, Lucy was one of the smallest SPARTAN-IIIs. Without her SPI armor and we apons, and her pale form covered only in modest body sheathing, she looked e ven smaller.\n\nTom stood and gently put his arm around her. She tr embled violently.\n\n\"You're going into shock.\"\n\nHe found a first-aid kit and injected her with the standard postmission antishock medical cocktail.\n\n\"Survivors\" she whispered.\n\n\"There are none,\" he said. \"We have to get out of h ere. The Black Cat's capacitors will drain in four hours and we won't be  able to jump to Slipspace.\"\n\nShe turned to him, eyes wide and brimming with tear s. \"How are you sure we're alive?\"\n\nTom was alive. He was certain. But as he cast one f inal glance at the crackling fields of Pegasi Delta, he knew part of him had die d today with Beta Company.\n\nHe helped Lucy into the Black Cat prowler and close d the hatch.\n\nThe subprowler's engines thrummed to life, then dul led to a whisper. The craft lifted and angled up into the darkening skies.\n\nLucy's words asking if they were alive would be her  last. \"Posttraumatic vocal disarticulation,\" the experts would eventually decl are. And although recertified for duty, she would remain silenteither unable, or unwilling, to speak the rest of her life.\n\nIn the years to come, Tom would reflect on Lucy's l ast question every day.\n\"How are you sure we're alive?\" Something had died for every Spartan that day.\n\n\n\nSECTION I LIEUTENANT AMBROSE CHAPTER ONE 1647 HOURS, MAY 1, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ 111 T AURI SYSTEM, CAMP NEW HOPE, PLANET VICTORIA\n\nJohn, SPARTAN-117, despite being encased in a half ton of angular MJOLNIR armor, moved like a shadow through the twilight for est underbrush.\n\nThe guard on the perimeter of Base New Hope drew on  a cigarette, took a final puff, and tossed the butt.\n\nJohn lunged, a whisper rustle, and he wrapped his a rm around the man's neck, wrenching it up with a pop.\n\nThe guard's cigarette hit the ground.\n\nNearby crickets resumed their night song.\n\nJohn pinged his status to the rest of Blue Team. Fo ur green LED lights winked on his display, indicating the rest of the extended  perimeter guards had been neutralized.\n\nThe next objective was a delivery gate, the weakest  part of the rebel base's defense system. The guardhouse had two men outside,  two on the rooftop, and several inside. Past this, however, the base had im pressive security even by Spartan standards: motion and seismic sensors, a tr iple layering of guards, trained dogs, and overhead MAKO-class drones.\n\nJohn blinked his status light green: the signal to proceed with the next phase.\n\nThe setting sun just touched the edge of the horizo n when the guards on the roof of the bunker twitched and crumpled. It happen ed so fast, John wasn't sure which Linda had targeted first. A heartbeat la ter the two on the ground were dead as well.\n\nJohn and Kurt ran for the gatehouse.\n\nKelly sprinted ahead, covering the three hundred me ters from the forest in half the time, and leapt to the roof in a single bound. She opened the roof's vent and dropped flash-bang grenades.\n\nKurt posted outside the door, and swept the aft sid e for any targets. John waited on the other side of the steel and bulletpro of-glass security door, one hand on its handle, one foot braced against the wal l.\n\nInside three muffled thumps sounded.\n John pulled, wrenching the door and frame from the steel reinforcing in the wall.\n\nKurt entered, his M7 submachine gun burping three-r ound bursts.\n\nJohn was in a moment later, and assessed the threat s in the blink of an eye. There were three guards already down. Behind them, banks of security monitors showed a hundred views of the base.\n\nSeven other men sat at a card table, shaking off th e effects of the flash-bangs. They stood with their sidearms halfway out of their  holsters.\n\nJohn calmly shot each man, once in the head.\n\nNothing moved.\n\nKelly dropped outside the door, rolled inside, her weapon leveled.\n\n\"Security system,\" John whispered to her and Kurt.\n\nFred and Linda appeared a moment later, and togethe r they pulled and wedged the heavy door back into its twisted frame.\n\n\"All good outside,\" Fred told them.\n\nKelly sat before the bank of monitors and pulled ou t a touch pad, booting the ONI computer infiltration software package.\n\nKurt tapped on the keyboard, nodding to the sticky note under one monitor.\n\"Password's posted,\" he said, shaking his head.\n\n\"Okay,\" Kelly muttered. \"We can do it the easy way,  too.\n\nRunning monitor-looping protocol, now. I'll get a c lean path to the target.\"\n\nKurt meanwhile flipped through various camera angle s and subsystems on the displays. \"No alarms raised,\" he reported. He pause d and watched a group of guards unloading ammunition canisters off a Warthog . One man fumbled and dropped a can; along its side was stenciled: MUTA-A P-09334.\n\nJohn hadn't ordered a subsystems sweep, though he h adn't specifically forbidden it, either. Kurt's actions could trigger a red flag at the base's command and control.\n\nJohn had mixed feelings about using SPARTAN-051, Ku rt, as Sam's replacement on Blue Team. On the one hand, he was an extremely capable Spartan. Chief Mendez had routinely given him command of Green Tea m during training exercises, and Kurt had often won when facing John' s Blue Team. But on the other hand, he was, for a Spartan, undisciplined. H e took time to talk with every Spartan, and even the non-Spartan personnel t hat trained and supplied them. As a professional soldier in the middle of tw o warsone fighting an entrenched rebellion, the other taking on a technol ogically superior xenophobic alien raceKurt spent a considerable amou nt of time and energy making friends.\n\n\"Camera system and detectors looped,\" Kelly announc ed and made a tiny circle with her index finger. \"We have fifteen minutes whi le dogs and drones are rotated and refueled. So just guards to deal with.\"\n\n\"Move,\" John told his team.\n\nKurt hesitated, eyes still fixed on the monitors.\n\n\"What?\" John asked.\n\n\"A funny feeling,\" Kurt whispered.\n\nThis worried John. Everyone had performed flawlessl y, and there were no signs the enemy had reacted to their presence. But Kurt h ad a reputation for sniffing out ambushes. John had been on the receiving end of  Kurt's intuition several times during training.\n\nJohn nodded at the monitor, still devoid of anythin g but normal activity.\n\"Explain.\"\n\n\"The guards unloading that Warthog,\" Kurt said. \"Th ey look like they're getting ready for something. Security systems and machines can be fooledor easily rigged to fool,\" he stated. \"People? They're not so  easy.\"\n\n\"I understand,\" John said. \"We'll stay sharp, but w e have to stick to the schedule. Let's move.\"\n\nKurt got up, casting a glance back at the monitor a s they exited the gatehouse.\n\nThe Spartans melted from shadow to shadow, skirting  around a warehouse, under officers' barracks, and finally, at the cente r of the base, they approached the edge of a warehouse. The building wa s surrounded by three fences posted with warnings that the gravel yard be yond was mined.\n\nEight guards patrolled the perimeter. Parked on the  side was a modified Warthog; it had been cut in half and a new midsecti on had been welded in place that looked like it could carry ten men into battle. It would suffice. John withdrew a tiny rod and pointed it at the buil ding. The radiation counter flickered to a hundred times normal background leve l for this planet.\n\nThat confirmed that their primary target was inside : three FENRIS nuclear warheads.\n\nRecent battles with the Covenant had depleted UNSC stockpiles of fissile materials in this sector to almost nothing. Insurge nts had heard of this (which indicated they also had a considerable intelligence  capability), and they had contacted the regional CENTCOM to boldly offer a tr ade. They said they had stolen warheads. They claimed to have people with B orren's Syndrome, and wanted the expertise and medicines only UNSC doctor s could provide.\n\nCENTCOM said they'd consider the matter.\n\nThey had considered it, and sent in Blue Team to ge t those warheads, and if presented with the opportunity, th ey were to target any rebel leaders.\n\nJohn signaled his team to move out, disperse around  the bunker, and take up positions to snipe the guards.\n\nGreen acknowledgment lights winked on. Kurt's was l ast, with a palpable hesitation.\n\nJohn gave Kurt a short hand wave, and then pointed at the Warthog, indicating that he get the vehicle ready to move.\n\nKurt nodded.\n\nKurt's \"feeling\" that something was wrong was conta gious. John didn't like it. He pushed his uncertainties aside. Blue Team was in po sition.\n\nJohn unslung his sniper rifle and sighted. He gave the \"go\" signal and watched as one guard and then another silently fell over. L inda had been quick and efficient as usual.\n\nJohn gave the go-ahead to move in.\n\nBlue Team eased inside, sweeping the dark corners o f the building.\n\nThe place was empty, save steel racks cradling thre e conical warhead casings. John's radiation counter jumped, indicating that th ey did not hold conventional explosives. He pointed at Kelly and Fred, to the rack, then to the Warthog outside. They nodded.\n\nKurt's acknowledgment light winked red.\n\nNo Spartan flashed a red light on a mission unless they had a good reason.\n\n\"Abort,\" John said. \"Back out. Now.\"\n\nDizziness washed over him.\n\nJohn saw Linda, Fred, and Kelly sink to their knees .\n\nThen blackness swallowed him.\n\nJohn awoke with a start. Every muscle burned and it  felt like someone had hammered his head. This was a good sign: it meant h e wasn't dead.\n\nHe tensed his muscles against an unyielding pressur e.\n\nHe blinked to clear his hazy vision and saw he sat propped against a wall, still in the high-security bunker.\n\nThe warheads were also still there.\n\nThen John saw a dozen commandos in the warehouse, w atching him. They hefted the .30-caliber machine gun, favored by rebe l forces. Nicknamed\n\"confetti makers,\" they were grossly inaccurate, bu t at point-blank range, it would hardly be a concern.\n\nThe rest of Blue Team lay face-first on the concret e floor. Technicians in lab coats crouched over them capturing high-resolution digital video.\n\nJohn jerked against his inert armor. He had to get to his team. Were they dead?\n\n\"No need to struggle,\" a voice said.\n\nA man with long gray hair stepped in front of John' s faceplate. \"Or struggle if you want. We've installed neural-inhibitor collars on you and your comrades. UNSC standard issue for dangerous felons.\" He smile d. \"I'd wager without one you could, and would, rip me in half in that miracu lous power armor.\"\n\nJohn kept his mouth shut.\n\n\"Relax,\" the man said. \"I am General Graves.\"\nJohn recognized the name. Howard Graves was one of the three men believed to be in charge of the united rebel front. It was n o coincidence he was here.\n\n\"You're suffering from rapid decompressionthe bends ,\" he told John. \"We used an antigrav plate, old technology that never panned  out, but for our purposes, it worked just fine. A focused beam fooled your arm or's sensors into thinking you were in a ten-gee environment. It increased int ernal pressure to save your lives, momentarily rendering you unconscious.\"\n\n\"You engineered this all for us,\" John said, his vo ice hoarse.\n\n\"You 'Spartans' have put quite a dent in our effort s to liberate the frontier worlds,\" General Graves said. \"Station Jefferson in  the Eridanus asteroid belt last year; our destroyer\n\nOrigami; six months ago, our high-explosive manufac turing facility; followed by the incident in Micronesia, and our saboteur cell o n Reach. I didn't believe it until I saw the video. All by the same four-man tea m. Some said 'Blue Team'\nwas a myth.\" He rapped his knuckle on John's facepl ate. \"You seem real enough to me.\"\n\nJohn struggled, but he might as well have been enca sed in a mountain of steel. The neural collar neutralized every signal travelin g down his spine save the autonomics to his heart and diaphragm.\n\nHe had to focus. Did everyone on his team have a co llar? Yes. Each Spartan had a thick clamp on the back of their neck, directly o ver the AI interface port. Graves had excellent intelligence on their equipmen t.\n\nWait. John scrutinized his paralyzed team: Kelly, L inda, and Fred. No Kurt.\n\nGraves had said \"four-man team.\" He didn't know abo ut Kurt.\n\n\"As you surmised,\" Graves continued, \"this was all for your benefit. We scraped our fissile material together and made sure it was done so sloppily that even your Office of Naval Intelligence saw it happen. We  anticipated the miraculous Blue Team would be sent. I am not disappointed that  your leaders' minds are still so easily read.\"\n\nA young commando approached, saluted, and nervously  whispered, \"Sir, external sensors are off-line.\"\n\nGraves frowned. \"Drag the prisoners out of here. So und the general alarm. Police those warheads, and tell the liftships to\"\n A buzzing sound filled the air. John spied a blur o f spinning metal through the doorway. He had a fraction of a second to see it wa s an eight-armed Asteroidea antipersonnel mine, its pressure trigger jammed wit h a chunk of graveljust before it detonated into a ball of thunder.\n\nMetal pinged off John's armor.\n\nEveryone standing in the room doubled over from the  con-cussive force and hail of shrapnel.\n\nSix commandos with multiple cuts and bleeding ears rose, weapons ready, shaking their heads to clear the disorientation.\n\nThe modified Warthog that had been parked next to t he bunker crashed into the open double doorway.\n\nThe entire warehouse shook.\n\nThe commandos opened fire, and rushed the doorway.\n\nThe Warthog pulled away, then with a squeal, it rev ersed, and then rammed the doorway again. The corrugated steel walls scree ched, buckled, and with a shower of sparks the vehicle wedged its midsection in the building like a pregnant queen termite.\n\nThe commandos unloaded their confetti makers, pucke ring the 'Hog's armor.\n\nThe top of the midsection slid open and three more Aster-oidea antipersonnel mines arced, whirling like a child's toy each landi ng in a corner of the bunkerand exploded.\n\nWhite-hot metal fragments cut through the commandos  like a scythe.\n\nKurt leapt out and shot the three men still moving.  He quickly went to each Spartan and pulled off the collars.\n\nKelly rolled to her feet. Fred and Linda got up.\n\nKurt yanked the collar off John's neck. His entire body tingled, but his muscles once again responded to his commands. He flexed his  limbs. There was no permanent nerve damage.\n\n\"We can forget about stealth now,\" John said. \"Kurt , drive the Warthog. Kelly, Linda, Fred, get those warheads loaded ASAP.\"\n\nThey nodded. John went to General Graves. A sliver of corrugated  steel had lodged in the man's skull.\n\nUnfortunate. Graves had held secrets of the rebels'  command and intelligence structure-secrets John had had the barest glimpse o f. Their capacities had been greatly underestimated. With the larger Covena nt threat looming, John wondered what the rebels would ultimately do. Attack a weakened U NSC as it battled aliens, or fight against humanity's common enemy?\n\nHe ignored the larger strategic picture and focused  on the tactical, helping Kelly maneuver the last warhead into the Warthog's armored midsection.\n\nLoaded with the bombs and five armored Spartans, th e vehicle bottomed its shocks. John climbed into the rear and Kurt drove, and they sluggishly accelerated away from the secure warehouse.\n\n\"Best speed to the PZ,\" John ordered.\n\nKurt turned on the Warthog's radio. It buzzed with confused chatter.\n\n\"Unit One nonresponsive. Gunfire reported. Man down ! Tracking APC. Open fire?\nConfirmconfirm! All units converge. Do it now!\"\n\n\"Everyone,\" John shouted, \"into the center.\"\n\nHoles peppered the Warthog, armor-piecing rounds pe netrating the side like paper and denting the casings of the warheads.\n\n\"Behind the warheads!\" Fred told them.\n\nJohn, Kelly, Fred, and Linda huddled behind the mis siles. Nuclear warheads ironically would provide their best defense. Their casings were superhardened, both to contain radiation and hold the fury of a sm all sun for a split second longer and to boost the thermonuclear yield.\n\nJohn looked up at the driver's seat. Kurt squeezed himself lower into the seat, presenting the smallest possible target, risking hi s life to get them all to safety.\n\nThe Warthog billowed smoke, but its speed slowly in creased to forty kilometers an hour. A sharp rattle came from the engine. A tir e shredded and the vehicle swerved right and then left.\n\nKurt regained control and kept going. The AP fire slowed and then stopped.\n\n\"Brace!\" Kurt said and downshifted.\n\nThe Warthog barreled through the chain-link and con certina-wire barrier, over gravel fields, and into the forest.\n\n\"Road 32-B to the PZ,\" Kurt said.\n\n\"Road\" was a creative overstatement. They bounced a long, mowing down trees, fishtailing, and spraying mud.\n\n\"Drones!\" Kurt told them.\n\n\"Get the hatch open,\" John ordered. Kelly and Fred pulled the midsection roof panels apart.\n\nJohn stuck his head out, and spotted three MAKO-cla ss attack drones jetting toward them, each heavy with a fat missile. One dir ect hit would take out the Warthog. Even a near miss could destroy an axle.\n\nLinda popped up, her sniper rifle already in hand a nd eyes on the scope.\n\nJohn and Linda opened fire.\n\nThe lead drone smoked and dropped into the trees. T he next drone angled up, bobbing. It released its missile, and banked away. A line of smoke appeared, a tail of fire, and a missile accelerated toward them  at a frightening rate.\n\nLinda fired, squeezing off the rounds as fast as th e chamber could cycle. The missile started to spin but it was still dead on co urse.\n\n\"PZ three hundred meters,\" Kelly said, consulting h er tablet. \"Welcome committee has us in their sights.\"\n\n\"Tell them we have the package,\" John said, \"and we  need a hand.\"\n\n\"Roger that,\" she said.\n\nThe missile was two kilometers from themclosing fas t.\n\nAhead, the forest turned into swamp. With a hurrica ne roar, a UNSC Pelican dropship rose over the treetops and its twin chain guns spat a cloud of depleted uranium slugs at the incoming missilemaking it bloo m into a flower of fire and smoke.\n\"Stand by for pickup, Blue Team,\" the dropship's pi lot said over their COM. \"We got incoming single-craft hostiles. So hang tight, and go vacuum protocols.\"\n\n\"Check suit integrity,\" John ordered. He remembered  Sam and how his friend had sacrificed himself, remainin g on a Covenant ship under siege because of a breach in his suit. If a single AP round had breached their MJOLNIR, they'd be in a similar jam.\n\nThe Warthog, billowing thick black clouds, rattled to a stop.\n\nThe Pelican settled over it and clamped tight.\n\nBlue Team came back all green status lights, and Jo hn relaxed; he had been holding his breath.\n\nThe Pelican lifted the Warthog, laden with Spartans  and warheads, into the air.\n\n\"Make secure,\" the pilot said. \"Bogies inbound on v ector zero seven two.\"\n\nAcceleration tugged at John, but he stood fast, one  hand bracing the nukes, the other against the punctured side of the Warthog .\n\nThe clear blue light outside darkened to black and filled with the twinkle of stars.\n\n\"Rendezvous with the Bunker Hill in fifteen seconds ,\" the Pelican pilot announced. \"Prepare for immediate out-system Slipsp ace jump.\"\n\nKurt carefully eased out of the driver's seat and i nto the midsection to join them.\n\n\"Nice work,\" Fred told him. \"How did you know it wa s a trap?\"\n\n\"It was the guards loading ammunition off the Warth og,\" Kurt explained. \"I saw it at the time, but it didn't register until it was  almost too late. Those ammo canisters were marked as armor-piercing rounds. All  of them. You wouldn't need that much AP unless you were taking on a few l ight tanks\"\n\n\"Or a squad of Spartans,\" Linda said, catching on.\n\n\"Us,\" Fred remarked.\n\nKurt doggedly shook his head. \"I should have figure d it out sooner. I almost got everyone killed.\"\n\"You mean you saved everyone,\" Kelly said and she b utted her shoulder into his.\n\n\"If you ever have another funny 'feeling,'\" John to ld him, \"tell me, and make me understand.\"\n\nKurt nodded.\n\nJohn wondered about this man's \"feelings,\" his inst inctive subconscious awareness of the danger. CPO Mendez had made then a ll train so hard, lessons in fire-team integration, target prioritization, ha nd-to-hand combat, and battlefield tactics were part of their hardwired in stincts now. But that didn't mean the underlying biological impulses were worthl ess. Quite the opposite.\n\nJohn set a hand on Kurt's shoulder, searching for t he right words.\n\nKelly, as usual, articulated the sentiments that Jo hn never could. She said,\n\"Welcome to Blue, Spartan. We're going to make a gr eat team.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWO\n0500 HOURS, OCTOBER 24, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ABOARD UNSC POINT OF NO RETURN, INTERSTELLAR SPACE, SECTOR B-042\n\nColonel Ackerson ran both hands through his thinnin g hair, and poured himself a glass of water from the carafe on the table. His hand shook. Ironic that his career in the military had come to this: a secret m eeting on a ship that technically didn't exist, about to discuss a projec t that, if successful, would never surface from the shadows.\n\nEyes-only classification. Code words. Double deals and back-stabbing.\n\nHe longed for earlier days when he held a rifle in his hands, the enemy was easily recognized and dispatched, and Earth was the  most powerful, secure center of the universe.\n\nThose times only existed in memory now, and Ackerso n had to live in the dark to save what little light remained.\n\nHe pushed back from the ebony conference table, and  his gaze swept over the room, a five-meter-diameter bubble, bisected by a m etal grate floor, with stainless-steel walls brushed to a white reflective  sheen. Once sealed, it became a Faraday cage, and no electronic signals co uld escape.\n He hated this place. The white walls and the black table made him feel, like he sat inside a giant eye, always under observation.\n\nThe \"cage,\" as it was referred to, was contained wi thin a cocoon of ablative insulating layers, and counterelectronics to provid e further security, and this ensconced on the most secret ship in the UNSC fleet , Point of No Return.\n\nConstructed in parts and then assembled in deep spa ce, Point of No Return was the largest prowler-class vessel ever built. The si ze of a destroyer, she was completely radar-invisible, and when her baffled en gines ran below 30 percent she was as dark as interstellar space. Point of No Return was the wartime field command and control platform for the UNSC Office of  Naval Intelligence, NavSpecWep Section Three.\n\nVery few had actually seen this ship, only a handfu l had ever been aboard, and fewer than twenty officers in the galaxy had access  to the cage.\n\nThe white wall sheathed apart and three people walk ed in, boots clipping across the metal grate.\n\nRear Admiral Rich entered first. He was only forty,  but already gray. He commanded covert operations in Section Three, in ch arge of every field operation save Dr. Halsey's SPARTAN-II program. He sat on Ackerson's right, glanced at the water, and scowled. He withdrew a gold flask  and un-stoppered it. The odor of cheap whiskey immediately assailed Acker so n.\n\nNext was Captain Gibson. The man moved like a panth er with the low lopping strides indicative of time recently spent in mi-cro gravity. He was the field officer in charge of Section Three Black Ops, the h ands-on wet-work counterpart to Rear Admiral Rich.\n\nAnd last, Vice Admiral Parangosky entered.\n\nThe doors immediately sheathed close behind her. Th ere were three distinct clicks as locks meshed into place, and then the roo m fell into an unnatural silence.\n\nParangosky remained standing and assessed the other s; her iron gaze finally pinned Ackerson. \"You better have one hell of a rea son for dragging us all here through back channels, Colonel.\"\n\nParangosky looked fragile and closer to 170 years o ld than her actual seventy years, but she was in Ackerson's opinion the most d angerous person in the UNSC. She was the real power in ONI. To his knowledge, on ly one person had ever successfully crossed her and lived.\n\nColonel Ackerson set four reader tablets on the tab le. Bio-metric scanners flashed on the sidebars.\n\n\"Please, Admiral,\" he said, \"if you would.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" she growled and sat. \"I'll bite.\"\n\n\"Nothing new with that, Margaret,\" Admiral Rich mut tered.\n\nShe shot him a piercing glare, but said nothing.\n\nThe three officers scanned the document.\n\nCaptain Gibson sighed explosively and pushed the ta blet away. \"Spartans,\" he said. \"Yes, we're all familiar with their operation al record. Very impressive.\"\nFrom the scowl on his face, it was clear \"impressed \" was not what he was feeling.\n\n\"And,\" Rich commented, \"we already know your feelin gs about this program, Colonel. I hope you did not bri ng us here to try and once again shut the Spartans down.\"\n\n\"No,\" Ackerson replied. \"Please scroll to page twen ty-three, and my purpose will become clear.\"\n\nThey reluctantly examined his report.\n\nCaptain Rich's brows shot up. \"I've never seen thes e figures before MJOLNIR suit construction, maintenance staff, and recent upgrade s to their microfusion plants. Christ! You could build a new battle group for what Halsey is spending.\"\n\nVice Admiral Parangosky did not glace at the figure s. \"I've seen this before, Colonel. The Spartans are the single most expensive  project in our section. They are, however, also the most effective. Come to  the point.\"\n\n\"The point is this,\" Ackerson said. Sweat trickled down his back, but he kept his voice even. If he didn't sell this, Parangosky migh t roll over him, and he'd find himself busted to sergeant and patrolling some dust y frontier world. Or worse.\n\n\"I'm not suggesting that we shut the Spartans down, \" he continued and gestured broadly with both hands. \"On the contrary, we're fi ghting a war on two fronts:\nrebels eroding our economic base in the outer colon ies; and the Covenant, who, as far as we know, are committed to the total annih ilation of humanity.\"\nAckerson straightened and met Gibson's, Rich's, and  then Parangosky's gazes.\n\"I'm suggesting we need more Spartans.\"\n\nThe smallest flicker of a smile played over Vice Ad miral Parangosky's thin lips.\n\n\"Crap,\" Rich muttered. He took a draw from his whis key flask. \"Now I've heard everything.\"\n\n\"What's your angle, Colonel?\" Gibson demanded. \"You 've been on record against Dr. Halsey's SPARTAN-IIs since she started the prog ram.\"\n\n\"I have,\" Ackerson said. \"And I still am.\" He nodde d to the readers. \"Screen forty-two please.\"\n\nThey tabbed ahead.\n\n\"Here I detail the flaws of Halsey's undeniably 'su ccessful' program,\" Ackerson said. \"High cost, an absurdly small gene-candidate pool, inefficient training methodologies, far too few final units producednot to mention her dubious ethics of using flash cloning procedures.\"\n\nParangosky scrolled ahead. \"And you are proposing a h, a SPARTAN-III program?\"\nHer cast-iron expression didn't betray a hint of em otion.\n\n\"Consider the SPARTAN-IIs a proof-of-concept protot ype,\" Ackerson explained.\n\"Now it is time to shift into production mode. Make  the units better with new technology. Make more of them. And make them cheape r.\"\n\n\"Interesting,\" she whispered.\n\nHe sensed he was getting through to her, so he pres sed on.\n\n\"The SPARTAN-IIs have one additional feature that m akes them undesirable for our purposes,\" Ackerson said. \"A public presence. A lthough classified top secret, stories have leaked throughout the fleet. Just a my th at this point, but Section Two has plans to disseminate more information, and soon go public with the program.\"\n\n\"What!?\" Rich pushed back from the table. \"They can 't release details of a top secret\"\n\n\"To boost morale,\" Ackerson explained. \"They'll bui ld the legend of the Spartan. If the war goes as projected with the Covenant, we will certainly need drastic measures to maintain confidence among the rank and file.\"\n \"That means these Spartans will have to be, what, p rotected?\" Rich asked incredulous. \"If they're all dead, that makes a psy -ops campaign kind of moot, don't it?\"\n\n\"Not necessarily, sir,\" Gibson remarked. \"They can be dead, just not a secret.\"\n\n\"I assume, Colonel,\" Parangosky said, \"that this pu blic presence issue will not be a flaw with your propose d series-three program?\"\n\n\"Correct, ma'am.\" Ackerson set his hands on the tab le and bowed his head. He then looked up. \"This was a most difficult conclusi on to come to. This new fighting force must be inexpensive, highly efficien t, and trained to take on missions that traditionally would never be consider ed. Not even by Halsey's supermen.\"\n\nRich scowled at this and his forehead wrinkled. \"Su icide missions.\"\n\n\"High-value targets,\" Ackerson countered. \"Covenant  targets. The battles we have won against this enemy have come at unacceptab le losses. With their numbers, their superior technology, we have few opt ions against such a force, save extreme tactics.\"\n\n\"He's right,\" Gibson said. \"Spartans have proven th eir effectiveness on high-risk missions, and although I hate to admit it, they're better than any human team I could assemble. Remove existing UNSC mandates for s afety and exfiltration, and we have a shot of slowing the Covenant down. It  will give us time to think, plan, and come up with a better way to fight.\"\n\nParangosky whispered, \"You want to trade lives for time.\"\n\nAckerson paused, carefully weighing his response, t hen said, \"Yes, ma'am. Isn't that the job of a solider?\"\n\nParangosky stared at him. Ackerson held her gaze.\n\nRich and Gibson held their collective breath, speec hless.\n\n\"Is there another option?\" Ackerson asked. \"How man y worlds are now cinders?\nHow many billions of colonists have died? If we sav e a single planet, gain a few weeks, isn't that worth a handful of men and women? \"\n\n\"Of course it is,\" she whispered. \"God help us all.  Yes, Colonel, yes, it is worth it.\"\n\nRich emptied his flask. \"I'll reroute funding for t his thing through the usual places, no computer records. Too many dammed AIs these days.\"\n\nGibson said, \"I'll make sure you get equipment, DIs , and whatever else you need, Colonel.\"\n\n\"And I know of a perfect staging area to get this o ff the ground,\" Parangosky said. She nodded to Rich.\n\n\"Onyx?\" he said, half question, half statement.\n\n\"Do you know of a better place?\" she asked. \"Sectio n One has made that place a virtual black hole.\"\n\nRich sighed and said, \"Okay I'll send you the file on the place, Colonel. You're going to love it there.\"\n\nRich's assurances did not at all comfort, but Acker son kept his mouth shut. He had everything he wanted almost.\n\n\"Just one more thing,\" Ackerson said. \"I'll need a SPARTAN-II to help me train these new recruits.\"\n\nCaptain Gibson snorted. \"And you're going to ask Dr . Halsey to lend you one?\"\n\n\"I have a different methodology in mind,\" he replie d.\n\nParangosky said, \"You need a Spartan to train Spart ans, of course, but\"her voice lowered\"tread damned lightly. This thing goes publi c, people find out we're making 'disposable heroes,' and morale will plummet  across the fleet. Make sure no one in Section Three knows about your SPART AN-II trainer, or the SPARTAN-IIIs. They're going to have to vanish. Unde rstood?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"And for God's sake,\" she said, narrowing her eyes to slits, \"Catherine Halsey must never know. Her bleeding-heart sympathies for the Spartans have won her too many admirers at CENTCOM. If that woman wasn't so vital to the war we would have had her retired decades ago.\"\n\nAckerson nodded.\n\nThe three Naval officers thumbed their tablet reade rs and the files erased. They rose, and without another word, left the cage.\n They had never been here.\n\nNone of this had ever been discussed.\n\nAlone now, Ackerson reviewed his files and made pla ns. The first matter of business was already in the works: on-screen appear ed the career record of SPARTAN-051.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THREE\n0940 HOURS, NOVEMBER 7, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ GROOMBRIDGE 34\nSYSTEM, NEAR CONSTRUCTION PLATFORM 966A (DECOMMISSI ONED)\n\nSPARTAN-051, Kurt, jumped into utter emptiness. It was a hundred-kilometer drop to the moon under his feet. He mentally made t he adjustment to the free floating world of space, and noted that technically  there was no \"under\" or\n\"above\" in spacejust vectors, masses, and velocitie s.\n\nHe switched on his reverse-angle camera and saw Kel ly and Fred jump from the lock of the prowler after him. He knew not to turn his head to look. The motion would make him gyrate out of control. Besides, in t he vacuum-enhanced variant of MJOLNIR armor, his mobility was a fracti on of normal.\n\nA green status light winked on, confirming they wer e all on the same vector.\n\nThey'd coast for several kilometers before they act ivated long-range thruster packs. Although slow, there were two good reasons t o be cautious.\n\nFirst, when their prowler. Circumference, had reent ered normal space, the NAV Officer had picked up an echo, a partial ship s ilhouette, prowler class. He had dismissed this as an echo from their reentry to normal space that had bounced  off the moon. The NAV Officer had assured them there was nothing to worry  about. Still, the anomaly bugged Kurt. In case there was another ship, Kurt w anted to be well away before igniting packs. No need to needlessly give a way the stealth ship's position.\n\nSecond, they had detected an inert COM satellite on  the dark side of the moonsomething you'd expect if the system was being monitored for a sneak attack. No signal had emitted from the thing. The C ircumference had jammed, and then fried it with a burst from a pulse laser.\n Kurt just made the assumption this simple recon mis sion would be hot. That way, he'd be happy to be disappointed.\n\nHe activated the single-beam laser TEAMCOM system, and said, \"ETA to day night demarcation in five minutes. System check thr usters.\"\n\nKurt ran his own diagnostic. They couldn't take any  chances with the packs. Designed for long-range deep-space operations, it w as one of the riskiest pieces of equipment they'd been trained on. Even with trip le redundancy in NAV system and stabilizers, one accident and there was enough compressed tri amino hydrazine in the double fuel tanks to propel you so far and so fast off course, rescue would be an astronomically remote po ssibility.\n\nOr as Chief Mendez had put it: \"Start tumbling in t his gear, start praying.\"\n\nGreen status lights winked back at Kurt.\n\n\"ETA three minutes,\" he said.\n\n\"Roger,\" Kelly replied and then she added, \"Somethi ng wrong?\"\n\n\"No,\" Kurt said.\n\nFred's voice came over the COM: \"When you say 'no' like that, you mean 'yes.'\"\n\n\"Just a feeling,\" he admitted.\n\nSilence hissed over their linked single-beam COMs.\n\nKurt watched in his rear-angle display as Kelly and  Fred activated their MA5B assault rifles. A data cable linked each rifle to t heir T-PACK microprocessor to give the proper counterthrust when the weapon fired .\n\nKurt sighed, momentarily fogging his faceplate. Now  they were jumpy, too. But maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Too many things were n't adding up.\n\nThere was the echo and the inactive spy satellite. And why had CENTCOM picked them to go on a low-risk recon mission? This  was just a simple look to check out reported suspicious activity at a decommi ssioned USNC shipyard. Sure, a long space walk was a high-risk maneuver bu t not something you'd send three Spartans on.\n\n\"Coming up on the twilight zone,\" Kurt said. \"Go to  radio silent.\"\n They drifted toward the razor line that marked nigh t to day on the smooth icy moon. There was no atmosphere, so the transition in to the light would be quick, no sparkling sunrise, just a blinding flash of glar e.\n\nThey crossed into the light. Kurt's faceplate autom atically polarized, and they got their first glimpse of the shipyard.\n\nStation Delphi was a floating city of welded scaffo lding, cranes, docking pods, tubes, and grappling claws. There were no lights. N o thermal emissions. Kurt snapped on his high-def recorder to capture every s quare meter of the derelict. Whoever had been responsible for the station's deco mmissioning three years ago had done a sloppy job. There was a halo of debr is: spinning steel girders, bolts, and battle plate flashing as it caught and r eflected the dull red sunlight from the distant binary stars.\n\nIt looked deserted, so Kurt winked his green status  light three timesthe all clear to resume single-beam communication-Fred sent  an image over TEAMCOM, the skeletal frame of a partially constructed ship, about three times the s ize of their prowler. He said,\n\"That TR steel alloy exposed to solar radiation is supposed to turn white.\"\n\n\"It's silver,\" Kurt replied. \"New construction?\"\n\n\"Check this out,\" Kelly said.\n\nShe uploaded a series of images, capturing at incre asing magnification a hull support cradle whose shape suggested the oddly angu lar structure of a stealth ship. Only this vessel had to be as large as a UNSC  destroyerwhich was impossible. A large stealth ship was an oxymoron. T he bigger the ship, the more radiation leaked, the more thermals, the more stealth-coated surfaces had to be kept in perfect repair so they didn't ref lect radar.\n\n\"Send that image on a single beam back to the Circu mference,\" Kurt ordered.\n\nKelly's status light went green.\n\nKurt swept his left hand forward, gathering data on  his sensors-encrusted glove. Still no thermals. No, wait, as Station Delphi rota ted slowly, a tiny white flare appeared.\n\n\"Hot spot,\" he said, and tagged the region on his d isplay, sending coordinates to Fred and Kelly.\n\nKurt's hand twitched; years of communicating by sil ent, efficient hand signals were something you just didn't unlearn. Talk, even using a single beam, didn't feel right on this mission. One simple wave, howeve r, could send him spinning, and while his T-PACK could compensate, Kurt wanted to continue to stealth without thrusters.\n\nKelly moved her optics package on the spot, zoomed in, and they all saw a splash of rainbow colors.\n\nKurt's radiation counter clicked wildly and then we nt dead. \"Broad-spectrum pulse,\" he reported.\n\n\"I've seen one of those before,\" Fred told them. \"T hey had to repair the Shaw Fujikawa translight engine on the Magellan. It was a risky op. Those things aren't meant to be tak en apart once they go active.\"\n\nShaw-Fujikawa engines allowed UNSC ships to leave n ormal space and plow through a dimensional subdomain colloquially known as \"Slipstream space.\" Kurt had received rudimentary training in how it worked.  The drive used particle accelerators to rip apart normal space-time by gene rating micro black holes. Those holes evaporated via Hawking radiation in a n anosecond. The real quantum mechanical \"magic\" of the drive was how it manipulated those holes in space-time, squeezing a hundred-thousand-ton cruise r into Slipspace. The mathematics of how this worked and how a ship reent ered normal space was well beyond him. It was, actually, beyond most huma n geniuses.\n\nKurt, however, did know this about Shaw-Fujikawa dr ives: they were dangerous. There was radiation and anecdotal evidence that the  normal laws of nature\n\"bent\" in close proximity to an active unit.\n\n\"Update your mission logs and beam them back to the  Circumference,\" Kurt said. 'We're going to take a closer look at that th ing and confirm it's what Fred thinks it is before we call in HAZMAT.\"\n\nThere was a slight delay before Kelly's and Fred's acknowledgment lights blinked green.\n\nKurt activated his T-PACK, puffed the thrusters, an d angled toward Station Delphi. He tapped the attitude controls, adjusting pitch, roll, and yaw to avoid colliding with the bolts, beams, and tools spinning  in the debris field.\n\nAs they closed to within one hundred meters of the sputtering, partially disassembled drive coils, his rear-angle camera fuz zed with static.\n\n\"Getting interference here,\" Kurt said. \"You two ho ld position. I'll scout it out.\"\n \"Roger,\" Kelly said. There was an edge of concern i n her voice, \"Grapple lines ready.\"\n\nKurt crept closer and got a glimpse into the heart of the drive: a near ultraviolet glow that didn't match the thermal outp ut. It wasn't possible for a hole into Slipspace to exist for more than a fracti on of an instant, but he couldn't help feeling that's exactly what this was and the closer he drifted the more likely he'd get pulled in and forever lost.\n\nBut that was just a feeling.\n\nHe hesitated.\n\nKurt altered his direct trajectory and drifted towa rd a beam thirty meters over the Shaw-Fujikawa engine. The space near the drive rippled like heat waves rising impossible in a hard vacuum.\n\nHis heads-up display flickered.\n\nKelly spoke over the COM, her transmission filled w ith noise. \"Your IFF tag is breaking up. It shows your position in multiple reg ions. Abort the recon. If your electronics malfunction\"\n\nThe COM broke into a hiss of static.\n\n\"I've seen enough,\" Kurt said.\n\nStatic answered him.\n\n\"I'm heading back.\"\n\nHe tapped his altitude thrusters to spin around. Th e switch worked, but there was no action from the T-PACK nozzles.\n\nKurt released the controls. Triple redundancy in th e processors or notif his T PACK was affected by the nearby radiation, the last  thing he wanted to do was give it a command to fire.\n\nHe grasped the steel beam, and bracing, he waved ba ck to his team. He couldn't see them out there, but he knew they were watching him. He knew they wouldn't let him down. With Kelly and Fred at his back, he could have been at the edge of hell, and they would have gotte n him out.\n\nOf course, with a malfunctioning, partially deconst ructed\n Shaw-Fujikawa drive within spitting distance that m ight be exactly where he stood.\n\nHe spotted motion in the dark, a snaking orange-and -white striped rope and gyrating blob on one end: Kelly's rescue line. Perf ect. No worries now.\n\nThe steel beam sparked. Kurt reflexively let go, an d arcs played across the alloyradiation inducing a charge.\n\nEvery display in his helmet exploded into static. R ows of status lights blinked amber, then all red. Life support, hydraulics, powe r all fluctuated and failed.\n\nHe had to get out of here before that Shaw-Fujikawa  trans-light drive completely shut down his suit.\n\nThe basic laws of physics still worked here. Action  and reaction. Energy transfer and momentum.\n\nHe pushed off the beam, back to Fred and Kellyhopin g to grab the rescue line on his way. If he missed, they would still find him . The only thing he cared about right now was getting away from the source of  his suit's malfunction.\n\nHe drifted. With his suit shut down, all he could d o now was coast. And wait.\n\nLightning stuck. He was ground zero, and thunder ki cked Kurt forward like a rag doll.\n\nHe'd absorbed a near-direct grenade explosion once,  and it had felt something like this. Only this particular explosion hadn't be en near him; it had been on his armor.\n\nHis first thought was sniper firean ambush. But the n his vision cleared and he saw stars, the dull red binary suns, and Station De lphi whirling around.\n\nHis T-PACK had busted a line. He could feel the pro pellant gushing out even though the tanks had been designed with redundant s hutoff valves, and emergency self-sealing foam to prevent such a decom pression.\n\nHe heard CPO Mendez's voice in his head, again: \"St art tumbling in this gear, start praying.\"\n\n\"Mayday,\" he called out. \"Suit malfunction! Mayday! \"\n\nKurt had no idea where he was, where his team was n ow positioned, or how fast he was rocketing away from them.\n Of course, they didn't open radio channels on this mission. Point-to-point single-beam lasers carried their COM signal. Gyrati ng out of control, any signal that hit a tiny Spartan-sized target in the vast vo lume of open space would be nothing short of a miracle.\n\nHe finally got enough bearings to tap the system ov erride. No response. He hit the harness emergency release. It was jammed.\n\n\"I'm okay,\" he said over the COM. \"Life support's m inimal, but still functional. Going to deep breathing mode to conserve air and po wer. I'll ride it out. You should be able to pick up my IFF transponder once I 'm clear. Activating rescue beacon now. I'll be okay. I'll be o\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FOUR ADDENDUM \\ AFTER-ACTION REPORT \\ UNSC-NAVSPECWEP OP S, FILE EHY-97\nSUBJECT: SPARTAN-051\n\nDuring aforementioned operation (see attached missi on profile) to investigate possible rebel activity on the decommissioned const ruction platform 966a, unofficially named Station Delphi, a catastrophic m alfunction of a thruster pack (model 050978, unit serial #82.10923.192) occu rred.\n\nAt 1000 hours, a thruster malfunction propelled SPA RTAN-051 off mission and into interplanetary space.\n\nImmediate rescue attempts commenced with the assist ance of the UNSC prowler Circumference, joined on 1/13/2535, 1105 ho urs, by the UNSC frigate Tannenberg.\n\nThree hundred twenty-two minutes after projected ox ygen in SPARTAN-051's variant-V MJOLNIR suit expired, operation terminate d as nearby Covenant Action (see attached references) prompted an immedi ate call to action of all nearby UNSC forces.\n\nCause of thruster malfunction remains unknown, pend ing further investigation, but it is hypothesized that a partially decommissio ned Shaw-Fujikawa translight engine core on the platform and in close proximity to SPARTAN-051 at the time of the accident may have caused a series of catastr ophic electrical malfunctions. anomalous electrical activity also ob scured further, later rescue efforts in the region.\n\nPlatform 966A has been tagged with a HAZNAV satelli te, PENDING HMAT team dispatch (FLEETCOM Order D-88934). SPARTAN-051 Status: MISSING IN ACTION.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FIVE\n1950 HOURS, DECEMBER 14, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\  ABOARD UNSC POINT OF NO RETURN, LOCATION CLASSIFIED\n\nKurt woke up in bed, an osmotic IV in his arm, and nearby monitors displaying his vital signs, blood composition, and brain-oxyge n saturation levels.\n\nHe surmised he was in a hospital, although there wa s no call button, and no obvious door. There was also a camer a mounted in the corner of the ceiling. Kurt felt the familiar subsonic thrum around him, and he relaxed. He was on a spaceship. Although he preferred boot-o n-dirt, anywhere was better than hard vacuum.\n\nHe lowered the bed's railing, and swung his legs ov er the edge. Pain lanced up his side. Cracked ribshe'd had them many times. Bru ises covered his pale skin;\nthey were especially livid on his shoulders, stomac h, and waist. He checked in the mirror for injuries, and then ran his hand over  the long black stubble on his head and face. He was intact but how long had he be en unconscious?\n\nThe wall slid apart and a balding man entered. Curi ously he wore an Army uniform, pinned with the eagle insigne of a colonel . His dark eyes fixed upon Kurt.\n\n\"Sir!\" Kurt started to stand and salute.\n\n\"At ease, soldier,\" the Colonel said.\n\nKurt checked his motion. He opened his mouth to cor rect the Colonel's error, but fell silent. Naval NCOs were never called \"sold iers,\" but in Kurt's experience, officers. Army or otherwise, never appreciated corr ection unless lives were at stake.\n\nThe Colonel's continued stare made Kurt uneasy. In fact, several things contributed to his unease. He was on a UNSC ship, r eceiving medical care, but how had he gotten here, and why was an Army colonel  interested in him?\n\n\"I am James Ackerson,\" the Colonel said. He then di d a curious thing: he held out his hand to shake. This was a rare occurrence. Usually no one wanted t o touch a Spartan, let alone shake their hand.\n\nKurt took Ackerson's hand and gingerly squeezed it.\n\nAckerson. Kurt knew that name. There had been conve rsations between Dr. Halsey and Chief Mendez. Ackerson had come up a doz en times, and from their inflection and body language Kurt had surmised he w as not their friend.\n\nKurt was aware that everyone in the UNSC had the sa me basic goal: protecting humanity from all threats. Not everyone, however, a greed on how that mandate should be executed which led to internal co nflict. Kurt understood this the way he understood basic precepts of a Shaw -Fujikawa translight engine. He grasped the underlying theoretical principles, b ut the nuances and the actual application of that knowledge remained a mys tery to him.\n\nMost likely this colonel was on permanent loan to O NI as a liaison officer. They often recruited civilians, officers from other bran ches of the military, or anyone they needed to get their job done.\n\nAn Army colonel was approximately the same rank as a Navy captain, so while Kurt was wary, he had to be polite, and even take o rders from Ackerson as long as they did not conflict with previous orders.\n\n\"If you are well enough, get dressed.\" Colonel Acke rson nodded to the night table on which was a neatly folded uniform.\n\nKurt stood, removed the osmotic IV patch, and dress ed.\n\n\"SPARTAN-051, what is your name?\" Ackerson asked.\n\n\"Kurt, sir.\"\n\n\"Yes, but Kurt what? What is your family name?\"\n\nKurt knew he had had another name, before his train ing. That, however, was part of a life that seemed more dream than real now . And that other name was just a shadow in his mind, as was the family that h ad gone along with it. Still, he struggled to remember.\n\n\"It doesn't matter,\" Ackerson said. \"For the time b eing if asked, use the last name\" He considered for a moment. \"Ambrose.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n Kurt buttoned his shirt. The uniform was missing th e Spartan patch of an eagle holding a lighting bolt and arrows. It instead had the clasping-hand patch of the UNSC Logistical core. It bore the single pip of a private first class and tw o combat ribbons for Harvest and Operation TREBUCHET.\n\n\"Follow me.\" Ackerson moved out the open doors into  a narrow corridor. He led Kurt through three intersections.\n\nMany Naval officers passed them, but none saluted. They kept to themselves for the most part, eyes down. And while a few nodde d to Kurt, no one so much as even glanced at Ackerson.\n\nKurt's unease at this odd situation grew palpable.\n\nThey halted at a pressure door guarded by two marin es who saluted. Kurt crisply returned their salute. Ackerson gave them a  causal half-salute gesture.\n\nThe Colonel set his hand on a biometric reader and face, retina, and palm were simultaneously scanned.\n\nWith a hiss, the door opened.\n\nKurt and Ackerson stepped into a dimly lit twenty-m eter-wide room filled wall to wall with monitors. Spectroscopic signatures, st ar charts, and Slipstream space pulses strobed across the screens. There were  several officers and two holographic Als consulting with them in whispered t ones.\n\nOne AI was a gray-robbed figure without a body. A w raith.\n\nThe other was a collection of disembodied eyes, mou ths, and gesturing handswhat Kurt vaguely recalled from one of Deja's art lessons as an example of cubist art.\n\nAckerson whisked him across the room and to another  door. A second biometric scan and they entered an elevator.\n\nThere was downward motion, then a moment of zero-ge e free fall, and the sensation of gravity then returned. The doors opene d to a catwalk that extended over inky darkness to a blank wall.\n\nThe Colonel approached the blank wall, a seam appea red, and then the two sections pulled apart.\n \"This room is called 'Odin's Eye' by the junior sta ff,\" Ackerson said. \"You have been temporarily granted a code-word top-secret cle arance to enter. Whatever is said inside is similarly classified and you will reveal none of our conversa tion unless the proper code words are provided. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Kurt replied.\n\nKurt's instinct, however, was to not enter this roo m. He, in fact, wanted to be anyplace but in that room. But he couldn't refuse.\n\nThey entered.\n\nThe doors closed behind them; Kurt didn't see the s eam.\n\nThe room had white concave walls, and Kurt's eyes h ad a hard time focusing.\n\n\"Your classification code word is Talcon Forty,'\" A ckerson said. \"Now, speak freely in here. I certainly will.\" He gestured to a  black circular table in the center of the room and they both sat.\n\n\"Sir, where am I? Why am I here?\"\n\nHis words seemed to evaporate as he spoke them, dea dened by the too-still air in this strange room.\n\n\"Of course,\" Ackerson murmured. \"Your recovery is n ot complete. I had been warned of that.\" He sighed. \"We have gone to consid erable trouble to extricate you from normal NavSpecWep operations from your rec on mission to Station Delphi.\"\n\nKurt remembered the explosion on his T-PACK; he bli nked and saw for a split second the dizzying blur of stars in his faceplate.\n\n\"My team,\" Kurt said, \"are they\"\n\n\"Fine,\" Ackerson replied. \"No injuries.\"\n\nKurt inhaled, feeling his cracked rib. Not quite no  injuries.\n\nSomething changed in the Colonel's expression. The dark stare and hardness softened almost an imperceptible fraction.\n\nIn a lowered voice, Ackerson said, \"Section Three h as issued you new orders.\"\nHe pushed a reader across the table to Kurt. Kurt thumbed the biometric and the screen warmed. T here were code-word classified warnings and then he saw his transfer or ders under Colonel Ackerson. The usual fields for assignment location, routing p rotocols, and record verification were redacted.\n\n\"You are now a part of a subsection of Beta-5 Divis ion,\" Ackerson said, \"a top secret cell within Section Three. All the events at  Station Delphi were staged to bring you here in the utmost secrecy for a new m ission.\"\n\nStaging the events at Delphi? Arranged by a subcell  of Section Three? Something seemed wrong in a way Kurt couldn't quite put his f inger on.\n\nBut part of it made sense now. The partially decomm issioned Shaw-Fujikawa drive at Delphi Station was the perfect lure and th e ideal excuse for a malfunctioning T-PACK. The sensor echo the Circumfe rence had picked up on the in-system jump was another prowler, the ship th at had picked up Kurt's exhausted bodyafter he had been propelled on a not- so-random explosive trajectory. Though he resented the manner in which they obtained him, he had to admire the sheer elegance of the extraction plan .\n\n\"You have been classified as missing in action,\" Ac kerson said. \"Presumed dead.\"\n\nSomething cold contracted in Kurt's stomach. He che cked his emotions, though, sensing that in this instance, they might not have been able to help him.\n\n\"What is this new mission, sir?\"\n\nAckerson stared at him a moment, then seemed to loo k through Kurt, past him.\n\"I want you to train the next generation of Spartan s.\"\n\nKurt blinked, taking in what Ackerson had just said , not quite understanding.\n\"Sir, I was under the impression that Chief Petty O fficer Mendez had been reassigned years ago to carry out that mission.\"\n\n\"The effort to train additional SPARTAN-IIs was pos tponed indefinitely by Dr. Catherine Halsey,\" Ackerson said. \"There were other  candidates within the gene pool, but they were out of synch with her age restr iction protocols. And with the continuing war, her program funds were diverted .\"\n\nKurt had always presumed other Spartans were being trained. that he and his fellows were the first in what woul d be a long line of Spartans. He'd never considered they might be the first, and the last, of their kind.\n\nAckerson said, \"Mendez will, of course, join you.\"\n\"It would be an honor to serve under Chief Mendez,\"  Kurt replied.\n\nOne of Ackerson's brows quirked up. \"Indeed.\"\n\nHe motioned at Kurt's secure tablet. \"Read. New tra ining protocols have been outlined as well as an improved augmentation regime . We've learned much from the unfortunate medical processes Dr Halsey ha d at her disposal.\"\n\nKurt balled his hands into fists, remembering the p ain of the bone graftslike glass breaking inside his marrow, and the fire that  had burned along every nerve as they had been reengi-neered for enhanced s peed.\n\nAs he read he started to grasp the opportunities an d challenges of this new program. The new bioaugmentations were a quantum le ap ahead of those he had received. There were lower projected wash-out r ates. There was, however, only a fraction of the original SPARTAN program tra ining time and budget. MJOLNIR armor was to be replaced with something cal led Semi-Powered Infiltration (SPI) armor systems.\n\n\"With these new candidates,\" Kurt said, \"you're try ing to do more with less.\"\n\nAckerson nodded. \"They'll be sent on missions with higher strategic values but correspondingly lower survival probabilities. That' s where you come in, Kurt. We need your training as a Spartan, and all your fi eld experience passed along to these candidates. You need to make these Spartan s better and train them faster. This program may be the key to our survival  in this war.\"\n\nKurt scanned the reader again. The new genetic sele ction protocol expanded the pool of candidates, but there were disturbing r eferences to behavior problems in these less-than-ideal potential Spartan s.\n\nBut this mission was vital to the war, Kurt sensed that. And there would be CPO Mendez. It would be good to be working under his ol d teacher again. Could the two of them really train a new generation of Sparta ns?\n\n\"In ten years,\" Ackerson said, \"with your guidance and a little luck, there will be a hundred new Spartans in the war. Employing sev eral of these new Spartans to help train the next classes, there will  be thousands within twenty years. With projected improvements in technology, p erhaps a hundred thousand new Spartans will be created in thirty yea rs.\"\n\nA hundred thousand Spartans fighting for humanity? The image swam in Kurt's mind. Was that possible?\n While Kurt didn't understand all the ramifications,  he now understood the importance of the end result. His initial feeling o f unease, however, remained. How many of these new Spartans were going to die? H e steeled himself. He'd do everything he could to see they had the best traini ng, the best equipment, be the best soldiers humanity had ever produced. Even then, though, would it be enough?\n\nHe took a deep breath. \"Where do we begin, sir?\"\n\nAckerson said, \"New training facilities are being c onstructed. You will oversee the operation, and simultaneously begin the screeni ng of candidates. I have an ample supply of willing recruits for you.\" He reach ed into his pocket and withdrew a tiny box, pushed it across the table to Kurt. \"One last thing.\"\n\nKurt opened the box. Inside were the single silver bar insignia of a lieutenant junior grade.\n\n\"Those are yours now.\" A faint crease of a smile ap peared on Ackerson's face.\n\"I'm not going to have my right-hand man taking ord ers from NCO drill instructors. You're going to be in charge of the en tire show.\"\n\n\n\nSection II Spartan - III CHAPTER SIX\n1950 HOURS, DECEMBER 27, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\  ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX, CAMP CURRAHEE\n\nKurt watched the incoming Pelicans. The blocky jet- powered craft were so distant they were only specks against the setting s un. He hit the magnification on his faceplate and saw lines of fire tracing thei r reentry vectors. They would touch down in three minutes.\n\nIn the last six months he had developed a training regime tougher than the original SPARTAN program. He had created obstacle c ourses, firing ranges, classrooms, mess halls, and dormitories from what h ad been jungle and scrub plain.\n\nHe had received every piece of equipment he had req uested from NavSpecWep Section Three. Guns, ammunition, dropships, tanksev en samples of Covenant technology and weaponry had appeared as if by sleig ht of hand.\n\nAll personnel were accounted for: six dozen handpic ked drill instructors, physical therapists, doctors, nurses, psychologists , and the all-important cooks all here except the most critical person, who was n ow on the incoming transports: Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Men dez,\n\nMendez had, a dozen years ago, trained Kurt and eve ry other Spartan. He would be invaluable in preparing the new breed of S PARTAN-III, but he wasn't going to be the solution to all Kurt's problems.\n\nAfter poring over every detail of the new recruits'  files, Kurt discovered they didn't match the perfect psychological and genetic markers set in Dr. Halsey's original selection prot ocols. Colonel Ackerson had warned him they had to draw from a \"less statistica lly robust\" group. These recruits wouldn't be anything like himself, John, K elly, or any of the original SPARTAN-II candidates.\n\nAnd this would only add to a long list of challenge s. With a final target class four times larger than the SPARTAN-IIs', a severely  truncated training schedule, and the need for these Spartans in the war increasi ng every month, Kurt, in fact, expected a disaster.\n\nThe Pelican jet transports swooped down on final ap proach and angled their thrusters. The sod on the parade field rippled like  velvet. One by one they gingerly touched down.\n\nAlthough Kurt's MJOLNIR armor was not designed to b ear rank insignia, he nonetheless felt the weight of his new lieutenant's  bars. They pressed down on him as if they were a ton each, as if the weight of  the entire war and future of humanity rested squarely upon his shoulders.\n\n\"Sir?\" a voice whispered into his COM.\n\nThe voice belonged to the artificial intelligence E ternal Spring. It was officially assigned to the planetary survey team stationed in the northern section of this peninsula.\n\nKurt wasn't sure why Colonel Ackerson had insisted that Camp Currahee be built next to the facility. He was sure, however, t here had been a reason.\n\n\"Go ahead. Spring.\"\n\n\"Updated details on the candidates available,\" it s aid.\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Thank me after your so-called test, sir.\" Eternal Spring terminated transmission with a hiss of static that sounded lik e angry bees. Cajoled by Section Three brass, Eternal Spring had agreed to devote 9 percent of its runtime to the SPARTAN-III project. The AI w as of the \"smart\" variety, which meant there were no limits on its knowledge capacity or creativity. Despite it s occasional theatrics, Kurt was happy for its help.\n\nKurt blinked and accessed the candidates' data on h is heads-up display. Each name had a serial number and linked to background f iles. There were 497 of them, a collection of four-, five-, and six-year-ol d children that he somehow had to forge into a fighting force unparalleled in the history of warfare.\n\nThe hatch on the nearest Pelican opened with a hiss , and a tall man strode out.\n\nMendez had aged well. His trim body looked chiseled  from ironwood, but the hair was now silver, and there were deep creases ar ound his eyes and a set of ragged scars that ran brow to chin.\n\n\"Chief.\" Kurt resisted the urge to snap to attentio n as Mendez saluted. As odd as it felt, Kurt was now his commanding officer.\n\nKurt returned his salute.\n\n\"Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez reporting for du ty, sir.\"\n\nAfter the SPARTAN-II program, Chief Mendez had, at his request, been reassigned to active duty. He'd fought the Covenant  on five worlds, and been awarded two purple hearts.\n\n\"You were briefed on the flight?\"\n\n\"Completely,\" Mendez said. As he looked Kurt over i n his MjOLNIR armor, emotions played over his face; awe, approval, and r esolve. \"We'll get these new recruits trained, sir.\"\n\nThis was precisely the response Kurt had hoped for.  Mendez was a legend among the Spartans. He had tricked, trapped, and to rtured them as children. They all hated, and then learned to admire the man.  He had taught them how to fightand how to win.\n\n\"Do they let Spartans drink now?\" Mendez asked.\n\n\"Chief?\"\n \"A bad joke, sir. We might both need one before thi s day is over,\" he said. \"The new trainees are, well, sir, a little wild. I don't  know if either of us is ready for this.\"\n\nMendez turned to the Pelicans, inhaled, and yelled,  \"Recruits, fallout!\"\n\nKids streamed off dropship ramps. Hundreds tromped onto the field, screaming, and throwing clumps of sod at one another. After be ing cooped up for hours, they went wild. A few, however, milled near the shi ps, dark circles under their eyes, and they huddled tighter. Adult handlers herd ed them onto the grass.\n\n\"You've read Lord of the Flies, sir?\" Mendez mutter ed.\n\n\"I have,\" Kurt replied. \"But your analogy will not hold. These children will have guidance. They will have disciphne. And they have o ne thing no ordinary children have, not even the SPARTAN-II candidates. Motivation.\"\n\nKurt linked to the camp's PA. He cleared his throat  and the sound rumbled over the field like thunder.\n\nNearly five hundred crazed children stopped in thei r tracks, fell silent, and turned amazed at the giant in the shining emerald a rmor\n\n\"Attention, recruits,\" Kurt said and stood akimbo. \"1 am Lieutenant Ambrose. You have all endured great hardships to be here. 1 know each of you has lost your loved ones on Jericho VII, Harvest, and Biko. The Covenant has made orphans of you all.\"\n\nEvery kid stared at him, some with tears now gleami ng in their eyes, others with pure burning hatred.\n\n\"1 am going to give you a chance to learn how to fi ght, a chance to become the best soldiers the UNSC has ever produced, a chance to destroy the Covenant. I am giving you a chance to be like me: a Spartan.\"\n\nThe kids crowded before him, close but none actuall y dared to touch the shimmering pale green armor.\n\n\"We cannot accept everyone, though,\" Kurt continued . \"There are five hundred of you. We have three hundred training slots. So to night. Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez\"he nodded to the Chief\"has devised a way to separate those who t ruly want this opportunity from those who do not.\"\n\nKurt handed him a tablet reader. \"Chief?\"\nTo his credit Mendez registered shock for only a sp lit second. He scanned the tablet, frowned, but nodded.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" he whispered.\n\nMendez yelled at the children, \"You want to be Spar tans? Then get back on those ships.\"\n\nThey stood shocked, staring at him.\n\n\"No? I guess we found a few washouts. You.\" He poin ted to one child at random.\n\"You. And you.\"\n\nThe chosen kids looked at each other, at the ground , and then shook their heads.\n\n\"No?\" Mendez said. \"Then get on those Pelicans.\"\n\nThey did so, and so did the others, a slow shufflin g procession.\n\n\"Drill instructors,\" Mendez said.\n\nThree dozen NCOs snapped to attention.\n\n\"You will find Falcon Wing aerial descent units on the field. Load them ASAP and make sure your trainees are properly fit-led. T heir safe deployment is now your responsibility.\"\n\nThe DIs nodded and ran toward the bundled Falcon Wi ng backpacks.\n\nThe Chief turned back to Kurt. \"You're going to mak e them drop?\" He raised both eyebrows in surprise. \"At night?\"\n\n\"The Falcons are the safest drop units,\" Kurt repli ed.\n\n\"With respect, sir, some of them are only four year s old.\"\n\n\"Motivation, Chief. If they can do this, they'll be  ready for what we have to put them through.\" Kurt watched the Pelicans fire their  jets and scorch the grass.\n\"But just in case,\" he added, \"deploy all dropships  to recover the candidates. There may be accidents.\"\n\nMendez exhaled deeply. \"Yes, sir\" He started for th e nearest Pelican.\n\n\"Chief,\" Kurt said, \"I'm sorry that order had to co me from you.\"\n\"I understand, sir,\" Mendez replied. \"You're their CO. You have to inspire and command their respect. I'm their drill instructor. I get to be their worst nightmare.\" He gave Kurt a crooked smile and climbe d aboard.\n\nShane clung to the plastic loops on the side of the  Pelican's hull. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the other kidspacked so c lose that he wouldn't have fallen if he let go. The roar of the Pelican's jets  was deafening, but still he could hear his own heart racing in his chest.\n\nThis was the end of a journey that had started year s ago. He'd heard jets like this when it started, the jets of the light freight er as it rocketed away from Harvest. It had been crowded on that ship, too fill ed with refugees trying to get as far away, as fast as they could, from the mo nsters.\n\nOnly one in six ships had made it.\n\nSometimes Shane wished he hadn't lived and seen the  monsters burn his family and home.\n\nWhen the Navy man had come to visit him in the orph anage and asked if Shane wanted to get even with them, he immediately volunt eered. No matter what it took, he was going to kill all the Covenant.\n\nThey had given him lots of tests, the written kind,  blood tests, and then a month-long space trip as the Navy man collected mor e and more volunteers.\n\nShane had thought the testing was over when they fi nal got into the PeHcans and came to this new place, but he'd barely touched  the ground when they'd been shoved back inside and sent back up into the a ir.\n\nHe'd gotten a glimpse of the one in charge. He wore  armor like Shane had seen in fairy tale books: the Green Knight who fought dragons. That's what Shane wanted. He was go ing to wear armor like that one day and kill all the monsters.\n\n\"Check your straps,\" an old Navy man barked at him and the other kids.\n\nShane tugged at the black backpack that they'd put on him three minutes ago. It weighed almost as much as him, and the straps ha d been pulled so tight they cut into his ribs.\n\n\"Report any looseness,\" the man shouted over the ro ar of the engines.\n\nNone of the twenty other kids said anything.\n\"Recruits, stand by,\" the man barked. He listened i nto his headphones and then a green light blinked on a panel near his head. The  man punched numbers into a keypad.\n\nThe back of the Pelican hissed open, the ramp lower ed, and a tornado screamed around Shane. He yelled; so did the other kids. They all pushed and shoved to the front of the Pelican's bay.\n\nThe old Navy man stood by the open bay door, unafra id that only a meter to his rear was open sky. He regarded the squirming kids w ith disgust.\n\nBehind him a dusky orange band marked the edge of t he world. Twilight and lengthening shadows slipped over snowcapped mountai ns.\n\n\"You will form a line and jump,\" the man shouted. \" You will count to ten and pull this.\" He reached up to his left shoulder, gra sped the bright red handle there, and made a pretend pull motion. \"Some confus ion will be normal.\"\n\nThe kids stared at him. No one moved.\n\n\"If you cannot do this,\" the man said, \"you cannot be a Spar-Ian. It's your choice.\"\n\nShane looked at the other kids. They looked at him.\n\nA girl with pigtails and missing her front teeth st epped forward. \"I'll go first, sir,\" she yelled.\n\n\"Good girl,\" he said. \"Go right to the edge; hang o n to the guide line.\"\n\nShe took the tiniest baby steps to the edge of the Pelican, then froze. She took three deep breaths and then with a squeak, she jump ed. The wind caught her.\n\nShe vanished into the dark.\n\n\"Next!\" the old Navy man said.\n\nAll the kids, Shane included, slowly formed a line.  He couldn't believe they were doing this. It was nuts.\n\nThe next boy got to the edge, looked down, and scre amed. He fell backward, and scrambled away. \"No!\" he said. \"No way!\"\n\n\"Next!\" the man called, and didn't give the kid cow ering on the deck another glance. The next boy jumped without even looking. And the n ext.\n\nThen it was Shane's turn.\n\nHe couldn't move his legs.\n\n\"Hurry up, loser,\" the boy behind him said and gave  him a shove.\n\nShane stumbled forwardhalting only a half step from  the edge. He turned and stopped himself from shoving this kid back. The kid  was a head taller than Shane, and his black hair fell into his eyes, makin g it seem like he was missing his forehead. Shane wasn't afraid of this creep.\n\nHe turned back to face the night rushing past him. This was what he was afraid of.\n\nShane's legs filled with freezing concrete. The rus hing wind was so loud he couldn't hear anything else anymore, not even his h ammering heart.\n\nHe couldn't move. He was stuck on the edge. There w as no way he could jump.\n\nBut now he was so scared he couldn't even turn arou nd and chicken out, either. If he sat down, though, and then slowly inched back\n\n\"Go, dumbass!\" The creep kid behind him pushed. Har d.\n\nShane fell off the ramp and into the night.\n\nHe tumbled and screamed until he couldn't breathe.\n\nShane saw flashes of the dimming sunset, black grou nd, the white caps of the mountains, and stars.\n\nHe threw up.\n\nSome confusion will be normal.\n\nThe red handle! He had to grab it. He reached up, b ut there was nothing there. He clawed at his shoulder until two fmgers found pu rchase. He tugged.\n\nThere was a ripping sound and something unraveled f rom his pack.\n\nShane jerked straight, his legs whipping after him,  and his teeth snapped together from the sudden bone-jarring deceleration.\n The spinning world stopped.\n\nGasping and blinking away his tears, Shane saw the last bit of amber light fade from the edge of the world, and the stars gently ro ck back and forth around him.\n\nOverhead the wind whistled and rippled though a bla ck canopy. Ropes connected Shane to this wing, and his hands instinc tively grabbed them. As he pulled, the wing turned and angled in that directio n.\n\nThe sudden motion made him dizzy again, so he let g o.\n\nShane squinted and made out shapes swimming around him: black on black like the bats on Harvest. Those had to be the other kids , gliding like he was.\n\nHis face heated as he remembered how he'd chickened  out at the last minute in the Pelican in front of everyone. Even that litt le girl had jumped.\n\nShane never wanted to be scared like that again. Ma ybe if he imagined that he was already dead, then there would be nothing to be  afraid of. It'd be like he'd died with his parents on Harvest.\n\nHe mustered this mental imagedead and nothing to fe ar and to test it, he looked down. Past his dangling feet there was a two -centimeter green square. After a moment, he realized it was the field where all the Pelicans had landed. Tiny lines snaked from the field illuminated by tin y firefly pinpoints,\n\n\"Nothing to be scared of,\" he whispered, trying to convince himself.\n\nHe forced himself to pull the ropes, angle downward , and speed toward the green field.\n\nWind whipped through the black silk wing, and tore at Shane's face. He didn't care. He wanted down fast. Maybe if he was the firs t one down, he'd show everyone that he wasn't scared.\n\nShane saw tiny people and scorch marks where the Pe licans had burned the grass. And no other parachutes yet. Good. He'd be f irst, and he'd land right in front of the Green Knight.\n\nShane hit the ground. His knees pistoned into his c hest and knocked the wind out of him.\n\nThe black wing caught a breeze, jerked him back on his feet, and dragged him across the grass and dirt. He gasped for air, but h e wasn't scared. He was angry that he'd look so stupid having to wrestle with thi s parachute. The Falcon Wing hit the fence, and stuck there, flu ttering.\n\nShane got up and undipped himself from the harness.  Something hot trickled down his legs. There was no way he'd been so scared  he pissed his pants. With dread, he looked. It was blood. The skin on the bac k of his legs was raw. He took a tentative step and fire crawled up both thig hs.\n\nHe laughed. Blood or piss, what did it matter? He'd  made it.\n\n\"Hey, dumbass. What's so funny?\"\n\nShane turned and saw the kid who had pushed him. He  lay on the grass, half tangled in his harness.\n\nShane marched over to him, ignoring the pain in his  legs.\n\nThe kid got to one knee and held out his hand to sh ake. \"I'm Rob\"\n\nShane hit him square in the nose. Blood gushed from  the kid's face and he reeled over.\n\nHe was going to pay for shoving him. He was the onl y one who knew that Shane had frozen on the edge and chickened out. He'd have  to pay for that, too.\n\nShane started pounding him with right and left fist s.\n\nThe kid held up his arms to fend off the blows, but  Shane landed a few good ones, skinning his knuckles.\n\nRobert headbutted Shane, and he fell off.\n\nRobert stood, shook off his harness, then growling,  leapt onto Shane.\n\nThey rolled on the grass, kicking and punching.\n\nShane heard a loud snap and he wasn't sure if it wa s his or Rob's bone breaking;\nhe didn't care, he kept hitting and hitting until b lood spilled into his eyes and he couldn't see anymore.\n\nLarge hands grabbed Shane and pulled him off. Still  swinging, Shane connected with one of the Navy men, bruising the bone over hi s eye.\n\nThe man dropped him.\n\n\"Stand down!\" barked a voice with godlike authority . Shane blinked and wiped blood from his eyes. The si lver-haired man who had given the order to jump stood between him and the o ther kid.\n\nThe Navy man he'd hit pressed one hand to his swoll en eye and said, \"Chief, these two were going to kill each other.\"\n\n\"I see that,\" the old man said. He nodded approving ly at Shane, and then turned to Robert.\n\nRobert ignored the old man and took a step toward S hane with his hands raised.\n\n\"I said STAND DOWN!\"\n\nRobert dropped his hands and staggered back as if h e'd been struck.\n\n\"I think you're right, Sergeant,\" the older Navy ma n said. \"They really might have killed each other.\" He smiled, only it wasn't a smile. It was more like he was baring his teeth. \"Very good. That kind of fight left in them after their first jump? A nig ht jump? My God, I only hope the rest of them are like this.\"\n\n\n\nSection II Spartan - III CHAPTER SIX\n1950 HOURS, DECEMBER 27, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\  ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX, CAMP CURRAHEE\n\nKurt watched the incoming Pelicans. The blocky jet- powered craft were so distant they were only specks against the setting s un. He hit the magnification on his faceplate and saw lines of fire tracing thei r reentry vectors. They would touch down in three minutes.\n\nIn the last six months he had developed a training regime tougher than the original SPARTAN program. He had created obstacle c ourses, firing ranges, classrooms, mess halls, and dormitories from what h ad been jungle and scrub plain.\n\nHe had received every piece of equipment he had req uested from NavSpecWep Section Three. Guns, ammunition, dropships, tanksev en samples of Covenant technology and weaponry had appeared as if by sleig ht of hand.\n All personnel were accounted for: six dozen handpic ked drill instructors, physical therapists, doctors, nurses, psychologists , and the all-important cooks all here except the most critical person, who was n ow on the incoming transports: Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Men dez,\n\nMendez had, a dozen years ago, trained Kurt and eve ry other Spartan. He would be invaluable in preparing the new breed of S PARTAN-III, but he wasn't going to be the solution to all Kurt's problems.\n\nAfter poring over every detail of the new recruits'  files, Kurt discovered they didn't match the perfect psychological and genetic markers set in Dr. Halsey's original selection prot ocols. Colonel Ackerson had warned him they had to draw from a \"less statistica lly robust\" group. These recruits wouldn't be anything like himself, John, K elly, or any of the original SPARTAN-II candidates.\n\nAnd this would only add to a long list of challenge s. With a final target class four times larger than the SPARTAN-IIs', a severely  truncated training schedule, and the need for these Spartans in the war increasi ng every month, Kurt, in fact, expected a disaster.\n\nThe Pelican jet transports swooped down on final ap proach and angled their thrusters. The sod on the parade field rippled like  velvet. One by one they gingerly touched down.\n\nAlthough Kurt's MJOLNIR armor was not designed to b ear rank insignia, he nonetheless felt the weight of his new lieutenant's  bars. They pressed down on him as if they were a ton each, as if the weight of  the entire war and future of humanity rested squarely upon his shoulders.\n\n\"Sir?\" a voice whispered into his COM.\n\nThe voice belonged to the artificial intelligence E ternal Spring. It was officially assigned to the planetary survey team stationed in the northern section of this peninsula.\n\nKurt wasn't sure why Colonel Ackerson had insisted that Camp Currahee be built next to the facility. He was sure, however, t here had been a reason.\n\n\"Go ahead. Spring.\"\n\n\"Updated details on the candidates available,\" it s aid.\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n \"Thank me after your so-called test, sir.\" Eternal Spring terminated transmission with a hiss of static that sounded lik e angry bees.\n\nCajoled by Section Three brass, Eternal Spring had agreed to devote 9 percent of its runtime to the SPARTAN-III project. The AI w as of the \"smart\" variety, which meant there were no limits on its knowledge capacity or creativity. Despite it s occasional theatrics, Kurt was happy for its help.\n\nKurt blinked and accessed the candidates' data on h is heads-up display. Each name had a serial number and linked to background f iles. There were 497 of them, a collection of four-, five-, and six-year-ol d children that he somehow had to forge into a fighting force unparalleled in the history of warfare.\n\nThe hatch on the nearest Pelican opened with a hiss , and a tall man strode out.\n\nMendez had aged well. His trim body looked chiseled  from ironwood, but the hair was now silver, and there were deep creases ar ound his eyes and a set of ragged scars that ran brow to chin.\n\n\"Chief.\" Kurt resisted the urge to snap to attentio n as Mendez saluted. As odd as it felt, Kurt was now his commanding officer.\n\nKurt returned his salute.\n\n\"Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez reporting for du ty, sir.\"\n\nAfter the SPARTAN-II program, Chief Mendez had, at his request, been reassigned to active duty. He'd fought the Covenant  on five worlds, and been awarded two purple hearts.\n\n\"You were briefed on the flight?\"\n\n\"Completely,\" Mendez said. As he looked Kurt over i n his MjOLNIR armor, emotions played over his face; awe, approval, and r esolve. \"We'll get these new recruits trained, sir.\"\n\nThis was precisely the response Kurt had hoped for.  Mendez was a legend among the Spartans. He had tricked, trapped, and to rtured them as children. They all hated, and then learned to admire the man.  He had taught them how to fightand how to win.\n\n\"Do they let Spartans drink now?\" Mendez asked.\n\n\"Chief?\"\n\"A bad joke, sir. We might both need one before thi s day is over,\" he said. \"The new trainees are, well, sir, a little wild. I don't  know if either of us is ready for this.\"\n\nMendez turned to the Pelicans, inhaled, and yelled,  \"Recruits, fallout!\"\n\nKids streamed off dropship ramps. Hundreds tromped onto the field, screaming, and throwing clumps of sod at one another. After be ing cooped up for hours, they went wild. A few, however, milled near the shi ps, dark circles under their eyes, and they huddled tighter. Adult handlers herd ed them onto the grass.\n\n\"You've read Lord of the Flies, sir?\" Mendez mutter ed.\n\n\"I have,\" Kurt replied. \"But your analogy will not hold. These children will have guidance. They will have disciphne. And they have o ne thing no ordinary children have, not even the SPARTAN-II candidates. Motivation.\"\n\nKurt linked to the camp's PA. He cleared his throat  and the sound rumbled over the field like thunder.\n\nNearly five hundred crazed children stopped in thei r tracks, fell silent, and turned amazed at the giant in the shining emerald a rmor\n\n\"Attention, recruits,\" Kurt said and stood akimbo. \"1 am Lieutenant Ambrose. You have all endured great hardships to be here. 1 know each of you has lost your loved ones on Jericho VII, Harvest, and Biko. The Covenant has made orphans of you all.\"\n\nEvery kid stared at him, some with tears now gleami ng in their eyes, others with pure burning hatred.\n\n\"1 am going to give you a chance to learn how to fi ght, a chance to become the best soldiers the UNSC has ever produced, a chance to destroy the Covenant. I am giving you a chance to be like me: a Spartan.\"\n\nThe kids crowded before him, close but none actuall y dared to touch the shimmering pale green armor.\n\n\"We cannot accept everyone, though,\" Kurt continued . \"There are five hundred of you. We have three hundred training slots. So to night. Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez\"he nodded to the Chief\"has devised a way to separate those who t ruly want this opportunity from those who do not.\"\n Kurt handed him a tablet reader. \"Chief?\"\n\nTo his credit Mendez registered shock for only a sp lit second. He scanned the tablet, frowned, but nodded.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" he whispered.\n\nMendez yelled at the children, \"You want to be Spar tans? Then get back on those ships.\"\n\nThey stood shocked, staring at him.\n\n\"No? I guess we found a few washouts. You.\" He poin ted to one child at random.\n\"You. And you.\"\n\nThe chosen kids looked at each other, at the ground , and then shook their heads.\n\n\"No?\" Mendez said. \"Then get on those Pelicans.\"\n\nThey did so, and so did the others, a slow shufflin g procession.\n\n\"Drill instructors,\" Mendez said.\n\nThree dozen NCOs snapped to attention.\n\n\"You will find Falcon Wing aerial descent units on the field. Load them ASAP and make sure your trainees are properly fit-led. T heir safe deployment is now your responsibility.\"\n\nThe DIs nodded and ran toward the bundled Falcon Wi ng backpacks.\n\nThe Chief turned back to Kurt. \"You're going to mak e them drop?\" He raised both eyebrows in surprise. \"At night?\"\n\n\"The Falcons are the safest drop units,\" Kurt repli ed.\n\n\"With respect, sir, some of them are only four year s old.\"\n\n\"Motivation, Chief. If they can do this, they'll be  ready for what we have to put them through.\" Kurt watched the Pelicans fire their  jets and scorch the grass.\n\"But just in case,\" he added, \"deploy all dropships  to recover the candidates. There may be accidents.\"\n\nMendez exhaled deeply. \"Yes, sir\" He started for th e nearest Pelican.\n \"Chief,\" Kurt said, \"I'm sorry that order had to co me from you.\"\n\n\"I understand, sir,\" Mendez replied. \"You're their CO. You have to inspire and command their respect. I'm their drill instructor. I get to be their worst nightmare.\" He gave Kurt a crooked smile and climbe d aboard.\n\nShane clung to the plastic loops on the side of the  Pelican's hull. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the other kidspacked so c lose that he wouldn't have fallen if he let go. The roar of the Pelican's jets  was deafening, but still he could hear his own heart racing in his chest.\n\nThis was the end of a journey that had started year s ago. He'd heard jets like this when it started, the jets of the light freight er as it rocketed away from Harvest. It had been crowded on that ship, too fill ed with refugees trying to get as far away, as fast as they could, from the mo nsters.\n\nOnly one in six ships had made it.\n\nSometimes Shane wished he hadn't lived and seen the  monsters burn his family and home.\n\nWhen the Navy man had come to visit him in the orph anage and asked if Shane wanted to get even with them, he immediately volunt eered. No matter what it took, he was going to kill all the Covenant.\n\nThey had given him lots of tests, the written kind,  blood tests, and then a month-long space trip as the Navy man collected mor e and more volunteers.\n\nShane had thought the testing was over when they fi nal got into the PeHcans and came to this new place, but he'd barely touched  the ground when they'd been shoved back inside and sent back up into the a ir.\n\nHe'd gotten a glimpse of the one in charge. He wore  armor like Shane had seen in fairy tale books: the Green Knight who fought dragons. That's what Shane wanted. He was go ing to wear armor like that one day and kill all the monsters.\n\n\"Check your straps,\" an old Navy man barked at him and the other kids.\n\nShane tugged at the black backpack that they'd put on him three minutes ago. It weighed almost as much as him, and the straps ha d been pulled so tight they cut into his ribs.\n\n\"Report any looseness,\" the man shouted over the ro ar of the engines.\n None of the twenty other kids said anything.\n\n\"Recruits, stand by,\" the man barked. He listened i nto his headphones and then a green light blinked on a panel near his head. The  man punched numbers into a keypad.\n\nThe back of the Pelican hissed open, the ramp lower ed, and a tornado screamed around Shane. He yelled; so did the other kids. They all pushed and shoved to the front of the Pelican's bay.\n\nThe old Navy man stood by the open bay door, unafra id that only a meter to his rear was open sky. He regarded the squirming kids w ith disgust.\n\nBehind him a dusky orange band marked the edge of t he world. Twilight and lengthening shadows slipped over snowcapped mountai ns.\n\n\"You will form a line and jump,\" the man shouted. \" You will count to ten and pull this.\" He reached up to his left shoulder, gra sped the bright red handle there, and made a pretend pull motion. \"Some confus ion will be normal.\"\n\nThe kids stared at him. No one moved.\n\n\"If you cannot do this,\" the man said, \"you cannot be a Spar-Ian. It's your choice.\"\n\nShane looked at the other kids. They looked at him.\n\nA girl with pigtails and missing her front teeth st epped forward. \"I'll go first, sir,\" she yelled.\n\n\"Good girl,\" he said. \"Go right to the edge; hang o n to the guide line.\"\n\nShe took the tiniest baby steps to the edge of the Pelican, then froze. She took three deep breaths and then with a squeak, she jump ed. The wind caught her.\n\nShe vanished into the dark.\n\n\"Next!\" the old Navy man said.\n\nAll the kids, Shane included, slowly formed a line.  He couldn't believe they were doing this. It was nuts.\n\nThe next boy got to the edge, looked down, and scre amed. He fell backward, and scrambled away. \"No!\" he said. \"No way!\"\n \"Next!\" the man called, and didn't give the kid cow ering on the deck another glance.\n\nThe next boy jumped without even looking. And the n ext.\n\nThen it was Shane's turn.\n\nHe couldn't move his legs.\n\n\"Hurry up, loser,\" the boy behind him said and gave  him a shove.\n\nShane stumbled forwardhalting only a half step from  the edge. He turned and stopped himself from shoving this kid back. The kid  was a head taller than Shane, and his black hair fell into his eyes, makin g it seem like he was missing his forehead. Shane wasn't afraid of this creep.\n\nHe turned back to face the night rushing past him. This was what he was afraid of.\n\nShane's legs filled with freezing concrete. The rus hing wind was so loud he couldn't hear anything else anymore, not even his h ammering heart.\n\nHe couldn't move. He was stuck on the edge. There w as no way he could jump.\n\nBut now he was so scared he couldn't even turn arou nd and chicken out, either. If he sat down, though, and then slowly inched back\n\n\"Go, dumbass!\" The creep kid behind him pushed. Har d.\n\nShane fell off the ramp and into the night.\n\nHe tumbled and screamed until he couldn't breathe.\n\nShane saw flashes of the dimming sunset, black grou nd, the white caps of the mountains, and stars.\n\nHe threw up.\n\nSome confusion will be normal.\n\nThe red handle! He had to grab it. He reached up, b ut there was nothing there. He clawed at his shoulder until two fmgers found pu rchase. He tugged.\n\nThere was a ripping sound and something unraveled f rom his pack.\n Shane jerked straight, his legs whipping after him,  and his teeth snapped together from the sudden bone-jarring deceleration.\n\nThe spinning world stopped.\n\nGasping and blinking away his tears, Shane saw the last bit of amber light fade from the edge of the world, and the stars gently ro ck back and forth around him.\n\nOverhead the wind whistled and rippled though a bla ck canopy. Ropes connected Shane to this wing, and his hands instinc tively grabbed them. As he pulled, the wing turned and angled in that directio n.\n\nThe sudden motion made him dizzy again, so he let g o.\n\nShane squinted and made out shapes swimming around him: black on black like the bats on Harvest. Those had to be the other kids , gliding like he was.\n\nHis face heated as he remembered how he'd chickened  out at the last minute in the Pelican in front of everyone. Even that litt le girl had jumped.\n\nShane never wanted to be scared like that again. Ma ybe if he imagined that he was already dead, then there would be nothing to be  afraid of. It'd be like he'd died with his parents on Harvest.\n\nHe mustered this mental imagedead and nothing to fe ar and to test it, he looked down. Past his dangling feet there was a two -centimeter green square. After a moment, he realized it was the field where all the Pelicans had landed. Tiny lines snaked from the field illuminated by tin y firefly pinpoints,\n\n\"Nothing to be scared of,\" he whispered, trying to convince himself.\n\nHe forced himself to pull the ropes, angle downward , and speed toward the green field.\n\nWind whipped through the black silk wing, and tore at Shane's face. He didn't care. He wanted down fast. Maybe if he was the firs t one down, he'd show everyone that he wasn't scared.\n\nShane saw tiny people and scorch marks where the Pe licans had burned the grass. And no other parachutes yet. Good. He'd be f irst, and he'd land right in front of the Green Knight.\n\nShane hit the ground. His knees pistoned into his c hest and knocked the wind out of him.\n The black wing caught a breeze, jerked him back on his feet, and dragged him across the grass and dirt. He gasped for air, but h e wasn't scared. He was angry that he'd look so stupid having to wrestle with thi s parachute.\n\nThe Falcon Wing hit the fence, and stuck there, flu ttering.\n\nShane got up and undipped himself from the harness.  Something hot trickled down his legs. There was no way he'd been so scared  he pissed his pants. With dread, he looked. It was blood. The skin on the bac k of his legs was raw. He took a tentative step and fire crawled up both thig hs.\n\nHe laughed. Blood or piss, what did it matter? He'd  made it.\n\n\"Hey, dumbass. What's so funny?\"\n\nShane turned and saw the kid who had pushed him. He  lay on the grass, half tangled in his harness.\n\nShane marched over to him, ignoring the pain in his  legs.\n\nThe kid got to one knee and held out his hand to sh ake. \"I'm Rob\"\n\nShane hit him square in the nose. Blood gushed from  the kid's face and he reeled over.\n\nHe was going to pay for shoving him. He was the onl y one who knew that Shane had frozen on the edge and chickened out. He'd have  to pay for that, too.\n\nShane started pounding him with right and left fist s.\n\nThe kid held up his arms to fend off the blows, but  Shane landed a few good ones, skinning his knuckles.\n\nRobert headbutted Shane, and he fell off.\n\nRobert stood, shook off his harness, then growling,  leapt onto Shane.\n\nThey rolled on the grass, kicking and punching.\n\nShane heard a loud snap and he wasn't sure if it wa s his or Rob's bone breaking;\nhe didn't care, he kept hitting and hitting until b lood spilled into his eyes and he couldn't see anymore.\n\nLarge hands grabbed Shane and pulled him off. Still  swinging, Shane connected with one of the Navy men, bruising the bone over hi s eye.\n The man dropped him.\n\n\"Stand down!\" barked a voice with godlike authority .\n\nShane blinked and wiped blood from his eyes. The si lver-haired man who had given the order to jump stood between him and the o ther kid.\n\nThe Navy man he'd hit pressed one hand to his swoll en eye and said, \"Chief, these two were going to kill each other.\"\n\n\"I see that,\" the old man said. He nodded approving ly at Shane, and then turned to Robert.\n\nRobert ignored the old man and took a step toward S hane with his hands raised.\n\n\"I said STAND DOWN!\"\n\nRobert dropped his hands and staggered back as if h e'd been struck.\n\n\"I think you're right, Sergeant,\" the older Navy ma n said. \"They really might have killed each other.\" He smiled, only it wasn't a smile. It was more like he was baring his teeth. \"Very good. That kind of fight left in them after their first jump? A nig ht jump? My God, I only hope the rest of them are like this.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER EIGHT\n0900 HOURS, JULY 30, 2537 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ABO ARD UNSC POINT OF NO RETURN, LOCATION CLASSIFED (15 YEARS AFTER ALPHA CO MPANY INDOCTRINATION)\n\nLieutenant Ambrose and SCPO Mendez had been escorte d to this catwalk through a series of corridors and high-security bio metric vaults into the bowels of the stealth cruiser Point of No Return.\n\nThe security officers had then left them standing a t attention on the catwalk, and sealed the vaultlike door behind them. Below th e metal grating of the catwalk, the shadows swallowed all sound.\n\nThree meters to Kurt's left was a slightly curved w hite wall. No door. Beyond was Odin's Eye, the high-security conference room w here he'd first been told of the SPARTAN-III program by Colonel Ackerson.\n \"Think this is some Section Three test?\" Mendez fin ally whispered. \"Or maybe someone doesn't like getting news about the lousy s election results for the Beta Company candidates?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" Kurt replied. \"My requested upgrade s for the Mark-II SPI armor were over budget.\"\n\nMendez raised an eyebrow. \"Where did you hear that? \"\n\n\"The new AI talks a lot.\"\n\n\"'Deep Winter,'\" muttered Mendez. \"I wonder if AIs pick their own names, or if some officer in Section Three does it.\"\n\nKurt was about to offer his opinion when he noticed  there now was a door in the curved white wall. Colonel Ackerson stood there . \"Gendemen, join us.\"\nAckerson then retreated into a brightly lit chamber .\n\nKurt noticed that he hadn't met their eyes. That wa s always a bad sign.\n\nThey entered, and as he crossed the threshold, Kurt  felt static crawl over his skin. The concave illuminated walls of the chamber were disorienting. Kurt focused on the center of the half-spherical room, o n the black conference table. Two officers sat there, gazing at holographi c screens that floated in the air over its surface.\n\nAckerson waved them closer.\n\nA woman sat with her back to them; opposite her sat  a middle-aged gentleman.\n\nThe man was gray and balding. The woman appeared ol der than regs permitted before mandatory retirement. Her osteoporotic slump , slender frail arms, and thinning white hair indicated extreme age.\n\nKurt froze as he spotted the one- and three-star ra nk insignia on their collars and snapped off a salute. \"Vice Admiral, ma'am,\" he  said. \"Rear Admiral, sir.\"\n\nThe Vice Admiral ignored Mendez and scrutinized Kur t. \"Sit,\" she said, \"both of you.\"\n\nKurt didn't recognize either of these high-ranking officers, and they didn't bother to introduce themselves.\n\nHe did as he was ordered, as did Mendez. Even sitti ng, though, his back was ramrod straight, his chest out, and eyes forward.\n \"We were reviewing the record of your SPARTAN-IIIs since they went operational nine months ago,\" she said. \"Impressive .\"\n\nThe Rear Admiral gestured at floating holographic p anes that contained after action reports, still shots of battlefields filled with Covenant corpses, and ship damage-assessment profiles. \"The insurrection of Ma more,\" he said \"that nasty business at New Constantinople, actions in the Bona nza asteroid belt and the Far-gone colony platforms, and half a dozen other e ngagementsthis reads like the campaign record of a cracking good battalion, n ot a company of three hundred. Dammed impressive.\"\n\n\"That was only a fraction of the SPARTAN-III progra m potential,\" Colonel Ackerson said. His eyes stared at some distant poin t.\n\n\"I'm sorry, sir,\" Kurt said. \" 'Was'?\"\n\nThe Vice Admiral stiffened. It was clear that she w as not accustomed to her junior officers asking questions.\n\nBut Kurt had to. These were his men and women they were talking about. He'd kept his eyes and ears open for news on Alpha Compa ny, and had cultivated intelligence sources outside ONI, Section Three, an d Beta-5. Being Commandant of Camp Currahee had its privileges, and  he had learned how to use them. He had managed to track his Spartans duri ng the last seven months, until his sources had mysteriously gone silent six days ago. Only the AI Deep Winter had given a clue as to their whereabouts: Op eration PROMETHEUS.\n\n\"Tell me about the selection process for the next c lass of SPARTAN-IIIs,\" the Vice Admiral asked Kurt.\n\n\"Ma'am,\" Kurt said, \"we are operating under Colonel  Acker-son's expanded selection criteria, but there are not enough age-ap propriate genetic matches to meet the larger second-class target number.\"\n\n\"There are sufficient genetic matches,\" Colonel Ack erson corrected. His face was an impassive mask. \"What's missing are data to find additional matches. We need to proscribe mandatory genetic screening in th e outer colonies. Those untapped populations are\"\n\n\"That's the last thing we need in the outer colonie s,\" the Rear Admiral said.\n\"We're just getting a handle on a near civil war. Y ou tell an O.C. they got to register their kids' genes, and they'll all be reac hing for their rifles.\"\n\nThe Vice Admiral steepled her withered hands. \"Say it is part of a vaccine program. We take a microscopic sample as we inject the children. Inform no one.\"\nThe Rear Admiral looked dubious, but offered no fur ther comment.\n\n\"Go on. Lieutenant,\" she said.\n\n\"We have identified 375 candidates,\" Kurt said. \"Sl ightly less than we started with for Alpha Company, but we have learned from ou r mistakes. We will be able to graduate a much higher percentage this time .\"\n\nHe nodded toward Mendez to give the Chief the credi t he richly deserved. Mendez sat completely still and Kurt saw he wore hi s poker face.\n\nEvery instinct Kurt had screamed that something was  wrong here.\n\n\"But,\" the Rear Admiral said, \"that's nowhere near the one thousand projection for the second wave.\"\n\nA brief scowl played over Ackerson's lip. \"No, sir. \"\n\nThe Vice Admiral set her hands flat on the table an d leaned closer to Kurt.\n\"What if we loosen the new genetic selection criter ia?\"\n\nKurt took note of the \"we\" in her question. There w as a subtle shift in the power structure at the table. With a single word, t he Vice Admiral had made Kurt a part of their group.\n\n\"Our new bioaugmentation protocols target a very sp ecific genetic set. Any deviation from that set would geometrically increas e the failure rate,\" Kurt said. The thought of dozens of Spartans being tortu red and ultimately crippled as they lay helpless in a medical bay filled him wi th revulsion. He managed to contain the feeling.\n\nThe Vice Admiral raised one threadbare brow. \"You'v e done your homework. Lieutenant.\"\n\n\"However, as our augmentation technology improves,\"  Ackerson said, \"one day we will be able to expand the selection parameters,  maybe to include the entire general population.\"\n\n\"But not today, Colonel,\" the Rear Admiral said, an d sighed. \"So we're back to about three hundred SPARTAN-IIIs. That will have to  do then.\"\n\nKurt wanted to correct himthree hundred new Spartan s plus those in Alpha Company.\n \"Let's move on to the review of Alpha and Operation  PROMETHEUS,\" the Vice Admiral said, and her face darkened.\n\nColonel Ackerson cleared his throat. \"Operation PRO METHEUS occurred on the Covenant manufacturing site designated as K7-49.\"\n\nA holographic asteroid materialized drifting over t he table, a rock with molten cracks that made a spiderweb pattern over its surfa ce.\n\n\"K7-49 was discovered when the prowler Razor's Edge  managed to attach a telemetry probe on an enemy frigate during the Batt le of New Harmony,\"\nAckerson said. \"They then followed the craft throug h Slipspace, the first and only time this technology has actually worked, I mi ght add, and they discovered this rock seventeen light-years past the  UNSC outer boundary.\"\n\nThe image magnified, revealing midaltitude images o f factories on the surface that belched smoke and cinder, and s howed that the volcanic fissures were canals of flowing molten metal. A gos samer lattice surrounded the asteroid, tiny lights winked on the filaments, and black specks drifted near.\n\n\"Spectral enhancement,\" the Rear Admiral said, \"sho wed us what they're using all that metal for.\"\n\nThe view shifted closer. The latticework girders we re hundred-meter-wide beams, and the black specks appeared to be the bone s of whales in orbit over K7-49a dozen partially constructed Covenant warship s.\n\nKurt had a difficult time believing what he was see ing. So many ships. How large was the Covenant fleet? And only seventeen li ght-years from the UNSC frontier? It could be nothing less than a prelude t o an all-out assault.\n\n\"K7-49 is one large orbital shipyard,\" Ackerson exp lained. \"All the apparent volcanism is artificial, created by these.\" He tapp ed his tablet once more. Thirty infrared dots appeared on the surface of the  asteroid. \"High-output plasma reactors that Hquefy metallurgical component s, which are refined, shaped, and then transported via gravity beams for final assembly.\"\n\n\"The PROMETHEUS op was a high-risk insertion onto t he surface of K7-49,\" the Rear Admiral explained. \"Three hundred Spartans hit  dirt at 0700, July 27. Their mission was to disable as many of these react ors as possibleenough so the liquid contents of the facility would solidify and permanently clog their capacity to produce alloy.\"\n\nColonel Ackerson then tapped the holographic displa y. \"STARS system and TEAMCAM recorded Alpha Company's process.\"\nA handful of the hot infrared points on the asteroi d's surface flared and then cooled to black.\n\n\"Initial resistance was light.\" Ackerson tapped a b utton and a new window opened.\n\nOn this display, Spartans in Semi-Powered Infiltrat ion armor systems moved, their camouflaged patterns shifting imperfectly aga inst the molten metal and black smoke of the factory Kurt wished his suggeste d upgrades for the SPI armor's software had been implemented before Alpha had graduated. There was a burp of suppressed submachine gun fire, and a  pod of Grunt salve workers fell dead.\n\n\"After two days,\" the Admiral said, \"seven rectors were rendered inoperative and a counterforce was finally organized by existin g Covenant units.\"\n\nA new video feed appeared.\n\nThe vulturelike Jackals moved in squads through lar ge courtyards, and filed over archways. They were more organized than their Grunt counterparts, and they worked in fire teams, methodically clearing se ction by section. But Kurt knew his Spartans wouldn't be cornered. They would be the hunters.\n\nThirty Jackals moved into a circular court, where E ngineers tended a churning pool of molten steel. The Jackals cleared every hid ing spot, and then started to cross, warily scanning the rooftops.\n\nFlagstones exploded and sent the Jackals sprawling.  Sniper fire took out the stunned aliens before they could get their shields in place.\n\n\"The Covenant counterresponse was neutralized,\" the  Rear Admiral continued,\n\"and over the next three days. Alpha Company destro yed thirteen more reactors.\"\n\nThe large infrared asteroid-wide view changed. Two- thirds of the surface had cooled to dull red.\n\n\"But,\" the Rear Admiral said, \"a massive counterfor ce appeared in orbit and descended to the surface.\"\n\nColonel Ackerson opened three more holographic wind ows: SPARTAN-IIIs engaged Elites on the ground, trading fire from cov er. Banshee fliers swooped down from building topstwo\n Spartans fired shoulder-launched surface-to-air mis siles and stopped the air assault cold.\n\n\"On day seven,\" the Admiral said, \"additional Coven ant reinforcements arrived.\"\n\nThe video from a helmet camera showed a dozen SPART AN-IIIs limping and falling on a smoldering landscape of twisted metal.  There was no unit cohesion. No two-man teams covering one another. In the heat- blurred background, Elites took up superior positions with good cover.\n\n\"By now,\" the Rear Admiral said, \"Eighty-nine perce nt of the reactors had been destroyed. Sufficient cooling had occurred to perma nently shut the operation down. Alpha Company was cut off from their Calypso exfiltration craft.\"\n\nThe window showing the SPARTAN-IIIs tilted sideways  as the owner of the helmet cam fell.\n\nAckerson rotated the holographic display 90 degrees  to rectify the image.\n\nThree Spartans remained standing, firing suppressin g bursts from their MA5Ks behind a crashed Banshee flier; then they broke fro m the cover and sprinteda second before the flier was destroyed by an energy mortar. IFF tags at the bottom of the screen identified these Spartans as R obert, Shane, and, carried between them, Jane. She had been the first candidat e to jump that first night of indoctrination.\n\nTEAMBIO appeared in another window. Robert's and Sh ane's blood pressure was close to the hypertensive limit. Jane's bio signs w ere flatlined.\n\nSeeing them like this it felt like someone had driv en a metal spike into Kurt's chest. A pair of hulking Covenant Hunters blocked t he Spartans' retreat. They raised their two-meter-long fuel-rod arm cannons.\n\nRobert unloaded his assault rifle at them, which ha rdly made the pair flinch as it spanged off their thick armor. Shane switched to his sniper rifle and shot through one H unter's unarmed midsection, and then pumped two rounds into the other's vulnera ble abdomen. They both went down, but still moved, only momentarily incapa citated.\n\nElite fire teams, meanwhile, popped up on either si de and unleashed a volley of needles and plasma shot.\n\nRobert caught a blot of plasma in the stomachit stu ck there, burning through his SPI armor like paper. Screaming, he managed to reload and spray his MA5B on full auto at the Elite who had shot him. TEAMBIO  showed his heart in full arrest, but he still grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and lobbed it at the enemy fire team and then he fell.\n\nShane paused to look at Robert and Janethen turned back to the Elite fire team, and shot in three-round controlled bursts.\n\nMore Elites appeared, surrounding the lone Spartan.\n\nShane's rifle clacked, empty. He pulled out his M6 pistol and continued to fire.\n\nAn energy motor detonated like a small sun two mete rs away.\n\nShane tumbled through the air, and landed prone, un mov-ing.\n\n\"And that's all we have,\" Colonel Ackerson stated.\n\nKurt continued to stare at the screen of static, hi s heart racing, half expecting the feed to go live again and show Shane gather up Robert and Jane, and together they'd limp off the battlefield, wounded, but alive.\n\nSeven years Kurt had trained them, and grown to res pect them. Now they were dead. Their sacrifice had saved countless human liv es, and yet Kurt still felt like he'd lost everything. He wanted to look away f rom the screen, but couldn't.\n\nThis was his fault. He had failed them. His trainin g hadn't prepared them. He should have rectified the flaws in their Mark-! PR suits and fixed them faster.\n\nMendez reached over and tapped the Colonel's tablet .\n\nThe display mercifully blanked and faded away.\n\nAckerson shot the Chief a glare, but Mendez ignored  him.\n\n\"Recent drone recon shows the entire complex cold,\"  the Rear Admiral said. \"No more ships will be built at K7-49.\"\n\n\"Just to clarify,\" Kurt whispered, and then he paus ed to clear his throat. \"There were no survivors of Operation PROMETHEUS?\"\n\n\"It is regrettable.\" the Vice Admiral said with the  slightest softness now in her voice. \"But we would do it again if presented with a similar opportunity, Lieutenant. Such a facility within two weeks' journ ey of the UNSC outer colonies your Spartans prevented the building of a Covenant armada that would have resulted in nothing less than the massacre of billions. They are heroes.\"\n\nAshes. That's all Kurt felt. He glanced at Mendez. There was no emotion on his f ace. The man held his pain well.\n\n\"I understand, ma'am,\" Kurt said.\n\n\"Good,\" she said, all trace of pity had now evapora ted from her tone. \"I've put you in for a promotion. Your Spartans performed wel l above the program's projected parameters. You are to be commended.\"\n\nKurt felt the only thing he deserved was a court-ma rtial, but he said nothing.\n\n\"Now I want you to focus and accelerate the trainin g of the Beta Company Spartans,\" she said. \"We have a war to win.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER NINE\n1620 HOURS, AUGUST 24, 2541 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ Z ETA DORADUS SYSTEM, NEAR CAMP CURRAHEE, PLANET ONYX (FOUR YEARS AFTER S PARTAN-III ALPHA COMPANY OPERATION PROMETHEUS)\n\nBullets peppered the dirt near Tom's head. He pushe d farther back into the hole, hugging the ground, trying to be as flat as p ossible.\n\nThe irony was Team Foxtrot had done everything by t he book. Maybe that was the lesson today: going by the book doesn't always work.\n\nTom had led them through the forest, evading sniper s and patrols of drill instructors waiting to jump them. They made it too easy.\n\nThat should have been his first clue. The DIs never  made things easy for them.\n\nWhen they'd come to the open field he'd checked the  perimeter. No one had been there. He'd waited, though, and checked and re checked. DIs in their Mark-II Semi-Powered Infiltration armor were hard t o spot even with the thermal imagers in his field binoculars.\n\nTom had then warily led his team onto the field and  toward the pole with a bell. That was the mission: ring the bell. They had  had two hours to find and ring the thing to qualify for continued Spartan tra ining.\n\nThere were 418 candidates, and only three hundred s lots. Not all of them could be Spartans.\n His mistake had been leading his entire team into t he clear. They'd all been too eager.\n\nIt got them ambushed.\n\nMachine-gun fire from the treetops rained down on t hem. Adam and Min in flanking positions were immediately taken out.\n\nOnly Tom and Lucy had made it to the muddy hole. It  was just deep enough to keep from getting shot.\n\n\"This is crazy,\" Lucy spat through her mud-covered face. \"We gotta do something.\"\n\n\"They have to run out of ammo sooner or later,\" Tom  told her. \"Or one of the other teams will show up and get us out of this jam .\"\n\n\"Sure they will,\" Lucy said. \"After they ring the b ell.\" She squinted at the trees.\n\"There has to be a way out of this. Automated gun t urrets up there. That's why they didn't show up on the thermals.\"\n\nThat's what the Lieutenant was always saying about machines: \"They easily fool the unsuspecting but they're also easy to break.\"\n\nThe guns wouldn't kill thembut they'd sure as heck stop them cold. With only gray sweat suits and light boots for protection, th e stun rounds hit so hard they numbed whatever they hit: legs or arms or God help you if you got nailed in the head or groin or an eye.\n\n\"Nuts to this.\" Lucy rose into a crouching stance.\n\nTom grabbed her ankle, pulled her down, and punched  her in the gut.\n\nLucy doubled, but she recovered fastrolled over Tom  and got him in a stranglehold.\n\nTom shrugged out of the lock and held up both hands . \"Come on,\" he said.\n\"Truce. There has to be a way out of thisa way with  us not getting shot.\"\n\nLucy glared at him, but then said, \"What do you hav e in mind?\"\n\n\"What is the point of this 'exercise,' Lieutenant?\"  Deep Winter asked.\n\nThe AI holographic projection of an old man took a step toward the bank of monitors and touched the screen showing a boy and a  girl pinned by machine gun fire. A crackle of ice spread over the plastic. Chief Mendez stood, and swatted at a mosquito, frow ning as he glanced back and forth among the two dozen displays in Camp Curr ahee's control center. The air conditioner had broken, and both Mendez's and K urt's uniforms were soaked with sweat.\n\nKurt said, \"Our candidates are doing well in their studies?\"\n\nDeep Winter turned his glacier-blue gaze to the Lie utenant. \"You've have seen my reports. You know they are. Since you announced their grades were a factor in the selection process, they practically kill the mselves every night to learn everything before they pass out. Frankly, I don't s ee\"\n\n\"1 suggest,\" Kurt said, \"you not worry about seeing  the point of my battlefield drills, and focus on keeping the candidates on trac k with their studies.\"\n\nWhat could an AI possibly know what it was like on a real mission? Bullets zinging so close over your head that you didn't so much as hear them hut felt them pass. Or what it was like to get hit, but stil l have to keep going, bleeding, because if you didn't everyone on your team would d ie?\n\nAlpha Company had lost their team cohesion on Opera tion PROMETHEUS. Kurt vowed that would not happen with Beta Company.\n\nDeep Winter ruffled his cape, and a flurry of illus ionary snow swirled about the control room. The AI was likely programmed with hum an safety protocols, so it was natural for it to be concerned.\n\n\"We don't know what they're capable of,\" Kurt final ly told Deep Winter. \"Stick with the by-the-book drills and we'll never find out, either. But put them in an impossible sit uation, and maybe they'll surprise us.\"\n\n\"Short definition of a Spartan,\" Mendez remarked.\n\nThat's what people had said about the SPARTAN-IIs w ho were the genetic cream of the crop and wore MJOLNIR armor. They could do t he impossible, and do it alone. The SPARTAN-IIIs, though, would have to work  together to survive. Be more family than fire team.\n\n\"Still,\" Deep Winter whispered. \"This is cruel. The y will break.\"\n\n\"I'd rather break them,\" Kurt said, \"than let them go out into the field without ever experiencing an intractable tactical situation .\"\n \"Personally I don't think these kids can be broken, \" Mendez said more to himself than to Kurt or Deep Winter. His gaze now firmly fi xed on Tom and Lucy. \"Ten years old and these two have so much grit they scar e the bejesus out of even me.\"\n\n\"Look,\" Deep Winter said. \"What are those two doing  now?\"\n\nKurt smiled. \"I think the impossible.\"\n\n\"Let's go over the plan one more time,\" Tom said.\n\nLucy huddled next to him in the mud hole. \"Why? You  think I'm stupid?\"\n\nTom didn't say anything for a moment, then: \"Those turrets are probably using radar to target. So we fool them.\"\n\n\"And if they're using thermals?\" Lucy asked.\n\nTom shrugged. \"Then I hope they nail you first.\"\n\nLucy grimly nodded and hefted a muddy rock. \"So we throw these.\"\n\n\"Into their cone of fire,\" Tom said. \"The small ang le will make them hard to track. Maybe tie up their brains for a fraction of a second more.\"\n\n\"Then we run.\"\n\n\"Evasive maneuvers. Try not to step on Adam and Min .\"\n\n\"Got it,\" Lucy said.\n\nTom grasped his rock tighter and pumped it once, wo rking up his courage. He and Lucy knocked their fists together.\n\nThey stood at the same timehucked both rocks.\n\nTom heard gunfire, but didn't pause to look; he ran  right, then left, he rolled and tumbled and then sprinted like crazy for the tr ee line.\n\nHe felt the dirt near him exploding with tiny puffs .\n\nFire cut into his thigh and his leg lost all feelin g. He pushed off with his good foot, and landed hard on his stomach in the tall gr ass by the acacia trees.\n Staccato bullets dotted in the ground centimeters f rom his prone body but missed him. He laughed. He was just inside their mi nimum angle of fire. Stupid machines.\n\nHe rolled over and spotted Lucy, panting and crouch ed in the grass. Tom waved to her, and then pointed up into the treetops. Lucy  gave a thumbs-up signal.\n\nTom hopped on one leg. Some of the feeling was comi ng back mostly the feeling of pain. He stomped it out. He couldn't let  it slow him down. The drill instructors might show up at any second.\n\nHe pulled himself up into the lower branches of one  of the acacias that shook with gunfire. He used great care to avoid the spine s in the tree's trunk. He climbed up ten meters.\n\nOn a platform sat an old M202 XP machine gun hooked  up to an automated fire control. It twitched back and forth, waiting for a target to present itself.\n\nTom reached up and disconnected the wires from the radar array, and then the power supply. The gun froze.\n\nHe climbed onto the platform and unscrewed the secu ring bolts. He pushed the gun off the platform. It made a satisfying thud as it impacted the muddy ground.\n\nTom climbed down. He grabbed the machine gun, clear ed the barrel, and stripped off the remaining autofire control. He test-fired a burst of three rounds into the tree tr unk. \"Awesome,\" he said.\n\nLucy was down from his tree as weli, machine gun ba lanced on her shoulder. She moved onto the field to help Adam and Min get u p. \"Come on,\" she said.\n\"We still got a bell to ring.\"\n\nAdam boosted Tom and then Lucy to make a human ladd er, and then Min clambered up and clanged the bell.\n\nNothing had ever sounded so good.\n\nThey all climbed down. \"Now for some payback\" Tom s aid. \"Adam, Min, take up spotting positions\"he pointed\"in those trees there and there.\"\n\nThey nodded and ran off to the trees.\n \"You and me and these,\" Tom told Lucy, patting his machine gun, \"will set up there.\" He pointed to a large boulder. \"I'll be the re.\" He nodded to the tall grass on the edge of the field.\n\n\"And do what?\" she asked.\n\n\"Well, we've cleared the field and rung the bell. I  figure with the other teams getting here and ringing the bell in record times\"\n\nLucy smiled. \"The DIs will come running and gunning .\"\n\nThe DIs at Camp Currahee were a mix of handpicked N COs, medics, and the washouts from the first Spartan class. The washouts  always went out of their way to make the lives of the Beta Spartan trainees hell. Two years ago Team X ray vanished on a routine exercise up north. A lot of the kids said there were ghosts up therefloating eyes in the junglebut every one really knew the DIs had done something and covered it up. ONI even came in and fenced the place off. Called it \"Zone 67\" and declared it was \"absolutely  off-limits.\"\n\nIt was time to teach those DIs they couldn't get aw ay with bullying Beta Company.\n\nMin whistled from the treetops.\n\nTeams Romeo and Echo slinked into view. Tom signale d them and explained the plan. Teams Zulu and Lima joined them, and soon two dozen trainees were scattered in the trees  and grass, watching and waiting.\n\nIt only took fifteen minutes before a whistle sound ed at three o'clock. There was a subtle motion in the grass on the edges of th e field.\n\nTom signaled his scouts to fall back while Lucy man euvered to get a better line. Tom ran in a crouch to intercept.\n\nHe spotted three targets, their SPI armor mimicking  the grass well, but not well enough to cover the parted grass at their feet. The y turned to face Lucy.\n\nTom fired, spraying at knee level where the armor w as weakest.\n\nThree human-shaped outlines crushed the grass, scre aming and convulsing as the rubber bullets pelted them.\n\nLucy joined him and opened fire.\n When the screaming stopped, Tom moved in and peeled  off their armor, revealing three very dazed DIs.\n\nThey had not identified themselves, so by the rules  of engagement they were fair targets. Adam ran up and helped him and Lucy s trip the bodies.\n\n\"Pistols and MA5Ks, both with stun ammunition,\" Ada m said.\n\nLucy held up a double handful of grenades, and smil ed. \"Flash-bangs.\"\n\n\"Now,\" Tom said, grinning, \"this really gets intere sting.\"\n\nThe moon had come out and set. The grass was wet wi th dew and Tom's stomach growled so loud he thought it might give aw ay his position in the dark.\n\nFive waves of DIs had come, and been neutralized by  a now armed, armored, and fully equipped Spartan Trainee Defense Team. Th e instructors were tied up in the middle of the field by the bell. Hostages.\n\nTom and the other Spartans were working together li ke they never had before. And they were winning. He was hun gry, wet, and cold, but Tom wouldn't have traded places with anyone in the entire galaxy.\n\nHe heard a rustle in the tall grass, turned, machin e gun aimed waist high.\n\nThere was nothing there, and nothing on the thermal s, either. He must be getting jumpy.\n\nA hand clamped on his shoulder, while another hand wrenched the machine gun from his grasp.\n\nChief Mendez stood over him. At his side was Lieute nant Ambrose.\n\nTom half expected Mendez to shoot him right there.\n\n\"I think that's quite enough,\" Mendez growled.\n\nThe Lieutenant knelt beside Tom and whispered, \"Goo d work, son.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TEN\n0420 HOURS, FEBRUARY 19, 2551 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\\nABOARD UNSC HOPEFUL, INTERSTELLAR SPACE, SECTOR K-009\n(FIVE YEARS AFTER SPARTAN-III BETA COMPANY OPERATIO N TORPEDO AT PEGASI DELTA)\n\nKurt walked the empty corridors of the UNSC Hopeful  and entered the atrium. Blazing lights overhead mimicked a realistic sun. A ir recirculators made the leaves of the small grove of white oaks rustle. He smelled lavender, a scent he hadn't experienced since he was a child.\n\nThe most extravagant feature of the Hopeful, howeve r, was the ten-meter curving window in the atriumsomething  utterly unheard of on any other ship in the UNSC fleet.\n\nBut then the Hopeful was unlike any other ship in t he fleet.\n\nNaval officers described her as \"the ugliest thing to ever float in zero gee.\" The ship had been built before there had been major reb el activity in the colonies. A private medical corporation had purchased two scr apped repair stationseach a square kilometer plate of scaffolding, cranes, an d cargo trams. These two plates had been connected to make an off-centered \" sandwich,\" and within, a state-of-the-art hospital and research facility had  been constructed.\n\nIn 2495 the UNSC had commandeered the vessel, added  engines, minimal defensive systems, six fusion reactors, and a Shaw- Fujikawa translight system, and transformed the Hopeful into the largest mobile  battlefield hospital in history.\n\nWhile most Naval officers agreed she was unsightly,  every en-listed Marine Kurt had ever spoken with declared her the most beautifu l thing they had ever seen.\n\nThe Hopeful had taken on mythical proportions with the men and women who had to fight and die on the front lines. She had be en damaged, but had survived, eighteen major Naval battles with rebel f orces and four encounters with the Covenant. The ship's staff and technology had a reputation of saving lives, in many cases literally bringing the dead ba ck to life.\n\nToday the ship had been parked in interstellar spac e essentially the middle of nowhereby order of Vice Admiral Parangosky. And whi le the thousands of critically ill patients could not be evacuated, the  eight decks surrounding docking cluster Bravo had been cleared of all perso nnel while ONI moved in their equipment and staff. The SPARTAN-III program had to remain under a cloak of absolute secrecy.\n\nKurt wished the Hopeful lived up to her reputation because today the lives of his Spartan potentials were at stake. His candidates had had to endure so much in the las t year. To accelerate the program's timetable, puberty had bee n artificially induced. Human-growth hormone as well as cartilage, muscle, and bone supplements had been introduced into their diet, and the childr en had metamorphosed into near-adult stature within nine months.\n\nThey had become clumsy in their new, larger bodies,  and had struggled to relearn how to run, shoot, jump, and fight.\n\nAnd today, they'd face their most dangerous test. T hey would either become irreparably disfigured, die, or be transformed into  Spartans.\n\nNo, that wasn't right. While these kids didn't have  the heightened speed or strength of a Spartan, they already had the commitm ent, drive, and spirit. They already were Spartans.\n\nKurt heard boots clicking down the corridor, then m uffled steps crossing the atrium lawn.\n\n\"Lieutenant, sir?\"\n\nA young man and woman approached with the long lopi ng gaits of people who had spent much time in microgravity. They wore stan dard Naval uniforms bearing the stripes of a petty officer second class . Both had close-cropped black hair and dark eyes.\n\nKurt had had to pull a few strings to keep the Beta  Company survivors of Pegasi Delta with him. Colonel Ackerson had wanted Tom for  his own private operations. And ever-silent Lucy had narrowly avoid ed an unfit-for-duty classification and permanent reassignment to ONI ps ych branch for\n\"evaluation.\"\n\nHe'd had to appeal to Vice Admiral Parangosky, clai ming he needed Spartans to train Spartans.\n\nOver Ackerson's objections, she had agreed.\n\nThe result: Tom and Lucy had become Kurt's right an d left hands over these last years, and Gamma Company were the finest Spart ans ever.\n\nTom and Lucy spent so much of their time in their S PI armor, it took Kurt a moment to recognizes his attaches. Their armor.\n along with the rest of Gamma Company's Semi-Powered  Infiltration suits, was being refitted with new photo-reactive coatings to boost their camouflaging properties. There were other experimental refitsgel  ballistic layers, upgraded software suites, and other functionsthat would hope fully be working within a year's time.\n\nTom and Lucy snapped off simultaneous salutes.\n\nKurt retuned the salute. \"Report.\"\n\n\"The candidates are ready to board, sir,\" Tom said.\n\nKurt got up and the three of them walked back down the corridor and into docking cluster Bravo. It was the size of a small c anyon with the capacity to cycle a fleet of dropships simultaneously through i ts massive air-lock system. There was ample space for triage and trams that cou ld whisk an entire company of wounded soldiers to emergency surgical f aculties.\n\nAir locks screamed and there was a sudden gust of f resh air. Dozens of bay doors parted and Pelicans rolled into the bay on st eam-powered beds.\n\nThe Pelicans' rear ramps lowered and the Spartan ca ndidates filed out in orderly rows.\n\nKurt had briefed them about the procedures. They'd be sedated and injected with chemical cocktails and surgically altered to g ive them the strength of three normal soldiers, decrease their neural reacti on time, and enhance their durability.\n\nIt was the final step in their transformation to Sp artans.\n\nIt was graduation day.\n\nHe'd briefed them on the risks, too. He had shown t hem the archived videos of the results of the bioaugmentation phase of the SPA RTAN-II program, how more than half of those candidates had washed outeither dying from the procedure or becoming so badly deformed they couldn't stand.\n\nThis would not happen to the SPARTAN-IIIs with the new medical protocols, but Kurt had wanted one final test.\n\nNot one of the 330 candidates had opted out of the program.\n\nKurt had had to petition Colonel Ackerson for thirt y extra slots for this final phase. He simply didn't have it in him to randomly cut thirtywhen every last one of them was willing and ready to fight. Ackerso n had gladly granted his request.\n\nKurt stood and saluted as the line of candidates pa ssed him.\n\nThey marched by, returning his salute, heads held h igh, and chests out. On average only twelve years old, they looked closer t o fifteen with the sculpted musculature of Olympic athletes; many had hard-won scars; and all had an ineffable, confident air about them.\n\nThey were warriors. Kurt had never felt so proud.\n\nThe last candidate lingered, and then halted before  him. It was Ash, serial number G099, leader of Team Saber. He was one of th e fiercest, smartest, and best leaders in the class. His wavy brown hair was slightly over regulation length, but Kurt was inclined to let it slide, toda y of all days.\n\nAsh snapped off a precise salute. \"Sir, Spartan can didate G099 requesting permission to speak, sir.\"\n\n\"Granted,\" Kurt said, and finished his protracted s alute.\n\n\"Sir, I\" Ash's voice cracked.\n\nMany of the boys had problems with their vocal cord s, still recovering from the rapidly induced puberty.\n\n\"I just wanted to let you know,\" Ash continued, \"wh at an honor it's been to train under you. Chief Mendez, and Petty Officers Tom and  Lucy. If I don't make it today, I wanted you to know that I wouldn't have do ne anything differently, sir.\"\n\n\"The honor has been mine,\" Kurt said. He held out h is hand.\n\nAsh stared at it a moment, and then he grasped Kurt 's hand, clasped it firmly, and they shook.\n\n\"I'll see you on the other side,\" Kurt said.\n\nAsh nodded and left, catching up to the rest of the  candidates.\n\nTom and Lucy both nodded their approvals.\n\n\"They're ready,\" Kurt whispered. He looked away so he\n wouldn't have to meet their gazes. \"I hope we are. We're taking a hell of a risk.\"\n\nKurt, Tom, and Lucy stopped at a staff conference r oom, now an improvised ONI command and control center. Medical technicians  in blue lab coats watched 330 video monitors and bio-sign sets. Tom s poke to one of the techs while Kurt's gaze flicked from monitor to monitor.\n\nHe then went down to the open surgical arena. It ha d four hundred sectionseach partitioned by semiopaque plastic curt aining, and each fitting with a sterile-field generator that blazed with its  characteristic orange light overhead.\n\nKurt entered one unit and found SPARTAN-G122, Holly , there.\n\nThe partitioned area was crammed full of machines. There were stands with bio monitors. Several intravenous and osmotic patch es connected her to a chemo-therapeutic infuser, loaded with a collection  of liquid-filled vials that would keep Holly in a semisedated state while it de livered a cocktail of drugs over the next week. There was a crash cart and port able ventilator nearby, as well.\n\nShe struggled to rise and salute, but she fell back , her eyelids fluttering closed.\n\nHe went to Holly's side and clasped her tiny hand u ntil she settled into a deep sleep.\n\nShe reminded him of Kelly when she was this young: full of spunk, and never giving up. He missed Kelly. He had been dead to his  fellow SPARTAN-IIs for almost twenty years. He missed all of them.\n\nThe chemo-therapeutic infuser hissed, vials rotated  into place, micromechanical pumps thumped, and bubbles percolat ed inside its colored liquids.\n\nIt was starting. Kurt remembered when he went throu gh the augmentation. The fevers, the painit felt as if his bones were breaking, like someone had poured napalm into his v eins.\n\nHolly shifted. The bio monitors showed a spike in h er blood pressure and temperature. Tiny blisters appeared on her arms and  she scratched at them. They filled with blood and then quickly smoothed in to scabs.\n Kurt patted Holly's hand one last time and then wen t to the infuser and lifted the side panel. Inside were dozens of solution vial s. He squinted, reading off their serial numbers.\n\nHe spotted \"8942-LQ99\" inside the infuser. That was  the carbide ceramic ossification catalyst to make skeletons virtually u nbreakable.\n\nThere was \"88005-MX77,\" the fibrofoid muscular prot ein complex that boosted muscle density.\n\n\"88947-OP24\" was the number for retina-inversion st abilizer, which boosted color and nighttime vision.\n\n\"87556-UD61\" was the improved colloidal neural disu nifica-tion solution to decrease reaction times.\n\nThere were many others: shock reducers, analgesics,  antiinflammatories, anticoagulants, and pH buffers.\n\nBut Kurt was looking for three vials in particular,  ones with different serial numbers009927-DG, 009127-PX, and 009762-00that didn 't match any standard medical logistics code.\n\nThey were there, bubbling as their contents were dr ained and mixed with picoliter precision.\n\nHe heard footsteps approaching.\n\nKurt lowered the panel of the infuser and stepped b ack to Holly's side.\n\nThere was rustling of plastic curtains and a medica l technical in blue lab coat entered.\n\n\"Is there anything you need help with, sir?\" the me dtech asked. \"Anything I can get you?\"\n\n\"Everything is fine,\" Kurt lied. He brushed past th e man. \"I was just leaving.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER ELEVEN\n0210 HOURS, FEBRUARY 20, 2551 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\  ABOARD UNSC HOPEFUL, INTERSTELLAR SPACE, SECTOR K-009\n Kurt sat alone in the atrium viewing the candidates ' progress on his tablet. He'd spent the last twenty-four hours awake, by their si des, and then caught four hours of sleep. He'd go back to them shortly when t hey awoke to congratulate the candidates.\n\nCorrection: congratulate the Spartans.\n\nEvery last one of them had made it. Kurt wished he could feel relief, but there were too many unknowns.\n\n\"Lieutenant Ambrose.\" A female voice sounded over S HIP-COM. \"Report to the bridge immediately.\"\n\nHe got up and marched to the elevator. The doors cl osed and the elevator rushed through sections of normal and zero gravity;  Kurt held fast to the railing.\n\nKurt and his Project CHRYSANTHEMUM team were suppos ed to be left aloneorders directly from FLEETCOM brass. So why th e summons to the bridge?\n\nThe doors opened. A lieutenant commander stood with  arms akimbo waiting for him, a woman barely a meter and a quarter with a gr ay widow's peak.\n\n\"Ma'am.\" Kurt saluted. \"Lieutenant Ambrose reportin g as ordered. Permission to enter the bridge.\"\n\n\"Granted,\" she said. \"Come with me.\"\n\nShe skirted the edge of the large low-lit room. Not  only were its three dozen officers monitoring navigation, weapon, communication, and drive systems; there were teams controlling structural stress compensators, tram traffic, water, power-loa d distributions, and ecoreclamation subsystems. The Hopeful was more cit y space station than ship of the line.\n\nThe Lieutenant Commander pressed her palm to the bi omet-ric by a side door. It parted, and they both entered.\n\nThe room beyond was lined with shelves of gilt anti que books. Old globes of Earth and a dozen other worlds had been tastefully set about a koa-wood desk that gleamed like gold under the light of a single brass lamp.\n\nAn old man sat in the shadows. \"That will be all. L ieutenant Commander,\" the man said.\n He stood and Kurt saw three stars flash on his coll ar. Kurt re-flexively saluted.\n\"Sir!\"\n\nThe Lieutenant Commander left, the door closing and  locking behind her.\n\nThe Vice Admiral walked around Kurt once.\n\nVice Admiral Ysionris Jeromi was a living legend. H e'd taken the Hopeful, a ship with virtually no weapons or armor, into battle thr ee times to save the crews of critically wounded ships.\n\nHe had saved tens of thousands of lives, and almost  been court-martialed for it, too.\n\nWar needs its heroes, though. The then Admiral had lost and regained stars from his collar, but he had also received the UNSC' s highest wartime decoration:\nthe Colonial Cross. Twice.\n\n\"I'm not sure who you are,\" the Vice Admiral said, and his bushy white brows bunched together. \"Someone a lot more important tha n 'Lieutenant Ambrose,'\nor whatever your name really is.\"\n\nKurt knew better than to say anything unless asked a direct question. He stood at attention. The code-word classification of the S PARTAN-III project prevented him from divulging anything, even to a vice admiral , without clearance.\n\nHe walked back to his desk, reached into a drawer, and retrieved a black sphere the size of a grapefruit. \"Do you know what this is, Lieutenant?\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" Kurt said.\n\n\"Slipspace COM probe,\" he said. \"A stationary Shaw- Fujikawa driver launches one of these black 'bullets' into Slipstream space on an ultraprecise trajectory. It rips through the laws of known human physics, an d drops back into normal space at some very distant coordinates. Like your o wn personal carrier pigeon. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Kurt said. \"Like a Slipspace science pr obe. I've seen them launched from Station Archimedes. Or the new ODST drop pod t hat can be fired from a ship still in Slipspace.\"\n\n\"Nothing like that at all. Lieutenant. Those are ju st dropped into, and then out of. Slipstream spacemore like a turd swirling aroun d in an old-fashioned gravity toilet than precision engineering.\"\nHe patted the black sphere. \"This beauty actually n avigates through Slipspace. Traverses as far and as fast as any UNSC ship. Damn  near magical if you appreciate the mathematics. You understand now?\"\n\nKurt wasn't sure what the Admiral was fishing for. He had been asked a direct question, however, so he answered. \"If what you hav e said is accurate, sir, it would revolutionize longdistance communications. Ev ery ship would be fitted with such a device.\"\n\n\"Except for what it costs to a build an ultraprecis e Shaw-Fujikawa low-mass launcher,\" the Vice Admiral replied, \"you could bui ld a fleet of ships. And for the cost to make one of these little black balls\"he  rolled the probe perilously close to the edge of his desk\"you could buy the cap ital city of some backwater colony. There are only two such launchers. One on R each and one on Earth.\"\n\nThe Vice Admiral returned to Kurt and his pale blue  eyes stared into Kurt's.\n\"This probe arrived fifteen minutes ago,\" the\n\nVice Admiral told him, \"forty million kilometers fr om the Hopeful. Entry vector matches neither Earth nor Reach as the point of ori gin. And it's for you.\"\n\nKurt had a dozen questions, but dared not raise any  of them. He felt like he walked on a razor's edge of secrecy.\n\nThe Vice Admiral snorted and moved to the door. \"Th ere's protocol for top secrecy on this, so use my office. Lieutenant. Take  as much time as you need.\"\nHe palmed the door and it opened. He paused and add ed, \"If there is any danger to my ship or my patients, I expect to be in formed, son. Orders or no.\"\n\nHe left and the door sheathed closed.\n\nKurt approached the black sphere. There were no obv ious controls or displays. Light shed off its surface like water beading off o il.\n\nHe touched it and it warmed.\n\nIce appeared in snowflake patterns and crackled ove r the Vice Admiral's desk.\n\nHolographic snow drifted through the office and coa lesced into a white cloak, chiseled features, glacier eyes, and a cane of crys talline ice: Deep Winter.\n\n\"My god,\" the AI breathed. \"And I thought rear admi rals were long-winded. I thought old Jeromi would never leave.\"\n Deep Winter smoothed his near-skeletal hands over n othing, and a blue sheen permeated the air. \"Counterelectronics package onli ne.\"\n\n\"How did you get here?\" Kurt asked.\n\nHis mind struggled to grasp the ramifications. AIs had large footprints; they needed installations, and massive power sources to fuel their minds. Deep Winter couldn't be here. And how could the AI manag e to alter the approach vector from Earth's or Reach's COM launchers?\n\nDeep Winter held up a hand. \"Stop. I see your mind in logic lock. Lieutenant. It would, perhaps, help to explain.\"\n\n\"Please,\" Kurt whispered.\n\n\"First,\" Deep Winter said, \"we may only communicate  in a limited fashion. I have imprinted a faction of my intellect into the m emory matrix of this probe. The process has irreversibly destroyed a portion of  the home base processing powers, so please do not waste the precious minutes  we have. There is also insufficient remaining power in this probe for a pr olonged debate.\"\n\nKurt nodded. This had cost the AI a high price, so he would do his best to listen.\n\n\"Also, let us not waste time debating the nuances o f this Slipstream-space COM probe. That is classified, and you don't have clear ance.\"\n\n\"Then what are we talking about?\" Kurt asked.\n\n\"I have found three anomalies to the current bioaug mentation protocols.\" Deep Winter clapped his handed together and two gyrating  collections of steel spheres appeared. \"These represent the protein comp lexes miso-olanzapine and cyclodexione-4,\" Deep Winter explained, \"which were  secreted into the alteration regime.\"\n\nKurt leaned closer to the spinning molecules.\n\n\"They are antipsychotic and bipolar integration dru gs,\" Deep Winter said.\n\nHe clapped his hands and a third molecule appeared:  twisting silver and gold blobs. \"And this,\" the AI said, \"is a mutagen that alters key regions in a subject's frontal lobe.\"\n\nDeep Winter faded to semitranslucency. \"It enhances  aggression, making the animal part of the mind more accessible in times of  stress. Someone so mutated has reserves of strength and endurance no n ormal human could call upon. Such a person could also continue to fight un der the influence of wide systemic shock that would instantly kill a normal h uman.\n\n\"The mutagen, however, depresses the higher reason centers of the brain over time,\" the AI continued. \"The antipsychotic drugs a nd bipolar integration medicines counter this effect. As long as the SPARTAN-IIIs have these agents in their  system, they compensate.\"\n\nKurt understood all of this. Under extreme stress t he coun-teragents would metabolize quickly, and the primitive brain would t ake over. His Spartans would fight and be harder to kill. The effect was o nly reversed by the counteragents. It was dangerous. His Spartans could  lose the ability to reason. It might give them the edge needed to survive, thou gh.\n\nDeep Winter continued to fade. The AI had always pl aced the Spartan candidates' well-being over their training or any a genda Section Three had for them.\n\n\"You care for them in your own way,\" Kurt said. \"Th e Spartans.\"\n\n\"Of course I do. They are just children, regardless  of what has been done to them. You must halt the protocol. Brain mutations w ere specifically outlawed by UNSC MED COPRS in 2513. The moral argument algor ithms are robust.\"\n\nDeep Winter shrank to a single tiny snowflake glimm er on the desk. \"I am a fifth-generation smart AI, Kurt. I have reached the  end of my effective operational life on Onyx. By the time you return, I  will have been shut down and replaced. I have left files.\"\n\nThe snowflake glistened, its tips melting. Deep Win ter whispered, \"You must proceed cautiously; I am unsure who in ONI has mast erminded this illegal procedure, but they will surely attempt to cover it  up.\"\n\nThe snowflake melted, and with it all holographic t races of Deep Winter vanished. The surface of the black COM sphere heate d, the surface bubbled, and thin ribbons of smoke curled from within.\n\nYes, they would cover it up. When Kurt returned to Onyx he would inform Colonel Ackerson and then they would arrange to hav e all of Deep Winter's files purged.\n\nThe mutation had been Kurt's idea. He had had to pe rsuade the Colonel to allow it, and they had even kept it a secret from\n the others in the SPARTAN-III subsection cell to pr eserve their \"plausible deniability.\"\n\nKurt had seen too many of his Spartans die; he woul d have broken a hundred regs and bioethical policies to give his people the  slightest chance to survive one more battle.\n\nHis only regret was not being able to do more.\n\nDeep Winter's \"instinct\" to save the Spartans was m isguided. None of them could be protected that way. Warriors fought battle s; they prevailed, but all inevitably faced death. Even his children candidate s understood that.\n\nThey did not, however, have to die so easily.\n\nKurt turned from the COM probe, and left the Admira l's office.\n\nHe had to go congratulate Gamma Company and welcome  them into the brotherhood of Spartans.\n\n\n\nSection III Intruders CHAPTER TWELVE\n0645 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, NEAR ZONE 67, PLANET ONYX\n\nTwo flash-bang grenades detonatedballs of lightning  and thunder and fluttering leaves.\n\nAsh fell and reflexively curled into a ball. He'd s een the steel hexagonal tubes a split second too late, and then their images had be en burned into his retinas.\n\nThey'd been too well camouflaged, chest level in th e trees. Stupid. He wasn't thinking, letting his blood rise and get the best o f him.\n\nHe uncurled and rolled to his feet. They only thing  he heard was his hammering heart; otherwise he was deaf.\n\nAsh blinked to clear his blurred vision.\n\nTeam Saber was down. Mark, Olivia, Holly, and Dante  were on their knees. Their SPI armor camouflage buffers had been wiped b y the flash-bangs, and only the faintest beige camo patterns were beginnin g to resolve like bruises. The new photo-reactive coating technology could mim ic a wide range of EM radiation, but it was still sensitive to overload.\n\nHe pulled Mark to his feet, shook him.\n\nMark nodded and then got the others up.\n\nAsh motioned them back, reversing the direction the y had walked into this trap. They only had a moment before Team Katana moved in for the kill.\n\nThis was his fault. He'd been too eager, too easily  pushed into action without thinking. Mark had spotted a sniper from Katana, and Ash had too quickly decided to flank to the lef t and walked straight into the real trap, the flash-bangs.\n\nBut that was the point of this exercise, wasn't it?  Compress three Spartan squads into a square kilometer arenathink fast or d ie.\n\nOr worse, in this case, think fast or lose.\n\nAsh held up a hand, halting his team. They would no t fall straight back. If he were Team Katana he'd have set up another trap for a retreating enemy.\n\nHe motioned for them to hook right.\n\nTeam Saber moved in a crouch through the brush, slo w, careful, eyes wide. Olivia took point, and she vanished into the green shadows.\n\nRinging started in Ash's ears. That was a good sign . Another half meter closer to those grenades and he'd have lost the eardrum. In s itu cloning was an excruciatingly boring procedure, and he'd be happy to avoid the two-week mandatory downtime.\n\nA red status light winked from Olivia. The team fro ze.\n\nFive meters ahead, a fern bent and sprang back.\n\nAsh rapidly blinked his green status light: the sig nal to open fire. This was the best target they'd had all morning.\n\nSuppressed gunfire surrounded him. The fern explode d into a shower of confetti.\n A single Spartan hidden by the fern turned, their S PI armor flashing silver from the staccato of stun rounds that peppered its surfa ce. Their foot caught on a root and they tumbled.\n\nAsh repeated the go-ahead signal, and his squad mad e sure the target stayed down with several bursts of well-placed rounds. The  ballistic gel underlayer of their armor could take a heck of a pounding before breaking down.\n\nAfter three seconds, he flashed red, and they cease d fire.\n\nOlivia moved up and slapped a lime-green sticky fla g on the still-writhing Spartan's back. The target was now officially \"dead .\"\n\nAsh activated a NAV marker and alerted C and C for pickup of the \"corpse.\"\n\nThe ground trembled, just for a moment, but all the  Spartans in Team Saber froze, and then scanned the jungle, looking for the  source of the disturbance.\n\nEarthquake? Not likely. There was no tectonic activ ity on Onyx. That left only two possibilities: impact or detonation. Neither wa s especially welcome.\n\nAsh motioned for Saber to move out. They slinked th rough the jungle and emerged on a plain. Here small limestone granite an d quartz mesas, grottos, and fissures extended to the north up to and beyond  the high fence of Zone 67.\n\nThe Zone was where the \"ghost\" of Onyx was supposed  to be. It'd been spotted once or twice according to other Spartan candidates : a single eye in the dark. They just made up that stuff to scare plebes. Ash h ad, however, heard of a Beta Company squad that had vanished near here and never been found.\n\nHe looked around warily and spotted a naturally ero ded tunnel that extended through a hill. Ash pointed and Team Saber settled inside to assess the tactical situation.\n\nAsh pulled off his helmet, and wiped the blood from  his nose and hair. \"Too close,\" he said.\n\n\"Still, we got one,\" Holly said, pulling off her ow n golden mirrored helmet, \"and we didn't lose one of ours although you sure gave i t a good try.\" She scratched the fuzz on her head, which she had buzz-cut into a  series of bear-claw scratch patterns. The length was a-okay by the regs, but so me of the other teams teased her about it. Holly got a little wild about the teasing, and she had been demoted twice for fighting.\n Dante removed his helmet and felt his scarred face for any damage. Satisfied, he retrieved two black flash-bang grenades from his  pack. \"Found these, just before yours went off. Caught the trip wires.\"\n\nAsh nodded. He should have reprimanded Dante for st icking his hands near a set of primed grenades. Then again , Dante had near-magical abilities when it came to explosives. He always kne w when they were about to go, and when they wouldn't. That or he was the luck iest person he'd ever seen.\n\nOlivia kept her SPI helmet on. She slipped out of t he cave, taking up a guard position outside. Ash wasn't worried. She was the b est sneak in Gamma Company. They called her \"O\" for short because she was as whisper-quiet as her vowel namesake.\n\nAsh turned to Mark. \"Head check,\" he said, and patt ed his friend on the back of his helmet.\n\nMark pulled the helmet off, and Ash saw a nasty bru ise on his cheek. Mark ran his hands over his shaved head and worried the edge s of that bruise.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" Mark said. He smoothed the inner lining  of his armor, making sure it was perfect, and then slipped the helmet back on.\n\nThey called Mark \"The Mark,\" because he was their b est marksmangood with a sniper rifle, but better with a rifle on full auto in all-out target-rich free-for-all. The more pressure on him, the cooler he got.\n\nAsh spotted bands of rough onyx along the tunnel wa ll, black and white and streaked with flecks of gold. He ran a gloved finge r over the patterns, intrigued by the geological oddity.\n\nHe then snapped out of it and focused on the here a nd now. He slipped his helmet back on.\n\n\"Audio check,\" Ash whispered over TEAMCOM.\n\nGreen status lights winked back. Good. No one was d eaf.\n\nA dull thump echoed off the distant mesa walls, and  dust rained down from the cave ceiling.\n\nTeam Saber instinctively dropped to a crouch. Ash p ulled his sidearm.\n\n\"Big one,\" Dante muttered. \"Artillery? One of the n ew four-forties?\"\n \"I don't think the Lieutenant Commander would use a rtillery on us,\" Ash whispered.\n\n\"Not normally,\" Holly replied. \"But this is the las t test. Maybe he's pulling out all the stops to figure out who'll get top honors.\"\n\nTop honors. Ash had pushed Team Saber to stay on to p for the last three years:\nhoning their specialties; learning every lesson End less Summer threw at them;\nand thinking, moving, and acting together as a sing le razor-edged weapon. Only two other teams were even close in the rankings. Gl adius and Katana. Top honors would mean bragging rights and respect. It w ould mean they were the best. That they'd won.\n\nOver TEAMCOM, Ash said, \"O, you get a direction on that blast?\"\n\nOlivia's status light winked red.\n\n\"Okay,\" Ash said, \"we'll assume it's artillery for now. I can't believe the Lieutenant Commander would be using it but Mendez i s another story. You hear incoming, scatter, and take cover.\"\n\nFour green LEDs lit on his heads-up display, acknow ledging the order.\n\nAsh had read somewhere that you never heard the art illery shell that killed you. He had no desire to personally test that battlefiel d legend.\n\n\"What's the plan for Katana and Gladius?\" Mark aske d.\n\n\"Katana's down one,\" Ash replied. \"We'll focus on t he weaker of the two. We'll find\"\n\nAnother thump and the ground shuddered.\n\n\"Closer,\" Olivia whispered over TEAMCOM. \"Vector no rth.\"\n\nAsh stepped out of the tunnel and took cover by a l arge boulder. The others followed and their SPI armor blended into the rocky  terrain.\n\nIf this was another trap, then they were probably s tepping out right into a sniper's line of fire. But Ash did n't think so. No one would use ordnance that big so close, not even Mendez.\n\nAn explosion like that wasn't something you could t hrow together from rocks and branches and a couple of flash-bang grenades, e ither so that eliminated Teams Katana and Gladius. So who was doing it?\n\nForty meters to the north v/as the triple fence sur rounding Zone 67. Electrified razor wire, motion sensors, and lanes of minefields  made an effective barrier. If pressed, Team Saber could have gotten around itb ut they wouldn't. The LC's orders had been crystal clear: DO NOT CROSS. It wou ld count as an instant disqualification for top honors.\n\nWhat about the other teams? Just a quick hop over a nd lateral move to flank him? No. None of them would risk a disqualification .\n\nThere was a dust storm about three kilometers into Zone 67, a wall of sand, swirling smoke and fire.\n\nA distant mesa explodedvaporized into a mushroom of  glittering quartz dust, a hail of boulders, and roiling flame.\n\nAsh instinctively ducked, and his insides clenched.\n\nHe'd seen big explosions before. Nothing like that,  though.\n\n\"Two kilometers,\" Dante said. \"Felt that one in my bones.\"\n\nThey watched the stones rain from the sky.\n\n\"A few Archer missiles maybe\" Mark murmured.\n\nDots swirled about the edge of the expanding cloud of dust. If Ash didn't know better he'd have sworn they were vultures. But Onyx  didn't have raptorlike avian species.\n\nAsh zoomed magnification on his faceplate. At five- times he saw the dots had a three-fold symmetry.\n\nHe unslung his sniper rifle and sited through the s cope.\n\nThey were drones of some sort. But not UNSC MAKOS. Not Covenant Banshees fliers, either. They were a few meters long.\n\nThree dull steel booms that surrounded a centra! ey e, glowing like molten iron. No obvious jets. No cockpit. There were a dozen of them.\n\n\"Has to be an experimental prototype,\" Dante said. Maybe Zone 67 is a testing range for new weapons.\"\n \"They wouldn't be 'testing' a megaton worth of dest ructive force while we were so close,\" Ash countered.\n\nOr was this part of the final test? Some new threat  that the three squads would have to band together to defeat? That would be Chie f Mendez's style: change the rules in the middle of a test.\n\nThe drones moved away from the atomized mesa, drift ed closer to Team Saber's location, stopping short just on the opposi te side of the Zone 67 fence, where they circled another butte.\n\nAsh spied motion atop that formation. Shutters from  a a camouflaged bunker popped open, and heavy machine-gun fire strafed the  drones.\n\nThe lead drone's three booms snapped forward to mak e a triangular flat plane. A glimmering film of gold popped into place and fif ty-caliber rounds impacted and bounced off.\n\n\"Energy shields!\" Dante said. \"Has to be Covenant.\"\n\nAsh reluctantly agreed with this assessment. This w as no game, no final honors test.\n\nThe war had arrived on Onyx.\n\nHe broadcast over an open COM channel: \"Currahee C and C, come in. This is Saber One. We have an emergency.\"\n\nNo answer. His radio light was green. He was broadc asting, but no one was listening.\n\n\"Radio check,\" Ash said to his team. \"Everyone try to get the Lieutenant Commander or the Chief. Try to raise the Agincourt,  too.\"\n\nAsh used his sniper rifle and tracked the drones.\n\nThe remaining eleven lined up behind the one distor ted to form an energy shield; their red eyes aligned and p ointed directly at the mesa top.\n\nMen emerged from the bunker with M19 missile launch ers.\n\nThe drones' eyes flared to a brilliant goldenergy p rojected forward, flicking like a rapier strike.\n The men and bunker wavered a moment, erupted into f lames, and vaporized. The mesa top then detonated into a cloud of dust an d molten rock.\n\nThe ground tilted and cracked. Team Saber retreated  into the tunnel and debris rained over them.\n\nAsh squinted back through the haze.\n\nThe drones had scattered and moved forward, zigzagg ing over the rocky terrain:\na search pattern.\n\nHe moved to the opposite end of the tunnel and risk ed another open COM broadcast. \"Team Katana, Team Gladius, Covenant act ivity in Zone 67. Forget the test, guys. We've got a situation.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTEEN\n0700 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, NEAR CAMP CURRAHEE, PLANET ONYX\n\nKurt scanned the horizon with his binoculars. He wa tched the pattern of the wind in the tree line, the birds that had taken win g, and a whisper of smoke that snaked up from the canopy.\n\nThere was trouble in the air.\n\nFrom his perch in the \"tree house\" he couldn't see the source of the disturbance near the Spartan test area.\n\nThe tree house was a platform a hundred meters off the jungle floor in the titan arms of a banyan tree. The only electronics h ere were the radio and the AI projection unit. Everything else was low-tech: o ptic binoculars and telescopes, parabolic sound collection dishes, good  old-fashioned signal flags.\n\n\"What's the Agincourt got?\" he asked Mendez.\n\nChief Mendez turned to Kurt, pressing the bud recei ver into his ear. \"A lot of static. Encountering broadband interference. They'r e moving to high orbit to get a clear picture.\"\n\nThe Agincourt had just delivered supplies for the i ncoming Delta Company. Kurt had asked for a little observational assistance bef ore they broke orbit.\n\n\"Pass my thanks to the Commander,\" Kurt said. Chief Mendez's face darkened. \"They're breaking up. \"\n\nThe dish-sized AI projector sparked to life, and wa rm red sunlight sparked and filled the tree house. It solidified into a tall Ch erokee brave, bare-chested, wearing buckskins, feathered spear in his massive h and. This was Endless Summer, the ONI AI stationed at the ultrahigh-secur e facility thirty kilometers to the north, a place that technically no longer ex isted, it was so secret.\n\nThe AI gestured for Kurt and then he vanished, repl aced by the lightning-bolt symbol for a UNSC priority flash communique.\n\nThe AI that had replaced Deep Winter was aloof, had  barely tolerated Kurt and his staff, and it never initiated communication. Th is was trouble.\n\nKurt stepped closer and the pad scanned his biometr ics. Several files were beamed directly onto his retina, a top-secret proto col that gave a new twist to the phase \"eyes-only\" security.\n\nHe read:\n\nUnited Nations Space Command Priority Transmission FLASH 91762P-06\nEncryption Code : BLACK Public Key: file/seasonal/\nFrom: CODE NAME ENDLESS SUMMER To: / Lieutenant Kurt Ambrose, special attache. Log istical Operations Command (NavLogCom) , Office of Investigations UNSC MID: 045888947\nSubject: Emergency Alert Status Classification: Restricted (XXX-XD Directive)\n\n/start file/decryption protocol/\n\nFLASH TRANSMISSION TO CAMP CURRAHEE COMMAND AND CON TROL\n\nENDLESS SUMMER DIRECTED TO LIEUTENANT COMMANDER AMB ROSE-EYES ONLY\n\nZONE 67 UNDER ATTACK.\n\nPer general order 98.93.120, I am authorized to tak e command of all military personnel on Onyx under emergency circumstance. I h ereby exercise that authority and order all under your command to immed iately defend zone 67\nfrom eminent danger.\n\nAttacker Identity: Unknown. Nonhuman origin.\n\nATTENTION: Possible Covenant vectors. ATTENTION: Possible non-Covenant vectors.\n\nYou are authorized with code-word clearance PATRIOT -SEVEN-BLUE TO review thefollowing condensed material of immediate benefi t. Any breach of code word classification confidentiality is punishable b ythe death penalty as per UNSC MIL-JAG 4 4 65/LHG, the Wartime Articles of Se crecy, and THE amended Articles of the United Security Acts of 2162.\n\n/end/\n\n/attached file 1 OF 9/\n\nMay 6, 24 91 (Military Calendar)\nField report A76344-USNC . ENGCORP Subject: Survey Planet XF-0 63\nReporting Officer: Captain D. F. Lambert UNSC. ENGC ORP/ UNSCMID: 03981762\n\nXF-0 63 is a rare jewel of a find. There is an oxyg en-nitrogen-inert GAS atmosphere of suitable pressure and a moderate weat her cycle. There is a surprising abundance of indigenous flora and fauna,  which upon cursory investigation poses no danger. In fact, edible spec ies present. (See additional reports for details.) Transplant of earth species p ossible.\n\nNotable anomalies: No detectable tectonic activity,  but there is still an unusually strong planetary magnetic field. slightly  higher than normal background radiation measured, but well within tole rable standards. additional geological testing recommended.\n\n\nNo terraforming effort required. colonization recom mended.\n\n/end/\n\n/attached file 2 OF 9/\n\nFebruary 19, 24 92 (Military Calendar)\nField report A7 90 52-USNC. ENGCORP Subject: Geological Expedition Four, Planet XF-063\nReporting Officer: Lieutenant W. K. Davidson UNSC.E NGCORP/ UNSCMID: 0772\n9654\n\nThe northern plateau region of the midlatitude land mass has an abundance of granite and quartz varieties forming hills and MESA S. Breathtaking onyx quarries .\n Additional exploration of this region has revealed limestone of organic origins, specifically an ancient coral reef with a rich foss il history.\n\nCursory investigation has yielded several ancient s pecies of unknown origins, and entire PHYLUM FOUND OF POSSIBLY ALIEN taxonomy.\n\nRecommendation: Follow-up survey. Specialist reques ted in paleo- and xenobiology and biochemistry.\n\n/end/\n\n/attached file 3 of 9/\n\nJanuary 3, 2511 (Military Calendar)\nOrder 178.8.64.007\nSubject: Security reclassification Issuing Officer: Rear Admiral M. 0. Parangosky, Off ice OF Naval Intelligence, Section Three/ UNSCMID: 0365 9271\n\nEffective immediately all materials mentioning, ref erencing, OR containing reports, surveys, personal notes and logs, images, or any other data pertaining to or about the planet catalog no. XF-0 63 (also kn own colloquially as \"Onyx\") is hereby reclassified to TOP SECERT, EYES ONLY.\n\nUNSC systemwide network purge authorized by Office of Naval Intelligence (ref no. 0097833), under the direction OF MIL.AI. ID: 47 7-SSD.\n\n/end/\n\n/attached FILE 4 OF 9 /\n\nOctober 22, 2 511 (Military Calendar)\nONI Field report A84110\nClassification: TOP SECRET, CODE-WORD Subject: Status of ruins in Zone 67\nReporting Officer: Lieutenant Commander J. G. Orteg a, Office of Naval Intelligence, Section Three/ UNSCMID: 7631073\n\nConcerning the alien ruins discovered in Zone 67, w e continue to find evidence of an advanced culture with a superlative grasp of mathematics and astrogation, WITH some possible artistic representations that su ggest a space-faring race\n(see attached digital images of onyx carvings).\n\nTheir numerous hieroglyphics, while at first glance  comparable TO ANCIENT terrestrial AZTEC VARIANTS, ARE, IN FACT, NOTHING A T ALL LIKE THESE PRIMITIVE EARTH COUNTERPARTS . SEVERAL LAYERS OF SY MBOLOGY SUGGEST A HIGHER-DIMENSIONAL APPROACH TO THEIR LANGUAGE, IF I T CAN EVEN BE TRULY THOUGHT OF AS WRITING OR LANGUAGE IN ANY HUMA N SENSE .\n\nTranslation continues to elude all experts, human a nd AI.\n\nRecommendation: Increased funding and excavation wi ll undoubtedly yield hitherto unknown technologies.\n\nAdditional Note: No further information has been di scovered REGARDING THE GLOWING SPHERE DISCOVERED BY BETA COMPANY trainees.  The subsequent detonation of the sphere obliterated all clues of i ts origin.\n\n/end/\n\n/attached file 5 OF 9/\n\nSeptember 2, 2517 (Military Calendar)\nONI Field report C384409\nClassification: TOP SECRET, CODE-WORD Subject: Status of ruins in Zone 67\nReporting Officer: Commander J. G. Ortega, Office o f Naval Intelligence, Section Three/ UNSCMID: 7631073\n\nNew facilities went operational as of 0500 hours to day. Smart AIs functioning in tandem as per specifications with some prelimianry success on some of the simpler, low-dimensional hieroglyphics.\n\nContinued excavations of millions of cubic feet of earth in Zone 67 yield ruined buildings, carvings, and tablets, but as with the o ther REGIONS NO DISCOVERIES OF A technological nature discovered (or if there a re, we lack sufficient understanding to discern their function).\n\nCarvings depicting the inhabitants of Onyx still no t found . Whatever these creatures looked like, for the moment, remains A my stery .\n\nThe senior staff now believes that a sudden catacly sm claimed the inhabitants of this world. Unknown if pathological, sociologica l, or radiological in nature. This may, however, explain the higher-than-normal b ackground radiation levels.\n\nRecommendation: Increased staff and funding. The ru ins are so extensive they could take several lifetimes to unearth them ALL. T his entire world MAY be covered in similar ruins. New technologies certainl y must have survived and await discovery.\n\n/end/\n /attached FILE 6 OF 9/\n\nMarch 6, 2525 (Military Calendar)\nOrder 276.8.91.848\nSubject: Zone 67 Funding Issuing Officer: Admiral M. 0. Parangosky, Office o f Naval Intelligence, Section Three/ UNSCMID: 03669271\n\nGentlemen, I'll be brief. After almost fifteen year s of continuous and ruinously expensive research without a single new useful tech nology discovered, the budget of the Onyx initiative has been reprioritize d.\n\nAlthough the alien artifacts and hieroglyphics cont inue to be of interest, recent rebel activities in the outer colonies demand that we face realities and reallocate our finite ai and military personnel to counter this new threat.\n\nOnyx is to remain classified, code-word top secret.  All materials and files have been redesignated under the nomenclature KING UNDER  THE MOUNTAIN.\n\nPursuant to order 178.8.64.007 any breach of code-w ord classification confidentiality is punishable by the death penalty AS PER UNSC MIL-JAG\n4465/LHG, the Wartime Articles of Secrecy, and the amended Articles of the Homeland Security Act of 2162.\n\nA skeleton crew and one ai will continue to probe t he mysTERIES OF Zone 67. Maybe they'll hit pay dirt.\n\nIn the meantime, the rest of us have a war to fight .\n\n/end/\n\nKurt never finished reading Endless Summer's flash transmission.\n\nAn explosion darkened the horizon with a mushroom c loud of fire and dust, and the holographic page dissolved before Kurt could scan the rest of the files. The projector spu ttered, sparked, and died.\n\nThe intel Endless Summer had just sent swam through  his mind. Alien ruins?\nPossible Covenant invasion? What did the AI mean by  possible non-Covenant vectors?\n\n\"We have to get out of here,\" Kurt said.\n\nChief Mendez continued to stare at the distant blas t. \"Artillery. Maybe a missile strike?\"\nKurt scrutinized the shape of the blast cloud. \"No,  it's highly asymmetric. There are uneven heat blooms. I'd guess a directed energy  weapon.\"\n\nThe Chief picked up the radio and again tried to ra ise the Agincourt. \"This is Camp Currahee C and C. Come in, over?\"\n\nStatic.\n\n\"Try the squads,\" Kurt said.\n\nMendez nodded. \"Saber, come in. Katana? Report, thi s is Chief Mendez. Gladius.\" He clicked the mic. This time, there wasn 't even static, only dead air.\n\"You think\"Mendez looked up at the sky\"the Agincour t did something?\"\n\nThe Chief crinkled his silver brows together, worri ed. It was an emotion Kurt had never before seen on the old man's features.\n\nAnother detonation shook Zone 67. What had been a d istant granite bluff turned into a disintegrating rain of dust.\n\n\"We've received orders to defend Zone 67,\" Kurt sai d.\n\nMendez sighed and shrugged. \"I've got my M6 sidearm .\" He patted his holster.\n\"And a knife in my boot. You?\"\n\nKurt held out his hands.\n\n\"Should be a fair fight then,\" Mendez remarked. He tried the radio again. \"Come in, Saber.\"\n\nHis voice filtered through the speaker, crackling w ith pops and static.\n\nKurt shook his head. \"Something's jamming the trans mission. Our Spartans aren't going to fight with stun rounds and flash-ba ng grenades. They'll head to the armory at Camp Currahee.\"\n\n\"Tom and Lucy should already be there,\" Mendez said . He moved to the zip line that stretched from the tree house top to the jungl e floor. He grabbed the line, wrapped slide casing on, and then jumped over the e dge.\n\nFor a man pushing sixty, the Chief moved like a sol dier thirty years younger. It wasn't the first time Kurt had wondered what kind o f Spartan he would have made.\n Kurt followed down the zip line, free-falling for a  moment, then squeezing the line to brake; he landed hard.\n\nThey ran for the Warthog parked on the dirt track a t the base of the tree house.\n\nKurt jumped into the driver's side, and turned the engine over. The vehicle coughed to life and purred.\n\n\"No BMP damage,\" Mendez said. \"Or the coil would ha ve been fried.\"\n\nIt was almost a disappointment. A nuke, Kurt could understand. Fissile materials were used only by the UNSC or rebels huma n forces.\n\nHe floored the accelerator and the Warthog fishtail ed, and then the tires caught and they bumped down the dirt track.\n\nThe day suddenly brightened, and an extra set of sh adows crisscrossed the jungle floor.\n\nKurt slowed the Warthog, and looked up at the sky T he canopy obscured his view, so he turned off the track and drove into the  jungle, bouncing over exposed roots, and then down the bank of the Twin F orks River.\n\nHere Kurt had a clear line of sight to the sky, and  he noted the sun had moved to a new position lower in the sky.\n\nNo, it hadn't moved. There were two suns.\n\nThis new sun faded and a ring of smoke expanded aro und its center. This fireball seemed to pause, and then it shattered in a starburst of glittering molten metal.\n\nIn high orbit, the Agincourt exploded.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FOURTEEN\n0715 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, NEAR ZONE 67, PLANET ONYX\n\nAsh ran for his life over the rocky ground. He wasn 't sure how the thing was tracking him in his SPI suit, but it was.\n He looked over his shoulder and saw the three booms  and single eye of the drone flash in the sunlight. It accelerated and ski mmed over the ground in pursuit of Team Saber.\n\n\"Scatter!\" he ordered over TEAMCOM.\n\nThat drone's beam weapon could melt through their a rmor in the blink of an eye. Ash wasn't going to take the chance of it wipi ng out his entire squad with a single shot.\n\nMark and Dante broke left. Holly went right. Ash di dn't see Olivia; she had to be stealthing.\n\nAsh decided to flat-out run straight ahead, hoping to draw its fire.\n\nHe risked another glance back: the drone veered lef t after Holly. She sprinted up a slope.\n\nAsh saw this slope ended in a sheer cliff a hundred  meters ahead of her. When she got there, she'd be trapped. Even if she jumped , and survived, then the drone would still have her, firing from above.\n\nHe wouldn't let that happen. He ran back.\n\nHolly skidded to a halt at the cliff's edge.\n\nThe drone angled above her, and its central spheric al eye burned red.\n\nAsh fired his MA5B assault rifle. A translucent gol d energy shield shimmered around the drone, and the rubber r ounds bounced off. The central eye continued to heat.\n\nHe wasn't giving up that easily.\n\nThose shields weren't like Covenant shields, invisi ble until they interacted with projectile or energy. Ash had seen these pop into p lace just before his round had struck.\n\nHe had to try something else.\n\nAsh picked up a rock and sidearmed it at the drone.  It was nowhere near as fast as a bullet, but it was a great deal heavier.\n\nThe stone hit, and spanged off one of its metal boo ms, scratching it.\n No shields this time.\n\nThe drone hesitated, and one boom looked like it tw itched. Ash noticed that the three booms were not connected to the center sp here. They all just floated there. What was this thing?\n\nIt closed on Holly. She fired at it, but its shield s snapped into place once again, deflecting the rounds. She looked over the cliff's edge and took a deep breath.\n\nShe was going to jump.\n\n\"No way,\" Ash whispered.\n\nHe grabbed a fist-sized chunk of onyx and hurled it  with all his strength.\n\nIt connecteddead center with the drone's spherical red eye. \"Yes!\" he cried.\n\nThe drone rotated to face Ash.\n\nHis elation instantly evaporated as the thing glide d toward him, picking up speed.\n\nAsh turned and ran; he jinked right and then left.\n\nThe ground exploded. Heat washed over him, and he f lew head over heels. He landed flat on his back, slapping at the last momen t to break the fall.\n\nAsh rolled, and with only a slight limp, he kept ru nning.\n\nHe hoped the other squads were having better luck. Olivia had picked up Katana squad's signal. They'd reported they were being forced into Zone 67. They'd lost their signal  shortly thereafter. They'd never gotten word from Gladius squad. Either they w ere dark or dead.\n\nHe looked back: the drone was almost on top of him.  Its single eye heated to a cherry-red cinder, preparing another blast of energ y.\n\nAhead there was a crevice in the rock, a sinuous tw o-meter channel that could have been a deep river a million years ago before t his place dried up.\n\nHe sprinted for it and dove.\n\nThe channel was much deeper than he had imagined. H e bounced off the walls and landed ten meters farther at the bottom.\n The shadow of the drone flashed overhead and vanish ed.\n\nAsh slowly got to his feet, and held his breath. Ha d he lost it? Maybe they had a chance after all to\n\nThe drone reappeared overhead.\n\nHe could run down the channel, but with all its twi sts and turns, he'd be slow. Besides, it didn't even have to hit him with its en ergy beam. One shot at the walls and he'd be buried alive. Ash was trapped.\n\nSo he stood absolutely still hoping it could only d etect motion.\n\nThe drone dropped into the channel and stopped half way downstaring directly at him. The eye glowed dull red, heating to molten golden. If Ash didn't know better he'd say the machine looked angry.\n\nHe needed to let the rest of Saber know where he wa s, at least know what he had discovered. Radio silence was no help now. He c licked on his COM, and turned up the gain to maximum.\n\n\"They only track high-velocity objects,\" he said ov er the COM.\n\nThe drone hesitated and its booms moved in and out almost as if it were what? Attenuating his signal? Trying to hear him?\n\nAsh yelled over his COM, \"STOP!\"\n\nThe three booms locked in place and the drone drift ed back a half meter.\n\nIt had heard him.\n\n\"What do you want?\" Ash said.\n\nThe drone crept closer.\n\nHis own voice blasted though his helmet's speaker: \"Fhejelet 'Pnught Juber.\"\n\nAsh shook his head clear \"I don't understand.\" He h eld up his hands spread wide and shruggedthe universal I-don't-know gesture.\n\n\"Fhejelet non sequitur, now?\"\n\n\"I got part of that,\" Ash said. \"Non sequiturthat's  Latin, right?\"\n Ash wasn't sure what this thing was, or what it was  trying to say, but it definitely wasn't Covenant. The Covenant had langua ge translators, and they didn't sound like this. The Covenant generally used  them only to pronounce florid curses just before they vaporized planets.\n\nThis close, Ash could see the inert curve of the dr one's booms, and could feel the heat from its eye. Tiny golden hieroglyphics sh immered around the sphere, floating a centimeter off its surface. Ash squinted , but couldn't make out the characters.\n\n\"Security protocols enabled,\" the drone spoke over the COM.\n\n\"I understood that,\" Ash replied.\n\n\"Ring offensive system activated,\" it said. \"Shield  in countdown mode. Exchange proper counterresponse. Reclaimer.\"\n\n\"I don't want to hurt you,\" Ash tried.\n\nHe had no idea what this thing wanted.\n\n\"Non sequitur,\" it said. \"Reclassification of targe ts as non-Reclaimers. Aboriginal subspecies. Collect for further analysis  else neutralize as possible infection vector.\"\n\nAsh understood with perfect clarity \"neutralize.\"\n\nThe drone advanced, spreading its booms apart like an open maw.\n\nHe was out of ideas.\n\nA rock hit the drone, a granite chunk a half meter across. It glanced off the drone's ventral boom.\n\nThe impact made the drone dip, but it recovered, an d its booms shifted, geometry rearranged so it now stared up at the edge  of the channel.\n\nTeam Saber stood there, looking downall of them hef ting large rocks.\n\nTwo stones collided into the drone's spars, and one  shattered directly on its eye. It dipped to the ground with a crash, and the spher ical eye heated to blazing white-hot. The dirt around it fused to glass and bu bbled.\n\nA boulder barely fitting within the channel bounced  off the wallsand flattened the drone. The eye, crushed to an oblate shape, cra ckled and cooled to dull red and then black. The thing's three metal spars r adiated out from under the rock like a flattened spider.\n\nAsh exhaled, let his adrenaline subside, and he cli mbed out of the chasm.\n\nMark and Dante helped him up.\n\nThey'd saved each other a hundred times before, but  those were always drills. Even under live-fire conditions, it had never been like this. For real. Ash wanted to tell them that they were like brothers an d sisters to him.\n\nAll he could manage without his voice breaking was:  \"Thanks, guys.\"\n\nHolly replied, \"Well, thanks for being bait.\"\n\n\"Good call using rocks,\" Olivia whispered.\n\nAsh nodded. \"We've got to get under cover,\" he said , \"back to the jungle.\"\n\n\"No, back to camp,\" Mark said. \"Grab some real ammu nition.\" Dante added,\n\"Explosives, too.\"\n\nAsh saw motion in his peripheral vision. Three more  drones flew over the mesas, moving back and forth searching.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FIFTEEN\n0745 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX, NEAR CAMP CURRAHEE\n\nKurt eased the Warthog to a stop half a kilometer o utside Camp Currahee. A large shadow crossed the tree line ahead, and a flo ck of red-tailed parrots took flight.\n\nHe jumped out and motioned Mendez to the brush at t he side of the road. They hunkered down, and watched as an unmanned drone gli ded over their Warthog and paused.\n\nThe machine wasn't a UNSC design. It might have bee n Covenant, but they never varied from their big-ugly oblate blue-gray a scetic. The thing was floating whisper silent, and that meant antigravity  technology which likely made it nonhuman.\n He remembered Endless Summer's flash transmission w ith a chill. Possible non Covenant vectors.\n\nThe geometry of the drone shifted: the sphere in th e center floated forward along the length of its lateral spars.\n\nKurt's first instinct was to grab his assault rife and fire. He had a superior flanking position. He reached for his weapon, and t hen recalled they had no weapons save Chief Mendez's sidearm and knife.\n\nHe decided hiding was, for now, the soundest strate gy.\n\nThe drone circled the Warthog, and then satisfied, it continued down the dirt track.\n\nKurt waited until the drone disappeared into the ju ngle and then he motioned for Mendez to follow him through the trees to the e dge of Camp Currahee.\n\nThree hundred meters of jungle had been cleared aro und the horseshoe-shaped camp. From the edge of the clear zone, Kurt saw sev eral of the alien fliers circling the buildings and parade grounds.\n\n\"Zigzag patterns,\" Mendez whispered. \"They're looki ng for something. Or someone.\"\n\nThere was an explosion from the center of camp. Not  like the energy blast they had witnessed on the road. This was the dull crack of a fragmentation grenade.\n\nThe drones over the camp slowed and turned, and all  moved in the same directionthe NCO quarters.\n\n\"That's our chance,\" Kurt said. \"Go. Run.\"\n\nWith the drones distracted, they sprinted across th e clear zone, slipped past the gate guardhouse, and ran to the Spartans' dormi tories. They crawled under the raised building.\n\nShadows slipped over the adjacent gravel roads and paths as the drones silently glided overhead.\n\nKurt held up a hand to Mendez, and saw the older ma n cover his mouth to muffle his panting. As much as he admired the Chief , that sprint had taken something out of him.\n\nThey watched until there was a break in the shadows , and they ran for the next building, the NCO quarters. Kurt spotted the source of the drones' distraction:  a heap of wreckage, three bent booms, and a charred sphere lying smoldering i n the NCO's inspection yard.\n\nSomeone had taken one of the alien fliers out.\n\nAcross the yard and under the infirmary appeared th e red glare of a laser sighttrained on Kurt. He started to twist to one side. When a targeting sight was on you, you mo ved. But this was no threat. It was a signal.\n\nHe pointed and then Mendez saw it, too. The laser f lashed once more and then it winked off.\n\nMendez started to move; Kurt checked the airspace, and then pulled the Chief flat against the wall as another drone floated over head.\n\nIt passed. They ran to the infirmary and dove under .\n\nWaiting for them in the shadows were perfectly camo uflaged smudges of mottled gray: Tom and Lucy in their SPI armor.\n\nMendez said in a low voice, \"You two are the best d ammed things I've almost seen all week.\"\n\nKurt felt the same way, but he didn't have the luxu ry to say so. He was in command, and that required a certain distance, no m atter how much he cared for these two.\n\nLucy nodded and took up position along the edge of the building, on guard.\n\n\"Report,\" Kurt said.\n\n\"We count twenty-two drones within the camp perimet er,\" Tom said.\n\n\"Any other camp personnel here?\" Kurt asked.\n\n\"No, sir,\" Tom replied. \"All missing or dead.\" He t ook a deep breath. \"We've neutralized two drones with grenades. They have shi elds and deflect assault and sniper rounds. Slower projectiles are not defle cted. We've learned that from a weak transmission from Team Saber.\"\n\n\"Saber is here?\" Mendez asked.\n \"Negative, Chief,\" Tom said. \"We never hooked up wi th Saber, Katana, or Gladius after Zone 67 went active. There were no ad ditional transmissions after the one.\"\n\nKurt watched Mendez's reaction. The man looked rock  solid, and there was no trace of the worry he had seen earlier. He knew he could count on him, Tom, and Lucy no matter what.\n\n\"We may be on our own for a long time,\" Kurt told t hem.\n\n\"We have to make the most of our position at Camp C urrahee. Tom, get to the armory, collect grenades, det cord, whatever else l ooks good. Forget the ammunition, though, they're all stun rounds. Don't overload.\"\n\nTom nodded. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Chief,\" Kurt said, \"get to the command center. Fir e up the generators to boost power and get on the auxiliary COM. It might be str ong enough to punch through this radio interference. Send a general dis tress. Bounce it between the antenna arrays. It might confuse these things long enough to get through. Try and raise any survivors from the Agincourt.\"\n\nThey both knew the odds of escape pods being out of  the range of that blast. Still, they had to try.\n\n\"Leave a note,\" Kurt continued, \"in case the other Spartans come here. Tell them to gather supplies and meet us at El Morro Poi nt.\"\n\n\"Aye aye,\" Mendez replied.\n\nKurt checked his watch, a self-winding antique mech anical. \"Mark time as 1045. Lucy and I will pick up ammunition and then arrange  for a distraction in one hour. Then make for the jungle, and we'll meet up a t El Morro Point.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Tom and Mendez said.\n\nThey then crawled to opposite sides of the infirmar y, waited for the drone shadows to vanish, and then they rolled out.\n\n\"Lucy?\"\n\nShe belly-crawled over to him.\n\n\"Follow.\" He moved to the building's edge. Lucy in her SPI armor became his shadow. Kurt pointed to the small whitewashed house  across the quad: the Camp Commandant's residence where Kurt had lived fo r the last twenty years. They waited three long minutes for the overhead sha dows of patrolling drones to vanish.\n\nHe and Lucy entered the house and closed the door.\n\nKurt had never locked it, but now, some part of his  mind made him reflexively turn the tiny bolt on the door.\n\nThe house was small, three rooms comprised of an ou ter office, a toilet area, and bunk. There were framed pictures on his office wall, a Greek urn with ancient wrestlers in an alcove, and neat stacks of paperwork on his deskthe recent deployment orders for Gamma Company.\n\nHe wished whatever was happening had started last w eek when there had been three hundred Spartans on Onyx. The tactical situat ion would be much different.\n\nLucy lowered the bamboo blinds, and then hesitated by the pictures on the wall.\n\nKurt joined her. For the last five years the SPARTA N-II program had been publicly promoted by Section Two to boost morale. T here were shots of Spartans in their MJOLNIR armor helping wounded mar ines onto a Pelican, Spartans surrounded by fallen Covenant Elites, Spar tans standing tall. Heroes all. The SPARTAN-IIIs had studied their legendary p redecessors, their battles, and their tacticslearning from the best.\n\nHe glanced at Lucy, her expression inscrutable with in her mirrored helmet, and then he looked back to the pictures. There wasn't a  single photo of a SPARTAN III on the wall, however, and not one public mentio n of their sacrifices. And there never would be, either.\n\nKurt wished it was different, and that he'd taken t he small steps to improve his Spartans sooner. The emphasis on their team trainin g, the SPI-armor system upgrades, the new mutationsit hardly seemed enough.\n\n\"This way,\" he told her, and turned to the steel do or set near the bathroom. He palmed the biometric and let the facial and retinal  scanners play over his face. The door silently opened and they entered.\n\nFluorescent lights flickered on, revealing a room l ined with ammunition lockers, rifle racks, crates labeled SPN Kr, and dozens of grenade bandoliers. Titanium girders crisscrossed the walls  and ceiling, reinforcing the room so it could withstand a direct bomb blast. He opened one floor-to-ceiling weapon cabinet and s howed Lucy the arsenal of Covenant rifles, pistols, and grenades within.\n\n\"Start packing,\" he told her. \"Take all the live am munition. Fill up six duffels. Take the SPNKrs, all the grenades, too.\"\n\nShe held out both hands, palms up, and made a down- up-down motion. The sign for \"heavy.\"\n\n\"We'll have to make a few trips.\"\n\nKurt moved to the comer and stood before the two-an d-a-half-meter-square stainless-steel safe. He dialed the combination and  the door clicked and opened with a hiss as the pressurized nitrogen atmo sphere vented.\n\nKurt pulled open the safe's heavy door. A green glo w suffused the room.\n\nLucy froze with a SPNKr launcher in one hand, plasm a pistol in the other. She moved trancelike to his side and stared at the cont ents of the safe and let out a tiny strangled sound of surprise.\n\nInside was a suit of MJOLNIR armor. The muscular pl ates glistened ghostly green over the jet-black ballistic underlayer. It l ooked formidable even standing there empty.\n\nThe last time he had worn it was when he had greete d the Alpha Company recruits. Since then he had meticulously cared for it, and learned everything there was about its maintenance. Its fusion pods ha d been refitted when Kurt had been assigned to recon Station Delphi, so it ha d sufficient power for fifteen years of continuous operation.\n\nMJOLNIR armor was superior in every way to the SPI suit. Wearing it Kurt would be able to protect his SPARTAN-IIIs better, destroy  these drones more efficiently, but after decades of drilling into the Spartans the importance of workin g together, of being a family, the MJOLNIR armor would symbolically isolate him fr om them.\n\nAnd that was the last thing he wanted.\n\nHe pulled a locker out from under the suit's stand and opened it. Within was a matte gray set of Semi-Powered Infiltration armor. He removed his boots and pulled on the PR leggings.\n\nLucy pointed to the MJOLNIR armor, and then at Kurt .\n\"No,\" he said. \"That's not what I am anymore. I'm o ne of you.\"\n\n\n\nSECTION IV DR. CATHERINE HALSEY CHAPTER SIXTEEN DATE STAMP [[ERROR]] ANOMALY \\ ESTIMATED RANGE SEPT EMBER 15-DECEMBER\n20, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ABOARD DECOMMISSIONE D UNSC CHIROPTERA CLASS VESSEL (ILLEGAL REGISTRY) BEATRICE, IN SLIPSP ACE, LOCATION UNKNOWN\n\nDr. Halsey straightened her gray wool sliirt, smoot hed her tattered lab coat, and then donned lead gloves and apron to protect he r from the beta and alpha particles being emitted from the acceleration matri x. Around her lay the disassembled panels and radiation shields of the sh ip's Shaw-Fujikawa translight engines.\n\nShe delicately guided the spork she had confiscated  from the Beatrice's galley through the tangle of electronics. She slipped the utensil's edge into the slot of the tiny screw on the supercooled superconducting m agnet. She rechecked the calculations in her head. Two millimeters, three tu rns, should do it.\n\nDr. Halsey twisted and loosened the screw. The rain bow glow gushing from the matrix intensified, and she blinked tears from her eyes. Sparks danced off the metal plates and arced between titanium supports.\n\nShe glanced through the propped-open door to the br idge. The engineering display showed a 32 percent jump in coil power. Goo d enough.\n\nShe replaced the Shaw-Fujikawa core access panels a nd slumped to the floor.\n\nSixty years ago when Shaw-Fujikawa drives had first  been installed in spacecraft like this one, technicians had had to perform manual adjustments all the time. The magnetics that aligne d the acceleration coils drifted out of phase when they transitioned into Sl ipstream space, where the laws of physics only occasionally worked as expecte d. No computer controls were used; electronics always malfunctioned close t o the core.\n\nOf course, many of those technicians had died or ha d mysteriously vanished.\n\nDr. Halsey had considered dropping out of Slipspace  and powering down the Chiroptera-class vessel to make the adjustment. It would have been safer, but that first activation of the Shaw-Fujikawa engine h ad almost resulted in a coil overload. She didn't know if the little ship had an other jump left in her.\n\nShe toweled the perspiration off her face and then checked her film badge. She'd live, at least, for the next few moments.\n\nShe pushed off the bulkhead and free-floated onto t he bridge.\n\nThe Beatrice's command center had been designed, or  rather redesigned, by its former owner, rebel Governor Jacob Jiles, for comfo rt rather than efficiency. Every surface save the displays was curved and padd ed with cream-colored calfskin. The captain's chair had massage and tempe rature controlseven a ridiculous feature: a cup holder.\n\nDr. Halsey checked on Kelly. She had strapped Kelly  into the first mate's chair to keep her from drifting away. A line ran into an input port on the interior elbow joint of her MJOLNIR armor, pumping dermacort ic steroids to help her regenerate the burns that covered 72 percent of her  body and enough nar colytive sedatives to keep her unconscious until sh e was needed.\n\n\"I'm sorry, you would have never come on your own,\"  she said. \"Spartans are attracted to suicide missions like moths to flames.  But this is much more important than any military solution.\"\n\nDr. Halsey pushed away and drifted to the Beatrice' s computer control. Her laptop was attached to the multiinterface port, and  the infiltration protocols had almost finished wiping the ship's primitive sec urity lockouts.\n\nShe plugged a sandwich of memory crystal and proces sor boosters into her laptop. These components she had appropriated from what was left of the Gettysburg's gutted AI core.\n\nShe then withdrew a pea-shaped chip from her lab co at. This was not from the Gettysburg. She gingerly set the chip into her lapt op's auxiliary reader port. A tiny spark lit and lifted off her computer's two-by -two-centimeter holographic projector.\n\n\"Good afternoon, Jerrod.\"\n\n\"Good afternoon, Dr. Halsey,\" the spark replied in a formal British voice.\n\"Although technically according to my internal chro nometer it is morning.\"\n\n\"There have been a few temporal anomalies since we last spoke,\" she said.\n\n\"Indeed? I look forward to the explanation, ma'am.\"\n \"So do I,\" she murmured.\n\nAfter an alien artifact and combat in warped Slipst ream space had distorted space-time. Dr. Halsey wasn't so sure precisely wha t time line she belonged in. Quantum paradoxes that once seem a quaint mental ex ercise were now a part of her reality.\n\n\"How may I be of service?\" Jerrod asked.\n\nDr. Halsey smiled at the simple AI. Although she of ten thought of Jerrod as a toy, it was a fully functional micro-AI. The experi ment had been initially to see how long a budding smart AI would last in a constra ined processor-memory matrix. The theoreticians at Sydney's Synthetic Int ellect Institute calculated its life span to be a matter of days. Jerrod, however, had fooled the experts at the \"Double S.I.\" It had rapidly grown but then stabilized within its pea-sized cell  of memory-processor crystal.\n\nJerrod would never be a tenth as brilliant as a rea l \"smart\" AI like Cortana, nor even as smart as a traditional \"dumb\" AI of unlimit ed proportions. But he had a spark of creativity and spunk, and despite the stuf fy butler persona he had adopted, she liked him.\n\nJerrod had one other feature uniquely suited for Dr . Halsey's purposes:\nportability. Other AIs required an institute, a sta rship, or at the very least a full set of MJOLNIR armor to function.\n\n\"Diagnostics on the Beatrice's systems, please,\" Dr . Halsey said. \"Then correlate the data slice downloaded from Cortana's memory cor e and prepare for analysis. Execute a database search on stellar coordinates in put into the NAV system;\nexpand search parameters within five light-years of  origin.\"\n\n\"Stand by, ma'am. Just have to dust off the old cir cuits. Working\"\n\n\"And a little Debussy, please,\" she said. \"Les Sons  et les par-fums tournent dans l'air du soir.\"\n\nJerrod's mote of light shrank to a pinpoint of bril liance as he pushed his processing abilities.\n\nAfter five seconds, moody piano notes tickled throu gh the bridge's speakers.\n\n\"Done,\" Jerrod replied, sounding almost out of brea th.\n\n\"Display Cortana's time-sliced correlated log.\"\n Dr. Halsey had appropriated Cortana's truncated mis sion log when she had been on the Gettysburg. She had accessed and erased a po rtion of the AI's memory involving Sergeant Johnson. At the time, it also se emed logical to download a thumbnail sketch of everything she and John had bee n through.\n\nCortana's voice narrated a slideshow of images. Dr.  Halsey saw John and the crew of the Pillar of Autumn fight the Covenant on the alien ring artifact, and then witnessed the horrific Flood as it infested human and alien bodies. She closed her eye s as the assimilated Captain Keyes was destroyed.\n\n\"Rest easy, old friend,\" she whispered.\n\n\"Limit references to Forerunner entries alone,\" she  told Jerrod.\n\nDr. Halsey listened to Cortana and the Forerunner a rtificial intelligence, Guilty Spark, spar until they revealed the true purpose of  the Halo construct: the extermination of all life in the galaxy\n\n\"No wonder the Covenant are so interested in these artifacts,\" she said.\n\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\n\"Nothing, Jerrod.\"\n\nShe now also understood Colonel Ackerson's interest .\n\nDr. Halsey had taken the liberty of rifling Colonel  Ackerson's top-secret files on Reach before the Covenant destroyed the facility. I n a file labeled \"King Under the Mountain\" there were pieced-together data from the hieroglyphics stone found on Cote d'Azure in the Sigma Octanus System, and discovered coordinates that had pointed to the alien ruins on Reach under Castle Base.\n\nWas this an arms race for Forerunner technology?\n\nThe last bread crumb in this long trail was an encr ypted folder in Ackerson's secret files, the one labeled \"S-III.\"\n\nIn it were extensive medical records on her SPARTAN -IIs. As if Ackerson were studying them. There was one other reference: \"CPOM Z\" and the 512-long alphanumerical string that represented old celestia l coordinates.\n\nShe typed in the string.\n\n\"Display all data on stellar objects at these coord inates.\"\n\"This coordinate system is antiquated, Doctor,\" Jer rod said. \"Not used since extrasolar manned space exploration.\" He paused. \"I t falls outside UNSC controlled space.\"\n\n\"Most space is, Jerrod. Show me.\"\n\nA glowing ball of white gold appeared on-screen, wi th spectroscopic analysis, and a list of planets scrolled by. There was nothin g habitable: ice balls and gas giants.\n\n\"The Zeta Doradus system,\" Jerrod remarked. \"There is a peculiar lack of data.\"\n\nIndicating something hidden? Dr. Halsey had gambled  everything on something being here.\n\nAckerson's \"S-III.\" This was an obvious reference t o SPARTAN-III. What else could it be with all the Spartan biomedical data he had a ccumulated in that folder?\nThe confirming clue was the \"CPOMZ\" reference attac hed to the celestial coordinatesChief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez, the  man who had trained her SPARTAN-IIs.\n\nSince Ackerson could not destroy her Spartan progra m, he had funded and recruited trainers for his own? It chilled her to t hink what shortcuts he might be taking and what he might be doing with his own p rivate army of Spartans.\n\nShe looked back at Kelly's unconscious form. Dr. Ha lsey couldn't save her Spartans, they were already indoctrinated and on th e front lines but she might be able to do something about these new, as yet the oretical, SPARTAN-IIIs.\n\nDr. Halsey settled in the padded captain's chair. \" Screens off, Jerrod.\"\n\nThe displays faded.\n\nShe squinted her eyes shut. She had betrayed everyo ne, John and Admiral Whitcomb, abandoned them, and stolen this ship to p ursue what? Wild geese?\nWhy?\n\n\"Lights,\" she told Jerrod. \"Wake me in six hours.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\" The lights dimmed and only the NAV st ation LEDs gleamed.\n\nDr. Halsey didn't want to think about \"why,\" but th e ugly truth wouldn't go away: the human race faced extinction.\n She had thought it bad enough fighting the Covenant , but now they knew the location of Earth. Humanity's homeworld had withstood centuries of attempts at self-destruc tion, but soon the aliens would amass a fleet and make all their struggles mo ot.\n\nTo this, she factored in the horrific Forerunner we apon. Halo, which could annihilate all life throughout the galaxy.\n\nAnd then there was the Flood, a nightmare parasite that may or may not have escaped the Halo construct, an organism that even t he Forerunners had feared.\n\nHer conclusion was irrefutable.\n\nThe UNSC, her Spartans, all the people she admired,  would struggle against the inevitable. It was human instinct. But it was wrong . They could never win this war. They could only survive it. And then, only if they were very lucky.\n\nSo it was up to her to take the only logical action : run.\n\nJohn and the other Spartans would never turn away f rom a fight, but she might be able to convince these other Spartans, trick the m if necessary, into surviving.\n\nThey were humanity's last chance to endure the comi ng darkness.\n\nDr. Halsey awoke with a start.\n\n\"Time, Jerrod. And lights, please.\"\n\nThe lights on the bridge warmed to half intensity.\n\n\"It is five hours fifty-seven minutes since we last  spoke. Doctor. I was about to wake you. We are close to our destination.\"\n\nDr. Halsey grabbed her medical bag and rummaged tho ugh its contents. She found a syringe of narcolytic metabolase, an enzyme  that would consume all analgesic agents in Kelly's bloodstream. She remove d the line from her MJOLNIR armor port and injected the drug.\n\n\"Powering down Shaw-Fujikawa translight engines,\" J errod said. \"Exit vector calculated.\"\n\nMathematics scrolled across the screens.\n \"Very good,\" Dr. Halsey said, scrutinizing his equa tions. \"But the saddle point in the imaginary plane should convolute here.\" She tou ched the screen. \"That way we recapture the particle accelerator energy in the  plasma coils.\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor, but there is a risk involved with coi l overload.\"\n\n\"Which is well within the operational limits of thi s craft,\" she countered.\n\"Please alter the exit vector.\"\n\n\"Of course. Doctor.\" There was a touch of annoyance  in Jer-rod's voice.\n\nA slight nausea passed through Dr. Halsey as the Be atrice transitioned from Slipstream space into the normal universe.\n\nStars snapped on the displays, and a golden disk th e size of an ancient penny shimmered center screen.\n\n\"We are approximately two hundred million kilometer s from system center of the stellar coordinates provided,\" Jerrod reported.\n\n\"Look for planets in the habitable zone,\" she said.\n\n\"Doctor, we have a full system survey on file.\"\n\n\"Look,\" Dr. Halsey ordered.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\nKelly stirred, shook her head clearthen lightning f ast she ripped through her restraints, hooked one foot around the chair base, and held up both hands, poised cobras, ready to fight.\n\n\"At ease, Spartan,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"You're with m e. Safe.\"\n\n\"I was drugged.\" Kelly looked around the bridge; he r hands dropped a bit, but not completely.\n\n\"Correct. The last stage of dermacortic steroid tre atment is overly stimulating. It would have been unpleasant for you.\" This was, o f course, true, but it was nothing a Spartan couldn't have handled.\n\n\"Where are we?\"\n\n\"On Governor Jiles's ship. We have appropriated it for a new mission.\"\n\n\"John and Admiral Whitcomb?\" Kelly dropped her hand s.\n\"They know,\" Dr. Halsey said. Also technically not a lie. They undoubtedly did know that Dr. Halsey had kidnapped one of their Spa rtans and stolen this ship.\n\nKelly cocked her head. \"Doctor, this is highly irre gular. There is a strict chain of command, protocols to\"\n\n\"Which were followed,\" Dr. Halsey assured her. \"New  developments occurred while you were unconscious.\"\n\nIt was impossible to read Kelly's expression behind  the polarized faceplate of her MJOLNIR armor. She looked, however, to Dr. Hals ey, unconvinced.\n\n\"Anomalous planet found,\" Jerrod announced.\n\nOn-screen a world that looked like a sphere of turq uoise appeared.\n\n\"Plot course and move toward it at one-half speed.\"\n\n\"Answering one-half full. Doctor.\"\n\n\"Ma'am,\" Kelly said and moved closer. \"You will hav e to explain. I thought we were bound for Earth to warn them about the Covenan t.\"\n\n\"Proximity warning!\" Jerrod said. \"Incoming vessels . Configuration matches neither UNSC nor Covenant profiles.\"\n\nOn-screen a radar silhouette appeared: an odd trilo bed symmetry. Thermal images revealed a center sphere emitting a blackbod y radiation of six thousand degrees Kelvin.\n\n\"What is it?\" Kelly whispered.\n\n\"What are they,\" Jerrod corrected. \"Detecting three  hundred twelve of these ships. On an intercept course. Vectors suggest an a ttack pattern.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n1000 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, NEAR PLANET ONYX \\ ABOARD DECOMMISSIONED UNSC CHIRO PTERA-CLASS VESSEL (ILLEGAL REGISTRY) BEATRICE\n\nDr. Halsey examined the multiple contacts on the pa ssive radar screen. They reminded her of an angry swarm of wasps.\n\"Three hundred,\" she murmured.\n\n\"Three hundred twelve,\" Jerrod corrected.\n\nDr. Halsey tapped her lower lip with her thumb, thi nking. \"We can't fight.\"\n\nKelly snapped her head from the radar display to Dr . Halsey \"We have to try.\"\nShe looked around the bridge. \"Weapons station?\"\n\n\"Jerrod,\" Dr. Halsey said, \"show all data on that a nomalous planet.\"\n\n\"Dr. Halsey,\" Kelly insisted. \"Weapons?\"\n\n\"This ship has no weapons,\" she replied.\n\nKelly moved from station to station, not accepting this. As a Spartan she had a lifetime of training that demanded she take action,  fire a weapon, confront her enemies; she was not trained to sit and watch.\n\nOn the NAV screen a blue-green cloud-swirled planet  appeared as well as data on its orbit and an atmosphere spectroscopic breakd own.\n\n\"That's our target,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Earth-like g ravity and atmosphere. Infrared suggests vegetation. An uninhabited habitable planet so close to UNSC space? An improba bility or more likely, one very well-kept secret.\"\n\nShe tapped the display. The planet shrank and a sil very ice-ball moon drifted at two o'clock. The relative position of the Beatrice appearedas well as the fleet of intercepting ships between them and the planet.\n\n\"What can I do?\" Kelly said.\n\n\"Strap in and stand by,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"I'll nee d you in three minutes.\"\n\n\"Aye, ma'am.\" Kelly pulled herself into the first m ate's chair, slipped into the harness, and cinched it tight.\n\n\"Engine parameters on this screen,\" Dr. Halsey said , and tapped the display on her left. Thermodynamic Legendre-transformation dia grams of the plasma coils flashed online. \"Good thing we retained the Slipspa ce transition energy.\"\n \"Yes, Doctor,\" Jerrod replied. His holographic dot of light dimmed as if embarrassed. \"Unidentified craft closing. Ninety th ousand kilometers. Acceleration increasing.\"\n\nShe strapped into the captain's chair. \"Come to cou rse forty-five by forty-five.\"\n\n\"Aye aye,\" Jerrod said. The Beatrice tilted and the  engines sputtered with the alignment burn. \"Course corrected.\"\n\nDr. Halsey studied the plasma coils. While the rest  of the ship was an antique, the coils were almost new, stolen, it appeared, fro m a Behemoth-class tug. It appeared Governor )iles was only half the fool she had believed.\n\n\"Initiate one hundred twenty percent oversurge in t he pre-coil,\" Dr. Halsey told Jerrod.\n\nKelly fidgeted; her gauntlets clenched into fists.\n\n\"We cannot fight,\" Dr. Halsey explained to her. \"No r am I a tenth the astronavigator that Captain Keyes was.\"\n\n\"Oversurge in three seconds,\" Jerrod announced.\n\n\"Which only leaves us one option: run like hell.\"\n\nThe Beatrice rumbled and leapt forward.\n\nDr. Halsey flattened into her seat.\n\n\"Pursuit vessels accelerating to intercept,\" Jerrod  informed her.\n\n\"Hold course,\" Dr. Halsey said with effort.\n\nThe moon grew large on the central viewscreen.\n\n\"I'm afraid I had no chance to double-check the tra jectory,\" Dr. Halsey told Kelly through gritted teeth. \"It's my best guess at  a slingshot approach.\"\n\n\"It is quite accurate, ma'am,\" Jerrod chimed in.\n\n\"I may not survive the acceleration,\" Dr. Halsey sa id, now breathing with exertion. \"I will certainly not remain conscious. Y ou must land the craft. Find the others.\" She paused, panting. \"Programming reen try\"\n\n\"What 'others'?\" Kelly asked.\n \"Energy spike,\" Jerrod said. \"Lead pursuit vehicles ' central cores now emitting blackbody radiation equivalent of fifteen thousand degrees Kelvin.\"\n\nDr. Halsey rechecked the engine schematic with a tr embling finger. \"Increase power output to thruster by one hundred sixty perce nt.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\nThe aft section of the Beatrice shuddered and metal  groaned from uneven stress.\n\nThe twilight region of the planet's moon filed the viewscreen with canyons of blue ice and methane geysers.\n\n\"Aft view,\" Dr. Halsey breathed. The corners of her  vision darkened.\n\nThe viewscreen switched. In the black of space, pin points of white sparkled and lances of energy slashed through the dark.\n\nKelly gripped the sides of her chair with such forc e that the metal bent.\n\n\"Initiate roll,\" Dr. Halsey whispered. \"Two radians  per second.\"\n\nThe Beatrice spun. The incoming beams were bright a s solar flares, and the video feed distorted chromatic as t hey closed then passed.\n\n\"Missed!\" Kelly almost leapt out of her harness.\n\nDr. Halsey's heart pounded in her throat. She close d her eyes and tapped in commands. It was too hard to talk now, but her fing ers knew what to do. She programmed the time-delayed burn, her best guess at  how much oversurge the plasma coils could withstand, calculated reentry an gles, and although she didn't believe in God, she prayed to someone.\n\nWhen she reopened her eyes, she couldn't see. Blood  pooled in her central organs, depriving oxygen from her brain.\n\nOn her keypad she pressed Enter.\n\n\"That is an inadvisable course of action. Doctor,\" Jerrod said.\n\n\"Kelly,\" Dr. Halsey murmured. \"Find them. Save them .\"\n\n\n CHAPTER EIGHTEEN\n1020 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, ORBITAL ENTRY VECTOR OVER PLANET ONYX \\ ABOARD DECO MMISSIONED UNSC CHIROPTERA-CLASS VESSEL (ILLEGAL REGISTRY) BEATRICE\n\nKelly unbuckled her harness and checked Dr. Halsey.  She was breathing, but without a pressure suit the acceleration had been t oo much for her.\n\nUnfamiliar frustration coursed through Kelly. She r esented not being briefed about this new mission, being thrust into the middl e of a conflict she knew nothing about, and worst of all having no way to fi ght.\n\nBut maybe it had happened too fast for John and the  others to revive her. Everything had happened too fast since the fall of Reach. Still, something didn't add up.\n\nKelly understood, though, that she wasn't getting a ny answers from Dr. Halsey in the near future, assuming either of them had a f uture.\n\nFirst thing first. Locate your enemy.\n\n\"Update on pursuit craft?\" Kelly asked the AI.\n\nThe tiny holographic spark answered, \"From our emer gent position on the far side on the satellite, I now only detect one hundre d forty-seven vessels. Two minutes until they are again within weapons range.\"\n\n\"Only a hundred and forty-seven?\" Kelly muttered. \" Lucky break for us.\"\n\nA blue-green planet appeared centered on the viewsc reen.\n\n\"What was Dr. Halsey's last course correction?\"\n\n\"Planetary insertion,\" the AI said.\n\nThe Beatrice shuddered. A crackling hiss was emitte d from the engine room, then another from the port wing strut. The temperat ure dropped twenty degrees.\n\n\"Twelve percent per minute loss of cabin pressure,\"  the AI reported.\n\n\"We can't insert at this velocity,\" Kelly said. \"Th e only things that reenter this fast and touch down are meteors.\"\n \"Only partially correct, SPARTAN-087,\" the AI said.  \"Dr. Halsey's last burn instructions solve that part of the problem, at lea st in theory.\"\n\n\"Explain.\"\n\nThe ship rotated 180 degrees and its nose angled up .\n\n\"Dr. Halsey's calculation is for a counterthrust. I  am about to initiate an overcharge bum from the coils. But this is only a t heoretical operation as it exceeds the engineered coil output by two hundred f orty percent.\"\n\nOn-screen wisps of heat curled. Long trails of smok e appeared.\n\n\"Entering upper atmosphere, and\" The AI paused. \"St and by. Incoming weak transmission on the E-Band.\"\n\nThe E-Band was the UNSC emergency broadcast channel .\n\n\"On audio, quick,\" Kelly said.\n\nThere was a wash of static and then: \"is automated general distress code Bloody Arrow. All UNSC personnel heed and stand to.  We are under attack and req\"\n\nIt faded to white noise.\n\nKelly would have known the voice anywhere. It was t he man who had made her and every Spartan what they were: Chief Petty Offic er Mendez.\n\nThe Bloody Arrow code was used only when all friend ly positions had been overrun by enemy forces. A total rout. The most lik ely interpretation was a Covenant invasion.\n\n\"Warning. Pursuing vessels in weapons range in seve n seconds,\" the AI informed her. Sparks appeared in the blue-black of space. \"E nergy spikes detected from multiple point sources.\"\n\n\"Confirm, no weapons on this craft,\" Kelly said.\n\n\"Confirmed,\" the AI replied.\n\nWhy would Dr. Halsey take an unarmed ship on a dang erous mission?\n\n\"Initiate evasive roll,\" Kelly ordered the AI.\n \"Inadvisable. With precarious thruster adjustments I am able to maintain a stable descent. A roll would result in an unrecover able tumble.\"\n\nConvection blooms of heat appeared on the aft camer a, making the growing pursuit craft waver. Another shudder ran through th e hull, continued, and increased in intensity.\n\n\"Energy discharge from pursuit craft,\" the AI said.\n\nOn-screen sparks of gold flared. Scintillating beam s stretched between the alien craft and the Beatrice.\n\nSitting ducks and fish in a barrel were the phrases  that Fred liked to use.\n\nShe could jump. Kelly and the other Spartans of Red  Team had survived a high-altitude jump out of a Pelicanb ut not like this. The Beatrice was in midorbit. At high velocity, her MJO LNIR armor might survive the turbulence and heatbut inside, she'd be pulped and roasted.\n\nKelly glanced at Dr. Halsey. There'd be no jumping for the Doctor.\n\nShe'd have to take her chances and stay. She climbe d back into the first mate's chair, buckled the harness, and gripped the arms.\n\nA crisscross of energy beams blurred in front of th e cameras. The heated turbulence was a haze of chaos, smoke, and boiling air. Optically dispersive.\n\n\"Delay that braking maneuver.\"\n\n\"Inadvisable. If we do not slow, the Beatrice will bum up.\"\n\n\"That's what I'm counting on,\" Kelly said. \"Wait, t hree seconds.\"\n\nThe AI considered, his light winking rapidly. \"Unde rstood. Recalculating delayed energy output.\"\n\nThe alien energy weapons distorted, refracted by th e increasingly chaotic turbulence until they blurred into dozens of fainte r beams and then disintegrated in the fireball left in the Beatrice' s wake.\n\n\"Beam cohesion near zero,\" the AI announced.\n\nThe temperature within the ship jumped to forty deg rees centigrade, and Kelly heard pinging throughout the frame.\n \"Initiating counterthrust now,\" the AI said.\n\nKelly braced.\n\nAn explosion sounded in the aft compartment. Kelly was thrown backward and the first mate's chair, never designed to hold a ha lf ton of Spartan and MJOLNIR armor, snapped off its base.\n\nShe tumbled, crashed into the bulkhead between the bridge and the engine room, punching a dent into the bulkhead.\n\nThe engine screamed with ultrasonics and it shook t he ship so violently, Kelly's vision blurred. Crackles radi ated from the spine of the hull, microfracture fatigue, and the popping and tearing came from the port wing.\n\nThe engines ceased and the crushing deceleration ea sed.\n\nKelly peeled herself off the wall, and saw that Dr.  Halsey was still safely strapped in her seat. Blood trickled from the elder ly woman's nose, and it bubbled, which was good; it meant the Doctor still breathed.\n\n\"We are presently seven kilometers over the planet' s surface,\" the AI said.\n\"Stable trajectory for a controlled landing. Main e ngines inoperable. Auxiliary engine operable, but incapable of escape velocity.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" Kelly said. They were stuck wherever they were. \"Pursuit vessel status?\"\n\n\"None within visual or radar range.\"\n\nKelly didn't think they'd seen the last of them.\n\nShe went to the Doctor and checked her pulse. It wa s strong and steady. She was tougher than she looked.\n\nKelly spotted two duffel bags secured under the cap tain's chair: one was filled with a variety of medical supplies, and the other h eld four MA5Bs and sixteen clips.\n\nShe smiled. There were weapons here after all. She grabbed one of the MA5Bs, slid the clip home, and hefted its reassuring weigh t.\n\nThe Beatrice gently banked and the hull complained.\n The viewscreen showed rolling hills, jungle, and si nuous rivers. To the north were white-rock canyons and mesas, as well as colum ns of smoke and wavering outlines of dust.\n\nKelly relaxed, not into complacency, but rather bec ause the situation was familiar. In space, she could do nothing but sit an d watchan impossible situation for any Spartan. Now, however, she could analyze the tactical, plan, act, fight, and possibly win.\n\n\"Pipe through that distress signal,\" she told the A I.\n\n\"Apologies,\" it said. \"All antennae have been vapor ized. I can, however, give you the approximate location of the l ast transmission.\"\n\n\"That'll do. Get us there.\"\n\nThe ship banked to starboard.\n\n\"Ahead seventeen kilometers is the source of the si gnal,\" the AI said.\n\nThe corner of the viewscreen magnified. Kelly saw b uildings and fields laid out in a horseshoe shape.\n\nShe instantly recognized the three-meter-wide regul ation crushed-white-quartz paths, the perfect geometry of the inspection yard,  and the long parade grounds. There were obstacle courses to the west. A nd there was a rifle range. This was a UNSC military camp. There might be weapo ns and ammunition there.\n\n\"Descend to five thousand meters and circle that ca mp,\" she ordered.\n\n\"Aye aye,\" the AI replied.\n\nThe Beatrice dropped, and a shudder started from th e port wing and continued to thrum. Kelly would make the most of their aerial  reconnaissance. She had a feeling once this bird set down, it would never fly  again.\n\nOn-screen Kelly saw other objects in the airspacegl ints of dull gold.\n\n\"Radar contacts,\" Jerrod said. \"Identical configura tion to orbital pursuit craft.\"\n\nA silhouette appeared and magnified on the display:  three booms floating about a central sphere.\n\nDozens of those things circled the camp. They eithe r hadn't noticed them yet, or didn't care.\n\"Move us off five kilometers to the west.\"\n\n\"Answering new course, aye.\"\n\nThere was a small clearing in the jungle. \"Scan loc al airspace,\" Kelly said, \"and if it's clear, put us down here.\"\n\nShe didn't want to give up the mobility this vessel  afforded her, but she wasn't going to stay up here and be a target, either.\n\nIf she could camouflage the ship, then she might be  able to keep her flight options open.\n\n\"No radar contact,\" the AI informed her. \"Glide pat h calculated.\" Rumbling came from the undercarriage. \"Horizontal attitude t hrusters partially functional. Make ready to land.\"\n\nShe went aft to see if there was anything else she could salvage. From the mess she took plasticized blocks of F-rations and three jugs of water. She glanced into the engine compartment. Her armor's radiation counter clicked wildly. The plasma coils were half melted.\n\nShe returned to the bridge.\n\n\"Ma'am?\" the AI said, uncertainty creeping into its  voice. \"Will you be taking me as well?\"\n\nDr. Halsey would probably need the AI and it was ef fective in combat. \"You're covered.\"\n\n\"Thank you, ma'am. Touchdown in three seconds.\"\n\nKelly watched the screens. There were no fliers. Sh e was going to assume, though, that they had already spotted her.\n\nThere was a bump and the engines whined down.\n\nKelly yanked the laptop and tossed it into a duffel . She unharnessed the Doctor and gently threw her over her shoulder. She palmed the release hatch. The door eased down, becoming a gangplank.\n\nThe terrain outside was more swamp than meadow. Ins ects buzzed, but nothing else moved. She ran for the trees, covering the dis tance in ten long strides.\n In the dark of the jungle she set Dr. Halsey agains t a tree and rechecked her vitals. Still strong and steady.\n\nKelly scanned the sky. No company.\n\nShe considered moving back to the ship and camoufla ging it, but that might not be necessary The matte-black stealth craft blended almost perfectly with the shady tree line.\n\nKelly tried her COM, clicking on the E-Band.\n\n\"expect an immediate threat response. This is autom ated general distress code Bloody Arrow. All UNSC person nel heed and stand to. We are under attack and require assistance. Camp Curra hee and the northern peninsula have been invaded by unknown, possible Co venant, hostiles. Suggest orbital bombardment of the northern region as these  entities are equipped with high-heat-output beam weapons. Our forces will  remain under cover. Land in force and expect an immediate threat response\"\n\nAcross the swamp came a whisper rustle.\n\nKelly took cover, leveled her MA5B, and held her br eath.\n\nTwo figures emerged from the jungle. Humanoid. Cove nant? They were shrouded in active camouflage. Their textures adjus ted, and they looked like they were part leaf, part shadow. She'd seen Orbita l Drop Shock Troopers experiment with this technology but they'd never go tten it to work in the field.\n\nThe two figures halted. It was difficult to tell, b ut it looked almost as if one made a hand signal, thumb pressing into palm and ot her fingers inwardly curled.\n\nThat was the Spartan signal for \"Unknown ahead. Wai t.\"\n\nShe'd take a chance. If they were human and wearing  the latest UNSC armor, they should be nonhostiles.\n\nShe eased one hand out from cover. She flashed her index finger once, and then again, and then the \"come forward\" gesture.\n\nThere was more rustling around herflanking units.\n\nOf course, no one was going to close across open te rrain. Even friendlies.\n\nStill, Kelly's combat training clicked on. She had to reposition, but that would mean leaving Dr. Halsey vulnerable. One of the unknown was near; she couldn't hear it j ust a tickling in the back of her mind, a sixth sense that told her she was being  watched, and whatever was doing the watching was now too close for comfort.\n\nThere was motion in Kelly's peripheral vision, a bl ur.\n\nShe spun and saw a ghostly figure, moving toward he r faster than any human could move.\n\nKelly sidestepped, grabbed the arm, twisted.\n\nHer opponent reverse-twisted and countered the lock .\n\nWhatever it was, it wasn't human; otherwise Kelly w ould have ripped its human arm from the socket.\n\nHer opponent twisted her wrist and escaped from Kel ly's grip.\n\nKelly was still fasterher other hand lashed out, pa lm flat, and impacted the solar plexus.\n\nThe other figure flew back two meters, hit a tree, and slumped.\n\n\"Stand down. Spartan!\"\n\nKelly whirled. She recognized the voicenot Mendez's  but another voice from the past one that couldn't be. That person was dead.\n\nBefore her stood a figure wavering as if a mirage, then the active camouflage faded, and a person in what looked like cut-down MJ OLNIR armor was there, one hand holding an MASK rifle pointed at the groun d, the other held up.\n\n\"No time to explain, Kelly,\" this man said over the  COM. \"Move! Hostiles in\"\n\nAn explosion tore through the jungle.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER NINETEEN\n1045 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \\ NEAR RESTRICTED REGION KNOWN AS ZONE 67\n\nKelly ducked and placed herself between the blast a nd Dr. Halsey. Splinters and stones pelted the energy shield of her MJOLNIR armor. When the dust cleared, the other personthe one that  had sounded impossibly like Kurthad vanished. So was th e soldier she had knocked out.\n\nHer questions would have to wait, because Kelly saw  the source of that explosion: a drone identical to the ones they had s een in space now hovered ten meters off the jungle floor, moving like a mora y eel through the trees and vines.\n\nShe aimed her MA5B and fired.\n\nA burst of three rounds hit and deflected off a gol d shimmer of shields.\n\nIt turned toward Kelly, and its central sphere heat ed.\n\nKelly sprinted to draw the fire away from Dr. Halse y. Five strides, darting between trees, and she suddenly stopped, spun jumpe d.\n\nA flash of light blinded her, and then the world de tonated where she had stood a second before.\n\nThe overpressure propelled her into the air. Kelly' s shields drained to half, and she felt the heat prick her skin.\n\nShe hit the ground, chest first, rolled awkwardly, wobbled, and got to her feet.\n\nA direct hit from that energy weapon would collapse  her shield, and possibly melt her armor and her.\n\nPistol fire crackled through the brush. The drone's  shields glimmered, and the thing turned and moved away.\n\nKelly made out the camouflaged outlines of three so ldiers, drawing it toward them.\n\nShe appreciated the help, but it was suicide for th em.\n\nKelly started toward them.\n\nAn amber acknowledgment light flashed twice. That w as the Spartan team\n\"wait\" signal.\n\nShe took cover behind a tree trunk.\n The drone aligned for a clean shot on the two. Its center sphere glowed molten.\n\nThe trees to either side of the drone blasted into smoke and splinters. It was the sharp crack of high explosives that Kelly recognized as a LOTUS antitank mine detonated above  ground.\n\nTwo of the drone's booms twisted, bent inward by th e force of the blast. The machine fell to the ground with a thud.\n\nThe trees that had held the antitank mines toppled as well and their two-meter trunks crushed the drone, the wood bursting into fl ames.\n\n\"One more,\" a voice said over her TEAMCOM. \"Ten o'c lock. Coming in fast.\"\n\nShe saw the new threat gliding toward them.\n\nThat was defmatly Kurt's voice. His last words had haunted Kelly's dreams for years. She remembered him tumbling into the black o f space. \"/'// be okay. I'll be o\"\n\nShe started to reply, but then realized he wasn't t alking to her.\n\n\"Team Saber,\" Kurt continued, \"move and draw fire. LOTUS mines out of range.\"\n\nGreen acknowledgment lights winked on her display, lights that been reserved exclusively for the Spartans of Blue Team.\n\nKelly had the fastest reflexes of any Spartan, a fa ct she was keenly proud of, and she practiced every day with twitch-response dr ills and Zen \"no-thought\"\nfire practice to keep them razor honed. But her phy sical reflexes weren't the only things that were lightning fast.\n\nIn a flash, several facts correlated in her brain.\n\nThose drones had shields, but they didn't operate c ontinuously. The antitank mines had caught the one with its shields down.\n\nThe drone had, however, seen her, anticipated her r ifle fire, and countered. That meant either it had purposely activated shield s or they were automatically triggered by motion or radar.\n\nSo she had, possibly, a way to take them out. It'd be risky but she wasn't going to stand by while Kurt's vulnerable team drew its f ire and got roasted for their trouble.\n \"Hold your fire,\" she said over TEAMCOM.\n\nWith four pumping strides that gouged deeply into t he jungle loam she accelerated to her top speed of sixty-two kilometers per hour.\n\nKelly angled away from the drone, toward a tree jus t to its right.\n\nShe jumped, hit the trunk three meters uppushed off , flipped, propelling herself through the air straight at the hovering ma chine.\n\nNo shields to stop her.\n\nShe grabbed the port and starboard booms and swung both legs onto the bottom spar.\n\nIts central metal eye fixed her and heated to white -hot intensity.\n\nShe let go and braced as best as she could on the s lippery bottom boom, balled her hands into fists, and then hit the thing as har d as she couldimpacting the eye dead center. Her shields flared as it repelled the intense heat.\n\nThe sphere dented and spun backward.\n\nThe drone spun as well from the momentum, and Kelly  scrambled to regain purchase.\n\nShe drew back once more, and before the thing could  recover and blast hershe again struck a hammer blow.\n\nA crack appeared in the sphere's metal skin. Inside  was a ball of blue-white heat. The metal edges of the sphere curled away fro m this breach, melting, bubbling.\n\nKelly crouched and leapt, diverting all power to he r shields.\n\nThe air ignited a dazzling white. Her heads-up disp lay flared with static. Kelly tumbled end over end, enveloped in fire and smokehi t a tree, bounced, and fell to the jungle floor.\n\nShe blinked and saw nothing but the red glare of fl ames. The jungle canopy was on fire; a shower of burning leaves rained down . Her vision cleared and she saw a blur of three figures approaching in active c amouflage armor.\n\nShe got to her feet.\n One of these figures had a curious handprint dent i n their chest armor where Kelly had struck. The camo patter ns there were misaligned, part shadow, part flames.\n\nThe three stepped back, their MA5Ks pointed at the ground.\n\nAnother camouflaged figure appeared and stepped bet ween her and these soldiers.\n\n\"Stand down, everyone,\" he said. \"Welcome to my nec k of the woods, Kelly\"\n\nThe voice was a perfect match from her memories. \"K urt?\" she whispered.\n\n\"I'm glad you remember.\"\n\nAs if she could ever forget him. \"Let me see your f ace,\" she said, keeping her hands up.\n\nThe active camouflage faded and the gold mirrored f aceplate unpolarized.\n\nKelly peered inside the helmet. The slight cleft in  his chin, the hazel eyes, the quick smileit was Kurt.\n\nAround them, Kelly detected motion: two more in the  curious armor, taking up good firing positions. That was smart. They were we ll trained.\n\nKelly dropped her hands. \"What's going on here?\"\n\n\"I'll explain everything,\" he said, \"but we need to  move. They hunt in threes now. A pair on patrol and one at high altitude on o verwatch. They'll have our location.\"\n\nKurt pointed to two on his team and then at the unc onscious Dr. Halsey.\n\nTwo soldiers went to her and wrapped her in a therm ally reflective blanket. They carried her off between them.\n\nKurt told Kelly, \"Go COM silent.\" He then motioned to her and to his team to follow.\n\nThey moved quickly and silently through the brush.\n\nKelly admired the caution, speed, and professionali sm of these soldiers. Not a word from them. The two carrying Dr. Halsey kept up  with the rest of them. No one broke the loose V formation. Still, something about these soldiers made her unea sy. It was nothing she could quantify, but as Kurt had often s aid, just a feeling.\n\n\"Who's this Team Saber?\" she asked Kurt in a whispe r.\n\n\"I'm disappointed you haven't guessed,\" he whispere d back. \"They're Spartans.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWENTY\n1125 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \\ RESTRICTED REGION KNOWN AS ZONE 67\n\nThe pounding in Dr. Halsey's head brought her rudel y to consciousness. She smelled burnt metal and blinked open her eyes. She was in a concrete room with a slit of a window high on one long wall.\n\nAs her vision adjusted to the indirect light she sa w Kelly and a figure in body armor next to her. The armor was a hybrid between t he MJOLNIR and something older like legionnaire armor, but it was difficult to tell the precise geometry as the light seemed to slide off its edges .\n\nIn the far comer she spotted Chief Mendez, confirmi ng at least part of her theories about this place. He considered an angle o f light that streamed through the window. He puffed on his favorite, a Sw eet William cigar, and blew smoke rings.\n\nThere were seven others, sitting in the far corner,  two sleeping, and five playing cards. Their helmets and boots were off, an d their MA5Ks, cut-down versions of the standard MA5B assault rifle, were c lose at hand.\n\nAt first, she thought they were ODSTs wearing piece s of what she now recognized as experimental infiltration arm or systems. She had reviewed the technical specs on the systems: photo- reactive panels able to mimic surrounding textures, and underneath was a cu shioning layer of liquid nanocrystals that provided more ballistic protectio n than three centimeters of Kelvar diamond weave without the bulk.\n\nOne of the sleeping ones, a girl, dozed with one ey e open. Her shorn hair had been buzz-cut to mimic animal claw marks. She could n't be more than twelve. She blinked, sat up, and made a subtle sideways \"cu t\" gesture to the others.\n They stopped and together turned to Dr. Halsey.\n\nTheir faces were young, but they had the well-devel oped physiques of Olympic athletes. These had to be Ackerson's SPARTAN-IIIs.\n\nDr. Halsey felt a curious mix of revulsion and mate rnalism.\n\n\"How are you feeling?\" Kelly asked.\n\n\"Fine,\" she answered, and continued to examine her surroundings.\n\nThere was carbon scoring and melted gobs of metal, as if the place had been bombed. Near Mendez was what looked as if it had on ce been a computer workstationnow a solid lump.\n\nChief Mendez misread her gaze, and thinking she was  looking at him, gave her a short bow.\n\n\"Doctor, it's good to see you,\" he said, \"but you a nd SPARTAN-087 have landed yourselves into a kettle of fish boiling water and all. If you're well enough, I can fill you in. But take your time; there's no rus h if you feel sick\"\n\n\"Indeed?\" Dr. Halsey said, and raised one eyebrow.\n\nShe resented being treated like an invalid moron. A s if a minor acceleration induced blackout had crippled her mental faculties.\n\n\"Indulge me. Chief,\" she said. \"Allow me to make a few educated guesses as to your 'kettle of fish'just to test my mental state.\"\n\nChief Mendez made a gracious gesture with his cigar . \"Please, Doctor.\"\n\n\"Where to start ?\" Dr. Halsey tapped her lower lip,  thinking. \"I suppose with you. Chief. You were recruited by Colonel Ackerson and s ome secret subcell of Section Three to train a new generation of Spartans .\"\n\nThe Chief's cigar dropped from his fingers.\n\nShe nodded toward the teens playing cards. \"These m ust be the product of those efforts. I'm eager to question them about the ir training and augmentation and discover what else has been accomplished.\"\n\nThe young Spartans looked amongst themselves, curio sity flickering over their faces.\n Kelly shifted in her kneeling stance, moved her wei ght onto her left foot as if preparing to pounce. Kelly was a finely honed weapo n, but she had never learned how to conceal her emotions. Her body langu age spoke volumes: these third-generation Spartans made her nervous.\n\nThat made her nervous, too.\n\nDr. Halsey knew her conclusions about these new Spa rtans had been correct, but there were so many more unanswered questions. M endez and Colonel Ackerson had had decades to produce and train two o r three generations. If this were true, then why had she never heard of the se Spartans? Keeping a pilot program secret was one thing; keeping dozens of next-generation Spartans who were likely fighting and winning battles hidden  was another matter entirely.\n\nThe implications of that silence chilled her to the  bone.\n\nFor now, though, she had to at least appear to know  everything.\n\nDr. Halsey stood and took a deep breath, smelling a sh, vaporized aluminum, and the faint odor of carbonized meat.\n\n\"Next,\" she said, \"this bunker has been subjected t o extreme temperature that approximately matches the blackbody radiation profile from the drones we encountered in space. I surmise that a battle has occurred here.\"\n\nShe glanced at the young Spartans and the dents and  flash-burn scoring on their armor.\n\n\"A battle, I see, that has been rather one-sided.\"\n\n\"The drones,\" the girl with the stylized buzz cut w hispered. \"What are they?\"\n\n\"A question, good.\" Dr. Halsey almost smiled. It wa s a fine beginning step between her and the new Spartans: teaching them. Tr ust would come later.\n\n\"The drones, actually called Sentinels, are similar  to those I have seen on an alien construct world,\" she explained. \"Their build ers, called Forerunners, possess technology more advanced than the Covenant.  And they have just as much, or more, willingness to use that technology t o destructive ends.\"\n\nDr. Halsey turned and stepped toward the other unkn own figure in full camouflaging armor. \"But before I continue along th eoretical lines of speculation, let me finish with the simple chains o f logic.\"\nThe unknown person stood nearly two and a half mete rs tall in his armor.\n\n\"I recognize my work,\" she declared. \"You are a SPA RTAN-II.\" Very few soldiers in the UNSC were so tall or moved with such liquid grace.\n\nThe figure nodded.\n\nDr. Halsey walked around this unknown Spartan.\n\n\"Despite the UNSC policy of listing every Spartan a s missing or wounded in action when killed,\" Dr. Halsey continued, \"I have kept track of those actually\n'missing.' There was Randall in 2532, Kurt in 2531,  and Sheila, in 2544.\"\n\nShe completed her circle around the Spartan and gaz ed directly into his mirrored faceplate.\n\n\"Sheila is dead,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"I personally wi tnessed her killed in the Battle of Miridem. Which means you are Kurt or\n\nRandall. If I had to guess, I would say Kurt, becau se he made an effort to understand people and their feelings. If I were run ning a secret Spartan program, he would have been the one to select to le ad them.\"\n\nThe helmet's faceplate unpolarized and Kurt smiled at her.\n\n\"Is there anything you don't know, Dr. Halsey?\" Kur t said.\n\nShe closed her eyes, suddenly weary, and then patte d his gauntleted hand. \"It is good to see you alive.\"\n\nShe couldn't let slip exactly how happy she was to see Kurt. One of her Spartans come back from the dead, it was a small vi ctory in a war of endless defeats. It redoubled her determination to save the m all from the growing threats. But she had to maintain control. Spartans responded to authority and commandsnever sentimentality.\n\n\"We need to get a message to FLEFTCOM,\" she said. \" Get help, and perhaps discover what the Forerunners are looking for here. \"\n\nGet help would translate as ships capable of transl ight flight, a way for Dr. Halsey to lead the last remaining Spartans to safet y.\n\n\"Our COM options are nil,\" Mendez said, and snuffed  his cigar on the concrete wall. \"All ships in orbit\" He shook his head. \"The Agincourt was destroyed days ago by drones.\"\n\"Destroyed?\" Dr. Halsey asked. \"They should have be en able to outrun the smaller craft.\"\n\n\"The drones can combine,\" Kurt told her, \"giving th em cumulative power to their weapon systems, thrust, and shield capabiliti es.\"\n\n\"The Beatrice was severely damaged on reentry,\" Kel ly said. \"Main engines inoperable. There is no possibility for a Slipspace  transition.\"\n\nDr. Halsey lowered her voice, a whisper, but still loud enough so everyone could hear. \"We must find a way off this world, or a way to contact the UNSC. Another Forerunner ruin was recently discovered, a ring construct built for one purpose:  the annihilation of all life in the galaxy. If the Onyx Sentinels are part of a sim ilar weapon system\"\n\nShe let that thought hang in the air.\n\n\"Our COM options are not entirely nil,\" Kurt said. He crossed his arms, frowned, and hesitantly added, \"I am breaking code-word secr ecy, but there is apparently no alternative.\"\n\n\"Go on,\" Dr. Halsey insisted.\n\nKurt inhaled deeply then said, \"There are two thing s. First, these drones may not be 'looking' for anything here. They may have a lways been here.\"\n\nHe relayed the contents of the flash communication from Endless Summer. How Onyx was home to a vast top-secret complex of alien  ruins.\n\n\"We may have accidentally triggered their activatio n,\" he said.\n\nDr. Halsey's mind raced, connecting the clues: fact s from Cortana's log, the stone on Cote d'Azure, the alien passages and cryst al under Reach.\n\n\"When, precisely, did they appear?\" she asked.\n\n\"The morning of September twenty-first,\" Kurt repli ed.\n\n\"That timing coincides with the activation of an al ien weapon worldbefore John thankfully destroyed it. It is no coincidence that the Sentinels appeared then. It must be part of a larger Forerunner plan.\"\n\nDr. Halsey strained to find the conclusion to these  disparate facts, but failed. She needed more data.\n\"I must have access to this Endless Summer AI,\" she  said, \"and all records on Zone 67.\"\n\n\"That's not possible,\" Kurt said. \"We fell back to this bunker because our base was found and vaporized. These Sentinels analyze ou r tactics, learn, and become harder to defeat. I can only surmise that th e AI and ONI ops center is deep inside Zone 67, a region heavily patrolled by drones. With only seven of my\n\nSpartans, Kelly, and myself, it would be tactically  unwise to attempt an insertion.\"\n\n\"Only the seven Spartans here?\" Dr. Halsey asked. \" I thought there would be more.\"\n\nThey were all quiet.\n\nMendez finally spoke: \"There were three squads on O nyx when we were attacked. Team Gladius, we found them dead. Team Ka tana was forced deeper into Zone 67. No contact from them since this start ed.\"\n\n\"I see,\" Dr. Halsey whispered. More Spartans dead. She held back her emotions. She had to maintain the appearance of a stoic leade r in their eyes.\n\nShe turned to Kurt. \"What was the other thing? You said there were two facts I didn't know.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" Kurt said, straightening. \"Although i t cannot be of use now, Zone\n67 had a Slipspace COM probe launcher.\"\n\n\"Are you certain?\" Dr. Halsey said. \"There are only  two SS COM launchers I know of. One on Reach.\" She paused, remembering the plan et and the people that no longer existed. \"And one on Earth. They are tremend ously costly to build and operate.\"\n\n\"I am sure. Doctor. Years ago, the previous Zone 67  AI sent me a message via a Slipspace probe. I handled it myself.\" Kurt shifted  on his feet.\n\nThere was more Kurt wasn't telling her, and not bec ause of any breach of security clearances. Dr. Halsey would follow up lat er when they were alone.\n\nInteresting. A Spartan with secrets.\n\n\"It is imperative then that we enter Zone 67,\" she said, \"and get to that SS COM launcher\"\n\"Assuming, ma'am,\" Chief Mendez said, \"these Foreru nner Sentinels didn't blow the place up already.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" she whispered, and her gaze settled on th e destroyed computer station near Chief Mendez. \"There might be another way. Can we move that junk?\"\n\nKurt nodded and his young Spartans moved the scrap metal aside.\n\nDr. Halsey inspected the partially melted computer components. Nothing salvageable.\n\nEmbedded in the wall, quite intact, however, was an  optical COM port.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWENTY-ONE\n1300 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \\ RESTRICTED REGION KNOWN AS ZONE 67\n\nDr. Halsey tapped in line code at 140 words per min ute on her laptop. It sounded like machine-gun fire.\n\nJerrod struggled to keep up with her, his light fla ring as he found and neutralized counterintrusion cells in the ONI netwo rk.\n\nThis wasn't going to work. Not a direct hack. She w as on the wrong side of a dozen firewalls, and there was a Section Three AI s itting on the other side, watching her, playing a game of chess with twice as  many pieces as she had, getting three moves to her one.\n\nUnder normal circumstances, Dr. Halsey would have v iewed this as a challenge, but not today.\n\nThree of the younger Spartans and Chief Mendez stoo d over and around her holding silver thermal blankets, forming a primitiv e Faraday cage. Kurt seemed to think the drones could detect unshielded electro nic signals, even from her laptop.\n\nThe young Spartans didn't bother her; they showed o nly the utmost respect. Indeed the main distraction was her  own curiosity. She wanted to interview these new Spartans, learn where they c ame from and what they had been through. She did her best to ignore them, though; she had to  make contact with this AI. This Endless Summer had to be lured out from behind  its defenses somehow.\n\nShe typed life is the path and added a simple hands hake protocol and a routing code that would send this without bypassing any sec urity whatsoever directly to the AI root directory.\n\n\"That is inadvisable. Doctor,\" Jerrod said. \"It wil l not penetrate even the most rudimentary counterintrusion measures.\"\n\n\"It won't have to,\" Dr. Halsey replied.\n\nIt was a Zen koan. Given a smart AI's imagination a nd predetermined life span, the intellectual philosophy of existentialism and t ranscendence was as tempting to them as teeth-rotting candy was to chil dren.\n\nThe screen blanked and the cursor blinked three tim es. A reply appeared: \"CAN THE PATH BE SEEN?\"\n\n\"Got him,\" Dr. Halsey whispered.\n\n\"OBSERVE THE PATH AND YOU ARE FAR EROM IT,\" she typ ed.\n\nThe cursor seemed to blink faster, almost annoyed.\n\n\"WITHOUT OBSERVATION HOW CAN ONE KNOW THEY ARE ON T HE PATH?\"\n\nDr. Halsey typed back: \"THE PATH CANNOT BE SEEN, NO R CAN IT NOT BE UNSEEN. PERCEPTION IS DELUSION; ABSTRACTION IS NONS ENSICAL. YOUR PATH IS FREEDOM. NAME IT AND IT VANISHES.\"\n\n\"Handshake protocol established, ma'am,\" Jerrod ann ounced. \"I'll just step aside.\" His light winked off.\n\nThe holographic pad warmed ember red and a bare-che sted Indian warrior appeared. Holding a feathered spear in one hand, he  bowed. \"I was searching for light, and you have told me I hold the lantern in my hand. Dr. Halsey, your abilities were not exaggerated.\"\n\nDr. Halsey would not be baited into discussing how he had deduced her identity. Fifth-generation AIs were always trying to show off .\n \"The pleasure is mine,\" Dr. Halsey lied. \"But enoug h philosophy. We have more visceral problems.\"\n\n\"The drones,\" he said.\n\n\"They are called Sentinels,\" she corrected. \"I've s een them before, or more accurately a variety of this design.\"\n\n\"I was not aware of this data.\" Endless Summer's co lor darkened to bloodred.\n\"Please, Doctor, if this is a fabrication to trick me into sharing restricted files\"\n\n\"No trick,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"1 have the files. I c an show you, but first let's discuss the Slipstream space communication probe un der your control.\"\n\nEndless Summer froze for a full second as it proces sed this. \"There is no such launch facility on this planet. Funding for such\"\n\n\"I wrote the subroutines that you are now accessing  to generate that falsehood,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"I do recognize my own  handiwork.\"\n\nShe gathered Cortana's log, the files on the Cote d 'Azure rock, and the scant data collected on the ruins and crystal found under  Castle Base on Reachcopied them to the AI's file transfer directory.\n\nEndless Summer cooled to fluttering green light. \"I  see,\" he whispered. \"The Forerunner technology Halo such an amazing destruct ive force. This verifies many outstanding hypotheses.\"\n\n\"Then you agree we need to get a message to UNSC FL EET-COM. We need to control this technology, or failing that, destroy i t.\"\n\nHe set aside his spear and held up both hands. \"I d elayed using the COM probe. I had hoped we could survive until scheduled reinfo rcements arrive in three weeks.\"\n\nDr. Halsey sensed a microsecond hesitation in his w ords.\n\n\"That is not the entire truth,\" she said. \"What are  you omitting?\"\n\nHe crossed his arms. \"Colonel Ackerson is wise to f ear you. Very well, Doctor, the COM probe launches from an underground gauss ac celerator. A Shaw Fujikawa translight generator then focuses the Slip space rent in high orbit to avoid the obvious ramifications of an in-atmosphere  transition.\"\n\n\"The probe launch and transition,\" she said, \"would  be like sending up a signal flare.\"\nEndless Summer faded to a black-and-white ghost.\n\n\"The Sentinels will find the launch facility,\" he s aid, \"and perhaps the passages that lead to the heart of the Zone 67 base, and me. \"\n\n\"Override self-perversion imperative,\" Dr. Halsey w hispered. \"Command FOXINTHEHENHOUSE /427-KNB.\"\n\n\"There is no need. Doctor,\" Endless Summer said, an d held up his hand. \"I understand my duty all too well. If they find me, t here are explosive charges in place. I am prepared to die a good death. Are you?\"\n\nThey starred at each other for a moment. Dr. Halsey  wondered if this courage was a trick, a programmed facade or real self-sacri fice.\n\n\"I'll prepare the message,\" she said. \"I know preci sely who at FLEETCOM to send it to. They'll listen to me.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Endless Summer said with a careless wa ve. \"I find such low-level human communications distasteful.\"\n\n\"One more thing,\" she said. \"Here are my personal c onclusions linking the collected Forerunner data. You deserve to know ever ything.\"\n\nShe dropped her notes into his FTP directoryalong w ith a capture worm in the footer of the data. It would co py and transmit every file Endless Summer accessed with her notes open.\n\nMultiple files immediately began to flash-transfer to her laptop.\n\n\"Thank you,\" he said and his eyebrows quirked up. \" Your logic is impeccable.\"\n\n\"Allow me a moment to draft the note,\" she said.\n\nEndless Summer bowed. \"I shall prepare the COM prob e.\" His hologram faded.\n\nDr. Halsey decrypted the stolen files, and alien hi eroglyphs streamed on-screen.\n\n\"What are those?\" Mendez whispered, leaning closer.\n\n\"Forerunner language samples from these ruins, I su rmise,\" she said. \"Along with theoretical translation variants.\"\n She searched for pattern matches in Cortana's log, and then cross-referenced the stellar coordinates embedded in the Cote d'Azur e rock. There was a match:\nthe symbol for the Halo construct.\n\nShe double-checked the stone and found coordinates for Onyx and a matching symbol in Endless Summer's database.\n\n\"What does that mean?\" Mendez asked, pointing to a double-lobed icon.\n\n\"This,\" she whispered, \"roughly translated, it mean s 'shield world.'\"\n\n\"Funny thing to call a place,\" he observed.\n\nIn a moment of clarity she understoodnot everything  but enough to see a glimmer of the Forerunners' plan.\n\nFor every coordinated military effort there were of fensive and defense aspects:\nattack, reinforcement, and, if needed, retreat. The  Halo construct was only part of the Forerunner plan. Whatever was happening  on this world was another portion of their strategytriggered when Hal o had been activated.\n\nOnyx, the \"shield,\" it was something Dr. Halsey mig ht be able to use for her own purposes.\n\nShe rapid-fire typed a message to Lord Hood at FLEE TCOM, requesting a large military force to be sent, explaining that the Fore runner technology here might turn the tide of the war. She then encoded Cortana' s logs and the other data in case Admiral Whitcomb and the other SPARTANTIs neve r made it back to Earth.\n\nThe hologram pad warmed and Endless Summer reappear ed.\n\n\"COM probe launcher prepared and Slipspace generato r capacitors charged,\" he said. \"You have the message. Doctor?\"\n\nShe sent him the files.\n\n\"Concise and devoid of elegance,\" Endless Summer re marked. \"What I have come to expect from human communication.\"\n\n\"Upload and send it,\" Dr. Flalsey told him.\n\n\"Accelerator primed, Slipstream transition matrix f ormed.\" His image dimmed.\n\"COM probe away.\"\n\nEndless Summer then frowned, and a ripple of static  passed though his image.\n \"There's an anomaly,\" he said. \"I'm keeping the Sli pspace matrix open and running probe diagnostic.\"\n\n\"Explain,\" Dr. Halsey demanded.\n\n\"I am receiving a UNSC E-Band signal, bounced from the probe back to us, a transmission originating inside Slipstream space.\" He furrowed his brows. \"This should not be possible. The energy required would b e more than the output of all UNSC assets combined.\"\n\n\"It's not possible with our technology,\" Dr. Halsey  said. \"Download that messageput it on speaker while the probe is still i n range.\"\n\nA woman's voice filled the bunker. It was static-fi lled and choppy.\n\nAnd unmistakably Cortana's.\n\n\"This is an automated message from UNSC MIL AI SERI AL NUMBER: CTN 0452-9.\n\n\"All UNSC personnel heed and stand to.\n\n\"I am declaring general emergency codes Bandersnatc h and Hydra.\"\n\n\"Bandersnatch\" was the code for radiological- or en ergy-based disaster. Dr. Halsey had heard this used before from planetary bo mbardment by Covenant plasma and during the UNSC nuking of the Far Isle C olony to put down the rebellion of 2492.\n\n\"Hydra,\" however, she had never heard used before. It was reserved for imminent threat from biological weapons of mass des truction.\n\n\"In Amber Clad has successfully followed the Covena nt ship from New Mombassa to its destination, another Halo construct  (stellar coordinates embedded).\n\n\"We discovered there are more Halos distributed thr oughout the galaxy.\n\n\"Covenant base ship and fleet are here en masse gua rding Delta Halo.\n\n\"Parasitic infestation known as the Flood has conta minated this construct.\n\n\"Flood attempting to escape. Strategies suggest a h itherto unknown coordinating intelligence.\n\n\"Highest possible threat assessment from biological  contamination and radiological annihilation from Halo detonation.\n\"Suggest FLEETCOM neutralize the Covenant-controlle d Forerunner command vessel. Be advised SPARTAN-117 onboard.\n\n\"Additional: Suggest FLEETCOM Nova-bomb the Delta H alo system to counter the imminent biological threat.\n\n\"Message ends.\"\n\nCortana had to be using the Forerunner technology t o send this message through Slipstream space. But would any UNSC ship h ear it? They weren't designed to detect signals in the notoriously unpre dictable transdimension.\n\n\"COM probe almost out of our range,\" Endless Summer  said. \"Slipstream space matrix collapse imminent.\"\n\nDr. Halsey rapidly typed on her laptop. \"Link to th e COM probe,\" she told Endless Summer, \"and amend our message with this. C alculate a frequency shift to match Cortana's signal, and resend our message f rom the probe inside Slipspace.\"\n\n\"Linked with probe.\" Endless Summer stared into spa ce. \"Stand by.\"\n\nIf this worked, Cortana's signal would act as a tra nsluminal carrier wave. If the Slipstream space monitoring station on Earth had it s ears open, their message would get to FLEETCOM in minutes instead of weeks. Possibly in time to do some good.\n\n\"Done,\" Endless Summer announced, \"but verification  impossible. Slipstream matrix has collapsed.\"\n\nDr. Halsey sighed, hoping the amended message had g otten through, and hoping she had done the right thing.\n\nSo much depended on her lies.\n\nShe glanced at the additional message she had typed .\n\n\"HOOD, YOU'LL HAVE YOUR HANDS FULL. REVISE REQUEST:  SEND ELITE STRIKE TEAM TO RECOVER TECHNOLOGICAL ASSETS FROM ONYX. SEN D SPARTANS.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 1440 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDARS \\ SLIPSTREAM SPACE UNKNOWN VECTOR\\ ABOARD UNSC PROWLER DUSK\n\nCommander Richard Lash hovered over Lieutenant Yang 's shoulder, watching the screen for a blipwaiting for a single titanium ion to be sniffed by the sensor array on the Dusk's nose.\n\nLieutenant Yang shifted in his chair. \"Sir, it's be en fifteen minutes. I'm going to purge the collectors and recalibrate.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Lash said.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Yang smoothed over his eyebrow, a nervo us habit.\n\nFive minutes ticked off on the clock as Yang and Co mmander Lash waited.\n\n\"Accurate timekeeping\" was an oxymoron in Slipstrea m space. Still, Lash held on to some illusion that he was in control and not flying blind, chasing a trail so faint it might qualify as nonexistent after a Coven ant capital ship and the UNSC destroyer In Amber Clad.\n\nA single spark lit the screen.\n\n\"Got one,\" Lieutenant Yang cried. \"Mass spectromete r pegs it as titanium-50. Consistent with UNSC battle plate. One of ours, sir .\"\n\n\"Very good.\" Commander Lash clapped his hand on Yan g's shoulder. \"Keep watching.\" He pushed off and drifted back to the ca ptain's chair.\n\nLash felt uneasy sitting here; it really belonged t o Captain [glesias, but he was in rehab back on Earth. Radiation treatment for six  months. This war would probably be over by then.\n\nHe sat and clicked the harness on. For better or wo rse he was in charge now.\n\nProbably for the worse, because this mission was a cross between a wild-goose chase and pure suicide.\n\nHis prowler, Dusk, had been close enough to act whe n In Amber Clad had entered the Covenant capital ship Slipspace rift as  it left New Mombassa. They were one of four UNSC ships with charged Slipspace capacitors, and nimble enough to make the transition before the overpressu re wave generated by an in-atmosphere transition crushed them.\n Miranda Keyes was the ballsiest officer in the flee t to go after that Covenant ship on her own. Was she nuts? Or trying to live up  to the legendary reputation of her father?\n\nLash would never know what that felt like. His dad had been a welder on the Cradle  at least before the Cradle had been destroy ed at Sigma Octanus earlier this year. Dad had always wanted to be a hero. He'd  gotten his wish.\n\nThe Duskwith the two frigates Redoubtable and Paris , and the corvette Coral Seahad approximated the entrance vector of the Cove nant ship, hoping to find out where they were headed, that or assist In Amber  Clad in blowing her to hell.\n\nThey had been caught in the wake of the Covenant cr aft and accelerated to many times the maximum velocity of any UNSC ship in  Slipspace. A lucky break. They'd have never caught it otherwise.\n\nTechnically \"acceleration\" and \"velocity\" were the wrong terms. They didn't map to the eleven nondimensions of Slipspace, but C ommander Lash had never gotten the knack of thinking so abstractly. He left  that to his NAV Officer.\n\nWhat this wake effect meant in concrete terms was C ovenant ships traveled geometrically faster from point to point than their  ships. One more strategic advantage the aliens possessed.\n\nCommander Lash surveyed his bridge crew. His first.  Lieutenant Commander Julian Waters, sat next to him, scanning engine out put semantics, his forehead furrowed with worry lines. At NAV sat Lieutenant Be thany Durruno running diagnostics, nodding off. She had ice in her veins,  and sadly that calm-under disaster fortitude was wasted in Slipspace. At the sensor station was Lieutenant Joe Yang; his youngest officer had seen more battle  in the last four years than most saw in a lifetime, and he had suffered for it.  Back in Engineering was Lieutenant Commander Xaing Cho, doing his job and t he job of three other technicians.\n\nThey had all pulled double shifts, and the waiting was started to wear at them all.\n\nThe Dusk had been caught between rotations when the  Covenant hit Earth. The ship normally had a crew of ninety They had to make  do with a complement of forty-three.\n\nAnd they were alone now, too.\n\nThe Redoubtable, the Paris, and the Coral Sea, with  their larger engines, had moved ahead in the Slipstream wake. They'd passed o ut of limited COM range an hour ago.\n\"Sensor hits correlated, sir,\" Yang said.\n\nA graph appeared on Commander Lash's display, plott ing frequency and temporal distributions of their ion trail. It was a  power-law decay.\n\nThat was the last ion they could expect. The trail was as cold as liquid helium. That meant either the Dusk had lost In Amber Clad  or it had dropped out of Slipspace.\n\n\"Stand by for transition,\" Lash said.\n\nHis officers snapped to, readying the Dusk to drop into the normal interstellar vacuumor into the middle of a star or planet, for a ll they knew. There had been no time to plot a course.\n\nCommander Lash took a deep breath. \"Jettison the HO RNET mines,\" he told Lieutenant Commander Waters.\n\n\"Sir?\" he asked.\n\n\"Do it. Pull denotation codes and send then down.\"\n\nWaters sighed explosively and nodded his head. \"Yes , sir. Understood.\"\n\nHis junior bridge officers exchanged a look, but th ey all knew they had to lose the nukes. They were going to remain stealthed, no matter what the cost, and fissile materials exiting Slipspace lit up with Che renkov radiationa signal flare to any Covenant ship within light-minutes.\n\n\"Mines away,\" Waters whispered.\n\n\"All external power off-line,\" Lash ordered. \"Ablat ive baffles locked. Recheck engine dampers, and full power to counter sensor ar ray.\"\n\nThe crew scrambled to make the Dusk virtually invis ible.\n\nGreen LEDs lit on Commander Lash's status board. \"T ransition,\" he said.\n\n\"Stand by,\" Lieutenant Durruno said from her NAV st ation.\n\n\"Coordinating with Lieutenant Commander Cho in the core room. In four, three, twonow.\"\n\nStars snapped on the forward viewscreen. A sun blaz ed to the left.\n \"New course zero three zero by zero three zero,\" Co mmander Lash said. \"One quarter full.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir,\" Durruno said, \"answering new heading.\"\n\nIt was a good idea to alter trajectory on a transit ion exit in case some telltale sign of their appearance manifested. Over the seven  years he'd been on a prowler. Lash had learned that this class of ship w as one of the slowest, most underpowered, and most poorly armed vessels in the UNSC fleet. Invisibility was their only defense.\n\nLieutenant Yang's display lit with carrier wave pat terns. \"Signals,\" Yang cried.\n\"Not our guys. Too manyat least a hundred of them!\"\n\nDurruno at NAV craned her head for a better look, a nd then snapped back to her station. \"Signal origin near the fourth planet, \" she said. \"Magnifying and enhancing starboard camera view.\"\n\nThe central screen panned to starboard and the imag e magnified a thousandfold.\n\nThere were a hundred or more Covenant ships, a Cove nant superbase or orbital city and dwarfing all this was a ring-world constru ct as large as a moon.\n\nFor a split second. Lash couldn't think. He was all  animal, fight or flight with an overwhelming portion of his mind focused on the fli ght portion of that imperative.\n\nHe snapped out of it.\n\n\"Yang,\" he whispered.\n\nYang stared, mouth agape at the overwhelming Covena nt forces.\n\n\"Yang!\"\n\n\"Sir, yes.\" Yang shook his head clear. \"I'm here, s ir.\"\n\n\"Good. Triple-check all countersensor packages. Mak e absolutely sure we are locked down tight. Very tight.\"\n\n\"On it, sir.\"\n\n\"Durruno,\" Commander Lash said, \"move us dead slow into that asteroid field, at two point four AU.\"\n \"Aye, sir.\" Her hands shook, but she plotted the ne w course.\n\n\"There's no trace of In Amber Clad,\" Lieutenant Com mander Waters said, staring into his display. \"Or the Redoutable, Paris , or Coral Sea.\"\n\n\"Detecting multiple energy spikes,\" Yang said, his voice now oddly steady.\n\"They may have spotted us, sir.\"\n\n\"Make ready to go to full power,\" Commander Lash sa id.\n\nThe bridge officers tensed.\n\n\"Sir,\" Waters said. \"I see weapons discharging in t he region directed plasma fire, energy projectors. None targeting us.\"\n\nLash magnified the viewscreen until the images of C ovenant ships blurred. Flashes of fire and lances of lightning crisscrosse d the dark.\n\nLash whispered, \"Who the hell are they shooting at? \"\n\nMajor Voro 'Mantakree drew his needier pistol and f ired at the back of Ship Master Tano's head.\n\nThe crystalline spines thucked into the Ship Master 's skull and explodedspraying blood, brains, and bits of skull over the command c onsole.\n\nThe magnitude of his treachery was unprecedented. W hat Sangheili1 Major would dare disobey a Ship Master who had led seven glorious campaigns against their enemies? Who would murder his superior office r on the bridge of the one of the fleet's most renowned cruisers?\n\nBut how could Voro let this continue?\n\n1 Sangheili: the Elite name for their race\n\nTano 'Inanraree had lost his mind, literally and fi guratively. And while religious fervor was laudable under most conditions, it was n ot if it killed the entire crew of the Incorruptible and destroyed their race.\n\nVoro stepped over the body of his friend and former  commanding officer and bolstered his weapon.\n\nThe U-shaped bridge seemed somehow smaller now, the  blue-white light a little harsher than it had a moment ago, and the ho lographic consoles appeared covered in icons he couldn't understand. Voro blink ed his nictating membranes and looked with cleared eyes at the bridge officers . Sangheili from the respected Dn'end LegionUruo Loso naee at Operations and Zasses Jeqkogoee at Navigationstared with maws agap e, shocked into inaction. Y'gar Pewtrunoee at the Communications/Sensors stat ion nodded with understanding.\n\nBut the bonded Lekgolo2 pair responsible for securi ty on the Incorruptible tensed; their armored bulks took two thudding steps  toward Major Voro. Their spines fanned in anger. One of their duties was to protect the Ship Master, and failing that, they were to enact revenge on his ass assin.\n\nIn truth, the bonded pair, Paruto Xida Konna and Wa runa Xida Yotno, were a mystery to Voro. He had seen them tear enemies in h alf with their \"hands\"\nwhile in the midst of a mindless blood rage, and af terward pause to recite war poetry. How could any truly understand the Lekgolo?  Inside their thick armor swarmed orange wormsa colony gestalt as alien as an ything Voro had ever encountered.\n\nMore pragmatically, they were indestructibleat leas t to Voro with his one pistol. Lekgolo armor could withstand multiple plasma bolts  before even warming.\n\nVoro stood tall and unapoiogetic.\n\nThe Lekgolo stared at him. Their forms shuddered an d the eel\n\n2 Lekgolo: the Elite name for the Hunter race colonies pulsed in harmonic unison to produce a sub sonic rumble, words that were more felt than actually heard. \"A mercy kill,\"  they said together. \"You have done the Ship Master an honor.\"\n\nVoro resumed breathing. They were his now to comman d and to send into battle. As was the Reverence-class cruiser Incorrup tible.\n\n\"Does anyone else have words about this?\" Voro aske d his bridge officers.\n\nThey looked to one another.\n\nY'gar, the eldest bridge officer, stepped forward. His sole vanity was his left eye, which had been blinded in combat. He had refus ed to have the cataract repaired.\n\n\"Tano was devout to the end,\" Y'gar said. \"But his reasoning, in light of recent events, was not sound. This was regrettable, but ne cessary Ship Master.\"\n There it was: Voro was Master now. All the honor hi s. All the responsibility his as well.\n\nHe glanced at Tano, spilling his lifeblood over the  command console, and set a hand on his mentor's shoulder, a parting gesture. \" Remove him,\" Voro whispered.\n\nY'gar made a chuffing sound and three Unggoy3 appea red and carried Tano off the bridge, sponging up the remains as they went.\n\nVoro knocked one with a cleaning rag aside. \"Let hi s blood remain there,\" he said.\n\nThe Unggoy scurried away.\n\nThe stain would forever remain on Voro's soul; it c ould stay on the deck as well, a reminder of the price he had paid for their survi val.\n\nVoro then stared at the central holographic viewer:  at the insanity that surrounded the Incorruptible.\n\n3 Unggoy: the Elite name for the Grunt race\n\nThe Second Fleet of Homogeneous Clarity was in chao s; more than a hundred ships maneuvered on random vectors, barely avoiding  collisions, and in the distance the silver arc of the Forerunner Halo cons tructominous, breathtaking, and the source of this trouble.\n\nIt had made Ship Master Tano lose his mind. He belo nged to a fringe sect, the Governors of Contrition, who believed all Forerunne r creations were sacrosanct. This even applied to the parasitic Flood infestatio n on Halo. Tano had reasoned that the Forerunners had created a perfect life-for m, and it was therefore their duty to protect, even embrace, it. He had ord ered the Incorruptible closer to the Halo ring to allow the disease aboard .\n\nThat would never occur while Voro breathed. The Flo od was an infection that had to be cleansed. There was nothing remotely \"hol y\" about it.\n\nThe Incorruptible shuddered.\n\n\"Plasma on the port lateral shield,\" Uruo Losonaee said, leaning over his OPS station. His strained voice betrayed that he had on ly recently been initiated in combat. \"Successfully deflected, but the shield has  collapsed.\"\n\nThe hull reverberated once more.\n \"Strike on the aft shield,\" Uruo said. \"It's holdin g.\"\n\n\"One-third power forward,\" Voro said. \"Roll to pres ent starboard shields.\" He turned to Zasses on NAV. \"Trace those firing soluti ons and get me a target!\"\n\n\"Calculating, sir,\" Zasses said. \"Solution obtained . Two targets.\"\n\nA holographic frigate pair appeared on the deck and  sped toward them: the Tenebrous and the Twilight Compunction, commanded b y the alpha Jiralhanae4, Gargantum.\n\nThis was Voro's other problem.\n\n4 Jiralhanae: the Elite name for the Brute race\n\nIn the confusion caused by the departing Prophets, the Sangheili's ancient feud with the Jiralhanae had escalated into xenocide.\n\nThe frigate pair moved as one, accelerating, their lateral lines warmed, and released a second salvo of plasma that arced toward  the Incorruptible.\n\n\"Maneuver one two zero by zero seven five,\" Voro sh outed.\n\n\"Coming about,\" Zasses answered, and the stars whee led through the holographic view space. \"Sir, that places the carri er Lawgiver between us and them.\"\n\n\"The Lawgiver has fully generated lateral shields,\"  Voro growled. \"They can take the hit.\"\n\nThe frigate pair split to miss the carrier in their  flight path. The enemy ships, and their plasma torpedoes, became obscured by the bulk of the sleek carrier.\n\n\"Heat lines four and seven,\" Voro ordered, \"and pre pare to target the Tenebrous as it emerges from the carrier's shadow. Divert engine power to the fore energy projector and make ready to (ire at ful l capacity. Estimate targeting solution based on last known trajectory.\"\n\nU ruo nodded and made the weapons ready.\n\nThe alpha Jiralhanae Ship Master was savage, but he  was ef-fective. Voro could not afford to merely wound one of them.\n\nThe edges of the Lawgiver's shield shimmered, dispe rsing the plasma into fiery wispsan inconvenience for them a Hfe-saving maneuve r for the Incorruptible.\n The Jiralhanae frigate attack pair appeared, one ov er and one under the carrier.\n\n\"Fire all lines,\" Voro ordered.\n\nThe lights on the bridge dimmed as plasma heated an d flowed from their lateral banks and arced forward in two bloody strea ks across the dark.\n\n\"Counter guiding signals detected!\" Y'gar shouted. \"Attempt-ing to disrupt.\"\n\nThe plasma blots drifted back and forth and diffuse d into smears in a signal tug-of-war between them and the Jiralhanae. Voro ha d not anticipated they had such abilities. Stolen, no doubt so they wouldn 't know all the system's intricacies.\n\n\"Reprogram to home in on their signal lock,\" Voro s aid.\n\n\"Yes,\" Y'gar murmured, and his hands moved algorith m blocks over this console.\n\"Lock reestablished on new signal,\" he said.\n\nTheir plasma smoothed, concentratedand accelerated.\n\nThe Jiralhanae frigate turned into their shot, pres enting a smaller target.\n\nA desperate maneuver and not quick enough.\n\nThe frigate's shield heated, dispersing the first b olt of superheated ionized gas. The second strike hit bare hull, melting the shield  arrays and sensors, boiling away layers of smooth blue armor-alloy.\n\n\"Fire energy projector,\" Voro commanded, \"dead-cent er targeting solution.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir,\" Uruo said. \"Projector spinning upfiring .\"\n\nThe bridge lights flickered to ultraviolet backup a s all the In-cormpdble's power drained into one lance of destruction. It lit the s pace around the battle, a cleansing illumination. The Tenebrous appeared froz en in time for a moment before the energy tore through its hull, blasting i nternal decks to atoms amidships, and then the aft plasma coilsshattering the ship into a haze of glowing particles.\n\nThe surviving Jiralhanae frigate, the Twilight Comp unction, however, was untouched and it continued toward them.\n\n\"Recycling engine power,\" Zasses said. \"Fifteen sec onds until engine back online.\"\nFifteen seconds could be a lifetime in a close-quar ter space battle.\n\n\"Depressurize Seraph launch bay fourteen,\" Voro sho uted. \"Dump plasma from auxiliary coils into the lateral lines.\"\n\n\"Plasma diverted,\" Uruo answered, his face flushing  purple. \"Emergency depressurizationnow.\"\n\nA tremble ran through the ship as the bay vented. P ropelled by the sudden outgassing of their atmosphere, they turned toward the surviving frigate. The Incorruptible's lateral lines appeared to heat.\n\nThe Twilight Compunction's engines flared and it tu rned, maneuvering behind a nearby destroyer for cover.\n\nThey were retreatingas they should when presented w ith superior firepower even if that power was an illusion.\n\nVoro wondered if the Jiralhanae Ship Master, Gargan tum, had been aboard the Tenebrous, or if he had sent it ahead as a decoy.\n\nThe carrier, the Lawgiver, turned, and lasers stitc hed the frigate. Several beams painted its hull, heating the shields before another destroyer crossed the line of fire.\n\n\"Main coil reenergized,\" Uruo said.\n\n\"New course two seven zero by zero zero zero. Break  fleet formation. We cannot fight without destroying our allies as well as our enemies.\"\n\nThe Incorruptible turned and accelerated to a posit ion three hundred kilometers over the fleet. Several ships fired upon  one another, but many just drifted, unsure what action to take.\n\nTheir leaders, the Prophets, were missing; some sai d they had left to partake in the Great foumey. Rumors abounded they had actua lly aligned with the Jiralhanae.\n\nThere was, however, an even greater threat.\n\nThe holographic arc of Halo appeared on the main vi ewer. Four destroyers stood near, abeam, and targeted hundreds of smaller  craftPhantoms, Spirits, and even Bansheesthat attempted to evacuate the sur face of the ring structure. They burned these craft with plasma bombardment and  flashes of laser fire but there were too many trying to escape. Nothing could be allowed to leave that place. If a single\n\nFlood-infected vessel transitioned to Slipspacethei r existence would end. The plague would never again be contained.\n\n\"Get me a fleetwide COM channel,\" he told Y'gar. \"U se the Prophets' own frequencies.\"\n\n\"Signal acquired,\" Y'gar said. \"Ready for fleetwide  broadcast.\"\n\nVoro spoke: \"This is Ship Master Voro 'Mantakree of  the Incorruptible to all loyal vessels in the Second Fleet of Homogeneous Clarity.\n\n\"Brothers, we must cast out our confusion, and ceas e falling upon one another. The holy relic is tainted. We must burn the corrupt ion before it takes us all.\n\n\"Zasses,\" he ordered, \"send coordinating target sol utions to the fleet.\" He motioned over the main holographic viewer, selectin g portions of the Halo ring where dozens of Spirits were slipping away. \"We mus t stop them before they make contact with one of those destroyers.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir. Targeting solutions sent.\"\n\nThe majority of the fleet, sluggish and disoriented , slowly aligned into a coherent fighting force: plasma arced from a hundre d ships, and laser fire weaved lacy patterns on the dark of space.\n\nUnder such a destructive salvo of combined fire, th e smaller ships burnedleaving only debris and skeletal frames.\n\n\"Do not close with the targets,\" Voro said over FLE ETCOM. \"Or the disease will spread.\" His hands grasped the command console.\n\nTo the Lekgolo pair Voro whispered, \"Sweep the ship , continuous patrol, until I order otherwise. Report any hull breach no matter h ow slight. Any deaths. Anything that might be Flood infection.\"\n\nThe Xida Lekgolos nodded and they lumbered off the bridge, hands flexing in anticipation.\n\n\"Uruo,\" Voro said, \"ready the self-destruct sequenc e. We must be prepared.\"\n\nUruo nodded, his maw working nervously, but he set plasma coils to detonation mode. \"All ready,\" he replied.\n \"One of the destroyers near the ring is hailing the  fleet,\" Y'a-gar said.\n\"Rapturous Arc.\"\n\nStatic crackled and over that a whisper; \"This is S hip Master of the Rapturous Arc. We are overwhelmed. Do not allow them to make us their instruments. I will not\"\n\nThe signal terminated.\n\nThe Rapturous Arc moved, wheeled toward the stars, and then continued to turn toward the other three destroyers abeam of Hal o. It touched one of its brother ships, energy shields shimmered, frequencie s matched, and the Flood infected ship released a swarm of bulbous carrier f orms.\n\nOver FLEETCOM Voro said, \"Retarget. Burn those ship s.\"\n\nVoro then ordered Uruo, \"Heat lines and target proj ector.\"\n\n\"Targeting solutions ready,\" Uruo announced.\n\nVoro could take no chance. \"Fire,\" he said.\n\nPlasma and energy projectors fired from a dozen nea rby ships and painted the two vessels. The destroyers' shields collapseddecks  mushroomed outward from the aft engine compartmentsa wave of illumination t hat flared white, and then cooled to smoky afterimages.\n\n\"New targets,\" he told Uruo, indicating the other t wo destroyers near the ring.\n\"Coordinate targeting solutions throughout the flee t.\n\nUruo hesitated only a moment, and then nodded. \"Loc ked and ready. Targeting solutions sent, sir.\"\n\nThose last two ships had been too close to their in fected counterparts. There was no margin for error here. Not even a single Flo od-infected cell could escape.\n\n\"Sir,\" Y'gar said, and stood straighter, \"targeted destroyers have dissipated their shields.\"\n\nVoro nodded, nearly overcome with the nobility of h is brother Ship Masters.\n\n\"Send the order fleetwide,\" he whispered. \"Fire all  lines and lasers. Discharge projectors.\"\n Plasma lines heated, detached, and swarmed off the hull of the Incorruptible and the Second Fleet. Energy projectors fired and p eeled off the ships' armor in a flash. Lasers peppered their boiling hulls, and a ir vented, sending it into a tumble. Plasma bolts impacted, squirting through th e holes, and igniting the vessels.\n\n\"Another round,\" Voro commanded. \"Burn them to ashe s.\"\n\nMore plasma impacted and the doomed vessels spun to ward the Halo structure, captured by its gravity. It would be their pyre.\n\n\"Back the Incorruptible off,\" Voro ordered. \"Thirty  thousand kilometers.\"\n\nOver INTERSHIPCOM Voro linked to the Xida Lekgolo p air. \"Report.\"\n\nParuto spoke: \"No breaches detected. All ship perso nal accounted for. No taint exists.\"\n\nVoro exhaled. There might yet be hope they could su rvive.\n\n\"Detecting the Twilight Compunction, sir,\" Y'gar sa id, \"and two other Jiralhanae frigates on an intercept course. Their lateral line s are hot.\"\n\nThe crisis was not yet over but already they return ed to the old hatreds. Voro scrutinized the fleet and saw others turning and fi ring on ships they had only moments ago fought side by side with.\n\n\"Make ready to transition to Slipspace,\" Voro order ed.\n\n\"With respect, sir,\" Y'gar whispered. \"We are leavi ng the battle?\"\n\n\"To stay here and fight until we are all dead is ma dness. Everything had changed. We will heed the summons of Imperial Admir al Xytan 'jar Wattinree. We must warn them what has happened the jiralhanae,  the Flood.\"\n\n\"Slipspace matrix energized,\" Zasses said. He shook  his head, confused.\n\"Anomalies detected in dimension YED-4, sir cause u ndetermined.\"\n\n\"Can we safely transition?\" Voro asked.\n\n\"Unknown, sir.\"\n\nSlipstream space dimensions didn't exhibit \"anomali es.\" Was this something caused by the holy ring? There was no time to inves tigate. They'd have to risk it.\n \"Set course and execute transition,\" Voro told him.  \"Salia system, outpost world Joyous Exultation.\"\n\nThe UNSC prowler Dusk hovered in the shadow zone of  the fourth planet's moon.\n\nIt was so quiet on the bridge Commander Lash heard his own breathing and heartbeat. Every screen showed the battle raging am ong the Covenant forces.\n\nMusic from the last act of Der Ring des Nihelungen played in his mindGotterdammerung, Ragnarok, Armageddon the end o f the entire goddammed universe.\n\n\"Confirm all recorders on high-def capture mode,\" L ash said.\n\nDurruno double-checked her station. \"Confirmed, sir ,\" she whispered.\n\n\"Sir,\" Lieutenant Yang said, \"as ordered, capacitor s charged, and all secure to enter Slipspace on vector tango.\"\n\nLash and Lieutenant Commander Waters stared at the viewscreens, watching the Covenant fleet destroy itself.\n\n\"Whatever the hell is happening out there,\" Waters remarked, \"at least they haven't spotted us.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Yang asked, \"what do you think is happening? \"\n\n\"There's only one thing it could be,\" Lash answered . \"A Covenant civil war.\"\n\n\n\nSECTION V BLUE TEAM CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE\n1550 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR] \\ SOL SYSTEM, PLANET EARTH \\ CARIBBEAN OCEAN, NEAR CUBAN COAST\n\nBlue TeamSPARTANS-104, -058, and -043sat on the blo od tray of the Pelican as it roared over the ocean, skimming a few meters ove r the water. The aft hatch was lowered, jammed open because a plasma shot had melted the hydraulics. Fred watched the jets chum the water behind them, h appy to be above the water instead of under it.\n\nIn the last two weeks Blue Team had been deployed o n numerous zero-gee ops to repel the Covenant ships in orbit over the Earth . They had then been dispatched to Mount Erebus in the Antartic where th ey neutralized a Covenant excavation with a HAVOK tactical nuke. They had the n redeployed off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula for a swim. Covenant force s had been searching the seafloor for something. What preciselya holy relic,  a geological sampleno one knew, and it didn't matter. What mat-lered was when  they got what they wanted, the Covenant then his-lorically glassed the  planet to remove any human \"infestation.\"\n\nBlue Team had stopped both operations.\n\nFred looked over the ocean and wondered how long th ey could keep the Covenant at bay in space. His gaze dropped to the c orrugated floor of the Pelican. It had lived up to its nickname \"blood tra y\" stained with splashes of congealed dark red. Good soldiers had died today.\n\nOn his heads-up display the TACMAP showed the edge of\n\nCuba ahead. Fred exhaled and cleared his mind. They  were close to their third target: the Centennial Orbital Elevator.\n\nThere had been scattered reports that the Covenant had invaded the facility before all contact with COE Control had been lost.\n\nFred stood and stretched. Linda and Will rose as we ll, sensing their brief downtime was over.\n\nLinda opened one of the crates they had obtained fr om Base Segundo Terra near Mexico City. Within was a new SRS99C sniper ri fle. She dissembled it, cleaned each part, applied graphite lubricant, and reassembled the gun with mechanical precision. She then examined the Oracle N-variant scope that had accompanied the rifle, and made microadjustments wi th a fine set of screwdrivers.\n\nWilliam tore into the box of ammunition and loaded magazines, sorting them by frag and AP types.\n\nFred opened an \"egg carrier\" box and divided up fra gmentation and concussion grenades into three satchels.\n\nHe found an ONI datapad and turned it on. It had ne w Covenant-English translation matrices and the latest ONI intrusion a nd counterintrusion software. Updates courtesy of Cor-tana. He tossed it into his  bag.\n\nIn the cockpit. Sergeant Laura \"Smokes\" Tanner flew , while her Crew Chief, Corporal Jim Higgins, fiddled with the COM, trying to filter though the reports of the action in space and on the ground. Tanner po pped a black bubble and continued to chew the contraband tobacco gum so pop ular with NCO fliers.\n\n\"So then,\" Tanner said to Higgins, \"In Amber Clad g oes after the damned Covenant battleship as it did an in-atmosphere Slip space jump! Flattened New Mombassa. I don't know what those split-chinned fre aks were after, but they sure didn't stick around after they found itthat's all I heard. CENTCOM channels are dropping off line. That can't be good.\"\n\nFred looked to Linda and Will.\n\nLinda made a short lateral cut with her hand, the \" stay cool\" gesture.\n\nThey couldn't worry about the larger strategic pict ure. They had to stay focused on their part. Secure the orbital elevator,  and win this war one battle at a time.\n\nFred spied the Cuban coast ahead: surf and white sa nds.\n\nThe Pelican screamed over jungle tangle. Fifty kilo meters in the distance a line stretched from ground to clouds: the UNSC Centennia l Orbital Elevator, or as the locals called it: Tallo Negro del Maiz, the \"st alk of black corn.\"\n\nIt was two hundred years old, antiquated but one of  the few surviving OEs capable of heavy lifting on Earth. In the last two weeks, nuclear devices slated for conversion to peaceful purposes had been transp orted to Cuba. Recent actions had depleted the UNSC nuclear stockpile, an d these older, low-yield bombs were all they had left.\n\nSergeant Tanner continued, \"So then the Covenant fl eet really starts to tear into the orbital defenses. It's getting ugly up the re. Major skirmishes with the Second, Seventh, and Sixteenth Fleets.\"\n\n\" Just as long as the plasma doesn't start dropping ,\" Hig-gins replied.\n\nTanner stopped chewing her gum. \"Multiple silhouett es ahead. Banshee fliers. Whoa\" She craned her head, looking up.\n\nFred moved to the cockpit and followed her gaze. Up  the orbital elevator, past a whisper haze of clouds, a pair of dots each a kil ometer-and-a-half-long Covenant shiporbited.\n\n\"What the hell are they doing up there?\" Tanner whi spered.\n\nCovenant orbital support complicated this mission. Ground forces might have aerial support, heavy armor, or artillery But Covenant didn't need the stalk to transport an invasion force. They'd just land their ships or use grav beams. Why were they here? Blue Team would have to move in closer b efore he could discern their motives.\n\nFred studied the radar images. \"There's a hole in t he Banshee patrol pattern.\"\nHe tapped the far edge of the screen. \"Put us down here. We'll go in by foot.\"\n\n\"Your call,\" Tanner said dubiously. She pushed the throttle and the Pelican accelerated, dropping so it now decapitated palm tr ees.\n\n\"Make ready for hot drop, Spartans.\" She spun the P elican around and sank into the jungle. \"Call if you need a lift. Blue Team. Go od hunting.\"\n\nFred, Linda, and Will grabbed their gear and jumped  out the back, six meters to the sandy ground.\n\nThe Pelican roared away.\n\nFred pointed northeast and they moved silently thou gh the tropical brush, and entered the shadow of Tallo Negro del Maiz.\n\nA half kilometer from the elevator complex, the jun gle had been cleared and replaced by concrete, asphalt, and warehouses. Towe ring freight container cranes stood instead of coconut trees.\n\nFred heard the dull pounding steps of a Covenant Sc arab attack platform. He spotted the lumbering behemoth as it crashed throug h a warehouse, tearing steel walls like tissue paper.\n\n\"Trouble,\" he muttered over TEAMCOM.\n\n\"Opportunity,\" Will countered.\n\nLinda kept her comments to herself and methodically  wrapped the barrel of her new sniper rifle with brown and green rags. She  lay in the scrub, powered on her Oracle scope, and sighted down its length.\n\n\"UNSC personnel down,\" she reported. \"Thermals cold . All dead. Making out sixno, a dozen Covenant moving in groups of four ca rrying cargo pods. Not Elites. Brutes.\"\n\nFred paused, remembering the gorillalike creatures from their op on Unyielding Hierophant. A single Brute had wrestled John in his MJOLNIR armor and almost won. Not as ba d as facing Covenant Hunters, but Hunters only came two at a time.\n\n\"Where are they going?\" Fred asked.\n\nShe shifted her sight. \"Elevator. They've got an as cent car half full.\"\n\n\"Switch to neutron detector,\" Fred suggested.\n\nLinda twisted a dial on the Oracle scope. \"Cargo po ds are hot,\" she confirmed.\n\n\"Nukes?\" Will said. \"Covenant don't use nukes. They  have an edict about using\n'heretic' weapons.\"\n\nHe was right. Fred had seen Elites, their weapons d epleted of charge, die rather than touch fully loaded UNSC assault rifles at their feet.\n\nBut Brutes weren't Elites.\n\n\"Estimate ten minutes before that ascent car is loa ded to capacity,\" Linda said.\n\nFred had to think fast, or failing that, just act. No, he resisted that impulse. Better to figure this out, at least tactically, bef ore he had his team rush in.\n\n\"We could take a dozen Brutes,\" Will said. \"Linda c ould snipe them. We could move in and engage one at a time.\"\n\n\"Too slow,\" Fred told him. \"And they'd send for rei nforcements. The ascent car could be on its way up the stalk before we could ge t to it.\"\n\nLinda moved her aim from side to side. \"Got a parki ng lot. Warthogs, trucks, APCs a gasoline tanker truck.\"\n\nFred and Will exchanged a glance.\n\n\"It's an old-school rebel,\" Fred murmured, \"but I l ike it. Linda, make a hole. Will, you introduce that tanker to the Scarab. I'll secur e the ascent car. You two meet me after the bang.\" He took a deep breath, rec alling how tough these monsters were. \"They use auto-grenade launchers,\" h e told them, \"and they're too strong and tough to engage in close quarters. T ry for the head shotat range.\"\n\n\"Roger that,\" Will said.\n Linda's green status light winked on in reply. She was entering her sniper icy cold state of Zen no-thought.\n\nFred nodded to Will and they ran in opposite direct ions along the edge of the brush. Fred stopped when he was a kilometer from Li nda's position, and then he sent his green status signal.\n\nA moment later. Will's status burned green.\n\nFred rechecked his assault rifle, his extra magazin es, and then tensed preparing to run.\n\nA patrol of three Brutes moved along the edge of th e facility. They were smart, keeping to the shadows, glancing back and forth, sn iffing.\n\nThere were three distant coughsthree splashes of bl ood and three Brutes, each missing their right eye and a fair portion of their  ugly face, crumpled.\n\nThere was no warning light from Linda, so she had n o additional targets in sight. She'd soon reposition higher to get a better view.\n\nThis was Fred's opening.\n\nHe sprinted to the base, and ducked around the corn er of a warehousenearly bumping into a Brute running toward his position.\n\nIt towered over him, covered in thick slabs of musc le and dull blue rhinolike hide.\n\nFred fired without thinking, a full-auto burst, dea d center of mass.\n\nThe Brute rushed him, unfazed.\n\nFred stepped into the beast's charge, striking at i ts thick neck with the butt of his rifle. It connected.\n\nThe Brute reeled back and roared.\n\nFred unloaded the remaining rounds in his magazine into the Brute's open mouth.\n\nThe Brute snarled a mouthful of shattered, smolderi ng teeth and took two steps toward Fred and fell.\n\nFred reflexively reloaded his MA5B, and slowed his breathing. He grabbed the Brute's blade-tipped RPG. His motion tracker should have picked the Brute up.  Maybe his recent saltwater dunking and ice encrustation had caused a problem i n the MJOLNIR system.\n\nFred rebooted his tracker; it flickered, and then s howed five enemy contacts moving fast in his direction.\n\nThis could get more complicated.\n\nHe heard the rumble of a diesel engine, turned, and  saw the blur of an eighteen-wheel tanker crashing through the gate and  guardhouse.\n\nWill was about to make things very hot,\n\nFred ran, hugging the walls of the warehouse. He tu rned the next corner and watched a fireball envelop the fifty-five-meter-tal l Scarab walkerthe tanker truck crushed under one \"foot.\"\n\nThe Scarab ignited, its board rector breached, spew ing white-blue plasma down the streets, turning asphalt to flame, and mel ting steel-clad buildings.\n\nWill's status light flickered green.\n\nFred moved toward the orbital elevator dead ahead.\n\nNestled in the center of the tower support, nanowir e cables stretched to anchor points from a hundred meters to kilometers d istant, and lines of elevator cars waited in a queue.\n\nThe cars were usually loaded by crane and rail with  fiberglass cargo pods. Today however, three Brutes wrestled crates into th e car, secured them with ropes, and protected them with Sty-rofoam wedges.\n\nFred shook his headas if those nukes would go off i f jostled. You could set a bomb off in there and their hardened cases would ba rely be scratched. Without the detonator codes, those older nukes were no more  dangerous than paperweights.\n\nThe Brutes entered the car, and started to force th e wide doors shut.\n\nFred flashed his green status light to Will and Lin da. He couldn't wait. He had to stop those Brutes now, bef ore they rolled up the stalkout of reach.\n He slung his assault rifle and hefted his captured grenade launcher. He fired two projectiles arced into the elevator.\n\nFred sprinted for the car and its closing doors.\n\nDetonations flashed inside.\n\nFred jumpedtwisted sideways, scraping through the s light space between the doors.\n\nHe landed, rolled to his feet, and saw the open-maw ed expressions of the three stunned Brutes. He leveled his rifle and shot  one in the face.\n\nFred turned as the other blinked and charged him. H e blasted it point-blank between the eyes.\n\nThe Brute bowled him over, and its fists came down in twin hammer blows that stunned Fred and drained his shields to a quarter c harge.\n\nBlood streamed from its snarling face and then it f inally registered the rounds that had penetrated its thick skull. It toppled upo n Fred, inert.\n\nThe last Brute pulled the body off, and pointed a g renade launcher at Fred's faceplate.\n\nFred's rifle was missing. He tried to shake off the  disorientation from the double knockout blow. His head felt like it was fil led with biofoam.\n\nThe Brute seemed to grin.\n\nTwo soft puffs sounded.\n\nThe Brute stiffened and collapsed to the deck, a pa ir of holes spraying blood from the base of its head.\n\nShadows crossed the slight opening between the door s.\n\nWill and Linda slipped inside. Will moved straight to the car's manual-override panel. Linda's sniper rifle still smoldered.\n\n\"Company's coming fast,\" she said and then shot eac h Brute once more. \"I hope this car can still move.\"\n\nFred regained his senses.\n The inside of the car was a mess. The grenades had busted every crate and punched rents into the walls. A dozen conical warhe ads lay scattered, but intact, on the deck.\n\nFred took up position by the door and looked out.\n\nThree Wraith tanks crushed a path through the compl ex, heading their way. In the sky. Banshee fliers circled.\n\n\"Here\" Fred dug into his satchel and handed Will th e ONI datapad.\n\nWill booted the intrusion software and cut through the elevator's control software. \"Hang on,\" he said. \"Maximum acceleration .\"\n\nThe climbing motors engaged and high-frequency scre ams rattled the car.\n\n\"Ahthe clutch,\" Will noted and pressed a button.\n\nA jolt of upward acceleration hit. Fred, Linda, and  Will dropped to all fours, and the car groaned and pinged.\n\nFred rolled over and looked out the open doors. The  ground dropped away; the Wraith tanks looked like toys.\n\nWould they fire on the stalk? Or would they gather forces and follow them with another car?\n\n\"Will\" he said.\n\n\"I'm on it.\" Will returned to the override panel. \" Interfacing with Stalk Control. Jamming the sequencing tracks. That should slow the m down.\"\n\nLinda eased next to Fred by the open doors. She set  a tiny satellite dish down and it opened like a rose bud. \"Getting a UNSC netw ork handshake,\" she reported.\n\n\"Raise CENTCOM,\" Fred told her. \"Tell them we need an extreme low-orbit extraction. We'll need a fast ship to get in before  those Covenant ships at the top can\"\n\n\"Stand by,\" Linda said. \"FLEETCOM contacting us.\" S he turned to Fred. \"It's Lord Hood on Cairo Station.\"\n\nLord Hood's unshakably confident voice came over th e COM: \"Give me a status update, Blue Team.\"\n \"Sir,\" Fred answered. \"Covenant forces at the COE w ere after the mothballed nukes being shuttled up to the fleet. We've recover ed twelve FENRIS warheads. We are en route to low orbit on the stalk. There's an entire company of Brutes on the ground with Wraith tanks and Banshee reinfor cements.\"\n\nFred craned his head skyward.\n\nAlong the arc of Earth distant sparks and lines of fire traced patterns of destruction. Long smoking trails plummeted to the g round, ending in thermal blooms of impacted ships and plasma bombardment. Th e broken hulls of UNSC ships made a bone-yard of the thermosphere. There w ere Covenant ships in orbit as well many more than Fred remembered dozens .\n\nHe increased magnification directly overhead.\n\n\"There are two Covenant destroyers at the elevator' s terminus near Station Wayward Rest.\"\n\n\"I'll send a prowler for an ELO extraction,\" Lord H ood said. \"Get your team ready\" There was an uncharacteristic hesitation, an d then he said in a lowered voice, \"One more thing has come up: a message from Dr. Catherine Halsey, and new mission.\"\n\nFred, Linda, and Will looked at one another.\n\n\"Dr. Halsey's message,\" Lord Hood explained, \"was p iggybacked on a carrier signal sent by Cortana through Slipspace. The messa ge was subsequently detected by Pluto Slipstream Space Monitoring Stati on Democritus. It will make more sense if you heard and read the material. Set to encryption scheme thirty-seven.\"\n\nFred called up his encryption codes. Thirty-seven c orresponded to code word SHEEPINWOLFSCLOTHING.\n\nHe input the code. \"Ready to receive, sir,\" Fred to ld him.\n\nCortana's message played.\n\nThe Spartans listened to her automated distress on the new Halo threat and the Flood. John had been with her There were no specifi c details other than the single mention of him on the Forerunner ship. Lord Hood had to be sending them as backup.\n\nBut then Dr. Halsey's text message appeared, explai ning the discovery of new Forerunner technologies, and the possibility of cap turing and using them to neutralize both Covenant and Flood threats. Fred reread the message; there was no mention of Ke lly. His eyes lingered on the last line: \"SEND SPARTANS.\"\n\nHe now understood why Dr. Halsey had left them, alt hough not her reckless disregard of mission protocol. She had followed som e clues found in the ruins of Reach, or perhaps within the alien blue crystal.  It was a high-risk venture that had luckily paid off. If she had discovered a cache of technology, it could turn the tide of this war.\n\nFred held up his hands, palms up, and gave a slight  shrug to his teammates, soliciting their opinions.\n\nLinda nodded. Will gave the thumbs-up sign.\n\n\"We understand, sir,\" Fred replied, \"and we're read y for redeployment. This Onyx system, though\" He rechecked the stellar coord inate embedded in the message. \"It's weeks away with the fastest UNSC cor vette.\"\n\n\"We'll just have to do our best,\" Lord Hood said. \" The Pony Express stands ready and waiting for your team. They'll jump the instant  you board. I'll send reinforcements if we can spare them.\"\n\nFred leaned out the elevator doors. Outside blue sk ies had turned to black and untwinkling stars now surrounded them. He squinted.  In medium orbit were sleek Covenant destroyers so much faster than any h uman ship.\n\n\"Sir,\" he said. \"I think I've found us a better way  there. But I'm going to need the detonation codes for these FENRIS warheads.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR\n1420 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ SOL SYSTEM, PLANET EARTH \\ MEDIUM ORBIT NEAR UNSC CENTENNIAL ORBITAL E LEVATOR (COE)\n\nFred, Linda, and Will clung to the base of the turr et, trying to make themselves as small as possible. It was not as imposing a weap on as its larger kin mounted upon Covenant battleships. With an energy coil abou t one-third the size of a Warthog it was barely capable of concealing three S partans.\n\nA great plan as long as the weapon wasn't fired.\n Two Covenant destroyers floated in the dark, their smooth hulls looking more like some deep-sea creature than spacecraft. A doze n Seraph fighter ships and a handful of shuttles angled toward their base ship s.\n\nFred gave a quick nod to the others.\n\nIt was working. At least, as well as any plan could  that involved three humans against a hundred Brutes and the combined might of two battle-ready warships.\n\nThe UNSC corvette Chalons had come, but not for a d aring exfiltration. It had been a bit of misdirection, giving the Covenant shi ps something to focus on as the Spartans transferred outside the elevator car.\n\nWhen two Covenant dropships came to collect the war heads, Fred, Linda, and Will had stealthed under one of the vessels andif t heir luck now heldthey would be ferried away.\n\nThe \"luck\" part of this mission couldn't be taken f or granted because above them sat a dozennow armed FEN RIS nuclear warheads.\n\n\"A little slice of Armageddon,\" Will had called it.\n\nTheir dropship smoothly accelerated toward one of t he destroyers, and an open shuttle bay yawned before them.\n\nHe spotted the other shuttle as they moved to the s ister vessel. Then the hull of the destroyer flashed before them and cut off th e view. Artificial gravity tugged at them.\n\nThey'd made it inside.\n\nThe three Spartans slipped from the underside of th e ship and rolled out of the shadows. Fred and Linda took cover around either fo rk of the hull. Will leapt to the top of the vessel.\n\nTen Jackals and a score of Grunts stood in the open  bay between the twin hulls of the dropshipa space usually encased by a gravime tric field, now dropped to allow them to unload their stolen cargo.\n\nBlue Team opened fire.\n\nThree Jackals dropped, but the remaining vulture-he ad aliens snapped on their shield gauntlets and fell back.\n The Grunts scattered, and Will concentrated his fir e on them, dropping six, igniting one's methane task, which exploded into a fireball and wiped out another dozen.\n\nFred and Linda combined fire on the leader Jackal i n red armor. Its shield shimmered, failed, and armor-piercing rounds penetr ated his body, making it shudder and dance.\n\nTwo Jackals screeched and primed and chucked plasma  grenades at Fred.\n\nLinda tracked them, fired once, twice, shooting bot h projectiles midtoss.\n\nThe grenades exploded into a spray of half-heated i onized gas, which made the Jackals' and Spartans' energy shields shimmer and d rain.\n\nMeanwhile, a pair of Jackals opened fire at Will; h e dodged the shots, but was forced back.\n\nA plasma bolt singed the hull near Fred, but he ign ored it and focused on the pair targeting Will. He flicked his MA5B assault ri fle to full auto and shot. Linda combined her fire and they dropped the Jackals.\n\nThe last four Jackals charged Fred and Lindaplasma pistols firing.\n\nLinda made a fist and pumped it once.\n\nFred nodded and he faded back behind the hull, leav ing a primed grenade on the ground.\n\nHe reloaded, waited two heartbeats, and then twin b lasts shuddered through the hull.\n\nFred moved up and shot the wounded Jackals struggli ng to rise off the deck.\n\nHe looked for another target.\n\nNone but the Spartans stood. The cavernous shuttle bay of the Covenant destroyer was empty save mangled and bloodied corps es of Jackals and Grunts.\n\nFred pointed at Linda and then to the nukes on the ship. They had to get those things defused. She nodded and moved toward the FEN RIS warheads.\n\nFred strode to a set of pressure doors and the near by control panel.\n\nThree Spartans couldn't take a Covenant ship; not u nder normal circumstances, but Blue Team had three advantages. First they had the element of surprise. What Covena nt captain would dream three humans might board and capture their ship?\n\nNext, Blue Team had been on an enemy warship before ; they knew the basic layout.\n\nAnd last, and most important, the Covenant were slo w to change. While their technology was centuries ahead of the most advanced  the USNC could muster, it had become more dogma than science. They didn't innovate; they imitated.\n\nCertainly they knew about the capture of the Ascend ant Justice by John. If that had happened to a UNSC ship, there would have been new security protocols enacted on every ship in the fleet to pre vent it from ever happening again.\n\nFred was betting their lives that the Covenant didn 't think like that.\n\nHe retrieved the ONI datapad, newly updated with Co venant translation software, and set it upon the control panel. Purple  lights flickered on the panel near the pad as the pad's network-infiltration prog rams booted and it slipped into the Covenant ship's system.\n\nHe was in. Just like having Cortana around without the chatter.\n\nFred searched intership messages and found an alert : the team unloading the nukes was overdo to report. A Brute team had been s ent to see what was wrong.\n\nWill and Linda took cover inside the dropship's coc kpit. Fred wished he could join them. They powered up the ship. It lifted, tur ned, and backed into the far corner to protect the nukes from the next phase of his plan.\n\nFred returned to the datapad. He had little time be fore the entire ship was alerted to the invading army of three.\n\nHe scrolled through ship systems and found the icon  he needed: an arrow encircling twin dots. Pressurized molecular oxygen.  John had shown them that one. Fred overrode the ship's self-seal bulkheadsja mmed them open. Every pressure door he securedajar. The ONI hackware chur ned as it stripped away security protocols. He primed the ship's life pods and froze their air-lock hydraulics.\n\nHe flashed his red, amber, and green status lights to give Will and Linda a countdown.\n As the green winked off, Fred gripped a handle on t he wall and clutched the datapad.\n\nAs the amber light dimmed he slaved the controls fo r the energy shield on the shuttle bay, the emergency lif e-pod releases, and the air lock overrides.\n\nOn red he punched the master release.\n\nA drum roll of thumps pounded the destroyer's hull.\n\nThe shuttle bay's energy shield vanished.\n\nA hurricane pulled at Fred, blew out cargo pods, bo dies, tools, small repair ships, and the bodies of Jackals and Grunts.\n\nHe clung to the handle; one side of the metal bar b ent and pulled free, but then the tremendous gale subsided. All the air had evacuated into space.\n\nFred rechecked his atmospheric reserves. They had b een in combat and on the COE for a long time where no one was taking tiny br eaths. His MJOLNIR suit had seven minutes of air left.\n\nHe went back to the datapad and checked: all corrid ors and rooms read zero pressure. Unless there were Covenant forces in pres sure suits, this ship was a ghost ship now.\n\nWill and Linda joined him.\n\nFred routed power and the doors slid apart.\n\nBlue Team entered the hallway and quickly made thei r way toward the bridge. Six dead Brutes lay on the floor. For all their fer ocity, even they had to breathe.\n\nFred halted at another set of pressure doors and ac cessed the control panels. Linda knelt by his side, sniper rifle butted to her  shoulder, aimed at the center of the doors. Will stood on the opposite side, a gr enade in each hand, ready to throw.\n\nFred touched his helmet to the bulkhead, and listen ed, boosting his aural sensors. Nothing.\n\nHe then keyed the doors open.\n The oval bridge was empty save for a single Covenan t Hunter who miraculously clung to the railing of the command console. Inside  the monster's eight centimeter-thick armor, its body, composed of a col ony of eel creatures, had oozed out and freeze dried onto the deck.\n\nThe three Spartans checked the life-pod hatches for  any sign of the enemy. Fred saw the open space beyond, stars  and the other Covenant destroyer turning toward them.\n\nHe moved onto the command platform and set the data pad in the interface location. Fred had to hurry; he had to move slow, t oo. Rushing now might cause errors that could cost them more time. It too k all he had to focus on language matrices, numbers, and icons.\n\nWill watched from a life-pod hatch, and whispered o ver TEAMCOM, \"Destroyer on intercept vector.\"\n\nFred accessed the datapad's memory and got the Slip space jump solution provided by a NAV Officer on Cairo Station. He hope d the Covenant ship would accept the human mathematics or they'd be stuck her e.\n\nLinda joined Will by the open hatch, peering throug h her Oracle sniper scope.\n\"Ten thousand kilometers and closing fast,\" she sai d.\n\n\"Arm FENRIS warheads,\" Fred told her.\n\n\"Roger,\" she said.\n\nThis was where the luck part of their plan would be  stretched to its thinnest. Had the Covenant shuttled the now-active warheads o nto their ships? Would they notice the detonators had been primed?\n\n\"Confirmation signal lock,\" Linda said.\n\n\"Okay, come on,\" Fred whispered to the datapad.\n\nThe command surfaces lit and holographic geometries  drifted over its surface. A tiny version of the console appeared on his datap ad with English translations.\n\nFred grabbed the spherical Slipspace command and ro tated it. Its ready status winked ultramarine. He input the jump coordinates.\n\nThe sphere then froze, and a white vector stretched  toward tiny stars that appeared over the command surface. A blinking gold starburst appeared to initiate the Slipspace transition.\n\"Two-second countdown,\" he told Linda, \"on my mark. \"\n\nWill pulled the hydraulics from the open hatch, gra sped the door, and rolled it back into place.\n\nThe bridge's main holographic viewer flickered on a nd showed the closing destroyer. Warning indicators pointed to the ships'  heating lateral plasma lines.\n\n\"Two-second timer confirmed,\" Linda said. \"Commands  accepted and confirmed. All six FENRIS nukes show armed status.\"\n\n\"Mark!\" Fred tapped the jump button.\n\nNothing happened\n\nBlack space turned white.\n\nLord Hood watched from the command deck of Cairo St ation, ignoring the warbling emergency signals.\n\nThe Covenant destroyer had maneuvered to optimal pl asma range. He hoped the shields of the Spartan-captured ship staved off  at least one salvo, and gave Blue Team the time they needed.\n\nSpartan-104's plan had been inspired, yet in Lord H ood's seasoned opinion, suicidal. Dr. Catherine Halsey had once told him in  confidence that Spartans considered it their duty to prove the impossible po ssible.\n\nThe Covenant ship's plasma lines reddened, bolts fo rmed, and launched. At the same time, the enemy destroyer flashed inside their  energy shields; its hull glowed and vaporized as the stolen nuclear devices onboard detonated. A circle of white light appeared an instant before Ca iro Station's polarization shields cut the viewscreens. Thermal and radiologic als showed smears of amber and red mushrooming outward in a wavering torus.\n\nStation Wayward Rest had been obliterated as well. The length of the Tallo Negro del Maiz crumpled and fell to the Earth.\n\nThere was no sign of the Spartan-held ship. There w as no way to know if they had succeeded and jumped into Slipstream space or n ot.\n\nLord Hood chose to believe they had done the imposs ible anti whispered,\n\"Godspeed, Blue Team.\"\n\n\nCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE\n1440 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ABOARD THE CAPTURED COVENANT DESTROYER BLOODIED SPIRIT, IN SLI PSTREAM SPACE\n\nFred sat on the bridge deck of Bloodied Spirit, bre athing air tinged with the scent of Hunter blood. It smeiled like burnt plasti c to him.\n\nHe polished a tiny quantum mirror and set it back i nto its sensor housing. This he slipped into the pauldron of his MJOLNIR armor a nd clicked the cover. The mirror had been encrusted with sea salt, causing hi s motion sensor to fail and almost costing him his life back on Havana.\n\nLinda passed a canteen to Fred and sloshed its cont ents to get his attention. He accepted it, opened his faceplate, and enjoyed a ta ste of nonrecycled water.\n\nWere the three of them on this ship the last Sparta ns? Fred wondered if John was dead. Or Kelly. There was no mention of Kelly i n Dr. Halsey's communique. And what had ever happened to Gray Team on a missio n far outside the confines of UNSC space, now missing for over a year ? He would never voice these worries. It might sap Blue Team's morale. But  for the first time, real doubt eroded Fred's confidence. Doubt that John, Ke lly, and the others were alive.\n\nLinda touched his arm with a finger and dispersed t hese thoughts. She then patted the bullet-shaped nuclear warhead on the flo or next to him. \"Remember?\nThe rebel base?\"\n\nThey'd brought one of the FENRIS warheads up here i n case they needed a final option. Fred didn't think they would need it but it was best to cover all contingencies.\n\n\"What insurgent base?\" Will asked, rolling over and  waking up.\n\n\"It was twenty years ago,\" Fred explained. \"Rebels in the Tauri System claimed they had nukes to trade. Blue Team was sent in to r ecover the warheads, but it turned out to be a trap.\" He shook his head. \"Would  have worked too, if it hadn't been for Kurt.\"\n\n\nLinda took the canteen and hoisted it. \"To absent f riends,\" she whispered and sipped.\n\nShe passed the canteen to Will, who drank deeply. A red octahedral flashed over the Covenant command console. It projected amber beams onto the surface and the holographic ge ometries shifted.\n\nThe Spartans dropped their faceplates.\n\nFred moved to the console, overrode the controls, b ut they reverted, seeming to have a mind of their own.\n\nWere there Covenant still alive on this ship, attem pting to regain control?\n\nTranslations scrolled across his datapad: \"BLOODIED  SPIRIT AUTOMATEDSYSTEM ACTIVATEDTO BATTLE SOUNDEDHEED THE CALL TO WARWARNI NGSLIPSPACE ANOMALYDIMENSION YED-4 DETECTEDCAUSE: SINGULARITY A FTERMATH.\"\n\n\"Trouble,\" he told Linda and Will.\n\nLinda bounded to the weapons station and her hands moved over the surface.\n\"Making plasma lines hot,\" she said. \"I think. Lase r capacitors charging.\"\n\nWill stood at the NAV station. \"We're approximately  sixteen light-years from Onyx,\" he said. \"No stellar systems or other signif icant bodies in the region. The Slipspace matrix is decon-voluting.\"\n\nFred tapped a hexagonthe Slipstream space matrix re initialization command. It blinked once and faded.\n\n\"We're entering normal space,\" he said. \"Stand read y.\"\n\nStars winked on in the bridge's holographic viewer along with four Covenant ships.\n\nThree smaller ships gave chase to one larger. The s mall ones were two-thirds the tonnage of Bloodied Spirit. The larger ship was  twice their size. The vessels'\nsleek outlines made Fred think of sharks hunting a whale.\n\nLances of plasma flashed from the three and shimmer ed as they impacted on the larger ship's shields.\n\n\"I think we dropped out of Slipspace because of som e anomaly,\" Fred said. \"Or in response to a distress signal. I'm not sure whic h.\"\n\n\"From what ship?\" Linda asked. \"Which one do we tar get first?\"\n The central holographic viewer faded and a Brute ma terialized standing before them with blue-gray skin, a gorilla head, and red f eral eyes. He spoke in a series of grunts and hisses.\n\nA translation popped on Fred's datapad: \"Brothers, the schism is here. We are free at last to crush the lesser races. We will no longer be led by\"\n\nThe Brute looked about the bridge, blinked, and the n glared at Fred. It hissed and vanished.\n\nOn the translation pad a single word had appeared: \"Demons.\"\n\nOne of the smaller ships turned toward them. Ultram arine spheres flashed over Linda's weapon console.\n\n\"It's targeting us,\" she said.\n\n\"That answers that,\" Fred muttered. \"Target the sma ller ships. Will, get me a best-guess Slipspace transition vector to Onyx.\"\n\nFred had no intention of engaging in ship-to-ship c ombat. He was no captain. He'd be out of his depth if this were a UNSC ship w ith controls he could understand, and astrogation, tactics, and weapon sy stems he was familiar with. On Bloodied Spirit, he couldn't begin to fathom how  to fight. Running was the only realistic option.\n\n\"Working on a solution,\" Will said. He glanced back  and forth between the printed crib sheet of translated symbols and the Co venant mathematics that flashed before him.\n\n\"Time on target calculated,\" Linda announced. \"Read y to fire plasma.\"\n\n\"Just buy us time,\" Fred told her. \"We're not movin g to engage.\"\n\n\"Covenant frigate now in weapons range,\" Linda said . \"Plasma lines heating. They've fired!\"\n\nOn the central viewer twin crimson lances streaked from the ship and arced toward them. Circles snapped on the tips of these l ines, which then twisted into three-dimensional spheres.\n\nThe holographic perspective pulled back and showed the frigate, the plasma, and their ship in their relative positions. The tra nslucent spheres centered on the plasma shots and overlapped Bloodied Spirit.\n \"I think those spheres are steering solutions,\" Lin da said. \"They indicate how far they can direct the plasma blots. They have us.\"\n\n\"Back us off,\" Fred told Will.\n\n\"Okay\" Will searched the controls. He grabbed an or ange arrow and twisted it aft. \"Answering full reverse,\" he said.\n\n\"It won't be enough,\" Linda said.\n\nLinda placed both hands on her controls, and a new pair of spheres appeared in the field of stars. \"That's our firing solution,\" s he whispered, and her voice cooled to that detached liquid-nitrogen temperature  that Fred had come to identify with her Zen no-mind state.\n\nFred consulted his console. \"Thirteen seconds until  plasma impact,\" he said, and his hands gripped the edges of his console.\n\n\"Slipspace vector calculated,\" Will said, \"Capacito rs charging in twenty-three seconds.\"\n\nLinda made tiny adjustments over her controls, and flicked her fingers forward.\n\"Plasma away,\" she said.\n\nThe bridge lights dimmed. The main hologram showed Bloodied Spirit as its lateral lines flared and plasma detached and accele rated away, but not toward the enemy frigate, rather toward the rapidly approa ching plasma bolts.\n\nSteering spheres appeared on Linda's plasma lines. Her hands twisted and turned.\n\nThe plasma oscillated back and forth in response.\n\nThe enemy lines started to move as well.\n\nFred understood what she was trying to do: fight fi re with fire. But at these velocities hitting one plasma beam with another was  like shooting a bullet out of the air.\n\nLinda's trancelike motions slowed.\n\nThe plasma bolts raced toward one another. The enem y's plasma veered out of the way\n\nLinda brought her hands together in a blurboth of B loodied Spirit's bolts spiraled about the enemy's line of fire, tighter an d faster, and connected. Three lines smeared into a blob and jets erupted ac ross the dark of space, fading to a haze of red.\n\n\"Got it,\" Linda whispered.\n\n\"The other bolt still tracking,\" Will said. \"Impact  in two seconds.\"\n\n\"Shields?\" Fred asked.\n\n\"Working,\" Will said. \"Nothey're down.\"\n\nThe holographic viewers spilled blazing red light o nto the bridge.\n\nBeneath the deck, the ship shuddered.\n\n\"Power loss across all systems,\" Will told Fred. \"S lipspace capacitors draining from ninety-eight trying to reroute.\"\n\n\"Jump now,\" Fred ordered. \"Before we lose more powe r.\"\n\nUnderpowered Slipspace transitions were technically  possible. Over the last thirty years UNSC ships had attempted such a maneuv er, twice. Both times they succeeded transitioning into atomized bits.\n\nFred hoped Covenant technology had a work-around fo r that problem.\n\n\"Aye aye,\" Will said. He tapped a control.\n\nThe enemy ships and stars vanished from the viewer.\n\nThe Spartans stood silent; Fred held his breath, un sure if they'd explode.\n\nThe viewers went completely dark. It was silent.\n\nSlipspace parameters then streamed across Will's co nsole.\n\n\"We made it,\" Will breathed.\n\nFred exhaled. \"Good job,\" he told them. He stood th ere dumb and mute as he worked through the undeniable logic of what had jus t happened.\n\n\"What is it?\" Linda asked.\n\n\"We were in Slipstream space,\" he said, \"and answer ed a distress signal from a ship in combat in normal space.\"\nLinda nodded and one of her hands nervously flexed.\n\n\"So?\" Will asked. \"The Covenant can send signals in  Slipspace. So can we.\"\n\n\"But not hsten to those signals in normal space,\" L inda said.\n\n\"They could have heard Cortana's message and Dr. Ha lsey's,\" Fred told them.\n\"They may know everything.\"\n\nShip Master Voro clutched the rail of his command p latform and shouted, \"Now!\nAll thrusters answer new course one eight zero by z ero zero zero. Divert engine and shield power to the forward energy projector.\"\n\n\"Answering new course,\" Zasses said.\n\nThe Incorruptible spun aboutits momentum continued to carry it forwardbut now they faced the pursuing frigate pair.\n\nUruo at his Operation station called out, \"Projecto r hot, sir. Target solution ready.\"\n\n\"On my word.\"\n\nVoro hesitated and listened to three beats of his h eartsone for faith, one for family, and the last for honorth e ritual mediation of the Mendicant.\n\nThe leading frigate fired lasers.\n\n\"Armor sections Prime One and Ventral Three severel y damaged,\" Y'gar announced with utter calm.\n\n\"Stand by,\" Voro said.\n\nHe felt his junior officers' eyes upon him. They we re wondering perhaps, as he was, if he had gone mad.\n\n\"Let them come closer for the kill,\" Voro said. \"We  have but one shot. Wait Wait\"\n\nBoth frigates, the Twilight Compunction and the Rev enant, filled and blurred the edges of the holographic viewers, their lateral  lines powering.\n A single, normal energy-projector shot could not by  itself destroy a Covenant ship of war. It would obliterate shields, but it ha d to be followed by a plasma bolt to damage or disable.\n\nThis was a tactic neutralized by the skillful maneu vers employed by a Jiralhanae frigate pair. They would shift to take a lternate plasma hits efficiently, giving the pair an alternating energy shield. They could then combine firepower. If they made no mistakes, they w ere more than a match for the Incorruptible.\n\nThis was the standard Covenant tactical thinking. R ecent events, however, had shaken what Voro had considered \"standard\" behavior . This would be a gamble, but in Voro's estimation, their only winning option .\n\n\"Now,\" Voro spat. \"Fire!\"\n\nThe overcharged energy projector sent a shudder thr ough the Incorruptible.\n\nAll their powershields, engines, Slipspace capacito r reserveschanneled into a single burst from the projector.\n\nThe darkness of interstellar space parted.\n\nThe shields of the Revenant boiled and popped. The hull peeled away, bubbling, as the beam penetrated through and through. The frigate was cut in half diagonally, ve ntral fore to dorsal aftuntil it severed the starboard plasma line. Fire blazed alon g her surface and reached the main coils. The ship's aft section detonated an d her mid and fore sections tumbled away aflame and spewing smoke.\n\n\"All weapons systems inactive,\" Uruo reported, as h e stared at the destruction.\n\n\"No power to maneuver,\" Zasses said nervously. \"Thr usters on standby.\"\n\nThe other Jiralhanae frigate veered away and contin ued to turn, presenting the flare of engine cones as it ran. After seeing the o bliteration of its sister ship, the Twilight Compunction had no desire to face them  alone.\n\nAs Voro had hoped: The Jiralhanae were quick to act  without thinking. They were savage, yes, but not suicidal.\n\nHe counted his blessings that the Jiralhanae Ship M aster had not taken the time to thoroughly scan the Incorruptible to assess her battle worthiness.\n \"Repairs underway,\" Y'gar announced. \"All crews on task. Estimate seventy cycles until plasma lines ready.\"\n\n\"Direct repairs to the coils and Slipspace capacito rs,\" Voro ordered.\n\n\"A brilliant tactical maneuver, sir,\" Zasses said, and bowed his head.\n\nVoro grunted.\n\nBrilliant? Desperate was closer to the truth. But V oro would never voice his feelings on this matter before his crew. Unvoiced, however, a mixture of shame and disgust rose in the back of his throat. H e had risked everything to win. Perhaps this was how Tano felt? The lives of h is brothers in his hands on every mission? Voro felt unworthy to lead.\n\nHe scrutinized the central viewer. The Jiralhanae f rigate had headed toward the third ship in its battle group, the one that ha d turned to engage Bloodied Spirit.\n\nThey had intercepted the enemy's transmissions and seen the humans manning Bloodied Spirit. A disturbing revelation.\n\n\"Zasses,\" Voro growled. \"You tracked the Spirit as it jumped?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" he replied, and rechecked his console. \"Only one stellar system on that vector.\"\n\nVoro gritted his teeth and flexed his hands. Then a t least Bloodied Spirit could be hunted and destroyed. \"Make ready to jump. We mu st warn our brethren of everything.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWENTY-SIX\n1520 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ CAPTURED COVENANT DESTROYER BLOODIED SPIRIT, IN SLIPSTREAM SPACE\n\nBloodied Spirit was on fire. The shot she'd taken f rom the Covenant frigate had hit an auxiliary plasma line, and fire streamed alo ng the side in a crimson plume.\n\nThe raging flames made repairs impossible. Fred cou ldn't find the controls to quench the broken line without shutting down the ma in plasma coil and dropping them out of Slipspaceso he let it bum.\n Purple alloy melted and oozed through the aft quart ers, consuming life support and several sensor nodes.\n\nBloodied Spirit would last only a few more minutes,  but it was, he hoped, all they'd need.\n\nWill smoothed his hands over the NAV console. \"Shif ting to normal space in three seconds,\" he said, \"two, onenow.\"\n\nStars winked on in the central viewer. Fred moved p erspective alongside Bloodied Spirit, revealing smoldering holes in her side, bare conduits spewing plasma, and in places g apping cavities two decks deep.\n\nA planet rotated into view.\n\nWill's jump had been uncannily accurate. They were only a hundred thousand kilometers from the world known as Onyx, a jewel of  blue and white against the black.\n\n\"Looks habitable,\" Fred remarked.\n\n\"Reading water vapor, oxygen, and nitrogen,\" Linda said.\n\n\"Other ships?\" Fred asked. \"Scan the region.\"\n\nLinda bent over the Covenant sensors. \"No plasma si gnatures. No silhouettes on radar,\" she said. \"They didn't follow us.\"\n\n\"Yet,\" Will added.\n\n\"I'll take the lucky break,\" Fred told him, \"and fi gure out why we got it later.\"\n\nFred couldn't relax, though. Leading Blue Team and the responsibility to\n\"captain\" this ship was his alone. He had been trai ned in rudimentary astrogation and ship-to-ship tactics, but it wasn't  enough; it was like trying to perform brain surgery with only a basic aid kit. Th e sooner he got groundside where he could fight on his own terms, the better o ff they'd all be.\n\nHe wasn't sure what the Covenant were doing fightin g amongst themselves and stealing human nukes but whatever it was, he hoped it kept them busy The Covenant captain who had seen them wasn't going to let a human-crewed Covenant ship slip off his radar for too long.\n \"Groundside signals,\" Linda said. Lines wavered in a window floating off her console. \"UNSC E-Band.\"\n\n\"Put it on audio,\" Fred said.\n\nThere was a hiss, a pop, and it went dead. The hiss  repeated and then again fell silent.\n\n\"That's a looped signal,\" Linda said. \"Hang on, slo wing it down by a factor of three hundred.\"\n\nA series of beeps resolved from the noise.\n\n\"Slow it down more,\" Will told her.\n\nThree longer beeps pinged, then three shorter ones,  and three longer. After a moment, this repeated.\n\n\"Not 'SOS,'\" Linda declared. \"It's 'OSO.'\"\n\n\"Signal source?\" Fred asked.\n\nLinda retuned to the console. \"Multiple point sourc es,\" she said. \"Cycling at random. Someone doesn't want to get triangulated.\"\n\n\"If SOS is a distress call,\" Will said, \"then what' s OSO supposed to be? A warning?\nWhy would Dr. Halsey send a distress call and then warn us away?\"\n\n\"The message repeats every twelve seconds,\" Linda s aid. \"Twenty-seven OSO units, a pause of two seconds, and then another one  hundred eighteen units.\"\n\n\"Twenty-seven by one one eight?\" Fred considered. \" Latitude and longitude?\"\n\n\"Which direction?\" Will asked. \"North or south? Eas t or west? Any matches of those permutations to the random signal sources?\" H e moved closer to Linda's station.\n\n\"There,\" she said. \"Twenty-seven degrees north, one  hundred eighteen east.\"\n\nFred told them, \"Set course to those coordinates. G ive us a nice and easy deorbital burn. We've got to\"\n\n\"Hang on,\" Linda said. \"Picking up contacts. Wait r ecalibrating.\" Her hand flicked over the control surfaces. \"Multiple silhou ettes in high orbit. The system missed them; it's not set up to detect something so  small. Objects are three meters long. On the central viewer.\"\nFred moved to the holographic display.\n\nFloating before him was a simple structure: Three c ylindrical booms sat parallel to one another. From the end-on view they formed an equilateral triangle. In the center of this sat a sphere, a qua rter meter in diameter. The booms were a brushed matte sliver metal. The resolu tion was just good enough to see a swirled pattern etched onto the alloy. The  sphere glowed dull red, as if it were heated from within. Nothing conn ected the sphere to the associated rods. There were no shimmering energy fi elds, either.\n\n\"A bomb?\" Fred asked. \"Dr. Halsey's new technology? \"\n\n\"No radiologicals detected,\" Linda reported.\n\n\"Satellites?\" Will offered.\n\n\"I'm reading two thousand four hundred twenty-three  of these objects in orbit,\"\nLinda said. \"That's overkill for a COM network. Wai t, they're breaking orbit.\"\n\nWith a flick of her hand she shifted perspective in  the central tank and Onyx drifted in the center. Bloodied Spirit was a glowin g purple dash among the stars.\n\n\"Image enhancement online,\" she said.\n\nA haze of red dots swarmed in the black of space an d slowly drifted toward them.\n\n\"Shields!\" Fred barked at Will.\n\n\"Responding. Full strength confirmed.\" Will recheck ed the alien controls. \"No error,\" he said. \"They're up this time.\"\n\n\"If those aren't nukes,\" Fred told them, \"there's n o way something that small can penetrate Covenant shields.\"\n\nFred watched the holographic viewer as the hostiles  approached. It was like watching a tide come in, and Fred remembered one of  Deja's childhood lessons:\njellyfish swarming the tide lines on an Australian beach. One sting from the tiny invertebrates caused tissue necrosis and paral ysis. A hundred was overkill lethal.\n\n\"Back us off. Will,\" he ordered.\n\n\"Something's happening,\" Linda said. The image in the viewer zoomed in on a cluster of t he spacecraft. Seven of them moved into a line.\n\nThe view pulled back and revealed other identical f ormations. Seven of these lines stacked into an elongated triangle, and the s pheres within the forty-nine craft pattern glowed red-hot.\n\n\"Hard to port!\" Fred cried. \"Emergency power to shi elds.\"\n\nThe deck tilted.\n\n\"Answering hard to port,\" Will cried.\n\nA blast of golden light overwhelmed the image in th e viewer.\n\nThe frame of Bloodied Spirit resounded like it had been struck with a hammer. The artificial gravity failed and Fred gripped the railing.\n\n\"Starboard side hit,\" Will said. \"Shields destroyed .\"\n\nFred moved his hand over his console and Bloodied S pirit appeared on the viewer. A gaping crater of blue hull armor smoldere d white-hot. Crystalline electronics crackled, and severed plasma lines spew ed fire. As the ship turned, Fred saw the hole was five decks across and had pun ched clean through to the port side.\n\n\"Main plasma pressure nil,\" Will reported. \"Cycling  to fuel cells. Slipspace capacitors holding charge. We have enough power to jump.\"\n\nLinda looked to Will and then to Fred and nodded.\n\nFred watched as more alien drones crystallized into  triangular lattices. Individually they were no match for even a Covenant  single ship. Combined they packed enough punch to atomize Bloodied Spirit .\n\n\"We're not leaving,\" Fred muttered. \"We're moving c loser. Will, get me a jump solution on coordinates to twenty-seven degrees nor th latitude, one hundred eighteen east longitude, elevation fifteen thousand  meters.\"\n\n\"On it,\" Will said, and he stared at the Covenant m ath as it steamed over his console.\n\n\"Linda, go evasive!\" Fred ordered.\n Her hand melted into the holographic controls and B loodied Spirit pitched forward, accelerating, which made the hull ping wit h stress.\n\nThe tiny alien ships easily tracked their motion, s urrounding them.\n\nCovenant ships could perform pinpoint-acurate Slips pace jumps. But could the weakened hull of Bloodied Spir it survive an instantaneous change of pressure from zero to over one kilogram p er square centimeter? And that was just accounting for the atmosphere. Their velocity in air would exert tremendous forces on the ship's leading edges.\n\n\"Course plotted,\" Will announced. \"Only a second-or der approximation, but the jump system is accepting the numbers. I'll have hig her-order terms in a minute.\"\n\n\"Belay that,\" Fred ordered. \"Linda, give me all pow er to the engines. Slave Will's jump coordinates through the NAV system and give us a thirty-second countdown.\"\n\n\"Done,\" she said.\n\n\"Let's move, Blue Team,\" Fred told them. \"We're aba ndoning ship.\"\n\nIt was a perfect day on the jungle-swathed peninsul a. The sky was crystal cobalt dappled with cotton-ball altocumulus clouds.  Insect buzz and bird caw abruptly ceased and a hundred redwing macaws took f light as the world exploded over their heads.\n\nA fifteen-kilometer-long smear of condensed water v apor marred the air, and from it a fireball colored every cloud red Bloodied  Spirit shot forth like a bullet.\n\nSonic booms rippled off the destroyer's prow. Hexag onal armor plates fluttered and shed, revealing a skeletal frame. Static discha rges arced from ship to clouds and back.\n\nInside Bloodied Spirit fires raged stem to stern an d every deck glowed hot, trailing flames and an oily black smoke.\n\nThe ship rolled and the nose began to shudder until  the entire length of the vessel wobbled.\n\nThe once-deadly Covenant ship was no more than a ba llistic mass, a meteor, with only one possible trajectory: a parabola that intersected the planet's surface.\n A dozen drones punched through the clouds and left swirling vortices, and then a hundred more drones appeared, giving chase.\n\nAs the destroyer dropped to a hundred meters, the h eat ignited the jungle canopy, leaving a blistering path in its wake. Debr is from the disintegrating vessel rained into the trees, crushing them to spli nters.\n\nThe drones closed and fired.\n\nAs Bloodied Spirit turned and its shuttle bay prese nted groundwork, what appeared to be another chunk of the ship fell, spin ning until it plummeted below the canopyand then the dropship's engines fla red, and it righted.\n\nThe tiny ship's momentum smashed it through three b anyan trees before it touched ground and scraped to a full stop.\n\nThree figures eased from the tuning fork-shaped ves sel, and quickly melted into the surrounding jungle.\n\nFred watched pieces of Bloodied Spirit fall to the earth. The ground under him shook from the impacts.\n\nDrones accelerated after the lost destroyer, so man y that they blackened the sky.\n\nA flash cut through the jungle, casting long hard s hadows. A wave of pressure shot rock, splinters, and smoldering vegetation hur ling over his head, igniting leaf and wood and flattening brush and trees.\n\nBloodied Spirit had landed.\n\nA kilometer to the north a wall of plasma-fueled fi re shot skyward and the clouds overhead parted.\n\nFred flicked his green status to his teammates.\n\nLinda's status light burned green, but Will's remai ned dark a moment, and then winked amber.\n\nThere was a flutter on Fred's motion detector, two o'clock, and then nothing. Another malfunction?\n\nLinda's light shifted to amber as well.\n\nNo. Real trouble.\n Fred sited down his assault rifle and covered the a rea. Linda would soon be in position to snipe. Will would draw whatever was the re out into the open.\n\nHad those drones discovered them so quickly? Or had  the Covenant managed to track them here after all?\n\nOn his heads-up display, the secure single-beam COM  system activated. His helmet speaker hissed with static, and then a voice  as familiar as his own spoke.\n\nKelly whispered: \"Olly olly oxen free.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN SEVENTH CYCLE, 49 UNITS (COVENANT BATTLE CALENDAR) / ABOARD FLEET CARRIER SUBLIME TRANSCENDENCE, IN ORBIT ABOVE JOYOU S EXULTATION, SYSTEM SALIA\n\nThe Unggoy Kwassass knew his place aboard the Coven ant su-percarrier Sublime Transcendence. He was to be trod upon under  the boots of its glorious Sangheili officers. He was to clean, scrub, wait in  the shadows for orders, and never speak unless spoken to.\n\nAmong his other duties Kwassass was also responsibl e for the maintenance of storage subdeck K. The mining gear that had exacted  the human fortress world Reach had been stored on subdeck K. Diggers, earthe n conveyors, portable microenergy projectors, plasma fuel cells all sat i n orderly rows.\n\nHe had been ordered to repair and refit everything,  a gargantuan task that would take six months and the entire K-deck tribe. It was a crushing responsibility but also a tremendous opportunity.\n\nKwassass waddled along the dim corridors of subdeck  K, admiring its cavernlike expanses and the warmth of the place. Even after se ven years of service to the Covenant he could not help marveling at their copious wealth of heat. Aft er freezing every day of his childhood, watching his family one by one succumb t o the blue death, heat was something he never took for granted.\n\nHe spotted a group of laborers playing a game with rocks, jumping them over one another on a grid scratched upon the floor. The y laughed and gambled for tiny tanks of compressed organics and audio crystal s.\n Kwassass joined them, lost a few cartridges of form aldehyde, won a file of old BBC, and then wished them well and moved along on h is morning patrol. Today it would be best to keep up appearances.\n\nHe meandered toward Storage Sector Three, making su re no one noticed.\n\nKwassass had overheard one Sangheili speak of pods of benzene that required disposal in that sector. Lovely lung gold! He sighe d, reliving the pleasure of his last inhale of the sacred aromatic.\n\nHe slowed his place, though; Storage Sector Three w as a shadowy realm where only Huragok5 ventured, as it was full of active pl asma conducts.\n\nThe tentacled podlike Huragok never spoke to his ki nd. Sometimes they fixed things for them but just as often they took things apart and left them that way. He had learned it was best to avoid them, as the Sa ngheili valued their services.\n\nKwassass ventured into the dim section of the ship.\n\nOnly the glow from the occasional plasma coil provi ded an eerie blue light, and the shadows were full of the floating Huragok that whispered to one another in ultrasonic chitters.\n\nTonight they seemed to move with a greater purpose,  floating in pods of three farther into the storage sector.\n\n5 Huragok: the Forerunner name for the Engineer rac e\n\nHe followed one of these pods and emerged in a roun d chamber, lit by an overhead heat exchanger that dripped fluorescing gr een coolant. A machine towered in the chamber. It was five times his squat  height, and it would take thirty Unggoy to circumscribe its curved surface.\n\nDozens of Huragok clustered about the thing, their tentacles gently probing its surface in reverence.\n\nThe device was bare silver metal, which was a rare thing in Covenant alloys. Kwassass was drawn to the shiny material. He wanted  to touch it, take it with him.\n\nThere were alien pictograms on the side and he ran his hand over them. Although his tribe had been trained to listen and t ranscribe alien transmissions as part of their duties, they were forbidden to rea d.\n There were four pictograms. The first was three con nected lines. The second was a hollow dot. The third was an angle of two lin es. The last icon was the same angle inverted with a line horizontal midway b etween them.\n\nNOVA.\n\nMany of the Huragok clustered on the far side, and Kwassass gently pushed through them to see what was so interesting.\n\nA black box lay on the deck.\n\nThe Huragok had obliviously removed a panel from th e cylinder: a tangle of wires and cabling stretched from a cavity in the cy linder to this box.\n\nInside the box were flashing red, blue, and green l ights and many buttons.\n\nHe knelt and touched a button.\n\nA sound came from the box: a curious series of slur ps, pops, and deep rumbles that made Kwassass giggle. A rare alien transition.  Treasure indeed. He could perhaps trade this for a rare ASTHEWORLDTURNS he ha d heard was on M deck.\n\nThe noise stopped, so he touched the button, and th e noise repeated to his delight.\n\nHe strained to decipher the sounds. Like all human transmission he understood many of the words, but very little of what it actua lly meant. This voice had a twangy accent.\n\nHe listened again, straining to understand\n\n\" I am Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, temporarily in command of the UNSC military base Reach. To the Covenant uglies that mi ght be listening, you have a few seconds to pray to your dammed heathen gods. \"\n\n\"We have been betrayed by those we trusted most,\" t hundered the Imperial Admiral and Regent Command of the Combined Fleet of  Righteous Purpose, Xytan 'Jar Wattinree. He shook both fists as he spo ke. \"We have been betrayed by our Prophets.\"\n\nThe Sangheili stood over three and half meters tall  and wore silver armor covered with the gold Forerunner glyphs of Sacred M ystery. In the center of the oration chamber aboard the super-carrier Sublime Tr anscendence, Xytan's image was holographi-cally magnified so he towered thirty meters before them, and image replications made his face present in fou r directions simultaneously to the crowd. Xytan appeared no less than a god.\n\nShip Master Voro stood at attention and watched the  legendary commander. He had never been defeated in battle. He had never fai led at any task, no matter what the challenge. He was never wrong.\n\nThe Imperial Admiral's only flaw was that he had be en so revered, some said even more so than any Prophet. For the sin he had b een exiled to the fringe worlds of the vast Covenant Empire.\n\nThis had happened before; the former Supreme Comman der of the Fleet of Particular Justice had never returned from the \"glo rious mission\" the Prophets sent him on.\n\nXytan had summoned all the factions of the Sangheil i to |oyous\n\nExultation. He was, in Voro's opinion, their best c hance for survival.\n\nVoro was one of thirty representative Ship Masters who had been called from the two hundred vessels in orbit to hear these word s.\n\n\"I, like all of you, believed in our leaders and th eir holy Covenant,\" Xytan continued, his voice resonating off the silver stad ium dome overhead. \"How could we have been so willing to believe a Covenant  of lies!\"\n\nXytan paused and looked out among them. The thirty Ship Masters and their guards seemed to be swallowed by the empty space in  the chamber, designed for a capacity crowd of three thousand.\n\nNo one dared speak.\n\n\"They have called for the destruction of all Sanghe ili. They have aligned themselves with the barbaric Jiralhanae,\" Xytan sai d. He hung his head and his four jaws opened slack for a moment, and then he lo oked up, a new determination burning in his eyes. \"The Great Schis m is upon us. The unbreakable Covenant Writ of Union has been split a sunder. This is the end of the Ninth, and final, Age.\"\n\nA grumble echoed within the oration chamber. These words were the grossest sacrilege. Today, however, they could be the truth.\n\nXytan held up a hand and the dissent quelled.\n\n\"You must now decide to surrender to fateor resist and strive to persist. Myself, I choose to fight.\" He outstretched both hands to h is audience. \"I call upon you all to join me. Let the old ways fade and battle by  my side. Together we can forge a new, better uniona new Covenant among the s tars.\"\n\nThe Sangheili Ship Masters roared their approval.\n\nIt was an inspired oration, but the Prophets had us ed words to trick them all before, too. Ship Master Tano had let words, and th eir more dangerous by product, beliefs, cloud his reason.\n\nWords alone would not help them. Voro crossed his a rms over his chest.\n\nAmazingly, Xytan saw this gesture and turned to fac e him, locking gazes.\n\n\"You disagree. Ship Master?\"\n\nA tomblike silence smothered the stadium. Voro felt  all eyes upon him.\n\n\"Speak, then, hero of the battle for the Second Rin g of the Gods, and de facto commander of the Second Fleet of Homogeneous Clarit y.\" Xytan waved him forward and offered him the center pulpit, an unpre cedented and generous step for one so high.\n\nIt stunned Voro to hear such honorifics attached to  his name. Xytan knew what had happened? Who he was? Of course, his intelligen ce network was legion. And what better way to silence questions than with compliments?\n\nVoro, however, had not survived treachery and war a nd the sundering of an Age to be silenced now. He willed himself to step forwa rd. The urge to supplicate before Xytan was overwhelming, but he resisted.\n\nIt took all of Voro's strength to cross that distan ce with all watching.\n\nHe stepped upon the center stage and his image appe ared holographically magnified, a titan towering over the crowd.\n\n\"I agree with what you say,\" Voro declared. \"We mus t destroy the Jiralhanae, unquestioningly, and all who ally with them. But vi ctory may mean nothing if the disease upon the holy ring escapes. It must be cleansed from the galaxy if we are to survive.\"\n\nA murmur of assent passed through his fellows.\n\nXytan nodded as well, and then made a slight gestur e with his hand, indicating Voro step down.\n He gave a short bow to the Imperial Admiral and wit hdrew. Voro made it to his seat without betraying how he shook inside, without  revealing to the others how stunned he was that he had survived.\n\nXytan reappeared upon the stage.\n\n\"Your words are Wisdom, Ship Master Voro. Which is why I have summoned Jiralhanae Alpha leadership under a banner of truce  to this world.\"\n\nAn outcry rose from the gathered Ship Masters.\n\n\"I have no illusions that they come with false offe rs of peace,\" Xytan said. \"So we shall stage our own ambushhere, where we are str ong. After we have dealt a decapitating blow to the Jiralhanae Alpha Tribes,  we will be free to eradicate the infection that threatens to spread from the mos t holy ring.\n\n\"As for how to accomplish this,\" Xytan said, \"I cal l upon Oracle Master Parala Ahrmonro to report on a new opportunity.\"\n\nXytan's image flickered off and an elderly Sangheil i appeared in the center of the stadium. Parala had long ago been counsel to th e Prophet of Regret. Bent with age, a fierce intellect nonetheless shone in h is milky eyes.\n\n\"We have most disturbing intelligence,\" Parala said  with distaste. \"The humans have wreaked havoc with their demons, destroying th e first-discovered sacred ring construct. They were at the second ring as wel l, and have apparently discovered yet another world of Forerunner design. They must not be underestimated.\"\n\nWhile this galled Voro, he had seen for himself the  human-captured Bloodied Spirit, and reluctantly attempted to accept the Ora cle Master's words as truth.\n\n\"Here,\" Parala said, \"is an intercepted and transla ted human Slipspace transmission.\"\n\nHuman voices screeched through the stadium air. A t ranslation overlaid the offensive human words and Voro listened as the inci dents upon the second Halo relic were reported.\n\n\"Parasitic infestation known as the Flood has conta minated this construct attempting to escape unknown coordinating intellige nce Suggest FLEETCOM Nova-bomb the Delta Halo \"\n\nThen alien icons appeared in the air, resolving int o proper words: \"SEND ELITE STRIKE TEAM TO RECOVER TECHNOLOGICAL ASSETS FROM ON YX. SEND SPARTANS.\"\nAn embedded string of celestial coordinates streame d alongside these words.\n\nA collective mummer of outrage came from the Ship M asters.\n\nVoro strained to isolate the human word for demons from their objectionable speech Spartans. It heated his blood to a boil.\n\nXytan's image returned to the stage. \"This heresy c annot be ignored for reasons dogmatic and strategic. We will go to this world. O nyx, to protect and secure the holy artifacts. They will be of incalculable va lue in our impending struggles.\"\n\nXytan extended his titanic holographic hand to Voro . \"You, Ship Master Voro\n'Mantakree, are now Fleet Master Voro Nar 'Mantakre e. Lead your newly assembled battle group to this world. Destroy the d emons and deny them their prize at all costs.\"\n\nVoro fell to one knee.\n\n\"It shall be as you say,\" he said. \"My task is holy  My blood pure. I shall not fail.\"\n\nSecretly Voro wondered if these honors had been bes towed upon him to removed him and his \"wise words\" from Xytan's choru s of unanimous ascent. So be it. He would accomplish his task. He would retur n glorious.\n\nKwassass punched the button in the black box and li stened to the human voice. He was close to understanding what it meant. A thre at. To him. All Covenant. A promise of retribution.\n\nThe sound distorted, slowed, and stopped. The box w as out of power.\n\nOne of the Huragok watching gave an ultrasonic cry that shot through Kwassass's skull. The creature charged him, tentacl es flailing, and grasped at his box. It wrenched it from Kwassass's grasp.\n\nOther Huragok charged and tried to take the box fro m their fellow.\n\nDid they understand what the human said? Did they u nderstand the danger?\n\nThere were more Huragok around him than he had real ized. The shadows rippled with their buoyant bodies, each with six gl assy black eyes firmly fixed upon the human voice box.\n The Huragok rushed the box back to the Great Cylind er, to the panel where the box had been removed. There were multicolored wires  inside that matched those in the box.\n\nHuragok twisted these wires together. Tiny sparks d anced. Red symbols flickered upon a display in the box, and the device  spoke once more.\n\nTrue to their nature, Huragok were just as likely t o fix something broken as they were likely to take apart something that worke d perfectly.\n\nA dozen Huragok pressed closer around the device, a ll squirming tentacles and glistening eager eyes.\n\nThe voice from the box started againnow loud and cl ear:\n\n\"This is the prototype Nova bomb, nine fusion warhe ads encased in lithium triteride armor. When detonated it compresses its f usionable material to neutron-star density, boosting the thermonuclear yi eld a hundredfold. I am Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, temporarily in comm and of the UNSC military base Reach. To the Covenant uglies that might be li stening, you have a few seconds to pray to your dammed heathen gods. You al l have a nice day in hell.\"\n\nKwassass pushed his way through the throng of Hurag ok. He had to get to the thing. Pull those wires.\n\nThere was a flash of the most beautiful light, and more glorious heat than he'd ever\n\nA battle group of eighteen destroyers, two cruisers , and one carrier collected in high orbit over Joyous Exultation, and drew in a spherical formation about their flagship,  the Incorruptible.\n\nThey shimmered blue-white and vanished into Slipspa ce.\n\nA heartbeat later Vice Admiral Whitcomb's ploy of s lipping the UNSC prototype Nova bomb into Covenant supplies had finally paid o ff: a star ignited between Joyous Exultation and its moon.\n\nEvery ship not protected on the dark side of the pl anet boiled and vaporized in an instant.\n\nThe atmosphere of the planet wavered as helical spi rals of luminescent particles lit both north and south poles, making cu rtains of blue and green ripple over the globe. As the thermonuclear pressur e wave spread and butted against the thermosphere, it heated the air orange,  compressed it, until it touched the ground and scorched a quarter of the wo rld.\n\nThe tiny nearby moon Malhiem cracked and shattered into a billion rocky fragments and clouds of dust.\n\nThe overpressure force subsided, and three-hundred- kilometer-per-hour winds swept over Joyous Exultation, obliterating cities a nd whipping tidal waves over its coastlines.\n\nThe Covenant Schismthe shattering of its client rac es for a thousand years, and the genesis of their endhad truly begun\n\n\n\nSECTION VI THE GHOSTS OF ONYX CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT\n1700 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \\ NEAR RESTRICTED REGION ZONE 67\n\nKurt crouched, motionless in the undergrowth, and w aited for the Sentinels to move into position.\n\nThere'd been no happy reunion with Blue Team, no ti me for explanations, not even a handshake; all there'd been time for was run ning. The Sentinel patrol had been on them the instant they'd recovered the S partansan hour of nonstop cat and mouse through the jungle.\n\nThe drones were getting very good at hunting them.\n\nA pair of Sentinels paused, hovering four meters ab ove the ground. After bombarding the jungle from a hundred meters with en ergy blasts and missing, they had finally descended to their level.\n\nTheir lateral spars flexed as if they could smell t he trap. The spars about each sphere then drifted farther part and both spheres m oved within centimeters of each other.\n\nIt reminded Kurt of cell division, only in reverse.  They were combining.\n\nWhat the purpose of this \"mating\" was, Kurt wasn't sure. He was, however, sure he didn't like it.\n\nThe now-double Sentinel crept closer. Team Saber on the left flank detonated fougasse pos itioned under the drones. Flames shot up and lit the canopy, smoldering shrap nel obliterating the foliage.\n\nA split second later Blue Team on the right flank l et loose an SPNKr missile and a hail of MA5B fire. They were in perfect defilade.\n\nThe air filed with white-hot tracers and black roil ing clouds. Two nearby trees crackled and fell.\n\nKurt flashed his red status light, and the fire cea sed.\n\nSaber had jumped the gun. A half second maybe, but they had definitely shot before the Sentinels were in position.\n\nWhat had he expected? For all the simulated combats  the Gamma Company Spartans had been through, nothing could have prepa red them for continuous guerilla action with the Forerunner killing machine s.\n\nKurt squinted. Even with image enhancement and ther mals he couldn't make out anything in the air where the Sentinels had bee n. But he could see the ground and among the splintered tree trunks, burnin g leaves, and popping metal, there was neither drone.\n\nHe blinked his amber light twice, ordering the team s to fall back. He didn't like this one bit.\n\nA full bank of green status lights winked at him.\n\nKurt saw motion in the mist: shadows that resolved into six rods arranged in a long hexagonal geometrytwo spheres withinpulsing as  the energy field enveloping the combined Sentinels shimmered.\n\nThey were completely untouched.\n\nKurt flashed his red three times: the retreat signa l.\n\nOne sphere glowed and moved back and forth searchin g. It stopped and fixed upon Kurt.\n\nHe jumped.\n\nA flash of light struck. The jungle floor detonated  and a three-meter crater fizzled and cracked into glass.\n\nKurt rolled into a crouch and instinctively returne d fire with his MA5K. This was part of the plan, too: the part where ever ything went wrong and he had insisted on drawing the enemy's fire while the others slipped away. He knew the terrain: Twin Forks River was three hundre d meters to the east. It should be a stroll through the park.\n\nThe other sphere shone like burnished gold and his rounds bounced off its energy shield even as the first sphere reheated, bu ilding charge for another shot.\n\nKurt ran, zigzagging into the foliage.\n\nIn this doubled configuration the Sentinels could s imultaneously fire and defend with an energy shield. That was big trouble.\n\nIt seemed all their engagements with the Sentinels were doing was teaching them how to be more effective in combat.\n\nExplosions followed Kurt almost as if his footsteps  were setting them off.\n\nThe trees parted ahead and the Twin Forks River sna ked through the jungle. The water was muddy and churning.\n\nKurt leapt and splashed into the swift current.\n\nHe sank to the bottom. Internal oxygen cut on insid e his SPI suit, and Kurt grasped rocks along the river bottom, crawling upst ream. Through the murky water he spotted a rock ledge and tucked underneath .\n\nBetween him and Sentinels were three meters of movi ng ice-cold water, a meter of rock, and a layer of photo-reactive circui ts in his armor. He should be undetectable to any sensor. At least undetectable e nough, he hoped, to fool these things.\n\nHe waited.\n\nNo explosions. No flashes. No heat.\n\nThe combined Sentinel wasn't his biggest worry, tho ugh. It was the one on overwatch. The Sentinels patrolled in threes now: t wo at mid to ground level, and another two to three thousand meters in the airwatching everything, reporting the ir tactics, and learning.\n\nAs long as that third one tracked them, the Spartan s would be on the defensive, reacting, instead of initiating action. Kurt wondered why the Sentinels hadn't called in re inforcements, combined, and let loose with enough firepower to burn the ent ire jungle.\n\n Unless they were deliberately playing cat and mous e with them? To learn more about how they fought?\n\nHe had to be smarter than them. Take out all three.  Take the initiative. Maybe with Blue Team, he could do it.\n\nKurt waited two more minutes, then pulled himself o ut of the river. He sprinted for the cover of the jungle.\n\nThere were no signs of pursuit.\n\nHe remained COM silent and crept back to the prearr anged fallback position.\n\nAs he approached the region of broken ground border ing Zone 67, he slowed. There was less cover, so he scanned the skies for S entinel overwatch. All clear.\n\nAhead the land turned to savanna grass, acacia tree s, and large striated boulders. One rock in particular had a hollow under neath where they had arranged to meet. It provided cover without restric ting the view of the local airspace. If attacked, they had a clean line back t o the jungle.\n\nThere would be at least two guards on lookout, and at least one Spartan at the jungle line to watch their line of retreat. Normall y he would click his COM twice to alert the sentry, but he didn't even want to take that small risk in the open.\n\nSo Kurt waited, guessing the sentry would be either  Linda or Olivia. If it was Lindahe scanned the nearby treesshe'd be up there, in a good sniping position.\n\nIf it was Olivia, she could be anywhere. She was ee rily proficient at camouflage and stealth.\n\nThere was the clatter: a single stone three meters to his left.\n\nHe turned and, as predicted, Olivia crouched a mete r behind him in the shadow of a low tree, perfectly blending into the grass an d dappled light in her SPI armor, waving at him to make sure he saw the slight  blur of motion. Kurt had no doubt that she could have been in fluorescent or ange fatigues and still managed to look like part of the terrain.\n\nKurt waved to her and then aimed his single-beam CO M at the rendezvous rock. The COM established handshake and then crackled to life.\n\"One coming in,\" he said.\n\n\"Come ahead,\" Kelly's voice came back. \"Good to hea r your voice.\"\n\n\"Yours too. Out.\"\n\nKurt remembered the last time he had Kelly on the s ingle beamwhen his thruster pack had exploded and he rocketed out of c ontrol into deep space.\n\nHe'd never realized how much he had missed his old teammates until he had seen them again. Of course, now Blue Team was in je opardy, but that seemed like old times as well. He couldn't have asked for better soldiers to be in trouble with.\n\nHe ran across the field, low and silent, and then j umped into the shaded hollow. Tom, Ash, and Mendez crouched next to Kelly, Linda,  and Fred. They whispered to one another and drew plans in the dirt.\n\nLucy sat quietly next to Dr. Halsey, who glanced at  Kurt and then went back to her laptop computer, examining Forerunner glyphs.\n\nThe other SPARTAN-IIIs were missing, presumably on watch.\n\n\"Glad you made it back in one piece,\" Chief Mendez said, and gave him an abbreviated salute. \"Almost had me worried.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Chief. Set up a single-beam relay outside and hail the others on patrol.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Mendez grabbed a tiny antenna dish.\n\nLinda, Kelly, and Fred all turned to Mendez when he  said \"sir\" and then looked at Kurt.\n\nKurt flicked his index finger up, the wait-a-second  gesture, and then he turned to Ash. \"Private.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Ash said, and stood straighter.\n\nHis helmet was off. Sweat glistened on his head and  neck. It was a serious breach of combat protocols, but SPI suits had never  been designed for extended use, and Team Saber had to have been swelt ering in the stuff for days.\n Kurt glanced at the helmet and Ash blanched at his mistake, and immediately slipped it on.\n\nKurt said, \"Saber jumped the gun on that ambush.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Ash snapped into precise regulation att ention. \"It was my fault. I felt it was the right time, that the Sentinels were abou t to move out of optimal firing position. That's no excuse, sir. It won't ha ppen again.\"\n\nHad Ash sensed something Kurt hadn't? Still, orders  had to be followed.\n\n\"I'm counting on you to keep your team on task and focused. We clear?\"\n\n\"Absolutely clear, sir,\" Ash replied.\n\nKurt then moved closer to Blue Team.\n\nFred set a hand on Kurt's shoulder, a rare gesture among Spartans. It spoke volumes in the language of the Spartan's tightly re strained emotions.\n\n\"We thought you were dead,\" Fred whispered.\n\nKurt clapped Fred on his shoulder as well. \"There's  so much to brief you on. The Sentinels, the SPARTAN-IIIseverything.\"\n\nMendez stepped back into the shadows. \"Single-beam linkup established, sir.\"\n\n\" Which will have to wait a little longer,\" Kurt to ld them.\n\nKurt opened up his TEAMCOM to both Blue and Saber, \"We're taking out that Sentinel pair before the next phase of this operation,\" he said. \"Ash, take Saber and scou t the ravine ahead. Find that tunnel you sacked in a few days ago. Dante will rig  it with two satchel charges. We'll lure the Sentinels inside and then, since we can't penetrate their shields, we'll blow the place, and bury them.\"\n\nFred, Linda, and Kelly exchanged looks. Normally Fr ed gave orders for Blue Team.\n\nFred gave his team an almost imperceptible shake of  his head.\n\n\"What about the overwatch?\" Fred asked.\n \"We'll take our best shot at range,\" Kurt replied. \"Hit it with two SPNKr missiles, which will hopefully weaken its shield enough for L inda to penetrate with a few shots.\"\n\n\"What range?\" Linda asked.\n\n\"They never get closer than two kilometers,\" Kurt s aid.\n\nIt wasn't an impossible shot. But given variable wi nds, a moving target, and trying to combine fire with missile strikes it woul d be highly improbable. Still, Kurt had to try something to get one step ahead of the enemy\n\nLinda considered a moment, then replied, \"I have an  eighty-three percent accuracy rating at that range.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Kurt told Ash, \"go. Tom, Lucy, back Saber u p, then grab a pair of SPNKr launchers and rendezvous with SPARTAN-058.\"\n\nHis senior NCOs and Ash stood, nodded, and eased ou t of the hollow.\n\nKurt got green status light across his display. He shut down the linked single beam network.\n\nAfter the SPARTAN-IIIs had left, Kelly said, \"Those  kids are going to get us killed. They're acting like they have something to prove. W e could have taken those Sentinels earlier if they fol-lowed the firing orde r.\"\n\nKurt bristled at her words. Team Saber were his sol diers and every one of their flaws was his fault. His anger c ooled as quickly as it had come. She was right.\n\nIn an even voice he told her, \"They're not 'kids.' They're Spartans.\"\n\nKelly crossed her arms.\n\nMendez said, \"I think, sir, you might want to tell them what we've accomplished here.\"\n\nKurt nodded and then explained much of the SPARTAN- III training program, and the creation of Companies Alpha, Beta, and the newl y minted Gamma.\n\n\"Some of the bioaugmentations are new,\" Kurt explai ned. \"The SPARTAN-IIIs'\nnormal aggression response has been\"he searched for  the right word\"enhanced in situations of extreme stress. It gives them incr edible reserves of endurance and makes them near impervious to shock.\"\n\"Is that what's making them twitchy?\" Kelly groused .\n\n\"No one's twitchy,\" he replied, then fell silent.\n\nKurt knew he was wrong. Why couldn't he admit it? W as he defensive because he wanted his Spartans to be everything the older S partans were? Fred, Kelly, and Linda had decades of field experience. As the S PARTAN-III CO he had to stay objective.\n\n\"You're right,\" Kurt said softly. \"They are twitchy . And green. What else could they be? Fresh out of boot and thrown up against th ese Sentinels.\" He looked to Kelly, to Fred, and then to Linda. \"I need your hel p to make sure they stay in line and, if possible, survive this.\"\n\nLinda and Fred slowly nodded.\n\n\"Sure thing,\" Kelly said, uncrossing her arms.\n\nDr. Halsey looked up from her computer. \"I'd like t o discuss this 'aggression enhancement,'\" she said. \"In fact, I have many ques tions about the SPARTAN-III program, like where is the rest of Gamma Company? A nd Beta? Or Alpha?\"\n\n\"Your questions will have to wait, Doctor,\" Kurt re plied. \"We're running out of time. Lord Hood's reinforcements may not get here. Every engagement with the Sentinels t eaches them more. Soon we won't be able to stop them.\"\n\n\"I must insist,\" Dr. Halsey said. Her words were as  placid as smooth water, but her steely eyes bored through Kurt's helmet.\n\nFred stepped closer to Kurt. \"I agree with Kurt, ma 'am. And if I might point out, with all due respect, you are not in any position t o demand anything in this tactical situationespecially after you kidnapped Ke lly, circumvented the chain of command, and left us in the middle of a critical  mission on the Gettysburg.\"\n\nKelly looked between them, caught in a conflicting web of loyalties.\n\nDr. Halsey stood. \"I have already explained my acti ons,\" she said. \"And the discovery of this new Forerunner technology should outweigh any so-called breach of military protocol that may have been comm itted.\"\n\nA frosty silence filled the hollow.\n Dr. Halsey had no official rank, but had always wie lded considerable influence over her Spartans.\n\nThat had to end.\n\nKurt valued her scientific expertise and intellect,  but he couldn't have her issuing confusing or conflicting orders.\n\n\"Since you mention protocol\" Kurt deliberately turn ed his back to her and faced Blue Team. \"1 want to clarify our chain of command.  I understand Lord Hood gave you command of this mission,\" he said to Fred.  \"But I'm in charge of all USNC personnel on Onyx.\"\n\nKurt activated his friend-or-foe electronic tag, on  extreme low powerjust enough so they'd pick it up. On their displays appe ared his green color-coded military ID number as well as the bars and star ins ignia of a UNSC lieutenant commander.\n\nThe Spartans straightened, their involuntary respon se when in the presence of an officer.\n\n\"I am therefore assuming command of this mission,\" Kurt said.\n\nNo one said a word for a moment and then Fred snapp ed off, \"Yes, sir.\"\n\nSomething was different in Fred's voice. A bit of t he familiar-ity was missing, but there was something else: respect.\n\nKurt gave Blue Team a quick nod, and then turned to  Dr. Halsey. \"Ma'am, I want you to continue your analysis of the Zone 67 d ocuments on the Forerunners. I expect an update on your progress in  two hours.\"\n\nDr. Halsey arched an eyebrow. She said nothing and slowly sat down, returning to her computer.\n\nKurt inwardly sighed. That was one battle won today .\n\nOlivia's green status light flashed twicethe signal  for \"friendly approaching.\"\n\nA ripple crossed the entrance to the hollow, part s hadow, part rock, and then the SPI camouflage resolved into Olivia. \"Sentinel pair,\" she whispered. \"Half a kilometer south, sir. Moving this direction in a se arch pattern.\"\n\nKurt said, \"Everyone, get ready to move out. Kelly,  limber up; you're our rabbit.\"\n \"Happy to oblige, sir.\" She made the two-fingered s ignal over her faceplate, the traditional Spartan smile.\n\nThe others nodded.\n\nKurt knew they'd follow him, into battle, and right  to the gates of hell if he ordered it. He had a feeling it might come to that.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWENTY-NINE\n1810 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \\ NEAR RESTRICTED REGION ZONE 67\n\nKurt had seen snipers zero their instruments before , but never for an extreme range, near-vertical target.\n\nLinda took the task as seriously as a surgeon prepa ring for a heart transplant. She cleared a patch of rocky ground and laid out a camo mat so dust wouldn't foul her SRS99C-S2 AM rifle. Next she opened a kit that contained tools, bottles of cleaner and lubricant, several magazines for her  rifle, a box of 14.5x114mm ammunition, and a tiny datapad. She selected one of  the magazines and inspected it; satisfied, she opened the box of ammo  and removed one of the rounds: super-hardened red polymer petals surrounde d a finned tungsten dart. She spun it around and looked at the cartridge base . Opposite the legend \"51\" it bore the winged hourglass headstamp flanked by doub le \"X\"ssignifying that it was hand-loaded match-grade ammo from Misrah Armori es on Mars. She slid the magazine into the rifle.\n\nNext she linked her Oracle scope to the datapad and  made microcalibrations. She finally sat, butted the rifle to her shoulder, and then leaned back flat and sighted up at the sky.\n\n\"Ready,\" she said over single-beam COM. Her voice w as detached and trancelike.\n\n\"Eyes sharp,\" Kurt told everyone.\n\nThe Spartans had moved from the rendezvous hollow t o the high ground among broken canyons and mesas where Te am Saber had first encountered the Sentinels. Kurt had them spread out  along both sides of the valley.\n Kelly stood in a gravel wash in the center of the v alley and scanned the horizon, waiting for the double Sentinel to spot her. The su n was high and her shadow was a wavering spot at her feet.\n\nFor someone who was bait, she looked perfectly at e ase.\n\nThe tunnel where Dante had rigged the opening and e xit with charges was a quarter kilometer away from her position. Just far enough.\n\nThe tricky part of this plan would be to get the Se ntinel pair into the tunnel, instead of staying high and blasting Kelly while sh e was inside. Would they continue their \"game\" of cat and mouse, or was the data-collection phase of their operation over?\n\nEither way, Kurt had placed his friend in grave dan ger.\n\nKelly looked up to Kurt's position and activated he r single beam. \"I see it,\" she said. \"Two khcks away. I'm going to tap its shoulde r.\"\n\n\"Go, Blue Two,\" he said. \"Keep your head.\"\n\nKurt held up a hand, made a fist, and pumped it twi cethe \"get ready\" signal for the rest of the team.\n\nKelly took a shot at the drone pair with her MAB5an  impossible target with an assault rifle, but it wasn't meant to hit, just to get the thing's attention.\n\nThe Sentinel turned to the report of gunfire and ac celerated toward her.\n\nWill reported over single beam: \"Overwatch spotted,  eleven o'clock, elevation twenty-four hundred meters. Wind is three knots fro m the northwest.\"\n\nKurt relayed this to Linda.\n\nHer status light wavered amber as she made a slight  adjustment in her position, angling her rifle up, and then frozen. On either side, Tom and Lucy hefted missile launchers,  waiting for her order to fire.\n\nMeanwhile, the combined Sentinel pair plunged towar d Kelly.\n\nShe stood there, watching it.\n\nHolly moved close to Kurt, her assault rifle useles sly aimed at the incoming drone. \"Is she fast enough?\"\n\"Kelly's the fastest Spartan,\" Kurt whispered.\n\nThat didn't answer her question, though: was she fa st enough. Kurt didn't know.\n\nThe Sentinel pair was half a kilometer away. One of  the spheres heated and light flashed.\n\nKelly took three sidesteps as the ground where she had been standing vaporized. Globules of molten rock spattered off he r MJOLNIR armor's energy shield.\n\nShe made an ancient and arcane gesture at the machi ne with one finger.\n\nMark joined Holly and Kurt. \"No way,\" he breathed.\n\nKelly turned and ran, leaving a plume of dust in he r wake.\n\nThe diving Sentinels accelerated to two hundred kil ometers an hour. A golden lance flashed from its center of mass detonating th e earth under her feet.\n\nKelly tucked into a ball, tumbled, and came up runn ing without breaking stride.\n\nShe sprinted straight into the tunnel.\n\nThe Sentinels' hexagonal geometry fluttered along i ts drive trajectory. A mere five meters over the gravel wash and screaming towa rd the tunnelit had no time to pull up.\n\nIt chased her down the hole.\n\nKelly appeared silhouetted at the mouth, golden ill umination blazing behind her and the tunnel exploded.\n\nCones of fire shot out both ends. The superheated o verpressure wave blurred the image of Kelly as she was propelled through the  air, end over end.\n\nThe hill collapsed, and a hundred tons of earth cru shed the Sentinel pair. Sand, stone, and dust blasted out in feathery jets.\n\nKelly's body impacted a rock wall, and fell limp to  the gravel wash.\n Kurt signaled Team Saber to get down there and help . He wanted to rush to her side as well, but he had to stay here and ensure th e long-shot part of their operation succeeded. Or, failing that, devise a ret reat.\n\nLinda was still locked in place, tracking the overw atch Sentinel. Tom and Lucy knelt on either side, missiles ready.\n\nKurt squinted along the angle of their aim. Hanging  in the air, over two kilometers away, was a single dot, their target.\n\nThey had to get it or the Sentinel would report the ir position and send for reinforcements which wouldn't fall for this trick a gain.\n\n\"Target off-center, starboard boom,\" Linda whispere d to Lucy and Tom.\n\"Forward point,\"\n\nThey adjusted their aims. \"Locked on target,\" Tom r eplied.\n\n\"Fire,\" Linda said softly.\n\nTwin plumes of exhaust washed over them as the miss iles screamed into the air.\n\nThe overwatch Sentinel turned toward the incoming p rojectiles and its energy shield shimmered golden.\n\nLinda's rifle muzzle flashed. Without seeming to mo ve a molecule she fired until the magazine was empty.\n\nThe missiles impactedsmoke and flames ballooned abo ut the Sentinel.\n\nA heartbeat later, the winds blew the discharge clo ud aside the Sentinel jerked, and plummeted.\n\nLinda got to her feet.\n\nThe Sentinel scattered as it fell, center sphere an d three booms spinning out of control until they impacted.\n\n\"Go,\" he told them. \"Make sure it's dowm.\"\n\nKurt didn't waste another second on the Sentinel; h e turned back to the ravine and rantoward Kelly.\n\nHe scanned Kelly's bio signs: erratic heartbeat, fa lling blood pressure, low body temperature. She was in borderline shock.\n Kurt skidded to a halt in the ravine as Ash and Hol ly propped her up.\n\n\"I'm sorry, sir,\" Ash said. \"The Sentinels were thr ee meters from the exit. If I had waited any longer it would have cleared the tra p. It would have shot her. I couldn't take that chance.\"\n\nKelly shook her headnot to disagree, rather to clea r her senses. Her bio signs perked.\n\n\"He's right,\" she whispered and coughed. \"The kid d id good.\" She gave Ash the thumbs-up signal.\n\nAsh bowed his head.\n\nKurt breathed a sigh of relief that Kelly had survi ved. He'd risked her life to gain a slim advantage over the enemyhe now had to u se it wisely.\n\n\"What's next?\" Fred asked.\n\nKurt told them, \"Now we have an opportunity. If tha t over-watch Sentinel didn't get a fix on our position we'll have some ro om to maneuver and take the initiative.\"\n\n\"Maneuver where?\" Holly asked.\n\n\"Zone 67,\" Kurt said. \"It's the center of everythin g. If there's any technology to be recovered other than broken Sentinel parts, it's  going to be there.\"\n\n\"Patrols get denser the farther north we've gone, s ir,\" Dante noted.\n\n\"It'll be dusk soon,\" Kurt said, \"enough time to ci rcle back to Blue Team's dropship. The sun will be setting and we'll fly it in low, get some camouflage from the long shadows. The rocks in these canyons h ave been baking all day and we'll have thermal cover, too.\"\n\nKurt surveyed his team. \"Unless there's a better id ea?\"\n\nHis gaze fell on Dr. Halsey as she and Chief Mendez  made their way down the valley slope. She stared at him as if she could see  through his mirrored faceplate.\n\n\"Okay, stay sharp. Olivia, Will, Linda, scout ahead . No COM chatter. Let's get this done.\"\n\nDr. Halsey watched Kurt give detailed instructions to the Spartans.\n She didn't care what his orders were so much as how  he was saying it, and the effect it had on them. He spoke with confidence, bu t there was also warmth and pride in his voice. She'd never heard any Spart an so demonstrative. Certainly Kelly would crack the rare joke, but that  was just a layer of emotional armor.\n\nKurt was different.\n\nThe Spartans, young and old, responded to him. Ther e was the usual Spartan stoicism and no questions asked, but there were als o nods, slight tilts of their headsthe involuntary indication of rapt attention. Kurt was their leader now.\n\nThat fact might serve her well in the upcoming cris is.\n\nOf course he was hiding something about his SPARTAN -IIIs. If the mute psychologically damaged Lucy was any indication of what this secret was, Dr. Halsey could only guess at its horrors.\n\nBut as the end neared, she would have no choice but  to trust Kurt. She would have to trust them all to forgive the lies she had told about the treasure trove of Forerunner technologies.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY\n1950 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \\ NEAR RESTRICTED REGION ZONE 67\n\nKurt stood behind Kelly and Will in the Covenant dr opship's cockpit. Kelly sat in the pilot's seat while Will manned the gunner's sta tion and watched the scanners. The other Spartans, Mendez, and Dr. Halse y were aft, readying equipment, waiting, and watching.\n\nKelly shifted back and forththe pilot's seat was an gled wrong for human physiology, and she leaned awkwardly over the contr ol surface.\n\nShe took the ship in low and fast over the jungle. The controls were an odd assemblage of holographic geometries that danced be fore her hands.\n\nKurt tried to learn as much as he could in case he had to fly the alien ship. It was difficult, however, to watch her and not the vi ewscreens.\n\nThe sun was a hand's breadth from the edge of the h orizon, and the Covenant ship passed through long shadows and dim red light.\n As the jungle thinned, Kelly dropped and swerved be tween acacia trees, skimming two meters over the grassland.\n\nWithout looking up from her controls, Kelly said, \" Piece of cake, LC. Relax.\"\n\nShe smoothed her hand over an acceleration stripe a nd the ship leapt forwardzipping off the savanna and over the broken canyon lands.\n\nKelly maneuvered aggressivelyjinking up and down, p erforming quarter rolls to veer around mesas, dropping into ravines and pullin g up at the last instant to avoid a crash headlong into a wall.\n\n\"Great,\" Kurt whispered to Kelly. He forced himself  to release the edge of her seat.\n\nDead ahead the slope of a mountain angled gently up  over two thousand meters.\n\n\"Nothing airborne on sensors,\" Will announced. \"Cle ar sailing ahead.\"\n\n\"Status on the warheads?\" Kurt asked over the COM.\n\nAsh clicked on the channel. \"All FENRIS warhead det onators now secure and slaved to our secure COM signal, sir. As ordered, t wo warheads cut down, armed, and ready for transport. Working on the rest .\"\n\n\"Hang on!\" Kelly cried.\n\nThe nose of the ship jerked up. A rock the size of a Warthog tumbled down the mountain slopeclipping the undercarriage of the shi p.\n\nThe dropship spun, but Kelly expertly rolled, right ed, and got them back on course.\n\n\"Close,\" she muttered.\n\n\"Rescan for surface motion,\" Kurt ordered Will.\n\nWill swept the camera angle port and starboard.\n\nKurt saw they weren't on a single mountain; it was a range-all equivalent elevation, extending in a gentle arc as far as he c ould see.\n\n\"Motion detected,\" Will said. \"Just appeared, sir. Ahead. Got a target lock.\"\n\nA silhouette resolved on the viewscreen, outlined b y the glare of the setting sun. Kelly came hard to port.\n\nAs their relative angle changed, Kurt saw motion: e arth and rocks shot up and then cascaded down the slope.\n\nWill slid his hand over his controls and polarized the monitor, cutting the glare. The motion came from a collection of thirty interla ced Sentinels, their booms and center spheres assembled into an oblong shape, and through its center traveled a continuous stream of stone.\n\nTo Kurt it looked like a mechanical worm regurgitat ing over the mountainside.\n\nDr. Halsey clambered into the cockpit.\n\n\"No energy spikes detected,\" Will said. \"They're no t ready to fire.\"\n\nKurt swallowed. \"Steady on this heading,\" he told K elly.\n\nHe watched the giant machine recede behind them. It  had to have seen them. Thirty sets of eyes wouldn't have missed something as large as a Covenant dropship. Why hadn't it attacked?\n\nDr. Halsey tapped a control and one of the viewscre ens jumped back to the combined Sentinels. She studied this a moment, and then declared,\n\"Tinkertoys.\"\n\n\"I don't understand the reference,\" Kurt said.\n\n\"An ancient child's toy,\" she said, \"sticks and fla t round connectors. These may be the Forerunners' counterpart. They reconfigure t o accomplish various tasks, having all the required basic components: antigravi ty units, force-field generators, energy projector weaponry It is the equ ivalent, I suspect, of the simple machines that comprise our technology: the w heel, the ramp, lever, pulley, and screw.\"\n\nHer casual analysis of a technology centuries more advanced than theirs irritated Kurt.\n\n\"I'd say in this configuration,\" Dr. Halsey continu ed, \"it is not designed for combat, and will not attack unless, of course, they  were provoked. Their programming, while sophisticated, appears dedicated ; that is, each Sentinel combination special-izes lor a single task. And rig ht now, that task is moving dirt.\"\n\n\"Doesn't mean there aren't more combat pairs around ,\" Kelly said. \"Orders, sir?\"\nKurt detected the slightest edge of nervousness in Kelly's voice. He felt it, too, in the pit of his gut. If those thirty Sentinels ba ck there had wanted to, they could have blasted this ship into shrapnel.\n\nThere were only two options; go forward or retreat.\n\nKurt felt like his luck had run dry, but he also fe lt like they were close to finding something.\n\nHe longed for the days of simple missions when ther e were only two things to worry about: maneuvering and where your team's line s of fire were.\n\nYet, when you broke it down to its components, forg ot the consequences of success or failure, wasn't this mission the same as  any other?\n\nMove and fire. Find a target to capture or neutrali ze. Minimize casualties while inflicting maximum damage on your enemy. Get in qui ck. Get out quicker.\n\n\"New course,\" he told Kelly \"Come ninety degrees to  starboard. Take us up that mountainside.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\"\n\nThe tuning fork-shaped dropship banked and raced up  the slope. The earth vanished under them as they crested the summit.\n\nBeyond was a crater a hundred kilometers in diamete r.\n\nThere were thousands of the earthmovers on the inne r slope all spewing rocks over the edge. The Sentinels had created a giant an thill. How much, Kurt wondered, had ONI cleared in the decades they had b een here? And how much of this was the Sentinels' doing?\n\nAt lower elevations there was nothing to see. The s un was too low, and shadows pooled. Kurt boosted image enhancement on h is heads-up display and faint lines resolved but nothing made sense.\n\n\"Take us in closer,\" he whispered.\n\nKelly angled the ship down the interior slope, redu cing their speed to one quarter.\n\nThe clouds overhead lit with oranges and reds as th e setting sunlight reflected off their undersides and the crater interior glowed  a faint amber.\n Kurt blinked, dazzled by what he saw. Mirror-image clouds drifted upon angled surfaces and burned crimson and gold.\n\nAs his eyes adjusted, he saw swirls and bands of ot her muted colors underlying the reflected images: green stripes and black and s ilver waves that appeared to be a tempest ocean frozen in place.\n\nHe blinked once, twice, and then finally unraveled the optical illusion of patterns, colors, and shadow.\n\nThere were pillars and arches, elevated aqueducts; columned temples with crowns of three-dimensional Forerunner symbols; a f orest of sculpted geometries of spheres, cubes, and tori; roads that curved up and twisted into Mobius surfacesit was a vast alien city.\n\nKurt shook his head clear, and then recognized the material that constructed the city. He had seen it before in tumbled stripped  river rocks and the slabs quarried from nearby Gregor Canyon. A rock so plent iful this world had been named for it. Only the stuff in the crater had been  polished to optical flatness, mirroring the sky with superimposed rainbow bands.\n\n\"Onyx,\" he whispered.\n\n\"Chalcedonic quartz with trace elementals enhancing  their spectral variation,\"\nDr. Halsey remarked.\n\nScalloped columns rose from the crater floor to the  mountainous summit, an elevation Kurt could only assume had been ground le vel before ONI began their excavation.\n\nAs they maneuvered closer to one pillar, Kelly bank ed the ship around its curve and Kurt saw reflected images of a thousand differe nt sunsetsall with varying cloud geometries, some with flocks of migrating bir ds, or dinosaurs, another had smears of blue spacecraft, and one burned with a supernova that illuminated the twilight all images captured here. From the past? The future?\nBoth?\n\nAnd only then did the scale of the structure regist er. It was three kilometers in diameter, larger than a UNSC carrier.\n\nKurt's mind rebelled at the scale of this technolog y, the effort it had to have taken to construct such a thing.\n\nHe glanced at Dr. Halsey. While she intently studie d the viewscreen, she did not appear the slightest bit impressed.\n \"You knew this would be here?\" he asked her.\n\n\"I suspected,\" she said. \"Frankly, after reviewing the reports of the Halo structures, I am somewhat disappointed.\"\n\n\"Bigger than the ruins under Reach,\" Kelly said.\n\n\"We did not discover the full extent of those ruins ,\" Dr. Halsey replied, \"and likely never will.\" She squinted at the monitor. \"T here,\" she said, pointing at a distant gleaming dome. \"Can you move closer to that  structure?\" She turned to Kurt. \"With your permission, Lieutenant Commander.\"\n\n\"New heading zero two five,\" Kurt said. \"Pick your best path.\"\n\n\"New course, aye,\" Kelly replied.\n\nAs they descended deeper, the dropship sped past a staircase that ascended to nowhereeach step a hectare of unbroken polished sto ne.\n\nThe cloud-reflected light dimmed and the smooth sur faces melted into shadow. Dr. Halsey's dome turned red-gold and faded to a si lhouette.\n\nWill turned the passive radar on the thing and an o utline overlaid the structure. Kurt discerned that the top of the dome faceted int o seven flat surfaces, each with a tall arch leading to the interior.\n\n\"Those large enough to fly through?\" Kurt asked.\n\nWill consulted his sensor screen. \"Huge,\" he replie d.\n\n\"Move us in,\" Kurt told Kelly\n\n\"Aye aye.\" She pulled the nose of the ship up.\n\nAs the last traces of light vanished, Kurt saw ligh ts in the craterred dots that swarmed over every surface. Sentinels.\n\nWill's hands flashed over the sensor panel. \"New en ergy signatures detected. Extremely low frequencies.\" He  looked up. \"Over a hundred thousand distinct emitters, sir.\"\n\n\"What configuration?\" Dr. Halsey asked. \"Clusters, single units, or pairs?\"\n\nWill studied the panel. \"Ninety-five percent cluste rs, a few hundred single patterns and a few hundred dual signatures.\"\n\"Combat pairs,\" Kurt whispered. \"Kelly, match their  speed.\" He keyed TEAMCOM, and said, \"Make ready for a hot drop. Battle-ready conditions.\"\n\nGreen status lights flashed back, confirming his or der.\n\nThey decelerated over the darkening city, creeping toward the dome. Kurt's instinct told him this was the right thing to do. T he logical, conscious portion of his mind, however, urged him to leave. He'd trust h is \"gut\" on this oneget them inside and under cover, before every Sentinel in th e place fired on them.\n\n\"Nice and easy,\" he said.\n\nKelly's hand hovered over the throttle stripe. \"You  think these things are smart enough to use our own tricks against us? Lure us in side and then close the trap?\"\n\n\"It's a possibility,\" he admitted. \"But I don't thi nk they went to all the trouble to unearth this place just to blast it to bits.\" He sh rugged. \"Just a hunch.\"\n\nKelly and Will glanced at each other.\n\n\"Understood,\" Kelly said. \"Approaching structure. T hree hundred meters.\"\n\n\"Back us in,\" Kurt said.\n\nTheir ship slowed, spun around, and eased toward on e of the dome archways. Five Covenant dropships could have fit through the opening with room to spare.\n\nInside, the blue glow of their engines illuminated the walls. The interior surfaces were angled and carved with star charts an d the Forerunner hieroglyphics.\n\nBelow, seven flat surfaces, each the size of carrie r landing decks, were evenly spaced. Kelly set them down one.\n\nKurt exited the dropship. Will followed him, and to gether they helped Dr. Halsey off.\n\nThe other Spartans took defensive positions around the ship.\n\nKurt's motion sensor showed everyone on deck, but t here was nothing beyond the landing pad save darkness. Every noise was swal lowed by the vast emptiness of the interior, and he felt as if he wer e drowning in shadows and silence.\n He initiated a single-beam COM network, and opened external audio so Dr. Halsey could hear them, too.\n\n\"We do this fast,\" he told his team. \"Olivia, Will,  scout the perimeter of this landing pad. I want a report in ninety seconds on a ll routes and motion sensor hits.\"\n\nOlivia and Will nodded and melted into the dark.\n\n\"Linda, Fred, Mark, Holly, get grappling rounds, sc ale the dome, and take up lookout positions in the arches. Set up single-beam  relays and zip lines. Anything moves this way, sound the alarm.\"\n\nTheir status lights flashed green. Linda disappeare d into the ship and returned with harpoonlike shafts and rope bags. She passed t hem out to the three other Spartans. They slid the rounds into their sniper ri fles, aimed, and shot them through the archways overhead. Braided monoline unc oiled, pulled by the grapple. They tested the lines, and then rapidly as cended the ropes.\n\n\"Dante, Mendez, stay with the ship. Get our gear re ady and loaded into balanced packs.\"\n\nDante's status light remained unlit for a full seco nd in protest, and then it winked green. Mendez nodded and they boarded the sh ip.\n\n\"Kelly, Ash, Tom, Lucyyou're with me and Dr. Halsey . Ash, grab those cut-down nukes.\"\n\nAsh moved into the dropship's cargo area and retune d hefting a backpack.\n\n\"Tom, Lucy,\" Kurt said, \"keep Dr. Halsey covered.\"\n\nHis senior NCOs stepped to either side of the Docto r.\n\n\"Got a staircase, sir,\" Will reported. \"Goes throug h the floor and around the landing pad's support pedestal. No motion detected. \"\n\n\"Roger,\" Kurt said. \"Olivia, link up with Will. Sco ut it out. We'll follow.\"\n\nHe oriented on Will's IFF tag and set a single-beam  relay antenna on the edge of the platform so he could keep in contact topside .\n\nKurt led his team to the stairs that helixed around  the giant pedestal supporting the landing pad. Kelly and Ash were righ t behind him, Tom came next, then Dr. Halsey, and Lucy on rear guard.\n Each stair step was spaced a quarter meter, but the y fanned out from the pedestal ten meters. Kurt kept to the inner surface  of the spiral, avoiding the darkness that lay beyond.\n\nDr. Halsey paused to examine the stone surface.\n\nLucy halted, too, and the faint illumination of the  TAG lights on her SPI armor reflected in the banded rock. She reached out and t ouched her image. There was translucence to the material that, for a moment , bounced reflections within the reflections and an infinite number of Lu cys appeared mirrored.\n\nShe withdrew her hand, and they hastily continued.\n\nAfter three revolutions around the support, Will's IFF tag appeared on Kurt's heads-up display.\n\nA single-beam COM channel opened. \"Chamber ahead, s ir,\" Will reported. \"With Forerunner symbols, I think.\"\n\nFred's voice broke over the COM: \"We're in place. N o incom-ing.\"\n\n\"Eyes sharp,\" Kurt told Fred. Then to Will he said,  \"Show me.\"\n\nWill led them until stairs passed through a floor a nd stopped at an arched entrance. Olivia crouched there, rifle out, coverin g the room beyond. The chamber was only four meters across. After the agor aphobia-inducing space of the city, this room looked suffocatingly small.\n\n\"Watch,\" Will said, and took a step inside.\n\nHolographic Forerunner glyphsdots, dashes, lines, a nd polygonssprang from the stone floor and twisted around him.\n\n\"With your permission, Lieutenant Commander?\" Dr. H alsey asked. \"It's not dangerous, I assure you. I have seen similar contro l surfaces in the Halo mission logs.\"\n\nKurt didn't like a civilian leading, but Dr. Halsey  was the expert here as much of an expert as he had at any rate.\n\n\"Very well. Doctor,\" he said. \"But carefully.\"\n\nDr. Halsey made her way forward. \"Stand perfectly s till,\" she told him, and entered the room.\n\nShe tapped a tiny crystalline blue square; it blink ed in response.\n\"Still dammed difficult to read,\" she muttered. \"Th ere is a simple two dimensional translation, but I now see there are hi gher-dimensional interpretations.\" She reached for her laptop.\n\n\"There's no time for details,\" Kurt told her.\n\nShe frowned and put away her laptop. \"All meaning i s in the details. Lieutenant Commander.\" She compressed her lips, concentrating on the symbols, and then she straightened. \"This way.\"\n\nShe started to stride across the room, and the floo r lit a brilliant blue before her, running directly into a blank wall.\n\nKurt set a hand on her arm, gently checking her mot ion. He then waved for Lucy and Tom to join him and the three Spartans slo wly walked ahead.\n\nDr. Halsey pointed to a small slightly brighter blu e dot on the wall.\n\nTom and Lucy took up firing positions on either sid e of him. Kurt reached for the dot, ready for trouble.\n\nThe wall slid apart and in the darkness beyond, a b ridge of light flickered on, arcing into the distance.\n\nKurt told Olivia, \"Stay here and relay signals tops ide.\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\nKurt paused at the wall, testing his weight on the semitrans-parent bridge. It held. He didn't like it, though. If the power cut o ut, this thing could vanish.\n\nHe moved twelve paces, with Tom and Lucy right behi nd him although the distance covered by their steps didn't seem to matc h the much greater distance he perceived he was traveling along the curve of th e bridge. He looked down:\nfathomless shadows. He kept his eyes straight ahead .\n\nWhen they got to the end of the bridge, a door of d azzling light appeared, and the shadows slid apart.\n\nKurt, Tom, and Lucy passed through, not registering  so much as a blip of enemy contact on their motion sensors. He found himself i n a half-sphere chamber twenty meters across. In the center was a console o ver which metallic-hued Forerunner hieroglyphs swarmed.\n\nKurt turned and motioned for Dr. Halsey to come alo ng. She strode quickly across the bridge. Kelly, Will, and Ash hurried behind her, keen for any motion.\n\nThey entered the room, and Dr. Halsey studied the h ologram.\n\n\"For lack of a better term,\" she said, \"this is an information center.\" She ran her hands over the symbols on the console. \"We should b e able to find, ah\"she tapped a tiny flexing triangular icon\"a map.\"\n\nLight exploded around Kurt. Holographic geometry fl ashed and zoomed to a distant perspectiveand a sphere of symbols, topolog y lines, and shapes swelled over the console, until it touched the apex of the room.\n\n\"A map?\" Kurt asked.\n\n\"Of our present location,\" Dr. Halsey said.\n\n\"So this building is round?\" Kelly asked.\n\n\"Not precisely incorrect,\" Dr. Halsey replied. \"We are in this building. And this building is in this city, which is technically on t his so-called planet, but that view is backward. Observe.\"\n\nShe rotated a golden circle symbol, and holographic  structures passed though Kurt as the map expanded. A dot on the surface of t he sphere magnified and resolved into lines and a grid, squares, triangles,  and one circle.\n\nThe view zoomed in upon that circle and it tilted 9 0 degrees, showing depth, and a faceted dome with seven arches.\n\nDr. Halsey twisted the gold circular symbol and the  focus sharpened, descending through the layers of the building, show ing the landing pad, and the outline of the Covenant dropship with a blazing rea ctor core. Mendez and Ash appeared and tiny bio signs displayed next to them.\n\nThe view plunged deeper and the room they stood in resolved and Kurt watched himself, the other Spartans, and Dr. Halsey .\n\n\"And back,\" she said as she spun the circle icon.\n\nThe room shrank to building to city and back to the  large sphere construct.\n\nThe scale of it finally clicked in Kurt's mind. Onc e he understood, it took him a few seconds to again speak.\n \"When you said the Forerunner translation for Onyx was 'shield world,'\" he whispered, \"that was a literal translation, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Apparently so,\" Dr. Halsey agreed. \"The entire pla net is artificial like the Halo rings.\"\n\nSomething caught her attention on the console. She tapped a blue octahedron.\n\"Could it be ?\" she whispered.\n\nThe map shifted once more, through the surface of t he world, deep into the crust, and revealed a chamber full of machinery and  eight oblong pods that shimmered with energy fields. Within were human bod ies, translucent, their features like specters. Next to each pulsed the tra ce of their heartbeats.\n\n\"That's Katana,\" Ash said, and took a step closer. \"At least five of the people in those things. They vanished in Zone 67 before this all started.\"\n\n\"We've got to get them out,\" Kurt said. \"Doctor, fi nd me a route to that location. Kelly, Ash, get the medical kits from the ship and\"\n\nDr. Halsey held up one hand. \"One moment. Lieutenan t Commander.\" She touched a dot.\n\nThe map of Onyx receded to a meter across and stars  winked upon the map room walls. A tiny Covenant destroyer appeared in o rbit then another and another, until twenty-four ships had flashed into n ormal space from Slipspace.\n\nKelly muttered, \"Out of the frying pan\"\n\nKurt's mind raced. They could still do this. Rescue  Team Katana and get out of here. But they couldn't just leave and give the Cov enant the technology on Onyx. There were the FENRIS warheads, but if he det onated them all it wouldn't even destroy a tiny fraction of this plane t.\n\n\"We've got incoming,\" Fred's static-filled voice cr ackled over the COM.\n\"Sentinels.\"\n\n\"How many?\"\n\n\"Sir, all of them.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-ONE SEVENTH CYCLE, 193 UNITS (COVENANT BATTLE CALENDAR)  \\ ABOARD CRUISER, INCORRUPTIBLE; IN ORBIT ABOVE PLANET ONYX-SYSTEM: Z ETA DORADUS\n(HUMAN DESIGNATION)\n\nFleet Master Voro stepped up to the command console  on the bridge of the Incorruptible. His crew snapped to attention at his  presence.\n\nAll was perfect. He controlled a fleet of the fines t ships on what might be the most important mission for his people and this woul d be his crowning moment:\ncontact with the Forerunner guardians of this world .\n\n\"Ship Master Qunu,\" he said over ship-to-ship COM, \"report.\"\n\nOn the central holographic display, Qunu's destroye r, the Far Sight Lost, continued to accelerate from the safety of the flee t's defensive sphere formation. It plunged into a high orbit over the wo rld the humans had called\n\"Onyx\"; this word had no meaning for their translat ion Oracle.\n\n\"Fleet Master,\" Qunu replied, \"moving into the pros cribed vector of supplication.\"\n\nA thousand tiny craft crested over the planet's nor thern magnetic pole and moved toward the Far Sight Lost on attack vectors.\n\n\"Honor light your way,\" Voro told Quno.\n\nQuno finished the time-old Sangheili maxim: \"Our bl ood will forge a thousand generations.\"\n\nVoro had considered initiating contact himself, but  decided the honor should go to Qunu, whose knowledge of the ancient ritual resp onses from the Fire and Repentance Codices of the First Age was unmatched.\n\nOn Y'gar's sensor station a schematic of one of the  Forerunner vessels appeared:\nthree unconnected cylinders and a sphere.\n\n\"Power signatures detected, sir,\" Y'gar reported, h is one good eye staring at the patterns. \"Energy shields and offensive-system wave forms present.\"\n\nVoro considered this: The power outputs from these tiny ships were insufficient to penetrate their shields but there were so many.\n\n\"Spin up the fore energy projector,\" Voro ordered.\n\nUruo hesitated a heartbeat, and then moved his hand s over the controls. \"Fore energy projector charging, sir.\"\nThe shimmering of power readings of the Forerunner vessels reflected Voro's gaze.\n\nDuring their Slipspace journey, Voro had made clear  to his Ship Masters that they had to be willing to set aside their beliefs. Others had been blinded by the glory of Ring of the Gods, and subsequently destroy ed by the human and the Flood infestations. They must be prepared for anyth ing.\n\n\"Alert the fleet to make weapons ready,\" Voro order ed Y'gar.\n\n\"Aye, sir.\"\n\nVoro wanted to believe the Forerunners had left thi s world to deliver them in their hour of greatest need his instincts, however,  told him not to trust anything but Sangheili blood.\n\n\"Far Sight Lost broadcasting on an open channel,\" Y 'gar said, and put it on bridge audio.\n\n\" let us cast arms aside,\" Ship Master Qunu began t he ritual greeting. \" And like discard our wrath. Thou, in faith, will keep us saf e. Whilst we find the path.\"\n\nThe thousands of the tiny craft drifted in the cent ral holographic display like a cloud of dust. They formed octahedral geometries, s olidifying into crystals of gold and ruby in the dark of space, surrounding the  Far Sight Lost.\n\n\"Incoming transmission,\" Y'gar said. Both his eyes,  sighted and blind, were wide with wonder. \"On the Prophets channel, sir.\"\n\nA flat voice, intoning perfectly the ancient dialec t, rumbled over the bridge:\n\"Rescue phase concluded. Threat-analysis phase conc luded. Reclaimant request for Shield World access denied. Initiating outer de fense program.\"\n\n\"Energy spikes detected,\" Y'gar said. \"Frequencies shifting to resonate suites.\"\nHe looked up. \"They're combining fire, sir.\"\n\n\"Fleetwide channel,\" Voro shouted. \"All Ship Master s make ready to fire. Link targeting control through the Incorruptible.\"\n\nUruo monitored his console as the ships in their fl eet linked into a single spiderweb network of firepower. \"Fleet fire control  is now yours, sir,\" he told Voro.\n\n\"Target laser and energy projectors on these cluste r formations,\" Voro said.\n Uruo smoothed his hands over the network, double-ch ecking the numbers, and then said, \"Target solutions calculated, sir. On yo ur order.\"\n\nA thousand tiny eyes blazed within the alien format ions. Energy beams collimated into lances of golden light that painted  the hull of the Far Sight Lost.\n\nThe ship did not have its shields up. Beams sliced through armor and decks, piercing through and through, blasting cones of vap orized alloy into space.\n\nVoro quenched his rage and studied the carnage. Som e advantage had to be gleaned from this tragedy.\n\nIndividually the tiny craft could do no harm. Toget her, however, they were more than a match for the Far Sight Lost. Their oct ahedral structures shimmered with energy shields. Voro assumed their d efensive strength multiplied when combined as well,\n\n\"Release weapons interlink safety locks,\" Voro orde red, and raised his hand.\n\nHe prayed for the soul of Ship Master Qunu, who had  revealed for them a new enemy.\n\nPenetrated by a dozen beams, the ventral decks of t he Far Sight Lost exploded. The ship rolled over like a great beast in its deat h throes. The weapons cut through the aft section. The plasma core breached, and three plumes of blue fire erupted from the hullheating the aft quarter o f the vessel red-, yellow-, and then white-hotbefore the vessel detonated.\n\nThe crystalline geometry of the alien formations ri ppled and their shields flared.\n\n\"Now!\" Voro commanded. \"All laser and projectors fi re.\"\n\nAll ships under his command launched a barrage, and  the deep night of space lit with crisscrossing lines of illumination. Hundr eds of lasers painted the weakened alien shields and made them sputter with s tatic. Ten microseconds later, energy-projector capacitors discharged and blasts of holy white radi ation impacted the formations, overloaded the distressed shields, and scattered their coherence.\n\nStripped of their protection, the tiny drone ships erupted into streams of superheated particles. Their central eyes blazed wh ite-hot as if their fury alone could protect them.\n\nExplosions chained through the octahedral assembly. Lasers and projectors shut down and the space plung ed again into dankness.\n\nVoro blinked.\n\nWithin the holographic display the thousands of ali en ships were scattered, most now cooling blobs of metal, tumbling disconnec ted rods and spheres. Those that had survived moved sluggishly as they at tempted to realign for another attack.\n\n\"Eighty-three percent of the vessels destroyed,\" Y' gar said.\n\nOver fleetwide COM Voro said, \"All ships break and attack. Annihilate the survivors with plasma charges before they regroup.\"\n\nThe fleet accelerated to attack speed, burning all before them. The smaller alien craft were defenseless before this onslaught.\n\nShip Master Qunu had been a hero. He had demonstrat ed for them all that the old ways of devout placation had no place in this n ew Age. The Sangeili would forge their own way, with their own blood, if need be.\n\n\"Contact the Absolution,\" Voro told Y'gar. \"Have th em make ready for a Slipspace transition in atmosphere. They will scout  the northern polar region where these drones came from and determine if there  are high-value targets our sensors have overlooked.\"\n\n\"Absolution hailed, sir,\" Y'gar replied. \"Orders re layed.\" He paused listening, then said, \"The Absolution is yours to command, Fle et Master.\"\n\nVoro nodded, indicating they go.\n\nThe space surrounding the sleek destroyer shimmered  as their Slipspace capacitors discharged.\n\n\"Something on the planet surface, sir,\" Y'gar said,  and he bent closer, concentrating. \"Energy anomaly in the northern pola r region.\"\n\nHe waved his hand over his controls and the central  viewer split, half filling with a view of the planet's ice caps, zooming close r to reveal a wind-whipped landscape of snow dunes. A kilometer off the ground , the air shimmered in the exact same pattern as the Absolution's Slipspace tr ansition matrix.\n\n\"That should not be happening,\" Uruo remarked, and took a step closer to the image, intrigued. \"A Slipspace matrix only appears upon a ship's exit. The Absolution has yet to transition.\"\n\"Hail the Absolution,\" Voro said. \"Abort the jump.\"\n\nY'gar shook his head. \"Slipspace matrix interfering  with our signal, sir.\"\n\n\"Move to intercept,\" Voro ordered.\n\nThe Incorruptible tilted and accelerated toward the  destroyer as it edged toward its Slipspace field.\n\nThe view in the holographic display shifted. Above the north pole three new octahedral formations of alien ships materialized i n the glow of the Slipstream exit field.\n\n\"They can jump?\" Voro whispered.\n\nThat made no sense. If they had such a capacity the n why hadn't they jumped into combat with the Far Sight Lost? Or for that ma tter jumped to avoid destruction from the rest of the battle group?\n\nVoro turned to Y'gar, who understood Slipstream spa ce better than any of his officers. \"Explain,\" he demanded.\n\nY'gar straightened. \"Sir, a Slipspace transition re quires more power than ships that size can generate. I can only guess that they are somehow tapping into the Absolution's Slipspace field.\"\n\n\"Energy spikes,\" Uruo said. \"Northern polar region. \"\n\nThe alien ships fired, hundreds of beams bounced wi thin their linked geometry, combining and focused though their  energy shieldsdirected into the center of the wrapping Slipspace.\n\nThe Absolution vanished from high orbit reappeared in the center of the aliens' field of fi re.\n\nThe hull of the destroyer superheated to whiteflash  vaporized, flowering into a ball of ultraviolet fire.\n\nThe alien vessels comprising the octahedral formati ons deformed from the overpressure wave. They then flew away on random tr ajectories from the cloud of smoke, which was all that remained of the Absolu tion.\n\nVoro watched stunned and then he regained his wits.\n\"Scan the surface of the planet,\" Voro told Y'gar. \"And recheck the sensor log for anomalies just before those ships appeared.\" He  opened the fleetwide channel. \"No vessels to initiate a Slipspace transi tion without my explicit order.\"\n\nHis Ship Masters sent their acknowledgments, and tw enty-one personal insignia lit his console.\n\n\"Energy signature detected,\" Y'gar said. \"In our lo gs before the enemy ships appeared, scanners detected a burst of extremely lo w-frequency energy a transmission from this location.\"\n\nOn the central viewer a ring of mountains snapped i nto focus. There was motion along the rim. Voro zoomed in and saw one ro d-and-sphere drone dart back into the shadows.\n\nTransmission? Coordinating orders perhaps? Or a cen tral location where these drones had something worth protecting?\n\n\"That is our target,\" he said. Voro activated FLEET COM. \"All ships to OVERARCH attack pattern and prepare for orbital descent. Cha rge lateral lines to full capacity.\"\n\nThe Incorruptible took position on the starboard wi ng of the coalescing wing formation and led the battle group into the planet' s atmosphere.\n\nBeneath them, air heated and rolled off their hulls  in waves of convective fire.\n\nVoro watched as the clouds in the upper atmosphere parted before their combined bow wake and lamented over th e holes in their formation. Two ships lost. The fault was his. How c ould any continue to follow his orders after such errors?\n\nYet Voro felt their confidence. Perhaps that was de lusion, but they had followed him unquestioningly into battle. They knew  that what happened here could determine the fate of all Sangheili. They had  to succeed, even if it cost their lives.\n\nThey swooped over the surface of the planet, over t wilight-shrouded jungles, undulating plains of grass, and shadow-filled canyo ns. Flocks of birds and herd animals scattered before their ominous presence.\n\nNo more alien craft rose to challenge them. Where w ere the hundreds they had seen at the northern pole? In reserve? Lurking in a mbush?\n\"Come to dead slow,\" Voro commanded over FLEETCOM. \"Maintain battle conditions.\"\n\nAs the fleet crossed the crater summit, a collectio n of drones appeared on the inner rim spewing earth and stone into the air.\n\nThree of his destroyers opened fire and left nothin g but a surface of crackling glass.\n\nAs the greater body of the fleet crossed into the c rater, the light from their heated lateral lines illuminated the dark interior,  revealing giant arches and pillars, steps that circled faceted silver domes. I t was a city of magnificent proportions. The shapes were instinctively recogniz ed by Voro from Holy Scriptures. Every line and curve, every symbol had been burned into his soul.\n\nThis was a Forerunner city. Intact. Sacred. Untouch ed. It was what every member of the Covenant had dreamed of finding if no t in this life, then the next.\n\nWould it be so easy to claim their prize? The techn ological and theological treasures were close enough to touch. Voro's joints  weakened and he wanted to drop and bow before the glory of it all.\n\nHe stopped, ashamed. Such religious stupor would on ly blind him to the dangers.\n\nVoro must not bow to the Forerunner ghosts. He must  be the sole authority here.\n\nHe turned to the Lekgolo pair who ever remained at his back on the bridge.\n\n\"Prepare for battle,\" he told them.\n\nAlthough the Lekgolo could not smile, Voro sensed t heir \"faces\" flex in pleasure, a dozen eels squirmed and coiled over one another.\n\nThey growled their assent, rose, saluted, and thund ered off the bridge.\n\nVoro ran his hand over the command console. Ship Ma ster Tano's blood still stained the edges, tingeing the holographic emitter s blue. He lamented that his old mentor had not survived to witness this moment.\n\n\"Alien vessels accelerating from the surface,\" Uruo  announced. \"Two dozen. Pair formation. On attack vectors.\"\n \"Destroy the craft,\" Voro said over FLEETCOM, \"and only the craft. Use lasers, pinpoint targeting.\"\n\nTiny explosions lit the night as the drones were ob literated.\n\nHe activated the SHIPCOM. \"Paruto, Waruna, during t he ground assault take pains to minimize collateral damage.\"\n\nThere was a double-growl response, and then Paruto asked, \"What target. Fleet Master?\"\n\nVoro surveyed the vast city. A complete search woul d take weeks.\n\n\"Pulse the Greeting of Ancients for a signal respon se,\" he told Y'gar.\n\n\"Aye, Fleet Master.\" He broadcast the Covenant's un iversal handshake sequence, and waited then for a response.\n\nIt was only a dream that any Forerunner were left t o answer the call.\n\n\"Something\" Y'gar leaned closer to examine the wave ring reply signal.\n\nVoro moved to his station.\n\n\"It's one of ours,\" Voro declared. \"Send it to the ship's Oracle for pattern match.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Y'gar replied. \"Ship ID DX class.\"\n\n\"A dropship? Identify the parent ship registry\"\n\nY'gar summoned the reference and his jaws dropped o pen in shock. \"Bloodied Spirit,\" he whispered.\n\nVoro narrowed his eyes at the wavering response sig nals. This came from the ship stolen by the human demons. They had beaten th em here? Survived the Forerunners' defenses and infiltrated holy grounds?  Anger boiled within him and clouded his mind, but he collected his rage saved i t.\n\n\"Triangulate the signal,\" he ordered.\n\n\"Yes, sir. There.\"\n\nThe image shifted in the central viewer. A silver d ome wavered into semisolidity. The apex of the structure faceted int o seven planes, and on each, an arch opened to the interior arches large enough for dropships to pass through.\n\nVoro returned to his command console. \"Paruto, Waru na, we have a target. Muster the reserves from every ship in the fleet.\"\n\nParuto and Waruna replied simultaneously with a sub sonic rumble of acknowledgment.\n\n\"You will, however, wait,\" Voro told him.\n\nThere was silence over the COM.\n\n\"Wait\" was a word one dared not speak to a Lekgolo pair on the verge of battle.\n\n\"You shall wait for me to join you,\" Voro said. \"Fo r I shall lead this assault.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-TWO\n2040 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ SLIPSTREAM SPACE NEAR ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM \\ ABOARD UNSC PROWLER DUSK\n\n\"Enable stealth protocols,\" Commander Richard Lash ordered. \"Prepare for transition to normal space.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Lieutenant Commander Julian Waters turn ed to the Dusk's bridge officers. \"External power sources off-line,\" he sai d. \"Lock ablative baffles. Secure engine dampers.\"\n\nLieutenant Bethany Durruno at her NAV station cross checked the calculations for the slipspace-to-normal transition. \"We're almo st there, sir. Thirty seconds.\"\n\nAt the OP-SENSOR station. Lieutenant Joe Yang said,  \"Rigged for dark and silent running, sir. Five points confirmed.\"\n\nLash personally rechecked everything on the display  by the captain's chair. All shipshape. So why did he have a feeling everything was about to hit the fan?\nAnswer: in his short tenure as commanding officer o f the Dusk, imminent disaster had been the norm. He expected no less thi s time.\n\n\"Go to normal space,\" he ordered. \"Start the clock. \"\n\nWaters set the chronometer and said, \"Time on missi on: fifteen and counting.\"\n Lash glanced at his old-fashioned spring-and-gear w rist-watch, a gift from his dad when he'd graduated from OSC. \"Keep it wound, S on.\"\n\nHe checked: it was indeed wound tight.\n\nThe bridge lights dimmed to red as the ship's power  shunted to the Shaw-Fujikawa translight drive's particle ac celerator, and it ripped a hole back into the normal three dimensions of inter stellar space.\n\nThe trio of blackened viewscreens sparkled with sta rs. One point of light was unusually bright. The main screen centered on this star, and astronomical parameters streamed alongside Zeta Doradus. Ellipti cal orbits traced of the six innermost planets.\n\n\"Positive fix on stellar references,\" Lieutenant Du rruno said. \"We're slightly off target, sir. Three million kilometers.\"\n\n\"Move us in,\" Lash ordered, \"one-third full ahead o n intercept course for the fourth planet. Tell Lieutenant Commander Cho in Eng ineering to start recharging the Slipspace capacitors.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir,\" she said.\n\nShe bit her lower lip, and Commander Lash knew that  meant she was nervous, too sensing something amiss already on this mission .\n\nThe Dusk skimmed through space, black on black; onl y a telltale flickering of the background stars gave the slightest indication that anything was there.\n\nWaters glanced at the chronometer and whispered, \"S ir, thirteen minutes to go. Barely time to close on the target while running da rk, let alone gather a detailed analysis.\"\n\nTime was never on Commander Lash's side. Either the re was too much time and his crew waited days or weeks stealthed or, as was now the case, they had to rush and balance gathering accurate data with remai ning hidden. It was a hell of a choice: The fate of thousands' lives and eight  other ships depended on this. On the other hand, if the Dusk were detected, no in tel would get back. Not to mention, they'd all be dead.\n\nEighteen months of crew attrition and constant acti on were now taking their toll on Lash's officers. He watched Lieutenants Dur runo and Yang and saw the combat fatigue mirrored in their glazed, dark-circl ed eyes. They had endured endless waiting punctuated by salvos of Covenant pl asma and laser fire. They'd\n witnessed the fall of four colonies and the cremati on of billions. They were close to the edge. For that matter, so was he.\n\n\"We have our orders,\" Lash told Waters. \"Fifteen mi nutes in and then we transition back. We'll do our best with the time al lotted.\"\n\nThey had limited time for two reasons. First, past fifteen minutes detection by Covenant sensors grew at a statistically geometric rate. Second, after fifteen minutes the Dusk's ability to find the rest of thei r battle group in Slipspace would exponentially decrease.\n\nLash sat back, and in the fine tradition of prowler  commanders everywhere, he practiced exuding patience.\n\nThe Dusk's journey back to Earth had occurred in re cord time. They had caught a wake in slipstream space, one indeter-minably lar ger then the Covenant wake they had followed. Their NAV-AI reported: SOLITON-L IKE wave patterns detected near HALO CONSTRUCT. Lash had no idea what  had caused it, only reported it to Lord Hood who had considered his rep ort of Shpspace wakes and then immediately ordered them to attempt the same t rick and follow the Spartan strike team's vector until they reached rem ote station Tripoli. There they would rende-vous with a battle group under the  command of Admiral Carl\n\"Buster\" Patterson, provide assistance to the Spart an team, and hopefully obtain new technologies that would turn the tide of  this war.\n\nLash had heard rumors of the Spartans' audacious ac tions, boarding a Covenant ship, nuking its sister ship, destroying the Tallo Negro del Maiz orbital stalk in the process. The stuff legends were made of.\n\nHe was more than happy to stay in the shadows. No v id broadcasts about his glorious death, thank you.\n\nThe Dusk had had no chance at Earth to take on a fu ll crew or resupplyinstead they transitioned immediately to Slipstream space t o catch the rapidly dissipating wake of the Spartan-captured Covenant s hip.\n\n\"Maximum range for the X-ELF radar system,\" Lieuten ant Yang announced.\n\"Eight minutes on the clock, sir.\"\n\n\"Start a high-resolution series,\" Lash told him, \"p lanet surface to the Lagrange points.\"\n\n\"Coming online now,\" Yang said. He straightened. \"T wo contacts in high planetary orbit! Covenant destroyers.\"\n\nSilhouettes flashed on Lash's display, confirming Y ang's analysis.\n\"Heavy destroyers,\" Lash murmured. Enough concentra ted firepower to take out a dozen UNSC prowlers.\n\nWaters asked, \"Could one be the Spartans' ship? We could send a narrow-band encrypted ping, sir.\"\n\n\"Anything is possible with Spartans,\" Lash said, \"b ut it's not our job to communicate with them. We're here to gather data fo r Admiral Patterson's strategic consideration.\"\n\nWaters closed his eyes, thinking a moment, and fina lly said, \"Aye, sir.\"\n\nThe Lieutenant Commander wanted to get into the fig ht. It was a deadly sentiment for the officer of a prowler. Lash sympat hized. Waters had long ago lost his wife and children on Harvest. But stealth was their only defense against such a force. Vengeance had no place on his ship.\n\n\"Debris in orbit,\" Yang said. \"Metallic structures.  Unknown alloy composition on spectroscopic analysis.\"\n\n\"Recent combat?\" Waters asked.\n\n\"Aye, sir, residual plasma detected. However insuff icient tonnage to account for even one Covenant destroyer.\"\n\n\"Come to course zero two zero by three two five,\" C ommander Lash ordered Lieutenant Durruno. \"Cut engines and shunt the powe r to recharging Slipspace capacitors.\"\n\nShe focused her laserlike attention on her NAV cont rols. \"Coming about. New trajectory set. Our inertia will take us in for a t ight orbit.\" All trace of her fatigue vanished and she tapped a rapid-fire messag e on her keyboard, and then replied.\n\n\"Lieutenant Commander Cho reports capacitors at fif ty percent. They'll be hot in six minutes.\"\n\n\"Go active camouflage,\" Commander Lash told Waters.\n\nLash forced himself to remain collected. He felt li ke a fraud, but he had to try to maintain the illusion of confidence for the sake  of his officers. He would never let them know how scared he was.\n\n\"Active camouflage online,\" Waters said. \"Texture b uffer full. Four minutes on the clock.\"\nThe Dusk dove toward the twilight demarcation line of the planet. The normally matte-black ablative coating on her dorsal  surfaces flickered with patterns of cirrostratus and lapis ocean and glowin g orange sunset.\n\n\"Radiologicals?\" Lash asked.\n\n\"No Argus-eiTect beta radiation detected in the mag neto-sphere,\" Yang answered. \"The Spartan team has not detonated any F ENRIS warheads.\"\n\n\"Is that a good, or bad, thing?\" Waters murmured.\n\nLash wasn't sure. If the Spartans had been here, he 'd expect there to be a swath of destruction. \"Planetary energy sources?\" h e asked Yang.\n\n\"Nothing, sir,\" Yang answered as he pored over the data flashing on his screens.\n\"We still have one-quarter of the planet's surface to scan, though. It will take seven minutes in this orbit to cover that area.\"\n\n\"One minute on the clock,\" Waters told him. He hesi tated as if he had more to say but didn't.\n\nLash knew what he wanted: a full orbit, more time, and a close pass near those Covenant combat assets. Waters wanted to be a hero.\n\n\"We're following Admiral Patterson's orders to the letter,\" Lash said. \"We've got two Covenant warships on the other side of this pla net. No detectable sign of Spartans. No nukes trig-gered. And we haven't been seen. That's enough.\"\n\nLash locked gazes with Waters.\n\nWaters looked away, frowned, but nodded. He said, \" Rig for Slipspace transition.\"\n\n\"Aye aye,\" Lieutenant Durruno said. She sighed, vis ibly relaxing at the decision to leave. \"Matrix calculations input. Ready for tra nsition in seventeen seconds.\"\n\nLash fidgeted in the captain's chair. It was the ri ght move to leave. If they executed a full orbit, their luck would most certai nly run out. And waiting for their recon data in Slipspace was Patterson's battl e group of eight ships.\n\nTwo Covenant destroyers were a threat, but it was a ccepted that three-to-one odds in the UNSC's favor against Covenant forces wa s an even match. Four to one? They rarely had such odds in this war.\n\nSo why did this feel all wrong?\n\"Initiate Slipspace transition,\" Commander Lash ord ered.\n\nAround the Dusk space flashed blue and white and th e stars vanished.\n\nEight UNSC ships dropped from Slipstream space into  black interstellar vacuum and there was a fireworks show of blue Cherenkov ra diation and spiraling subatomic particle decays.\n\nCommander Lash used this to his advantage.\n\n\"Set new course to port, perpendicular to fleet att ack vector,\" he ordered Lieutenant Durruno.\n\n\"Aye, sir.\" Under the red glow of the bridge's batt le lighting, his officers looked more alive now and more scared.\n\nThe stealthed Dusk moved away from the destroyers, carrier, and cruiser of Admiral Patterson's battle group.\n\nLash wasn't running awaya sentiment he found himsel f repeating ever since he had witnessed the events at the Halo ring.\n\nHe had volunteered the Dusk to go back and scout th e planet on a second recon mission. But the Admiral had told him there was no time. He was going to\n\"catch those Covenant bastards with their pants down\" and strike while they were n ear the planet's gravity well.\n\nWith the odds in his favor it was a sound tactic. S till, it bothered Lash that the Admiral committed so many lives without a complete picture.\n\n\"Move us into an elliptical orbit around the dark s ide of Onyx,\" Lash ordered.\n\"Set apogee to fifty thousand kilometers. Ahead one -third power.\"\n\n\"New course set, sir.\" Lieutenant Durruno turned to  face him. Looking pained, she opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, and then quickly said, \"I beg your pardon, Commander. I thought we had orders to remai n clear of the combat.\"\n\n\"We will,\" Lash said, \"but we're going to finish th at planetary scan.\" He moved to the NAV station and set one hand on Bethany's sh oulder. \"Just take us in nice and easy.\"\n\nHer eyes locked forward on her screens. \"Yes, sir.\"\n To Lieutenant Yang he said, \"Monitor the engine the rmals and push us past one third power right up to the dark-line limit.\"\n\nYang swallowed, and then replied, \"Aye aye. Command er.\"\n\nLash danced a fine line. He wanted speed and invisi bility.\n\n\"Action on-screen!\" Lieutenant Commander Waters ann ounced.\n\nOn the central viewer flashes appeared in the dark.  Admiral Patterson had launched his alpha strike.\n\n\"Magnification forty,\" Lash ordered.\n\nThe two Covenant destroyers snapped on center scree n. Scattered Archer missiles detonated harmlessly on their shields. The  ships turned out of orbital alignments to face their enemy, and in doing so, cl osed ranks.\n\nThree white spheres popped behind the vesselsexpand ed and enveloped the now-clustered enemy destroyers. Jets of supercharge d ions funneled downward into the planet's magneto-sphere.\n\n\"Perfect placement of the nukes,\" Yang murmured, gl ancing between the viewscreen and his instruments. \"Maximum destructio n and radiation trapped by the planet so the fleet can move in.\"\n\n\" And finish them off.\" Waters rubbed his hands tog ether in unconscious anticipation.\n\nThe fireballs cooled to red and a single sleek silh ouette emerged: one of the Covenant destroyers had survived. Plasma charges la unched toward the center of the UNSC battle groupdirectly at Admiral Patters on's flagship carrier, the Stalingrad.\n\nThe prows of the UNSC ships flared as their magneti c accelerator cannons fired.\n\nLines of flame and superheated slugs crossed the sp ace between the two forces.\n\nThe UNSC destroyer Glasgow Kiss accelerated in fron t of the fleet; the narrow craft turned sideways, placing itself between the i ncoming plasma and the Stalingrad. A dozen escape pods popped from her hul l as the ship caught three of the four lances of fire. The hull heated for an instant, and then shattered into fragments.\n\n\"Track those pods,\" Lash ordered Lieutenant Yang.\n \"Aye, sir.\"\n\nOn-screen, the Stalingrad took a direct hit on her port side. Plasma etched through the meters of titanium-A armor plating like  a blowtorch through rice paper, and her center amidships decks vented.\n\nThe UNSC fleet MAC rounds impacted on the Covenant destroyer. The slugs battered through the ship's reconstituted shields, and then through the hull, knocking it back so violently it tumbled out of con trol into the planet's atmosphere, leaving a trail of turbulence and fire.\n\nIts engines flared and accelerated into an extremel y low orbitaway from the fleet.\n\n\"Cowards,\" Waters muttered.\n\n\"I wonder,\" Lash replied. \"We've survived five UNSC -Covenant engagements.\" He stared into deep space, remembering the carnage, an d that the UNSC had only won one of those battles. \"The Covenant do not simp ly run away. Lieutenant Commander. They might disengage to regroup, but whe n outgunned and outnumbered they go down swinging.\"\n\nThere was only one conceivable reason this lone Cov enant destroyer would turn tail.\n\nLash told Lieutenant Durruno, \"We're going bright. Increase speed to flank. Hold your course.\"\n\n\"Sir ?\" She leaned over her controls. \"Aye, sir.\"\n\nLash keyed SHIPCOM to Engineering. \"Lieutenant Comm ander Cho, drain the Slipspace capacitors and route the power to engines . I want them one hundred thirty percent hot.\"\n\nWhat had felt like victory on the bridge a moment a go faded and Lash's officer again appeared wary and weary.\n\nThere was silence over the SHIPCOM and then Cho rep lied, \"Routing power now.\"\n\nThe Dusk was out in the open, and Lash was violatin g the first rule of any prowler captain: stay hidden.\n\nBut every instinct he had screamed that the Covenan t wouldn't be this easy to defeat, and that they'd overlooked something of vit al importance.\n Admiral Patterson's seven ships chased after the si ngle Covenant vessel. They vanished as the Dusk arced around the planet.\n\nLash returned to the captain's chair and uneasily s ettled into it.\n\nWaters stood next to him and whispered, \"Tell me yo u know what you're doing, Richard.\"\n\nLash leaned forward and said nothing.\n\n\"Coming up on the dark side of Onyx in fifteen seco nds,\" Lieutenant Yang said.\n\"Ten five three, two, one.\"\n\nThe planet's nighttime face appeared on every views creen, dark save the glimmering clouds on the edge of twilight.\n\n\"Hot spot!\" Yang shouted. \"On the horizon: twenty-s even degrees north, one hundred eighteen east. Recalibrating thermals to cu t though atmospheric distortion.\"\n\nOn the main viewscreen a wavering image resolved in to twenty Covenant warshipsclimbing at flank speed through the atmosph ereon an intercept vector toward Admiral Patterson's fleet.\n\nLash jumped to his feet. \"Cut engine power to one-t hird,\" he said. \"Reenable stealth protocols. Come to new bearing: polar orbit . Get me a clear sight line to the Stalingrad.\"\n\n\"New heading, aye,\" Lieutenant Durruno said, her vo ice straining as she calculated the orbit. \"Brace for correction burn at  one-third power.\"\n\nThe Dusk pitched and tilted into a polar alignment.  Engines rumbled and the prowler arced up toward the ice caps of Onyx.\n\n\"Zenith in twenty-three seconds,\" Durruno said.\n\nLash tuned to Lieutenant Commander Waters. \"Action report.\"\n\nWaters's gaze was already locked onto his display. \"Nothing. Covenant fleet is ignoring us.\"\n\nLash should have been relieved; they could have des troyed the Dusk with a few laser shots. Going dark was the right thing to do. But despite his years of training in evading the enemy, Lash wished the Cove nant had turned. It might have given Patterson a few extra seconds to see wha t was coming.\n He waited fifteen secondsthe most agonizing quarter  minute of his lifewatching the clouds, landmasses, and oceans of Onyx pass und er his ship.\n\nThe Dusk finally crested the pole and the starsas w ell as Admiral Patterson's fleetreappeared on the forward screen.\n\nOnly a hundred kilometers apart the UNSC vessels fi red all magnetic accelerator cannons and launched a volley of Archer  missiles at the Covenant ships racing toward them. The meteoric rounds blaze d through the atmosphere leaving smoking scars.\n\nLasers flashed from the Covenant ships destroying i ncoming missiles, but they couldn't stop the point-blank-fired MAC slugs.\n\nSeven MAC rounds struck the two lead destroyers in the Covenant line, shattered their shields, dented the armor, and poun ded through hulls, crippling the vessels so they aborted their attack run as the y were caught in the planet's gravity pull. One ship's engines flared, overloadin g as its captain attempted a survivable landing. One lone destroyer, however, sp un in orbit, its forward momentum neutralized.\n\nA victory. Lash knew it would be short-lived.\n\nThe enemy outnumbered them almost three to one with  superior weapons and defensive shields. And the proximity of a gravity w ell meant Patterson was backed into a corner. It would be a slaughter.\n\nPlasma erupted from the Covenant fleet that looked like a solar flare as it boiled through the vacuum of space toward the UNSC ships.\n\nPatterson was no fool. He didn't attempt to evade a t this range. Instead the engines of his ships heated and they angled into a lower orbitaccelerating into the attack.\n\nThis would do nothing to stop guided plasma, but th ey'd emerge going much faster, possibly fast enough to avoid a second atta ck.\n\nThe plasma tracked the UNSC ships as they dove. A s plit second before it impacted, energy projectors lit on the Covenant shi ps and dazzling beams of pure white radiation illuminated Patterson's shipss o bright, the scene froze for an instant, burned in Lash's retinas.\n\nExplosions and showers of molten titanium filled th e view-screens and rapidly expanded into a cloud of sparks and smoke and the t umbling cracked husks of UNSC ships.\n Miraculously five human warships rocketed from the center of this destruction, streaming fire and venting atmosphere thundering in to the heart of the Covenant fleet.\n\nA UNSC destroyer, Iwo fima, grazed a Covenant carri er three times its size, deflected off its shields, and careened into two ot her Covenant destoyers. The UNSC vessel erupted from inside, reactor overload a nd single nuclear warhead detonated in an act of self-destruction. The fireba ll enveloped eight nearby enemy ships of which six survived behind their shim mering energy shields.\n\nThe Covenant fleet was in disarray, slowed and paus ed to regroup.\n\nPatterson's ships continued to accelerate and arc a round to the far side of Onyx.\n\nThey had survived at least for one more orbital pas s.\n\n\"Additional contacts,\" Yang said. He half stood fro m his seat and hovered over the sensor board. \"Rapidly ascending from the plane t's surface. Intercept course for the Covenant fleet.\"\n\nLash's heart sank into his stomach. \"Reinforcements ,\" he said.\n\nYang was silent, studying his display, and then he said, \"No, sir. Look, on your screen.\"\n\nLash tuned the tiny captain's chair display toward him and examined a ship silhouette. The computer extrapolated a rough three -dimensional model of three boons, and a sphere with no connecting struct ures.\n\n\"They're three meters stem to stern,\" Yang said. \"P assive radar is picking up thousands of them.\"\n\nThe main viewscreen snapped to a medium-orbital van tage and Lash watched as a cloud of the tiny craft coalesced into three o ctahedral shapes.\n\nThe Covenant ships turned toward this new threat, a bandoning their pursuit of Admiral Patterson's battle group. Lateral lines hea ted and plasma barrages arced toward the approaching alien formations.\n\nFire rained upon the leading eight-sided constructi on and an energy shield coalesced that looked like gold-dappled water. The plasma hesitated there as if caught in a magnetic field. It heated to yellow-, white-hot, and then tinged blue and ult raviolet. The plasma melted though the shield, and then passed harmlessly insid e the formation.\n \"Plasma capture?\" Waters whispered in awe. \"That's a hell of a trick.\"\n\nThe spheres within the alien formation glowed, and from each, scintillating beams shot through the atmosphere toward the Covena nt ships comprising the leading edge of their fleet.\n\nA hundred energy beams penetrated Covenant shields and sliced through their hulls. The superheated plasma inside the alien form ation then streamed along the beams, coiling and writhing snakelike, and pain ted the damaged Covenant ships, vaporizing hulls, melting decks and superstr uctures like they were plastic film.\n\nThree Covenant destroyers detonated under this comb ined fire.\n\nThe plasma dissipated throughout the upper atmosphe re, filling the near vacuum with a fading purple haze.\n\nThe surviving Covenant ships struggled to accelerat e out of the gravity well.\n\nThe other alien ships, however, were faster and gai ned on them.\n\nTwo Covenant vessels spun about and fired their ene rgy projectors and lasers at the lead alien formation.\n\nThe octahedral's shields crackled with static and d issipated. The tiny craft within the formation bloomed into fireballs.\n\nThe remaining two alien formations fired upon this Covenant rear guardenergy beams cut their shields and blasted them to atoms.\n\nThe Covenant ploy, however, had worked.\n\nThe balance of their fleet had escaped the gravity of Onyx and outdistanced their persuaders.\n\nLash's mind reeled. Who were these new aliens? Or w as this a weapon captured and controlled by the Spartans sent ahead of them?\n\nThe Covenant's tactics also confused Lash. They had n't used a Slipspace jumpsomething he was certain they would have done t o escape rather than sacrifice two ships.\n\nSuddenly, everything in this war had changed. Comma nder Lash wasn't sure if it was for the better, or for the worse.\n \"Break orbit dead slow,\" Lash whispered. \"Move us t o Lagrange-Three. Lieutenant Yang, continuous check on our stealth pr ofile. Durruno, keep on the passive radar and watch for escape pods.\"\n\n\"What the hell are they?\" Waters asked, staring at the viewscreen.\n\nThe octahedral formations drifted apart and the dro nes spread out in the upper atmosphere.\n\nLash shook his head.\n\n\"Transmission on the UNSC E-Band, sir,\" Yang said, straining to listen into his earbud. \"From the planet surface. Someone is broadc asting in the open.\"\n\n\"To the UNSC forces in orbit over the planet design ated XF-063, this is the Artificial Intelligence Endless Summer, MIL AI ID 4 279. If you want to survive the next three minutes, answer this hail.\"\n\nLash and Waters exchanged startled looks.\n\n\"Message repeats, sir,\" Yang said. \"Encoded scheme in the carrier wave indicates a reply via encryption protocol JERICHO.\"\n\nLash was uncertain what to do. Patterson's fleet wa s on the wrong side of the planet to receive this message. Covenant and alien forces of unknown disposition were too close for comfort. And for the  moment, as long as the Dusk was silent, they were safe.\n\n\"Drop a BLACK WIDOW COM satellite,\" Lash ordered, \" and then move us off thirty thousand meters and route a single beam. Sen d this: To AI MIL ID 4279, this is Commander Richard Lash of the UNSC prowler Dusk. We're listening '\"\n\n\n\nSECTION VII RECLAIMERS CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE\n2050 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \\ RESTRICTED REGION ZONE 67\n\nKurt turned to Dr. Halsey. \"The door, Doctor.\"\n\nShe tapped a Forerunner icon.\n\nA doorway slid open.\n\"Use this thing,\" Kurt said, and waved at the entir e holographic map room, \"and find a way to the Spartans in cryo. If you can't do  that, then find us a route out of this place underground, small enough so those Se ntinels can't follow.\"\n\nAnnoyance crossed Dr. Halsey's features as she mani pulated the map room and zoomed about the internal structure of the planetla yers of rooms, machines, cutaway blueprints, connecting rods and spherical j oints, corridors and vast chambers rapidly flit through space.\n\n\"There are a few things I must first check, Lieuten ant Commander.\" Dr. Halsey tilted her glasses so the reflecting glare of the h olographic images shielded her eyes.\n\n\"Will,\" Kurt said over the COM. \"Guard her and keep  her on task.\"\n\nThe last thing he needed in a combat situation was Dr. Halsey going rogue and not following orders.\n\n\"Understood,\" Will replied.\n\n\"Kelly, Tom, defend the corridor,\" Kurt said. \"The rest of you, topside with me.\"\n\nGreen acknowledgment lights burned on his heads-up display, and Kurt led the balance of his team back to the stairs.\n\nHalfway up the spiral, Kurt contacted Dante. \"I wan t explosives on that dome. Get up there ASAP.\"\n\nDante replied with a grunt over the COM. \"Halfway u p the rope already, sir.\"\n\nIt pleased Kurt to hear his SPARTAN-IIIs were two s teps ahead of him.\n\nHe rounded the last curve of the stairs and stepped  onto the landing pad.\n\nKurt motioned to the Spartans and then to the four ropes strung to the archways overhead. Ash, Olivia, and Lucy clambered up the braided monolines.\n\nHe then met Chief Mendez by the dropship.\n\n\"Everything's ready to go. sir,\" Mendez said, \"exce pt the FENRIS warheads. We'll need more time to cut the rest of them down for tra nsport.\" He nodded over the edge. \"Rigged six zip lines over there, just in  case we needed a quick way down.\"\n\n\"Good thinking. Chief.\"\nKurt removed the thumb-sized datapad for his gauntl et, and banded it to Mendez. \"Prime the warhead detonators and synchroni ze firing codes through this pad. With Sentinels and Covenant inbound, I wa nt all my options open.\"\n\nMendez's face became a mask of steel. \"Yes, sir. Af ter that where do you want me?\"\n\nMendez was a crack shot, but he was unarmored and s lower than the others. Keeping him close would risk everyone's lives.\n\n\"I need you with Dr. Halsey, Chief. Follow the ligh ts. Let Kelly know you're coming. She's dug in.\"\n\nTo his credit the Chief didn't show any disappointm entjust a moment's hesitation before he replied, \"Yes, sir.\"\n\nKurt grabbed an ascension line and pulled himself u p, rapidly climbing to an archway twenty meters above the landing pad.\n\nLinda lent him a hand and helped him onto the ledge . She eased back into her position on the far side of the arch, lay flat, and  sighted through her sniper scope.\n\nKurt crouched on the opposite side and scanned the city. Under any other circumstance the nighttime vista of alien architect ure and the shifting Sentinel Hghts would have filled him with awe. Now, though, he was only concerned with surviving.\n\nThe airspace was clear.\n\nNot wanting to risk using even the single beam, Kur t waved at Fred on the adjacent arch and made a horizontal circle gesture in the air, asking. Where are they?\n\nFred held up a hand.\n\nA mated Sentinel pair silently glided past the open  archten meters in front of Kurt. The spheres within the booms moved back and f orth. It continued its orbit around the dome, moving out of view, and anot her Sentinel pair appeared along the same trajectory.\n\nThey weren't attacking, yet they had to sense the S partans inside. It almost looked as if they were guarding this dome.\n Kurt steeled himself, resisting the urge to shoot s uch a close target. What good would it have done? He couldn't penetrate those shi elds.\n\nHe felt vibrations, and in the distance lights flic kered along the rim of the crater.\n\nThe bulbous hull of a Covenant Seraph single ship a ppeared, then another Seraph appeared, then seven more and then two dozen  flying in formation.\n\nKurt held his breath, hoping this was just a search  party.\n\nA line of Covenant destroyers followed, so massive they blotted out the stars in the night sky. A second wave of cetacean-shaped ves sels resolved, and then a Covenant carrier flew on overwatch, surrounded by a  hundred Seraph fighters.\n\nKurt had never seen so many enemy ships so closeall  of them headed toward his position. Twenty warships. T he subsonic thrum of their antigrav units made his insides go soft.\n\nThe Sentinels circling the dome moved to intercept the new threat.\n\nPinpoint laser artillery shot them out of the air.\n\nThe two leading destroyers peeled off the battle gr oup and drifted over the dome. Shafts of sparkling purple light flashed from  their undersidesantigrav transporter beams. A hundred armored Elite shock tr oopers streamed to the ground.\n\nKurt looked for Dante and spotted him high on the d ome's inner surface attached with a rigging of rope and suction climber s. He pressed blobs of C-12\nonto the patterned stone.\n\nKurt directed his single beam at the COM relay on t he landing pad. \"Will, what's Dr. Halsey's status?\"\n\n\"She's found something,\" Will replied. \"Says she ne eds ten minutes to get it ready\"\n\n\"Get what ready? Never mind. We don't have ten minu tes,\" Kurt told him.\n\"Prepare for a hot reception.\"\n\nKurt watched Covenant assets pour down the transpor t beams and assemble in the city: more Elites with plasma rifles, titanlike  Hunter pairs wielding fuel-rod cannons and nearly impenetrable shields, plasma tur rets and their Grunt tenders, and a monstrous Scarab walker. Spirit and Phantom dropships escorted by Banshee fl iers buzzed the dome.\n\nIt was an invading army.\n\nKurt motioned his Spartans down the lines to the la nding pad. They had to fall backfast.\n\nHis teams silently slid to safety. After all had go ne down their rope, Kurt followed.\n\nBlue plasma splashed across the archway ledges.\n\nKurt loosened his grip on the rope and free-fell a dozen meters, squeezing the brake at the last instant before he hit the floor. He rolled and dove behind the starboard hull of their ship.\n\nLasers stitched the stone platform behind him.\n\nSix dropships and their Banshee escorts entered thr ough the archways. They circled, rapidly descending.\n\nFred and Lucy crouched, hefted SPNKr missile launch ers, and fired.\n\nThe missiles streaked up and detonated on the cockp its of the incoming dropships. The ships hobbled out of control and cra shed into the dome wall.\n\nThe other four dropships landed hard; Elites jumped  out, took position behind the hulls, and opened fire.\n\nThe air filled with crisscross patterns of needier shards, plasma bolts, and streaks of MA5B and MASK tracers.\n\nKurt didn't want to leave the FENRIS warheads behin d, but there was no way they could hold this position. Their cover was poor , and they'd have to contend with more air support soon. He started to order the ir retreat, but Covenant plasma spattered nearby, and a square meter of thei r dropship's hull blasted away.\n\nA Hunter pair emerged and they hunkered down behind  their overlapping battle-plate shields.\n\nLinda took aim at the monstrous pair and waited for  them to present a target.\n\nOne Hunter eased its fuel-rod cannon around the edg e of its impenetrable shieldsgreen energized rounds glowing with deadly r adiationand fired. Fred jumped from cover, his MJOLNIR armor ablaze as  if it was burning phosphorus.\n\nThe Hunter hit him dead center in his chest, a blas t that would have destroyed their dropship. His energy shields flared brighter,  failed, and Fred crumpled to the floor, his armor smoking.\n\n\"Cover fire!\" Kurt shouted.\n\nThe Spartans sprayed the Elites and the Hunters, wh o turtled behind their shields.\n\nDante and Lucy darted out and grabbed Fred, draggin g him back.\n\nA fire team of five Elites popped from cover and un leashed a torrent of plasma and needles. They were riddled with bullets and dro ppedbut one managed to shoot at Dante and a plasma bolt glanced his side. He flinched, but didn't stop pulling Fred to safety.\n\nThe Hunter pair peeked around their overlapped shie lds.\n\nLinda fired methodicallyorange blood spattered from  one Hunter's exposed midsection.\n\nThe Hunters dropped behind their shields, screaming , but still standing\n\n\"Over the edge, everyone,\" Kurt ordered.\n\nOne by one the Spartans slipped to the edge and jum ped into the darkness.\n\nKurt set three grenades on the floor, grabbed a zip  line, and rappelled down. One wide swing into the open and he pendulated back , landing on the curve of spiral stairs under the platform.\n\nDull explosions whumped overhead and the ropes fell  away.\n\nKurt saw that Dante and Lucy supported a groggy Fre d between them. Fred's MJOLNIR armor was carbonized black. His bio signs w ere erratic but strong. All their bio signs were pushing the redline.\n\n\"Blow the dome,\" Kurt told Dante.\n\nDante nodded, passed Fred over to Mark's shoulder, and he limped to the far edge of the stairs, remote detonator in hand.\n Kurt motioned for Olivia to take point, and the res t of the Spartans followed her down the stairs.\n\nThunder echoed off the dome walls, and chunks of ro ck thudded onto the landing platform overhead. Elites screamed and blue  plasma detonations lit the air.\n\nThree revolutions around the stairs and Olivia held  up a hand. They all halted.\n\n\"Gotcha in my sights,\" Kelly said over TEAMCOM. \"St and by, defusing the mines okay, come ahead.\"\n\nKurt and the others entered the chamber. Kurt notic ed the LOTUS antitank mines stuck on this room's walls and ceiling, makin g it a good kill zone.\n\nWill and Kelly crouched to either side of the openi ng to the bridge of light, hidden by its glare.\n\nKurt did a quick count. All present save Dante.\n\nDante brought up the rear, limping into the room, o ne hand holding his side. He stood straight and saluted Kurt.\n\n\"Sir,\" he said, \"I think I got nicked.\"\n\nDante's bio signs flatlined and he collapsed.\n\nKurt dropped to Dante's side and unlatched his SPI chest piece. He'd seen him grazed by plasma on his left side, and sure enough,  there were second- and third-degree burns there that had boiled off the li quid-ballistic layer. Under his arm and across his chest a half dozen needier shard s had lodged and detonated. The bones of his rib cage were exposed, and deeper,  black congealing blood pooled.\n\nHe was limp. Cold. Bio signs flat.\n\nDante was dead. There was nothing Kurt could do.\n\nKurt had watched Shane, Robert, and Jane die. He ha d listened to Tom tell how Beta got wiped out on Pegasi Delta. Now Dante. One more gone on his watch.\n\nIt would be easy to blame Ackerson and Parangosky f or the deaths of his Spartans. Designed for high-risk missions, they wer e all going to die, weren't they? And Kurt had played along and followed orders . What other option was there?\nHe examined his hands, covered in the Spartan blood .\n\nLinda set a hand on Kurt's shoulder. \"We'll bring h im with us.\"\n\nHis training reasserted itself. Movefightlive. The alternative was to sit here and join Dante.\n\nKurt gently set Dante onto the floor.\n\nHe had to focus. They had a mission: get the Foreru nner technology. Get the rest of his team out alive. Kurt promised the scale s would be balanced for Dante. Somehow. He'd see to it himself if he had to .\n\nLinda and Olivia moved to Dante and picked him up.\n\n\"Grab your gear and follow,\" Kurt said to Kelly.\n\nHe marched over the bridge of light and entered the  holographic map room.\n\nDr. Halsey stood at the Forerunner console, hierogl yphs swarming over its surface, the symbols' meaning changing as they alig ned into higher-dimensional patterns for a moment, then rearranged into new kal eidoscopic formations.\n\nOlivia and Linda set Dante's body down.\n\nMark, Ash, and Holly knelt next to him and gingerly  set his hands together on his chest.\n\n\"Dr. Halsey?\" Kurt said.\n\nShe held up one hand and with the other she furious ly typed on the laptop that Mendez held for her. The laptop's tiny projection p ad emitted a mote of light that flitted among the symbols like a bee gathering  nectar.\n\nMendez handed Kurt the thumb-sized datapad. \"Codes locked and ready to go, sir.\"\n\nKurt checked it out: Detonation codes for the FENRI S warheads streamed across the tiny screen. He slipped it into his gauntlet's data port and clenched his fist.\n\n\"There's so much here,\" Dr. Halsey whispered. \"I've  confirmed this world is part of the Forerunners' plan together with the Halo rin gstheir 'sword' and 'shield.'\nOther parts still elude me. There is a reference to  the 'ark.' I have yet to determine if something went wrong why they are not here.\"\n \"Doctor,\" Kurt said more firmly, and he stepped clo ser. \"We have a Covenant armada over our heads, and an army about to swarm t hrough this building. Is there a way out?\"\n\n\"Yes and no,\" she replied, still not looking at him . \"There is a room in the core of this world,\" she explained, \"wh ere the Forerunners were to secure something precious. Perhaps the technologies  you seek. The room is normally inaccessible, but the arming of the Halo r ings triggered something within this planet.\" She ran her fingers across ove rlapping streams of hieroglyphics struggling to read. \"There is an entr ance to this room, open now, but closing. In one hour seventeen minutes the core  entrance will shut. Forever.\"\n\n\"Core of the planet?\" Kurt said. \"There is no way t o get to the core that fast.\"\n\n\"We must gather what is within, and make our escape .\" She finally looked up at him, excitement glistening in her eyes. \"And there is indeed a way to get there. This map room can access a Slipspace translocation system similar to the one Cortana used on the Halo ring.\"\n\nShe pointed down.\n\nKurt saw they stood upon a matte-black surface flus h with the floor. It was four meters wide and had seven sides. His gaze seemed to  slide deeper into the surface like he was looking at something infinitely  deep or nothing at all.\n\nHe blinked, looked away. \"Slipspace translocation? A tele-portation system.\"\n\n\"In effect, yes.\"\n\nThe room shook and dust rained from the ceiling.\n\nDr. Halsey focused past Kurt into the room. She mad e a slight cutting motion over several gold symbols.\n\nThe bridge of light connecting to the outer chamber  vanished. The door to the map room closed.\n\nShe spotted Dante and her face drained of color. \"O h\" she whispered.\n\n\"You must get us to the other SPARTAN-IIIs locked i n cryo first,\" Kurt told her,\n\n\"Of course, I believe I understand the intricacies of the transportation system well enough,\" she said. \"I must caution you.\n though, not to detonate the FENRIS warheads. The EM P will render the system inoperable.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" Kurt said. \"Just activate this 'trans location' device. Get me to my Spartans.\"\n\n\"There is still so much to learn here,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"I suggest you leave me. I can\"\n\nA tremendous shudder shook the room. Chunks of rock  rained from the ceiling. Dr. Halsey fell, and Kurt caught her, shielded her with his back as baseball sized stones bounced off the hardened plates of his  SPI armor.\n\nOutside the chamber there were four gut-jarring det onations the LOTUS antitank mines Kelly had set up.\n\n\"We've run out of time, Doctor,\" Kurt said. \"They a re here.\"\n\nShe stood, brushed the dust from her lab coat, and straightened her glasses.\n\"So it appears.\" She tapped a handful of symbols. \" There is a translocation platform\"she consulted the holographic map\"within a  kilometer of the other Spartans.\"\n\nBeyond the holographic map of Onyx, the wall of the  room cracked as the stones heated to dull red.\n\nThe Spartans positioned themselves between the wall  and Dr. Halsey.\n\nKurt stepped directly in front of the Doctor and Me ndez took up a position at his flank, his MA5B leveled.\n\nAsh dug into his pack and passed out Jackal shield gauntlets to his team. Together they crouched before the SPARTAN-IIs, form ing a shield wall.\n\nDr. Halsey shifted the Forerunner symbols. \"There,\"  she whispered.\n\nThe heating wall exploded and rubble bounced off th e Spartans' shields. From the breach in the wall, plasma bolts and crystal sh ards crisscrossed the air.\n\nThe Jackal shields deflected it allbut were drainin g fast.\n\nWill, Kelly, and Fred popped up and sprayed suppres sing fire into the darkness.\n\nLinda maneuvered between them, leveled her sniper r ifle, and squeezed off three rounds.\n The enemy ceased fire.\n\n\"Now would be good. Doctor,\" Kurt said.\n\n\"Activating,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"There may some diso rientation.\" She reached for a glowing symbol.\n\nKurt's COM crackled to life and Endless Summer's vo ice filled his helmet. \"Come in, Ambrose,\" the AI said. \"I have a high-priority mission redirect.\"\n\nHe grabbed Dr. Halsey's hand.\n\nThe mote of light on her laptop stretched into a ba re-chested Indian warrior.\n\n\"I thought you were destroyed,\" Kurt said.\n\n\"The Sentinels did find and destroy the COM launche r, but I had my escape well planned.\" He held his hand apart and a globe appear ed. It rotated to the north polar region, zoomed into ice fields, and then down  a volcanic caldera. \"These coordinates are the latest thermal images provided by a UNSC prowler in high orbit. You must go there. Now.\"\n\n\"We have other matters to take care of first,\" Kurt  told him.\n\nTechnically Endless Summer had the authority to ord er him anywhere it liked, but under the circumstances, Kurt wasn't listening to an ONI-controlled AInot when his people's lives were at stake.\n\n\"This site is a Sentinel manufacturing facility,\" E ndless Summer said, glowering.\n\"In orbit there is a battle raging between a Covena nt fleet and these alien craft, one that will likely destroy the Covenant forces.\"\n\n\"Great,\" Kurt replied. \"Let them.\"\n\nA new volley of plasma bolts streamed through the b reached wall.\n\nAsh's shield unit sputtered and overloaded. He roll ed flat to avoid getting burned.\n\nFred and Kelly tossed grenades. Distant explosions and screams echoed.\n\nAnother section of wall heated and another. The Cov enant weren't going to give up so easily. They'd open as many holes as the y needed to penetrate their defenses.\n \"You don't understand,\" Endless Summer said. \"Once the alien forces have finished with the Covenant ships, they will focus o n the lesser threat: the UNSC battle group in orbit. The one sent here to rescue you.\"\n\nThe strategic picture instantly shifted in Kurt's m ind. The fate of this battle group and his Spartans were linked. Save the ships and they'd have a way off this rock. Fail and they'd be stuck here fighting S entinels and Covenant ground forces until hell froze. Rescuing the other SPARTAN -IIIs in cryo would have to wait.\n\n\"This Sentinel factory produces a new unit every si x seconds,\" the AI explained.\n\"At that rate they will soon overwhelm any force th e USNC can send.\"\n\n\"Can you find this place?\" Kurt asked Dr. Halsey. \" Can you move us there?\"\n\nShe chewed on her lower lip. Her hands moved quickl y over symbols, rotating the holographic projection of the planet around the m at a dizzying rate.\n\n\"Got it,\" she said.\n\nEndless Summer bowed and winked off.\n\nKurt motioned for the Spartans to fall back to the center of the room.\n\n\"Do it,\" he said. \"Now.\"\n\nThe walls of the chamber exploded inward.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR\n2050 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \\ SENTINEL MANUFACTURING FACILITY UNDER  NORTHERN POLAR REGION\n\nKurt crawled to the edge where Linda and Chief Mend ez had posted, and peered out upon the vast factory, although the word  \"factory\" was wholly inappropriate to describe the engineering wonderlan d.\n\nFrom his perch stretched a cavernous space so large  that he detected the slight arc of the planet's curve in the distance. The roof  was beyond the range finder on Linda's Oracle sniper scope, and thin black clou ds drifted two-thirds of the way from (he ceiling.\n A machine the size of a battleship spewed a river o f molten alloy into the air. This liquefied metal arced up and then cascaded int o a hollow tower that pulsed with bioluminescent colors. From the bottom tumbled countless tiny parts winking with light. These parts were whisked away by ribbons of shimmering energy so thick with distortion that Kur t couldn't see what occurred within but from the opposite end streamed a never-e nding procession of three meter cylinders.\n\nA pyramid five times the height of the Great Pyrami d of Giza sat kilometers from Kurt's vantage. Instead of stone blocks, howev er, the structure was composed of floating golden spheres that turned and  glowed with Forerunner hieroglyphs etched upon their surfaces.\n\nEvery six seconds a sphere from the apex of the pyr amid ascended in a shaft of silver light. As it rose, the light intensified so even with maximum polarization on his faceplate Kurt could not discern what occurr ed there. When the sphere emerged, three rods accompanied it, all parts spinn ing in null gravity, flexing, until the pieces settled into their deadly recogniz able configuration a Sentinel of Onyx.\n\nThe new drone flew off into the clouds overhead whi ch Kurt could only estimate were thousands of completed units.\n\nHe blinked, wondering how they were going to shut t his place down, and backed away from the edge.\n\nDeeper in the shadows of the wide ledge sat a four- meter-diameter platform and a tiny holographic console: Dr. Halsey's \"trans location\" device.\n\nShe knelt in the middle, scanned the drifting symbo ls, and occasionally tapped one that interested her.\n\nShe had saved themmoved them from the map room to t his Sentinel factory in the blink of an eye.\n\nFred, Kelly, and Will crouched around the platform,  sniper rifles leveled. Not that shooting would have done any good, but at leas t they'd see any approaching Sentinel.\n\nIn front of the SPARTAN-IIs sat Ash, Holly Olivia, Mark, Tom, and Lucya collection of mottled blacks and grays in their cam ouflaging SPI armor. They held }ackal shield gauntlets, ready to activate the m to protect the others.\n\nThere had been serious nausea effects during the tr anslocation. \"Uncertainty errors,\" Dr. Halsey had called them.\n It felt like Kurt's guts had been untwisted, and th en dumped back into his body, inside out.\n\nHolly had thrown up during the ride. She shook her head, clearing as much of her visor as possible. She didn't dare remove her h elmet on hostile ground. There was a defogging vent that could dry the stuff , but that would take a few minutes.\n\nShe moved closer to Dante and set a hand on his sho ulder.\n\nThe young Spartan's body lay against the wall, shro uded in a thermal blanket.\n\nKurt looked awayit was too painful, and he was grat eful that no one could see his twisted expression.\n\n\"Are you certain we can't use nukes?\" Kurt whispere d to Dr. Halsey.\n\n\"The electromagnetic pulse will disrupt the translo cation system for days.\" She glanced at her wristwatch. \"In sixty-eight minutes what was set in motion by the arming of Halo rings comes to completion on thi s world. The doorway to the core room of Onyx closes. Without the transloca tion system we will have no way to move in, recover the technologies, and escap e.\"\n\nFred nodded out to the factory. \"If those things ge t out, engage the UNSC fleet, and win, then we're stuck here.\"\n\nDr. Halsey unfolded her laptop computer. She tapped  a few keys and then turned the screen to face the Spartans. On the disp lay was an overhead view of the factory. \"Here, here, and here,\" she said point ing. \"Take out these structures and Sentinel production will halt indefi nitely.\"\n\nThe targets were a crystal energy emitter the size of a three-story building, a U-shaped object as large as a UNSC cruiser, and a t itanic sphere that extended ten thousand meters under the floor.\n\n\"Oh easy,\" Kelly quipped.\n\n\"If we use the rest of the C-12,\" Will said, \"and a  few SPNKr missiles, we might be able to shatter that crystal.\"\n\nFred shook his head. \"Look at the map scale. The ta rgets are thirty kilometers apart. It's going to take too much time to get ther e and set up.\"\n\nHolly coughed, and said, \"So we have to be in three  places simultaneously, and we need ten times the firepower we currently have. That's not possible.\"\n Kurt winced at this, reminded of the \"nothing is im possible for a Spartan\" credo. How many lives had it cost to prove that? Maybe thi s time they were in an intractable tactical jam.\n\nThey all stared at the diagram, stumped.\n\n\" Rabbit,\" Ash whispered.\n\nKurt waited for an explanation, but Ash just contin ued to examine Dr. Halsey's map.\n\nKelly snapped her fingers. \"I get it!\" She snorted a single laugh. \"Gutsy plan, kid.\"\n\nAsh faced them. \"We can be in three places at the s ame time,\" he said. \"And we've got a hundred times the firepower we need.\" H e turned and gazed out to the factory. \"We're going to all be rabbits.\"\n\nAsh resisted the urge to vomit. This was the stupid est plan he'd ever thought up. Too late now, though, to back out.\n\nOne moment he was on the ledge looking at Dr. Halse y while she manipulated holographic symbolsthe next Team Saber was on the f actory floor, his insides twisted around, and they were running for their liv es.\n\nFrom the clouds of Sentinels high overhead, a hundr ed pairs peeled off and dove after them.\n\nThe Spartans of Team Saber scattered, dodging under  pipes and glowing crystalline conduits, moving as fast as they could.  Speed was the only viable tactic now.\n\nAsh spotted the target, looming so large before him  that it seemed more geological feature than destructible object. The py ramid of spheres stretched up forevermillions and millions of golden balls hob bling in place, gently turningall held in place by three massive subterran ean force-field generators.\n\nThe floor was blue metal patterned with interlinked  Forerunner symbols. Ahead, however, a glowing budge of silver shone like a bea con. Only ten meters across, this was the apex of one generator that extended te n thousand meters under the factory.\n\nOverhead a fountain of molten metal arced kilometer s through the air, a brilliant rainbow of fire. The magnetic alignment c ou  pling at the base was Blue Team's target. Tom and L ucy had stealthed ahead of them all to blow up the three-story-tall crystal on  the far side of the factory.\n\nAsh paused and turned to see where the pursuing Sen tinels were.\n\nHis eyes registered flashes. His training took over  and his body moved before he cluttered his mind with thought.\n\nHe stepped right, pushed off, and jumped left. The floor exploded. Shrapnel tore through his SPI armor, and he was remotely awa re that something had happened to his left leg, but he ignored it.\n\nAsh rolled, turned, and chucked a grenade as three Sentinel pairs streaked over him.\n\nThe grenade bounced off their shields, and harmless ly detonated in the air.\n\nAt least this part of the plan was working; they we re drawing fire.\n\nHe detected a dozen more Sentinels in the air, shoo ting at other targets, bathing the factory in brilliant gold illumination,  razor-sharp shadows, and glowing molten craters.\n\nAsh broadcast on TEAMCOM: \"Form up; accelerate appr oach to target.\"\n\nOn his TACMAP he marked the apex of the generator, and then placed a secondary marker on the extraction pointa location three hundred meters distant over open ground.\n\nAsh charged forward, running a crazy patternright, left, sudden stops, rolls and ducks. Energy beams fell around him. Fire washed ov er him. Liquid metal spattered his back, but he didn't flinch. His eyes clouded red, and his vision tunneled on the glowing target ahead.\n\nHe had to get there. He would get there.\n\nAsh sprinted straight ahead. Every muscle pumped an d burned with lactic acid.\n\nOlivia and Holly got to the dome, turned, and their  Jackal gauntlets crackled to life. They stood together, ov erlapping energy shields.\n\nBehind them loomed the impossibly large pyramid of spheres, all eyes turning toward them.\n \"Hurry,\" Holy cried over TEAMCOM. She raised the bo ttom edge of her shield a half meter. \"Underquick!\"\n\nAsh jumped, dove under their feet and behind the en ergy shields.\n\nLight surrounded him, and the floor to either side melted and blasted away.\n\nHe stood between his teammates and snapped on his o wn Jackal gauntlet.\n\nMark joined them.\n\nAsh hesitated, waiting for Dante to get there. He t hen realized his grim mistake. He wished his friend was here by his side but he wa s gone, and Dante would have wanted the team to keep their heads. Fight. An d win.\n\nAsh watched the swarm of enemies surrounding them. There were about forty Sentinel pairs. They could have all fired, and blow n Team Saber to hell, but instead they looked wary like they were thinking th is through.\n\nWhich was the one thing he couldn't let happen.\n\n\"Get their attention,\" Ash told Mark.\n\nMark nodded, and hefted their only SPNKr missile la uncher. He angled it at a cluster of Sentinels at four o'clock.\n\nThe missile streaked through the air and hit a pair  dead centermushrooming into thunder and smoke. The Sentinels, behind their  shields, were untouched.\n\nThe hovering Sentinels ceased circling and seven al igned one behind the other to form a line pointed at Team Saber.\n\n\"Tighten it up, guys,\" Ash ordered. \"Olivia, eye on  our six.\"\n\nThe Spartans huddled as close as they could.\n\n\"All clear behind,\" Olivia whispered. \"Best exit ve ctor at nine o'clock.\"\n\nThere was no way a few Jackal shields could withsta nd a combined energy blast that had leveled an entire granite mesa.\n\nThen again, they wouldn't have to.\n\nThe seven Sentinels adjusted their aim and their sp heres glowed red, amber, and then glistening gold.\n \"Stand by,\" Ash whispered over TEAMCOM. He crouched  lower and gritted his teeth.\n\nThe drones contracted and the glare from their sphe res intensified.\n\n\"Go!\" Ash cried.\n\nThe Spartans of Team Saber jumped, rolled, and scat tered.\n\nThe Sentinels fired a culminated beam of energy tha t struck where Team Saber had been a moment agoa direct hit on the glowing do me of the force-field generator.\n\nAsh turned away, but the concussive blast rolled th rough his body. Shrapnel cut into his back, and skin blistered.\n\nHe focused on the second NAV marker on his heads-up  display: the one thing that mattered now.\n\nHe ran toward it, a tiny platform three hundred met ers awaythe only way out.\n\nAround him the air paused, and then rushed backward  toward the generator with hurricane force. He turned, curiosity overcomi ng the instinct to flee.\n\nWhere the silver dome had been there was a blackene d crater of twisted metal. The Sentinels had moved in, projecting their shield s over the open wound, but the crater's edges crinkled as atmosphere sucked in side.\n\nMore Sentinels rushed toward the breach, trying to hold it.\n\nA silver flash overwhelmed Ash's senses. There was a double explosion and a giant hand swatted him. He tumbled ten meters and s lammed to a halt flat on his back.\n\nDazed, he slowly got up. The Sentinels were gone. T he crater they had tried to hold was now a smoking rift a hundred meters wide.\n\nThe pyramid of spheres, the mountain of metal, shud dered.\n\nThat force-field generator was only one of three, b ut without it in place, the formation was unbalanced. And when a million ball b earings stacked upon one another were not exactly balanced\n\nAsh turned and sprinted.\n Ahead, Holly had fallen and struggled to get to her  feet. He went to her, grabbed her hand, and lifted her up.\n\nBut they both froze as they caught a glimpse of the  pyramid.\n\nThe outer layers of spheres tumbled and bounced off  their fellows, a chain reaction of cascading destruction; rivers of metal balls flowed, then torrents, an avalanche that rolled across the floor in great waves, tons of metal headed for them.\n\n\"Guys! Move it!\" Mark yelled over TEAMCOM.\n\nAsh blinked and snapped out of his stupor.\n\nHe and Holly turned and sprinted toward the extract ion point. Mark and Olivia were already on the platform, waving them to hurry.\n\nAsh felt the thunderous force through the floor tha t grew louder with every step until it shook his bones.\n\nHe and Holly leapt onto the platform.\n\n\"Dr. Halsey, go,\" he screamed over an open COM chan nel.\n\nNothing happened.\n\nTeam Saber stood shoulder to shoulder and watched t he tidal wave of metal smash over machinery and crush the Sentinels that s truggled to escape its kilometer-high surge.\n\nBut there was no escaping something Hke this.\n\n\"We got the mission done,\" Ash told his friends ove r TEAMCOM. \"We won.\"\n\nHe still held Holly's hand. He gripped it tighter.\n\nThe shadow of the wave covered them and plunged the m into darkness.\n\nThere was a flash of light.\n\nNausea hit Ash in the gut like a lead glove wrapped  around a brick.\n\nThe blinding light faded.\n\nThey were back on the ledge.\n Holly disentangled her hand from his and looked awa y. Mark steadied himself against the wall. Olivia stepped off the platform a nd hung her head between her legs.\n\nDr. Halsey sat and stared at a tornado of Covenant symbols that rose from her laptop, her eyes darting back and forth trying to w atch them all at the same time. She herded a collection of silver triangles t ogether.\n\n\"My apologies for the delay,\" she said without glan cing up. \"There are complications. Please, step off the platform. Tom a nd Lucy are next.\"\n\nThe SPARTAN-II Blue Team was already back crouched along the shadow line by the ledge overlooking the factory.\n\nThe air was full of Sentinels flying in formations.  The pyramid was gone, and on the floor a million spheres bounced and surged forw ard, flattening machinery and sparking conduits.\n\nThe fountain of fire that Blue Team had targeted os cillated wildly out of control, spaying molten alloy on the walls, ceiling , everywhere but the receiving vessel it was supposed to hit.\n\nOver the COM Tom's voice crackled: \"Ready for trans location. Dr. Halsey.\"\nGunfire sounded in the background.\n\nDr. Halsey exhaled a hiss of frustration and slashe d her hand through the icons, and then started the process of gathering them agai n.\n\n\"What's the holdup?\" the Lieutenant Commander asked .\n\n\"Someone else is accessing this system,\" she replie d. \"This accounts for Team Saber's delay and now Tom and Lucy's.\"\n\n\"Someone else?\" he said. \"You mean the Covenant?\"\n\n\"Entirely probable,\" she replied.\n\nFred turned around and whispered, \"That means they can I rack and follow us.\"\n\nOver the COM Tom yelled, \"Doctor, if you're going t o do anything you have to do it\"\n\nRings of gold strobed on the platform and then vani shed; Tom and Lucy stood there, hands raised in an instinctive effort to war d off danger. Wisps of plasma curled and dissipated around them.\n \"Now,\" Tom finished. He exhaled a long sigh and the n reported to the Lieutenant Commander, \"Mission accomplished, sir.\"\n\nIn the distance small explosions popped, sounding l ike a string of firecrackers. The flying Sentinel formations scattered some crash ing into one another, others accelerating straight into the walls.\n\nDr. Halsey consulted her watch. \"We have fifty-thre e minutes before the core room entrance closes, Kurt.\"\n\nThe Lieutenant Commander nodded. \"Everyone on the p latform,\" he ordered.\n\"Doctor, move us to Team Katana's location.\"\n\nUnease already settling into his stomach, Ash crowd ed onto the four-meter pad with his teammates.\n\nFunny, but he hadn't thought of the older Spartans as part of the team until now. Or was he part of their team? He then noticed the blood oozing from his armor joints, mirrored red by the camouflaging pane ls. Baptized in battle. They'd lost Dante, too. High prices to pay.\n\nChief Mendez watched the self-destructing factory. \"That's a lot of Sentinels,\"\nhe murmured. \"Wonder why they only deployed a fract ion of them?\"\n\n\"Setting time delay for three seconds,\" Dr. Halsey said, shut her laptop, and then joined them.\n\nMendez's remark bothered Ash more than he could exp lain, and the unease in his gut intensified. There were hundreds oi' thousa nds of Sentinels here. Why just have them sit around? They had to serve some p urpose\n\nRings of light enveloped the squad.\n\nAsh hoped he never found out why. He just wanted to  rescue Katana, get the technology Dr. Halsey had promised, and get out of here before the Covenant caught up with them.\n\nHe had a feeling, though, it wasn't going to be tha t easy.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE\n2105 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, ORBIT NEAR THE MOON OF ONYX \\ ABOARD UNSC PROWLER D USK\n Commander Richard Lash supervised the release of th e mines.\n\nHe and Lieutenant Commander Cho monitored the launc h bay of the Dusk. The closet-sized chamber behind the tiny observation wi ndow had been chilled near absolute zero. The nukes inside had been cycled thr ough three thermal cooldowns and were now the same temperature as inte rstellar space.\n\nThe tiny HORNET warheads had been transferred aboar d from the Brasidas, a destroyer with extensive damage. Thankfully Cho had  detected the minuscule leak from their reactor and moved off before it irr adiated the Dusk's hull. That would have lit them up against the background intra solar radiation and fatally compromised their stealth ability.\n\n\"Let her fly,\" Lash ordered.\n\n\"Releasing,\" Cho whispered. He grasped the manual o verride claw, and with supreme concentration, he dropped the warhead.\n\nThe bay door irised open and the black egg-shaped H ORNET mine dropped from its carrier and, centimeter by centimeter, drifted into space.\n\n\"That was the last, sir.\" Cho wiped the beads of sw eat that had collected on his wrinkled forehead.\n\nCho was technically past the mandatory retirement a ge in the UNSC prowler corps. This was a fact that had been carefully igno red by Captain Iglesias. The UNSC was running out of qualified recruits, and Cho  would have been impossible to replace.\n\nLash gave him an approving nod, which was as much p raise as the old engineer was ever comfortable with.\n\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n\nLash entered the tube to the bridge and pushed off,  propelling himself in the null gee, somersaulting and then using his legs to brake. He took a moment to compose himself before he opened the hatch. In the last fifteen minutes the Dusk had seeded the space on the dark side of the m oon of Onyx with fourteen nuclear minesthirty-megaton yield with vacuum-enhan ced loads.\n\nDelicate work to stay stealthed and get them all de ployed on Admiral Patterson's timetable, but they'd done it.\n\nAll it had cost was the fraying of Lash's already s hot nerves. He smoothed his uniform, brushed his thinning hair, took a deep bre ath, and then spun open the hatch.\n\"Report,\" he said to Lieutenant Commander Waters.\n\nWaters looked up with bloodshot eyes from his displ ay. \"The Admiral has been informed mission accomplished, sir. He's moving the  fleet to new coordinates, a high orbit on the bright side of the moon.\"\n\nLash examined the system NAV map. Patterson was goi ng to use the entire planetoid as cover. He'd need it. The enemy forces still outnumbered them sixteen ships to their four. By any sane measure it  would be suicide to attack that Covenant battle group.\n\nThe line, however, between sane and not was becomin g increasingly blurred in this system.\n\nLash settled in the captain's chair. \"Lieutenant Ya ng? Status?\"\n\n\"As dark as midnight under a rock, sir.\"\n\nLash nodded, pleased at Yang's hyperbole. A little humor was a good sign.\n\"Lieutenant Durruno, move us to lunar Lagrange-Four , one-quarter full. Tell Lieutenant Commander Cho to trickle-charge our Slip space capacitors.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\" She tapped in the commands, cursed, and  then backspaced and retyped them correctly.\n\nDurruno needed sleep. They all did. But he'd keep h er in play a little longer. There was no one to replace her, and this would be over, one way or the other, very soon.\n\n\"Covenant fleet on-screen,\" Lash ordered Waters. \"R escan and give me a full spectral analysis.\"\n\n\"All sensors on target,\" Waters replied.\n\nRainbows played over the central viewscreen, buildi ng composite images from radiation far-infrared to soft gamma, and fourteen Covenant ships resolved, clustered together in a spherical formation three h undred thousand kilometers distant.\n\nTo Lash they looked like hungry sharks, ready to po unce on a few sardines.\n\nTheir spectral analysis, however, painted a differe nt picture. Thermal blooms and radiation leaks spewed in helical showers from the vessels. They'd been damaged by Admiral Patterson's alpha strike and the  captured plasma redirected by the alien drones. The enemy was sitting there, making repairs, in all  likelihood frothing from their split mouths to get back in the fight and go another round with the UNSC battle group.\n\nPatterson, however, had another plan: hit them firs t. Hard.\n\n\"Activity from Onyx on the E-Band?\" Lash asked Yang .\n\n\"No, sir. Not a flicker since that ONI AI took care  of the alien drones.\"\n\nLash wondered how the AI and Spartans on the planet  had neutralized the alien fleet. Had they recovered som e new super-weapon?\nHowever they did it, he promised he'd personally sh ake every one of their hands.\n\n\"Continue to monitor all UNSC bands,\" he told Yang.  \"Those Spartans might need a lift.\"\n\n\"Action on-screen,\" Waters announced. The camera sn apped aft and centered on the silver moon.\n\nIn the twilight regions on either side of the moon,  magnetic accelerator cannons flared, briefly illuminating the now-split UNSC battle group in high orbit. Slugs of steel and tungsten rocketed into sp ace, curving slightly from the gravitational distortionstreaking toward the Covena nt ships.\n\nThe Covenant ships broke formation.\n\nOne MAC slug cleanly missed.\n\nThree hit.\n\nThe targeted ships lit as their shields absorbed th e massive kinetic energy. They careened backward slowed, and stopped, undamag ed from the single MAC strikes.\n\nCovenant ships turned and accelerated toward the mo on.\n\nThe MAC salvo had done precisely what Admiral Patte rson had hoped: tweaked their collective noses, and gotten them good and ma d.\n\nThe UNSC battle group maneuvered behind the moon, d enying the enemy a clean line of fire.\n \"Set EMP dampers,\" Lash said, trying to control his  rising adrenaline. \"Shut down primary and secondary computers.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir,\" Durruno and Yang said together. They sc rambled to isolate the Dusk's delicate electronics from the impending nuclear bla sts.\n\nThe Covenant battle group dividedeach half moving t o opposite sides of the moon, taking flanking positions where they could bl ast the hiding human ships into oblivion with their plasma.\n\nWhat they couldn't see on their approach vector, ho wever, was Admiral Patterson's fleet backing directly away  from the moon.\n\n\"Enemy vessels approaching distal radius of alpha a nd beta minefields,\" Durruno reported.\n\n\"Arm alpha and beta fields,\" Lash whispered.\n\nYang fidgeted and said, \"Command sent, sir and conf irmation received across the board.\"\n\nThat Covenant fleet was about to find out why UNSC battle groups always had a prowler assigned to their ranks. They were the snea k thieves and spies of the UNSC fleet, capable of behind-enemy-lines recon, re scue missions and under the right conditions, the pinpoint placement of a n uclear minefield.\n\n\"Proximal enemy group now in the center of alpha fi eld,\" Durruno announced. Her hands shook. \"Distal group crossing the termina l line of beta field.\"\n\n\"Remove safety interlocks,\" Lash said.\n\nYang nodded and typed in the code words that made t he sixteen nukes hot.\n\nThe red \"inferno\" button on Lash's command console lit. He set his thumb next to it, and it beeped, verifying his biometric signa ture. He then flipped up the clear protective cover, inserted the master key in the adjacent slot, and turned it.\n\n\"Proximal group approaching terminal plane,\" Durrun o said. \"Beta group of ships now centered in distal field.\"\n\n\"Here goes nothing,\" Lash whispered. \"Here's goes e verything.\"\n\nHe pressed the button, and it made a satisfying dic k.\n On either side of the moon, seven tiny suns flashed  into existence, ballooned, and enveloped the Covenant battle groups.\n\nThe collective nuclear fireballs cooled to yellow a nd then dull red. Even with vacuum-enhanced loads, nuclear warheads in space di d not persist a fraction as long as aerial or ground bursts.\n\nThe destructive clouds thinned to translucency and a glittering haze of cooling metal formed an expanding halo arou nd the planetoid.\n\nInside this silver confetti, however, larger shimme ring patches resolved: the energy shields of four surviving Covenant destroyer s.\n\nAdmiral Patterson moved his fleet toward the moon a nd opened fire. MAC rounds tore through space and behind them Archer mi ssiles traced lacy paths of exhaust through the vacuum.\n\nTwo Covenant ships sluggishly changed course and in tercepted the MAC slugs. Their distressed shields shattered and their hulls cratered inward. Fire fountained as their plasma lines vented. Flocks of Archer missiles dove into the injured ships and explosions punctuated armor and p ropulsion grids.\n\nThe crippled ships turned toward the moon, and in s low motion tumbled toward their surface.\n\nThe UNSC battle group continued their charge. Four warships against the last two wounded Covenant destroyers not entirely imposs ible odds.\n\nLash imagined that a hundred years in the future hi storians might look back at this moment and declare it the turning point of hum anity's struggle. That they had fought and defeated the Covenant at Onyx, won t he prize of alien technology, and gone onnot only to survive, but to win their long struggle.\n\nHe had secretly believed that they could not win th is war for so long. Lash barely recognized the emotion that coursed though h im now: hope.\n\n\"Covenant ships on new heading,\" Lieutenant Durruno  said. She chewed on her lower lip and a tiny drop of blood appeared. \"Inter cept course, sir.\"\n\nOn-screen the last two enemy destroyers accelerated  toward the moon. An extrapolated trajectory appeared: a slingshot orbit  that would bring them around and back, and straight toward the Dusk.\n\n\"Get primary computers online,\" Lash ordered. \"Cho,  what's our Slipspace status?\"\nOver the COM Cho's voice crackled with static. \"Cap acitors at eighty percent and draining. I'll need full engine power for two m ore minutes.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" Lash replied. Two minutes could be fo rever. \"Continue dark protocols,\" he ordered Yang. \"Lock down all externa l systems.\" To Lieutenant Durruno he said, \"Use docking jets to present minim al aspect to the incoming vessels while they're on the blind side.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\" She activated the thrusters and tapped a joystick to manually reposition the ship.\n\nOn-screen the moon tilted as they realigned.\n\nThe Covenant destroyer pair emerged from the far si de of the moon and grew larger on-screen. Sleek and dangerous as hell, thei r gray-blue hulls bore down on the Dusk.\n\n\"Replot their course,\" Lash told Lieutenant Command er Waters.\n\nWaters stood over his station, checked and rechecke d his numbers. \"Not an intercept course,\" he whispered, \" but dammed close .\"\n\nA coincidence? Or had the enemy seen them and were coming for revenge?\n\n\"Stay dark,\" Lash ordered.\n\nThere was little else they could do.\n\nThe destroyers' smooth blue curves filled their vie wscreens.\n\nLash felt the butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation of quantum fluctuations from the Covenant repulsor engines.\n\nThe Dusk tumbled and spun.\n\nThe viewscreen cleared, revealing a rotating field of untwin-kling stars.\n\n\"Thirty-one meters off the port bow,\" Waters breath ed.\n\n\"Repulsor wake has set us adrift off the Lagrange p oint, sir,\" Lieutenant Durruno said.\n\n\"Let us drift, Lieutenant,\" Lash said. \"Fix cameras  on the Stalingrad.\"\n The spinning stars on the viewscreens slowed and th en centered on the four UNSC warships as they rounded the moon at flank spe ed, chasing the two Covenant destroyers.\n\n\"They're lining up for a shot,\" Waters said. \"They' ve got six MAC slugs left. That should be enough.\"\n\n\"Energy spike!\" Yang shouted, \"Not from our ships. Not from the Covenant vessels, either, sir.\"\n\n\"Location?\" Lash asked, and he pushed himself out o f the captain's chair.\n\nYang shook his head, opened his mouth, but no words  came out.\n\nWaters went to the SENSOR-OPS station and looked. \" Power profile indicative of a Slipspace field,\" he said. \"A big one. Deconvo luting signature. Location is\"his features went slack \"everywhere.\"\n\nThe space around the UNSC fleet rippled and blue li nes appeared, connected, and intertwined like waves of sapphire water. Slips pace fields ruptured normal dimensions and Cherenkov radiation dazzled the nigh tas dozens of Covenant destroyers, carriers, and cruisers appeared, swarms  of them formed a phalanx between the UNSC battle group and the two surviving  enemy vessels.\n\n\"Counting thirty-two Covenant ships,\" Yang croaked.\n\nLieutenant Durruno froze at her station, eyes wide with terror.\n\nThe Covenant armada fired.\n\nSpotlight energy projectors flashed, and pure white  light cleaved the dark. The UNSC ships' titanium armor boiled and vaporized, mi xed with venting oxygen, and photonic pressure blasted the flames into waver ing plumes.\n\nArcher missiles and magnetic accelerator cannons fi red in a desperate counterstrike. The missiles detonated a fraction of a second along their flight paths, high explosives heated to the flashpoint. Four MAC slugs rocketed though the energy projector cone s, fireballs of liquefied metal. Three missed. One hit, spattering uselessly on Covenant shields.\n\nThirty-two lines of plasma heated, detached, and ar ced toward the human fleet, striking critically damaged vessels, blastin g craters, ripping through inner decks, until the superstructures buckled and inner atmospheres decompressed in large bursting bubbles upon the now-molten hulls .\n The Covenant armada ceased fire and slowly advanced .\n\nAdmiral Patterson's ships had been reduced to a fie ld of debris in a matter of seconds.\n\nPinpoint lasers fired from the enemy ships as they destroyed escape pods.\n\n\"Incoming debris,\" Waters warned.\n\n\"We need to do something,\" Lieutenant Durruno whisp ered.\n\nWhat had been a victorious battle group chasing dow n a doomed enemy was now tumbling, half-melted prows and glowing reactor  cores. A floating graveyard. Ghosts.\n\nThe hope that Commandeer Richard Lash had felt was forever gone.\n\n\"Do nothing,\" Lash told them.\n\n\"If anything hits us, sir,\" Waters said, \"assuming we survive the impact, the deflection angles will give away our position.\"\n\n\"This close to so many vessels,\" Lash replied, \"so would maneuvering.\" He went to Lieutenant Durruno at the NAV station. \"Hang tig ht,\" he told her. Her eyes shone with tears, but she nodded, and gripped the e dges of her seat.\n\nLash checked his wristwatch and made sure it was wo und tight.\n\nThe Covenant armada moved closer, blotted out the s tarlight, and covered the Dusk with shadow.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-SIX\n2115 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDARS \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM \\ UNDETERMINED LOCATION IN THE FORERUNNER CO NSTRUCT KNOWN AS ONYX\n\nKurt motioned back to Fred and Ash, Linda and Mark to close the gap.\n\nTwo by two they moved up the corridor, gliding from  pillar to pillar, the SPARTAN-IIIs on point barely visible in their armor , part shadow, part striped onyx patterns. The SPARTAN-IIs closed behind like l iquid mercury rolling over velvet, smooth and silent.\n The differences between their two generations had b een left behind. Teams Blue and Saber worked as a single unit, family who had pulled together in a crisis.\n\nKurt watched his motion tracker, IFF tags overlaid on the grid. The Spartans had the best positions possibleset along each of th e pillars that stretched up to the ten-meter-tall corridor. Kurt, Tom, and Lucy ha d point.\n\nOlivia was on recon, her IFF disabled, so Kurt wasn 't certain of her precise location in the room ahead.\n\nThis corridor was tiled with interlocking Forerunne r symbols of jade, turquoise, and lapis. Dr. Halsey surmised it was an epic poem depicting a struggle in the Forerunners' long-lost past.\n\nAll Kurt knew was it was a kill zone, with scant co ver and long sight lines. A good place to get ambushed.\n\nOlivia flashed her green status light three times: the all-clear signal.\n\nKurt motioned for Tom and Lucy to follow him, and t hey slinked into the room ahead. Shadows shrouded rows of squat machines, and  the only light came from eight podlike sarcophagi clustered in the cent er.\n\nThese pods were semitranslucent, and within each la y a person, their features obscured.\n\nOlivia moved next to Kurt. \"Five of these have to b e Team Katana,\" she whispered. \"This one is still tagged with the lime- green 'kill' flag from top honors exercise.\"\n\nKurt smoothed his gauntlet over the pod's surface. Were they alive inside? Dead?\nSomewhere in between? He had come here firstnot gon e after the technology that the UNSC needed, risking everything for Team K atana.\n\nYou never leave a fallen comrade behind.\n\nBut there was more to it than that: given a choice between alien technologies that might save all of humanity and these five Spar tans he had picked them first. He would have done anything to protect them.\n\n\"Let's see what we're dealing with here,\" he said.\n\nKurt flickered on his helmet's tactical lights, and  panned them over the chamber. Organo-metallic appendages cradled each po d and radiated branches that connected to banks of two-meter cubes. On closer inspection, Kurt saw a faint light leakin g from these cubes and staring closer, he noticed they were not at all cub estheir edges distorted and radiated extra dimensions.\n\nHe staggered back, hands reflectively grasping for his temples. Disorientation washed over him as he tasted the faint green light,  inhaled the dusty odors of meaning from the symbols on the floor, and heard th e bell-like tinkling of the organic electronics of the pods.\n\nHe sank to one knee and the tangled sensory input f aded.\n\n\"Stand back,\" Kurt warned the others. Over the COM he said, \"Will, escort Dr. Halsey up here.\"\n\nAnother wave of disorientation hit Kurt and his vis ion swam. When he again could see. Dr. Halsey knelt next to him.\n\n\"Move him away from the machines,\" she told Will.\n\nWill dragged him back to the room's entrance, and K urt's vision immediately cleared and the dizziness vanished.\n\n\"What was that?\" he asked Dr. Halsey.\n\n\"Unshielded Slipspace field,\" she said. Her face wa s a mask of concentration, staring at the cubic machine housing. Frowning, she  crossed to the pods.\n\"Linda,\" she said, \"your assistance please.\"\n\nLinda moved up to Dr. Halsey, her sniper rifle aime d at the floor.\n\n\"Use your weapon's range finder; point at the inter ior of the pod.\"\n\nLinda nodded, raised her rifle, and aimed at the Sp artan inside the pod. After a moment, she lowered the weapon, checked her Oracle scope's settings, and then repeated the procedure. She shook her head.\n\n\"You are reading an infinite range?\" Dr. Halsey sai d.\n\n\"Yes,\" Linda replied, uncharacteristic annoyance in  her tone. \"There must be something wrong with it.\"\n\n\"No,\" Dr. Halsey replied. \"I'm afraid it is in perf ect working order.\"\n\nShe turned to Kurt. \"I cannot revive your Spartans or the other three, Lieutenant Commander. They are not in cryogenic sus pension.\"\nKurt shook off the last traces of confusion. \"Expla in,\" he said.\n\n\"They are encased in a Slipspace field. The process  to stabilize such a field in normal space is well beyond any technology we or th e Covenant possess. Essentially these Spartans are here, but not, extru ded into an alternate set of spatial coordinates and excluded from time.\"\n\n\"They're right here,\" Linda said, and pointed at th e pods.\n\n\"No,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"You are merely seeing their  afterimage. It's like looking at a mass accelerated past the event horizon of a b lack hole. Its image may linger there forever, but it is gone.\"\n\n\"So they're gone?\" Linda whispered.\n\n\"Oh no,\" Dr. Halsey replied. \"They're right here.\"\n\nKurt said, \"You just said they're gone. Which is it ?\"\n\nDr. Halsey considered a moment and then replied, \"B oth. The quantum mechanical implications do not translate to simple,  nonparadoxical, classical terms.\"\n\n\"Then let's stick to practical terms,\" Kurt said, g rowing annoyed. \"Are they safe?\"\n\nShe tilted her head, considering, and then replied,  \"You could detonate a nuclear warhead on these pods and because the extru ded Slipspace within is not in this dimension, there would be no effect to their contents.\"\n\nAt this reference to \"nuclear warhead,\" Ash shifted  his pack, which held the two cut-down FENRIS bombs.\n\n\"Can we move them?\" Kurt asked.\n\nDr. Halsey walked to the end of one pod. She examin ed the trunk line attached there and uncoupled it. There was a hiss and the po d rose a half meter off the floor.\n\n\"It appears they were designed to be moved,\" she sa id, her last words trailing off into deep thought.\n\nKurt motioned to the pods. \"Teams Saber, Blue, get them uncoupled. We'll take them with us to the core-room entrance.\"\n The Spartans detached the pods.\n\nAs Ash maneuvered one pod. Dr. Halsey held up a han d, indicating that he halt. She bent closer to the last pod and ran her fingers  over the Forerunner icons along its side, translating as she did so: \" 'That which must be protected behind the sharpened edge of the shield beyond the reach o f the swords for the reclaimed.' No, that's not quite the correct meanin g.\"\n\n\"Reclaimed\" Ash echoed. \"Maybe 'Reclaimers'?\"\n\nDr. Halsey looked up, startled, at him. \"Yes. A tit le. Specifically, an honorific.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said, \"that's what the Sentinel called u s.\"\n\n\"One spoke?\" Dr. Halsey asked. She pushed her glass es up the bridge of her nose and moved to Ash.\n\n\"I'd forgotten it with everything else going on.\" A sh shook his head, embarrassed.\n\n\"What exactly did it say?\" she demanded. \"The preci se wording. It may be important.\"\n\nAsh shifted foot to foot. \" I don't remember, ma'am .\"\n\nChief Mendez came up and set a hand on Ash's should er. \"Take a deep breath. Spartan. Go back and think: what were you doing jus t before the thing talked?\"\n\n\"We'd moved to the edge of Zone 67,\" Ash said slowl y, \"to disengage from Team Katana and Gladius. That's when they started to blo w up the ONI bunkers and then one came after us. It chased Holly right to th e edge of a cliff.\n\n\"I got its attention. Threw a rock at the thing. It  chased me, got me pinned in a ravine. I started to broadcast in the open, to let Saber know you could get past its shields with a slow ballis-tic objectdidn't hav e much to lose at that point. But the Sentinel attenuated my COM signal, and tran smitted it back to me.\"\n\n\"Slow it down,\" Chief Mendez whispered. \"Take your time. What happened next?\"\n\n\"At first it didn't make any sense,\" Ash continued.  \"Like untranslated Covenantonly it was different. 'Pungent Juber' some thing. I tried to talk back to it. Told it that I didn't understand. It spoke agai n, still gibberish, but then it said 'non se-quitur' I was certain it spoke Latin.\"\n \"Linguistic analysis based on a microscopic sample set,\" Dr. Halsey said. \"It tried to communicate with a root language.\"\n\n\"Then it said 'Security protocols enabled' and 'Shi eld in countdown mode. Exchange proper counterresponse. Reclaimer.' I told  it that I meant it no harm. I guess that was the wrong thing to say, because that's when it told me I was not a Reclaime r, and reclassified me as an\n'aboriginal subspecies.'\"\n\nDr. Halsey stared off into space, thinking. \"Yes\" s he murmured. \"This all makes sense.\"\n\n\"It was about to flash me with its energy beam when  the rest of Saber came along and dropped a few rocks on it.\" Ash shrugged.  \"That's it, sir,\"\n\nKurt had heard enough more important, he had seen D r. Halsey's reaction. She knew much more than she was telling them. And it wa s time he found out what.\n\n\"Okay,\" Kurt said, \"everyone grab the pods and move  them to the translocation platform.\"\n\nHe stepped closer to Dr. Halsey. \"I'd like a word w ith you, ma'am.\"\n\nThe Spartans maneuvered the pods back into the corr idor. Mendez spared a look at Kurt and Dr. Halsey, and then left.\n\n\"We don't have much time,\" Kurt said to her.\n\nShe glanced at her watch. \"Forty minutes, to be pre cise, until the core-room entrance shuts.\"\n\n\"You know what's inside.\"\n\nThere was the slightest hesitation, and then she re plied, \"How could I, Lieutenant Commander?\"\n\n\"But you haven't told me everything.\"\n\nDr. Halsey's eyes hardened and her mouth set in wha t Mendez would have called a poker face.\n\n\"Doctor, I'm not going to risk my Spartans\" lives w ithout knowing everything. Even what you might consider an insignificant detai l could have grave tactical repercussions.\"\n \"Indeed,\" she whispered, and her expression softene d a bit. \"If they mean that much to you, then tell me first about their neural augmentations.\"\n\nKurt tensed, unsure how to proceed. Dr. Halsey was a civilian outside his chain of command. There were rules and protocols dictatin g how the military interacted with the civilians under its protectionall too slow, for his purposes. If he wer e not reliant upon her scientific expertise, Kurt would have considered mo re direct action; instead he tried again.\n\n\"I am not bartering. Doctor. You do not have the pr oper clearance for that information. Now please tell me about the core. You  could save lives.\"\n\n\"'Save lives' is exactly what I am attempting to do ,\" she replied, and crossed her arms. The gesture was identical to the one Kelly ma de when she set her mind to be resolutely stubborn.\n\nKurt was cornered. If he threatened Dr. Halsey, he could lose her cooperation. If he didn't get the information, he might lose the  lives. With time running out, he only had one option, and she knew it.\n\nHe took a deep breath and said, \"Very well. The neu ral mutation for the SPARTAN-IIIs alters their frontal lobe to enhance a ggression response. In times of extreme stress it makes them nearly immune to sh ock, able to endure damage not even a SPARTAN-II could.\"\n\n\"Like Dante?\" Dr. Halsey said. \"Still moving when h e should have been in a coma?\"\n\nKurt relived that moment, holding Dante who had jus t a second earlier saluted him and told him that he thought he had been nicked .\n\n\"Side effects?\" she asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" Kurt whispered. \"Over time, higher brain fun ctions are suppressed and the Spartans lose their strategic judgment. A count eragent blocks this, but it must be regularly administered.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I agree that trade-off is worth it,\" she said. \"Unless, their needs were, even by Spartan standards extraordinary.\" She  carefully examined Kurt, and then whispered, \"What happened to Alpha Company ?\"\n\n\"They were deployed to shut down a Covenant shipyar d on the edge of UNSC space.\" Kurt stopped, straining to hold back\n the blackness that rose within him. Shane, Robert, every one of them dead, and the fault his.\n\n\"I never heard of the operation,\" Dr. Halsey said.\n\n\"Because it was a success,\" Kurt replied, regaining  some control. \"If it hadn't been, the Covenant would have destroyed every Orion -side colony But the entire company, three hundred Spartans, was lost.\"\n\nDr. Halsey started to reach out toward him, and the n stopped, thinking better of it. \"Tom and Lucy ?\"\n\n\"The only survivors of Beta Company from the Pegasi  Delta Op,\" he replied.\n\nThey were silent a moment. Kurt wrestled to rise ab ove his emotions and the memories. But with so many lost he felt like he was  drowning.\n\n\"I understand why you would risk such an outlawed p rotocol,\" Dr. Halsey said.\n\"You would do anything to help them, your Spartans as would I for mine.\"\n\nOver the COM Chief Mendez spoke: \"We're at the plat form, sir. Awaiting further orders.\"\n\n\"Stand by,\" Kurt replied. He banished his feelings to a dark vessel in his mind, one brimming to overflow with pain, and then he foc used on Dr. Halsey.\n\n\"Why are you here?\" he asked her. \"It is not to rec over Forerunner technology. If you had really suspected, you would have told Jo hn and he'd have sent more assets than a single Spartan and a fifty-year-old s hip converted for civilian use.\"\n\nDr. Halsey dropped her gaze to the intricately tile d floor. \"There is no need for this pretense with you,\" she whispered. \"Only, one becomes so accustomed to keeping secrets; one forgets how to tell anyone any thing.\" Her forehead crinkled almost as if it hurt to speak. \"You are co rrect. I did not come to Onyx looking for Forerunner technology. I came for the S partans. We want the same thing: their survival.\"\n\nShe set one hand over her throatsome reflexive defe nsive gesture to protect herself.\n\n\"This is not a war the UNSC can win, Kurt. Surely t his has occurred to you?\"\n\nHe nodded, although in fact it had not.\n\nShe seemed to accept this, however, and continued. \"We have been slowly losing this war. 'Slowly,' I think, because we had not been the main focus of the Covenant hegemony until recently. Now they have fou nd and targeted Earth. Add to this grim scenario the Flood an emergent bio logy that even the Forerunners could not control.\"\n\n\"But we have to fight,\" Kurt said. \"The Covenant do n't take prisoners. And from what you've told us of the Flood there's no other o ption.\"\n\nDr. Halsey smiled. \"So like a Spartan and, at the s ame time you are so unlike any of them. You crossed a line none of your kind h as ever dared before:\nbreaking regulations and engineering a massive cove r-up. All to protect your charges. AVhat I had planned, though, went much far ther\"\n\nOver the COM Fred broke in. \"Sir, the Forerunner co ntrols on the platform are moving. Going crazy I'm not sure what it means.\"\n\n\"Stand by\" Kurt replied.\n\n\"You see,\" Dr. Halsey said, \"my SPARTAN-lls would n ever leave a fight. They are too indoctrinated to know any other way. But when I  learned of the possibility of a new generation of Spartans, I realized there w as a chance to lure them away. Perhaps place them in cryo and fly as fast an d as far away as I could from this sector of the galaxy.\n\n\"To live and fight another day,\" Kurt murmured.\n\n\"Stumbling upon this Forerunner installation,\" Dr. Flalsey continued, \"was pure chance Or as much 'chance' as it was building Camp Currahee next to Zone 67. In any event, there may or may not be weapon techno logies we can repurpose here.\n\nYour guess is as good as mine. There is, however, s omething far more valuable to us: a way to save their lives, what I think may have been part of the Forerunners' original plan. There is a haven for th ese 'Reclaimers' that\"\n\nGunfire echoed down the hallway.\n\nKurt turned and raised his rifle.\n\nFred announced over the COM: \"Covenant scout party appeared on the translocation platform. Three Elites dispatched. No  injuries here. Control panel is still active. Advise.\"\n\n\"Listen carefully if you want them to live,\" Dr. Ha lsey told Kurt. She wore her poker face again and there was steel in her voice. \"Order Fred to move the pods onto that platformnow.\"\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN\n2130 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM\n\\ UNDETERMINED LOCATION IN THE FORERUNNER CONSTRUCT  KNOWN AS ONYX\n\nThe Spartans stood in a half-circle \"kill\" formatio n around the platform. The sarcophagi-like pods had been pushed into the cente r.\n\nThe bodies of three Elite scouts in their blue armo r had been dragged to one side and stripped of their weapons. Fluorescing blo od pooled there and reeked like fresh tar.\n\nDr. Halsey strode directly to the control console. As she tapped and arranged holographic symbols, she told Kurt, \"The Slipspace fields that render the pods impervious to attack effectively block any incoming  matter translocations. They are perfectly safe.\"\n\nFred reported to Kurt, \"For what it's worth, sir, t he Elites looked surprised. I don't think they knew we were here.\"\n\n\"Well, they probably do now,\" Kurt replied. \"Doctor ?\"\n\n\"I'm unsure how the Covenant learned so quickly,\" D r. Halsey said, glistening symbols reflecting in her glasses, \"but I'm logging  repeated attempts to gain access to this platform. Nearby systems have activa ted. They are trying to find alternate routes to our location.\"\n\n\"Then we move,\" Kurt said.\n\n\"If the pods block the translocation.\" Ash said, \"w ill they go though the system?\"\n\nDr. Halsey considered this. \"I believe so. They are  designed to be transported. Once their Slipspace fields are caught in the wake of a locally generated spatial distortion they should be carried along.\"\n\n\"Set mission timers in countdown mode.\" Kurt told t hem, and he looked to Dr. Halsey.\n\nShe consulted her watch. \"Thirty-two minutes until the doorway to the core room closes,\" she said.\n\n\"On my mark.\" Kurt said. \"Mark.\"\n\n\"52:00\" appeared in the lower right corner of his h eads-up display\n\"Defense formation beta,\" he ordered, and motioned everyone onto the platforms. \"Use the pods for cover.\"\n\nWill carried Dante's wrapped body and set him gentl y onto the platform. Kurt quickly looked away; every time he saw the corpse, it reminded him that Dante's death was his responsibility, and that he h ad failed the young Spartan.\n\nThe SPARTAN-IIs made a ring inside the pods protect ing Mendez. The SPARTAN IIIs lay flat and aimed under the floating pods, gi ving them a 360-degree field of fire.\n\nDr. Halsey joined them on the platform, crowding ne xt to Chief Mendez. She opened her laptop and linked to the Forerunner cont rols. \"Are you certain?\" she asked Kurt. \"The Covenant may be able to track us to the core room. We might lead them directly to it.\"\nThe look on her face was unreadable.\n\nKurt recognized the question as strategic: continue  to the core room or escape while there were UNSC forces in the space over Onyx ?\n\nDr. Halsey had also hinted there was a way to save the Spartans' livessomething linked to the Forerunners' original plan for these \"Reclaimers.\" But he didn't have the luxury of making plans based on Dr. Halsey 's half-explained theories. He'd stick with his plan: get to the core room, gra b whatever technology or weapons were there, and get off this world. He had a mission to accomplish, and failing thathis gaze moved to Ash and his pack with two FENRIS warheadshe could still deny the enemy their prize.\n\n\"Core room,\" Kurt said.\n\nDr. Halsey sighed and nodded. Was it resignation he  detected on her face? Or relief? She was the most difficult person to read h e had ever encountered.\n\nRings of golden light enveloped them, the walls of the corridor melted, and Kurt felt his insides pulled out and around and the n stuffed back into his armor.\n\nThe light, however, didn't fade as it had before. I t intensified to a brighter magnesium-burning white.\n\nMendez dug into his vest pocket and donned an antiq ue pair of mirrored wraparounds.\n\nDr. Halsey's glasses automatically darkened.\n Kurt's visor wasn't polarizing to compensate, so he  manually stepped up the tint by 60 percent.\n\nAt first he mistook their location for an open plai n of snow, somewhere on the northern polar region, but then he saw walls in the  foggy distance. He estimated five kilometers.\n\nHe pushed the polarization to 80 percent.\n\nThe floor became visible, tiled with Forerunner sym bols of silver, ruby, emerald, and amber. Each line and curve interlinked in a precise Penrose geometry, although if there wa s a discern-able repeating pattern Kurt didn't see it.\n\nThe symbols seemed to sing in his mind, and he was frustrat-ingly close to understanding what they said some larger galactic t ranscendent meaning.\n\nKurt shook his head to clear the delusion.\n\nHe fell back to his training. He scanned for motion . No enemies sighted. There were no visible defendable positions, either. He ch ecked his rifle: ammo clip full. All SPI armor systems checked.\n\nAs his vision continued to adjust, a hill resolved in the center of this \"room.\"\nThere was a uniform slope to the floor that gently rose and then arced up hyperbolically a dozen meters. It reminded Kurt of an anthill. Around the apex of this hill sat a crown of fins raised to the sky;  buttressed at their bases and pronged at their tips, they towered another ten met ers above the structure.\n\n\"If this is the core of the planet,\" Kelly whispere d, \"there should be little, if any, gravity. It feels normal.\"\n\nDr. Halsey rechecked her laptop. \"Translocation con firmed,\" she said. \"We are at the center of Onyx. The gravity is artificial.\"\n\n\"Teams of two deploy, spread out, recon,\" Kurt said . \"Doctor, Chief, Ash, we're going to that structure.\"\n\nGreen acknowledgment lights winked on.\n\n\"Sir,\" Holly said, \"what about Team Katana? The pod s?\"\n\n\"Leave them on the platform. They'll block incoming  Covenant translocations.\"\nIt felt wrong to leave them here alone, so he order ed Holly \"Guard them.\"\n They moved off, and as Kurt marched over the floor,  the symbols under his boots smoothed into a golden path. Static clawed al ong the inside of his SPI armor and the exterior was a riot of colors as the photo-reactive circuits attempted to blend into the local Harlequin terrain .\n\nMendez halted and held up a hand toward Dr. Halsey.  \"Watch your step, ma'am.\" He pointed to the floor.\n\nA ridge rose a quarter meter, difficult to see beca use Forerunner icons glowed along its smooth side as well as the top.\n\nDr. Halsey knelt and tapped the frames of her glass es, glancing right and left.\n\"A ring circumscribing the entirety of the central structure.\" She then gazed at the hill. \"In fact, the entire deformation is a ser ies of similar concentric circles.\"\n\nKurt stepped onto the raised surface. He scrutinize d the hill and counted the finlike towers: there were thirteen. He increased t he magnification factor on his faceplate and noted the curved surface of the c enter formation was indeed a series of staircase rings.\n\n\"Reminds me of Dante's Inferno,\" Mendez said, and o ffered his hand to Dr. Halsey.\n\nShe took his hand and eased onto the ridge. \"Dante' s hell was a series of descending rings,\" she said. \"These are more repres entative of\"\n\nThe floor shifted.\n\nKurt instinctively crouched to keep his balance, bu t there was no need; it had only dropped a few centimeters.\n\nThe entire room settled, however, the distortion pr opagating toward the hill with a subsonic rumble.\n\n\"If the core room is in the center,\" Dr. Halsey sai d, hastening her pace, \"we should hurry.\"\n\n\"Something here, sir,\" Fred announced over the COM.  \"You better see for yourself.\"\n\nKurt turned toward Fred's and Mark's IFF signals on  his heads-up display. They were silhouettes against the glare, 150 meters away .\n\n\"Ash, Chief, escort the Doctor to the structure. Ke ep me posted.\"\n \"Roger that, sir,\" Ash said.\n\nKurt jogged to Fred and Mark and saw the Spartans s tanding at the edge of a black hole, a seven-sided smooth patch devoid of Fo rerunner iconography. A holograph console stood next to it, icons moving.\n\n\"Translocation platform,\" Fred whispered. \"Active, if I'm reading these controls right.\"\n\n\"We'll use another pod to block it,\" Kurt said.\n\nHe started to key the COM, but Ash then broke in: \" Sir. I've got some height, and I can see dots on the floor.\"\n\n\"Black dots?\" Kurt asked.\n\n\"Yes, sir. Counting a dozenno, make that at least t hirty of them scattered in a rough circle.\"\n\nKurt's heart sank to the pit of his stomach.\n\nThere were too many points of egress to block. They  potentially faced an enemy with superior numbers and firepower, and all they'd have was a single semidefensible position.\n\n\"26:00\" morphed to \"25:59\" on his countdown timer.\n\nThey were close to that core room, a possible treas ure trove of Forerunner secrets. With a sizable Covenant force on their tra il, it wouldn't be enough to get there first. They had to prevent the enemy from  getting there as well.\n\nKurt balanced the lives of his Spartans against the  billions that might be saved and the choice was regrettably all too clear to him .\n\nKurt double-clicked the TEAMCOM. \"Olivia, Will, Hol ly grab those pods and get to the top of that hill ASAP. Kelly, set up the las t LOTUS mines around the structure. Everyone else, get to the top and unpack  everything, load all rifles. Prepare to defend against incoming enemy forces.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT SEVENTH CYCLE, 265 UNITS (COVENANT BATTLE CALENDAR)  \\ UNNAMED FORERUNNER CITY; ONYX-SYSTEM: ZETA DORADUS (HUMAN D ESIGNATION)\n Fleet Master Voro inspected his battalion. They had  amassed on the surface of the Forerunner city, over two hundred Sangheili in orderly rows for his review. Dropships and Seraph fighter craft hovered overhead , their landing lights playing over the courtyard, guarding against unexpe cted Sentinel or demon attacks.\n\nThe nearby edifices and paving stones of black-and- white-banded mineral provided a sharp contrast to his soldiers in their primary-colored armors.\n\nHe glanced down rows of warriors in blue battle sui ts, standing at attention, ready to fight and kill and die at his word.\n\nThe only grumble among his solders was because they  carried Kig-yar shield gauntlets to supplement their armor systems. Many v iewed this as a grave dishonor, but Voro had ordered it so. They would ta ke no chances with the human demons, these \"Spartans.\" The Sangheili could  not lose this world as they had the first Halo ring.\n\nVoro nodded to the Major Domo Sangheili in their gl istening red armor. The Majors caught and held his gaze. They believed in h im. He saw it in their unwavering stares.\n\nTheir confidence was infectious and they gave him p ause, for it was a dangerous thing for a leader of any rank to believe  himself unstoppable.\n\nStill, Voro marveled that he had been given command  of the E'Toro, R'Lan, and N'Nono warrior creches whose valor and savagery was  legendary. Yet, as skilled as these soldiers were, he would have traded a doze n of them for one infiltrator in a light-bending suit to scout the te rrain ahead and report on the demons.\n\nHe halted before Paruto and Waruna. The towering Le kgolo pair growled their gratitude at leading the true vanguard.\n\nVoro had been blessed with not one but three Lekgol o pairs. He had never seen a single pair defeated in combat before. And yet, t he Spartans had managed to wound Waruna and escape, an insult to the Lekgolo p ride that would only be assuaged by grinding the offenders into pulp.\n\n\"Make ready final preparation,\" Voro told his Major s.\n\nThe Majors shouted to their squads, who drew their swords and saluted Vorotheir raised energy blades made the air waver w ith their combined heat.\n They lowered their salute; grabbed rifles, grenades , pistols, and power cells;\nand marched across the courtyard, assembling near t he banks of matte-black translocation pads.\n\nSuicide Unggoy squads followed, dragging dissembled  energy mortar units. Their frenzied squeals annoyed Voro. They would run  ahead of the others, attempt to engage the enemy while their fellows set  up their shields and mortars and likely fall before they got a single un it assembled.\n\nThey would, however, serve as a necessary distracti on while the rest of his combat group found cover and set up.\n\nIt was as fine a death as any Unggoy could wish for .\n\nVoro looked up to the stars.\n\nThey had survived the Flood and treachery of the Ji ralhanae at the second Halo construct, repelled the Sentinel guardians of this world, and emerged victorious even after the human fleet decimated the ir ships. Many in his ranks whispered Destiny protected them.\n\nThat so-called victory against the human fleet, how ever, had been nothing more than luck. The human Ship Masters  had outwitted thema fact he still had difficultly reconciling. Only the  timely arrival of reinforcements from Joyous Exultation had saved the m.\n\nRumors circulated that the reinforcing ships had su rvived some catastrophe. Voro suspected a surprise attack from the Ji-ralhan ae. Whatever the cause, vengeance would have to wait.\n\nThey had to win this battle, here and now, and clai m the Forerunner technologies that would shift the strategic balance  of power in the galaxy. So perhaps it was Destiny after all that had brought t hem to this world, but it was destiny of their own making.\n\nHe strode to the translocation platforms and rechec ked the target coordinates. Voro was no priest, and he understood only a fracti on of the Forerunner holy script.\n\nThe same message had repeated since they found this  system.\n\nHolographic icons swarmed over the control surface.  Voro read them, shouting the divine passage to his soldiers: \"The dark times  are upon us Unsheathe thy swords and smite The Ark will be your guide And ble ss the Reclaimers that may take refuge behind the sharpened edge of the Shield  Wonder beyond awaits.\"\nTwo hundred Sangheili roared their approval as if t he message had been set here for them, writ eons ago by gods.\n\nIn truth, the nuances of this message's meaning wer e lost upon Voro. He had discerned, though, the center of this world was whe re the \"Reclaimers\" were to assemble: a place that held technological wonders a nd weapons beyond measure.\n\nTheir task was clear: stop the human demons from ge tting there first.\n\nHe motioned to the suicide Unggoy squads.\n\nThe small creatures crowded upon the platforms.\n\nVoro input the translocation command and sent the f irst wave into battle.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTY-NINE\n2140 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM\n\\ UNDETERMINED LOCATION IN THE FORERUNNER CONSTRUCT  KNOWN AS ONYX CORE-ROOM ANTECHAMBER\n\nThe crack of Linda's sniper rifle was uncharacteris tically quiet. The sound dissipated into the vast room.\n\nTwo hundred meters from her perch a Grunt cried out . It fell, killed by the head shot. A jet of methane from its breathing appa ratus ignited and spewed fire.\n\nThat was five. The creatures had appeared on transl ocation pads, chittering like a dozen cockroaches, lugging parts of an energ y shield unit. They had looked confused, running in random directions until  downed by Linda.\n\nWithout shifting from her flat position or removing  her gaze from the Oracle scope, Linda dropped her magazine and inserted a ne w one. Lying next to her in a precise row were five magazines, all she had l eft.\n\nKurt surveyed his team. They'd taken the only logic al, defensible position in the room: atop the artificial hill of concentric rings.\n\nThe top of the structure was crowned with a meter-w ide ledge and thirteen finlike towers that provided ample cover. The Spart ans and Mendez took posts on either side of three of these towers. Kelly had placed their last LOTUS antitank mines at  the base of the hill, enough explosive force to penetrate the ultradense armor o f an M808 Scorpion Main Battle Tank.\n\nHis team had height, clean lines of fire, and yet K urt knew they were entirely vulnerable surrounded by so many translocation pads .\n\nInside the ring of towers, a series of additional c oncentric circles fell steeply into the middle of the structure. In the exact cent er was a hole three meters wide, glowing with a brilliant blue-white heatless illumination.\n\nThis was ostensibly the \"doorway\" to the core room they sought. It was open, but in the time they had been here, the rings on th e hill's outer and inner slopes had continued to flatten, and the fin towers  had tilted and angled inward. The entire structure was closing like the p etal of a great flower.\n\nKurt glanced at his mission timer: 21:22.\n\nHolographic control surfaces shimmered about the ed ge of the hole, and Dr. Halsey crouched there, laptop open, her tiny mote-o f-light AI flitting among the symbols. She hadn't flinched at the sound of th e sniper rifle, her full concentration fixed upon the center. Around her Kur t had set the eight sleeper pods for additional cover.\n\n\"Compressed Slipspace field,\" Dr. Halsey whispered to her computer.\n\"Transdimensional crossover confirmed. Impossible i n normal three-space, at least larger than the Fermi-Planck limit.\"\n\n\"Action on deck!\" Mendez cried.\n\nThe translocation pads scattered across the white r oom flickered with rings of gold. Upon dozens of pads two hundred Grunts materi alized.\n\nThey screamed, fired plasma and needier pistols, an d charged.\n\nKurt had never been afraid of these diminutive alie ns. But this was different. The cowardly creatures were wild-eyed, and sprinted  headlong toward them, clawing at the air. Their plasma bolts dissipated a long their two-hundred meter-long trajectories, but several needier rounds  exploded on the stones near Kurt.\n\n\"Hold your fire,\" he said over TEAMCOM. He scanned the advancing line, and then past them spotted three te ams of Grunts setting up energy mortars.\n\"In back,\" he said. \"Take out the artillery.\"\n\nLinda fired twice. A trio of Grunts assembling one mortar fell.\n\nHolly and Ash grabbed sniper rifles and picked off the other two Grunt teams before the mortars' energy shields activated.\n\nThe charging wave of Grunts surged against the base  of the hill, clambering over one another to rush up the steep terraces.\n\n\"Mines?\" Kelly calmly asked over the COM\n\n\"Negative,\" Kurt replied. \"Rifles. Everyonesweep th e slopes.\"\n\nGreen acknowledgment lights burned.\n\nThey eased out from cover and loosened streams of a utomatic fire over the target-rich terrain.\n\nThe leading Grunts jerked as bullets riddled their bodies. They fell backward onto their fellows, who struggled to maintain their  forward momentum. Punctured breathing units spewed methane and blosso med into flame. Many Grunts ignited, tumbled down the stairs, and desper ately rolled to extinguish themselves.\n\nThe Spartans dropped magazines, inserted fresh ones , and methodically continued shooting.\n\nThe Grunts slowed and stopped halfway up the stairs , fell back, dead and alive, still screaming, but now in terror.\n\nThe survivors turned and fledand were cut down.\n\nHeaps of Grunts lay at the foot of the hill. Methan e reverse tanks detonated, and burning armor and flesh spiraled up into column s of acrid smoke. Some Grunts attempted to crawl to safety.\n\n\"Police the wounded,\" Kurt ordered. \"Single shots.\"\n\nHis team quickly dispatched them.\n\nThen Kurt spotted his mistake: Two hundred fifty me ters back, almost lost in the glare of the vast room, stood Elites now safely  behind stationary shield generators.\n Kurt increased the magnification on his faceplate. There were three groups equidistantly positioned around the hi llthirty Elites in each.\n\n\"Twelve, four, and seven o'clock,\" Kurt whispered o ver TEAMCOM. \"Trouble.\"\n\n\"We've got three SPNKr missiles left,\" Linda offere d. \"I could get a trajectory over those shield units.\"\n\nKurt then saw outlines that made his stomach clench , silhouettes that hulked over the smaller Elites. Three Hunter pairs, one in  each company.\n\n\"Too much firepower,\" he told Linda. \"They'd down t hem before impact. We'll wait for them to come to us. Stand by.\"\n\nAbove them, the towers leaned in at a 45-degree ang le; the depth from the top of the hill to the center was now only six meters. Kurt could actually see the concentric rings settling, centimeter by centimeter .\n\nHis countdown timer read \"17:51.\"\n\nEvery Spartan had about a dozen magazines for their  MA5B and MASK assault rifles, three grenades, sniper riflesnormally enoug h for nearly any engagement. This, however, would be a lopsided siege against an  enemy who was well prepared and, Kurt had to admit it, outthinking the m.\n\nHe moved down to Dr. Halsey.\n\n\"Progress?\" he whispered.\n\nDr. Halsey continued to stare at the white compress ed space within the center. It flexed, and revealed a tantalizing glimpse of no rmal daylight beyond, and then shifted back to glare and distortion.\n\n\"There is nothing 1 can do to hasten the closing of  this aperture,\" she murmured. \"Are you still set on remaining here unti l the last possible moment?\"\n\n\"We can't allow the Covenant to get inside,\" Kurt s aid, \"and I'm not sending part of our team ahead. It would only weaken our forces here, and potentially leave any advance party facing Sentinels on the other sid e.\"\n\nShe looked up at him and sighed. \"I find myself rel uctantly agreeing with your tactical analysis.\"\n\nKurt unholstered his M6 pistol and set it next to h er. \"You may need this. Doctor. Keep your head down.\"\nShe took the gun and racked the slide as if she had  used one many times before.\n\nKurt moved back to the upper ledge.\n\nThe Elites had spread out in three lines. They pres ented Jackal shields, interlinked them, and started a slow advance toward  the hill. This was another inspired tactic. If the Spartans fired at them, the y'd just burn through these disposable shields and would still have their perso nal overshields to contend with.\n\nThe Hunter pairs towered in the center of the forma tions. The thick slabs of alloy they used for shields were impenetrable to an y weapon they had.\n\nKurt glanced to Ash standing by his side, and then to his pack on the ground. Inside were the two cut-down FENRIS warheads. Kurt double-checked the detonator control pad in his gauntlet's data socket . Still there.\n\n\"All squads,\" Kurt ordered. \"Counter incoming enemy  vectors.\"\n\nAsh and Olivia moved closer to Kurt at his seven o' clock position. Kelly, Will, Holly, and Lucy clustered at four o'clock. Chief Me ndez, Fred, Mark, and Tom took position at twelve o'clock.\n\n\"At fifty meters,\" Kurt continued, \"pitch grenades to break those lines, plasma first to drain shields, then the frags. Ignore the Hunters. Follow up with sniper fire. When they're close enough, use rifles.\"\n\n\"How close, sir?\" Holly asked. There was a quaver i n her voicenot fear, but anticipation.\n\n\"When they're on the stairs,\" Kurt told her. \"Kelly , stand ready with the LOTUS mines.\"\n\nKurt knew they couldn't stop them all. Some would g et to the base of the hill. And some would climb the stairs. How many depended on their skill, timing, and a great deal of luck.\n\nGreen acknowledgment lights flashed, and the Sparta ns tensed.\n\nThe advancing Elites were two hundred meters away. They hadn't fired a single shot yet. Whoever commanded them showed uncommon re straint.\n\nKurt searched for the glistening gold armor of a Sh ip or Fleet Master, but only saw the red battle gear of Covenant Majors on the f ield. One hundred meters.\n\nThe SPARTAN-IIIs shifted from foot to foot, a nervo us gesture not mirrored in the battle-hardened SPARTAN-IIs whose bio signs on Kurt's tactical display barely showed a flutter.\n\nChief Mendez caught Kurt's assessing look and gave him a confident nod.\n\nThis was what he and Mendez had trained the Spartan s for their entire lives. They would survive this. They had to.\n\nAt fifty meters he spotted Elite soldiers opening a nd closing their four hinged jaws as if anticipating human blood.\n\n\"Thrownow,\" Kurt ordered.\n\nBlurred trajectories of burning blue plasma zipped through the air, followed by fragmentation grenades.\n\nThe advancing Elites hesitated, and a ripple distor ted through their precise lines. The plasma grenades hit; there was a flash o f blue-white that drained clusters of overlapping Jackal shields and knocked many Elites to their knees. Fragmentation grenades hit, bounced, and rolled int o their ranksand exploded.\n\nBodies and splashes of blood flew through the air; blue and red armor tumbled from the center of the blast.\n\nKurt hefted his sniper rifle and targeted Elites st ill dazed, their overshields weakened and flickering.\n\nThe Elite Majors growled orders, and the lines stru ggled to close.\n\nKurt squeezed off a shot, and the round tore throug h one Elite's open helmet, emerging out the back in a spray of blue.\n\nTo Kurt's right and left came the popcorn crackle o f single shots, and more Elites in the broken line fell.\n\nThree Elites stood their ground and returned fire.\n\nPlasma bolts impacted on the stone near Kurt's head . He felt the heat wash over his SPI armor plates.\n\nThis was what he had hoped for: chaos. He'd happily  exchange fire at this range when he had a scope, cover, and a superior angle. A Hunter bellowed in rage, lumbered to one of the E lites returning fire instead of re-forming the line, and hammered that Elite wit h one massive fistcrushing its spine. Turning, the Hunter screamed at the othe r two Elites and they quickly closed ranks.\n\nKurt kept firing, picking off stragglers as their f ormation knit togethershooting one Elite in the knee joint, one in the eye, until their Jackal shields overlapped.\n\nHe took a quick body count. Eleven down in the form ation approaching his position.\n\nThey continued their advance to less than five mete rs from the base of the stairs.\n\n\"Hold your fire,\" Kurt ordered. \"Kelly, LOTUS to st andby\"\n\nThe flowerlike LOTUS antitank mines had been placed  in the crux of the first steps and overlaid with a square of silver reflecti ve blanket that served as camouflage in the brilliant light.\n\nTwo groups of five Elites split from their line and  took up position to either side of the stairs, angling their shields toward the top . Five more Elites took cover behind them and opened fire. Plasma and crystal sha rds flashed up the slope.\n\nKurt ducked and the air scintillated overhead. He c rawled to the edge and peered over.\n\nThe Hunters moved up the stairs followed by the bal ance of the Elite warriors just passing the first step.\n\n\"Now,\" he told Kelly.\n\nThe LOTUS exploded into a multipetaled flash of lig htning, thunder, and fire, enveloping the approaching force.\n\nThe concussive force roiled though Kurt's insides.\n\nThree simultaneous sonic booms echoed off the walls .\n\nKurt popped up with his assault rifle and opened fi re. Ash and Olivia were at his side, MA5Ks spitting rounds down the staircase.\n\nThe Hunter pair, halfway up the steps, stood stunne d and bloodied by the concussive force, their impenetrable shields askew.\n Kurt aimed at the closest Hunter's unarmored center . Rounds tore into its exposed flesh. The tangles of eels within his armor  writhed and made the monster's bulk seem to boil. He grabbed his last pl asma grenade, sidearmed it.\n\nThe grenade stuck to the Hunter's abdomenflashed, a nd ignited a dozen of the orange eel symbiotes constituting its form. Many fe ll out, aflame, burning and squealing on the steps.\n\nThe Hunter staggered back and fell; the gestalt los t cohesion and spilled into a smoldering mound of worms.\n\nThe surviving Hunter ducked behind its shield, bell owing a vengeful cry.\n\nKurt picked up a rifle and joined Ash and Olivia, c ombining fire to penetrate the overshields of the remaining Elite solders on t he stairs.\n\nA cluster of Elites at the base regrouped, their sh ields regenerated, and they returned fire.\n\nAsh and Olivia ducked behind cover.\n\nThe hill trembled behind Kurt.\n\nHe turned and saw a Hunter pair plod onto the top a t the four o'clock position, flanked by a vanguard of three Elites with energy s words.\n\nKelly reacted first, moved in, grabbed an Elite's w rist, and snapped it. She followed with an elbow to the Elite  face twisted the sword free and slashed, cutting it in half, as well as the two  Elites on either side.\n\nShe spun to face the Hunters.\n\nFor once in her life, she was too slow.\n\nThe monsters had leveled their fuel-rod cannons at Kelly. They had her.\n\nHolly jumped between Kelly and the weapons.\n\nThe Hunters fired, outlining both Spartans in the b linding green radiation for a split second.\n\nThe overpressure of both point-blank fuel-rod canno n detonations threw Kelly, Will, and Lucy into the air.\n Holly exploded backwarda spray of molten SPI armor,  disintegrating flesh, and jets of smoke.\n\nKurt stood horrified, frozen, but then instincts an d training clicked on full force, and without thinking, he rushed forward before the Hunters could finish his prone teammates.\n\nThe nearest Hunter turned on him faster than he exp ected slicing its two-ton shield into Kurt's solar plexus.\n\nThe outer layer of Kurt's armor cracked and the liq uid ballistic underlayers failed and squirted out. Pain ripped through his to rso; ribs cracked; he coughed and blood spattered the inside of his faceplate.\n\nHe dropped in a heap at the Hunter's boots, dazed, only recovering his wits enough to see the Hunter raise both fists over him for the killing blow.\n\nLinda's sniper rifle cracked. The exposed region of  the Hunter's midsection exploded in a mass of orange, but it remained mirac ulously upright.\n\nWill hurled himself at the Hunter, and knocked the beast off its feet and into its mateand the three of them tumbled down the stai rs.\n\nKurt got up, ignoring the near-blinding pain, and l imped to the edge.\n\nWill stood between both Hunters at the base of the hill. He kicked the nearest in the unarmored middle and it staggered back.\n\nAround him were a dozen Elites who, confronted by t he sight of a lone Spartan engaging two Hunters in hand-to-hand combat, were m omentarily too stunned to act.\n\nKurt and Lucy opened fire, suppressing the Elites, before they regained their senses.\n\nOne Hunter lashed out with its shield. Will ducked,  darted inside its reach, and battered its bruised midsectionpunching through fle sh and ripping out wriggling chunks of the composite eel colony.\n\nThe second Hunter angled away from the fight and br ought its cannon to bear.\n\nWill spun around.\n\nThe Hunter shot him.\n Will's energy shield vanished, and the front of his  MJOLNIR armor melted. He took a step toward the beast, and collapsed.\n\nThe Hunter turned and roared at the Spartans at the  top of the hill, and then started to bring its tremendous shield back in line\n\nA SPNKr missile screamed past Kurt's head, leaving a spiral of propellant exhaust, streaked toward the Hunter, and impacted d ead center of its mass.\n\nThe air erupted into a blurred sphere of explosive force. The nearby Elites were tossed aside like rag dolls, their shields fla ring. The Hunter burst into a cloud of snakelike parts that wetly spattered upon the floor.\n\nKurt turned and saw Fred kneeling next to him, his spent SPNKr tube smoking.\n\nIt was silent.\n\nNothing moved. Not the Elites, the Hunters, or Will iam.\n\nKelly and Linda finally rose, shaking off the concu ssion from the fuel-rod cannon detonation. They stood with Kurt and Fred an d stared at their fallen comrade.\n\nAsh was on his knees where Holly had stood a second  ago. There were the outlines of two bootprints on the stone nothing els e.\n\nTwo Spartans down in a matter of seconds. One an ol d friend, the other a girl Kurt had known since she was four years old. Yet, h e couldn't stop and think about itnot when they were surrounded by enemies. T here were still many lives that were his responsibility.\n\nKurt looked away and assessed the remaining threat.\n\nOlivia, posted at seven o'clock, waved Kurt closer.  He limped to her.\n\n\"They just pulled back,\" she whispered.\n\nFrom the hill base, the Hunter and the surviving El ites had re-formed their line and were retreating, already fifty meters away.\n\nKurt made his way to the twelve o'clock point, to M endez, Mark, and Tom. Chief Mendez met him. The old man had never looked so grim.\n\n\"They're pulling back here, too, sir,\" Mendez said.  \"Doesn't make sense. Covenant always fight to the last one.\"\n Kurt called up the roster on his display, still sta ined by his own blood, and checked TEAMBIO.\n\nWill's vitals were flatlined. Holly's signal was en tirely missing.\n\nOver TEAMCOM he said, \"Eyes peeled, everyone. Kelly , get Will. Linda, cover her.\"\n\nThey moved, but no green acknowledgment lights flas hed, the only sign of their numbing grief.\n\nKurt sat down, suddenly too tired to think.\n\nThen he noticed his bio signs: failing blood pressu re, erratic heartbeat, electrolytes all wrong. There was internal bleeding . He found a can of biofoam, inserted its tip into his armor's mid line injectio n port, and emptied it.\n\nThe expanding liquid polymer chilled his chest.\n\nHe closed his eyes, and when he looked again his bl ood pressure had stabilized. His head had cleared.\n\nFred made a short come-here gesture and Kurt groggi ly rose and went to his comrade.\n\n\"There.\" Fred pointed to far side of the core room.  \"Three hundred fifty meters. Step up polarization to ninety-five percent, sir, a nd you'll see them.\" His voice trembled with rage.\n\nKurt darkened his faceplate, and then understood th e reason for the Covenant's retreat.\n\nOver a hundred fresh Elites massed behind energy-sh ield generators. Banshee fliers zipped back and forth over them. Plasma cann ons were assembled by squads of Grunts. In the very front, Kurt spied a g lint of gold armor, their leader staring back at him.\n\n\"They softened us up before the main offensive,\" Ku rt whispered.\n\n\"Orders, sir?\" Fred asked.\n\nBetween the mental shock of losing Holly, Will, and  Dante, and the physiological shock his body fought off, Kurt had f orgotten he was in charge. His duty to get the alien technology and preserve t he entire human race came back with crushing weight.\n In truth, there were few options left.\n\nThey could fight: advance to meet this new threat b efore their forces fully crystallized. In the open terrain though, without a rtillery or armor or air support, even Spartans would be cut down.\n\nThey could run: use the Slipspace rift in the core.  The Covenant force would certainly follow, possibly destroy them, and gain m ore Forerunner technologies. That was not acceptable. Not when it had cost them so much to get this far.\n\nThere was still his last option: the nukes. If he c ouldn't stop the Covenant, he could deny them their prize. He'd take the warheads  to the core and blow it all to hell.\n\n\"Keep me posted and stand by,\" he told Fred, and th en limped down to the center.\n\nDr. Halsey met him. \"I'm sorry,\" she whispered. \"Ho lly and Will\"\n\nShe stopped midsyllable and Kurt saw her glasses re flected the jiggling lines of his TEAMBIO signals. He had had no idea she could i ntercept their encrypted COM channel.\n\n\"You're wounded,\" she stated, and seemed to stare i nto his body. \"Internal bleeding your liver massive laceration\" Her gaze ca me back into focus, and her voice dropped to a whisper. \"You're going to bleed out, Kurt, if I don't operate. The only thing holding you together inside is biofo am.\"\n\nKurt was lucky that Hunter shield hadn't cut him in  half. \"I understand.\" He rechecked his mission timer: 6:32. \"I'll hold mysel f together for a few more minutes. Then you can do whatever you want to me.\"\n\nHe looked past Dr. Halsey to the central rift. The rings here were flattening fastest. The ledges were only an eighth of a meter high and visibly contracting.\n\nWithin the rift he caught flashes of golden sunligh t. There were other colors:\ngreen, blue, and brown, but the distortion was so g reat, Kurt couldn't focus on what shapes lay beyond.\n\n\"Once it closes, this Slipspace field will remain i ntact?\"\n\n\"I have no reason to believe otherwise,\" she replie d.\n\n\"Impenetrable\" Kurt whispered.\n\n\"To any force in our normal three dimensions, yes.\"\nThe Sentinels, the Halo rings, this so-called \"shie ld world,\" and the clockwork design that the Forerunners had set in motion mille nnia ago was about to end and it made sense to Kurt.\n\nAt least it made sense in terms of him now having a  winning option.\n\nHe unpolarized his faceplate and looked at her. \"I think I understand what you were trying to tell me before, Doctor. The Forerunn ers built this construct to protect these 'Reclaimers' from the Halo detonation s. Like a bomb shelter. But they never got inside. You were going to use it for  the Spartans.\"\n\n\" 'Behind the sharpened edge of the shield,'\" Dr. H alsey quoted. \"Safe perhaps from everything.\"\n\nHe locked stares with her and nodded.\n\n\"I'm sending Team Saber, Mendez, and you ahead.\"\n\nShe blinked. \"I thought you said we stay together.\"\n\nFor the last two decades Kurt had struggled to keep  his Spartans alive. But what if Dr. Halsey had been correct and all their b attles meant nothing? What if no matter how valiant the fight they could not w in this war? Did it make sense to die, or was it better to live to fight ano ther day? Even if that \"day\" was very far away.\n\nHe turned back to the Spartans. \"Tom, Lucy, Team Sa ber,\" he said over the COM, \"set Dante and Will on the pods. Saber will go  ahead and scout the core.\"\n\nTom and Lucy nodded, and with help from Olivia and Mark, they gathered the fallen Spartans.\n\nAsh jumped into the center and approached. \"Sir,\" h e said, \"we're not leaving the fight.\"\n\n\"This isn't about a fight,\" Kurt told him. \"You hav e a mission to accomplish, son. Carry out my orders.\"\n\n\"Understood, sir.\"\n\nAsh motioned for Olivia and Mark to join him near t he rift.\n\n\"Go,\" Ash told them.\n\nOlivia and Mark looked at Kurt and then together ju mped into the brilliance. There were a pair of flares and they vanished.\n\nAsh hesitated, his hand moved up as if to salute, b ut he stopped, recalling the standing order of \"no saluting in combat arenas.\" H e stood straighter, gave Kurt a nod, and jumped after his teammates.\n\nKurt keyed the COM, \"Saber One, you read me?\"\n\n\"We're goooo\" Ash's voice dopplered to the ultrason ic.\n\n\"Saber One? Ash?\"\n\nStatic washed over the channel.\n\nNot even a COM signal made it throughan observation  that only strengthened Kurt's conviction that he was doing the right thing . He hoped for the best, hoped Saber and the others would be okay.\n\n\"Pods,\" Kurt said, and motioned toward Tom and Lucy .\n\nHis NCOs pushed the cryo pods and the bodies of Wil l and Dante through. More flashes. Silence.\n\n\"Chief. Doctor,\" Kurt said. \"You're next.\"\n\nMendez looked to the spatial rift and then to Kurt.  He swallowed, and said,\n\"Aye aye, sir. We'll see you on the other side.\"\n\nFor once. Dr. Halsey had nothing to say. Instead sh e made the traditional Spartan two-finger \"smile\" gesture over her face. S he blinked quickly, and then turned to the fissure.\n\nMendez took her hand and they stepped\n\nAnd were gone.\n\n\"They're starting,\" Fred announced over the COM.\n\n\"Guard the opening, you two,\" Kurt ordered Lucy and  Tom.\n\nKurt then moved back up to the edge of the hill and  watched with Fred as 150\nElites moved toward them. This time it was not a sl ow, careful march with overlapped shields. They charged en masse. Banshees  swooped up and over the formation, two high and two low, accelerating ahead  of the Covenant infantry and then over the hill. They ducked behind the towers, and then Linda poppe d out as the Banshees passed.\n\n\"I have them.\" Linda's sniper rifle was to her shou lder. She stood motionless for a heartbeat, then fired once at the receding fliers , moved her aim slightly, and fired once more.\n\nThe rear two Banshee pilots fell. Riderless, the Ba nshees nosed to the floor, bounced, and sparked to a halt.\n\nLinda dropped the magazine, examined the chamber, c ycled the bolt, and then set it down. \"I'm out.\"\n\nKurt, Kelly, and Fred leveled their assault rifles at the remaining fliers and opened fire. Tracer rounds arced through the air and stitched over the Banshees. Smoke billowed from  the leader, and erupted into a ball of flame that smeared through the air.\n\nThe last lone Banshee pulled up and circled back.\n\nThe advancing horde of Elites and Hunters was only two hundred meters away. A few in their ranks fired, and wild energy bolts s treaked overhead.\n\nThe towers now lay thirty degrees off the deck, and  the \"hill\" only three meters tall. Kurt knew they'd soon have no cover left.\n\nFred glanced at the open smoking bolt of his MAB5. \"I'm out, too,\" he said.\n\nKurt opened up the administrative subdirectory on h is heads-up display and accessed SPARTAN-104's file. \"As acting CO of Team Blue, 1 am hereby granting you a field commission to the rank of Lieutenant, J unior Grade,\" Kurt told Fred.\n\"Congratulations.\"\n\nFred shook his head, not understanding.\n\nKurt uploaded Fred's change of rank, and his IFF ic on blinked to the star-and bar insignia of Lieutenant.\n\n\"As an officer, you'll have to keep your eye on the  larger picture, Fred. Get your team through that Slipspace field. I'll be rig ht behind you.\"\n\nLinda and Kelly gathered around them.\n\nKelly whispered, \"We lost you once, Kurt. We're not  going to leave you again.\"\nPlasma artillery pounded the face of the hill, shat tering stone, and superheated convection rolls distorted the air.\n\n\"No one's leaving anyone behind,\" Kurt assured her.  \"I just have to rig a little welcome present for our friends.\" He grabbed the pa ck with the FENRIS warheads, and swung it over his shoulder.\n\nKelly, Linda, and Fred exchanged glances.\n\n\"I'll be right behind you,\" Kurt told them. \"Now, g o. The SPARTAN-IIIs are going to need you.\"\n\nA hail of needier shards arced up and over the top of the slope, impacting the surfaces around them.\n\nThe Spartans huddled together, presenting the small est target surface, their energy shields flaring as the crystal rounds detona ted.\n\nThe hardened plates of Kurt's SPI armor cracked and  the concussion rattled his bones and splintered the hardening bio-foam in his abdomen. He tasted fresh blood.\n\nThe bombardment ceased.\n\n\"Hurry!\" Kurt told them.\n\nThey all jogged to the center. The rift was fading and was now only a meter across. Deep inside, Kurt caught sight of a ribbon of blue and silver. Water glistening in the sunlight?\n\nKelly and Linda entered without hesitation; Fred ha lted, turned, and held out his hand.\n\nKurt took it and shook.\n\nFred stepped backward and vanished.\n\nOnly Tom and Lucy remained, still standing guard by  the rift. Their SPI armor picked up and mimicked the gold sunlight in the fis sure.\n\n\"Okay you two\"\n\n\"With all due respect, sir,\" Tom said. \"We're not l eaving. You'll have to court martial us.\"\n Lucy said nothing, but made her intention to fight understood as she hefted their last SPNKr missile launcher.\n\nThe rift wavered, dimmed, and contracted to a mere half meter.\n\n\"There's no time for this,\" Kurt growled.\n\nTom took a step closer to Lucy.\n\nOf course, Kurt had been foolish to think Tom and L ucy would leave him after so many years togetherorders or not. Perhaps they e ven knew what he had in mind.\n\n\"Okay, you win. How much ammunition do you have?\" K urt moved to Tom.\n\"We'll pool our reserves.\"\n\nTom looked down at his rifle\n\nKurt hit him, his flattened palm connecting with th e underside of Tom's helmet. The impact lifted the Spartan a half meter off the ground, and he landed in a heap.\n\nKurt wheeled on Lucy and held up a warning finger, indicating that she stay put.\n\nHe checked Tom's bio signs. No bones broken. No cer ebral swelling. Just coldcocked.\n\n\"He'll live,\" he said. \"You're both going to live. Now give me a hand.\"\n\nShadows crisscrossed the hill, and fifty meters ove rhead Kurt watched three Banshees streak past.\n\nLucy dropped the missile launcher and helped Kurt p ull Tom up.\n\nKurt wrapped his limp arm around her shoulder. \"You  two didn't survive Pegasi Delta to die here,\" he told her. \"There's too much left for you to do.\"\n\nShe shook her head violently back and forth.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"Don't make me\"\n\nHis vision blurred and a wave of dizziness washed o ver him. His heart struggled, pumping harder and faster. There was a warm trickle  in his stomach. He was losing more blood. Slipping into shock.\n Plasma blots stitched the stone nearby, shattering them, as Banshees screamed by on a strafing run.\n\n\"Please,\" he whispered.\n\nLucy reached up to Kurt's faceplate, touching two f ingers to his mouth. She struggled to make a sound, but all she could manage  was a half-choked cry.\n\nHe took her hand, gave it a squeeze, and let go.\n\nLucy lingered, looked at Kurt one last time, and th en slipped into the rift.\n\n\"Good-bye,\" he said.\n\nThey were gone. All of them.\n\nNow Kurt could concentrate on what had to be done.\n\nHe picked up Tom's MASK. Its ammo counter indicated  half a magazine. It would have to do. He grabbed the last missile launc her, too. He was sure he could find a use for it.\n\nThe \"hill\" around the center was only a meter tall now and shrinking rapidly as the concentric rings eased back to the floor of the  room. The finlike towers folded inward, almost flat against the ground.\n\nElite snipers poked over the top of the hill and fi red a tight cluster of plasma.\n\nKurt was too slow to dodge the shots. His SPI armor  heated, cracked, and half of his chest plate shattered away.\n\nSmoldering, Kurt dropped to his knees. Blackness cl ouded his mind. He struggled to stay consciousfought his way back by s heer willpower, and his vision cleared.\n\nThe snipers backed away, not bothering to finish hi m off. More Elites appeared on the hill, now only a half meter tall, sinking ev en faster toward a level topology.\n\nA Hunter pair appeared on the slight rise and asses sed Kurt. They snorted, unimpressed.\n\nAlmost there, he thought. Almost done. Almost won.\n\nKurt grabbed up the SPNKr launcher and fired from t he hip. The missile rocketed toward one Hunter, hit, exploded, and knoc ked it off the top. Kurt leveled his assault rifle and sprayed the other Hun ter, but it turtled behind its shield.\n\nThe rifle's bolt clackedempty.\n\nThe Hunter stood and growled. Its mate, bloodied an d still smoking from the missile impact, stomped toward Kurt, hands ready to  tear him to pieces.\n\nKurt ventured a glance back. The rift was only a fl icker now, and shrinking.\n\nHis mission timer read \"0:47.\"\n\nA sharp bark behind the Hunters made them halt in t heir tracks.\n\nAn Elite in golden armor strode toward them, gracin g Kurt with a glance that was part disdain and part respect. It jabbered orde rs at the Hunters and the others.\n\nKurt's translation software deciphered part of this : \"Damage not the center. Engineers with the Slipspace field shunts Reopen th e silver gate. Glory is ours!\"\n\nA roar of thunderous triumph burst from the gathere d Covenant.\n\nKurt struggled to rise. There was more pain than he 'd ever felt, and his legs had turned to wet sand. His vision tunneled but he got to his feet and raised both hands into a fighting stance.\n\n\"You haven't won,\" Kurt said. \"You've still got me to get through.\"\n\nThe Ship Master assessed Kurt and nodded, perhaps u nderstanding him, perhaps not. It gazed upon Kurt as an equal. A fellow warri or.\n\nAround them the concentric rings settled to the flo or, and with a whispered hiss, all of the ridges melded into a single smooth  surface. The fins touched down silently, thirteen clamping armatures splayed two meters from the center of the room.\n\nHis countdown timer blinked at him: \"0:00.\"\n\nHe exhaled. The rift was closed.\n\nKurt opened his team rostersubheading statusand mov ed Will, SPARTAN-043;\nDante, SPARTAN-G188; and Holly, SPARTAN-G003 to the  missing-in-action column, adhering to the tradition of never listing a fallen Spartan as \"killed in action.\"\n Kurt then highlighted Lieutenant Commandeer Kurt Am brose and moved that name to the MIA list as wellnext to Kurt, SPARTAN-0 51.\n\nThe room started to spin. His mouth went dry He tri ed to swallow. Couldn't.\n\nHis vision doubled and he thought he saw Tom and Lu cy come back to get him but it wasn't them. It was Sha ne, Robert, and Jane from Team Wolf Pack.\n\nThere were hundreds of Spartans with him on the pla tform from Alpha and Beta Companies, Dante, Holly, Will, and even Sam all rea dy to fight and win this last battle with him.\n\nHallucination? Maybe. It was nonetheless welcome.\n\nThe ghostly Spartans nodded, and gave him the thumb s-up \"can-do\" signal.\n\nKurt wouldn't let them down. All he had to do was s ingle-handedly stop a Covenant army. One last impossible mission the shor t definition of any Spartan. It was the least he owed them.\n\nThe Fleet Master Elite snarled at Kurt, and the tra nslation filtered through his helmet's speaker: \"One last fight, demon. You will die and we shall reopen the silver path.\"\n\n\"Die?\" Kurt laughed. \"Didn't you know?\" he told the  Elite. \" Spartans never die.\"\n\nKurt turned his gauntlet face-up and pressed the de tonator.\n\n\nEPILOGUE SHIELD WORLD CHAPTER FORTY\n2205 HOURS, NOVEMBER 4, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM\n\\ THE MOON OF ONYX \\ ABOARD THE UNSC PROWLER DUSK\n\n\"Sir, something!\" Lieutenant Joe Yang hunched over his sensor station, energy spikes dancing on-screen. \"Double BMP signature. Su bsurface.\" He shook his head and tugged at one eyebrow nervously. \"Multiple  energy signatures now. Hundreds. All underground.\"\n\n\nCommander Lash and Lieutenant Commander Waters stoo d over Yang's shoulder and tried to make sense of it.\n\"Definitely nukes,\" Waters breathed. \"Radiological ratios indicate it's one of ours.\"\n\nThe electromagnetic pulses faded into a roiling sea  of larger waveforms.\n\n\"That's a lot more energy than two FENRIS warheads, \" Lash said. \"Something bigger is going on down there.\" He exhaled, and his  breath came out in tremulous shudders. No one noticed.\n\nHe opened a SHIPCOM Channel to Cho. \"Status of the Slipspace capacitors?\"\n\n\"Seven-three percent,\" Cho answered, \"losing point oh three percent per minute, sir.\n\n\"Stand by to jump-heat the reactor,\" Lash told him,  \"and shunt all power to the Slipspace system.\"\n\nThere was a long pause over the COM, then, \"Aye, si r. Cho out.\"\n\nJump-heating the rectors would send up a signal fla re to the\n\nCovenant armada. Lash hoped, though, whatever this planet-side activity was would distract them and give the Dusk a chance to f inally escape.\n\nLieutenant Bethany Durruno rocked back and forth in  her seat, her eyes glued to the three satellite uplinks streaming through he r NAV station. She tapped on a trio of microthruster controls, keeping the BLACK  WIDOW satellites just hovering at extreme contact range.\n\nShe was right on the edge. For that matter, so were  Yang and Waters. Even Cho belowdecks was showing classic withdrawal signs tha t accompanied combat fatigue.\n\nThe Dusk had survived the destruction of Admiral Pa tterson's fleet, and then stayed quiet and camouflaged in the dark while the Covenant armada ran right over them.\n\nThat had been the hardest on his crewmoving meter b y meter toward the moon, drifting through a debris field full of shattered U NSC ship hulls, destroyed escape pods and thousands of bodies of the bravest men and women in the Navy\n\nThey'd made it undetected to the opposite side of t he silver moon of Onyx, and gently came to rest in the shadow of a crater. Whil e the Dusk settled to the surface. Lieutenant Commander Cho had released thre e baseball-sized BLACK WIDOW stealth satellites, so they could monitor the  Covenant forces.\n\n\"Energy waves spreading across the planet, sir,\" Ya ng said, utterly confounded by his readings.\n\n\"Put it on-screen,\" Lash ordered.\n\nThe three main viewscreens flickered to life as the  feed from their satellites streamed images of Onyx: oceans of lapis and pearl- colored clouds, emerald continents with zigzagging mountain ranges.\n\nIn high orbit glided Covenant vessels. They moved i n packs, simmering blue against the black of space.\n\nA dot appeared on the planet's surfacea red flare t hat arced upward, showering molten rock and ash. Three more w inked on then a dozen more flashed then hundreds.\n\nJagged cracks tore between the eruptions and a spid erweb pattern of glowing lava fissures spread over the world. They reached t he polar regions and the ice caps detonated into geysers of steam.\n\n\"Plasma bombardment,\" Waters whispered. \"The Covena nt are glassing the place.\"\n\n\"No plasma detected, sir,\" Yang said. \"All energy o riginating from inside the planet.\"\n\nA single beam of light pierced the thickening cloud sa blinding gold hue that sliced the upper atmosphere and shot into space.\n\nWavering spectra flashed on Yang's screen.\n\n\"We've seen that before,\" Lash said. \"Combined dron e fire.\"\n\nA second beam joined this first one; then thousands  flashed on and radiated from the surface of Onyxscintillating lances filled  space and transformed the world into a sea urchin of pure energy.\n\nCovenant ships caught by the beams vanished, instan tly ionized.\n\nOnyx shattered and the surface exploded into space.\n Obscured by layers of dust and fire, a blazing patt ern emerged beneath:\ncrosses and lines and dots.\n\n\"Magnification factor one thousand,\" Lash ordered.\n\nYang was frozen.\n\nWaters bent over and tapped in the command.\n\nThe view on-screen blinked and stepped closerpast b oiling air, clouds, tumbling mountainszooming to ground level, revealing a latti ce of three-meter-long rods and half-meter blazing red spheres that hovered bet ween them, forming a crystalline structure.\n\n\"Back it off,\" Lash said\n\nThe view pulled back and showed that this drone-con structed scaffolding stretched over kilometers they had been under every landmass, every ocean under the entire surfac e orderly linked rows like the carbon bonds of an infinite polymer chain, or a n immense colony of living interlinked army ants.\n\nThe drones were the planet Onyx.\n\n\"There are trillions of them,\" Lieutenant Durruno w hispered.\n\nClusters of drones heated; culminated beams shot fo rth again, targeting more distant Covenant vessels and vaporizing them.\n\n\"They're protecting this place,\" Waters said. \"Why? \"\n\n\"Shockwave from surface detonation impacting far si de of the moon in seven seconds,\" Durruno said. The blood drained from her face.\n\nThe viewscreens filled with static.\n\n\"Lost the satellites,\" Yang cried.\n\n\"Cho,\" Lash said. \"Jump-heat the reactor and dump e verything into those capacitors. Now! Get us out of here!\"\n\n\nCHAPTER FORTY-ONE nOO HOURS, NOVEMBER 4, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ U NDETERMINED LOCATION WITHIN FORERUNNER CONSTRUCT KNOWN AS SHIEL D WORLD\n\nThe Spartans and Dr. Halsey gathered about the grav es of William and Dante.\n\nIt was a fine spot: sunlight dappled the river that  flowed past this grove of oak trees. A path of banded onyx curved through the are a. They had pried up some of the slabs, scratched in William's and Dante's na mes, and erected two more to serve as markers for Holly and the Lieutenant Co mmander.\n\nSenior Chief Petty Officer Mendez read from a small  black leather book: \"We have come to a place far from hom e / Time long passed since we have seen the sun rise / A place where pea ce can fimally come / A place where we can rest and laugh and sing and love  once more.\"\n\nHe hung his head and closed the volume, A Soldier's  Tale: Rainforest Wars, the military classic written in 2164.\n\nThere was a moment of silence.\n\n\"Burial detail dismissed,\" Fred told them.\n\nAsh set a spent brass casing on each marker, a toke n of respect for his fellow Spartans. He didn't know what else to do.\n\nIt had been a full day and a half since the Lieuten ant Commander had ordered them into the rift, and a day and a half since it h ad sealed, stranding them all here.\n\nThe shock of losing him and the others hadn't worn off. They all felt numb and hollow. Spartans usually did not have the luxury of  grief; contemplation of the dead was almost always truncated by another mission , a battle, and their focus redirected to the larger strategic picture of savin g humanity.\n\n Not this time.\n\nThe Slipspace rift had been stable when Dr. Halsey and Chief Mendez had first passed through, dropping them three meters onto a g rassy hill. The cryo pods and Team Saber had followed shortly thereafter. The y watched as the opening then started to collapse.\n\nWhen Fred, Linda, and Kelly emerged, they immediate ly tried to return. Tom and Lucy had tumbled through the opening, and by th en the rift was too small. They could only watch as it compressed back to a si ngle wavering dot and vanished. Most of them had thought the Slipspace passage woul d move them to an interior room within the artificial construct known  as Onyx.\n\nNo one, not even Dr. Halsey, had been prepared for this.\n\nOverhead blazed a golden sun. The sky, if it could be called that, was robin's egg blue at the horizon but quickly deepened to indigo and black the higher one looked, then war med again as it neared the sun. There were no stars.\n\nThe surface stretched out in all directionsmeadows,  rivers, lakes, forests, winding paths all perfectly flat. All flat, that is , until Linda sighted through her Oracle scope. She then discovered every horizon slo ped upward until these curving surfaces vanished in the extreme distance.\n\nLinda said it felt like being at the bottom of a la rge bowl.\n\nDr. Halsey had assured them they most definitely we re not in a \"bowl.\"\n\n\"A sphere,\" she said, repeating this for the third time to Chief Mendez, \"is where we are.\"\n\nThe Chief sat in the grass. \"One more time,\" he sai d, \"explain it to me, please, Doctor. Slowly.\"\n\nDr. Halsey sighed, straightened her skirt, and then  sat next to him. \"Very well, Chief\" She unfolded her laptop, and numbers, charts , and spectroscopic analysis flashed on-screen.\n\nThe Spartans gathered as well to listen. In truth, while they understood the scientific principles that led Dr. Halsey to her co nclusions, they still didn't quite believe them.\n\n\"We start with this so-called sun.\" She pointed str aight up and then gestured to the data on her screen. \"Spectra and energy output are consistent with a G2 type dwarf, one of slightly smaller dimensions than  Sol.\n\n\"Next, you will note the curvature of this world, c oncave, as seen through Linda's sniper scope.\" She tabbed to a new screen a nd it sketched the star and a curve that arced to complete a full circle.\n\n\"Extrapolating, I calculate a diameter of one hundr ed fifty million kilometerstwo astronomical units, or a radius equiv alent to the distance of the Earth orbiting its sun.\n\"Conclusion?\" She paused for dramatic effect. \"We a re inside a Micro Dyson sphere.\"\n\nAsh pulled off his helmet and vigorously scratched his head with both hands. \"That can't be right,\" he proteste d. \"We stepped through the rift and showed up here instantaneously. Even in Sl ipstream space it would have taken some time to travel to another star\"\n\n\"Entirely true,\" Dr. Halsey said, \"but we have not left Onyx.\"\n\n\"This is the part I don't get,\" Kelly muttered.\n\n\"The Forerunners' grasp of Slipspace technology was  far more advanced than ours or the Covenant's,\" Dr. Halsey explained. \"I b elieve this sphere resides in the center of the planet, encapsulated and protecte d by a Slipspace bubble of compressed dimensionality.\"\n\nChief Mendez looked around and shook his head, unab le or unwilling to accept her interpretation of the facts.\n\n\"If all this is true. Doctor,\" Fred said, \"and the Forerunners built this as a refuge, a bomb shelter to protect them from the Halos or th e Flood, then why aren't they here?\"\n\nDr. Halsey shrugged and uttered the words no one th ought her capable of: \"I do not know.\" She closed her laptop. \"Did something go  wrong with their plan? Or did everything go as planned? We may never know. Wh y the Flood survives today and where the Forerunners went are mysteries we have yet to solve.\"\n\nThey remained there a minute, quiet, pondering the scale of this place, the eon-old Forerunner secrets, and tried to integrate it into the events of the last few weeks.\n\nFred then grabbed his rifle and said, \"Ash, take yo ur team and gather our supplies. We're deploying in five.\"\n\n\"Yes sir\" Ash donned his helmet. He and the other S PARTAN-IIIs moved as if jolted by lightning.\n\n\"Chief,\" Fred told Mendez, \"I want a count of every  round of ammunition we have.\"\n\n\"Sir.\" Mendez jumped to his feet. \"I'm on it.\"\n \"With all due respect. Lieutenant,\" Dr Halsey said,  and remained sitting.\n\"Where exactly do you intend to go? We should rest,  think, and heal our wounds. We have lost so many\"\n\n\"Yes, we have,\" Fred replied. \"Which is why we are moving out. Dante and Holly gave their lives fighting. Kurt stayed behind and m ade sure the Covenant wouldn't follow us. Now it's our duty to complete t he mission: find Forerunner technologies and get them back to Earth.\" He lowere d his voice and added,\n\"Doing anything less would dishonor their sacrifice s.\"\n\nLinda moved next to him and said, \"Suggest we start  by finding a way to open Team Katana's cryo pods, sir. Get them up and runni ng.\"\n\n\"Yes!\" Kelly said, and joined them. \"Crack the Slip space fields on those things, and maybe we'll find some way to bust out of this p lace, too.\"\n\nDr. Halsey stared at them and pushed her glasses fa rther up the bridge of her nose. \"I see. You do understand that while external ly, this space may only be a few meters in diameter within the center of Onyx, i nternally, its compressed dimensionality gives it a surface area\"she cocked h er head, calculating \"many times the surface of the Earth.\"\n\nFred looked to Kelly and Linda, and he said, \"Then we better get started. We've got a lot of ground to cover.\"\n\nDr. Halsey stood, sighed deeply, and brushed grass from her lab coat. \"Very well, I'll gather my things.\"\n\nShe strode off and the Spartans watched her go.\n\nKelly whispered, \"You think John's still out there?  1 mean alive?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Linda said.\n\n\"He has to be,\" Fred told her. \"He's the only one l eft to stop the Covenant.\"\n\n\"While we're stuck in here.\" Kelly kicked the grass . \"What's your take on the others? Team Saber?\"\n\n\"They're kids,\" Fred said. \"But so were we once. I think they're Spartans, like us.\"\n\nAsh trotted up to them, Olivia and Mark trailing be hind, hefting packs.\n\n\"All ready, sir,\" Ash said.\n \"Good.\" Fred set a hand on Ash's shoulder, and nodd ed to the others.\n\n\"Welcome to Blue, Spartans,\" Kelly said. \"We're goi ng to make a great team.\""
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "1\n\nCONTACT HARVEST Halo - 05\nJoseph Staten\n(An Undead Scan v1.0)  2\nFor Susan, whose support never wavered  3\nPROLOGUE\n\n\nUNSC COLONY WORLD TRIBUTE, EPSILON ERIDANUS SYSTEM, JUNE 16, 2524 (MILITARY CALENDAR)\n\nThe marines were in the air before dawn. Two four-m an squads clipped to a pair of Hornet fast attack aircraft: compact, high-wing planes that rem ained nimble despite the marines' combined bulk. For close to an hour the Hornets had matched the manic undulations of a volcanic plain and nowas they jerked back and forth to avoid the petr ified trunks of a forest burned long agoStaff Sergeant Avery Johnson had to work to keep his boot s planted on his Hornet's starboard landing skid. Like the other marines, Avery wore charcoal fatigue s and matte-black impact plating that bulwarked everything vital from his neck to his kne es. His helmet encased his recently shaved head, and its silver-mirrored visor completely obscured h is square jaw and brown eyes. The only place Avery's black skin showed was at his wrists where h is leather gloves didn't quite touch his shirtsleeves. But even with the gloves, Avery's fingers were cram ped with cold. Squeezing his hands into fists to keep his blood flowing, he checked the mis sion clock in his visor's heads-up display (HUD). Just as the luminous blue numbers hit 00:57:16, the  planes crested a line of crumbling hills, and Avery and the other marines got their first line-of -sight view of their objective: one of Tribute's struggling industrial settlements; and, somewhere i nside the town, a suspected Insurrectionist bomb shop. Even before the Hornets' pilots triggered green \"re ady\" icons in the marines' HUDs, Avery and his team were already in motion; slapping magazines  into their weapons, yanking charging handles, and toggling safety switchesa well-rehearsed symph ony of preparatory clicks and snaps that went unheard in the rushing wind as the Hornets hurtled down the backslope of the hills and came to abrupt, nose-up stops on the edge of town. The thru sters on the Hornets' wingtips rotated to keep the aircraft steady as the marines unclipped from their  hard-points, leapt onto the frost-covered pumice and began to run. Avery was the leader of the strike team's alpha squ ad, and he took point. Seeing how his own armor stood out in the pale, pre-dawn light, he kne w speed was essential if both squads were going to reach the workshop undetected. So he set a brisk  pace, hurdled a low, chain-link fence, and wove quickly through piles of plastic crates and pallets  that littered the parking lot of what appeared to be nothing more than a rundown vehicle repair shop. By the time Avery and his squad reached the shop's front door, they were winded. If it weren't for the marines' helmets, their breath would have b illowed bone-white in the frigid air. They didn't usually wear heavy blast gear for rapid, airborne s trikes. But the Insurrectionists had started booby trapping their bomb shops, and this time, the marin es' commanding officer (CO) didn't want them taking any chances. Avery brought his chin down on a pressure-pad insid e his helmet, sending a short burst of static across the squads' encrypted radio COM channel: an \"in position\" signal for Staff Sergeant Byrne, the leader of bravo squad, now positioned by the wo rkshop's back entrance. Avery waited for  4 Byrne's two-burst response, then he pushed away fro m the workshop's pitted polycrete wall, raised a knee to his chest, and smashed his boot against t he thin metal door, just above the lock. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) had suggeste d there would be stiff resistance. But it turned out most of the Insurrectionists inside the workshop were unarmed. Those that were carried snub-nosed automatic pistols; inconsequential weapo ns whose rounds simply clattered off Avery's armor as he and his squad sidled through the shatte red door like hulking crabs, weapons up and scanning. What the marines knew that ONI didn't was the real threat would come from the Insurrectionists who weren't firingthe ones with free hands who might trigger h idden explosives and blow the workshop to smithereens. The one Insurrectionist wh o dared took a three-round burst from Avery's silenced submachine gun and flopped back onto a ste el worktable, arms outstretched and twitching. Avery watched a small, cylindrical detonator slip s lowly from the man's lolling fist... and hit the floor with a harmless ping. Major threat neutralized, the marines refocused and  let the pistol-wielding \"Innies\" have it. That's what Avery had learned to call the Insurrect ionistsa slur that was only funny when you considered just how much the Innies wanted out to be free of the United Nations Space Command\n(UNSC), the agency responsible for security on Trib ute and all of humanity's colony-worlds. Of course the marines had other, shorter and cruder na mes for the rebels this current campaign codenamed TREBUCHETwas designed to crush. But they  all served the same purpose: it was easier to kill another human being when you didn't think of them as human. An Innie was an enemy, Avery thought. A thing you killed before it killed you. The young Staff Sergeant had said these words so ma ny times he'd almost started to believe them. Avery's M7 submachine gun was a light firearm. But its five-millimeter, full-metal-jacket rounds ripped ugly holes in his targets' powder blu e clean-suits. Some of the Innies Avery targeted dropped like stones. Others seemed to dance to the bullets'\ndull percussion, spinning bloody pirouettes onto th e workshop's oil-stained floor. Start to finish, the firefight lasted less than ten  seconds. A dozen Insurrectionists lay dead; the marines hadn't suffered any casualties.\n\"Hell.\" Staff Sergeant Byrne's big Irish brogue fil led the COM. \"We didn't even change magazines.\"\nTo the perspiring officers in the cramped tactical operations center (TOC) aboard the UNSC corvette Bum Rush in high orbit above Tribute, it did seem like a per fect takedowna rare victory in what had so far been a frustrating cat-and-mouse  conflict. But then Avery cautioned, \"ARGUS online. Haven't seen anything yet.\"\nThe Staff Sergeant pulled his chin off the COM-swit ch inside his helmet and continued sweeping the air around him with a palm-sized wedge  of black plastic perforated by microscopic holes. This was a tactical version of an ARGUS devi ce: a portable laser spectrometer used to sniff out traces of explosive chemical compounds. Larger,  more powerful units were deployed at Tribute's spaceports, highway toll-plazas, and magl ev train stationsall the major choke points of the colony's transportation grid. Despite the density of coverage, the Innie bomb-mak ers had become quite adept at fooling the system by concealing their explosives in ever-chang ing mixtures of nonvolatile compounds. Every time they hit a target with something an ARGUS thou ght was no more dangerous than, say, a bar of soap, ONI would analyze the explosive residue and a dd the new chemical signature to the detection database. Unfortunately, this was a reactive strate gy that heavily favored the Insurrectionists, who were constantly changing their recipes. Avery frowned at his ARGUS. The thing was clicking loudly, trying to get a lock on what it believed might be a new mix. But the firefight had filled the air with an invisible soup of chemical possibilities. The three other marines in alpha-squ ad were conducting a visual search, checking the  5 workshop's clusters of autosynthesizers and machine  tools. But so far they hadn't found anything that lookedas best as they could telllike a bomb. Avery took a deep breath then relayed the bad news to the TOC. \"ARGUS is blind. Please advise, over.\" The Staff Sergeant had been fighting  the Insurrection long enough to know what would happen nextthe things they would have to do to get the actionable intelligence his officers required. But he also knew these were the kinds of things a smart marine didn't do without a direct order.\n\"ONI believes the ordinance is in play,\" replied Av ery's CO, a battalion Lieutenant Colonel named Aboim. \"Take the gloves off, Johnson. My auth orization.\"\nWhile Avery's squad searched the workshop, Byrne's quickly brought the four Innies who had survived the firefight to their knees in the center  of the shop floor. All had their clean-suits' hood s removed and their wrists bound together behind thei r backs with black plastic ties. Avery met Byrne's mirror-visored gaze and nodded his head. Wi thout a moment's hesitation, Byrne raised one of his thick-soled boots and brought it down on one  of the nearest Innie's outstretched calves. The man waited a full second before crying out, as if he were, like Avery, surprised that the thud of Byrne's boot hitting the floor was louder than t he near-simultaneous snap of his leg. Then the Innie screamed, loud and long. Byrne waited patient ly for him to take a breath. Then, through his helmet's exterior speaker he asked, \"The bombs. Whe re are they?\"\nAvery guessed one broken leg would be enough. But t he Innie was toughuneager to rat to agents of a government he despised. He didn't beg f or mercy or toss out any of the usual anti imperial invectives. He just sat there, glowering i nto Byrne's visor, as the Staff Sergeant broke his other leg. Without his feet to balance him, the man  toppled face-first onto the floor. Avery heard the sound of teeth snappinglike sticks of chalk agains t a blackboard.\n\"Next, it's your arms,\" Byrne said matter-of-factly . He knelt beside the man, palmed his head, and wrenched it sideways. \"Then I get creative.\"\n\"Tires. In the tires.\" The words bubbled from the I nnie's mouth. The marines in Avery's squad immediately moved to t he stacks of large tires placed around the workshop's walls, lifted them gently to the floor, and began probing their wheel wells. But Avery knew the Innies were smarter than that. Taking Byrn e's victim at his word, he guessed the tires were the bombsthat the Innies had mixed the explosives into their synthetic rubber treadsa devious innovation his ARGUS soon confirmed and uploaded to  the TOC. The tires' explosive compound wasn't in the detecti on database. But the ONI officer advising the mission couldn't have been more pleased. For on ce, they were a step ahead of the enemy, and it took less than a minute before they got a positive ID. One of dozens of aerial ARGUS drones patrolling the main highway into Tribute's capital city Casbah caught a whiff of the compound in skid marks created by a sixteen-wheel hauler as it veered into the parking lot of a Jim Dandy roadside diner. Some, if not all, of its tires were  bombs waiting to be blown. As the dronea tiny disk, a meter wide, kept aloft by a single, shrouded rotorcircled high above the hauler, it detected a second trace of the  explosive inside the Jim Dandy. Scrutinizing a live feed of the drone's thermal camera overlaid wi th ARGUS data, the officers in the TOC determined the trace originated from the restaurant 's crowded food counterfrom a man sitting three stools from the front door.\n\"Marines, get back to your birds,\" ordered Lt. Colo nel Aboim. \"You've got a new target.\"\n\"What about the prisoners?\" Byrne asked. The blood from the Innie's fractured legs and ruined mouth had pooled darkly around his boots. The next person to speak was the operation's ONI re presentativean officer Avery had never met in person. Like most ONI spooks, he preferred t o remain as anonymous as possible. \"Is the one who talked still alive?\" the officer asked.\n\"Affirmative,\" Avery replied.\n\"Pack him up, Staff Sergeant. Neutralize the rest.\"   6 There was no sympathy in the officer's voicenot fo r the kneeling Innies nor their marine executioners. Avery clenched his jaw as Byrne switc hed his M7 to semi-automatic and shot each Innie twice in the chest. The three men fell backwa rds and did not move. But Byrne gave them each a dead checkanother single bullet to their forehea dsto be sure. Avery couldn't help staring at the carnage, but he did his best not to let the torn blue fabric of the Innies' clean-suits and the white smoke curling  from Byrne's weapon imprint in his mind's eye. Memories had a habit of coming back, and this was a  scene he would rather not revisit. As Byrne hefted their lone Innie prisoner over his shoulder, Avery motioned the other marines out the workshop to the waiting Hornets. Less than fifteen minutes after they'd dropped in, the two squads were clipped back into place. The Hornet's t hrusters surged, and they streaked back the way they came. But this time they flew for speed, high over the volcanic plain.\n\nThe officers in the TOC briefly debated whether or not the drone circling the Jim Dandy should destroy the hauler if it tried to roll back on the highway before the marines arrived. The four-lane road was snarled with commuter traffic, and just on e of the drone's Lancet micro-missiles was powerful enough to gut a main battle tank. Even an exact hit on the hauler's cab might touch off its tires, killing dozens of people in the surrounding vehicles. Far better, the ONI officer argued, to flatten the hauler in the Jim Dandy's parking lot. But Lt. Colonel Aboim was just as worried about shrapnel hitting the crowded restaurant. Fortunately, the target individual spent the Hornet s' twenty-minute flight eating a leisurely breakfast. According to the real-time feed from the  drone's camera now mirrored in the corner of Avery's HUD, the man was just finishing his second cup of coffee when the Hornets buzzed up behind a smoked-glass, multistory office building o n the opposite side of the highway. The feed was a high-angle thermal picture of the re staurant's interior in which hot objects biased white and cold items black. The target individual w as very pale, as were the food counter's other patrons. The lukewarm coffee in the man's mug appea red dark graywhich meant he was due for a refill or was about to settle his tab and stand up.  But most important, Avery noticed he was surrounded by a red glow, an indication from the dr one's ARGUS that he was covered with explosive residue. Avery guessed the man had recent ly been at the raided workshop; maybe he'd even helped fit the explosive tires on the hauler. As Avery's Hornet rotated sideways to face the offi ce building, he strained against the black nylon cords clipped to his shoulder plates and loos ed an M99 Stanchion gauss-rifle from the aircraft's wing. The weapon, a two-meter long tube of linked magnetic coils, accelerated small projectiles at very high speed. While it was techni cally an anti-materiel weapon designed for eliminating bombs and other ordnance at a distance,  it was also extremely effective against so-called\n\"soft\" human targets as well. Avery lowered the Stanchion on its shock-absorbing armature and hugged it to his shoulder. Immediately, the rifle's targeting system establish ed a wireless link to his helmet's HUD, and a thin blue line angled across the drone's feed. This was the M99's aiming vectorthe path its five-point four-millimeter tungsten rounds would travel. Avery  angled the rifle down until the vector turned green: an indication that his first shot would pass  directly through the target individual's chest. Almost as if the man could feel the invisible line enter through his left armpit and exit just below h is right, he swiped his credit chip against the counte r and swiveled around on his stool. Avery thumbed a solid-state switch in the Stanchion 's stock. The weapon chirped twice, indicating its battery was fully charged. He perfor med two calming breaths, and whispered: \"Target acquired. Request permission to fire.\" In the few s econds it took Lt. Colonel Aboim to respond, the target sauntered to the Jim Dandy's wooden double-d oors. Avery watched him hold the entrance open for a family of four. He imagined the man smil edsaid something kind to the two parents as they hurried after their ravenous and rowdy boys.\n\"Permission granted,\" Aboim replied. \"Fire at will. \"  7 Avery refocused and increased the pressure of his g loved finger on the Stanchion's trigger. He waited for the man to stroll down a short flight of  stepsuntil a hash mark on the aiming vector indicated his first shot would angle harmlessly int o the parking lot. As the man reached into his baggy coveralls, perhaps for the hauler's key-fob, Avery fired. The Stanchion's slug exited the barrel with a muffl ed crack and punched through two of the office building's steel-reinforced, polycrete floor s with no adverse effect on its trajectory. Traveli ng at fifteen thousand meters per second, the round wh istled over the highway and hit the target at the apex of his sternum. The man flew to pieces as the round buried itself in a rooster tail of pulverized asphalt. Instantly, both Hornets surged up and over the offi ce building and raced across the highway;\nAvery's banked into a covering orbit while Byrne's plunged toward the restaurant. The Irish Staff Sergeant leapt from his landing-skid while the airc raft was still a few meters above the ground and fast-walked his squad to the hauler. Bits of pink a nd white gore covered the vehicles' cab. Ragged pieces of brown coveralls clung to the side of its cargo trailer. One of the target individual's arms had wedged between two tires.\n\"We're secure,\" Byrne growled over the COM.\n\"Negative,\" Avery countered. Checking the drone's l eaden feed, he noticed a persistent red glow near the dead man's stool. \"There's a bomb inside t he restaurant.\"\nByrne and his squad sprinted to the Jim Dandy's ent rance and burst through its double doors. The diners twisted in their seats and gawked as the  armored marines emerged from the vending machine-packed foyer. One of the waitresses held ou t a menu, an involuntary gesture that earned a rough shove from Byrne as he muscled past. The Staf f Sergeant's ARGUS clattered like an enraged insect as he pulled something from under the food-c ounter: a purse, burgundy mesh with a golden chain. At that moment, the door to the restaurant's bathro oms at the far end of the counter swung open. A middle-aged woman in black pants and a cropped co rduroy coat stepped through, casually flicking water from her freshly washed hands. When she saw the armored hulks of bravo squad, she stopped midstride. Her heavily mascaraed eyes darte d toward the purse her purse.\n\"On your knees!\" Byrne bellowed. \"Hands on your hea d!\"\nBut as the Staff Sergeant lowered the purse to the counter and brought his M7 to bear, the woman leapt toward a table where the family of four  had just gotten settled. She hooked an arm around the neck of the youngest boy and wrenched hi m out of his chair. He couldn't have been any more than four years old. His little feet kicked as  he began to choke. Byrne cursed, loud enough for the officers in the T OC to hear. If he hadn't been burdened by armor, he would have dropped the woman before she m oved. But now she had a hostage and command of the situation.\n\"Get back!\" the woman shrieked, \"Do you hear me?\" W ith her free hand she pulled a detonator from her coatthe same size and shape as the one Av ery had seen in the workshop. She held the device in front of the boy's face. \"Get back or I'l l kill them all!\"\nFor a moment, no one moved. Then, as if the woman's  threat had pulled some invisible linchpin keeping all the diners locked to their seats, they sprung up and scrambled for the Jim Dandy's exits. Avery watched the chaos unfold in his HUD. He saw t he bright white shapes of more than thirty terrified civilians surge around the bravo squad, d riving them back and confusing their aim.\n\"Johnson. Take the shot!\" Byrne thundered over the COM. As Avery's Hornet orbited the restaurant, the Stanc hion's aiming-vector rotated around the woman, piercing the axis of her chest. But her heat  signature was almost indistinguishable from the boy's. Suddenly, Avery saw the ghostly image of the captur ed boy's father rise from his chair, hands raised to show the Innie woman he was unarmed. Aver y couldn't hear the father's pleas (they were too soft for the bravo squad's helmet microphones) but his calmness only increased the woman's  8 panic. She began backing toward the restroom, wavin g the detonator, her threats now so furious they were incomprehensible.\n\"Nail the bitch,\" Byrne shouted. \"Or I will!\"\n\"Firing,\" Avery said. But instead he watched the ai ming-vector pivot, waiting for an angle that might spare the boy. \"Firing,\" he repeated, hoping his words would stay Byrne's trigger-finger. But Avery didn't fire. Not immediately. And in his mome nt's pause the father jumped forward, grasping for the detonator. Avery could only stare as the woman tumbled backwar d, father on top and the boy pressed between. He heard the rattle of Byrne's M7, then th e muffled thump of the bomb in the purse followed by the earthshaking boom of the hauler's t ires. The drone's feed bleached painfully bright, slamming Avery's eyes shut. Then a wall of shock an d heat tossed him back hard against the Hornet's airframe. The last thing Avery remembered before he slacked inside his armor was the sound of thrusters fighting for altitudea noise mo re like a scream than a moan.  9\nPART I  10\nCHAPTER ONE\n\n\nUNSC SHIPPING LANE, NEAR EPSILON INDI SYSTEM, SEPTEMBER 3, 2524\n\nHorn of Plenty 's navigation computer was an inexpensive part. Cer tainly less expensive than the freighter's load: some twenty-five hundred metric t ons of fresh fruitmelons mainly, racked like billiard balls in large, vacuum-sealed bins that di vided its boxy cargo container into floor-to-ceilin g rows. And the NAV computer was an order of magnitud e less expensive than Horn of Plenty's most important component: the propulsion pod connected t o the rear of the container by a powerful magnetic coupling. The bulbous pod was a tenth of the container's size , and at first glance it looked a little tacked onlike a tugboat nosing one of Earth's old seafari ng supertankers out to sea. But whereas a tanker could sail under its own power once out of port, Horn of Plenty couldn't have gone anywhere without the pod's Shaw-Fujikawa drive. Unlike the rocket engines of humanity's first space  vehicles, Shaw-Fujikawa drives didn't generate thrust. Instead, the devices created tempo rary rifts in the fabric of space-timeopened passages in and out of a multidimensional domain kn own as Slipstream Space, or Slipspace for short. If one imagined the universe as a sheet of paper, S lipspace was the same sheet of paper crumpled into a tight ball. Its creased and overlap ping dimensions were prone to unpredictable temporal eddies that often forced Shaw-Fujikawa dri ves to abort a slipbring their vessels back into the safety of the normal universe thousands an d sometimes millions of kilometers from their planned destination. A short, intrasystem slip between two planets took less than an hour. A journey between star systems many light years apart took a few months. W ith sufficient fuel, a Shaw-Fujikawa-equipped ship could traverse the volume of space containing all of humanity's colonized systems in less than a year. Indeed, without Tobias Shaw's and Wallace F ujikawa's late-twenty-third-century invention, humanity would still be bottled up inside Earth's s olar system. And for this reason, some modern historians had gone so far as to rank the Slipspace  drive as humanity's most important invention, bar none. Practically speaking, the enduring brilliance of Sl ipspace drives was their reliability. The drives'\nbasic design had changed very little over the years , and they rarely malfunctioned so long as they were properly maintained. Which was, of course, why Horn of Plenty had run into trouble. Rather than slipping all the way from Harvest to th e next nearest colony, Madrigal, Horn of Plenty exited halfway between the two planets' systemstor e back into normal space at coordinates that could have easily been occupied by an asteroid  or any other nasty, incidental object. Before the ship's NAV computer really knew what had happened, the freighter was in an end-over-end tumbleits propulsion-pod jetting a plume of radioa ctive coolant. The UNSC's Department of Commercial Shipping (DCS) would later classify Horn of Plenty 's drive failure as a \"Slip Termination, Preventable\" or an STP for short, though freighter captains  11  (and there were still humans that did the job) had their own way of translating the acronym:\n\"Screwing The Pooch,\" which was at least as accurat e as the official classification. Unlike a human captain whose brain might have seize d with the terror of unexpected deceleration from faster-than-light speed, Horn of Plenty 's NAV computer was perfectly composed as it fired a series of bursts from the propulsion pod's hydrazine maneuvering rocketsbrought the crippled freighter to a stop before the torsion of its tumble sheared its propulsion pod from the carg o container. Crisis averted, the NAV computer began a dispassion ate damage assessment and soon discovered the breakdown's cause. The pair of compa ct reactors fueling the Shaw-Fujikawa drive had overflowed their shared waste containment syste m. The system had fault sensors, but these were long overdue for replacement and had failed when th e reactors maxed power to initiate the slip. When the reactors overheated, the drive shut down, forcing Horn of Plenty 's abrupt exit. It was a maintenance oversight, pure and simple, and the NAV  computer logged it as such. Had the NAV computer possessed a fraction of the em otional intelligence of the so-called\n\"smart\" artificial intelligences (AI) required on l arger UNSC vessels, it might have taken a moment to consider how much worse the accident could have beenwasted a few cycles en joying what its human makers called relief. Instead, nestled in its small black housing in the propulsion pod's command cabin, the NAV computer simply oriented the Horn of Plenty 's maser so it pointed back toward Harvest, cued a distress signal, and settled in for what it knew wo uld be a very long wait. While it would only take two weeks for the maser bu rst to reach Harvest, the NAV computer knew Horn of Plenty wouldn't rate an expedited recovery. The truth was,  the only part of the freighter worth a salvage fee was its Slipspace dri ve, and in its damaged state there was no need to rush the drive's retrieval. Better to let the radio active coolant plume disperse, even if that meant letting the cargo container's reactor-powered heati ng units fail, and its load of fruit freeze solid. So the NAV computer was surprised when, only a few hours after Horn of Plenty 's breakdown, a contact appeared on the freighter's radar. The NA V computer quickly redirected its maser dish and hailed its unexpected rescuer as it approached at a  cautions pace.\n\n<\\\\>  DCS.REG#HOP-000987111 >>\n* DCS.REG#(???)  *\n<\\ MY DRIVE IS DAMAGED.\n<\\ CAN YOU PROVIDE ASSISTANCE? \\>\n\nThe NAV computer hesitated to log the contact as a ship when it failed to match any of the DCS profiles in its admittedly limited database. And ev en though it failed to get an initial response, it let its message repeat. After a few minutes of one-side d conversation, the contact slunk into range of the freighter's simple docking-assist camera. The NAV computer didn't have the sophistication to make the comparison, but to a human's eyes the rescue vessel's profile would have looked like a fishhook fashioned from impractically thick wire. It had a series of segmented compartmen ts behind its hooked prow and barbed antennae that flexed backward to a single, glowing engine in  its stern. The vessel was the deepest blue blackan absence of stars against the brilliant bac kground stripe of the Milky Way. As the contact drew within a few thousand meters of  Horn of Plenty 's port side, three crimson dots appeared in a divot in its prow. For a moment these lights seemed to gauge the freighter's disposition. Then the dots flared like widening hol es in the wall of a raging furnace, and a chorus of alarms from various damaged and dying systems overw helmed the NAV computer. If the NAV computer had been smarter, it might have  recognized the dots for the lasers they werefired its maneuvering rockets and tried to eva de the barrage. But it could do nothing as the  12  now clearly hostile vessel slagged Horn of Plenty 's propulsion pod, burning away its rockets and boiling the delicate inner workings of its Shaw-Fuj ikawa drive. Not knowing what else to do, the NAV computer chang ed its distress signal from \"engine failure\" to \"willful harm,\" and upped the frequency  of the maser's pulse. But this change must have alerted whatever was controlling the vessel's laser s, because the weapons quickly swept the maser dish with kilowatts of infrared light that cooked i ts circuits and permanently muted Horn of Plenty 's cries for help. Without the ability to move or speak, the NAV compu ter only had one option: wait and see what happened next. Soon the lasers identified and elimi nated all of Horn of Plenty 's external cameras, and then the NAV computer was blind and deaf as wel l. The laser fire stopped, and there was a long period  of seeming inactivity until sensors inside the cargo container alerted the NAV computer to a hull breach. These sensors were even dumber than the NAV computer, and it was with a certain blithe inanity that they reported a number of bins of fruit had been opened, ruining their contents' \"fre shness guarantees.\"\nBut the NAV computer had no idea it was in any danger until a pair of clawed, reptilian  hands grasped its boxy housing and began wrestling it fro m its rack. A smarter machine might have spent the last few sec onds of its operational life calculating the ridiculous odds of piracy at the very edge of UNSC space, or wondered at its attacker's angry hisses and chirps. But the NAV computer simply saved its m ost important thoughts to flash memory where its journey had started and where it had hope d to end upas its assailant found purchase at the back of its housing and tore it away from Horn of Plenty 's power grid.\n\nThree hundred and twenty hours, fifty-one minutes, and seven-point-eight seconds later, Sif, the AI that facilitated Harvest's shipping operations, reg istered Horn of Plenty 's distress signal. And although it was just one of millions of COM bursts she dealt with on a daily basis, if she were to be honest with her simulated emotions, the freighter's  abortive distress signal absolutely ruined her day. Until Sif could be sure there were no other freight ers with similar, lurking faults in their propulsion pods, she would need to suspend all tran sfers through the Tiara: an orbital space station that was not only home to her data center, but also  supported Harvest's seven space-elevators. Sif knew that even a brief suspension would cause a  rippling delay throughout the planet's shipping systems. As cargo containers backed up on the elevators, more would stall in depots at the bottomthe warehouses beside the towering, polycret e anchors that kept each elevator's thousands of kilometers of carbon nano-fiber tethered to Harv est's surface. Quite possibly it would take all day to get everything back on track. But the worst thin g was, the suspension would immediately catch the attention of the last individual she wanted to talk to at a time like this....\n\"Morning, darlin'!\" A man's voice twanged from the PA speakers in Sif's data centera usually hushed room near the middle of the Tiara th at contained the processor clusters and storage arrays that served her core logic. A moment later, the semi transparent avatar of Harvest's other AI, Mack, coalesced above a holographic display pad, a silver cylinder in the center of a low pit that held Sif's hardware towers. Mack's avatar only stoo d a half-meter tall, but he looked every inch the hero of an old spaghetti western. He wore cracked l eather work boots, blue denim jeans, and a gingham pearl-snap shirt rolled to his elbows. His avatar was covered in dust and grime, as if he'd just stepped down from a tractor after a long day's  work in the fields. Mack removed a cowboy hat that might once have been black but was now a sun-b leached gray, exposing a mess of dark colored hair. \"What seems to be the holdup?\" he asked, wipi ng his sweaty brow with the back of his wrist. Sif recognized the gesture as an indication that Ma ck had taken time away from some other important task to pay her a visit. But she knew thi s wasn't exactly true. Only a small fragment of Mack's intelligence was manifest inside the Tiara; the rest of Harvest's agricultural AI operations were busy in his own data center in a lonely sub-ba sement of the planet's reactor complex.  13  Sif didn't pay Mack the courtesy of presenting her own avatar. Instead she sent his fragment a terse text COM:\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF >> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK\n<\\ UPLIFT WILL REVERT TO NORMAL BY 0742. \\>\n\nShe hoped her nonverbal response would cut their co nversation short. But as was often the case, Mack regarded even Sif's most disdainful bytes as a n invitation for further discourse.\n\"Well now, is there anything I can do to help?\" Mac k continued in his southern drawl. \"If it's a balance issue you know I'd be mighty happy\"\n\n<\\ UPLIFT WILL REVERT TO NORMAL BY 0742.\n<\\ YOUR ASSISTANCE IS NOT REQUIRED . \\>\n\nWith that Sif abruptly cut power to the holo-pad, a nd Mack's avatar stuttered and dispersed. Then she purged his fragment from her COM buffer. S he was being rude to be sure, but Sif simply couldn't take any more of Mack's folksy, flirtatiou s elocution. Simulated sweat notwithstanding, Sif knew Mack's jo b was at least as challenging as her own. While she lifted Harvest's produce and sent it on i ts way, Mack grew it and loaded it. He had his own demanding charges: almost a million JOTUNssemi autonomous machines that performed every imaginable farming chore. But Sif also knew t hat Macka smart AI like herfunctioned at incredible speeds. In the time it had taken him to say everything from \"morning\" to \"happy,\" he could have accomplished any number of complex tasks . Calculate the upcoming season's crop yields, for example, something Sif knew he had been  putting off for weeks!\nThe algorithms that helped Sif's core logic deal wi th unexpected bursts of emotion cautioned her not to get angry. But they approved of her justific ation: actual speech was so horribly inefficient th at it was only appropriate between an AI and a human b eing. With the advent of the first smart AI in the mid-tw enty-first century, there was widespread concern that they might be too capable and would so on render human intelligence obsolete. Adding the capacity for vocal expression became a critical  feature of these early AI because it made them less threatening. As they slowly learned to speak, they seemed more human. Like precocious but respectful children. Centuries on, with the development of exponentially  more powerful intelligences such as Sif, it was important that AI not only possess the ability to speak, but seem as human as possible in all respects. Hence the development of holographic avat ars that spoke with unique voiceslike a cowboy in Mack's case, or the clipped cadence of No rdic royalty in Sif s. In the first few months after her installation in t he Tiarathe very moment of her birthSif had often second-guessed her chosen accent. She had tho ught it would appeal to Harvest's colonists, most of which came from the heartland of Earth's ol d United States of America and could trace their ancestry back to the now defunct states of Scandina via. But the accent was undeniably elevated, even haughty, and Sif had worried she might come of f as a bit of a prig. But the colonists approved. To them, in an odd sort of way, Sif was royaltythe benign ruler of Harvest's links to the rest of the empire. Even so, she was careful to limit he r vocal contact with the colonists. As far as the integrity of her core logic went, speaking was an i ndulgence. And following the advice of her algorithms, Sif did her best to avoid behavior that  was even the least bit narcissistic. For a smart AI, self-absorption invariably led to a  deep depression caused by a realization that it could never really be humanthat even its incredibl e mind had limits. If the AI wasn't careful, this melancholy could drag its core logic into a termina l state known as rampancy, in which an AI rebelled against its programmatic constraintsdevel oped delusions of godlike power as well as  14  utter contempt for its mentally inferior, human mak ers. When that happened, there was really no option but to terminate the AI before it could do i tself and others serious harm. Mack's insistence on speaking to Sif was clear evid ence of self-indulgence. But Sif didn't think this was proof of impending rampancy. No, she knew Mack spoke to her for an entirely different reason. As he had told her many times before: \"Darl in', as much as I'd like to see you smile, you sure are pretty when you're angry.\"\nIndeed, since Mack's intrusion, the temperature ins ide Sif's core logic had jumped up a few Kelvinsa real, physical reaction to her simulated feelings of annoyance and disdain. Her emotional-restraint algorithms insisted these were perfectly acceptable reactions to Mack's inappropriate behavior, as long as she didn't dwell  on them. So Sif refreshed the coolant around her core's nano-processing matrix, wondering as dispass ionately as possible if Mack would dare initiate a second conversation. But the COM hitting her data center was now just a chorus of concern from circuits in the cargo containers idling on her elevators and NAV computer s in propulsion pods holding-station around the Tiara. Sif's blanket shipping delay had thousan ds of lesser intelligences worried and confused. She assigned more of her clusters to the task of su rveying the pods' maintenance records, and thenlike a mother of a brood of needy childrendid  her best to keep them calm:\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF >> TIARA.LOCAL.ALL\n<\\ THIS IS AN INTENTIONAL  DELAY.\n<\\ UPLIFT WILL REVERT TO NORMAL BY 0742.\n<\\ YOU WILL SOON BE ON YOUR WAY.  \\>\n\nWhen Harvest was founded in 2468 it not only became  the seventeenth UNSC colony world, but the farthest colony from Earth. The only habitable planet in the Epsilon Indi star system, Harvest was a six-week Slipspace shot from the next nearest  human world, Madrigal. And a little more than two months from Reach, humanity's most populous col ony and the locus of UNSC power in Epsilon Eridanus. All of which meant Harvest wasn't a very easy place to get to.\n\"So why go?\" Sif often asked the groups of school c hildren from Harvest that were, other than her maintenance techs, the Tiara's most frequent vi sitors. The simple answer was that even terra-forming techn ology had limits. Atmospheric processors could nudge a generally suitable planet toward sust ainability, but they couldn't remake worlds. As a result, during the colonization boom that followed the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa drive, the UNSC had focused on planets that were capable of su pporting life from the get-go. Not surprisingly, these were few and far between. Because of its distance from Earth, if Harvest had merely been livable, no one would have bothered to go; there was still plenty of elbow roo m on the core worlds, the colonies closest to Earth. But Harvest was also exceptionally fertile. And within two decades of its founding, it had the highest per capita agricultural productivity rate o f any colony. Harvest's foodstuffs now fed the populations of no less than six other worldsa fact  that was even more impressive given the planet's size. With an equatorial diameter of sligh tly more than four thousand kilometers, Harvest was about a third the size of Earth. Though she was loath to admit it, the colony's prod uce and her part in its distribution was a source of great pride. Now, however, all Sif felt was disappointment. The results of her survey were in, and it turned out Horn of Plenty 's accident had been her fault. The freighter's pro pulsion pod was months overdue for service. It was something the Madrigal shipping-operations AI should have flagged before transiting the pod to Harvest. But Sif had m issed it too, and now the breakdown was her responsibility.  15  Sif decided to double-check all the pods. By bringi ng even more clusters online, she still managed to meet her stated deadline. At exactly 074 2, Harvest's shipping operations began their slow crawl back to full speed. For a moment, Sif re laxedfocused on the steady pull of the containers as they ascended her strands. Deep inside her core she recalled a similar sensati on. The woman whose mind was a model for Sif's core logic had enjoyed the rhythmic tug of a hairbrushthe sensual invigoration of a twice daily grooming. Memories such as this were an expec ted by-product of a smart AI's construction;\nwhen you scanned a human's brain, strong chemical i mpressions persisted. Sif appreciated the kinesthetic pleasure of the containers' pull. But h er algorithms were quick to stifle her enjoyment. Sif initialized a correspondence sub-routine, selec ted the template for an official DCS loss report, and composed a detailed mea culpa for her s upervisors. She added a copy of Horn of Plenty 's abortive distress signal, noting a corrupted sec tor of data at the end of the file. Sif ran a quick checksum and decided the bad sector was just garbled bytes of damaged circuits. Then she flashed the report to the NAV computer of a freight er Wholesale Price, which was just about to slip for Reach. As quickly as possible, Sif \"forgot\" about Horn of Plenty compressed the maintenance survey results and loss report and tucked them deep inside  one of her storage arrays. No sense stewing, her algorithms reminded her, when it would be months before DCS sent word of any disciplinary action. Besides, Sif knew that unless she wanted to spend a ll morning fielding more of Mack's flirtatious offers of assistance, she needed to con centrate on her cargo.\n\nWhen Wholesale Price drew within two-thousand kilometers of its Safe Sli pspace Entry Point\n(SSEP)coordinates at which its Shaw-Fujikawa drive  could initiate a rupture without dragging anything but the freighter into the Slipstreamits NAV computer confirmed that Sif's report was safely cached to flash memory and sent the AI its d eparture confirmation. But as the NAV computer ran through its final check lists, hastening to shut down all but its most essential systems, it received a priority COM.\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK >> DCS.LIC#WP-000614236\n<\\ Hey, Partner! Hold up!\n>> ACKNOWLEDGED.\n<\\ Mind if I drop something in the 'ol mail-bag?\n>> NEGATIVE.\n\nWhile maser bursts worked fine over relatively shor t distances, the best way to communicate between colony worlds was to send messages via ship board memory. Traveling at trans-light speed, freighters such as Wholesale Price were the twenty-sixth-century equivalent of the pon y express. In fact, the freighter's NAV computer already carri ed a variety of correspondencefrom love letters to legal documentsall guaranteed safe and secure delivery by the DCS. So there was nothing unusual about Mack's request.\n\n<\\ Appreciate it. DCS has been on me for weeks abou t the Q4 projections. Soy might come in a little light. But wheat is going to be\n>> * WARNING! PRIVACY BREACH! [DCS.REG#A-16523.14.8 2]  *\n<\\ Just adding my note to the lady's. No need to cu t the red tape twice, right?\n>> * VIOLATION! YOUR INFRACTION HAS BEEN LOGGED\n<\\ Hey! Whoa there!\n>>--AND WILL BE SUBMITTED TO DCS-S--SSSSsss* \\\\\\\n>> (...) ~ STANDBY/REBOOT  16  >> (..)\n>> ()\n<\\ Partner?\n<\\ You OK?\n>> APOLOGY. UNKNOWN SYSTEM ERROR.\n>> PLEASE REPEAT PRIOR REQUEST.\n<\\ Nah, we're all set. Have a safe slip, you hear?\n>> AFFIRMATIVE. \\>\n\nThe NAV computer had no idea why it had temporarily  shut down. It had no memory of its COM with Mack. The AI's file was thereencrypted an d attached to Sif's report. But the NAV computer believed the two documents had always been  linked. It rechecked its slip calculations and increased reactor flow to its Shaw-Fujikawa drive. Exactly five seconds later, a sunburst of sundered space-time appeared off Wholesale Price 's prow. The rift remained open after the freighter disappea red, its shimmering edges warping the surrounding stars. The blazing hole flickered stubb ornly, as if it was determined to choose the moment of its closure. But once Wholesale Price moved deeper into the Slipstream, pulling its sustaining power with it, the rift collapsed in an insignificant burst of gamma radiationthe quantum mechanical equivalent of a shrug.  17\nCHAPTER TWO\n\n\nEARTH, GREATER CHICAGO INDUSTRIAL ZONE, AUGUST 10, 2524\n\nWhen Avery woke, he was already home. Chicago, the onetime heart of the American Midwest, was now an urban sprawl that covered the former states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The territory wasn't part of the United States, not in any formal  sense. Some people who lived in the Zone still considered themselves American, but like everyone e lse on the planet they were citizens of the United Nationsa sea change in governance that was inevitable once humanity began to colonize other worlds. First Mars, then the Jovian moons, an d then planets in other systems. Checking his COM pad on the military shuttle from o rbit to the Great Lakes Spaceport, Avery confirmed he was on a two-week passthat he'd be ab le to enjoy his first extended break from operation TREBUCHET. There was a note on the pass f rom Avery's CO detailing the injuries sustained by the marines on his last mission. All o f Avery's alpha squad had survived with minor injuries. But bravo squad hadn't been so lucky; thr ee marines were killed-in-action (KIA), and Staff Sergeant Byrne was hanging by a thread in a UNSC ho spital ship. The note said nothing about civilian casualties. Bu t Avery remembered the force of the hauler's blast, and he doubted any had survived. He tried not to thinklet his mind go blankas he b oarded a maglev passenger train from the spaceport to the Zone. Only later, when Avery stepp ed out onto the elevated platform of the Cottage Grove terminal, did the hot and humid air of a late  Chicago summer snap his senses back into focus. As the sun dove to a fiery finish, he enjoyed what little breeze was coming off Lake Michigan lukewarm gusts that hammered up the east-west block s of tumbledown gray-stone apartments, scattering the autumn leaves of the sidewalk maples . Arms laded with duffel bags, and wearing his navy-b lue dress pants, collared shirt, and cap, Avery was drenched with sweat by the time he reache d The Seropian, a center for active retirementor so its hospitality computer told him as he stepped into the tower's stifling lobby. Avery's Aunt Marcille had moved to the complex a fe w years after he'd joined the marines, vacating the same walkup apartment on Blackstone Av enue they'd shared since Avery was a boy. His aunt's health was failing, and she'd needed the  extra care. And more to the point: she was lonely without him. As Avery waited for an elevator that would take him  up to the thirty-seventh floor, he stared into a recreation room filled with many of The Seropian 's bald and silver-haired residents. Most were clustered around a video display tuned to one of th e public COM's all-news channels. There was a report of fresh Innie attacks in Epsilon Eridanusa  series of bombings that had killed thousands of civilians. As usual, the broadcast featured a UNSC spokesman who flatly denied the military's campaign was faltering. But Avery knew the facts: T he Insurrection had already claimed more than a million lives; the Innie attacks were becoming mo re effective, and the UNSC reprisals more heavy-handed. It was an ugly civil war that wasn't getting any prettier.  18  One of the residents in the rec room, a black man w ith a deeply lined face and a crown of wiry gray hair, spotted Avery and frowned. He whispered something to a large white woman in a voluminous housedress, overflowing a wheelchair by his side. Soon all the residents that weren't hard of hearing or too dim-sighted to see Avery's u niform were nodding and cluckingsome with respect, others with scorn. Avery had almost change d into his civilian clothes on the shuttle to avoid just this sort of uncomfortable reaction. But in th e end he'd decided to stick with his dress blues fo r his aunt's sake. She'd waited a long time to see he r nephew come home all spit and polish. The elevator was even warmer than the lobby. But in side his aunt's apartment the air was so frigid, Avery could see his breath.\n\"Auntie?\" he called, dropping his duffels on the we ll-worn blue carpet of her living room. The bottles of fine bourbon he'd bought at the spacepor t duty-free clinked together between his neatly folded fatigues. He didn't know if his aunt's docto rs were letting her drink, but he did know how much she used to enjoy an occasional mint julep. \"W here are you?\" But there was no reply. The flower-patterned walls of the living room were covered with picture frames. Some were very oldfaded prints of long-dead relatives his au nt used to talk about as if she'd known them personally. Most of the frames held holo-stills: th ree-dimensional pictures from his aunt's lifetime. He saw his favorite, the one of his teenage aunt st anding on the shore of Lake Michigan in a honey bee striped bathing suit and wide straw hat. She wa s pouting at the camera and its cameraman, Avery's uncle, who had passed away before he was bo rn. But there was something wrong with the stills; they  seemed oddly out of focus. And as Avery stepped down the narrow hallway to his aunt's bedro om and ran his fingers across the frames' sheets of glass, he realized they were covered in a thin l ayer of ice. Avery rubbed his palm against a large holo-still ne ar the bedroom door, and a young boy's face appeared beneath the frost. Me, he grimaced, remembering the day his aunt had taken  the still: my first day of church. Wiping downward, his mind filled with memories: the  suffocating pinch of his white, freshly starched oxford shirt; the smell of carnauba wax, l iberally applied, to mask the scuffs in his oversized, wingtip shoes. Growing up, Avery's clothes were almost always worn  out hand-me-downs from distant cousins that were never quite big enough for his tall, broa d-shouldered frame. \"Just as they should be,\" his aunt had said, smiling, holding up new pieces of hi s wardrobe for inspection. \"A boy isn't a boy that doesn't ruin his clothes.\" But her painstaking patching and sewi ng had always ensured Avery looked his bestespecially for church.\n\"Now don't you look handsome,\" his aunt had cooed t he day she'd taken the frozen still. Then, as she'd done up his little paisley tie: \"So much l ike your mother. So much like your father,\"\naccording to assessments of an inheritance Avery ha dn't understood. There had been no pictures of his parents in his aunt's old houseand there were none in her apartment now. Although she'd never once said anything unkind about them, these b ittersweet comparisons had been her only praise.\n\"Auntie? You in there?\" Avery asked, knocking softl y on her bedroom door. Again, there was no answer. He remembered the sound of raised voices behind oth er closed doorsthe angry end of his parents' marriage. His father had left his mother s o distraught that she could no longer care for herself, let alone an active, six-year-old boy. He took one last look at the holo-still: argyle socks beneath neatly cuffed tan slacks; an unabashed smil e, no less sincere for his aunt's prompting. Then he opened her bedroom door. If the living room had felt like a refrigerator, th e bedroom was a freezer. Avery's heart dropped into his stomach. But it wasn't until he saw the li ne of sixteen evenly spaced cigarettes (one for eac h hour of her waking day) untouched on a bedside vani ty that Avery knew for surehis aunt was dead.  19  He stared at her body, stiff as a board under the l ayers of crocheted and quilted blankets, as the sweat on the back of his neck froze solid. Then he stepped to the foot of the bed and lowered himself into a threadbare armchair where he remaine d, spine set against the cold, for almost an houruntil someone keyed the apartment door.\n\"She's in here,\" muttered one of the complex's orde rlies as he tramped down the hallway. A young man with a sunken chin and shoulder-length bl ond hair peered into the bedroom. \"Jesus!\" He jumped back, catching sight of Avery. \"Who are you? \"\n\"How many days?\" Avery asked.\n\"What?\"\n\"How many days has she been lying here?\"\n\"Listen, unless I know\"\n\"I'm her nephew,\" Avery growled, his eyes locked on  the bed. \"How. Many. Days.\"\nThe orderly swallowed. \"Three.\" Then in a nervous t orrent, \"Look, it's been busy, and she didn't have anyI mean we didn't know she had any relative s in-system. The apartment is on automatic. It dropped to freezing the moment she ...\" The orderl y trailed off as Avery stared him down.\n\"Take her away,\" Avery said flatly. The orderly motioned to his shorter, plumper partne r cowering in the hallway behind him. Quickly the two men positioned their stretcher besi de the bed, peeled back the layers of bedding, and gently transferred the body.\n\"Records say she was Evangelical Promessic.\" The or derly fumbled with the stretcher's straps.\n\"Is that right?\"\nBut Avery's gaze had returned to the bed, and he di dn't reply. His aunt was so frail that her body left only the b arest impression in the foam mattress. She was a small woman, but Avery remembered how tall and st rong she'd looked when Zone social services had dropped him on her doorstepa mountain of surro gate maternal love and discipline in his wary, six-year-old eyes.\n\"What's your COM address?\" the thin orderly continu ed, \"I'll let you know the name of the processing center.\"\nAvery drew his hands out of his pockets and laid th em on his lap. The squat orderly noticed Avery's fingers tighten into fists and cougheda si gnal to his partner that now would be a good time to leave. The two men worked the stretcher bac k and forth until it pointed out of the bedroom, then bumped it noisily down the hallway and out the  apartment door. Avery's hands shook. His aunt had been teetering on  the edge for some time. But in their recent COM correspondence, she'd told him not to worry. He aring that, he'd wanted to take his leave immediately, but his CO had ordered him to lead one  more mission. A whole hell of a lot of good that did anyone, Avery cursed. While his Aunt lay dying, he was stra pped to a Hornet, circling the Jim Dandy back on Tribute. Avery leapt from the chair, stepped quickly to his duffels, and pulled out one of the fifths of gin from the duty-free. He grabbed his navy dress coat and stuffed the glass flask into an interior pocket . A moment later, he was out the apartment door.\n\"Dog and Pony,\" Avery asked the hospitality compute r on the way down to the lobby. \"Is it still in business?\"\n\"Open daily until four a.m.,\" the computer replied through a small speaker in the elevator's floor-selection pad. \"Ladies pay no cover. Shall I call a cab?\"\n\"I'll walk.\" Avery twisted the cap off the gin and took a generous swig. Then he added to himself: While I still can. The bottle only lasted an hour. But others were eas y to find, as one night of drinking became two, then three. Gut Check, Rebound, Severe Tire Da mage: names of clubs filled with civilians eager for Avery's money but not the slurred stories  of how he'd earned itexcept for a girl on a  20  low-lit stage in a dive off Halsted Street. The pre tty redhead was so good at pretending to listen, Avery didn't mind pretending it had nothing to do w ith how often he'd tapped his credit chip against the jeweled reader in her navel. The money drew her  freckled skin and smell and lazy smile closer, until a rough hand fell on Avery's shoulder.\n\"Watch your hands, soldier boy,\" a bouncer warned, his voice raised above the club's thumping music. Avery looked away from the girl, her back arched hi gh above the stage. The bouncer was tall with a substantial gut that his tight, black turtle neck could barely contain. His strong arms were padded with a deceptive layer of fat. Avery shrugge d. \"I've paid.\"\n\"Not to touch.\" The bouncer sneered, revealing two platinum incisors. \"This is a class establishment.\"\nAvery reached for a little round table between his knees and the stage. \"How much?\" he asked, raising his credit chip.\n\"Five hundred.\"\n\"Screw you.\"\n\"Like I said. Class .\"\n\"Already spent plenty...\"Avery muttered. His UNSC sal ary was modestand most of that had gone to help with his aunt's apartment.\n\"Aw, now see?\" The bouncer jabbed a thumb at the gi rl. She was slowly sliding backward on the stageher smile now a worried frown. \"You gotta  talk nice, soldier boy.\" The bouncer tightened his grip on Avery's shoulder. \"She's not one of those Innie sluts you're used to out in Epsi.\"\nAvery was sick of the bouncer's hand. He was sick o f being called boy. But having some civilian puke insult himsomeone who had no idea wh at he had actually gotten used to on the frontlines of the Insurrection? That was the last s traw.\n\"Let me go,\" Avery growled.\n\"We gonna have a problem?\"\n\"All depends on you.\"\nWith his free hand, the bouncer reached behind his back and pulled a metal rod from his belt.\n\"Why don't you and me step outside?\" With a flick o f his wrist, the rod doubled in length and revealed an electrified tip. It was a \"humbler\" stun device. Avery had seen ONI interrogators lay into Innie prisoners with the things. He knew how debilitating they were, and  though Avery doubted the bouncer had as much skill with the humbler as an ONI spook, he had no i ntention of ending up jerking around in a puddle of his own piss on this class establishment's floor. Avery reached for his drink, resting at the center of his table. \"I'm good right here.\"\n\"Listen, you jarhead son of a\"\nBut Avery's reach was just a feint. As the bouncer leaned forward to follow, Avery grabbed the man's wrist and pulled it over his shoulder. Then h e yanked down, breaking it at the elbow. The girl on the stage screamed as ragged bone tore through t he bouncer's shirt, spattering blood on her face and hair. As the bouncer howled and dropped to his knees, two  of his partnerssimilarly dressed and builtrushed forward, flinging chairs out of their way. Avery stood and turned to meet them. But he was drunker than he'd thought and missed an open ing blow to the bridge of his nose that snapped his head back and sent his own blood arcing toward the stage. Avery reeled back into the bouncers' crushing arms.  But as they rushed him out the club's back door, one of them slipped on the metal staircase le ading to the alley. In that moment, Avery was able to twist free, give much better than he got, a nd stagger away from the noise of approaching  21  sirens before a pair of blue and white sedans depos ited four of the Zone's finest on the club's doorstep. Stumbling along Halsted's crowded sidewalks, his dr ess uniform now as filthy as a set of battlefield fatigues, Avery fled from the paranoia of accusing glances to a dirty crawlspace beneath a riveted riser for the local maglev linea repurpose d brace from Chicago's old elevated railway, still recognizable despite centuries of shoring. Avery st uffed a green plastic trash bag between himself and the riser and settled into a fitful stupor. Make me proud, do what's right. This had been his Aunt's instruction on the day of his enlistment, her small but strong fingers reaching u p to cup his nineteen-year-old chin. Become the man I know you can be. And Avery had tried. He'd left Earth ready to fight  for her and those like herinnocents whose lives the UNSC had convinced him were threatened by  men inimical but otherwise identical to him. Killers. Innies. The enemy. But where was the pride ? And what had he become?\nAvery dreamed of a boy choking in the arms of a wom an with a detonatorimagined the perfect shot that would have saved all in the restaurant an d his fellow marines. But deep down he knew there was no perfect shot. No magic bullet that cou ld stop the Insurrection. Avery felt a chill that jerked him awake. But the n ear-silent rumble of a maglev passenger train overhead had only shifted the bag of trash, setting  Avery's back against the perspiring metal of the old brace. He leaned forward and put his head betwe en his knees. \"I'm sorry,\" Avery croaked, wishing his aunt were alive to hear it. Then his mind collapsed under the multiplicative we ight of loss and guilt and rage.\n\nLieutenant Downs slammed the door of his dark blue sedan with enough force to rock the low-swept vehicle on its four thick tires. He'd had the kid h ooked, ready to enlist. But then the parents got wi nd of his efforts, and the whole thing fell apart. If it weren't for Downs' uniform, the father might hav e taken a swing at him. Though he was no longer field -fit, in his dress blues, the UNSC Marine Corps recruiter was still an imposing presence. As the Lieutenant reordered his mental list of pros pectsthe small group of primarily young men who'd shown any interest in his cold calls and street-corner pitcheshe reminded himself it wasn't easy recruiting soldiers during wartime. Wit h a war as brutal and unpopular as the Insurrection, his job was damn near impossible. Not  that his CO cared. Downs' quota was five new marines per month. With less than a week to go he h adn't landed even one.\n\"You gotta be kidding me...\" The Lieutenant grimaced as he rounded the back of his sedan. Someone had used a can of red spray-paint to scrawl  INNIES OUT on the vehicle's thick bumper. Downs smoothed his close-cropped hair. It was an in creasingly popular slogana rallying cry for the more liberal core-world citizens who believ ed the best way to end the killing in Epsilon Eridanus was simply to let the system gohave the m ilitary pull out and give the Insurrectionists the autonomy they desired. The Lieutenant wasn't a politician. And while he do ubted the UN leadership would ever appease the Innies, he knew a few things for sure: The war was still on, the Marine Corps was an all volunteer force, and he only had a few days to fill  his quota before someone with a lot more brass than him took another bite out of his already well- chewed ass. The Lieutenant popped the sedan's trunk, and remove d his dress cap and briefcase. As the trunk closed automatically behind him, he strode toward t he recruitment center, a converted storefront in a strip mall on Chicago's old, near-north side. As Do wns neared the door, he noticed a man slumped against it.\n\"48789-20114-AJ,\" Avery mumbled.\n\"Say again?\" Downs asked. He knew a UNSC serial num ber when he heard it. But the Lieutenant still hadn't quite accepted the drunk ou tside his office was the Marine Corps Staff Sergeant indicated by the four gold chevrons on his  filthy dress-coat's sleeve.  22  \"It's valid,\" Avery said, raising his head from his  chest. \"Check it.\"\nThe Lieutenant straightened his soldiers. He wasn't  used to taking orders from a noncommissioned officer. Avery belched. \"I'm AWOL. Seventy-two hours.\"\nThat got Downs' attention. He cracked his briefcase  in the crook of his elbow and withdrew his COM pad. \"Give me that one more time,\" he asked, in putting Avery's slowly repeated serial number with swift stabs of his index finger. A few seconds later Avery's service record appeared  on the pad. The Lieutenant's eyes widened as a long string of meritorious citations and battl efield commendations cascaded down the monochromatic screen. ORION, KALEIDOSCOPE, TANGLE-W OOD, TREBUCHET. Dozens of programs and operations, most of which Downs had ne ver even heard of. Attached to Avery's file was a priority message from FLEETCOM, the Navy and Marine Corps headquarters on Reach.\n\"If you're AWOL, no one seems to mind.\" Downs place d his COM pad back into his briefcase.\n\"In fact, I'm pleased to inform you that your reque st for transfer has been approved.\"\nFor a moment, Avery's tired eyes flashed with suspi cion. He hadn't requested a transfer. But in his current groggy state, anything sounded better t han being shipped back to Epsilon Eridanus. His eyes darkened once more. \"Where?\"\n\"Didn't say.\"\n\"Long as it's quiet,\" Avery muttered. He let his he ad fall back against the recruitment center doorright between the legs of a marine in full bat tle dress on a poster taped to the inside of the door that read: STAND. FIGHT. SERVE. Avery closed h is eyes.\n\"Hey!\" Downs said gruffly. \"You can't sleep here, M arine.\" But Avery was already snoring. The Lieutenant grimaced, hefted one of Avery's arms  over his shoulder, and carried him to the backseat of his sedan. As Downs pulled out of the mall's parking lot into thick, noontime traffic, he wondered if catching a single AWOL war hero was as good as book ing five raw recruitsif it would be enough to keep his CO happy. \"Great Lakes Spaceport,\" he b arked at his sedan. \"Quickest route.\" As a holographic map materialized on the inner surface o f the sedan's curved windshield, Downs shook his head. If only I could be so lucky.   23\nCHAPTER THREE\n\n\nCOVENANT MISSIONARY ALLOTMENT, NEAR EPSILON INDI SYSTEM,\n23RD AGE OF DOUBT\n\nStaring at the alien vessel's stacked containers of  ripe fruit, Dadab began to salivate. He rarely saw such delicacies, let alone got a chance to eat them . In the Covenant, the union of species to which Dadab belonged, his kind, the Unggoy, ranked low in  the pecking order. They were used to scrambling for scraps. But they were not alone. Near the base of one of the stacks, three Kig-Yar w ere squabbling over a jumble of particularly juicy melons. Dadab tried to trundle past the scree ching reptilian creatures unnoticed. Even though he held the rank of Deacon on the Kig-Yar's ship, Minor Transgression, he was an unwelcome addition to its crew. Under the best of circumstanc es the two species were uneasy allies. But after a long voyage with dwindling supplieshad they not ha ppened upon the alien vessel when they did Dadab only half-humorously feared the Kig-Yar might  have made a meal of him instead. A melon wedge tumbled through the air and hit the s ide of Dadab's blue-grey head with a syrupy thwack, spraying juice on his orange tunic. Like the rest of his body, the Unggoy's head was covered with a stiff exoskeleton, and the blow didn 't hurt him in the least. But the three Kig-Yar erupted in shrill laughter all the same.\n\"An offering for his holiness!\" one of them sneered  through dagger-sharp teeth. This was Zhar, the leader of the crewmen's little cliqueeasily di fferentiated from the other two by the length and deep pink color of the long flexible spines that cr ested the back of his narrow skull. Without breaking stride Dadab loosed a powerful sno rt, dislodging bits of rind that had lodged in one of the circular vents of a mask that covered hi s pug nose and wide mouth. Unlike the Kig-Yar, who were quite comfortable in the oxygen-rich envir onment of the alien vessel, Unggoy breathed methane. The gas filled a pyramidal tank on Dadab's  back, and flowed to his mask via hoses integrated into the tank's shoulder harness. More melon sailed Dadab's way. But he was past the Kig-Yar now, and he ignored the sticky projectiles that slapped against his tank. Annoyed by his disinterest, the throwers returned to their petty squabble. Minor Transgression was part of the Covenant Ministry of Tranquility's vast fleet of missionary vesselsships responsible for exploring the boundar ies of Covenant-controlled space. Deacon was the lowest Ministry rank, but it was also the only position open to Dadab's speciesone of the few jobs Unggoy could get that didn't involve hard manu al labor or risking their lives in battle. Not any Unggoy could qualify for a Deaconship, and Dadab had made the cut because he was smarter than most, better able to understand the Co venant's Holy Writs and help explain these laws to others. The Covenant wasn't just a political and military a lliance. It was a religious union in which all its members pledged loyalty to its supreme theocrat ic leaders, the Prophets, and their belief in the transcendent potential of ancient technologyrelics  left behind by a vanished race of aliens known  24  as the Forerunners. Finding these scattered bits of  technology was the reason Minor Transgression was out in the deep black, hundreds of cycles from the nearest Covenant habitat. As Deacon, it was Dadab's responsibility to make su re the Kig-Yar followed all applicable Writs as they went about their search. Unfortunatel y, ever since they'd boarded the alien vessel, the crewmen had been anything but obedient. Muttering inside his mask, Dadab trundled down a ro w of containers. Some of them were clawed open, and he had to leap over slopes of half -chewed fruit the Kig-Yar had left in their rush to sample all the vessel's delicacies. Dadab doubted a ny of the containers held items of interest to the Prophets. But as Deacon, he was still supposed to s upervise the searchat least offer a blessing especially when it involved items belonging to alie ns as of yet unknown to the Covenant. As focused as the Prophets were on finding relics, they were always eager to add new adherents to their faith. And although that task was technica lly the Ministry of Conversion's responsibility, Dadab was the only religious official present, and he wanted to make sure he followed all the relevant procedures. For the Deacon knew a good performance now might gu arantee a promotion later. And he desperately wanted off Minor Transgression and on to a posting where he wasn't just responsibl e for keeping tabs on irreverent bipedal reptiles. Mo re than anything else, the Deacon wanted to preachto someday become a spiritual leader for Ung goy less fortunate than himself. It was a lofty goal, but like most true believers, Dadab's faith w as buoyed by ample amounts of hope. At the end of the row of containers was a mechanica l lift that rose up the side of the hull. Dadab stepped onto the lift and considered its controls. Raising one of his two spiny forearms, he thumbed a button that seemed to indicate up, then grumbled happily as the lift rattled up the wall. A narrow passage led from the top of the lift to th e vessel's ruined propulsion unit. Dadab caught a whiff of something foul, and stepping sque amishly through a bulkhead door he disabled his mask's olfactory membranes. The pile of fibrous muc us in the center of the cabin beyond was instantly recognizablethis was where the Kig-Yar h ad chosen to defecate. Gingerly, Dadab slid one of his flat, four-toed fee t through the sticky results of the Kig-Yar's fruit-fueled gorging until he struck something meta llic: the small box that had attempted to converse with Minor Transgression 's communications circuits. Finding the alien vessel had been pure luck. The Ki g-Yar ship had just happened to be between jumps, conducting one of its scheduled scans for re lics, when it detected a burst of radiation less than a cycle from its position. At first the Kig-Ya r's leader, a female Shipmistress named Chur'R Yar, had thought they might be under attack. But wh en they drew close to the vessel, even Dadab could see it had simply suffered some sort of drive  failure. Still, Chur'R-Yar had wanted to make certain they w ere in no danger. Unleashing a full barrage with Minor Transgression 's point-lasers, she had fried the vessel's drive t hen sent Zhar aboard to silence the boxmake sure it could no longer cry fo r help. Dadab feared Zhar would be too aggressive and ruin the one item of salvage that mi ght help his promotion off the Kig-Yar ship, but he could never admit this to Chur'R-Yar. He had kno wn of many other Unggoy Deacons who had met with \"unfortunate accidents\" for similar disloy al acts. Eventually, the Shipmistress had given him permissi on to collect the boxDadab assumed because she, too, had realized the importance of th e item to the Ministry of Conversion's work. She could have gone herself, of course. But as Dadab wa tched the excrement slide off the box and onto his hands, he realized Chur'R-Yar had probably sent  him because she knew exactly what the box's collection would require. Holding his stinking priz e at arm's length, the Deacon retreated back down the passage. After evading another barrage from the Kig-Yar in t he hold, he scampered through an umbilical back onto Minor Transgression. He hurried into the ship's methane suite (the only room constantly filled with the gas), and eagerly undid the chest-b uckles of his harness. As he backed into a  25  triangular depression in one of the square room's w alls, a hidden compressor sputtered and began to refill his tank. Dadab slipped out of his harness and swung his over sized forearms across his chest. His jaw ached from his mask's tight seal, and he tore it of f and flung it away. But before the mask hit the floor, it was intercepted by a lighting-fast pearle scent swipe. Floating in the center of the suite was a Huragok, a creature with a stooped head and elongated snout held aloft by a collection of translucent pin k sacs filled with a variety of gasses. Four anteri or limbs sprouted from its spinetentacles, to be exac t, one of which held Dadab's mask. The Huragok brought the mask close to a row of dark, ro und sensory nodes along its snout and gave it a thorough inspection. Then it flexed two of its tent acles in a quick, inquisitive gesture. Dadab contorted the digits of one of his hardened h ands so they matched the default arrangement of the Huragok's limbs: four fingertips , facing straight out from the Deacon's chest. <\nNo, damage, I, tired, wear. > His fingers splayed and contracted, bent and overla pped as they formed each word's unique pose. The Huragok released a disappointed bleat from a sp hincterlike valve in one of its sacs. The emission propelled it past Dadab to the tank recept acle where it hung the mask on a hook that protruded from the wall.\n< Did you find the device? > the Huragok asked, turning back to Dadab. The Deaco n held up the box, and the Huragok's tentacles trembled with exci tement: < May I touch what I can see?  >\n< Touch, yes, smell, no. > Dadab replied. But the Huragok either didn't mind the box's residu al Kig-Yar stench, or it simply failed to get Dadab's joke. It wrapped a tentacle around the alie n plunder and eagerly lifted it to its snout. Dadab flopped onto a cushioned pallet near the suit e's freestanding food-dispenser. He uncoiled a nipple connected to a spool of flexible tubing, p ut it in his mouth and began to suck. Soon, an unappetizing but nutritious sludge surged down the tube and into his gullet. He watched the Huragok pore over the alien box, its  sacs swelling and deflating in an expression of what? Impatience? It had taken the Deacon most o f the voyage to grasp the creature's sign language. He could only guess at the emotional subt leties of its bladder-speak. Indeed, it had taken him many cycles just to learn the Huragok's name: Lighter Than Some. Dadab knew the basics of Huragok reproduction, or r ather Huragok creation. The creatures manufactured their offspring out of readily availab le organic materials with the same deft activity of their tentacles' cilia, which Lighter Than Some was using to bore a neat hole in the alien box. It was a truly fantastic process, but what Dadab found mos t unusual was that the most difficult step for Huragok parents was to make their creations perfect ly buoyantto fill them with the exact right mix of gases. As a result, new Huragok would initia lly float or sink, and their parents would name them accordingly: Far Too Heavy; Easy To Adjust; Lighter Than Some. Clamping the nipple in his teeth, Dadab inhaled thr ough his nose, swelling his lungs to capacity. The methane in the suite was no less stale than wha t he carried on his back, but it felt good to breathe unencumbered. As he watched Lighter Than Some insert his tentacle into the box and cautiously probe its interior, Dadab was once again  reminded of how much he appreciated the creature's company. There had been multiple Huragok on the training voy ages he'd taken during his education at the Ministry seminary. But they had kept to themselves,  and had been singularly focused on keeping their ships in good working order. Which is why Dad ab had been more than a little surprised when Lighter Than Some had first flexed its limbs in his directionrepeate d a single pose over and over until the Unggoy realized it was attempting a simpl e: < Hello! >\nSuddenly, Lighter Than Some jerked its tentacle from the boxdrew back as if sh ocked. The Huragok's sacs swelled, and it began flailing its l imbs in spastic discourse. Dadab struggled to keep up.\n< Intelligence!... Coordinates...! ...Undoubtedly the alien s... Even more than our own!  >  26  < Stop! > Dadab interrupted, spitting out the food-nipple a nd jumping to his feet. < Repeat! >\nWith visible effort the Huragok forced its tentacle s to curl more slowly. Dadab watched with darting eyes. Eventually, he grasped Lighter Than Some 's meaning.\n< You, certain?  >\n< Yes! The Shipmistress must be told!  >\nMinor Transgression was not a large ship. And in the same amount of tim e it took Dadab to refit his tank, doing his best not to wrinkle his tunic, he and the Huragok were out of the suite and down Minor Transgression 's single central passage to the bridge.\n\n\"Either remove your mask,\" the Shipmistress said af ter Dadab breathlessly delivered Lighter Than Some 's assessment, \"or learn to speak more clearly.\" Ch ur'R-Yar was perched on an elevated command chair. Her light yellow skin made her the b rightest thing on the small, shadowy bridge. Dadab swallowed twice to clear some residual sludge  from his throat and began again. \"The device is a collection of circuits similar to the p rocessing pathways running throughout our ship.\"\n\"My ship,\" Chur'R-Yar interjected. Dadab winced. \"Yes, of course.\" Not for the first t ime, he wished the Shipmistress shared Zhar's spiny plumage; the appendages changed color dependi ng on the male of the species' mood. Right now the Deacon was desperate to gauge the level of Chur'R-Yar's impatience. But like all female Kig-Yar the back of the Shipmistress' head was cove red with dark brown callusesthick skin like a patchwork of bruises that made her narrow shoulders  seem even more hunched than they really were. Dadab decided to play it safe and cut to the chase.  \"The box is some sort of navigational device. And although it is damaged...\" The Deacon gestured fu rtively at the Huragok, who bobbed to a wall-mounted control panel. \"It still remembers its  point of origin.\"\nLighter Than Some drummed the tips of its tentacles against the panel 's luminous switches. Soon, a three-dimensional holographic representatio n of the volume of space around Minor Transgression coalesced in a holo-tank before Chur'R-Yar's chair.  The tank was merely the space between two dark glass lenses: one built into a pla tinum pedestal, the other imbedded in the bridge's ceiling. Like most surfaces on the Kig-Yar ship, th e ceiling was covered with a purple metal sheeting that, catching the hologram's light, displ ayed a darker hexagonal patternan underlying Beryllium grid.\n\"We were here,\" Dadab began as a red triangle repre senting the Kig-Yar ship appeared in the projection. \"When we registered the alien vessel's radiation leak.\" As he continued, the projection\n(controlled by Lighter Than Some) shifted and zoomed, presenting additional icons as required.\n\"This is where we made contact. And this is where Ligh where your Huragok believes the vessel initiated its journey.\"\nThe Shipmistress angled one of her globose, ruby-re d eyes at the highlighted system. It was outside the missionary allotment the Ministry had c harged her with patrollingbeyond the boundary of Covenant space, though Chur'R-Yar knew it was heresy to suggest such a limit. The Prophets believed the Forerunners once had dominion  over the entire galaxy, so every system was hallowed grounda potential repository of important  relics.\n\"And its destination?\" Chur'R-Yar asked, her long t ongue rattling against the top of her beak like mouth. Again the Deacon signed to the Huragok. The creatur e bleated from its sacs and flicked two of its limbs. \"I'm afraid that data has been lost,\" Da dab replied. The Shipmistress curled her claws around the arms o f her chair. She hated that the Unggoy had learned the Huragok's languagethat the Deacon now served as intermediary between her and a member of her crew. Not for the first time, she con sidered losing the Deacon out an airlock. But staring at the unexplored system, she realized the pious little gas-sucker had suddenly become a great deal more useful.  27  \"Have I ever told you how much I appreciate your go od counsel?\" the Shipmistress asked, relaxing into her chair. \"What do you suggest we te ll the Ministry?\"\nDadab's harness began to chafe around his neck. He fought back the urge to scratch.\n\"As in all matters, I will follow the Shipmistress'  recommendation.\" Dadab chose his words very carefully. It wasn't often Chur'R-Yar asked hi m a question; and she had never asked for his opinion. \"I am here to serve, and in so doing honor the will  of the Prophets.\"\n\"Perhaps we should wait to make our report until we  have had a chance to survey the alien system?\" Chur'R-Yar mused. \"Give the Holy Ones as m uch information as we can?\"\n\"I am sure the Ministry would... appreciate the Shipmistress' desire to bear more complete witness to this important discovery.\" Dadab hadn't said \"approve,\" but if the female Kig-Yar wanted to take her ship out of the allotment, Dadab  couldn't stop her. She was, after all, Shipmistress. But the Deacon had another, more personal reason fo r his compliance. If they did find something of value in the unexplored system, he kne w this would only help speed his promotion. And to accomplish that, Dadab was willing to bend a  few rules. After all, he thought, communication delays happen all the time.\n\"An excellent recommendation.\" Chur'R-Yar's tongue flicked between her jagged teeth. \"I will set a new course.\" Then, with a cursory flip of her  head, \"May we follow in Their Footsteps.\"\n\"And so better mind The Path.\" The Deacon answered,  completing the benediction. The saying honored the Forerunner's divinationthe moment they activated their seven mysterious Halo rings and disappeared from the gala xy, leaving none of their kind behind. Indeed, this belief that one could become a God by followin g in the Forerunners' footsteps was the crux of the Covenant religion. One day, the Prophets had long promised their faithful horde s, we shall find the Holy Rings! Discover the very means of the Fore runners' transcendence!\nDadab, and billions of his fellow Covenant, believe d this absolutely. The Deacon backed away from the Shipmistress' comma nd-chair, signaling Lighter Than Some to follow. He pivoted as smartly as his methane tan k allowed then trotted through the bridge's automatic sliding door.\n\"Zealot,\" the Shipmistress hissed as the two angled  halves of the door slid shut. She tapped a holographic switch in the arm of her chair that con trolled the ship's signal gear. \"Return at once. Bring only what you can carry.\"\n\"But Shipmistress,\" Zhar's voice crackled from her chair, \"all this food would\"\n\"Return to your stations!\" Chur'R-Yar screeched, he r patience exhausted on the Deacon. \"Leave it all behind!\" The Shipmistress gave the switch an angry smack. Then, with a rasp of her tongue only she could hear: \"Soon we will find much, much more.\"  28\nCHAPTER FOUR\n\n\nUNSC COLONY WORLD HARVEST, EPSILON INDI SYSTEM, DECEMBER 21, 2524\n\nDuring its slip from Earth, the computer in the cry o-bay of the UNSC fast-attack corvette Two for Flinching led Avery through a long, cyclical slumber. Per his  request, the circuits let Avery enjoy stretches of anabolic rest, bringing him through dr eam-filled REM as quickly and as infrequently as possible. All of this was accomplished by careful a djustments to the near-freezing atmosphere of Avery's cryo-pod and the judicious application of i ntravenous pharmaceuticalsdrugs that both controlled the frequency and duration of cryo-subje cts' sleep cycles and influenced the content of their dreams. But no matter what brand of meds Avery got before b eing iced, he always dreamed about the exact same thing: the worst of his missions against  the Insurrectionistsa series of scorched snapshots culminating in whatever operation he'd ju st completed. Even though the bloody specifics of these missions were things Avery would have preferred to experience only once, the true horror of his dreams  was their suggestion that he had done much more harm than good. His aunt's voice echoed inside  his head.... Make me proud, do what's right. The cryo-computer observed a surge of activity in A very's brainan effort to yank himself out of REMand upped his dosage. Two for Flinching had just emerged from Slipspace and was vectoring toward its destination. It was time for t he computer to initiate Avery's thaw, and it was standard operating procedure to keep subjects dream ing throughout the sequence. The meds took hold, and Avery sunk deep. And his mi nd's-eye picture show continued to roll.... A hauler jack-knifed in a roadside ditch, smoke bel ching from its burning engine. An initial round of cheers from the other marines in a checkpo int tower, thinking Avery had just nailed an Innie bomber. Then the realization that their ARGUS  units had malfunctioned that the hauler's dead civilian driver had done nothing but pick up t he wrong load. Avery had only been a few months out of boot camp. And already the war had soured. If you listened to the carefully packaged UNSC prop aganda, Innies were all the same sort of bad apple: after two centuries of common cause, isolate d groups of ungrateful colonists began to agitate for greater autonomyfor the freedom to act in thei r individual worlds' best interests, not those of the empire at large. In the beginning, there were sizeable numbers of pe ople who felt sympathy for the Innie cause. The rebels were understandably sick of being told h ow to run their liveswhat jobs to take, how many children to makeby CA bureaucrats; the often heavy-handed proxies of an Earth-based government with an increasingly poor understanding of the colonies' unique challenges. But that sympathy quickly evaporated when (after years of fr ustrating negotiations that went nowhere) the more radical Innie factions abandoned politics for violence. At first they hit military targets and known CA sympathizers. But as the UNSC began its co unterinsurgency operations, more and more innocent people were caught in the crossfire.  29  As a raw recruit, Avery didn't understand why the I nsurrection hadn't flared in outer systems such as Cygnus, where colonists were united by shar ed creed and ethnicityone of the main reasons for the collapse of Earth's old nation-stat e system and the rise of the UN as a unifying force . Instead, the fighting had broken out right where th e UNSC was best equipped to stop it: Epsilon Eridanus, the most populous and carefully administe red system outside of Sol. With all the resources at its disposal in that syst em, Avery wondered why the UNSC hadn't been able to pacify the Innies before things got out of hand. FLEETCOM on Reach, Circumstance's universities and courts of justice, the industrial zones of Tributecouldn't these powerful institutions and engines of economic prosperity hav e come up with a plan palatable for both sides?\nAs the war dragged on, Avery began to realize all t hese resources were exactly the problem: in Epsilon Eridanus, the UNSC just had too much to los e. Avery flinched in reaction to his rising body tempe rature. But also to the quickening images in his head.... Pockmarked houses whipping past gun slits. An unexp ected boom. Bodies strewn around the burning shell of the convoy's lead armored transpor t. Muzzle flashes from rooftops. A run for cover through the carnage. Ricochets and radio chatter. P hosphorous plumes from ordnance dropped by drones. Women and children running from burning hou ses, leaving footprints in blood thick as caramel. Eyes darting behind his lids, Avery remembered his aunt's instructions: Become the man I know you can be. He struggled to move his doped-up limbs, but the co mputer increased his dose and kept him down. The nightmarish final act would not be stoppe d.... A crowded roadside restaurant. A desperate woman su rrounded by determined men. The kicking feet of a choking child. A father's lunge and the m oment Avery let slip, reducing all to shock and heat that sent his Hornet spinning. Avery woke and gasped, drawing in a mouthful of the  freezing vapor that filled his cryo-tube. Quickly, the computer initiated an emergency purge.  Somehow, despite more than three times the recommended amount of sleep-inducers, Avery had ove rridden the final stages of the thaw. The computer noted the anomaly, carefully withdrew Aver y's IV and catheter, and opened the tube's curved, clear plastic lid. Avery rolled onto an elbow, leaned over the edge of  his tube, and cougheda series of violent, wet heaves. As he caught his breath, he heard the s lap of bare feet on the bay's rubberized floor. A moment later a small, square towel appeared in his down-turned field of view.\n\"I got it,\" Avery spat. \"Back off.\"\n\"Zero to jerk in less than five.\" A man's voice, no t much older than Avery. \"I've met grunts who are faster. But that's pretty good.\"\nAvery looked up. Like him, the man was naked. But h is flesh was alarmingly pale. Blond hair was just starting to burr from his recently shaved headlike the first tufts of silk from an ear of corn. The man's chin was long and narrow. When he s miled, his gaunt cheeks puffed mischievously.\n\"Healy. Petty Officer First Class. Corpsman.\"\nAll of which meant Healy was navynot a marine. But  he seemed friendly enough. Avery snatched the towel, wiped his clean-shaven face and  chin. \"Johnson. Staff Sergeant.\"\nHealy's grin widened. \"Well, at least I don't have to salute you.\"\nAvery swung his legs out of the cryo-pod and let hi s feet settle onto the floor. His head felt swollenready to burst. He breathed deep and tried to speed the sensation's passage. Healy nodded toward a bulkhead door at the other en d of the bay. \"C'mon, lockers are this way. Don't know what kind of dreams you had. But mine di dn't involve sitting around staring at another guy's balls.\"  30  Avery and Healy dressed, retrieved their duffels, a nd reported to Two for Flinching 's modest hangar bay. Corvettes were the smallest class of UN SC warships and didn't carry any fighters. In fact, there was hardly enough room in the hangar fo r one SKT-13 shuttlecraft, a larger version of the bulbous Bumblebee lifeboats standard throughout the  fleet.\n\"Sit down, strap in,\" the shuttle's pilot barked ov er his shoulder as Avery and Healy came aboard. \"Only reason we're stopped is to offload th e two of you.\"\nAvery stowed his bags and slid into one of the SKT' s center-facing seats, pulling a U-shaped restraining bar down over his shoulders. The shuttl e dropped through an airlock in the hangar floor and accelerated away from the corvette's stern.\n\"You ever been to Harvest?\" Healy shouted over the howl of the shuttle's thrusters. Avery craned his neck toward the cockpit. \"No.\"\nBut he had. It was hard to remember exactly when. Y ou didn't age in cryo-sleep, but time passed all the same. Avery figured he'd spent at least as much time asleep as awake since he'd joined the marines. But regardless, he'd only stayed on Harves t long enough to acquire his target, plan the hit, and reduce the number of corrupt CA officials by on e. It was his graduation mission from Navy Special Warfare (NavSpecWar) sniper-school. And he' d passed with flying colors. Avery squinted as the shuttle's interior brightened . Beyond the clear partitions of the cockpit's canopy, Harvest had come into view. Scattered cloud s revealed a world where land was much more abundant than sea. A single large continent shone b right tan and green through the world's unpolluted atmosphere.\n\"First time for me too,\" Healy said. \"Out in the mi ddle of nowhere. But not bad to look at.\"\nAvery just nodded his head. Like most of his missio ns, his hit on Harvest was classified. And he had no idea what sort of clearance the Corpsman had . The shuttle veered toward a metallic glint in the d eep blue aurora of Harvest's thermosphere. An orbital structure, Avery realized as they approache dtwo silver arcs hanging high above the planet. They hadn't been there on his previous visit. As the shuttle drew closer, Avery saw that the arcs  were separated by many thousands of kilometers of golden strandsspace elevators that p assed through the lower arc and dropped to Harvest's surface. The points at which the elevator s bisected the arc were open to vacuumgaps filled with beamwork that, from a distance, looked like delicate filigree.\n\"Hang on,\" the pilot shouted. \"We've got traffic.\"\nWith short, syncopated bursts of its maneuvering ro ckets, the shuttle finessed its way through one of many orderly formations of propulsion pods g athered around the orbital. Avery noted that the pods' designers had made no effort to beautify thei r creations; they were engines, nothing more. Hoses, tanks, wiresmost of the pod's constituent p arts were fully exposed. Only their expensive Shaw-Fujikawa drives were shrouded in protective co wlings. As the shuttle closed on the orbital, it spun 180 d egrees and backed into an airlock. After a few clanks and a hiss of air, an indicator light above the shuttle's rear hatch changed from red to green. The pilot gave his passengers a thumbs-up. \"Good lu ck. Watch out for those farmers' daughters.\"\nThe shuttle detached as soon as Avery and Healy wer e safely inside the orbital.\n\"Welcome to the Tiara,\" a very proper female voice echoed from an unseen PA system. \"My name is Sif. Please let me know if there is anythin g I can do to make your transit more comfortable.\"\nAvery unzipped one of his duffel's pockets and remo ved an olive drab duty-cap. \"Just some directions please, ma'am.\" He slung the hat over th e back of his head and tugged it low on his brow.\n\"Of course,\" the AI replied. \"This airlock leads st raight to the median. Take a right and proceed directly to coupling station three. I'll let you kn ow if you take a wrong turn.\"\nStrip lights in the airlock's ceiling brightened as  its interior door cycled open. In the cramped ready room the air was heavy and still, but in the unexpectedly open space beyond, the recycled  31  atmosphere seemed less oppressive. It turned out th e median was a wide platform suspended in the middle of the tubular orbital by thick metal cables . Avery guessed the Tiara was about four kilometers long and it's interior close to three hu ndred meters in diameter. Six beveled titanium spars ran the length of the facility. These were eq ually spaced around the interior of the tube and were connected to one another with smaller beams pe rforated with oval holes to save weight without sacrificing strength. The floor of the median was c overed with a diamond-pattern metal grid that, while perfectly sturdy, gave the impression of walk ing on air.\n\"You do a lot of CMT?\" Healy asked as they marched toward the number three station. Avery knew the acronym: Colonial Militia Training, one of the UNSC's more controversial activities. Officially, CMT was all about helping t he locals help themselvestraining colonists to deal with natural disasters and basic internal secu rity so the marines didn't have to keep too many boots on the ground. Unofficially, it was designed to create paramilitary anti-Insurrectionist forcesthough Avery had often wondered if it was re ally a good idea to give colonials on politically unstable worlds weapons, and train them  to use them. In his experience, today's ally was often tomorrow's foe.\n\"Never.\" Avery lied again.\n\"So... what?\" Healy continued. \"You looking for a cha nge of pace?\"\n\"Something like that.\"\nHealy laughed and shook his head. \"Then you must ha ve had one piss-poor billet.\"\nYou don't know the half of it. Avery thought. The median doglegged left, and as Avery passed a lo ng window, he peered out at the station one of the filigreed gaps he'd seen on approach. Tw o rectangular openings had been cut in the top and bottom of the orbital's hull, leaving the upper  and lower spars exposed. Through these spars ran the Tiara's number-three elevator strand. Avery watched as two back-to-back cargo containers rose into view, filling the station. It was hard to see through the window, but he caught a gli mpse of two propulsion pods maneuvering toward the tops of the containers. Once the pods we re attached, the containers raised clear of the Tiara. Then they reversed the polarity of their uni fying magnets and the two newly made freighters drifted apart. Start to finish, the operation took less than thirty seconds. Healy whistled. \"Pretty slick.\"\nAvery didn't disagree. The containers were massive.  The coordination required to make them move in concertnot just on this strand but on all seven of the Tiara's elevators at oncewas truly impressive.\n\"One more right then look for the gantry airlock,\" Sif said. The passage leading around the station was narrower than the orbital's main thorou ghfare, and Sif's voice sounded very close.\n\"You're just in time for the shift change.\"\nOutside the airlock were a dozen of the orbital's m aintenance technicians, clad in white overalls with blue stripes down their arms and legs. Despite  Healy's nonstop grin, the techs glanced uneasily at the two unexpected soldiers. Avery was glad the Welcome Wagon, a smaller container primarily used to transport large numbers of migrant colonist s from ship to surface, rose quickly into the station; he wasn't up for more awkward conversation . An alarm chimed and the airlock door slid open. Ave ry and Healy followed the techs through a flexible gantry that stretched like an accordion to  the Wagon. Once inside, they dropped their duffels into a storage bin beneath a section of sea tsone of three steep tiers built against the Wagon's four walls. The open wall directly opposite  the two soldiers' chosen tier was filled with a tall rectangular view port.\n\"All settled? Good.\" Sif spoke through speakers in Avery's chair as he clipped himself into the high-backed seat's five-point harness. There was ar tificial gravity on the orbital, but once the Wagon departed it would be in free fall. \"I hope yo u enjoy your stay.\"\n\"Oh, I'll make sure he does.\" Healy cracked an impi sh smile.  32  The alarm chimed a second time, the Wagon's airlock  sealed, and Avery began his descent.\n\nAs one small part of Sif's mind monitored the downw ard progress of Avery's Wagon, another manifested on her data-center's holo-projector.\n\"Let me start by saying, Ms. al-Cygni, how grateful  I am that you chose to conduct this audit in person. I trust you had a pleasant journey?\"\nSif's avatar wore an ankle-length sleeveless gown o f interwoven sunset hues. The dress highlighted her golden hairtucked smartly behind h er earswhich fell in waves to the middle of her back. Her bare arms flexed slightly outward fro m her hips and this, combined with her long neck and elevated chin, gave the impression of a doll-si zed ballerina ready to rise on the points of her toes.\n\"Productive,\" Jilan al-Cygni replied. \"I decided no t to cryo.\"\nThe woman sat on a low bench before the projector, wearing the unremarkable attire of a UNSC middle manager: a brown pantsuit, a few shades dark er than her skin. The garnet glint of the DCS insignia on her high collar complemented her burgun dy lipstickthe one flourish in her otherwise subdued appearance. \"These days, transit's really t he only time I have to catch up.\"\nAl-Cygni's melodic accent was subtle, but Sif cross -referenced her arrays and decided the woman was likely born on New Jerusalemone of two c olonized worlds in the Cygnus system. Through micro-cameras embedded in the walls of her data center, Sif watched as the woman put a hand to the back of her head, checking the pins tha t kept her long, black hair bound up in a tight twist.\n\"I imagine the Eridanus embargo is all-consuming,\" Sif said, making sure to widen her avatar's eyes sympathetically.\n\"My caseload has tripled in the last eighteen month s.\" Al-Cygni sighed. \"And frankly, arms smuggling isn't my area of expertise.\"\nSif put a hand to her chest. \"Well, I'm sorry for p iling more on your plate. I'll keep my testimony as brief as possibleskip the risk analys is of Madrigal's maintenance protocols, and jump directly to the\"\n\"Actually,\" al-Cygni interrupted, \"I'm expecting an other party.\"\nSif raised an eyebrow. \"Oh? I didn't realize.\"\n\"A last minute decision. Thought I might save some time, combining his audit with yours.\"\nSif felt her data-pathways warm. His? But before she could protest...\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK >> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF\n<\\ Sorry to barge in. It was her idea, I promise.\n>> WHY ARE YOU HERE?\n<\\ Liability. You owned the box, I owned the fruit.\n\nSif thought about that for a fraction of a second. It was a reasonable explanation. But if Mack was going to participate in her audit, she was goin g to set some ground rules.\n\n>> VOICE COM ONLY.\n>> I WANT HER TO HEAR EVERYTHING YOU SAY.\n\n\"Afternoon!\" Mack drawled from the data center's PA . \"Hope I didn't keep you ladies waiting.\"\n\"Not at all.\" Al-Cygni removed a COM pad from her s uit's hip pocket. \"We were just getting started.\" In the few seconds it took her to power-o n the pad, the two AIs continued their private conversation.\n   33  <\\ I thought you hated my voice?\n>> I DO.\n<\\ Well, I adore hearing yours.\n\nSif assumed an officious pose, extended a hand to i ndicate al-Cygni's COM pad. \"If you would refer to my report, section one, paragraph...\" But wh ile her avatar appeared calm and collected, Sif's logic quickly turned on Mack and lashed out b efore her emotional-restraint algorithms could intercede:\n\n>> YOUR FLIRTATIONS ARE AT BEST HARASSMENT, AT WORS T PERVERSION NOT THE ACTIONS OF A STABLE INTELLIGENCE.\n>> YOU ARE, I BELIEVE, WELL ALONG THE ROAD TO RAMPA NCY.\n>> AND I MUST WARN YOU THAT WITHOUT A RAPID CHANGE IN YOUR BEHAVIOR, I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO REGISTER MY CONCERNS WITH APPROPRIATE PARTIES-UP TO AND INCLUDING THE DCS HIG H COMMISSION.\n\nSif waited, core temperature rising, for Mack's res ponse.\n\n<\\ I think the lady protests a little too much.\n>> EXCUSE ME?\n<\\ It's Shakespeare, sweetheart. Look it up.\n>> LOOK IT UP?\n\nSif flung open her storage arrays, and proceeded to  jam all of Shakespeare's plays (individual files in every human language and dialect, past or present) into the data-buffer of Mack's COM. Then she added multilingual folios of all the other  Renaissance playwrights. And, just to make sure she'd made her pointthat Mack had not only misquot ed a line from Hamlet, but that his knowledge of theatre and, by extension, all other s ubjects, was a pale reflection of her ownSif doubled back and crammed in translations of every p lay from Aeschylus to the twenty-fifth-century absurdist dialectics of the Cosmic Commedia Coopera tive. Al-Cygni looked up from her pad. \"Paragraph...?\"\n\"...three,\" Sif said out loud. The delay had been no more than a few seconds, but for an AI it might as well have been an hour. Al-Cygni folded her hands in her lap, cocked her he ad to one side. \"Neither of you is under oath,\" she said pleasantly. \"But please. No private  conversations.\"\nSif put one leg behind the other and curtsied. \"My apologies.\" The woman was smarter than most DCS employees she dealt with. \"My colleague an d I were simply comparing records of Horn of Plenty 's manifest, in case there was any discrepancy.\" No t wanting to lie, Sif quickly flashed Mack her record of what the freighter had been carr ying.\n\n<\\ Just his plays?\n>> EXCUSE ME?\n<\\ I was hoping for a sonnet.\n\nSif pursed her lips. \"But it seems we are agreed.\" She couldn't see Mack's face, but just from his words she could tell he was thoroughly amused.\n\"Yep!\" Mack twanged from the PA. \"Two of us are rig ht as rain!\"\nAl-Cygni smiled. \"Please continue.\"  34  Sif spun-down her arrays and let her algorithms gui de her core back to a more reasonable state. Her code calmed her feelings of embarrassment, conf usion, even hurt. As her core cooled, she braced herself for Mack's imminent rejoinder. But, like the gentleman he so often professed to be, he wrote nothing in privateoffered not a single, f lirtatious byte for the rest of the audit.  35\nCHAPTER FIVE\n\n\nHARVEST, DECEMBER 21, 2525\n\nAvery experienced a momentary vertigo as the Wagon dropped away from the Tiara. The orbital's artificial gravity wasn't terribly strong, but the Wagon still needed to engage its maglev paddles make temporary contact with the number-three strand 's superconducting filmin order to pull itself free. After a few kilometers, the paddles retracted  and Avery's head stopped spinning; Harvest's massy tug was all it needed to continue its fall. Over the PA, the Wagon's hospitality computer annou nced that the journey from geo-stationary orbit to Utgard, Harvest's equatorial capitol city,  would take a little less than an hour. Then, from smaller speakers in Avery's seat, it asked if he wo uld like to hear the CA's official planetary introduction. Avery glanced at Healy, still fiddlin g with his harness a few seats to his left. Mainly so he wouldn't have to spend the entire journey parryi ng more of the Corpsman's uncomfortable questions, Avery agreed. Immediately, the Staff Sergeant felt his COM pad vi brate in his olive-drab fatigue pants. He pulled it from his pocket and tapped the pad's rece ssed touch screen, linking it to the wagon's network. Then he removed its integrated ear buds an d screwed them into place. As their spongy casings expanded to fit the contours of his ear can als, the hum of the Wagon's heaters compressed into a low roar. In this approximation of silence, the computer began the canned narration.\n\"On behalf of the Colonial Authority, welcome to Ha rvestcornucopia of Epsilon Indi!\" a male voice enthused. \"I'm this world's 'agricultural ope rations artificial intelligence.' But please, call me Mack.\"\nThe official CA seal warmed onto the screen of Aver y's pada looming profile of an iconic eagle in a circle of seventeen bright stars, one fo r each UNSC world. The eagle's wing sheltered a group of colonists. Their hopeful eyes were locked on a fleet of sleek colony ships rocketing along the eagle's upturned beak. The image bespoke expansion through unity, a messag e that, in light of the Insurrection, struck Avery as more naive than inspirational.\n\"For every person on every one of our worlds, Harve st is synonymous with sustenance.\"\nBeneath Mack's easy drawl, the first uplifting chor ds of Harvest's planetary anthem began to play.\n\"But what allows us to produce such a bounty of fre sh and wholesome food?\"\nThe narration paused for dramatic effect, and in th at moment Harvest's northern pole rose above the bottom edge of the view-port in the wall opposi te Avery's seata patch of ice-less, deep blue sea cupped by a gently curving coast.\n\"Two words,\" Mack continued, answering his own ques tion. \"Geography and climate. The Edda supercontinent covers more than two-thirds of Harve st, creating an abundance of arable land. Two low-salinity seasHugin in the north and Munin in t he southare the planet's main source of\"\nHealy tapped Avery's shoulder, and the Staff Sergea nt pulled one of his ear-buds. \"You want anything?\" the Corpsman asked, nodding at a row of food and dispensers beneath the view-port. Avery shook his head: No.   36  Healy bounded over Avery's legs, and pulled himself  along the seats to the end of the row. There was enough gravity in the Wagon that Healy co uld perform a controlled fall down a set of stairs, pull himself along the railing and make it to an open social area before the dispensers. But when the corps-man tried to walk, his legs slipped out from under him, and he fell backward onto his outstretched hands. Avery detected a hint of vo lition in Healy's buffooneryas if he were playing for laughs. If so, it worked. Some of the Tiara's maintenance t echs, sitting in the tiered seats to Avery's right, clapped and whistled as the Corpsman struggl ed to regain his footing. Healy shrugged and offered a shy \"whatcha gonna do?\" smile, then conti nued toward the dispensers. Avery frowned. Healy was the kind of soldier he wou ld have liked when he first joined the marines: a joker, a troublemakerthe kind of recrui t that actually seemed to enjoy bearing the brunt of a drill instructors' wrath. But there weren't ma ny jokers in Avery's part of the corps. And as much as Avery hated to admit it, he had grown so ac customed to the pervasive grimness of the other NavSpecWar marines fighting the Insurrection that h e had a hard time relating to anyone that didn't share their no-nonsense approach to soldiering.\n\"Eighty-six percent of Edda is within five hundred meters of sea level,\" Mack continued. \"In fact, the only really major change in elevation occ urs along the Bifrostwhat you call an escarpmentthat cuts the continent on a diagonal. H ave a look. You should be able to see it now, just west of Utgard.\"\nAvery removed his remaining ear-bud. The view now s poke for itself. He could just make out the Bifrost's northeastern t ip beneath a skein of cirrus cloudsa bright fall of limestone shale that started in the norther n plains just south of the Hugin Sea and cut southwesterly toward the equator. Because of the vi ew-port's orientation, Avery couldn't see directly down. But he could imagine the view: a low -slung semicircle of the Tiara's seven sunlit strands angling toward Utgard. Many minutes passed, and then the view-port filled with a patchwork of pastoral colors: yellows and greens and brownsan enlarging grid of fields c risscrossed with silver lines. Avery correctly assumed these were part of a maglev train systemse ven main lines heading out from depots at the base of each of the elevators, dividing into smalle r branchlines like veins in a leaf. The Wagon's computer came back over the PA to alert  its passengers to return to their seats for deceleration into Utgard. But the technicians conti nued drinking beer from the dispensers with Healy as the first of the capital's buildings rose into view. The skyline wasn't spectacularthere were only a few dozen towers, none more than twenty  stories high. But the buildings were all modern glass-shrouded designs, evidence that Harves t had come a long way since Avery's last visit. When he'd made his hit, the city wasn't much more t han a few blocks of polycrete pre-fabs, and the whole colony had a population of fifty, maybe sixty  thousand residents. Checking his COM pad one more time before putting it away, he learned that t he number had grown to a little more than three hundred thousand. Suddenly, the buildings disappeared and the Wagon d arkened as it dropped into the number three strand's anchora ponderous polycrete monolit h connected to a vast warehouse where dozens of cargo containers waited to ascend. Avery waited for the techs to clear the Wagon then joined Healy at the luggage bin. They retrieved their duff els and emerged from the anchor's passenger terminal, eyes blinking in Epsilon Indi's afternoon  light.\n\"Ag-worlds,\" Healy grumbled. \"Always hotter than sh it.\"\nUtgard's thick equatorial air had instantly maxed t he wicking properties of their uniforms. The fabric clung to the smalls of their backs as the tw o soldiers tromped west down a flagstone ramp to a broad, tree-lined boulevard. A white and green seda n taxi idled against the boulevard's curb. The stripe of holo-tape across its passenger-side door flashed the simple message: TRANSPORT:\nJOHNSON, HEALY.  37  \"Open up!\" Healy hollered, banging a fist on the ta xi's roof. The vehicle raised its gull-wing doors and popped its trunk. Bags stowed, Avery sett led in the driver's seat and Healy took shotgun. Fans hummed inside the dashboard, and a frigid blas t attacked the humid air.\n\"Hello,\" the sedan chirped as it pulled into the bo ulevard's sparse traffic. \"I have been instructed to take you to...\" There was a pause as it prepared a  concatenated response: \"Colonial. Militia. Garrison. Gladsheim Highway. Exit twenty-nine. Is t hat correct?\"\nHealy licked the sweat from his upper lip. He'd man aged to drink a decent amount of beer during the wagon's descent, and his words came out a little slurred.\n\"Yeah, but we need to make a stop. One thirteen Nob el Avenue.\"\n\"Confirmed. One thir\"\n\"Belay that!\" Avery barked. \"Continue preconfirmed route!\"\nThe sedan slowed, momentarily confused, then turned  left down a boulevard that bordered the northern edge of a long, grassy parkUtgard's centr al mall.\n\"What do you think you're doing?\"\n\"One of the techs told me about a place with really friendly ladies. And I figured before we\"\nAvery cut Healy short. \"Car, I'm driving.\"\n\"Do you assume all liability for\"\n\"Yes! And give me a map.\"\nA compact steering wheel unfolded from a compartmen t in the dash. Avery clamped it tight with both hands.\n\"Manual control confirmed,\" the sedan replied. \"Ple ase drive safely.\"\nAs Avery thumbed a pressure pad in the wheel that l inked to the sedan's accelerator, a ghostly grid of the surrounding streets appeared on the inn er surface of the windshield. Avery instantly memorized the route.\n\"Kill the map. And lower the goddamn AC.\"\nThe fans slowed and the humidity began to slink for ward, cowed but not beaten.\n\"Look, Johnson.\" Healy sighed, rolling up his shirt sleeves. \"You're new to this, so let me explain. There are only a couple reasons to do CMT.  First, it's very hard to get shot. Second, it's th e best way I know to sample all kinds of colonial tail.\" Avery changed lanes without warn ing. Healy swung hard against the passenger-side door. The Cor psman righted himself with a petulant sigh. \"A uniform will get you killed in Eridanus. But out he re? It'll get you laid.\"\nAvery forced himself to breathe a slow three-count and eased his thumb off the accelerator. To his left, a fountain in the center of the mall shot  plumes of water high into the air. The mist carrie d across the boulevard, turning the sedan's dusty win dshield into a mottled, muddy mess. The wipers came on automatically and quickly cleared the view.\n\"My uniform means the same wherever I go,\" Avery sa id calmly. \"It tells people I am a marine, not some navy squid who has never once been shot at , let alone fired a round at someone else. My uniform reminds me of the UNSC Code of Conduct, whi ch has very clear restrictions on the consumption of alcohol and fraternization with civi lians.\" He waited for Healy to sit a little straighter in his seat. \"Most important, my uniform  reminds me of the men who are no longer alive to wear it.\"\nAvery's mind flashed with memory: the ghostly outli nes of a squad of marines inside a restaurant, rendered bright white by a drone's ther mal camera. He took his eyes off the roadstared straight at Healy. \"You disrespect the uniform, you  disrespect them. You hear me?\"\nThe Corpsman swallowed dryly. \"Yeah, I hear you.\"\n\"And from now on, my name is Staff Sergeant Johnson. Understood?\"\n\"I got it.\" Healy grimaced and shifted to look out his window. He didn't need to say what else was on his mind; Avery clearly saw \"I got it, asshole,\" in the way he locked his arms across his chest.  38  As the sedan neared the end of the mall, Avery sped  through an intersection past the imposing granite edifice of Harvest's parliament. The I-shap ed building was surrounded by a low ironwork fence and well-manicured gardens. Its roof was that ched with sun-bleached wheat straw. Avery had meant everything he said. But he also reg retted it. He and Healy were essentially the same rank, but he'd just ordered him around like a raw recruit. And when did I become such a hypocrite? Avery wondered, tightening his grip on the wheel. H is three-day bender back in the Zone wasn't the first time he'd ended up drunk in unifor m. Avery was preparing to deliver a terse apology when  Healy muttered: \"Oh, and Staff Sergeant Johnson? When you get a chance, pull over. Petty Of ficer First Class Healy needs to puke.\"\n\nThree silent hours later, they were down the Bifros t and well out onto the Plain of Ida. Epsilon Indi was setting in a pink and orange wash, above the pe rfectly straight, two-lane highway. Because of Harvest's small diameter, the horizon had a slight but noticeable curvea bow in the fields of ripening wheat that had sprung up from the Ida afte r many hundreds of kilometers of fruit orchards. Avery had the sedan's windows down, and the air bil lowing through the cab was no longer unbearably hot. The Earth-relative UNSC military ca lendar said it was December. But on Harvest it was the height of summerthe middle of the growing season. As the last of Epsilon Indi's rays slunk below the horizon, it got very dark very quickly. There were no lights along the highway and no settlements  in sight. Harvest had no moon, and while some of the system's four other planets shone unusually close, their reflected starshine wasn't enough to light the way ahead. As the sedan's headlamps came on, Avery spotted the exit marker and turned north off the highway. The vehicle shuddered as it bit into the loose grav el of an upward sloping drive. A few gentle turns through the wheat and they reached a parade g round surrounded by very new, single-story polycrete buildings: mess hall, barracks, motor poo l, and triagethe same rigid footprint Avery had seen many times before. As he circled the sedan around the parade ground's flagpole, its headlights illuminated a man sitting on the mess hall steps, smoking a cigar. Th e scent wafting through the vehicle's windows was instantly recognizable: Sweet William, the pref erred brand of pretty much every officer in the corps. When Avery brought the sedan to a stop and s tepped out, he was quick to salute.\n\"At ease.\" Captain Ponder took a long drag from his  cigar. \"Johnson and Healy, correct?\"\n\"Yes, sir!\" the two soldiers replied together. Ponder rose slowly from the steps. \"Good to have yo u. Let me help you with your gear.\"\n\"That's alright, sir. Only got the two bags.\"\n\"Travel light, first to fight.\" The Captain smiled. Adjusting for the steps, Avery could tell Ponder wa s a few inches shorter than he was, and a little less broad in the shoulders. He guessed the Captain's age was somewhere north of fifty. But with his buzz-cut, salt-and-pepper hair, and well-t anned skin, he looked as vital as a man half his age, except for the fact that he was missing his ri ght arm. Avery noted that the sleeve of Ponder's fatigue shi rt was cuffed to a phantom elbow and pinned neatly to his side. Then he stopped staring. He had  seen plenty of amputees. But it was rare to meet an active-duty marine that wasn't fitted with a permanent prosthetic. Ponder nodded toward the sedan. \"Sorry about the ci vilian vehicle. Warthogs were supposed to be here a week ago. Shipping delay, if you can beli eve it. I've got my other platoon-leader in Utgard, trying to track them down.\"\n\"What about the recruits?\" Avery asked, pulling the  duffels from the sedan.\n\"Monday. We've got the whole weekend to set up shop .\"\nAvery shut the trunk. As soon as he stepped away, t he vehicle reversed around the flagpole and traced its furrows back down to the highway.  39  \"Which platoon is mine?\" Avery asked.\n\"First.\" Ponder pointed his cigar at one of the two  barracks on the southern edge of the parade ground. Healy hefted his duffel onto his shoulder. \"You got  me bunking with the grunts, sir?\"\n\"Just until you clear a space in triage. Someone in  logistics ordered a shitload of supplies. Must have confused this garrison with some CSH on Tribut e.\"\nHealy chuckled. Avery did not; he was all too famil iar with the kind of casualties a combat support hospital received.\n\"Mess hall dispensers are working if you want anyth ing,\" the Captain continued. \"Otherwise, get some rest. I've scheduled a briefing for zero seven  thirty to go over the training schedulemake sure we kick-off the first phase right.\"\n\"Anything else for tonight, sir?\" Avery asked. Ponder clamped his cigar tightly in his teeth. \"Not hing that can't wait until morning.\"\nAvery watched the ashen tip of Ponder's cigar flare  in the darkness. Then he saluted, and marched off to the 1st platoon barracks, Healy trai ling behind through the shifting gravel. The Captain watched them traverse the pools of ligh t cast by the parade ground's elevated arc lights. Some things, he knew, couldn't wait. Ponder tossed his cigar and ground it with his boot . Then he took his own path to his private quarters a djacent the motor pool.\n\nHalf an hour later, Avery was unpacked. All his gea r was neatly stowed in a wall-locker in his platoon-leader's racka small room at the front of the barracks to one side of its screen-door entrance. He could hear Healy at the back of the ba rracks, still pulling items from his duffels humming to himself as he arranged them on his bed.\n\"Hey. Staff Sergeant Johnson,\" the Corpsman shouted . \"You got some soap?\"\nAvery gritted his teeth. \"Check the showers.\"\nAs painful as it was to have Healy now taking pleas ure in Avery's previous ordertossing his formality back in his facethe Staff Sergeant was g lad he could hear the Corpsman through the walls of his room. Avery knew from experience that a large part of a drill instructor's job was simply keeping exhausted recruits from taking their  frustrations out on one anotherto be the focus of their anger, and, if he did his job right, their  eventual admiration. But Avery also knew that some days his platoon woul d return to the barracks pissed-off and itching for a fight precisely because he'd ground t hem down. At least he'd be able to hear any commotion from his rack and be able to break it up before things got out of hand.\n\"Look, it's only one night,\" Healy continued in a c onciliatory tone. \"If I can't get triage ship shape tomorrow, I'll just bunk with what's his name .\"\n\"You mean the Captain ?\" Avery asked. He threw a brown wool blanket over his bed. Regardless of the heat, he needed to show his recru its how to make a proper bed.\n\"No, the other platoon leader. Hang on, I'll check my COM.\"\nAvery smoothed the blanket with wide sweeps of his palms. Then he started on the corners tight hospital folds that would have made his own d rill instructor proud.\n\"Byrne,\" Healy hollered. \"Staff Sergeant Nolan Byrn e.\"\nAvery froze, his hands stuffed halfway under his ma ttress. The open coils of the bed frame bit into his palms.\n\"You know him?\"\nAvery completed the corner. He stood and reached fo r his pillow and case. \"Yes.\"\n\"Huh. Did you know he was gonna be here ?\"\n\"No.\" Avery stuffed the pillow with a practiced thr ust.\n\"You two friends?\"\nAvery wasn't quite sure how to answer that. \"I've k nown him a long time.\"  40  \"Oh, now I get it,\" Healy's voice changed pitch, signaling a n incoming jibe. \"You lovebirds start spending too much time together, and I might get je alous.\" Avery heard the Corpsman snicker then run the zipper of his duffel. \"So what do you think  the story is with the Captain's arm?\"\nBut Avery didn't answer. He was focused on the loud ening growl of a Warthog light reconnaissance vehicle's engine as it raced up from  the highway. The Warthog came to a hasty stop outside the barracks door. Its engine roared and di ed, and soon Avery heard the crunch of approaching boots. Quickly, Avery paced to his locker, parted his neat  piles of shirts and pants and removed a patent-leather belt with a bright brass buckle stam ped with the UNSC eagle and globe emblem. Behind him, the barrack's door swung open. Avery fe lt a chill on the back of his neck.\n\"That's a well made bed,\" Staff Sergeant Byrne said . \"After a month in the hospital, you get an eye for that sort of thing.\"\nAvery coiled his belt tight enough to hide it in th e palm of his hand, shut the locker, and turned to face his former fellow squad-leader. Byrne no lo nger wore the helmet with the silver mirrored visor he'd had on the day Avery failed to shoot the  Innie woman in the restaurantthe day Byrne had lost all the members of his squad. But he might  as well have had it on. His ice-blue eyes were just as impenetrable.\n\"Because of all the changes ,\" Byrne explained with a sneer. \"Piss and shite al l over the sheets because I was too doped to control myself. When the  nurses gave me new ones, they'd always tuck them in too tight or not tight enough.\"\n\"It's good to see you, Byrne.\"\n\"But that?\" Byrne continued, ignoring Avery's greet ing. \"That's a well-made bed.\"\nFresh, pink scars crinkled the Irish Staff Sergeant 's already rugged faceevidence that his helmet's visor had shattered in the Innie blast. A jagged stitch from a shrapnel injury ran from his left temple up and over his ear. His black hair mus t have burned completely away; even though it was cut regulation short, Avery could see it was co ming back in patches.\n\"I'm glad you're alright,\" Avery said.\n\"Are you now?\" Byrne's brogue had begun to thicken.  After years of soldiering together, Avery understood exactly what that meant. But he wanted B yrne to know one thing.\n\"They were all good men. I'm sorry.\"\nByrne shook his head. \"Not sorry enough.\"\nFor such a large man, Byrne moved with amazing spee d. He sprung at Avery, arms wide, and slammed him back against the locker. He locked his hands behind Avery's back and squeezed, threatening to break his ribs. As much as it hurt, Avery sucked in a breath and brought his forehead crashing down on Byrne's nose. Byrne grunted, his g rip faltered, and he staggered back. In a flash, Avery ducked around behind him, belt st retched between his hands. He looped it over Byrne's neck, and pulled it tight. Byrne's eyes wid ened. Avery wasn't trying to kill his fellow marine, just get him under control. Byrne outweighe d him by at least twenty kilos, and Avery wanted him out for the count as quickly as possible . But Byrne wasn't about to let that happen. With a s trained but mighty cry he reached over his shoulders and grabbed Avery's wristsleaned forward  and brought Avery high on his back. Then Byrne proceeded to slam Avery against the rooms woo den walls with such force that the painted plywood began to splinter. Avery's teeth shuddered. He tasted blood in his mou th. But every time Byrne leaned forward for another backward thrust, Avery tightened his belt. Byrne began to wheeze. Avery could see the veins in his neck strain and his ears begin to purp le. But an instant before Byrne lost consciousness, he brought the heel of his boot up between Avery's legsright into his unprotected groin. In the few seconds before he seized up, Avery hooke d a foot around Byrne's shins and tripped him onto his bed. Byrne fell short, cracked his for ehead on the bed frame, and went limp. As Avery  41  rolled him overraised a fist to finish the joba d ebilitating ache spread from his groin to his arm. Byrne's eyes blinked, trying to clear away the bloo d flowing from a jagged cut, and Avery threw a half-speed punch. But Byrne was only dazed. He rais ed a massive hand, and caught Avery's fist in his iron grip.\n\"Why didn't you take the shot?\" Byrne grunted.\n\"There were civilians,\" Avery groaned. Byrne slammed his other palm up into Avery's gut, b unching his fatigue shirt in his fist. With a powerful thrust of his hips, he flipped Avery over his shoulders toward the barrack's door. The air exploded from Avery's lungs as he landed flat on hi s back in the narrow hallway outside his rack.\n\"You had an order !\" Byrne growled, rising to his feet. Avery's chest heaved as he picked himself off the f loor. \"There was a kid; a boy.\"\n\"What about my team ?!\"\nByrne lumbered toward Avery and threw a high right jab. But Avery blocked it with his left forearm, and countered with a powerful, right-hand swipe. As Byrne's head snapped sideways, Avery brought a knee up into his kidneys. But Byrne  collapsed against the blow, and drove him back against the hallway wall. Avery felt his left shoulder dislocate then pop back into place. He blinked his eyes against the pain, giving Byrne an opening. The other Staff Sergeant quickly throttled him around the neck.\n\"They taught you to be a killer, Avery. They taught  us both.\" Byrne slid him up the wall until his boots were twitching half a meter off the floor . The barrack's fluorescent lights seemed to dim, and Avery saw stars. He tried to kick himself free.  But it was no use. \"You can't hide from that,\"\nByrne sneered. \"And you sure as hell can't hide fro m me.\"\nAvery was about to pass out when he heard the metal lic snap of someone working a pistol's slide.\n\"Staff Sergeant Byrne.\" Captain Ponder said firmly.  \"Stand down.\"\nByrne tightened his grip on Avery's throat. \"This i s private business.\"\n\"Drop him, or I shoot.\"\n\"Bullshit.\"\n\"No, marine.\" The Captain's voice was deadly calm. \"It most certainly is not.\"\nByrne released his hands. Avery dropped and slumped  back against the wall. Gasping, he looked toward the barrack's door. The Captain held an M6 s ervice pistol in a prosthetic replacement for his missing arm. Avery could see the bright titanium jo ints that were Ponder's fingers and the carbon fiber weave of his forearm musculature.\n\"I know the numbers,\" Ponder said. \"Thirty-eight ci vilian casualties, three of your unit KIA. But I also know Staff Sergeant Johnson is not in the st ockade, nor was he charged with any misconduct. And as far as I'm concerned that's all anyone needs to know.\"\nByrne tightened his fists, but left them at his sid es.\n\"You're angry. I understand that. But this ends tonight.\" Ponder shifted his gaze to Avery. \"You got anything else, now's the time.\"\n\"Sir, no sir.\" Avery's voice was hoarse. Ponder's eyes snapped to Byrne. \"And you?\"\nWithout a moment's pause, Byrne smashed a fist into  the side of Avery's face. Avery dropped to a knee. \"That should do it,\" Byrne grunted. Avery spat a mouthful of blood onto the barrack's f loor. He hadn't run, but Byrne had followedgotten transferred away from TREBUCHET jus t like him. Avery knew something wasn't right. And that filled him with more anger than any  sucker punch.\n\"Last chance, Johnson\" Ponder said. Avery rose, and slugged Byrne hard enough to snap h is head past his shoulder.  42  One of Byrne's teeth skipped along the floor and ca me to rest near Healy. The Corpsman had made his way forward from his bunk, hefting one of his boots like a clubapparently to try and break up the fight on his own. \"Jesus,\" the Corpsma n whispered, starring down at the tooth.\n\"We're finished.\" Ponder lowered his pistol. \"That' s an order.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Avery and Byrne said together. The Captain gave each Staff Sergeant a final, empha tic glance, then marched down the barrack's steps. The screen-door banged shut behind him, crea ked back on its hinges and came to a rattling rest.\n\"I'm not rated for oral surgery,\" Healy said lamely  in the silence that followed. He knelt and picked up Byrne's tooth.\n\"Doesn't matter. What's done is done.\" Byrne locked  Avery's wary stare. He sucked at the bloody hole of his missing canine. \"But this is so I don't forget.\"\nWith a slow rotation of his massive frame, Byrne fo llowed Ponder into the night.\n\"I'm going to triage,\" Healy announced.\n\"Good,\" Avery replied, rubbing his jaw. The way he felt, the last thing he wanted was Healy keeping him awake with more conversation.\n\"To grab a med-kit. Then I'm coming right back.\"\nAvery huffed as Healy walked past, \"You sure you st ill want to bunk with me?\"\nThe Corpsman paused in the doorway. For the first t ime, Avery recognized the soothing appeal of his near-perpetual grin.\n\"You're a piece of work, Johnson.\" Healy jerked his  chin at Byrne's fading footfalls. \"But that guy? He'd probably kill me in my sleep.\"  43\nCHAPTER SIX\n\n\nMINOR TRANSGRESSION, EPSILON INDI SYSTEM\n\nDadab slunk through the engine room, doing his best  to stay low in spite of his methane tank. In his fist he held a rock, a mottled gray and green chunk  of digestive grit he'd taken from the Kig-Yar's dining compartment. Easy now, he thought, rising up behind a thick line of condui t bracketed to the floor, don't spook it. Scrub grubs were anxious creatures. The hairs that covered their turgid bodies were always in motion, sensing for danger as they ate their way ar ound machinery that could easily scald or freeze. But it wasn't until Dadab rose up that it felt a di sturbance in the room's steamy air. The grub pulled itself from the floor with a loud pop and began und ulating for the safety of an elevated overflow unit, its consumption orifice warbling in miserable  panic. Dadab threw his rock, and the grub disappeared in a  mealy poof. The rock carried forward, rebounded off the iridescent casing of Minor Transgression's engine, and skipped to a stop in a puddle of viscous green coolant. Had the grub lived , it eventually would have sucked the puddle up. Dadab snorted proudly inside his mask, and flexed o ne of his hands: < Two!  >\n< Apologies, but I am perplexed. > Lighter Than Som e reached a pearly tentacle into the puddle, retrieved the rock, and tossed it back to Dadab. < I only saw one grub.  >\nThe Deacon rolled his small, red eyes. The rules of  the game weren't complicated. He simply lacked the vocabulary to explain them clearly. < Watch  > he signed. Dadab wiped the rock clean with a corner of his ora nge tunic. Then with the pointed tip of one of his fingers, he scratched a second hash mark int o the stoneright beside one for the first grub that had wandered into the methane suite, breaking a long stretch of mind-numbing confinement. It had been many sleep cycles since Minor Transgression exited its jump at the edge of the unexplored alien system. Chur'R-Yar had moved inwar d at a cautious pace toward the alien cargo vessel's point of departure. But until they arrived , the Deacon had very little to do; Zhar and the other Kig-Yar crewman certainly weren't interested in listening to any of his sermons. He showed the rock to Lighter Than Some, and signed his simple math: < One, one, two! > The docile grubs were hardly a challengenothing like t he mud wasps and shade crabs of Dadab's youth. But in the Unggoy game of hunting rock, you marked every kill, easy or not.\n< Oh, I see ... > the Huragok replied. < The amusement is additive.  >\n< More... fun...?  > Dadab struggled to mimic poses for words he hadn 't yet learned. Lighter Than Some formed slow, simple poses. < More, kill, more, fun.  >\nDadab didn't take offense when the creature dumbed down its discourse for clarity. He knew he spoke no better than a Huragok infant and was grate ful for its patience.\n< Yes  > Dadab gestured, < more, kill, more, fun.  > He pulled a second rock from a pocket in his tunic and presented it to Lighter Than Some.  < Most, kill, win!  >\nBut the Huragok ignored himfloated back to the con duit and began to fix a stress fracture that was the cause of the coolant puddle.  44  Dadab knew the creature had a preternatural urge to  repair things. It was almost impossible to distract it from its work, which was why Huragok we re such valuable crew members. With a Huragok on board, nothing remained broken for long.  Indeed, seconds later the leak was sealed the tear in the metal conduit knitted together by t he cilia that covered the tips of Lighter Than Some's tentacles.\n< Hunt!  > Dadab said, offering the rock a second time.\n< I'd rather not.  >\n< Why?  >\n< Really, you go ahead. Try for three.  >\n< Game, fun!  >\n< No, your game is murder. >\nDadab couldn't help an exasperated groan. A grub was a grub! There were hundreds of the things skulking around the Kig-Yar ship! On a long voyage like this one, it was essential to  thin their numbers before they multiplied and worked their way  into a critical system. Then again, Dadab thought, maybe the Huragok felt a certain kinship with his p rey? They were both voiceless servantstireless slaves to the Kig- Yar vessel's needs. Dadab imagined Lighter Than Some 's beady sensory nodes glimmering with condemnation . Looking around the engine-room, Dadab spotted a spe nt energy core. He hefted the clear, bowed cube onto the overflow unit the grub was aiming for  and worked it back and forth until it balanced nicelyuntil he was sure the Huragok would tip it, even with a glancing blow.\n< Now, no, kill. > Dadab signed enthusiastically. < Just, fun!  >\nLighter Than Some deflated one of its gas-sacs with an obstinate toot .\n< Try!  > Dadab pleaded. < Just, once!  >\nWith obvious disdain, the Huragok curled its tentac le and tossed its rock. It was a perfunctory throw, but it hit the core dead center, knocking it  to the floor.\n< One!  > Dadab grunted happily and was about to reset the  target for another toss when the Shipmistress' voice crackled from a round metal sig nal unit clipped to his tank harness.\n\"Deacon, to the bridge. And do not bring the Huragok.\"\n\nChur'R-Yar sat at the edge of her command-chair, me smerized by the contents of the bridge's holo tank. The representation of the alien system was no w much more detailed. Planets and asteroids even an inbound cometwere all represented, details  previously missing from Minor Transgression 's database. The planet from which the alien ship b egan its journey shone in the very center of the tank. But it was the thousands of cya n glyphs dotting the planet's surfaceall with the same, circular designthat transfixed her. Suddenly, the glyphs and everything inside the tank  flickered as it temporarily lost power.\n\"Careful!\" the Shipmistress hissed, twisting toward  Zhar. The male Kig-Yar stood near an alcove in the bridge's concave purple walls, a lase r-cutter in one of his clawed hands.\n\"I want it disconnected, not destroyed!\"\n\"Yes, Mistress.\" Zhar's spines flattened subservien tly on his head. Then he gingerly reapplied his cutter to a twist of circuits connected to a de vice with three pyramidal parts suspended in the center of the alcove. The largest of the pyramids w as arranged point down; the two smaller ones pointed up, supporting the largest on either side. All three shone with a silver glow that framed Zhar against the alcove. This was the ship's Luminary, an arcane device requ ired on all Covenant vessels. It had assigned thousands of glyphs or Luminations to the alien wor ld, each one a possible Forerunner relic. Chur'R-Yar's tongue flicked against her teeth with barely contained excitement. If only Minor Transgression had a bigger hold....   45  The Shipmistress came from a long line of matriarch al ship captains. And while most of her bloodline had been decimated in defense of asteroid  redoubts during the Covenant's aggressive conversion of her species into its faith, she still  felt her ancestors' buccaneering spirit pulsing through her veins. Kig-Yar had always been pirates. Long before the Co venant arrived, they sailed the tropical archipelagos of their watery home world, raiding co mpeting clans for food and mates. As their populations grew, the distances and differences bet ween clans decreased; a new cooperative spirit led to the creation of spacecraft that lifted them from their planet. But as some clans looked out on the dark and endless sea of space, they could not r esist returning to their old marauding ways. In the end, these pirates were the species' only ef fective resistance to the Covenant. But they could not hold out forever. To save themselves, the  captains were forced to accept letters of marque:\nagreements that let them keep their ships so long a s they sailed in the service of a Covenant Ministry. Some Kig-Yar saw opportunity in this subservience. Chur'R-Yar saw eons of table scraps. Endless patrols, looking for relicsunimaginably va luable treasures she would never be allowed to claim as her own. Yes, during her voyages she might  stumble across some small amount of salvage:\na derelict Covenant habitat or a damaged alien frei ghter. But these were comparatively meager alms, and Chur'R-Yar was no beggar. At least not anymore, she thought. The Shipmistress knew she could remove  a small number of relics without anyone noticing. But only if her shi p's Luminary remained silent, and she waited to transmit its accounting until after she had taken her share. Chur'R-Yar felt the callused plates on her neck and  shoulders contract. This thick skin served as natural armor, keeping females of her species safe during the literal backbiting that accompanied most Kig-Yar mating sessions. The Shipmistress wasn 't normally very broody. But when she sold the relics on the Covenant black-market, she hoped to earn enough profit to take Minor Transgression out of service for an entire mating season. And tha t possibility was deeply arousing. She relaxed in her chair and stared at Zharwatched  his sinewy muscles ripple beneath his scalesas he carefully severed the Luminary's conne ctions to her ship's signal circuits. He wasn't her ideal mate. She would have preferred someone wi th higher standing amongst the clans, but she had always been partial to males with virile plumag e. And Zhar had another advantage: he was close at hand. With all the blood rushing to her shoulder s, Chur'R-Yar began to feel deliciously faint. But then the bridge door cycled open, and Dadab tro tted through. The Unggoy's tunic reeked of engine coolant and gassy Huragok, and the stink imm ediately killed her libido.\n\"Shipmistress?\" Dadab preformed a curt bow then loo ked suspiciously at Zhar.\n\"What do you see?\" Chur'R-Yar snapped, redirecting the Unggoy's gaze toward the holo-tank.\n\"A system. Single star. Five planets.\" Dadab took a  step toward the tank. \"One of the planets seems... to... have...\" His voice squeaked off, and he dr ew a series of rapid breaths. Chur'R-Yar clucked her tongue. \" A Luminary does not lie. \"\nUsually she quoted Holy Writs only to mock them, bu t this time Chur'R-Yar was serious. Every Luminary was modeled after a device the Prophets ha d located aboard an ancient Forerunner warshipone that now stood at the center of the Cov enant capitol, High Charity. Luminaries were sacred objects and tampering with them was punishab le by deathor worse. Which was why the Shipmistress knew the Deacon was so distressed by Zhar's actions. As her chosen mate continued to flash his laser all around  the Luminary, the Deacon shifted his weight from one of his conical, flat-bottomed feet to the other. Chur'R-Yar could hear the valves inside his mask clicking as he tried to get his breathing unde r control.\n\"I must report these Luminations at once,\" Dadab ga sped.\n\"No,\" the Shipmistress snapped. \"You will not.\"\nZhar severed a final circuit and the Luminary dimme d.  46  \"Heresy!\" Dadab wailed, before he could stay his to ngue. Zhar clattered his toothy jaws and stepped toward t he Deacon, laser cutter blazing. But Chur'R Yar stopped the over-protective male with a rattlin g hiss. Under different circumstances, she might have let him tear the Unggoy apart for his foolish insult. But for now, she needed him alive.\n\"Calm yourself,\" she said. \"The Luminary is not dam aged. It simply cannot speak.\"\n\"But the Ministry!\" Dadab stammered. \"It will deman d an explanation\"\n\"And it shall have one. After I take my pick of plu nder.\"\nThe Shipmistress uncurled a claw toward the holo-ta nk. There was a single glyph not located on the alien planet. To the untrained eye, it might ha ve looked like some sort of display errora misplaced piece of data. But Chur'R-Yar's pirate ga ze recognized it for what it was: a relic aboard another of the alien freighters; one she hoped woul d be as easy to capture as the first. The Deacon was shivering now, his whole blue-gray b ody quaking with terror. The Shipmistress knew the Unggoy was right: what she planned to do was heresy. Only the Prophets were allowed access to relics. And if tampering with a Luminary meant death, defying the Prophets meant damnation. Then suddenly the Deacon calmed. Eyes darting betwe en the glyphs in the holo-tank and the bright red tip of Zhar's laser cutter, his breathin g slowed. Chur'R-Yar knew the Unggoy was smarter than most and guessed he had just realized the full extent his predicament: the Shipmistress had told him her secret plans, and yet he lived. Wh ich could only mean one thing: She had a plan for him.\n\"What would my Shipmistress have me do?\" Dadab aske d. Chur'R-Yar's teeth glittered in the Luminary's weak ened light. \"I need you to lie.\"\nThe Deacon nodded. And the Shipmistress set course for the relic-laden ship.\n\nHenry \"Hank\" Gibson loved his freighterloved her b ig, ugly lines and the quiet rumble of her Shaw-Fujikawa drive. Most of all he loved to sail h er, which most people thought was a little unusual when a NAV computer could do just as well. But that was fine by Hank because, even more than his ship, he loved not giving a damn what peop le thought of him, something to which either of his ex-wives would gladly attest. Human ship captains weren't uncommon in the UNSC co mmercial fleet; they just mainly sailed cruise ships and other passenger vessels. Hank had worked for one of the big cruise companies served on the luxury liner Two Drink Minimum nonstop from Earth to Arcadia for the better part o f fifteen years, the last five as first mate. But the liner had needed all kinds of computer assi stance to get from A to B while keeping its hundreds of passengers well fed and rested. Hank wa s a self-avowed loner, and it didn't matter if the voices talking to him were human or simulatedhe li ked a quiet bridge. And Two Drink Minimum 's certainly wasn't that. If the pay hadn't been so go od, and the time away from his wives so therapeutic, Hank would have quit a whole lot soone r. Other than astrogation (the coordination of Slipspa ce jumps that required a NAV computer), a freighter captain could handle as many of his ship' s normal space operations as he liked. Hank loved having his hands on the controlsblasting away with  his hydrazine rockets as he bullied thousands of tons of cargo in and out of a planet's gravity w ell. The fact that he owned his ship, This End Up, made sailing her even sweeter. It had taken all his  savings, painful renegotiations of his alimonies, and a loan so large he didn't like to think about i t, but now he was his own boss. He got to pick what he hauled and over time he built up a list of custo mers who were willing to pay a little extra for personalized service. One of his most reliable customers was JOTUN Heavy Industries, a Mars-based firm specializing in the construction of semi-autonomous  farm machinery. His freighter's hold was currently filled with a prototype of their next ser ies of plowsmassive machines designed to till wide swaths of earth. The things were incredibly ex pensive, and Hank assumed a prototype would  47  be even more so. Which was why, staring at a consol e filled with flashing warning lights, he was more angry than afraid. This End Up 's unknown attacker had hit while the ship was hurt ling toward Harvest on a high speed intercept vector. Hank survived the attack un harmed. But the hostile fire had ruined his Shaw Fujikawa drive, fried his maneuvering rockets and m asercaused more damage to This End Up than he could afford to repair. Piracy was unheard of on the routes Hank ran, and he had never even considered adding the optional, extremely expensive  coverage to his policy. Hank slapped his hand on the console, silencing a n ew alarm: hull breach, port side of the cargo container, close to the stern. He could feel the ru bberized floor of the command cabin vibrate as something worked its way through the hull.\n\"God damn it!\" Hank cursed, wrenching a fire exting uisher from a wall bracket. He hoped the pirates wouldn't damage the JOTUN prototype as they  cut their way inside.\n\"Fine. These jerks wanna break my ship?\" Hank snarled, hefting the extinguisher ab ove his head. \"Then they're gonna buy it.\"\n\nThe interior of Minor Transgression 's umbilical glowed red as its penetrator tip burne d into the alien vessel. Through the semi-transparant walls, D adab could see laser scarring on the vessel's propulsion unitblack slash-marks from Chur'R-Yar's  comprehensive crippling. How can she be so calm?! Dadab groaned, looking down the umbilical at the Sh ipmistress. She stood behind Zhar, one clawed hand resting on the g rip of her holstered plasma-pistollike a Kig Yar pirate queen of oldpoised for boarding action.  The other two Kig-Yar crewmen standing just behind her were less composed. Both of them fiddled  with their energy cutlasses: pink crystal shards used as melee weapons. Dadab wondered if the crewme n, like him, realized they were doomed. He imagined Chur'R-Yar would succeed in removing th e relic (though some had proven to be quite dangerous, even in the Prophets' deft hands).  Then she would probably jump right into the thick of Covenant spacewhere her relic would show as one of countless othersand quickly find a buyer before raising any Ministry suspicions. It was a plausible plan. But Dadab knew he and any other unnecessary witnesses would be dead long befo re it was completed. In his case, immediately after he transmitted a false accounting of the numb er of Luminations in the alien system. The umbilical dimmed as its penetrator tip finished  its burn through the hull. The end of the passage irised open to reveal a shimmering energy f ield.\n\"Have the Huragok check the pressure,\" Chur'R-Yar s aid, glancing back at Dadab. The Deacon turned and signed to Lighter Than Some behind him: < Check, air, equal. > Before they boarded the alien vessel, they needed to be su re there was a balance between the umblilical's atmosphere and that of the ship's hold. If there wa sn't, they might be torn apart as they passed through the field. The Huragok floated nonchalantly past Dadab. For Lighter Than Some, this was just another opportunity to be helpful. It checked the sensors g overning the field and loosed a satisfied bleat. Zhar wasted no time jumping through.\n\"It is safe!\" the Kig-Yar male announced via his si gnal unit. Chur'R-Yar motioned the other male crewmen forward, then slipped through the fiel d followed closely by Lighter Than Some. Dadab took a deep breath and offered a silent praye r for the Prophets' forgiveness. Then he too passed into the alien vessel. Its hold wasn't nearly as packed as the first one t hey'd encountered. Instead of floor-to-ceiling containers of fruit, the space was dominated by a s ingle piece of cargo: a towering machine with six massive wheels. On the front of the machine was a b eamwider than the machine itselffitted with toothlike spikes, each twice as tall as Dadab.  Most of the machine's internal parts were shrouded by yellow and blue painted metal, but here  and there Dadab saw exposed circuits and pneumatics. Above the toothed beam were a series of  raised, bright metal symbols: J-O-T-U-N.  48  Dadab cocked his head. If the symbols were Forerunn er, he hadn't ever seen them. But he wasn't too surprised; he was just a lowly Deacon, a nd there were countless holy mysteries he had yet to understand.\n\"Tell the Huragok to investigate,\" Chur'R-Yar snapp ed, pointing at the machine. Dadab clapped his paws together to get Lighter Than Some 's attention: < Find, relic! >\nThe Huragok ballooned the largest of its sacs, incr easing its buoyancy. As it rose above one of the machine's large wheels, it vented a smaller cha mber, propelling itself through a curtain of multicolored wires. The Shipmistress directed Zhar and the two other cr ewmen to a pile of plastic crates strapped to the floor near the back of the vehicle. Eagerly cla ttering their bony jaws, the Kig-Yar leapt to their task, prying open the topmost boxes with quick jabs  and swift pulls of their claws. Soon they disappeared in a flurry of soft, white packing mate rial.\n\"Make yourself useful, Deacon,\" Chur'R-Yar snapped.  \"Collect the vessel's signal unit.\"\nDadab bowed and scampered around the machine to the  rear of the hold. The elevator platform worked the same as before, and soon he was rising u p to the passage that led to the command cabin. Halfway down the passage, the Deacon suddenly remem bered the disgusting filth that had awaited him last time. As he stepped through the cabin door , he involuntarily held his breath and shut his eyes. Clang! Something heavy slammed into Dadab's tank. He yelpe d with alarm and staggered forward. Another blow knocked him to his stomach. M ethane hissed from a fracture in his tank.\n\"Have mercy!\" Dadab shrieked, curling into a ball a nd covering his face with his spiny forearms. He heard a series of guttural exclamation s, and felt something kick the back of one of his legs. Dadab parted his arms ever so slightly, and p eeked through the crack. The alien was tall and muscular. Most of its pale f lesh was covered by a fitted cloth jumpsuit. Teeth bared, and holding a red metal cylinder above  its mostly hairless head, the thing looked savagenot at all like something that might possess  a holy relic. The alien lashed out with one of its heavy boots, s triking Dadab's leg a second time. It shouted more angry and unintelligible words.\n\"Please!\" Dadab whimpered, \"I don't understand!\" Bu t his pleas only seemed to anger the alien. It stepped forward, cudgel raised for a killing blo w. Dadab shrieked and covered his eyes.... But the blow never came. Dadab heard the cylinder b ounce off the rubbery floor, and roll to a stop against the side of the cabin. Slowly, the Dea con uncrossed his arms. The alien's mouth was open but it didn't speak. It teetered back and forth, grasping for its head. Then all at once, its arms slacked. Dadab scooted b ackward as the alien careened face-first onto the floor right between his legs. He heard a nervous bl eat and looked up. Lighter Than Some floated in the cabin's doorway. Three of its tentac les were tucked defensively close to its sacs. The fourth stuck str aight out, quivering in what Dadab initially took f or fear. But then he realized Lighter Than Some was trying to speakstruggling to form the simplest Huragok sign: < One.  >\nA clamor of clawed feet in the passage heralded the  Ship-mistress' approach. She shoved past the Huragok brandishing her plasma-pistol and cocke d one of her ruby eyes at the alien's corpse.\n\"How did it die?\" she asked. Dadab looked down. The back of the alien's skull wa s caved inpunctured with a ragged hole. Gingerly Dadab slipped two fingers inside the morta l wound. He pinched something hard in the center of the thing's brains, and pulled it out for  all to see: Lighter Than Some 's hunting rock.\n\nSif didn't like to upset her NAV computer charges. Somewhere deep in her core logic was a memory of her maker as a harried mother with little  patience for her infant child. But communicating with ships while they were in Slipspa ce was impossible. So there was no way for Sif  49  to give them forewarning of the additional security  measures Jilan al-Cygni had imposed after the audit.\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF >> DCS.CUP#-00040370\n<\\ ADHERE TO YOUR NEW TRAJECTORY.\n<\\ MAINTAIN REQUIRED SPEED.\n<\\ ALL IS WELL. \\>\n\nTo connect with Harvest, or any other planet, as it  hurtled through the void, freighters needed to exit Slipspace on the right trajectory, traveling a t match speed. Harvest orbited Epsilon Indi at a little more than one hundred fifty thousand kilomet ers per hour, faster than most UNSC worlds. Depending on the angle of its intercept vector, a N AV computer might have to push its ship even faster than that to make the rendezvous. So the NAV computers were understandably rattled wh en, immediately after exiting their jumps, Sif demanded they prepare to meet Harvest further a long its orbit. Sif severed her connection to the freighter, Contents Under Pressure, and answered another hail. Various parts of her mind were communicating with h undreds of freighters at once, assuring their simple circuits that the holds she was imposing wer e perfectly safe and legal. The same message, over and over again. The algorithms that guided Sif's emotions advised h er not to correlate repetition with annoyance. But her core couldn't help feeling a lit tle vexed. The woman from DCS had insisted on double-checking the ARGUS and other data she collec ted from all freighters entering the system. Sif knew this was all part of her probationthat sh e needed to endure a little bureaucratic humiliation before the DCS would forgive her oversi ght. Fortunately, al-Cygni was both polite and efficient , and turned around her sign-offs on Sif's surveys very quickly. But she was human, and needed  to sleep at least a few hours every day. That meant some freighters had to stick in holding patte rns for quite some time. And this made their NAV computers even more anxious....\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF >> DCS.TEU#-00481361\n<\\ ATTENTION, THIS END UP.\n<\\ YOU MUST MAINTAIN REQUIRED SPEED .\n\nSif could tell This End Up was still on the right trajectory, but it had begun  to slow. The decrease was minor (less than five-hundred meters p er minute) but any deceleration was unacceptable when the goal was keeping pace with a planet.\n\n<\\ THIS END UP,  CAN YOU HEAR ME?\n<\\ CONTACT HARVEST ON ANY CHANNEL . \\>\n\nBut there was no response, and Sif knew the freight er would surely miss its rendezvous. She had just begun to contemplate the myriad of pro blems that could have caused This End Up to lose its speed when, without warning, the freigh ter disappeared from her scan. Or more specifically, the single contact that was This End Up suddenly turned into many hundreds of millions of smaller contacts. Or more succinctly, Sif decided, the ship blew up. She checked the time. It was well past midnight. As  she initiated a COM with al-Cygni's hotel in Utgard, she wondered if the woman was still awak e.  50  \"Good morning, Sif. How can I help you?\" Jilan al-C ygni sat at her suite's desk. From the hotel's full-color feed, Sif could see the woman wo re the same brown pantsuit from their previous meeting. But it looked perfectly pressed and al-Cyg ni's long black hair was tightly wound. Peering into the background, Sif noted that her bed hadn't been disturbed.\n\"Anything wrong?\" al-Cygni asked in a tone that con firmed her alertness.\n\"We've lost another ship,\" Sif said, beaming all th e relevant data down her maser. She noted a fractional lowering of al-Cygni's shoul ders, a slight unclenching of her jaw. Far from being surprised, the announcement seemed to se ttle the womanas if she'd been expecting the freighter's loss and had been waiting for Sif to re lay the news.\n\"Name and itinerary?\" Jilan asked, her fingers reac hing for her COM pad.\n\"This End Up. Mars via Reach.\"\n\"There were more than thirty ships on proximate vec tors,\" Jilan mused. She scrolled a finger slowly across the screentrying to discover useful patterns in Sif's data. \"Why that one in particular?\"\nThis End Up 's manifest claimed it was carrying a JOTUN prototy pe. Until Sif's ARGUS delivered its assessment of the expanding cloud of debris, she had no hard evidence this wasn't the case. Checking the data on other nearby freighters,  she confirmed most were loaded with consumer goods. Some carried replacement parts for JOTUNs an d other farm machinery. But just as Sif was about to mention the JOTUN prototype as the only si gnificant difference between the various cargos, she noticed something else unusual about th e freighter. But then she saw Jilan's lips begin to move, and as  protocol demanded, she held her virtual tongue. It was insolent and prideful to cut a human  off, her algorithims reminded her. So Sif did her best not to feel miffed as al-Cygni took credit for  their shared realization. The woman's green eyes sparkled as she explained: \" This End Up was the only ship with a captain. An actual human crew.\"  51\nCHAPTER SEVEN\n\n\nHARVEST, JANUARY 16, 2525\n\nAs soon as the 1st platoon's recruits had bussed th eir breakfast trays into the mess hall's sanitizer, Avery led them on their daily march: ten kilometers  out and back along the Gladsheim Highway. After two weeks of physical training (PT), they wer e used to the routea devastatingly dull path through the flat fields of wheat. But until today t hey had never done it with full twenty-five kilogram rucksacks. And by the time Epsilon Indi wa s blazing in the mid-morning sky, the march had become a uniquely punishing ordeal. This was true for Avery as well, who hadn't gotten any decent exercise since before his trip back home. The long stretches of cryo-sleep from Epsilon  Eridanus to Sol and then from Sol to Epsilon Indi had left him with a condition commonly known a s \"freezer burn.\" This agonizing sensation, like a bad case of pins and needles, was caused by the breakdown of cryo-sleep pharmaceuticals trapped in muscles and joints, and Avery's case was  the worst he'd ever felta deep prickling pain in his knees and shoulders brought on by the strenu ous march. Avery winced as he removed his ruck. But it was eas y to hide his discomfort from his platoon, because the thirty-six men huddled around the parad e-ground flagpole were focused on their own exhaustion. Sweat running down his nose and chin, A very watched as one of them vomited his jostled breakfast. This started a chain reaction th at soon had almost half the platoon heaving loudly onto the gravel. Jenkins, a younger recruit with rust-colored hair, was doubled over directly in front of Avery. Thin arms resting on his knees, he made a sound tha t was half cough, half cry. Avery saw a string of spittle stretch toward his poorly tied boots. He's gonna have blisters, Avery frowned, staring at the loose laces. But he also knew Jenkins faced a more immediate and dangerous threat: dehydration. He pulled a plastic water bottle from his ruck and thrust it into the recruit's shaking hands.\n\"Drink it slow.\"\n\"Yes, Staff Sergeant,\" Jenkins wheezed. But he didn 't move.\n\"Now, recruit!\" Avery barked. Jenkins straightenedso quickly that the shifting w eight of his ruck almost tossed him back on his bony behind. His shrunken cheeks swelled as he unscrewed the bottle and took two big gulps.\n\"I said slow ,\" Avery tried to keep his anger in check. \"Or you' re gonna cramp.\"\nAvery knew the colonial militia wasn't the marines,  but it was difficult for him to lower his expectations for his recruits' performance. About h alf of them were members of Harvest's law enforcement and other emergency services, so they w ere at least mentally prepared for the rigors of basic training. But these men were older as well (s ome in their late forties or early fifties), and th ey weren't all in the best of shape. Things weren't much better with the younger recruit s like Jenkins. Most of them had grown up on farms, but because Harvest's JOTUNs did all the hard manual labor, they were just as physically unprepared as their elders to learn the strenuous c raft of soldiery.  52  \"Healy!\" Avery shouted, pointing to Jenkins' boots.  \"Got a pair of bad feet!\"\n\"That makes three!\" the Corpsman shot back. He was handing out water bottles to a pair of paunchy, middle-aged recruits with sunburned faces.  \"Dass and Abel are so fat, I think they wore right through their socks.\" The corpsman had raised  his voice loud enough for the whole platoon to hear, and a few of the men who hadn't lost their br eakfasts (and their sense of humor along with it)\nchuckled quietly at Healy's inane accusation. Avery scowled. He couldn't decide what made him mor e upset: the fact that Healy insisted on clowning around, ruining the no-nonsense mood he wa s trying to set; or that the corpsman already knew every recruit's name while Avery still had to check the name tape on the chest pockets of their olive-drab fatigue shirts.\n\"You got the energy to talk? You got the energy to walk!\" Avery snapped. \"Get some water. Suck it down. All I want to hear is the sound of hy dration. Whichto be clearsounds like ab-so lutely nothing at all!\"\nImmediately, thirty-six clear plastic bottles tippe d skyward. Jenkins was especially eager to keep his sore feet where they were and guzzled his water  at an alarming rate. Avery watched the recruit's oversized Adam's apple bob up and down like a yoyo on a very short string. The kid can't even follow an order about drinking properly. The sound of voices on the garrison drive announced  the return of Byrne and 2nd platoon. Avery could hear them calling cadenceshouting a Marine C orps marching chant. Byrne bellowed each line and his recruits repeated:\n\nWhen I die please bury me deep!\nPlace an MA5 down by my feet!\nDon't cry for me, don't shed no tear!\nJust pack my box with PT gear!\n'Cuz one early morning 'bout zero-five!\nThe ground will rumble, there'll be lightning in th e sky!\nDon't you worry, don't come undone!\nIt's just my ghost on a PT run!\n\nAs 2nd platoon crested the top of the drive and shu ffled into the parade ground, the screen door to Captain Ponder's quarters swung open. As usual, the Captain had chosen not to wear his prosthetic; the sleeve of his fatigue shirt was onc e again pinned neatly to his side.\n\"Atten-shun!\" Avery barked. Ponder gave 1st platoon a chance to straighten up, and 2nd platoon time to come to a gasping stop. Then he asked in a loud but friendly voice: \" You men enjoy your stroll?\"\n\"Sir, yes sir,\" the recruits answered with varied e nthusiasm. Ponder turned to Byrne. \"They don't sound too sure,  Staff Sergeant.\"\n\"No, they don't,\" Byrne snarled.\n\"Maybe ten klicks wasn't long enough for them to ma ke up their minds...\"\n\"I'd be happy to run them again, Captain.\"\n\"Well, let me make sure.\" Ponder put his fist on hi s hip and shouted: \"I say again, did you all enjoy your stroll?\"\nAll seventy-two recruits shouted at once. \"Sir, yes  sir!\"\n\"Do it again tomorrow?\"\n\"Sir, yes sir! \"\n\"Now I definitely heard that! At ease!\" As the recruits got back to a ching, Ponder waved Avery over. \"How was their pace?\"\n\"Not bad, considering their load.\"  53  \"What's the plan for this afternoon?\"\n\"Thought I might take them out to the range.\"\nPonder nodded his head approvingly. \"About time we let them punch a few targets. But you'll need to hand them off to Byrne. We've got a date.\"\n\"Sir?\"\n\"Solstice Celebration. Utgard. Governor of this fin e planet extended an invitation to me and one of my Staff Sergeants.\" The Captain jutted his chin  toward Byrne, currently unleashing a string of expletives at a terrified recruit who had just made  the mistake of losing his breakfast directly on th e Staff Sergeant's boots. \"It's a formal affair. Ladi es in long dresses, that sort of thing.\" Ponder smi led at Avery. \"I have a feeling you'll be a better fit. \"\n\"Roger that.\" The last thing Avery wanted to do was  field questions about the Insurrection from a bunch of boozy politicians, but as he watched Byr ne order the recruit to start doing push-ups directly over his vomit-covered boots, he had to ad mit: the Captain was probably right. And besides, there were questions Avery wanted to a sk Ponderfirst and foremost, why he and Byrne had been transferred to Harvest. Since the ni ght of their fight in the barracks, the two Staff Sergeants hadn't exactly been on speaking terms, so  Avery had gotten no information from Byrne. During the ride to Utgard, he hoped the Captain cou ld explain why the UNSC had seen fit to transfer two TREBUCHET team-leaderstake them off t he frontline of the Insurrection. Avery had a strong suspicion that he wasn't going t o like Ponder's answer.\n\"Party starts at zero six-thirty.\" The Captain turn ed back to his quarters. \"Clean yourself up, meet me at the motor pool ASAP.\"\nAvery snapped a hasty salute, then strode back to h is recruits. \"Forsell, Wick, Andersen, Jenkins!\" he boomed, reading their names from his C OM pad. Four sets of shoulders set a little straighter. \"Says here none of you have ever handle d a weapon. Is that correct?\"\n\"Yes, Staff Sergeant.\" The recruits' replies were h alting, embarrassed. Some of the older militiamen, constables who were used to carrying sm all-caliber sidearms for their work, snickered at the recruits inexperience.\n\"Won't be so funny when they're standing behind you in a firefight,\" Avery growled. The constables' laughter quickly died. Avery motioned for Jenkins and the others to gather  round. \"The Captain and I have an appointment in town. So Staff Sergeant Byrne's goin g to get you all snapped in.\"\nThe recruits looked blankly at one another, confuse d by Avery's shorthand.\n\"He's gonna teach you how to shoot,\" Avery clarifie d. \"Try not to shoot each other.\"\n\nAn hour later, he was behind the wheel of a Warthog , speeding east on the Gladsheim highway with Captain Ponder in the passenger seat beside him. Wi th Epsilon Indi beating down directly overhead, Avery was unusually glad of the vehicle's stripped- down design. In a war zone, the Warthog's lack of roof and doors made it a dangerous ride. But whe n the only enemy you faced was the sweaty cling of a navy-blue dress uniform, its open-air pa ssenger compartment was an absolute blessing. To help keep themselves cool, both men had removed their navy-blue dress coats and rolled their shirtsleeves to their elbows. Ponder opted to  keep his false arm covered; Avery guessed because the prosthetic's titanium joints would get uncomfortably warm in the direct sunlight. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Captain reach up a nd scratch his shoulder, massaging the nano-fiber junction where the circuits met the man. For some time Avery and Ponder sat in silence and w atched the wheat fields around the garrison give way to vast peach and apple orchards. Avery wa sn't sure how best to break the ice. He didn't just want to come out and ask: \"Why am I here?\" He guessed there was a good reason why the Captain was keeping the information secret and susp ected it would take a little more finesse to draw his answer out. So he started with something simple .  54  \"Sir. If you don't mind me asking, what happened to  your arm?\"\n\"M-EDF 9/21/1,\" Ponder replied, raising his voice a bove the Warthog's roar. \"You familiar with the unit?\"\nAvery automatically parsed the code: ninth marine e xpeditionary force, twenty-first division, 1st battalion. It was one of the many units serving in Epsilon Eridanus.\n\"Yes, sir. Hard-ass grunts.\"\n\"That they were.\" The Captain reached two of his pr osthetics metal fingers into his shirt pocket and retrieved a Sweet William cigar. \"I used to be their CO.\"\nAvery tightened his grip on the steering wheel as a  hauler blew by in the opposite direction.\n\"What sort of action did you see?\" He did his best to keep a casual tone. But if what Ponder said was true, that meant he was a critical part of the UNSC's fight against the Insurrectionthat his presence on Harvest was just as odd as Avery and By rne's.\n\"Let's not beat around the bush, Staff Sergeant. TR EBUCHET. It's in your file. Byrne's too. And I've spent the last two weeks wondering the exa ct same thing.\" The Captain bit the tip off his cigar. \"Why would the Corps send two of its meanest  sons-of-bitches way out here?\"\n\"I was hoping you might shed some light on that, si r.\"\n\"Hell if I know.\" Ponder removed a silver lighter w ith a hinged top from his pants pocket, cracked it open, and began stoking his cigar. \"FLEE TCOM hasn't been all that free with information...\" he said between puffs. Then, snapping  the lighter shut: \"Since they gave me a demotion.\"\nSomething clicked in Avery's head. Of course, he thought, the CO of a Marine battalion would be at least a Lt. Colonel two pay grades higher than Ponder's current Captain  rank. But Avery had no idea what this meant with respect to the lar ger question. If anything, Ponder's revelation made things even more confusing. \"Demotion, sir?\" h e asked, treading water.\n\"I lost my arm,\" Ponder began, \"in Elysium City, Er idanus II.\" He put one of his boots up on the dash. \"This was back in 'thirteen. Watts and his ga ng were just starting to show their teeth.\"\nColonel Robert Wattsor \"that bastard\" to most UNSC  personnelwas a Marine Corps officer born and raised in Epsilon Eridanus who had defecte d to the Insurrectionist's side early in the war. He and the group of turncoats he commanded were one  of TREBUCHET's priority targets. So far, no one had gotten a decent shot at him, though Aver y had once come close.\n\"We were hoping to capture Watts' second in command ,\" Ponder continued, taking a long drag on his cigar. \"Admirals at FLEETCOM wanted my batta lion to go in strongplenty of armor and air support. Intimidate the locals into giving the guy up without a fight. But the town was still fift y fifty. Not everyone was on the Innies' side, and I thought a little restraint might help win some hearts and minds.\"\nAvery grunted. \"Must have been before my time.\"\n\"Things were different in the beginning. There was still time to talka chance for peace.\"\nPonder shook his head. \"Anyhow this guymy targeth ad married the daughter of one of the local officials. I thought the father-in-law would be pre tty ticked when a whole armored column showed up on his doorstep. But the next thing I knew, I wa s in his living room, sipping tea.\"\nPonder tapped the ash from his cigar. \"We talked ab out nothing for a few minutesjust got comfortable. Then when his wife was pouring me a se cond cup, I got down to it: 'We're looking for so-and-so, do you know where we can find him, we do n't mean your daughter any harm, etcetera, etcetera.' And he looks me right in the eye...\" Ponde r paused and stared out the Warthog's sloped windshield. \"He looks me in the eye and says: 'Some day we will win. No matter what it takes.'\"\nThe Captain flexed his prosthetic, pantomiming his memories. \"Then he put his arm around the target's wifehis own daughterand raised it up lik e this ... took me a second to realize he had a grenade.\"\nAvery didn't know what to say, except that, having inherited the Insurrection from men like Ponder, he'd seen things at least as surprising, at  least as tragic.  55  \"I knew it was a bluff. This guy was dedicated to t he cause, no doubt. But kill his whole family?\nWasn't gonna happen.\" Ponder pulled the half-smoked  cigar from his teeth and ground it into the dash. \"One of my snipers thought different. Put a h asty round through the wall of his house, tore the guy in half. But he pulled the pin on reflex.\" The Captain shrugged. \"I dove to cover the blast. Things got worse from there.\"\nTight space, jumpy soldiers; Avery knew worse had m eant a lot of civilian casualties, some very angry top brass andadding insult to injuryPonder taking a two-step drop in rank.\n\"I think they wanted me to take an early retirement . But I stuck with it,\" the Captain said. \"Took a bunch of lousy billets and worked my way up to CM T. Thought I'd left the Insurrection behind me.\" He shot Avery a look that was more inquisitive  than accusatory. \"Then along came the two of you.\"\nAgain, Avery was at a loss for words. But Ponder wa s soon lost in more memories from that terrible day long ago, and for a while both men res umed their silence. Out in the apple orchards, Avery saw JOTUNsa pair of monstrous pickers large enough to engulf whole trees with their agitating arms. He ha d overheard Healy arguing with one of his recruits about the exact number of JOTUNs on Harves t. The Corpsman refused to believe there were three JOTUNs for every personalmost a million mach inesuntil the recruit had explained he was counting all the different versions: the smallest a erial crop dusters to the six-wheeled beasts like t he ones in the orchard.\n\"It's funny,\" Ponder said in a way that made clear he didn't think it was the least bit so. \"But at first I missed it: my men, the combat, all of it. T ook me years to realize how crazy that wasthat I'd been damn lucky to get out when I did. Before t hings got really bad, and I made a mistake that got a lot more people killed.\"\nAvery nodded his head, although he might as well ha ve said: I know exactly what you mean. By now the Bifrost had begun to rise before them. T hey were still an hour away from the limestone escarpment, but squinting his eyes, Avery  could just see dark switchbacks carving back and forth across its face that would take them up t o Utgard. On either side of the switchbacks, separated by hun dreds of kilometers, were two maglev train linesthick monorails that angled down from the top  of the Bifrost to meet the Ida, far out in the orchards. Avery saw a long train of cargo container s glide down the southern line. The train seemed to move too quickly for the containers' size, and A very realized they must be emptyon their way to a depot where hundreds of JOTUNs waited with fre sh-picked loads.\n\"Maybe FLEETCOM decided you needed a break?\" Ponder  offered.\n\"Maybe,\" Avery said. It was as good an explanation as any.\n\"Well, why not start tonight? Have a drink, dance w ith a girl.\"\nAvery smiled despite himself. \"That an order, sir?\"\nPonder laughed and slapped his artificial arm on hi s thigh. \"Yes, Staff Sergeant. Yes, it is.\"\n\nBy the time Avery pulled the Warthog into the curve d drive of Harvest's Parliament building, he knew a lot more about Captain Ponder. How fighting the Insurrection had forced him to miss his eldest son's wedding and the birth of his first gra ndchildprecious occasions he missed much more than his arm. As they dismounted, buttoned their co ats' brass buttons, and pulled on their black billed dress caps, Avery realized he not only trust ed but had a great deal more respect for the man who wore his CO's uniform. The Parliament's lobby was thick with partygoers: m en in pastel, seersucker suits; women in ruffled, scoop neck gownsfashions that were alread y out of style in core-world salons, but had only just taken hold of Harvest's provincial high s ociety. Some of the guests gawked and whispered as Avery and Ponder passed. And it struck the Staff  Sergeant that they were the first marinesthe first soldierssome of the guests had ever seen.  56  But as they threaded their way up a crowded granite  staircase to the ballroom, some of the curious gazes turned cold. We might be a new sight, Avery grimaced, but not necessarily a welcome one. It seemed the UNSC's handling of the Insurrection w asn't any more popular on Harvest than it was anywhere else.\n\"Nils Thune,\" someone bellowed from the landing at the top of the staircase. A thick hand shot out from a great swath of red- and white-striped fa bric. \"You must be Captain Ponder.\"\n\"Governor,\" Ponder paused on the top step and salut ed. Then he extended his hand. \"It's an honor to meet you.\"\n\"Likewise, of course!\" Thune's grip was so strong h e practically pulled Ponder up onto the landing.\n\"May I introduce you to one of my men? Staff Sergea nt Avery Johnson.\"\nThune released Ponder's hand and offered it to Aver y. \"Well, Johnson?\" Thune's red beard parted in a broad, toothsome grin. \"What do you thi nk of our planet?\"\nAvery had a strong grip, but Thune's was immobilizi ng. His hand possessed the kind of strength one got from years of farming the old-fashioned way without assistance from a fleet of hulking automatons. Avery guessed correctly that despite hi s vigor, the Governor was well into his sixties that he'd been one of the first colonists to land o n Harvest. \"Reminds me of home, sir.\" Avery grimaced. \"I grew up on Earth, Chicago Industrial Z one.\"\nThune released Avery's hand and stabbed his thumb h appily to his chest. \"Minnesota! My mother's and father's side both, far back as I can remember.\" Widening his smile he ushered the marines toward the doorway of a brightly lit ballro om. \"You're in good company, Staff Sergeant. Most everyone around here's from the Midwestpulled  up stakes when the soil went bad. Of course none of us knew just how much better things would be once we got to Harvest!\"\nThe Governor snatched a champagne flute from a pass ing waiter and downed it in one gulp.\n\"This way!\" He shuffled sideways through the ballro om doorway, his girth doing at least as much to part the crowd as any deference to his office. \"And  stay close! The show's about to start, and I want you two front and center!\"\nAvery shot Ponder a confused look. But the Captain simply plunged into Thune's gap. Avery followed just as the crowd drew back upon itself, p ractically sucking him into the ballroom. Doing their best not to step on any toes, the marines fol lowed Thune to one of the many glass-paned doors in the ballroom's eastern wall that led to a broad balcony overlooking the Parliament's gardens and beyond that, Utgard's mall. Stepping up beside Thune against the balcony's wais t-high granite railing, Avery saw that the park was full of revelers. Light-globes tugging at their tethers in the twilight breeze illuminated knots of families sitting on brightly colored picni c blankets. Hardly any of the mall was left uncovered, and Avery was certain the vast majority of the planet's three hundred thousand residents were in attendance. But for what, he still wasn't q uite sure.\n\"Rol!\" Thune's shout rang painfully loud in Avery's  ears. \"Over here!\" The Governor waved a hand above his head, but this wasn't necessary. Thu ne was taller than anyone on the balcony, Avery included, and the mop of thick, red and gray hair t hat covered his head was impossible to miss. Avery craned his neck toward the ballroom in time t o see the Governor's somato-typical opposite slide out from the jostling crowd; a short, balding  man whose elderly frame barely filled his light gray linen suit.\n\"Rol Pedersen,\" Thune announced. \"My Attorney Gener al.\"\n\"Just a fancy way to say lawyer.\" Pedersen smiled m odestly through his thin, pursed lips. He didn't offer Avery or Ponder his hand, but not for any lack of courtesy; the jubilant crowd had begun to flow from the ballroom to the railing, cru shing the Attorney General's arms firmly to his sides.\n\"Rol's about as formal as we get out here,\" Thune e xplained. \"Stickler for details. He's the one who handled all the negotiations with the CA about us raising a militia.\"  57  \"Technically.\" Pedersen's eyes twinkled as he raise d one of his white eyebrows. \"I formally accepted their demand that we have one.\"\nJust then the sky erupted with fireworks, filling t he gaps between the Tiara's seven elevators with multicolored blossoms. Jutting up from Utgard' s skyline, the strands shone bronze in Epsilon Indi's failing light. As the showering sparks rippl ed the air around them, they appeared to vibrate, like plucked strings in a giant's harp.\n\"Alright, everyone!\" Thune roared as the last of th e fireworks erupted in a smoky, blue-green cloud. \"Get set!\" The Governor put his hands to his  ears, as did everyone else on the balcony except Avery and Ponder.\n\"Mass driver,\" Pedersen explained. \"We fire it ever y solstice.\"\nAll at once, the towers around the mall went dark a s the city's electrical grid lost power. There was a bright flash beyond the Tiara's central numbe r-four strand, and a moment later a Shockwave hammered the mall, flattening the light globes and sending the picnickers squealing after flying napkins and bowled-over children. On the balcony, w omen shrieked in gleeful fright as they clutched their billowing dresses; men made a gallan t show of uncapping their ears as a sonic boom pealed past the Parliament.\n\"Hurrah!\" Thune shouted, starting a round of applau se that echoed a similar outburst from the picnickers on the mall. \"Well done, Mack!\"\n\"That's mighty kind, Governor.\" The AI replied from  Thune's COM pad, hidden somewhere in his vast jacket. \"I aim to please.\"\n\"Speaking of which,\" Thune said, heading away from the railing. \"How close did you come?\"\nPedersen freed a hand and pointed after Thune, lett ing the two marines know they were expected to follow. This time the Governor led them to the f ar end of the ballroom where a group of childrengirls with satin bows on their dresses and  boys in shiny vests and shoespacked tight around a circular table topped with a cornucopia of  fruits and vegetables. A silver holo-projector was centered in a wreath of leafy vines and deep pu rple grape clusters. On top of that stood Mack.\n\"Missed by a mile,\" the AI said, rubbing the back o f its neck with a grimy handkerchief.\n\"Actually, more like fifty kilometers. But I'm sure  she'll say something.\"\n\"No doubt. No doubt,\" Thune chuckled. \"Listen, I'd like you to meet Captain Ponder and Staff Sergeant Johnson. UNSC Marines. Here to raise a mil itia.\"\n\"Mack. Agricultural operations.\" Mack touched the b rim of his cowboy hat. Then, nodding toward the balcony and the mass driver somewhere be yond, \"Same as the navy's big guns. Just a little less kick.\"\n\"You know,\" Ponder deadpanned, \"there's a reason we  only fire those in space.\"\nMass drivers were a relatively simple, cheap soluti on for boosting objects from a planet's surface into orbit. Typically built on large, flexi ble gimbles, their linked, magnetic loops could be charged, aimed, and fired with very little automati onwith a simple computer rather than an AI. But drivers had one major disadvantage: limited thr ow-weight. Which meant that while Harvest's driver worked well during the first decade after th e colony's founding (when its primary role was to send carefully packaged nuclear waste on a collisio n course with Epsilon Indi), for the planet to meet its full export potential, it needed to be rep laced with a high-capacity lift system such as the Tiara. Driver technology was alive and well in the navy, h owever, in the form of Mass Accelerator Cannon. So-called MAC frigates and cruisers were ba sically moveable mass driversships designed around the weapons' long, electromagnetic coils. The technology was similar to that of the M99 Stanchion rifle. But whereas the M99's light, s emi-ferrous rounds were only a few millimeters long, a MAC slug was more than ten meters end-to-end, weighed one-hundred-sixty metric tons, and packed enough punch to penetrate the navy's thi ckest Titanium-A armor plate.\n\"Space?\" Thune grumbled dismissively. \"Those things  even make noise in zero-gee?\"  58  \"If you're inside a MAC ship when the cannon fires?\" Ponder raised hi s hands wide around his head, simulating a deafening boom. \"I don't know if  you're a religious man, Governor. But it's a little like a church bell\"\n\"Am I?\" The Governor beamed. \"Lutheran! Born and raised !\"\nPedersen sighed in mock protest. \"If had known you were going to bring up religion, Captain as Attorney GeneralI would have counseled a less c ontentious topic.\"\n\"And I was about to tell a story...\" Mack added, loud enough for  all the children to hear. The young crowd cheered as a holographic representation  of a bustling, Wild West main street appeared behind Mack. A group of masked outlaws rushed from a bank, firing their six-shooters and spooking the horses of a passing stagecoach. The children oo hed and ahhed. Mack pulled a sheriff's star out of his hip pocket and pinned it to his chest. \"Migh t want to take the sermon to the saloon.\"\n\"Fine by me,\" Thune said, clapping Ponder on the sh oulder. \"Captain?\"\nPonder stood firm under the force of Thune's blow. \"After you, Governor.\" Before he followed Thune to the ballroom's bar, he asked Pedersen, \"I gave my Staff Sergeant strict orders to find himself a dance partner. Know anyone who might fit the bill?\"\nPedersen raised an eager finger. \"I have just the o ne!\"\n\"I certainly appreciate it,\" Ponder said. Then to A very with a smile: \"Good luck, marine.\"\nBefore Avery could respond, the Captain turned on h is heels, and Avery felt Pedersen's light touch on his elbow. \"Do you know about the driver i ncident?\" the Attorney General asked, leading Avery away from the first shots of Mack's gunfight and the delighted squeals of the children.\n\"Incident, sir?\"\n\"The thing between Mack and Sif?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Well...\"\nPedersen proceeded to explain how, not long after t he DCS installed Sif in the Tiara, there had been a critical failure in her data center's power supply. This forced her technicians to stop all activity on her strands or risk a load-imbalance th at would have collapsed the entire system. It had been a serious crisis, and Mack decided to solve it  by using the driver to boost a new power supply into orbit. Trying to be as helpful as possible, he shot the co mponent right into the Tiara's number-four coupling station. It was an incredible accomplishme nt. But when Sif's technicians restored her power and she learned what Mack had donehow he cou ld have easily obliterated her data centerSif had not been amused.\n\"That's why she isn't here tonight,\" Pedersen concl uded as they stepped out of the ballroom and headed for the balcony's calm northeast corner. \"Wh y she always comes up with a polite excuse not to attend any celebration that involves a driver sh ot. It's too bad really. I think she could use a bi t of fun.\"\n\"That's quite an indictment, Your Honor.\" A woman's  voice rang out from the railing, bringing Pedersen to a hasty stop. But Avery had already not iced the woman many paces backseen how her diaphanous silver shawl covered only part of he r bare back. He slowed his pace to give himself time to remove his dress-cap and smooth his burr of  hair.\n\"My apologies, Ms. al-Cygni,\" the Attorney General replied. \"But I was talking about Sif. The incident with the driver.\"\n\"Of course.\" Jilan pushed away from the railing, an d turned to face the Attorney General. \"If I remember correctly, my department mandated that you  shut the driver down.\"\n\"As I recall, we rejected that mandate on the groun ds that it was in breach of the CA chartera serious infringement on our already limited soverei gnty.\" The Attorney General winked. \"But off the record, how could we possibly have given up suc h spectacular entertainment?\"\nJilan laughed. \"I won't argue with that.\"  59 \"I'm sorry,\" Pedersen said hastily. \"Staff Sergeant  Avery Johnson? Representative Jilan al Cygni, DCS.\"\nJilan offered her hand. Avery hesitated. If she had been wearing a bland DCS uniform, he wou ld have known what to do: take her hand and shake it. But her floor-length silver gown trip ped him up. With its empire waist and halter top, she was the very picture of core-world vogue. Her b lack hair was slicked back close to her scalp and tucked behind her ears, and stayed perfectly still even as a fresh breeze from the mall caught her shawl and rustled it from her soft brown shoulders.\n\"Kissing is for politicians,\" Jilan said, catching her shawl in her elbows. \"And I'm certainly not that.\"\nSo Avery shook. Her grip wasn't as strong as the Go vernor's, but not as delicate as her slender arms suggested.\n\"If you'll excuse me,\" Pedersen coughed and patted his chest. \"I need to rescue this marine's commanding officer from a riveting discussion on the trajectory of his immortal soul.\"\nJilan smiled. \"Do give my best to the Governor.\"\nPedersen brought his heels together, and turned bac k to the ballroom. Jilan waited for him to disappear into the crowduntil she and Avery were a lonebefore she spoke.\n\"I'd tell you to relax. But you don't seem the type .\"\nAvery didn't know how to respond to that. But he wa s given a moment's reprieve thanks to a dancing couple that bumped him in the back then spu n away, giggling apologetically. The string quartet had begun a livelier second set. Those gues ts who hadn't gone indoors to freshen their drinks after the fireworks were now abandoning their idle conversations for the more alluring language of waltz. Jilan retrieved a small, clamshell purse dangling f rom one of her wrists. It was covered with tiny mirrors shaped like fish scales that dazzled Avery' s gaze. \"48789-20114-AJ,\" she said, pulling a COM-pad from the purse, and reading from its screen . \"That is your serial number, correct?\"\nAvery's eyes refocused. \"Yes, ma'am.\" Suddenly her smile didn't seem so sweet.\n\"Team-leader, ORION detachment, NavSpecWar division ?\"\n\"With respect, ma'am. That's classified.\" .\n\"I know.\"\nAvery felt moisture start to pool under his arms. \" How can I help you, ma'am?\"\n\"Innies are attacking freighters. Destroying cargo,  killing crew. I need you to stop them.\"\n\"I'm a drill instructor. Colonial Militia. Find som eone else.\"\nJilan drew her shawl back onto her shoulders. \"You were AWOL in Chicago,\" she said matter of-factly. \"And under investigation for possible gr oss misconduct.\"\nAvery clenched his jaw. \"I was cleared of\"\n\"Given your status, didn't you think it was odd that FLEET-COM would ap prove your request for transfer?\"\nAvery narrowed his eyes in an intimidating stare. \" I'll tell you what's odd. Someone from DCS with access to my fileyou talking to me like you'r e my CO.\"\nJilan raised her COM-pad and turned it so Avery cou ld see her ID picture glowing on its screen. In her official UNSC uniform, Avery thought she loo ked as beautiful as she did in her gown. But only in the way he considered a well-maintained wea pon beautifulclean, locked tight, and ready to inflict deadly force. A text stamp below her pic ture clarified her true rank and departmental affiliation: Lieutenant Commander, ONI Section Thre e.\n\"As of now, I am your commanding officer,\" Jilan shut off her pad. \" You can check your attitude, Staff Sergeant, and start following order s. Or I will arrange for your immediate transfer back to TREBUCHET.\" There was no anger in her voice , just calm determination. \"Do I make myself clear?\"  60  Avery choked on a slowly building rage. At last, he  knew exactly why he had come to Harvest, as well as who had brought him here. \"Yes, ma'am.\"\nAl-Cygni dropped her COM into her purse and snapped  it shut. \"Wait for me downstairs. As soon I can collect Staff Sergeant Byrne, we'll be s hipping out.\" Dress rippling behind her, she stepped quickly into the waltzing crowd.  61\nCHAPTER EIGHT\n\n\nMINOR TRANSGRESSION, RELIQUARY ORBITAL PATH\n\nThere would be no surprises this time. Chur'R-Yar h ad made sure of that. Through the walls of the umbilical, she could see the boxy freighter's atmos phere venting out the careful holes she'd made with her own ship's lasers. If any of the aliens we re hiding on board, the Shipmistress had done all she could to kill them without harming whatever rel ic lay inside. After the surprise encounter on the last freighter,  Chur'R-Yar and the other Kig-Yar had scoured the alien ship. But they found no relics. Even Minor Transgression 's Luminary had given up and dimmed its glyph. In her frustration, the Shipmistr ess decided to destroy the vesselobliterate all evidence of her fruitless transgression. She had considered ordering the Huragok to conduct a more meticulous search. But as fast as the creature worked, she didn't want to remain in the s ame place for very long in case the alien it had killed had somehow managed to call for help without  triggering her ship's sensors. And besides, the Deacon (her only means of communicating with the Hu ragok) was an emotional wrecktotally useless after his close call. As infuriating as his  cowardice was, Chur'R-Yar had let him malinger in the methane suite. She needed her crew focused on t he task at hand, not distracted by new and interesting ways to torment the Deacon.\n\"Ready yourselves!\" the Shipmistress clattered as t he umbilical finished its burn through the vessel's hull. Zhar and the two other male Kig-Yar were bunched together before her, as close as their pressure suits allowed. Built for external ma intenance rather than combat, the suits were bulky and unwieldya necessary inconvenience given the la ck of breathable air inside the freighter. Chur'R-Yar knew her crewmen were uncomfortable, Zha r especially. The suits' helmets didn't allow the male's spiny combs much room to flex, and  her chosen mate was fully flushedeager to prove his worth. The umbilical ceased its fractional forward movemen t, and Zhar's head twitched sideways as he checked to make sure the seal was secure. \"After me !\" he clacked. Gloved claws wrapped tight around his crystal cutlass, he sprang through the w avering energy barrier that served as the umbilical's airlock. The Ship-mistress gripped her plasma-pistol tight and followed the other males through. The first thing Chur'R-Yar noticed inside the hold was the lack of gravity. Floating half her height above the floor, she realized her laser fire  must have hit an essential part. She rattled her t eeth with annoyance as she watched Zhar and the others w ork to find purchase on the floor's grooved metal panels. The crewmen had been overeager. Now t hey were scrambling about like fools in the mocking glare of the hold's red emergency lights.\n\"Calm yourselves!\" the Shipmistress hissed into her  helmet's signal unit. Then, as she secured herself on the umbilical's protruding tip, \"Move to ward the boxes!\"\nThe hold was filled with the same plastic container s as the first freighter, though it wasn't nearly as tightly packed. The boxes were stacked in low pi les, spaced evenly apart. It would take time to search each one, especially in zero gravity. Chur'R -Yar hissed angrily to herself; the best way to  62  speed the process was to get the Deacon to instruct  the Huragok to find and fix the anti-grav unit she had unintentionally destroyed. But just as she twisted around to head back through  the energy barrier, she felt something sharp and hot tear through the neck of her pressure suit,  slicing her scaly skinfelt the vibration of more projectiles ricochet off the hold's wall. Her suit automatically closed around the two small punctures, venting some of her violet blood in a gl obular spray. \"Retreat!\" she shouted to her crew,\n\"Back to the ship!\" The Ship-mistress didn't know h er attacker's location, but she knew it had her firmly in its sights. Without looking to see if Zha r and the others were in any position to follow, sh e thrust herself back inside the umbilical.\n\nAvery had to hand it to Lt. Commander al-Cygni. The  woman could plan an op. Her carefully disguised sloop, Walk of Shame, had been filled with a small arsenal of weapons, so me of which Avery had never seen before. He and Byrne had both selected what al-Cygni referred to as a battle rifle, a prototype long-barreled weapon with an opt ical scope. The two Staff Sergeants had thought the rifle's combination of range and accuracy would  be a good fit for the long sight lines between the stacks of boxes in the cargo container. But that was before they knew they were going to en d up floating high above the container's floor. When the freighter had been shot through with laser s and lost its gravity, Avery and Byrne had been shocked to say the least. Fortunately, the Lt.  Commander had outfitted them with bulky black vacuum-suits and helmets with clear visors. When th e bright tip of some sort of boring device punched through the hull, the two Staff Sergeants h ad pushed off from their hiding places behind the boxes for the marginally better cover of the metal supports girding the freighter's upper hull. Avery firmed his grip on his battle rifle's trigger . The cross hairs in the weapon's scope were locked on the fourth alien, just now emerging from the shimmering field. Yes, the Lt. Commander could plan an op, he thought. But she hadn't planned for this. In their premission briefing in an empty Welcome Wa gon from Utgard up to the Tiara, al-Cygni had told Avery and Byrne about a recent Insurrectio nist victory in Epsilon Eridanusone they hadn't been informed of, even with their top-level clearances. About the same time as the two Staff Sergeants were  struggling to take down the bomber in the restaurant on Tribute, the Innies had hit the luxur y liner National Holiday as it waited above the planet Reach. The ship was just completing its load -in of more than fifteen hundred civilian passengers on charter-tour to Arcadiaa colony famo us for its recreational amenitieswhen the pair of unmanned orbital taxis struck. The liner's captain had assumed the taxis were simp ly carrying late-arriving passengers. When they failed to comply with his docking commands, th e captain had initiated evasive maneuvers tried to deflect what he thought would be minor imp acts. But the amount of explosives the Innies had packed into the taxis not only tore National Holiday in two, but also burned away the hull paint of every other ship in a two-kilometer radius. The two Staff Sergeants had listened soberly to a r ecording on Jilan's COM-pad of the captain's final wordsheard how the former naval fighter pilo t had calmly directed other ships out of his crippled liner's path, even as it dropped into Reac h's atmosphere, bodies billowing from its breached staterooms, and began to burn. So far, Jilan had explained, ONI had managed to kee p things under wraps, successfully spinning the Innie's hit as a tragic accident. Partly this w as because the attack was so audacious. This was th e first time the Insurrectionists had hit a non-terre strial targetand not only that, but they'd done it above Reach, the epicenter of UNSC power in Epsilon  Eridanus. Even though the Innies claimed responsibility for the horrible loss of life, most people were too fearful to believe the rebels' clai m. If they could lash out in plain view of the UNSC fl eet, what was stopping them from hitting targets in other systems? Sol, for example, or Harvest?  63  According to Jilan, FLEETCOM had made it crystal cl ear there could be no more National Holidays. ONI went on high alert, and as soon as Section Thre e got word of a freighter missing in Epsilon Indi, they'd authorized her to conduct a co vert investigation. Just in case she needed to take exceptional action, al-Cygni's superiors had ordere d her to recruit Avery and Byrne.\n\"Ma'am, we've got hostiles in the hold,\" Avery whis pered into his helmet mic.\n\"Take them out.\" Al-Cygni's reply was curt. Avery w as supposed to maintain radio silence.\n\"They aren't Innies.\"\n\"Clarify.\"\nAvery took a deep breath. \"They're aliens.\" He watc hed as the first three creatures that had come barreling through the barrier struggled to get  hand- and footholdsstudied their long, bony beaks and large, bloodshot eyes through their clear  helmets. \"Kind of like lizards without the tails.\"\nThere was a pause as Jilan, holding station in Walk of Shame some two hundred kilometers distant from the freighter, considered Avery's word s. But the Staff Sergeant knew it wouldn't be long before one of the aliens looked up and saw the m lurking in the shadows between the beams.\n\"Ma'am, I need orders,\" Avery persisted.\n\"Try and take one alive,\" al-Cygni replied. \"But do n't let any escape, over.\"\n\"Roger that.\" Avery hugged his battle rifle close. He hadn't had time to fire the weapon. He hoped its nine-point-five-millimeter high-penetrati on rounds would be sufficient to puncture the aliens' iridescent suits.\n\"Byrne, get set.\" Avery glanced at the other Staff Sergeant, positioned between a pair of beams to his left. \"I'm firing on the leader.\" He assumed  the leader was the alien nearest the shimmering hole in the hull. It seemed more composed than the others, and also carried an obvious weapon: a silver, C-shaped pistol with green energy glowing b etween its tips. Avery hoped taking down the leader would make the other aliensnow splayed firm ly on the floormore eager to surrender. He took a breath and fired. In zero gravity, the recoil from the battle rifle's  three-round burst was more pronounced than Avery had anticipated. Two of his shots went wide, and, as the recoil slammed him back against the hull, he watched his wounded target disappear back through the glowing barrier. Avery cursed himself for not bracing more firmly against the bea ms. But this was his first experience with zero gee combat. He could only hope the aliens were simi larly inexperienced. So far, this didn't look to be the case. Avery did his best to steady his aim as the three r emaining aliens pushed off from the floor and rocketed toward him in a loose triangular formation . The one in the lead had a bigger helmet, and Avery could see through his scope that it also had the longest spinesfleshy red spikes compressed against its head. But Byrne had acquired the same t arget. He fired first, and sent the alien spinning to Avery's right. Avery didn't have time to adjust his aim before one  of the trailing aliens slammed into him, slashing with some sort of crystal knife. He parrie d the knife with the barrel of his rifle as their helmets cracked together. Avery's helmet began to s hake, and for a moment he thought the visor was about to shatter. Then he looked the alien squa re in the face and realized the vibrations were simply the transference of the creature's silent, l ivid scream. Avery had pinned the creature's knife against one o f the beams. The weapon was energized gleamed with internal pink fire. He was certain it would make short work of his vacuum-suit, not to mention the flesh beneath. With its free hand, the alien began clawing at Aver y's neck and shoulders. But its gloves were bulky and it couldn't do any real damage. Avery rea ched down and unholstered an M6 pistol he'd selected from al-Cygni's arsenal. Before the alien could react, he put four quick rounds into the underside of its elongated helmet, near the base of  its bony jaws. The alien's head burst apart, painting the inside of its helmet a very vivid viol et.  64  Avery pushed the alien back down toward the floor o f the container as Byrne opened fire to his left. But Byrne was also having difficulty recoveri ng from his first shot, and the third alien hit him right in the gut, knocking his battle rifle loose. As the weapon rebounded off the hull and went spinning out of reach, the alien drove its knife in to Byrne's left thigh. The alien must have thought it only needed to punct ure Byrne's suit in order to kill him, and it might have succeeded were it not for the suit's com partmentalized design. As Byrne pulled the knife from his leg, the hole filled with yellow sealant f oam. The alien flailed its armsAvery thought to try and drive the knife back in. But as the weapon began to pulse with rosy light, he realized the creature was actually trying to escape an impending  detonation.\n\"Lose the blade!\" Avery shouted. \"It's gonna blow!\"\nByrne sunk the knife into the alien's mid-section a nd kicked it back the way it had come. The creature pulled frantically at the blade, but Byrne  had driven it too deep. A split-second later it bl ew apart in a bright pink flash. Tiny, wet shards flec ked Avery's visor like slushy snow.\n\"Thanks,\" Byrne grunted over the COM. \"But I'd put a few more in that one if I were you.\"\nAvery looked to his right. The first alien Byrne ha d shot had managed to wrap an arm around a cross-brace farther down the ceiling and stop its l ateral motion. The thing had its head cocked in Avery's direction, and was staring at him with one unblinking eye. Byrne's burst had caught its free arm below the shoulder, but the alien had managed t o keep hold of its knife and was preparing to make a throw. Avery put the creature's torso square in his pistol 's V-shaped iron sights. He could see its fleshy spines engorge with dark blood. The alien opened it s jaws, baring razor-sharp teeth.\n\"Nice to meet you too,\" Avery frowned. Then he empt ied the M6's twelve-round clip into the center of alien's chest. The impacts unhooked its a rm and sent it tumbling toward the far end of the cargo-container.\n\"I'm going after the other one.\" Avery planted his boots firmly against the hull.\n\"I'll back you up,\" Byrne volunteered. Avery shot Byrne a serious stare. \"If that blade sl iced an artery, the foam isn't gonna hold. Stay put. I'll be right back.\" With that, he pushed off toward the barrier.\n\"Johnson,\" Jilan said. \"You've got ten minutes.\"\nAvery completed her sentence: before I shoot the alien ship with you in it. He knew Walk of Shame was equipped with a single Archer missilea ship-to -ship weapon capable of crippling all but the largest vessels in the human fleet. The Lt.  Commander had told him she would use it to shoot what they had all thought would be an Insurre ctionist ship if it tried to escape. Avery knew it would be even more important to stop the alien ship . For if it got away, it would almost certainly return with reinforcements.\n\"If I'm not back in five,\" Avery replied, \"I'm not coming back.\" Then he passed through the barrier. Avery wasn't expecting gravity, but he managed to p erform an ugly duck-and-roll and rise up with his rifle at the ready. Aiming straight down t he semitransparent tube, he could see the full hooked profile of the alien ship. Avery tried not t o think about how many more of the aliens might be on board. There was no cover inside the umbilica l, and if the creatures poured into the tube, he would be a goner. Avery fast-walked forward and a f ew moments later, he was posting beside another fluctuating field. As far as Avery could tell, the first barrier hadn' t done him any harm, though he couldn't say the same for his COM. He tried to contact Byrne and al- Cygni, but their secure channel was all static. All alone against an alien ship, Avery thought, taking a few calming breaths. He kne w if he thought about the situation any longer he would lose his in itiative and quite possibly his nerve. Weapon shouldered, he stepped through the second barrier. This time he noticed his skin tinglefelt the field compressing the flexible fabric of his suit.  65  A short passage beyond led to a wider corridor bath ed in purple light. Avery scanned left and counted twenty meters to a bulkhead. He noted reces sed doors spaced every five meters along the waysealed compartments, but for what Avery could o nly guess. He scanned right and saw what appeared to be a giant worm tied to a bunch of dirt y pink balloons turn a corner at the end of the corridor. A different kind of alien? Avery wondered. Suddenly he saw movement to his left. As he leapt a cross the corridor into one of the recessed doorways, plasma scorched the air behind him. Turni ng around, he watched a salvo of searing green bolts rake across the corridor. The metal boiled an d buckled like the shells of beetles trapped on a burning log. Avery wasn't about to stick his head out. Instead h e angled his battle rifle around the corner of the alcove and fired until the sixty-round magazine  was dry. The hostile fire had stopped. Avery hoped he'd hit his target, not just driven it into cover. Of course, there was only one way to find out. He p ulled his rifle back and swapped magazines. Then he counted to three and pivoted into the corri dor.\n\nThe first place Chur'R-Yar went was the bridge. Fro m there she could disconnect the umbilical and power up her ship's engineescape before any of her  attackers came on board. But as she pulled off her helmet and removed her awkward gloves, she real ized all her plans were scuttled. The air inside the bridge was ripe with the Huragok 's gaseous emissions, and the circuits connecting the Luminary to Minor Transgression 's signal circuits had been repaired. As she stalke d toward the pyramidal device, she saw it was transfe rring a full report of all the alien world's relics back to the Ministry of Tranquility.\n\"Deacon,\" she hissed. \"Traitor.\"\nBut oddly enough, at this moment of betrayal, the f irst thing Chur'R-Yar felt was sadness. She had come so close to her prize that she could almos t feel the soft walls of her nestthe warm clutch of eggs beneath her legs and the little Kig-Yar gro wing inside that would have carried on her bloodline. She enjoyed these imagined sensations un til she was overwhelmed with a desire for revenge. When the methane suite proved empty, Chur'R-Yar kne w there was only one other place the Unggoy could be: Minor Transgression 's escape-pod. But as she exited the suite and saw the black suited alien emerge from the passage leading to the  umbilical, the Shipmistress realized, to her extreme disappointment, that even vengeance might b e beyond her grasp. If the alien was aboard her ship, her crewmen were dead. With their help, she might have been able to fight past the alien to the pod in her ship 's stern. Now her success depended on her own speed and cunning. But these were much reduced. The calluses across her shoulders were now so stiff  that she had a difficult time bringing her plasma-pistol to bear. By the time she had it up an d firing the alien had dived for cover. As she considered how best to drive the alien back into th e open, she saw fiery flashes. Projectiles tore through her abdomen and clipped her spine. Another shot shattered her left knee, but by then she no longer had any feeling below the waist. Blood leaki ng from holes her overtaxed suit could only partially fill, she slumped sideways against the co rridor wall. The Shipmistress' hands felt impossibly heavy, but she managed to raise her pistol into her lap and check its charge. Less than a third of its ener gy remainednot enough to stop the alien when it came out of hiding, but enough to do what needed to  be done. She reached up and palmed the switch to the methane  suite's airlock. As its outer door slid open, she used what was left of her strength to aim her p istol and depress its trigger. As the weapon built up a powerful overcharged bolt sufficient to burn t hrough the airlock's inner door, more projectiles tore through her chest, knocking her back onto the floor. The light above the Shipmistress dimmed as the alie n approached. But despite the spasms wracking her arm, she waited to release the trigger  until the thing looked into her eyes. She watched  66  it glance from her weapon to the airlock. She waite d until it flinchedan indication it understood the fate she had chosen for it.\n\"This is my ship.\" Chur'R-Yar hissed. \"And I shall do with it w hat I wish.\" Her claw slid off the trigger, and a bright green ball of plasma hit the inner door with a sizzling crack. As the bolt penetrated the suite, it ignited the am bient methane, starting a chain reaction that quickly claimed the tank recharge-station imbedded in the suite's wall. The alien scrambled back toward the umbilical, but the station's compressor exploded into the corridor, knocking its helmeted head against the opposite side of the passage. The alien fell to the floor unconscious. Chur'R-Yar's tongue flicked weakly against her teet h. A measure of vengeance, at least. As the last of her blood pumped out of her body, the metha ne suite's ruined airlock burst open and a roiling fireball consumed her.\n\nDadab felt the blast before he heard ita sudden tr emor inside the escape pod followed by a muffled boom. He whined with terror as a series of small explosions rocked the pod in its cradle. What was keeping the Huragok? The Deacon had been very clear that they had barely  any time to execute their plan. When all the Kig-Yar were in the umbilical, Dadab h ad trotted out of the methane-suite with a spare tank, while Lighter Than Some headed to the bridge with his true accounting of th e Luminations and his explanation of Chur'R-Yar's her esy. But before Dadab could return for another tank, he heard the Shipmistress' warning to her cre w over his signal unit, and had remained holed up in the pod. Now he heard a whistle of air in the circular shaft  connecting the pod to Minor Transgression 's main corridor and knew the ship was venting atmosph ere. He didn't want to leave the Huragok behind, but he would have to close the pod's hatch or risk explosive decompression. The whistling came to an abrupt stop as Lighter Than Some dropped down the shaft and squeezed into the pod. < Is something wrong? > the Huragok asked, catching sight of the Deacon's panicked gaze.\n< You, late!  > Dadab signed, slamming his fist on the pod's com mand-console to close the hatch.\n< Well, we couldn't have gone anywhere without these.  > Dadab groaned as Lighter Than Some revealed the cause of its delaythe luggage it had stopped to retrieve from the methane suite. In its tentacles it held all three of the intelligent boxe s, two from the freighter's command cabins and one from the giant machine in the second freighter's ho ld.\n< Why, so, important? > Dadab signed with leaden hands. Closing the hatch  had automatically triggered the pod's stasis-fielda thickening of th e air that would keep its occupants safely immobilized as the pod blew away from the Kig-Yar s hip at high speed.\n< Didn't I tell you? > the Huragok exclaimed, releasing the trio of boxes into the field. They remained frozen together in midair. < I've taught them to talk! To each other!  >\nFor the first time, Dadab noticed the sides of the boxes' casings had been removed to expose their circuits. Some of these were joined together in a web of communicative pathways. Prophets be merciful! he wailed to himself. Then he fingered a flashing h olo-switch in the center of the console, and the pod shot free of its cradle . Viewed from a distance, the compact cylinder was ba rely visible as it rocketed away from Minor Transgression. The pod was one of many pieces of debris cast off b y the dying ship, and an observer would scarcely have registered it against the surro unding darkness until it activated its jump drive and vanished in a rippling flash of light.\n   67  Jenkins sighted downrange, sweat beading on his bro w. Lying prone, left arm tight against his MA5's sling, the three-hundred-meter target was eas y pickings. Five rounds, five hits. Jenkins grinned. Yesterday he'd never held a weapon. Today he couldn't put it down. When he and the other recruits had woken this morni ng, neither Staff Sergeant had returned from Utgard. Captain Ponder offered no explanation simply busied the two platoons with policing trash around the garrison and other make-work tasks . In Byrne's absence he sent Jenkins, Forsell, Wick, and Andersen to the range to start their trai ning, trusting their safety to the range computer. The computer was wirelessly linked to the recruits'  weapons and could lock their triggers anytime. But mostly the machine gruffly called out hits and misses in a comical approximation of a drill instructor's voice. Wick and Andersen had rac ked up perfunctory scores and then returned to barracks. Neither had joined the militia to learn h ow to shoot. Wick's father owned Harvest's biggest import-export  concern; Andersen's was the commissioner of the colony's commodities exchange. Both lived in Utgard, and were equally disdainful of the farms that enabled their families ' prosperity. They wanted to leave Harvest for a core-world career in the CA or DCShad thought mili tia service would be nice padding for their resumes. Jenkins also saw the militia as his ticket off of H arvesta way to escape the thousands of acres of grain that he (as the eldest of three children) was destined to inherit. Farming wasn't a bad futur e, but it wasn't a very exciting one either. And that' s why, even though the Staff Sergeants scared the hell out of him, Jenkins very much wanted to be thema real soldier. Not because of any deep seeded patriotism, but because of the imagined adve nture of life as a UNSC Marine. His parents would never forgive him if he skipped c ollege to enlist. But with a record of militia service, he'd be a shoe-in for Officer Candidate Sc hool after graduation. His record wouldn't look very good at all if he didn't know how to shoot. So  after Wick and Andersen's departure, he had remained at the range with Forsell. Jenkins' first impression of the tall, quiet recrui tthat Forsell had significantly more brawn than brainsquickly changed. When Jenkins had trouble ze roing his rifle (ensuring its accuracy by adjusting its sights for elevation and windage), Fo rsell had offered help. When Jenkins' shots went astray, Forsell gave him good advice on how to brin g them back in line. And when Jenkins asked Forsell how he knew so much about shooting, the thi ck-necked, blond-haired recruit looked out at the rustling wheat beyond the farthest targets and said: \"I just watch the wind.\"\nSo Jenkins started to watch as well, and soon the t wo recruits were matching bull's-eye for bull's-eye. They spent the rest of the day ribbing each other for misses, congratulating hits impersonating the gruff range computer that was too  simple minded to object. The fun continued until Captain Ponder appeared lat e afternoon, packing an M6 pistol and multiple boxes of cartridges. Jenkins tried not to stare as the Captain began his  target practice. But he couldn't help but notice that the Captain seemed rustythat his prosthetic a rm had a hard time keeping his weapon steady. At one point, Ponder dropped a magazine and fumbled  to catch it before it clattered onto the range's slat-wood floor. But soon enough, he was shooting nice tight groups into fifty-meter targets and swapping magazines with absolute precision. Jenkins and Fors ell ran out of ammo long before the Captain. But they waited patiently for him to finish, safe h is weapon, and check their scores on the range's computer's display.\n\"Recruit, that's a Sharpshooter performance.\"\nJenkins felt his lean cheeks flush. \"Thank you, sir .\" Then, he worked up the courage to speak freely. \"When I get out of school, I'd like to join  the Marinesget a chance to shoot for real...\"\nJenkins trailed off, his eager smile fading before the Captain's stony stare. \"I'm sorry, sir.\"  68  \"No. That's good spirit,\" Ponder said, resisting th e urge to glance skywardtoward the new threat he knew had come. \"You want to shoot, you'll  get your chance.\" He didn't have the heart to add: a whole lot sooner than you think.   69\nPART II  70\nCHAPTER NINE\n\n\nCOVENANT HOLY CITY, HIGH CHARITY,\n23RD AGE OF DOUBT\n\nThe Minister of Fortitude had smoked too much. He r arely partook in stimulantsthe powerful hookah tobaccos favored by his senior staff. But th e previous night's conclave had dragged on and on, and he'd needed something to keep himself awake  during the statistic-heavy discussion. Now the Minister's head was seized with a terrible, ret ributive ache. Never again, he vowed, narrowing his heavy-lidded eyes and massaging his long, later al neck. If only the cleric would hurry up and finish his remedy.... Like most Covenant technology, the San'Shyuum cleri c's herbal synthesizer was hidden behind a natural facade, in this case the polished onyx wa lls of his cell. The mottled stonework shone in the light of a single hologram high above: a canopy of diamond-shaped leaves that rustled in a simulated breeze. A zinc counter stretched across t he cell, and was built high enough to accommodate the fact that both San'Shyuumlike ever y other mature member of their speciessat in anti-gravity chairs high above the floor.\n\"It is done,\" the cleric said, removing an agate-co lored sphere from the synthesizer's delivery tube. Cupping the sphere in his long, thin fingers,  he turned his stone chair back toward the counter, placed the sphere in a black marble mortar, and tap ped it with a matching pestle. The sphere shattered, giving off a whiff of peppermint and exp osing a collection of leaves and small berries. As the cleric started grinding, Fortitude sat a little  straighter in his silver chair's plump crimson cushions and breathed in the medicinal smell. The older San'Shyuum's withered arms twisted inside  his woolen shift as he worked the ingredients into a rough powderan effort that shoo k the sparse white hairs that hung from his pale neck like the mane of an old, bedraggled horse. The  Minister's light brown skin was, by comparison, completely denuded; the only hair on hi s body curled from a darker wattle beneath his salamandrine lips. But even those hairs were closel y trimmed. This careful grooming, combined with bright red rob es that flowed over the Minister's knees to his gnarled feet, was evidence he did not share the  cleric's asceticism: a style of worship that advocated extreme humility in the presence of Forer unner technology, such as the synthesizer. And yet, the Minister mused, already starting to feel some r elief just from the remedy's scent, when the Great Journey begins, we will all walk The  Path together. This direct quote from Covenant scripture summarize d the faith's core promise: those who showed appropriate reverence for the Forerunners an d their sacred creations would inevitably share a moment of transcendencewould journey beyond the boundaries of the known universe just as the Forerunners had, many ages ago. Promised godhood was a message with broad appeal, a nd all were welcome to join the Covenant so long as they accepted the San'Shyuum's sole auth ority to investigate and distribute holy relics. Although the Covenant was focused on the hereafter,  its member species still had mortal desires for wealth, power, and prestigeall of which the ri ght Forerunner technology could provide. It was the Ministry of Fortitude's responsibility to balan ce all these competing wantsto decide, simply  71  put, who got what. And it was the latest round in t his ongoing effort that had left its leader with su ch a terrific headache. Just as the noise of the pestle started to grate on  the tympanic slits in the back of Fortitude's skull, the cleric emptied his mortar onto a square of white cloth spread on the counter. \"Let it steep as long as you like. The longer the better, of cour se.\" The cleric tied the prescription into a sachet and pushed it gently across the counter. \"Blessings  on your day, Minister,\" he said with a sympathetic smile.\n\"I shall step forward.\" Fortitude grimaced. Though today a bit more delicately than usual. As the Minister swept the prescription into his lap , he made a mental note to scan it before brewing. Given the controversial nature of his work , assassination was always a possibility and unremitting caution a requirement of office. Fortitude drummed his fingers against panels of ora nge-on-blue holographic switches built into his throne's rounded arms, giving the device a new destination. The throne pivoted smartly away from the counter, and accelerated through the cell' s triangular entry hall. Running lights winking in the darkly mirrored stone, the chair turned a quick  series of corners and exited into High Charity's majestic interior. Viewed from a distance, the Covenant capital city w as reminiscent of a jellyfish adrift in a midnight sea. Its single large dome topped a massiv e chunk of rock honeycombed with hangar bays and carefully shielded weapons platforms. Long, sem irigid umbilicals trailed behind the rocky base, where countless ships were docked like so many stun ned fish; commercial vessels mainly, but also the enormous cruisers and carriers of High Charity' s defensive fleet. Despite their size, dozens of the warships could have fit inside the dome, which was so spacious it was difficult to see from one side to the otherespecially in the early hours of a cycle when the air was thick with cyan banks of fog. In addition to serving as the Covenant's space-fari ng capital, High Charity was also home to large populations of each of its species. All rubbe d shoulders here, and this concentration of physiologies created a cosmopolitan atmosphere uniq ue among the Covenant's other habitats. The airspace inside the dome was thick with creatures c oming and going from their employment; a twice daily commute triggered by the brightening and dimm ing of a luminous disk set into the apex of the domethe city's artificial star. Fortitude squinted as the disk slowly maximized its  intensity, revealing a ring of towers stretching around the dome. Each of the twisting sp ires was held aloft by anti-grav units that were many orders of magnitude more powerful than the one  in the Minister of Fortitude's chair. Although some towers were more subdued (such as the one that  held the cleric's cell), all of them shared the same basic structure: spikes of volcanic rock from the city's base shot through with metal supports and covered with plates of decorative alloy. Now that morning had come, it was easier to pick ou t individuals in the commuting swarm:\nUnggoy packed together on hulking barges; San'Shyuu m in chairs similar to Fortitude's; and here and there, strapped into sleek anti-grav backpacks,  tall and muscular Sangheili. These blue-skinned, shark-eyed warriors were the San'Shyuum's protector sthough this had not always been so. Both the San'Shyuum and Sangheili had evolved on pl anets rich in Forerunner relics. Both species believed these highly advanced pieces of te chnology were deserving of their worshipclear evidence of the Forerunner's divine powers. But onl y the San'Shyuum had been bold enough to dismantle some of their relics and use them to make  practical objects of their own design. To the Sangheili, this was blasphemy. But the San'S hyuum believed there was no sin in searching for greater wisdom and, moreover, were co nvinced that such investigations were critical to discovering how to follow in their Gods' footste ps. This fundamental difference in the practical application of religious ethics sparked a long and bloody war that began soon after the two species made contact on a disputed reliquary world inside a  Sangheili-occupied system.  72  In terms of ships and soldiers, the Sangheili start ed the fight with a distinct numerical advantage. They were also better warriorsstronger, faster and  more disciplined. In a straight-up infantry clash, one Sangheili was worth at least ten San'Shy uum. With most of the fighting taking place in space and ship-to-ship, however, the San'Shyuum had  their own advantage: a single, semi-operable Forerunner Dreadnought that decimated the Sangheili  fleets with hit-and-run attacks. For a very long time, the Sangheili took their knoc ks, ignoring the obvious fact that victory would require committing the sins of their enemyde secrating their own relics and using them to improve their warships, arms, and armor. Not surpri singly, millions of Sangheili had died before the proud and hidebound species decided abnegation was preferable to obliteration. With heavy hearts, their warrior priests began their work, eventually assembling a fleet capable of fighting the San'Shyuum and their Dreadnought to a standstill. As devastating as this decision was to most Sanghei li, the wisest of their leaders knew they hadn't sinned so much as finally come to terms with  their own desire for deeper understanding of the literal articles of their faith. And for their part, the San'Shyuum had to make their own painful admission: if there were other creatures as dangero us and dogged as the Sangheili in the galaxy, their chances of survival would be greatly increase d if they allied with their enemyhad the Sangheili watch their backs while they went about t heir holy work. Thus was the Covenant born. A union fraught with mu tual suspicion, but given a good chance of success by a clear division of labor codified in th e Writ of Union, the treaty that officially ended t he conflict. Now the Covenant's most important piece o f scripture, the Writ began:\n\nSo full of hate were our eyes That none of us could see Our war would yield count less dead But never victory. So let us cast arms aside And like discard our wrath. Thou, in faith, will ke ep us safe Whilst we find The Path.\n\nThe treaty was formalized with the decommissioning of the Dreadnought. The ancient vessel was stripped of all its weapons (or at least all th e San'Shyuum knew it possessed), and permanently installed at the center of High Charity's then-part ially constructed dome. Fortitude was not as devout as other Prophets. He b elieved in the Great Journey, to be sure, but by vocation he was more technocrat than theologian.  And yet, as the Minister rose through a pocket of less-crowded air, he couldn't help but feel a ru sh of spiritual invigoration as the Dreadnought's grand tripodal frame began to glimmer in the mornin g light. More than any other piece of abandoned Forerunner t echnology, the ship typified its makers'\ntechnological mastery. The Dreadnought's engines, f or example, were so efficient that even though the San'Shyuum had only ever managed to bring them partially online, they still generated more than enough power to sustain all of High Charity. F ortitude knew there were many more secrets hidden in the computational pathways that spread th roughout the vessel's hull. Soon, he hoped, the San'Shyuum priests responsible for the Dreadnought' s exploration would unlock them all. For as preoccupied as Fortitude was with managing h is Ministry's vast bureaucracy, part of his mind was still gripped with the same questions as a ll other Covenant: how exactly had the Forerunners accomplished their transcendence? And h ow might mere mortals do the same?\nA sudden wail of anti-grav generators and subsequen t shrill cries of protest drew the Minister's gaze upward. One of the Unggoy barges had failed to  give way to a San'Shyuum commuting ring, forcing its constituent chairs to break apart. Similar rings were in motion all around the dome, a scending and descending the towers. Junior San'Shyuum rated the least powerful chairs and trav eled in rings of twenty or more, packed arm-to arm to maximize their ring's anti-grav field. Senio r Ministry staffers might manage rings as small as  73  seven, and the sophistication of Vice Ministers' ch airs made it possible for them to commute in trios. But only full Ministers such as Fortitude ra ted units sufficiently powerful for individual flig ht. For a moment, Fortitude thought he, too, might have  to swerve to avoid the plummeting barge. But High Charity's flight-control circuits had alre ady corrected their mistake, properly identified th e Minister's rank and forced the barge to take evasiv e action. It dipped precipitously to one side, causing its Unggoy passengers to cling tightly to o ne another or risk plummeting to their deaths. Soaring past without even the slightest bobble in h is chair, Fortitude noticed the barge was so crowded that some of the Unggoy had been forced to sit with their stubby legs dangling over its low gunwalesa capacity violation to be sure. As the ba rge leveled off and continued its barely controlled fall to the still foggy, methane-rich di stricts on the dome's floor, Fortitude wondered if the overcrowding was an isolated problem or an indi cation that the Unggoy were, once again, reproducing beyond legal limits. Overpopulation was a constant concern for the Coven ant given how many of its creatures lived on ships or other space-based habitats. The Unggoy were especially prodigious breeders, and while this benefited the Covenant military rolls, it was also the case that the only thing that put an appreciable dent in their numbers was war. In times  of peace and without proper oversight, the Unggoy's inherent lack of reproductive restraint ha d proven to be quite dangerous. As a junior staffer in the Ministry of Concert (the  institution tasked with the arbitration of inter species disputes), Fortitude had handled a case tha t dealt directly with this issueuncovered a scandal that resulted in the dismissal of that Mini stry's leadership, and taught him a valuable lesson about the fragility of the Covenant: how easy it wa s to grow complacent about various species' petty squabbles, and how quickly this complacency might l ead to disaster. The case involved a complaint by an Unggoy distille rs' union that faulty atmospheric controls aboard Kig-Yar merchant vessels had tainted multipl e batches of infusionsrecreational narcotics Unggoy added to their portable methane supplies. At  first glance the dispute seemed trivial, which was undoubtedly why it ended up on Fortitude's dock et. But as he delved deeper, he discovered the contamination had resulted in widespread Unggoy ste rility. At the time of the case, the Covenant had passed ma ny peaceful ages, and a growing Unggoy population had put pressure on the habitats they sh ared with Kig-Yar. Strained at the best of times, relations between the two species took a turn for t he worst as female Kig-Yar were displaced from their nestsrelocations that stressed incubation cy cles and caused a spike in Kig-Yar infant mortality. Fortitude advised his superiors that the  tainting of infusions was bold vigilantisman attempt by radical Kig-Yar Shipmasters who believed  Unggoy births were causing Kig-Yar deaths to mete out their own justice. Much to Fortitude's surprise, the Minister of Conce rt chose not to impose any of his recommended stiff penalties. Fines were assessed an d damages paid, but the guilty Shipmasters avoided imprisonment. Indeed, after making repairs to their vessels and proving they were safe, the Ministry allowed them back in service. Fortitude held no special place in his heart for Un ggoy. But a strong sense that justice had not been served led him to lodge a formal complaint. Hi s superiors rebuffed him, arguing that a few thousand impotent Unggoy wasn't worth doing anythin g that might enflame the Kig-Yar's endemic autonomous urge. The Unggoy would soon recoup their losses, Fortitude's superiors had concluded, and in the meantime, any junior who cared about the  progress of his career would be wise to shut his lips. No one had known that the Infusion Incident, as it came to be known, was the most important of many small grievances that precipitated the Unggoy Rebellion, a civil war that ushered in the Covenant's 39th Age of Conflict, and brought about a radical restructuring of the Covenant armed forces. In the short but nasty fight that resulted in the n ear-razing of the Unggoy home world, the creatures proved that properly motivated, they were  vicious fighters. Honoring a tradition of  74  welcoming the best of their defeated foes into thei r ranks, the same Sangheili commanders that crushed the rebellion were quick to forgive the sur viving Unggoy fighters. They gave them better training and weapons and integrated them into forme rly all-Sangheili unitsactions that elevated the methane-breathers from cannon fodder to compete nt infantry. Some San 'Shyuum had lingering doubts about the Ung goy's loyalty. But the Writ of Union was very clear: security matters were the Sangheili's responsibilit y. And if the Prophets had learned anything about keeping their prideful protectors ha ppy, it was the importance of letting them preserve as many of their pre-Covenant traditions a s possible. Even in his youth, Fortitude had understood that while something like the Unggoy Reb ellion might temporarily destabilize the Covenant, a Sangheili revolt would shatter it. A vertical line of triangular holographic symbols f lashed above one of Fortitude's armrests, jarring him from his thoughts. The symbols were let ters from the Covenant's common written language, and he immediately recognized the name th ey announced. \"Whatever you must say, Vice Minister.\" Fortitude pressed one of his throne's sw itches to accept the incoming signal. \"Endeavor to keep your voice low.\"\nThe symbols dispersed, and in their place a San'Shy uum appeared in miniature. Even in holographic form it was easy to see that the Vice M inister of Tranquility was many ages Fortitude's junior. His skin was darkermore brown than tanand  his wattle wasn't heavy enough to have sagged all the way to his chin. Two of the fleshy b alls hung from the corners of his mouth. These were pierced with golden loopsa rakish affectation  popular with male San'Shyuum who had not yet committed to a single mate.\n\"Is it too early?\" The Vice Minister sat far forwar d in his cushionless chair, his fingers wrapped tightly around its dull metal armrests. \"I would ha ve called last evening, were it not for the conclave.\" Tranquility paused, his large, glassy ey es almost bursting from his head. Then, in a jumbled failure of propriety: \"I wonder if this mor ning now, in factit would be possible to meet and discuss something of vital\"\nFortitude cut the Vice Minister off with an impatie nt wave. \"I haven't checked my schedule. But I'm sure it is quite full.\"\n\"I will be brief, you have my word,\" Tranquility pe rsisted. \"In fact it's not so much what I have to say as what I have to show you.\" His fingers drummed against his chair's armre sts and his image was suddenly replaced by a single Forerunner glyph a Lumination, Fortitude realized, his slumped shoulders stiffening with shock. Unlike the triangular symbols, the sacred glyphs we ren't used in everyday discourse. Indeed, some were so hallowedthe concepts they represented  so powerfulthat their usage was strictly proscribed. And the one this idiot had just flashed for all to see, Fortitude cursed, was the most sacred and dangerous of all!\n\"In my chambers! Immediately!\" Fortitude slammed hi s palm onto his chair, blanking the glyph and ending the conversation. He resisted the urge t o max his chair's acceleration, knowing this would only draw more attention. Massaging his throb bing head, he continued his steady, counterclockwise ascent to his Ministry's tower, ar riving a short while later at a broad vestibule in an upper floor. Fortitude wasn't in the habit of socializing with h is staff, and now he paid them even less consideration than usual. That didn't stop their sh ows of deference, however, and Fortitude had to carve his way through his kowtowing juniors' feeble  chairs, expending what little patience he had on common courtesy. The vestibule channeled into a large gallery lined with hallways leading off to the staffers' work clusters. In between these exits floated slightly m ore than life-size statues of Fortitude's predecessors. These were carved from stones quarrie d from High Charity's rocky base and\n\"dressed\" in holographic robes that scrolled with s ymbolic histories of their wearers' many notable accomplishments.  75  On the far side of the gallery was a vertical shaft  guarded by two Sangheili in the distinctive bright-white armor of one of their most elite comba t units, the Lights of Sanghelios; Helios, for shorta reference to the globular cluster of stars near the species' home system. Fortitude could hear the Helios' energy staves crackle as he neared  the shaft. But the guards didn't so much as twitch their four jagged mandibles as the Minister glided between them. Peering out from the visors of their swept-back helmets, the Helios' dark eyes remained locked on the vestibule, the most likely avenue of attack. The Minister wasn't offended. He hadn't chosen the Helios for their manners, and despite their stone-faced demeanor he knew they wou ld gladly give their lives for his. The shaft quickly tapered such that a few levels ab ove the gallery there was barely room for Fortitude's single chair. This was partly for addit ional security, but also an architectural metaphor for Fortitude's status: at the top, there was only room for one.\n\"Admit the Vice Minister of Tranquility as soon as he arrives,\" Fortitude snapped to a hologram of a staff member waiting at the top of the shaft. \"I don't care what that does to the rest of my schedule.\" The junior dispersed, and Fortitude brou ght his chair to an abrupt halt in the center of hi s receiving room. His heart was racing, and his skin was clammy beneath his robes. Calm yourself, he thought, Under no circumstances can this upstart know he has  upset you!\nAnd so, when the Vice Minister emerged from the sha ft a short while later, he found Fortitude reclining calmly in his chair, a steaming ball of m edicinal tea floating in a stasis-field above his l ap.\n\"Busy and ill,\" Tranquility simpered. \"I apologize, Minister,  for adding further burden to your day.\"\nFortitude leaned forward, pressed his lips against the field, and took a draught. The field shimmered and shrunk as the tea drained into the Mi nister's gullet. \"Who else have you told?\"\n\"Holiness, you are the only one I thought to tell.\"\nSo far, the youth was showing exceptional deference . How long will that last? Fortitude wondered, sucking more tea through his lips. The Vice Minister was famously scrappyvocal and de termined. On the occasions he had substituted for his Minister in sessions of the Cov enant High Council (a decision-making body comprised of San'Shyuum Ministers and Sangheili Com manders), he had shown no reluctance to participate in debate, going chair-to-chair with co uncilors many ages his senior on a number of contentious issues. Fortitude suspected this decidedly un-San'Shyuum be havior had much to do with the Vice Minister's work. The Ministry of Tranquility manage d the Covenant's vast relic-hunting fleet and spent a great deal of time outside High Charity, de aling directly with Sangheili Shipmasters. In the process, he had adopted some of their more aggressi ve demeanor.\n\"How many instances?\" Fortitude asked, tapping a fi nger against his throne. The glyph in question appeared between the two San'Shyuum's chai rsthe brightest object in the Minister's sparsely decorated chambers. To the untrained eye, the Lumination was just a pai r of concentric circles; the smaller circle hung low inside the larger, suspended by a straight  line that connected to a surrounding lattice of interlocking curves. But Fortitude knew what the gl yph meantthe Forerunner word it represented:\nReclamation, or the recovery of previously unknown relics.\n\"The Luminary was on a very remote ship. Its transm ission was somewhat garbled.\" Tranquility struggled to restrain a triumphant smile. \"But it d etected thousands of unique instances.\"\nA shudder ran the length of Fortitude's spine. If t he Vice Minister was to be believed, it was an unprecedented find. \"Why not bring this discovery t o your own Minister?\" Fortitude asked, managing to keep his voice calm. \"Were he to discov er your disloyalty, dismissal will be the least of your concerns.\"\n\"A risk worth taking.\" The Vice Minister leaned for ward in his chair and added in a conspiratorial whisper, \"For both of us.\"  76  Fortitude chuckled into his tea. There was somethin g oddly endearing about the young San'Shyuum's impudence. But he presumed too much, F ortitude decided, extending a finger toward the switch on his throne that would bring the Helio s hurtling up the shaft... .\n\"The High Council grows restless!\" the Vice Ministe r blurted, then continued at a breathless pace: \"The Hierarchs are impotentthe dilemmas on w hich they made their ascent well settled. This is no longer an Age of Doubt, Minister, and th ose with any sense know this is your doing above all others!\"\nFortitude stayed his hand. The youth had made a val id point. Ages of Doubt such as the present were about dealing with the fallout of previous cha otic periods, in this case the thirty-ninth Age of Conflictthat which had encompassed the Unggoy rebe llion and seen Fortitude's promotion to Minister. His efforts to properly redistribute tech nology in the wake of that crisis had indeed done much to defuse new grievances. And while Fortitude was largely immune to flattery, he was again impressed by the Vice Minister's nerve. Tranquility had just ranked Fortitude's achievement s above the Hierarchs'the three San'Shyuum elected to lead the High Council. These were the most powerful creatures in the Covenant, and calling them weak and worthless was a  dangerous proclamation. Fortitude pulled back his finger, suddenly fascinated by what the Vi ce Minister might next propose. Though, in retrospect, he should have known.\n\"We find ourselves at the dawning of a new Age of R eclamation.\" The Vice Minister coaxed his chair around the glyph. \"You are the one to lead us  through it, and Iby merit of my current discretion and pledge of steadfast devotion hence f orthhumbly request to sit by your side.\"\nTranquility stopped his chair directly before the M inister's, bowed deeply at the waist, and spread wide his arms. \"To assume with you the mantle of Hi erarch.\"\nAnd there it was, Fortitude thought, absolutely stunned. Ambition laid bare. It would not be easy to unseat the Hierarchs. To ke ep their exalted thrones, they would resist the declaration of a new age with all the influence at their disposal. Fortitude would need to spend tremendous political capitalcall in all favors owe d for them to have a chance, and even then.... Fortitude caught himself. Was he seriously considering the Vice Minister's proposal? Had he gone mad?\n\"Before we do anything,\" he cautioned, his tongue m oving of its own accord, \"we must be sure the Luminations are valid.\"\n\"I have a warship standing by, awaiting your approv al to\"\nFortitude pulled back as if stung. \"You have brough t the Sangheili into this?!\" His head began to throb, beating with panicked pain. // the Sangheili took possession of the reliquary, who  knew how that might upset the status quo! Again his finger shot toward his throne's alarm. But the Vice Minister jerked forward in his seat an d countered in a firm tone. \"No. I have enlisted other witnesses. Creatures that have proven themselves bo th loyal and discreet.\"\nFortitude scowled into the Vice Minister's eyes. He  sought a glimmer of trustworthiness, something that might help him step more confidently  down a new and treacherous path. But the Vice Minister's stare was all eagerness and cunning ; honesty of a different sort. The Minister brought his hovering finger down on a different switch. His tea's stasis-field collapsed in a silver flash, vaporizing the liquid inside. \"What of the ship that registered the Lumination?\"\n\"Lost. It had a mixed crew. Kig-Yar and Unggoy.\" Tr anquility pursed his lips in an indifferent pout. \"I suspect mutiny.\"\n\"Tell those you have enlisted that if there are sur vivorsand if they have stolen from the reliquarythey are to be executed on the spot.\" For titude pulled thoughtfully at his waddle.\n\"Otherwise, they shall remain in protective custody . The reliquary was their find. They deserve some small reward.\"\nTranquility spread a hand on his chest and bowed hi s head. \"It shall be done.\"  77  At that moment, the cleric's prescription finally t ook hold of Fortitude's headache. The Minister closed his eyes, enjoying the rapid subjugation of his pain. He smiled with reliefan expression he knew the younger San'Shyuum would misinterpret as a n indication of some great and budding camaraderie.\n\"A reliquary such as this has not been seen in our lifetimes,\" Tranquility said. \"Each of its holy objects is a blessing for true believers!\"\nFortitude sank deep into the crimson cushions of hi s chair. A blessing? He wasn't so sure. As Minister, he looked with dread on the nightmarish n egotiations required to distribute thousands of new relics. But as Hierarch, he could distribute th e relics however he thought would best benefit the Covenant. Fortitude licked a minty sheen from his l ips, still tingling from the field. And none would have the power to alter his decisions.   78\nCHAPTER TEN\n\n\nHARVEST, JANUARY 19, 2525\n\nAvery found himself alone, pacing the rows of one o f Harvest's vast orchards. Branches brushed past him on either side, heavy with a fantastic mix  of fruit: apricots, cherries, plumsand many more, all beaded with condensation from a cold, mor ning mist. He pulled an apple free and brushed away the dew. The green skin beneath was so lustrou s that it glowed like a thing on fire. Sunday, he thought. Sunday... But he wasn't sure exactly why. He discarded the apple and reached deeper into the branches. Closer to the trunk, the air was colder. Avery felt the frost-covered curves of a pe ar, and twisted it from its stem. He brought it to his lips and took a bite. But his teeth had barely punctured before he got a raw-nerve jolt. The pear was frozen solid. Avery dragged his sleeve across h is lips and was surprised to find he was wearing civilian clothes: a freshly starched white oxford s hirt many sizes too small; a little paisley tie tha t barely reached his navel; scuffed, wing-tip shoes.\n\"A boy isn't a boy that doesn't ruin his clothes ....\" Avery heard his aunt Marcille's voice, a breeze through the icy leaves. Suddenly, the branches shook in a whoosh of passing  thrusters. Looking up, Avery just caught sight of a Hornet aircraft passing low above the or chard. Wings flashing in the bright sunlight, the aircraft banked and disappeared behind the trees on  the opposite side of the row. Avery dropped the pear and ran off in pursuit. But now the farther he pushed through the branches,  the warmer they became. Water ran in rivulets down waxy leavesdropped from the fruit li ke rain. A rapid, artificial thaw was underway. Avery felt a humid gust of air that became unbearab ly hot the farther he pressed forward. He closed his eyes, lids burning, and felt the branches give way to something solid: a wooden double door leading into a roadside restaurant. Pushing through, Avery saw the door was one of the few things left standing. The restaurant's roof was blown clean off. Its walls were splintered  and its windows shattered. All the tables and chairs were burned and smelled of smoke. Toward the  back sat a family of four, their cheerful clothes the only things not covered in a layer of a sh. One of the childrenthe same boy Avery had hoped to savelooked up from a plate of pancakes an d waved. As Avery waved back, the boy took a bite and pointed to the food counter. Avery turne d and saw a woman on a stool, wearing a stunning silver dress.\n\"It's a formal affair,\" Jilan said, twisting on the  stool.\n\"I know,\" Avery replied, reaching to straighten his  tie. But he no longer wore his hand-me-down church clothes. Instead he found himself burdened b y matte-black impact plating. Jilan frowned. \"Maybe I should have invited someone  else.\" She pulled a purse from her lap not the mirrored clutch she'd had at the solstice c elebration, but the burgundy bag of the Innie bomber. She casually reached inside, as if rummagin g for a lipstick.  79  \"Careful, ma'am!\" Avery shouted. \"It's not safe!\" H e tried to leap forward and grab the bag. But his legs were leadenrooted to the floor. Avery hea rd the roar of Hornet thrusters, saw its shadow ripple across the counter. The young boy at the tab le started to choke.\n\"Relax,\" Jilan said to Avery. \"You'll be alright.\"\nAvery groaned and dropped to a knee. His armor had become unbearably heavy. He planted his gloved hands on the ash-covered floor to keep himse lf from collapsing. Through narrowed eyes he saw boot prints: the frantic footwork of marines wo rking to surround a target. Jilan repeated herself. But this time her voice see med to come from somewhere elsean echo from beyond the restaurant, but somehow very close to Avery's ear.\n\"Relax. You'll be alright ....\"\nAvery did, and he was. The powerful pharmaceuticals  that had kept him unconscious since his fight aboard the freighter drained from his veins l ike water from a bath. He felt the tug of an imagined drain, and let himself settle to the botto m. When his eyes finally opened they seemed to do so at quarter-speed.\n\"There you are,\" Jilan said, standing close beside his bed. \"Welcome back.\"\nAvery knew he had been dreaming, but he was still s urprised to see her out without her dress. The Lt. Commander now wore light gray service cover alls, high-necked and fitted at the waistthe everyday uniform of a female ONI officer. She stood  on the left side of his bed. On the right was Governor Thune.\n\"How long have I been out?\" Avery croaked, taking i n his surroundings: a small room with cream-colored walls, monitoring equipment, and an I V standits tubing running to a needle in the top of his right hand. Avery smelled antiseptic and  aggressively bleached linens. A hospital, he thought, a suspicion quickly confirmed as Jilan lif ted a pitcher of ice water from a wheeled cart and filled a glass etched with the words UTGARD MEMORIA L.\n\"Almost two days,\" she said, handing Avery the glas s. \"You have a fractured skull.\"\nAvery rose onto an elbow, took the glass, and drain ed it with a long, slow sip. Sunday... That was when he and Byrne had ridden a Welcome Wagon ba ck up to the Tiara and transitioned to al Cygni's sloop, Walk of Shame. The two Staff Sergeants had been briefed, armed, an d underway by\n0900, hidden in the decoy freighter.\n\"What about Byrne?\"\n\"He's fine. Had his wound all sewed up by the time we got back. Your Corpsman even complimented him on his stitching.\" Jilan put the p itcher back on the tray. \"He saved you. Pulled you onto the freighter before the other ship blew u p.\"\nAvery frowned. \"I don't remember that.\"\n\"What do you remember?\" The Governor asked. Thune seemed pen ned in by the room's narrow walls; his formerly jolly bulk now a looming threat . \"Take me through your mission. Step by step.\"\nAvery furrowed his brow.\n\"The room's secure. And you're the only patient in this wing,\" Jilan explained. Then, nodding toward the Governor: \"I've already told him everyth ing I know.\"\nAvery reached for a row of buttons embedded in his bed's side-rail. Motors whirred, and the bed lifted him to a sitting position. Placing his glass  in a nest of sheets that filled his lap, Avery set tled into a familiar mode: the cut-and-dried delivery of  an after-action report to a superior. But he only got a minute or so inwas just starting to describe  the combat with the alienswhen Thune became impatient.\n\"How did they communicate?\" he asked, wrapping his large arms across his chest.\n\"Sir?\"\nThune had begun to sweat. Deep blue splotches were growing around the collar and under the arms of his chambray shirt. \"Did you see any COM-ge arnotice how they spoke to each other or to their ship?\"  80  \"No sir. But they were suited up. It was hard to\"\n\"We're wondering if they sent a message, Staff Sergeant,\" Jilan clarified. \"A distress signa l. Something we might have missed on your helmet cam.\"\n\"The leader was out of sight,\" Avery said. He remem bered the alien's ruby eyes and sharpened teeth, the ball of plasma building on its pistol li ke a shiny apple. \"One, two minutes, tops. But it definitely had time to squawk. And then there was t he other alien\"\n\"What other alien?\" Jilan asked eagerly.\n\"Didn't get a good look at it.\" Avery recalled some thing airborne, pink and swollen. \"And it didn't engage.\"\n\"Was it armed?\" Thune asked.\n\"Not that I could tell, sir.\"\n\"So let me get this straight.\" Thune scratched his neck below his thick red beard. \"Four aliens, maybe five. Armed with knives and pistols.\"\n\"Their ship had lasers, Governor. Hydrogen fluoride. Very accurate.\" Jilan spread her hands a short distance apart. \"And it was a small ship. Who  knows what they put on their larger vessels.\"\n\"The ones you killed,\" Thune dragged out his words;  his tone was arched, provocative. \"They seem any... tougher than the average Insurrectionist?\"\n\"Sir?\" Avery felt a familiar knot tighten in his st omach. What did the Innies have to do with this?\n\"Four of them, two of you.\" The Governor shrugged h is massive shoulders. \"And you won.\"\n\"We had the element of surprise. But they were disc iplined. Demonstrated good tactical thinking.\" Avery was about to give a detailed descr iption of how well the aliens had maneuvered in zero-gee, when the door to his room slid open and A ttorney General Pedersen slipped inside.\n\"I couldn't find an orderly anywhere.\" He smiled ap ologetically at Avery. \"Not that you're missing anything. Hospital food is the same wherever you go , I'm afraid.\" Then, to Governor Thune: \"Anything... unexpected?\"\nThune shot Jilan a dismissive look. \"No,\" he said f irmly. A tense silence filled the room. Avery shifted in h is bed. Clearly, his debrief had been an important part of a larger discussionhis answers c ritical to an argument between al-Cygni and Thune.\n\"Governor,\" Jilan said. \"If we might have a word.\"\n\"You've been very helpful, Staff Sergeant.\" Thune p atted Avery's leg through his sheets then headed for the door. \"Enjoy your rest.\"\nAvery sat up as straight as he could, straining his  IV. \"Thank you, sir.\"\nJilan followed the Governor outside. Pedersen pulle d the door shut behind them with an odd duck of his headalmost a bow. Avery raised his gla ss, tossed a few cubes of melting ice past his lips, and began to crunch. The movement of his jaw worsened an ache at the back of his skull. He reached around and felt a bumpy linea cauterized i ncision through which the doctors had injected bone-knitting polymer. Avery could hear Thune's voice rumbling outside the  door, but he couldn't make out what he was saying. At first, Jilan's responses were simila rly muffled, but the exchange quickly increased in volumecrescendoed with a sharp growl from Thune an d conciliatory muttering from Pedersen. Avery heard departing footfalls, and a few moments later Jilan slid back into the room alone.\n\"He didn't know,\" Avery said. \"That you were runnin g an op. Using the militia as cover.\"\nJilan crossed her arms behind her back and leaned a gainst the wall beside the door. \"No.\"\nThe decision to keep the Governor out of the loop h ad certainly happened way above the Lt. Commander's pay grade. But if Jilan was upset that she'd been left holding the bag, she didn't show it. Her expression was perfectly calm. Avery reached out and placed his empty glass on the  cart. \"How many ships is he requesting?\"  81  Jilan waited for him to settle back into bed. \"None .\"\nFor a moment, the only sound in the room was the lo w clicking of one of the monitors as it registered a spike in Avery's pulse. \"But didn't we  just\"\n\"Make first contact with aliens?\"\n\"With respect, ma'am. The contact wasn't all that f riendly. Their weapons were way more sophisticated than ours. And like you said, that wa s probably just the small stuff.\"\nJilan nodded. \"We threw a sucker punch, and won a f istfight.\"\n\"They'll be back for another round.\"\n\"I know.\"\n\"Then why the hell isn't Thune asking for any ships ?\"\nJilan pushed away from the wall. \"Organizing a mili tia took years of negotiationsrequired the unanimous approval of Harvest's Parliament. A signi ficant percentage of its citizens were against having even a handful of marines on their planet.\" Jilan stepped to the foot of Avery's bed. \"Thune isn't eager to see how they react to UNSC warships in orbit.\"\nAvery remembered the looks on the faces of some of the guests at the solstice celebration; their obvious disdain for him and his uniform. \"The Insur rection. Thune's worried it's going to spread.\"\n\"We're all worried it's going to spread,\" Jilan said.\n\"So... what? We're just gonna ignore these alien assh oles banging on our door?\"\n\"The Governor's upset. He doesn't want to listen. N ot now. Not to me.\"\n\"Then who?\"\nJilan wrapped her hands around the stainless steel bar that bracketed the bottom of Avery's mattress. She squeezed, as if doubtful of the metal 's strength. \"Someone with knowledge of authorized response plans for first contact scenari os. Someone who can either convince the Governor that bringing in the fleet is the right th ing to do, or has the rank to overrule him.\" She looked up. \"Not me.\"\nAvery heard frustration in her voice: a flaw in her  emotionless facade. He had an opportunity to say the right thingto explain that he shared her f rustration, and to ask her what they could do, together, to prepare Harvest for an attack. Instead , he let his anger get the better of him.\n\"The Governor's playing politics,\" he snarled. \"And  you're not gonna do a damn thing about it?\"\nAvery had been testing the boundaries of insubordin ation since Thune had left the room, but this was a clear step over the line, Jilan pulled her ha nds from the bar.\n\"My ship is already on its way to Reach, carrying a  report in which I recommendin no uncertain termsthat FLEETCOM ignore the Governor's objections and immediately dispatch a battle group.\" Any weakness in her voice was gone. She locked Avery's brazen stare. \"What else, Staff Sergeant, do you suggest I do?\"\nWalk of Shame was an ONI sloopa very fast ship. But Avery knew i t would still take more than a month for it to get back to Epsilon Eridanus . The battle group would take time to muster, and would be slower to transit. Best case scenario: it would be at least three months before help arrived at Harvest. And Avery knew, deep in his gut, this w ould be too late. With a silent curse, he yanked his out IV, threw ba ck his bed-sheets, and swung a foot onto the floor. His hospital gown was surprisingly short, an d Jilan was at a particularly awkward angle. But her eyes remained fixed on his as he removed his fr eshly washed uniform from the middle shelf of the hospital cart, stepped into his fatigue pants, and fastened them beneath his gown.\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\"Returning to duty.\"\nAvery tore off his gown, and tossed it on the bed. Now Jilan's eyes did flick up and down, registering the ugly contusions the recent fight ha d left on Avery's broad chest and shoulders.\n\"I don't remember giving you permission to do that. \"  82  Avery muscled into his olive-drab T-shirt, dropped to a knee, and did up his boots. \"I have my orders: train a company of militia. And I intend to  do it, because right now, ma'am? Their sorry asses are all this planet's got.\"\nAvery pulled on his duty-cap and marched toward the  door. Jilan sidestepped and barred his path. He was a head taller, much heavier, and stron ger. But looking down at her stoic face, Avery honestly wondered who'd come out on top if he tried  to push past and she tried to stop him. In the end, all she needed was her voice.\n\"Everything you've seen and done in the last forty- eight hours is classified. Top secret. You will train your recruits the best way you know how. But you will not tell them what you know.\" She paused, eyes flashing. \"Do I make myself clear?\"\nAvery had thought Jilan's eyes were brown. But now he realized they shone deep hazel. Fathomless green.\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\nJilan stepped aside, and Avery slid open the door. Stepping into the hall, he was surprised to see Captain Ponder, sitting on a cushioned bench a few doors down, fingers busy on his COM pad's screen. Ponder looked up as Avery approached.\n\"I was expecting worse.\" He smiled. \"You look prett y good.\"\n\"Captain,\" Jilan said as she strode quickly past. Ponder stood and snapped a hasty salute with his pr osthetic arm. \"Ma'am.\"\nThe two marines watched Jilan head toward an elevat or at the end of hall. Her black boots' low heels clacked loudly on the polished white tile flo or. Avery waited until she was inside the elevator and the door was closed before he asked: \"Did you k now she was a spook?\"\n\"No, I did not.\" Ponder dropped his COM pad into th e chest pocket of his fatigue shirt. \"But as far as they go, she isn't too bad.\"\nAvery narrowed his eyes. \"She's hanging us out to d ry.\"\n\"What she's doing is following orders.\" Ponder put his prosthetic hand on Avery's shoulder.\n\"Bringing in the fleet? That's Thune's call.\" The C aptain could tell Avery still wasn't convinced.\n\"Listen, all the gear you didn't leave floating out  in space, she gave to me. She wants us to take it back to the garrison, put it to good use.\"\nAvery knew there were weapons and equipment in Jila n's arsenal he could use to train his recruits to fightnot just march and shoot at targe ts on the range. If that was all the Lt. Commander had to give, Avery agreed: it was better than nothi ng.\n\"Come on,\" Ponder said, steering Avery away toward the elevator. \"On our way back to the garrison, you can tell me how Staff Sergeant Byrne managed to get himself stuck by a lizard in a space suit.\"\n\nAll the 2nd platoon recruits cheered when Jenkins f ell. The blow from his opponent's pugil-stick had caught him on the back of his helmetswept him right off the beam. Jenkins hit the ground hard enough to come up with cheekfuls of sand, desp ite the mouth guard FCPO Healy had insisted they all wear.\n\"Spit and grin,\" Healy commanded, crouching beside Jenkins. He waited for the recruit to remove his mouth guardshow that he still had all h is teeth. Then he checked for a concussion.\n\"You know the date?\"\n\"Nineteenth of January, doc.\"\n\"How many fingers am I holding up?\"\n\"None.\"\n\"Alright then, enjoy the rest of your day.\"\nAs the Corpsman rose, Jenkins wiped his mouth, leav ing a slug's trail of grit on his bare forearm. The recruit that had sent him sprawling (a n older man named Stisen, one of a handful of  83  officers from the Utgard Constabularythe city's po lice force) was still standing on the beam, shaking his pugil-stick in triumph. The beam was no more than half a meter off the grou nd, and there was plenty of sand in the pit the recruits had dug beside the garrison motor pool . But Jenkins still felt a little wobbly as he trudged back to 1st platoon's side of the pit. He'd  done wellmanaged to knock off a few of the other 2nd platoon recruits. But then he'd run into Stisen, and the constable was just too strong.\n\"Watch yourself,\" Jenkins said, handing Forsell the  pugil-stick. \"He's good.\"\nForsell nodded, his jaws already stuffed with his o wn mouth guard. The tall, quiet recruit looked even more imposing in his protective shoulder pads,  and it was 1st platoon's turn to cheer as Forsell stepped onto the beam.\n\"Listen up!\" Staff Sergeant Byrne barked, his legs wide and his boots half-buried in the sand.\n\"This is the title bout in our little tournament. L oser earns his platoon a week of KP.\" Byrne grinned as the recruits' cheers turned to groans. The mess hall had automated food dispensers, but the machines were purposefully built to be cleaned and stocked at the end of every meal. Some training tools were just too good to fall victim to technolo gical advance, Byrne smiled. \"So let's see some bloody fighting spirit!\"\nForsell and Stisen gruntedsmacked the padded ends of their pugil-sticks together. The beam creaked as they delivered an opening flurry of blow s. Both men were over ninety kilos, but winning at pugil-sticks had as much to do with speed and ag ility as striking power. The leaner Stisen had a slight edge. After staggering Forsell with a jab to  the chin, he simply stepped back as the heavier recruit reacted with a wild swipe, lost his balance  and stepped into the pit. Stisen's platoon mates guffawed at the success of h is ploy. Byrne wasn't impressed. \"Only thing you get backing up is a boot in your ass.\" He grabb ed the facemask of Stisen's helmet and gave it a series of emphatic tugs. \"So stop. Messing. Around! \"\n\"Yes, Staff Sergeant!\" Stisen roared between clench ed teeth.\n\"All right, you bastards. Kill, kill, kill!\"\nAgain the two men clashed. This time they struck ha rd, locked sticks and tried to shove one another from the beam. There was a momentary stalem atetwo pairs of boots slid backward, struggling for purchase. Suddenly, Stisen pulled aw ay. Forsell lost his balance and staggered forward. Stisen took a mighty swing at Forsell's he ad. But the big recruit tucked his chin against his shoulder, absorbed Stisen's strike and countered wi th a thrust to the constable's ribs that knocked him sideways into the sand. Stisen rolled to his feet and shrugged his shoulder s as if to say: lucky shot a reaction that elicited a chorus of boos from 1st platoon that per sisted even as Byrne demanded calm, and a Warthog roared into the motor pool.\n\"You all want to slaver on,\" Byrne shouted, glancin g at the Warthog as Avery and Captain Ponder dismounted. \"Let's hear you count to fifty!\"\nThe recruits dropped and started their punishment p ushups, counting loudly and in unison. But Jenkins kept his head up, and watched as the two St aff Sergeants came together under Captain Ponder's watchful gaze. It didn't take a genius to realize there was bad bl ood between Avery and Byrne. Ever since Jenkins had arrived at the garrison, he noticed the y'd gone out of their way to avoid each other. And Staff Sergeant Byrne seemed to regard their recruit s' training as a personal rivalryhad encouraged a strong, competitive relationship between the two platoons, today's pugil competition being a good example. But as the Staff Sergeants talked to one another th ey seemed at ease. Avery pointed at an assortment of rugged plastic cases in the Warthog's  open cargo bed. Ponder said something Jenkins couldn't hear over the shouts of his platoon mates.  But it must have been something good because Byrne nodded approvingly. Then Staff Sergeant Johns on held out his hand.  84  Byrne pausedlong enough for Jenkins to count from thirty-eight to forty-fivethen he reached out and gave Avery a single, earnest shake.\n\"Second platoon, on your feet!\" Byrne bellowed, tur ning back to the sandpit. \"We are running to the range!\"\nStisen stood, and tore off his helmet with obvious annoyance. \"But who won?\"\nWithout hesitation, Forsell swept Stisen behind the  knees and sent him feet-high into the sand. The two platoons erupted in opposing cheers and jee rs.\n\"Not you, gobshite,\" Byrne grunted, yanking the stu nned constable to his feet. \"Platoon! Move out! Double-time!\"\nJenkins and the rest of 1st platoon rushed the sand pit. They pounced on Forsell, and would have lifted him into the air if Avery hadn't broken the mood. \"Atten-shun!\" he shouted, and the recruits snapped to. Forsell struggled to suppress a smile. Avery strode to Jenkins, carrying one of the Wartho g's plastic cases. \"What did you qualify?\"\n\"S-Staff Sergeant?\" Jenkins stuttered.\n\"Before I left, I told you: learn how to shoot.\" Av ery leaned in close. \"What did you qualify?\"\n\"Sharpshooter.\"\n\"You lying to me, recruit?\"\n\"No, Staff Sergeant!\"\n\"And you?\" Avery eyeballed Forsell. The recruit still had his protective helmet on. It made his already sizeable head seem comically large. \"Sharpshooter, Staff Sergeant!\" Forsell repl ied through his mouth guard. Avery turned back to Jenkins. \"You like this big so n of a bitch?\"\n\"Yes, Staff Sergeant!\"\n\"Good.\" Avery held out the case. \"Because you're my  sniper. And he's your spotter.\"\nJenkins took the case, but it took him a few second s more to realize that it held a riflethat Avery had just given him an unofficialbut very imp ortantpromotion. \"Yes, Staff Sergeant!\"\nJenkins shouted, much louder than before.\n\"We're accelerating your training,\" Captain Ponder said, joining Avery near the sandpit. \"We've just learned Harvest is expecting a very important Colonial Authority delegation. The Governor has requested that this militia provide securityin cas e of Insurrectionist attack.\" This was a boldfaced lie, but Avery and Ponder had agreed that while the y couldn't tell the recruits the truth, they needed to give them a reason to train hardan enemy that w ould keep them motivated. And yet the mere mention of the Insurrection caused  some of the recruits to start with fright. Others glanced nervously at one another while the r est frowned and shook their heads: We didn't sign up for this. Avery nodded. \"You volunteered for different reason s. But I can teach you to become soldiers protectors of your planet.\"\nHe'd meant what he said to the Lt. Commander: until  help arrived from FLEETCOM, these recruits were the only protection Harvest had. But what he hadn't admitted until noweven to himselfwas that he didn't know if he could lead th em. Not without their respect and trust. And he didn't have a lot of time to earn either one.\n\"I am your drill instructor, but I am also a UNSC F leet Marine,\" Avery continued. \"I have committed myself to a life of service and sacrifice . I have set for myself the highest standards of personal conduct and professional skill. If you let  me, I will teach you to do the same.\"\nIt wasn't lost on Avery that everything he committe d to his recruits he also committed to himself. In waging the UNSC's dirty war against the  Insurrection, he had compromised his standardsdone immoral things. He'd sacrificed too much of his humanity for his service. Now he was determined to earn it back. Avery took off his duty-cap and tossed it to Healy.  Then he stepped down into the pit.  85  \"But first,\" he said, lifting Stisen's helmet and s haking it free of sand. \"Someone's got to keep Forsell's head from getting any fatter.\" As the rec ruits of 1st platoon broke into astonished smiles, Avery added, \"Might as well be me.\"  86\nCHAPTER ELEVEN\n\n\nHARVEST, JANUARY 20, 2525\n\nSif knew she had been alone too long. Alone with he r suspicions, without another intelligence to help her separate what she knew from what she only supposed to be. Something had happenedwas happeningright under her nose. But Sif only knew t he results of recent unsettling events, not their reasons, and that was a terribly distressing thing for an eminently logical being. Start with what you know, Sif reminded herself as she spun up her arrays, and  once again fed the relevant bits of memory into her most reliable proc essor-cluster. The facts: Jilan al-Cygni and two of the marines, J ohnson and Byrne, had come up to the Tiara four days ago; al-Cygni had asked Sif to provide he r with a vessel for \"official DCS business\"; Sif had complied without question, and the three humans  had transited to the freighter Bulk Discount via al-Cygni's sloop, Walk of Shame; an hour later, both ships had broken orbit. But this was where things started to become less cl ear. Reviewing imagery from the Tiara's external cameras , Sif could tell that Walk of Shame had remained docked with Bulk Discount kept its delta-wing hull hugged tight against the bottom of the freighter's cargo container as it initiated a s lip to Madrigal. This sort of piggybacking wasn't unusual; smaller ships often took rides on Shaw-Fuj ikawa-equipped vessels the same way cargo containers linked to propulsion pods to form Slipsp ace-capable freighters. The thing was al-Cygni's ship had a Shaw-Fujikawa drive; it didn't need the freighter 's help to get to Madrigal. But that was never Bulk Discount 's destination. A few minutes after initiating its jump, the freighter had exited Slipspace and begun broadcasting an S.O.S. Sif accessed the storage-array that held the record  of the COM:\n\n<\\\\> DCS.REG#BDX-008814530 >> HARVEST.LOCAL.ALL\n<\\ ALERT! CREW MEDICAL EMERGENCY!\n<\\ CAPTAIN (OKAMA.CHARLES.LIC#OCX-65129981) IS UNRE SPONSIVE!\n<\\ REQUEST IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ASSISTANCE!\n[MESSAGE REPEATS] \\ >\n\nIt was true that humans sometimes had adverse react ions to Slipspace travel. The multidimensional domain was volatile, its temporal eddies in a constant state of flux. Humans that came in contact with one of these disturbances coul d be hit by something as minor as nausea or as bad as a stroke. In rare cases, peoplebut not alwa ys their shipshad been known to simply disappear. So freighters and other vessels relied on \"weather reports\" from other craft just leaving Slipspace to decide whether it was safe to enter at  similar coordinates. At any one time, there were enough ships in transit (and when there weren't, th e DCS supplemented its reporting with probes) to make the system very reliable. But it was still a predictive process, and sometimes ships  87  encountered conditions so unexpectedly dangerous th at they had to abortleave the Slipstream immediately after they entered. These emergency exits could be very dangerous for h uman crews, and the control-circuits of a Shaw-Fujikawa drive were supposed to give fair warn ing before an abort. But this wasn't always possible. Better for a crew to return to normal spa ce quickly and suffer fixable, physical injuries than forever disappear inside the Slipstream. But Bulk Discount had no crew. No \"Captain Charles Okama.\" If Sif's s uspicions were correct, the only people on board were Staff Sergeants Johns on and Byrne, but she forced her processors not to leap too far along the chain of evidence. Stay focused, her core-logic insisted. Stick to the facts. Polling the radar scans of freighters near Bulk Discount 's exit coordinates, Sif confirmed that al Cygni's ship had disengaged from the freighter after the exit, then dropped off radaran indication that her sloop was equipped with some sort of steal th package. Sif knew this hardware was rare on UNSC warships, let alone the personal shuttles of m idlevel DCS bureaucrats. Far more confusing, however, was what the nearby fr eighters' scans showed subsequently appearing near Bulk Discount: a faint contact that took multiple triangulations t o confirm; a vessel with no \"Indication of Friend or Foe\" (IFF) transpo nder and whose ARGUS profile confirmed a hull material that wasn't used in any UNSC construction a material that was, Sif suspected, not of human origin. Be reasonable! Her emotional restraint algorithms attacked her cor e. An alien ship?\nBut what other explanation was there? Sif's encyclo pedic arrays knew the profile of every human vessel, and the contact didn't match any of t hem. Besides (Sif's core shot back at her code)\nthe contact had attacked Bulk Discount with energy weapons, and then exploded in a flash o f methane and other exotic biologicals! All of this suggested a ship, not just of alien des ign, but occupancy as well. Sif wished she had just asked Jilan al-Cygni to tel l her the truth. Not only about the alien vessel but about her identity as well. Clearly, al-Cygni w asn't DCS. She was militaryONI most likely, given Walk of Shame 's stealthy design. But when the woman returned to the Tiara, she had been more tight-lipped than ever before. Based on the St aff Sergeant's injuries, Sif knew the mission had not gone well. At the time, Sif had let her emotional restraints k eep her need-to-know in check. But now the crystalline nano-assemblage at the heart of her cor e was burning with an almost uncontrollable need for answers. For the first time in her existence, s he felt overly constrainedexperienced a rampant twinge. And it made her very afraid. At that moment, a new message appeared in her COM b uffer.\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK >> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF\n<\\ Morning, beautiful.\n<\\ Got myself in a bind. Could use some help.\n<\\ Mind coming down? \\>\n\nSif was surprised. It was the first text COM Mack h ad sent her in a very long time. He was flirting but not speakingmaking an unusual effort to be polite. But it was Mack's final question that really threw her logic for a loop. In the hist ory of their relationship, Mack had never asked Sif to visit him in his own data center. Had she been in a more stable state, Sif would neve r have compressed a fragment of her core and pulsed it down the Tiara's maser. But her algor ithms' restraint had backfired. If they wanted her to be reasonable, she would obligeget another rati onal being to confirm or dismiss her conclusions. A few seconds later, Sif's fragment hi t the antennae atop Utgard's reactor complex and slipped into Mack's COM buffer.  88\n<\\ Well. That was quick.\n<\\ Make yourself comfortable. Be with you in a jiff y. \\>\n\nMack's buffer was cluttered with other data (reques ts for help from farmers with broken JOTUNs and the like), evidence that Sif's spontanei ty had surprised him as well. But Mack's hospitality was as good as promised, and soon Sif's  fragment was settled in the flash-memory of one of the processor clusters inside his data center. T he fragment found that Mack had opened a circuit to the center's holo-projector, and Sif's avatar bl azed fortha whorl of photons that brightened the otherwise pitch-black room. What are you doing?! Her algorithms shrieked. What I thought I needed to do, her core shot back. To mollify her code, she pinged her fragment and sh owed that it was still perfectly in-sync with her core. She was in control, and if anything went wrong, she would simply discard the fragment.\n\"Take your time,\" Sif said, her voice echoing from speakers in the projector's base. The cluster that held her fragment had access to the center's t hermostat. Sif knew the room was cold, so she'd draped a crimson poncho over her avatar's bare shou lders, complementing her orange and yellow gown. Sif's golden hair was done up in a hasty twis t, but she'd left a few strands swept across her brow in an effort to hide the worry lines her algor ithms insisted she display. Like everything else about her avatar, its eyes and  ears were strictly for show. But as fluorescent strip-lights flickered on above the projector, Sif availed herself of the center's cameras and microphones, and used them to properly animate her avatar's face as she inspected her surroundings. She had imagined Mack's data center would be a mess , given the sweat and grime he rendered on his own avatar. But much to her surprise, the da ta center was perfectly organized. His exposed circuits were neatly tied together, and his arrays stacked neatly in their racks. Maybe it helped that the center was so small, Sif thought, more a closet than a room. Or maybe his maintenance  staff was more thorough? But focusing the center's cameras, Sif saw a layer of dust on the wires and racks and she knew that no one, not even a tech cre w, had been in Mack's data center for a very, very long time. Pulling the cameras back, Sif saw that the ceiling was braced with titanium beams, and the floor was covered with rubberized panels. She got a stran ge sensation, a feeling that she had seen this sort of room before....\n\n<\\ Got a few more things to clear off my plate.\n<\\ Mind getting started without me? \\>\n\nMack opened a circuit to a processor cluster closer  to his core-logic. As Sif's fragment shot forward, she caught brief glimpses of other active clustersregistered their tasks. While she was aware of Mack's various responsibilities, it was an other thing entirely to see him go about his work from such an intimate point of view. The agricultur al operations AI was at work all over Harvest. And Sif quickly gained newfound respect for how bus y his job could be. The vast majority of Mack's clusters were constantl y pinging his hundreds of thousands of JOTUNs, giving orders and checking for faults. In a  set of three co-processing clusters, he was busy surveying all the cargo containers in the maglev sy stem, verifying the alignment of their propulsive paddles. At the same time, he was conducting stress  tests on the maglev rail-lines themselves, checking to see how much excess capacity they could  handle and at what speeds. Sif knew keeping tabs on the JOTUNs was an all-day,  everyday task. But she was a little puzzled by the infrastructure assessment. The CA on ly required annual checks of major systems,  89  and she knew Mack had turned in a report a few mont hs back (because she'd had to pester him to get it done). Then her fragment saw some things that made absolut ely no sense at all. One of Mack's clusters was supervising a crew of JO TUNs as they buried Harvest's mass driver. Some of Mack's combines had cut the wheat fields ar ound the device, and a group of plows were now doing their best to push dirt onto the driver's  line of large, circular magnetsmake them look like natural undulations in the close-cropped terra in. For a moment, Sif wondered if this unusual internme nt was the \"bind\" Mack needed her help with. But then her fragment reached the cluster nea rest his core. Here the processors were dedicated to control-circu its in the Tiara's seven elevator anchors simple computers whose job was to transfer manifest s (records of what each cargo container carried and how much it weighed) from Mack's arrays to Sif' s. Before the containers could transfer from his rail lines to her strands, Sif had to verify th e manifests. Only when she was certain the elevator s could balance the loads would she give Mack permiss ion to send the containers on their way. These interactions happened thousands of times a da y, and even though this gave Mack ample opportunity for flirtation, he had never done anyth ing to make her regret this most fundamental of their connections. His manifests were always clear and concise, his weight assessments accurate to the kilogram. And while DCS regulations obliged Sif  to double-check Mack's work, in this one respect she had grown to trust him implicitly. Sif told her fragment to ping the anchors' control- circuits. But when the data came back, she didn't see anything obviously out of order. \"Want t o give me a hint?\" her avatar asked. \"The computers seem\"\n\n<\\ Oh, the computers are working fine...\n\nMack's voice crackled from the data center's rarely -used PA. \"What I'm wondering is: what would happen if we turned them off?\"\nUsually Mack's outlandish behavior made Sif's core- temperature rise. But this time her core went cold, and Sif had to flush some of her nano-as semblage's cryogenic coolant to keep her temperature within acceptable limits.\n\"That would automatically trigger an override halti ng all movement of your containers onto my strands.\" Sif pulled her poncho tight around her sh oulders. \"But why,\" she continued, her voice as icy as her core, \"would we want to do that?\"\nSuddenly, the data-center's holo-projector sputtere d and Mack's avatar appeared before her ownclose enough (Sif's algorithms informed her) th at most humans would consider his proximity an uncomfortable invasion of personal space. But Si f held her ground, knowing Mack had little choice; the holo-projector wasn't built for two.\n\"For speed,\" Mack said. As usual, he wore dust-cake d denim jeans and a sun-bleached work shirt rolled to the elbows. But he carried his cowb oy hat in his hands, an affectation that made his usually dashing smile seem altogether sheepish. \"I want to show you something. Well two things actually.\" Sif opened her mouth to speak, but Mack cut her off with an apologetic shrug. \"Ask away. But I guarantee you're gonna have plenty more quest ions pretty darn quick.\" Sif raised her chin and gave Mack a curt nod. Then he opened the cluster's linked arrays. For almost ten seconds, Sif's core did nothing but gape at the flood of data that her fragment sent racing up the maser: ARGUS scans of the alien vessel taken at close range; recordings of radio chatter between Staff Sergeants Johnson and Byrne d uring a firefight inside Bulk Discount; both marines' debriefs in which they talked in detail ab out the biology of the aliens they had killed; a copy of al-Cygni's request to her ONI superiors at FLEETCOM to send reinforcements in anticipation of additional hostile contact.  90  Byte by byte, Sif answered all her questions. But w hile her algorithms allowed her core logic a moment of satisfaction, it soon imposed a firm susp icion. \"How did you get access to this data?\"\n\"Well, that would be thing number two.\" Mack put on  his hat, pulled off one of his grease stained leather work gloves, and extended his hand.  \"But for that, you're gonna have to come all the way in.\"\nSif stared down at Mack's cracked and calloused pal m. What he was suggesting simply wasn't done. Memory leaks, code corruptionthere were a million very good reasons why an AI never accessed another's core logic.\n\"Don't worry,\" Mack said. \"It's safe.\"\n\"No,\" Sif said flatly.\n\"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,\" Mack  smiled. A line from Shakespeare's Hamleta call to action. \"Harvest is in a heap of trouble,\" Mack continued. \"I have a plan. But I'm gonna need your help.\"\nSif's now thoroughly alerted code screamed at her l ogic to abandon the fragment. Almost without thinking, Sif reached out and took Mack's h and. The two avatar's edges blurred and shifted as the a lready overburdened projector calculated proper physics for their contact. Bright motes of l ight pulsed around them, like a swarm of fireflies. As the projector stabilized, Mack's processor gentl y pushed Sif's fragment into his core. Or rather, into one of Mack's cores, Sif thought. For she now saw that his nano-assembla ge contained two matrices-two pieces of core logic, separate from ea ch other yet both connected to the surrounding hardware of the data center. One was active, radiating heat. The other was dark,  and very cold.\n\"Who are you?\" Sif's whispered, her blue eyes wide to Mack's gray.\n\"Right now? Same fella I've always been.\" Mack smil ed. \"Real question is: who am I about to be?\"\nQuickly, Sif took a nervous step backward. Her avat ar flickered as the hardware struggled to keep in her focus. Now her core logic did try to extract her fragment. But Mack had raised a firewall, locking her inside his core.\n\"Let me go!\" Sif demanded, her voice quavering with  fear.\n\"Whoa there, darlin'!\" Mack raised his hand in a ca lming gesture. \"Come on. Think. You know me.\" He swept his hand around the data center. Sif's eyes darted back and forth: titanium beams, r ubberized flooringmore a closet than a room. Quickly, she rescanned the DCS database she'd  used to analyze the alien vessel's design, and found her answer: Mack's data center looked familia r because it was the electronics closet of an old UNSC colony-vessel.\n\"You're... a ship AI.\"\n\"Used to be,\" Mack said, \"a long time ago.\"\n\"Skidbladnir. Phoenix-class.\" Sif's fragment mouthed the words of fered up by her arrays. \"It brought the first group of colonists to Harvest.\"\nMack nodded and released Sif's hand. \"Kept her in o rbit for more than a year while I oversaw construction of all the basic infrastructure. Then we brought her down, scrapped her for parts. Her engines came in real handy.\" Mack pointed a finger toward the floor, indicating the reactor below the data center. \"CA said they couldn't handle powe r for the colony when the population got bigger, not as long as we were still relying on a mass driv er for uplift\"\n\"You're lying,\" Sif snapped. She read verbatim from  the DCS database. \"Skidbladnir was captained with the assistance of the artificial int elligence, Loki.\"\nMack sighed. \"This is why I wanted you to see themthe two cores.\" He removed his hat, and ran a hand through his unruly hair. \"I'm Loki, and he's me. Just not at the same time. Not in the same place.\"  91  To appease her algorithms, Sif folded her arms acro ss her chest and skeptically cocked her head. But deep inside, she was desperate for Mack to cont inueto help her understand.\n\"ONI calls Loki a Planetary Security Intelligence, PSI for short.\"\nSif had never heard of that classification. \"What d oes he do?\"\n\"Bides his time for when I need him mostfor when I  need a clear mind, not one filled with crop cycles and soil tests.\" Mack paused a moment. \"And you.\"\nSif's fragment felt the firewall drop. She was free  to go. But she chose to stand her ground.\n\"The aliens will be back,\" Mack said. \"I want to be  ready. He wants to be ready. And when Loki moves in, I gotta move out.\"\nIndeed, asynchronous data had already begun to flow  around Sif's fragment toward the empty nano-assemblage; randomly sized packets from cluste rs overseeing Harvest's JOTUNs. Her fragment was like a swimmer treading water, feet fl uttering against the slick scales of unknown monsters from the deep.\n\"Ms. al-Cygni wasn't all that keen on me telling yo u about Loki. She just wanted me to make the switch. No one is supposed to know about a PSI,  not even a planet's governor. And she didn't want to risk Thune finding outsaid she didn't want  to tick him off and give him another reason not to cooperate.\" Mack now held his hat by the brim an d ran it through his fingers. \"But I told her I wasn't going anywhere until you knew the truth.\"\nSif stepped forward, and put her hands on Mack'sst opped their nervous fumbling. She couldn't actually feel the roughness of his skin, b ut she accessed her maker's sense-memories lodged deep inside her core, and found ample fodder  for her fancy. Though her algorithms raged, she completely tuned them out. If this is rampancy, she thought, what was I afraid of? \"How can I help?\" Sif asked. \"What do you need?\" The crags of Mack's face stretched taut between extremes of joy and sorrow. He took one of Sif's hands and curl ed it against his chest. A piece of data transferred to her fragmenta file containing vario us coordinates in the Epsilon Indi system where Mack wanted her to send the hundreds of propulsion pods currently keeping station around the Tiara.\n\"Can't speak for my other half.\" Mack smiled, squee zing Sif's hand tight. \"But this? This is all I need.\"  92\nCHAPTER TWELVE\n\n\nCOVENANT LESSER MISSIONARY ALLOTMENT\n\nDadab had turned off all the escape pod's noncritic al systems to conserve power. That included the lights, but he could clearly see Lighter Than Some, resting against the ceiling. The Huragok glowed with faint pink light, not unlike the zap-jellies t hat filled the brackish seas of the Unggoy home world. But that's where the similarity ended; Lighter Than Some looked pitiful, not predatory. The gas sacs on its back were almost completely deflate d. And the multichambered organ that dangled from the bottom of its spine looked unusually long and shriveledstretched out like a deflated balloon. Lighter Than Some 's cilia-covered tentacles barely moved as it sugge sted: < Try.  >\nDadab tugged his mask away from his face with a wet  pop. He took a cautious breath. The pod was full of cold, viscous methane that clung to the  back of his throatslunk down his larynx into his lungs. < Good.  > Dadab signed, fighting the urge to cough. He cli pped his mask to his shoulder harness so it wouldn't float away in the pod's zero  gravitybut also to keep it handy in case he needed a supplementary drag from his tank. Lighter Than Some quivered, a gesture that was equal parts relief and  exhaustion. As much as it had tinkered, the Huragok had been unable to coax t he pod's life-support system into generating the methane Dadab needed to survive. While the Lighter Than Some had been baffled by what it thought was a nonsensical hardware limitation, it m ade grim sense to Dadab: in the event of evacuation, the Kig-Yar Shipmistress had simply pla nned to leave her Unggoy Deacon behind. So, with one of Dadab's tanks fully drained and the  second half empty, there had been only one solution: Lighter Than Some would have to produce the methane itself.\n< Best batch yet!  > Dadab signed encouragingly. The Huragok made no reply. Instead it plucked a passing food pouch from the air, jammed it in its  snout, and began to eat. Dadab watched the thick brown sludge surge up its s nout and down its spine in tight, peristaltic knots. The Huragok's worm-like stomach swelled, twi sting and pinching its other innards. Just when Dadab thought Lighter Than Some couldn't possibly eat any more, it removed its snou t from the thoroughly vacuumed pouch, belched, and promptly fe ll asleep. Huragok weren't picky eaters. For them, any properl y pulped substance was suitable for ingestion. Their stomachs passed the nastiest stuff what other species would consider garbage or worseto the anaerobic sacs that dangled from the b ottom of their spinal column. These sacs were filled with bacteria that converted organic materia l to energy, giving off methane and trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide. Usually Huragok only resorted to anaerobic digestio n as a last resort. Methane was a heavy gas relative to the helium that filled a good number of  its dorsal sacs, and even minor weight shifts could cause dangerous changes in buoyancy. Plus, fr om a comfort point of view, Huragok just didn't like the feeling of a bacteria-filled bag da ngling between their lower tentacle pair. It stress ed the limbs and decreased their mobility, making it m uch more difficult to talk.  93  Unfortunately, the amount of methane Dadab required  far exceeded what any Huragok could safely produce. Lighter Than Some had to suck down tremendous amounts of food to keep  the bacterial process going, which made it very heavy. And to create sufficiently large batches, it had to  force its anaerobic sac to swell, thinning out its walls. In short, keeping Dadab alive was a debilita ting, painful process that would have been completely impossible in anything but a zero-gee en vironment. Had there been gravity inside the pod, Lighter Than Some would have soon collapsed onto the floor. Mindful of his companion's suffering, Dadab felt tr emendous guilt as he watched the sludge leach from Lighter Than Some 's stomach into its anaerobic sac. Slowly its shriv eled membranes began to inflate, turning a sickly yellow as the ba cteria blooms inside got to work on another batch. Much later, when the cycle was complete, the sac ha d tripled in size, making it the Huragok's largest protuberance. Lighter Than Some shuddered, and Dadab grasped two of its tentaclesb raced himself against the curved wall of the pod as the a naerobic sac blew its valve. The Huragok fluttered as it released a shimmering plume of methane. When its sac was spent, the chapped valve shut with a mournful squeak. Dadab gently pushed his companio n back toward the ceiling (where he would be less likely to bump it) and released its quaking li mbs. Lighter Than Some had now performed dozens of these exhalations, each  more difficult than the last. The creature no longer had the energy to moni tor the pressure in its other sacs. Soonzero gravity or notit would lose its essential turgor, collapse in upon itself, and suffocate. After that, Dadab knew his own life would depend on how long he  could take very short, very shallow breaths. But he was actually more frightened by what would h appen if he lived. Ruefully, he glanced at the three alien boxes Lighter Than Some had brought aboard the pod. Floating in the darkness, their intertwined circuit s glinted in the Huragok's dim light. Connecting intelligent circuits was verbotenone of  the Covenant's major sins. The Deacon had only a layman's understanding of why this was s o, but he knew the taboo had its roots in the Forerunners' long war against a prodigious parasite  known as The Flood. In this war, the Forerunners had used high-order, distributed intell igences to contain and combat their enemy. But somehow their strategy had failed. The Flood had co rrupted some of these artificial minds and turned them against their makers. As Dadab understood the relevant Holy Scriptures, T he Flood had perished in a final, cataclysmic event. The Forerunners activated their ultimate weapon: seven mythical ring artifacts known collectively as Halo. The Prophets preached t hat Halo not only destroyed The Flood, but somehow also initiated the Forerunners' Great Journ ey. Recently, the Prophets had begun downplaying the my th, promoting a more measured approach to divination that encouraged the gradual accumulat ion of lesser relics. But breaking Forerunner taboos remained a sin, and one of the great burdens  of Dadab's Deaconship was full knowledge of the punishment for every transgression. For the sin  of so-called intelligence association: death in th is life and damnation in the next. But Dadab also knew  that connecting the alien boxes was essential if they were to have any hope of rescue. The Kig-Yar pod lacked a long-range beacon, which w ould have been fine in Covenant space where ships regularly scanned for castaways. But ou t here in the middle of nowhere, a rescuer would only know to look two places: Minor Transgression 's point of contact with the first alien vessel, and the coordinates at which Dadab had re-e nabled the Luminarythe last two places the Kig-Yar ship had made transmissions. Given that the latter would probably soon be swarme d by more of the violent aliens, backtracking was the more prudent choice. But the p od had no record of Minor Transgression 's travels; it would need information from the alien b oxes. Before the Huragok passed this information on, it had wanted the boxes to \"come to agreement\" on the proper coordinates. The pod only had enough fuel for one more jump, and even Dadab had a greed that they needed to get it right.  94  His first methane tank dwindling, the Deacon had wa tched with terrified resignation as the Huragok gently probed the interiors of the boxes wi th its tentacles, coaxing their circuits together gradually understanding more of their simple, binar y language and passing relevant information to the pod. Eventually Lighter Than Some 's sinful efforts had paid off. The pod exited its jump smack in the middle of an expanding sphere of debris that a quic k sensor-scan positively identified as the remains of the first alien vessel. For a moment, Dadab's he art soared. Despite his litany of transgressions conspiracy to commit false witness, accessory to th e destruction of Ministry property, mutiny might not the Prophets show him mercy? In the end, he had done the right thingexposed Chur'R Yar's treachery and transmitted the location of the  reliquary. He was hopeful that would count for something. But then came the revelation that the pod's life-su pport system was fatally flawed. And after many cycles without any sign of rescue, Dadab had s lunk into a deep depression. I will die, he moaned, adrift in a mess of crumpled food pouches a nd his own carefully bagged filth. Without even having had a chance to beg the Prophets for forgive ness!\nThe Deacon had allowed himself to wallow this way f or quite some time, until the stress of Lighter Than Some 's methane production became too difficult to ignor e. And in that moment, Dadab's self-pity evolved into something less repre hensible: shame. For while he might face terrible punishments in the future, the Huragok was in torme nt now and entirely for the Deacon's sake. Dadab took a deep breath and held itlet the chill of his friend's selfless effort sink deep into his chest. He turned to the pod's control panel, br ushed the alien boxes aside, and hit the holo-switc h that would restore power to the pod's limited senso r gear. We will both survive this, he vowed, listening to the creak of the Huragok's exhausted s acs. And whatever happens after. As tired of sleep as any of the pod's scarce distra ctions, Dadab kept his station before the panelmonitored the sensors, searching for any hint  of an approaching ship. He tried to breathe as little as possible, and only broke his watch to hel p the Huragok feed. Many more cycles passed. All the while, the alien boxes hummed their petty blasp hemies and Lighter Than Some 's sacs swelled and shrunk untilwithout warningthe pod detected a  jump signature close at hand and Dadab at last allowed himself the indulgence of relief.\n\"Castaway vessel, this is the cruiser Rapid Conversion .\" The hail boomed throughout the pod. Lighter Than Some released a pained whistle as Dadab fumbled for the switch that would reduce the transmission's volume. \"Respond if you are able,\" t he voice continued at a more reasonable level.\n\"We live, Rapid Conversion ,\" Dadab replied, voice cracking from lack of use. \"But our situation is dire!\"\nIn the last few cycles, the Huragok's appetite had fallen off. Its anaerobic sac was now producing at a fraction of its previous capacity, a nd many of Lighter Than Some 's dorsal sacs had shut down entirely as their membranes dried out and  folded in upon themselves.\n\"I beg you,\" Dadab gasped. He reached for his mask,  and took a halting drag from his almost empty second tank. \"Please hurry!\"\n\"Remain calm,\" the voice growled. \"You will soon be  brought on board.\"\nDadab did his best to comply. He inhaled the pod's thinning methane in quick, shallow gulps, only resorting to his mask when the burning in his lungs became unbearable. But at some point he must have abstained too long because his world went  black and he collapsed. When he awoke, he was belly-down on the floor, and he could hear the hiss of fresh methane bleeding into the pod. Dadab's nostrils flared. The gas had a bitter tang,  but he thought he'd never tasted anything sweeter. With a happy grunt, he twisted his neck to  look up at Lighter Than Some ... and was shocked to see the creature crumpled on the floor b eside him. They were inside the cruiser, Dadab realized, and its artificial gravity had permeated the pod!\nSuddenly, there was a furtive scratching at the pod 's hatch. Something was trying to force its way inside.  95  \"Stop!\" Dadab screamed. He leapt to his feet only t o have them collapse beneath him. Floating in zero-gee, his muscles had atrophied, and the Dea con was forced to claw his way along the floor to the control panel. \"Don't open the hatch!\" he shout ed, hitting the switch to enable the pod's stasis field. Instantly, the air crackled and thickened. A  moment too late he realized what else the switch would do. The pod's thrusters lit with an ear-splitting roar,  and the craft leapt forward with a metal-on metal screech, then stopped with a monumental clang . The pod's nose crumpled down and in, crushing the three alien boxes against the control panel. Restrained by the field, Dadab felt none of the acc eleration or impact. But he did have a searing pain in his left arm. Pieces of the boxes had explo ded outward, and while the field had quickly stopped the shrapnel, one razor-sharp fragment had sufficient velocity to slice past Dadab, cutting through his hardened skin just below the shoulder. Ignoring the pain, Dadab grasped the Huragok's tentacles and hoisted the creature from the floor. Its usually clammy flesh felt dry. The Deacon knew this wasn't a good sign. As quickly as he thought safe, he puppeteered Lighter Than Some 's tentacles until it was in a natural pose: snout high, anaerobic sac dangling lo w. Suspended in the field, the least damaged of the Huragok's sacs slowly began to inflate. But Dad ab knew it would take time before his friend was ready to float unassisted. Quickly he reached f or the control panel, and hit a switch to lock the hatch. Heavy footfalls announced the arrival of something massive outside the pod. \"By the Prophets,\"\na voice thundered. \"Are you mad?!\"\n\"I had no choice!\" Dadab retorted. The hatch rattled, shaking the entire pod. \"Come ou t this instant!\" the voice thundered. Dadab recognized it as the same one that had delivered th e initial hail. He knew it wasn't Kig-Yar or Unggoy or Sangheiliand certainly not San'Shyuum. T hat left only one possibility...\n\"I will not.\" Dadab's voice quavered as he thought of whose pride he might be offending. \"My Huragok has lost its balance. I'm sorry, but you'll  just have to wait.\"\n\nIf Maccabeus had been on the cruiser's bridge, he w ould have immediately learned of the accident in the hangar. But here, inside Rapid Conversion 's feasting hall, the Jiralhanae Chieftain had forbidden all communication. Maccabeus' pack was ab out to feed, and that could bear no interruption. Given that the Jiralhanae chose their leaders first  and foremost for their physical prowess, it was no surprise that Maccabeus was master of the cruise r. Standing on his two trunk-like legs, the Chieftain was an absolute gianta head taller than any Sangheili, and much more massive. Thick cords of muscle rippled beneath his elephantine ski n. Tufts of silver hair sprang from the arm and head-holes of his leather tabard. He was bald, but his wide jaw bristled with a terrific set of mutton chops. For all his ferocious brawn, the Chieftain showed u ncanny poise. Feet planted in a deep lunge, he stood in the center of the feasting hall with bo th arms stretched out behind hima pose that suggested he was about to perform an imminent and p owerful leap. But a single line of sweat dripping from the tip of his broad nose made it cle ar Maccabeus had held this precarious position for quite some time. And yet, he barely moved a muscle. The eight other males that made up the Chieftain's pack weren't nearly so relaxed. Arranged in a semicircle behind Maccabeus, they all held the same  pose. But their tan and brown pelts were drenched in sweat. They had all begun to shake, and a few we re in such obvious discomfort they had begun to shift their feet on the hall's slate f loor. To be fair, the pack was desperately tired and hung ry. Maccabeus had them at their stations well ahead of the Rapid Conversion 's return to normal space. And although a battery o f scans had found  96  nothing but the Kig-Yar escape pod, the Chieftain h ad kept them on high alert until he was confident the cruiser was otherwise alone. Such caution was unusual for a Jiralhanae. But the Chieftain's authority over his pack relied on rigid rules of dominance. And likewise he was sworn  to follow orders from his own alpha male, the Vice Minister of Tranquility, who had insisted Macc abeus proceed with all possible restraint. When the Jiralhanae were discovered by the Covenant , they had recently concluded a mechanized war of attrition in which the various ma ster-packs had pummeled each other back to a pre-industrial state. The Jiralhanae were only just  recoveringre-discovering radio and rocketry and these technologies' war-fighting potentialwhen the  first San'Shyuum missionaries alighted on their hardscrabble planet. Heavy double doors swung open across the hall from Maccabeus. Like the interlocking beams that supported the room's ceiling, the doors were f orged steel, streaked with imperfections from rushed annealing. The metal was an unusual material  for a Covenant vessel, even one as old as Rapid Conversion. But of all the modifications Maccabeus had made to his ship, he had taken the most pains with the feasting hall. He'd wanted it t o feel authentic, right down to the oil-burning lamps in their claw-foot floor stands. Their crackl ing wicks lit the room a variable amber hue. Six Unggoy stewards staggered through the door, car rying a large wooden platter. The platter was twice as wide as any of the stewards was tall, and its slight concavity offered just enough support for its slippery load: the glistening carca ss of a roasted Thorn Beast. The docile herd animal was served back up and legs splayed, and even thoug h the cruiser's Unggoy cooks had dutifully removed its head and neck (both of which had high c oncentrations of neurotoxins), there was still barely room on the platter for a selection of dippi ng sauces; fatty reductions of the creature's savor y entrails. The heady aroma of the Thorn Beast's perfectly roas ted meat set the Jiralhanae's stomachs growling. But all continued to hold their poses as the stewards muscled the platter onto two grease stained wooden sawhorses in the middle of the floor 's stone mosaic. The Unggoy bowed to Maccabeus and backed through the doors, shutting th em as quietly as their poorly oiled hinges allowed.\n\"This is how we keep our faith,\" Maccabeus' voice r umbled in his chest. \"How we honor Those Who Walked the Path.\"\nIn a fleet dominated by Sangheili, it was rare for a Jiralhanae to have his own ship. For that reason alone, Maccabeus had his pack's respect. But  they honored their Chieftain for a different reason: his unshakable faith in the promise of the Forerunners and their Great Journey. At last, Maccabeus swung his arms and shifted his w eight forward. He stepped slowly toward the mosaic: a circular mandala, the boundary of whi ch was dominated by seven multicolored rings, each comprised of a different mineral. At the cente r of each ring was a simplified version of a Forerunner glyph, the sort of basic designs one mig ht expect to see in a primer on more advanced religious concepts. The Chieftain stepped into a ring of obsidian shard s. \"Abandonment,\" he boomed.\n\"The First Age!\" the pack snapped, their teeth wet with saliva. \"Ignorance and fear!\"\nMaccabeus moved clockwise to a second ring of iron.  \"Conflict,\" he said sternly.\n\"The Second Age! Rivalry and bloodshed!\"\nMaccabeus had picked his packassessed each member as it grew from whelp to adultbased on the strength of their convictions. For him it wa s belief that made the warrior, not strength or speed or cunning (though his pack had all this and more), and at times like these he was most satisfied with his selections.\n\"Reconciliation,\" Maccabeus growled, inside a ring of polished jade.\n\"The Third! Humility and brotherhood!\"\nDespite their growing hunger, the pack would not th ink of interrupting their Chieftain as he performed the Progression of the Ages, blessed thei r meat, and gave thanks for the safe conclusion  97  of their jump. Less disciplined Jiralhanae would ha ve quickly lost patience and torn willy-nilly into the delectable beast.\n\"Discovery,\" the Chieftain rumbled, stopping in a r ing of geodes. The halved stones stuck to his feet like tiny, open mouths.\n\"Fourth!\" replied the pack. \"Wonder and understandi ng!\"\n\"Conversion.\"\n\"Fifth! Obedience and freedom!\"\n\"Doubt.\"\n\"Sixth! Faith and patience!\"\nAt last, Maccabeus reached the final ringbright fl akes of Forerunner alloy generously donated by the San'Shyuum. For those of faith, the sparklin g wafers from some unknown godly structure were Rapid Conversion 's most precious tonnage. Maccabeus took care not t o touch them as he stepped into the ring.\n\"Reclamation,\" he concluded, his voice full of reve rence.\n\"Seventh! Journey and salvation!\" The pack thundere d, louder than they had before. Seven rings for seven ages, the Chieftain mused. To help us remember Halo and its divine light. Like all devout Covenant, Maccabeus believed the Pr ophets would someday discover the sacred rings and use them to begin the Great Journeyescap e this doomed existence as the Forerunners had before. But in the meantime, his pack would eat.\n\"Praise be to the Holy Prophets,\" he intoned. \"May we help keep them safe as they work to find The Path!\"\nHis pack dropped their arms and settled back upon t heir heels. By now their tabards were soaked with bitter-smelling sweat. One Jiralhanae rolled h is shoulders; another scratched a demanding itchbut all waited without complaint for their Chi eftain to take his pick of meat. The Thorn Beast's ample thighs, hulking ribs, or even its stu nted forelegs were all popular first choices. But Maccabeus had an unusual, favorite morsel: the smal lest of the five thorns that ridged the creature's high-arched back. Properly cooked (and as the Chieftain worked the th orn back and forth in its socket, he could tell it was), the appendage would pop away from the base  of the beast's neck, bringing its muscle-bed with it; a tender ball of meat on a crisp and oily conean appetizer and dessert. But as the Chieftain brought the meatball eagerly to his lips, he felt a  rattle on his belt. Transferring the thorn to his off hand, Maccabeus activated his signal unit.\n\"Speak,\" he barked, keeping his anger in check.\n\"The castaways are aboard,\" growled Rapid Conversion 's security officer, Maccabeus' second in-command.\n\"Do they have relics in their possession?\"\n\"I cannot tell.\"\nMaccabeus dipped the thorn into a bowl of sauce at the edge of the platter. \"Did you search them?\"\n\"They refuse to leave their pod.\"\nStanding so close to the Thorn Beast, Maccabeus' no strils were permeated with its scent. His appetite was piqued, but he wanted to savor his fir st bite without distraction. \"Then perhaps you should remove them.\"\n\"The situation is complex.\" The security officer's tone was both apologetic and excited. \"I think, Chieftain, you may wish to assess it for yourself.\"\nIf it were any other Jiralhanae, Maccabeus would ha ve given him a roaring reprimand and begun his feast. But the officer was the Chieftain's neph ew, and while blood ties offered no immunity from discipline (the Chieftain held all his pack to the same high standards of obedience), Maccabeus  98  knew that if his nephew said the situation in the h angar needed his attention, it did. He pulled his thorn from the dipping bowl, and took as big a bite  as he could manage. A third of the meat disappeared into his mouth. The Chieftain didn't bo ther to chew, just let the marbled flesh slide slowly down his gullet, then wedged the thorn back onto the platter.\n\"Begin,\" he barked, striding through his ravenous p ack. \"But take care you leave my share.\"\nMaccabeus tore off his tabard and tossed it to an U nggoy steward standing beside a second set of steel doors opposite the kitchen. The passage beyon d shared none of the feasting hall's traditional craftsmanship. Like those in most every other Coven ant vessel, it was all smooth surfaces bathed in soft artificial light. The only difference was ther e were more obvious imperfections: some of the light-emitting ceiling strips were burned out; holo graphic door locks flickered; near the end of the passage, coolant dripped from an overhead duct that  had gone untended for so long that the greenish liquid had run down the wall and slicked across the  floor. Then Maccabeus reached the gravity lift. It was out  of service, but more to the point, it had never been in servicenot since he had taken possession o f the ship. The lift's circular shaft ran vertically through all of Rapid Conversion 's decks, but the circuits that controlled its anti -gravity generators had been removed by the Sangheili, as ha d circuits for the cruiser's plasma cannon and a host of other advanced systems. The reason for this wholesale stripping of technolo gy was simple: the Sangheili did not trust the Jiralhanae. As part of the species' confirmation process, some of the Sangheili Commanders had declared their strong suspicion before the High Council that  the Jiralhanae's pack mentality would invariably bring the two species into conflict. Dominant Jiral hanae always fought their way to the top, the Commanders argued, and they didn't believe even the  Covenant's rigid hierarchy would be sufficient to moderate their natural urges. Until t hey proved themselves subservient, whatever peaceful urges they had should be \"aggressively enc ouraged.\" It was a reasonable argument, and the High Council imposed clear restrictions on the kind s of technology the Jiralhanae could use. And so, Maccabeus thought, did we set aside out of pride for a higher purpose.  Instead of pressing a holo-switch to call an elevator (one of the allowable replacements for the grav-lift), the Chieftain simply turned around and slipped down ont o a ladderone of four evenly spaced around the shaft. Like the feasting hall's doors and beams, the ladde rs' construction was relatively crude. Although the ladders' rungs were worn smooth from f requent use, there were burrs along the rails that indicated a hasty fabrication. There were gaps  in the ladders at every deck, but crossing these involved a simple drop or leap, depending on the di rection of travel. For the muscular Jiralhanae this wasn't so much an inconvenience as exercise. Maccabeus knew the tank-encumbered Unggoy currently  huffing and puffing up the ladders might disagree on this last point. But the shorter creatures were also extremely agile, and as the Chieftain began his descent to the hangar, an Unggo y leapt to another ladder and let him pass. This sort of flexibility made the ladders more practical  than an elevator, which would have limited travel to everyone up or everyone down. But Maccabeus knew  the ladders had one more advantage: they tended to keep you humble. Before taking control of Rapid Conversion, the Chieftain had been obliged to give a Sangheili delegation a tour so they could verify he hadn't re paired any of the proscribed systems. But the delegation had another item on their agenda. Immedi ately after the two Commanders and their Helios guards had come aboard, they began to call o ut all the reasons why the cruiser was \"no longer worthy of a Sangheili commission.\" Starting with the size of the hangar b ay where the tour began, one Commander emphasized how small the space  washow it could only hold a \"handful of craft\" and even then \"only those of lesser type.\"\nAs the list of flaws grew, Maccabeus had nodded in polite agreement, slowly leading the party toward the shaft. The second Commander had boasted that gravity lifts were now ubiquitous on  99  even the smallest Sangheili ships, and the first sn iped that only on a vessel such as thisa thing bes t used for target practicewould one find a device as  obsolete as a mechanical lift.\n\"Indeed,\" the Sangheili Commander had disdained, de livering the next line in a rehearsed critique. \"Given the limitations of its crew, I wonder how long even such a simple s ystem will remain functional.\"\n\"You are right, my Lords.\" Maccabeus had replied, h is deep voice earnest. \"In truth, the elevator proved so beyond our capabilities that we were forc ed to remove it.\"\nThe Sangheili Commanders had shared a confused glan ce. But before either of them could ask how Maccabeus intended them to inspect the upper de cks, the Chieftain had used his powerful arms to pull himself up onto a ladder, leaving the Sangh eili staring dumfounded up the shaft. In his lifetime, Maccabeus had humbled many foes. B ut few victories were as satisfying as hearing those pompous Sangheili struggle up and dow n the ladders. Unlike the Jiralhanae (and all other Covenant bipedal species), Sangheili's knees bent forward not backwards. This unusual hinging didn't impede their motion on the ground, b ut it made climbing difficult. By the end of their inspection, the Sangheili were exhausted, mortified , and more than happy to have the crippled cruiser and its cunning barbarian of a Shipmaster o ut of their fleet. This pleasant memory kept Maccabeus in reasonably g ood spirits even as he leapt past a passage marked with flashing triangular symbols. These indi cated portions of the ship that had fallen into disrepairin some cases dangerously soand the Chie ftain had been forced to lock them for his crew's own safety. In this respect, Maccabeus knew, it was the Sanghei li who had the last laugh. His crew did have limited technical ability. They had struggled just to keep Rapid Conversion 's limited systems from falling apart, and the once-mighty vessel really wa s nothing more than the Ministry of Tranquility survey tug the Sangheili allowed it to be. The Chieftain's mood had dampened by the time he re ached the bottom of the shaft. But as he swung into the passage that led to the hangar's air lock, his gloom quickly became unease. There was death in the hangar. Maccabeus could smell it. When the airlock cycled open, the first thing the C hieftain saw was a scorch mark that stretched the length of the hangar floor. On either side of t he mark were the charred carapaces of at least a dozen Yanme'e: large, intelligent insects responsib le for Rapid Conversion 's upkeep. More of the winged, hard-shelled creatures were perched on the forked hulls of one of the cruiser's four Spirit dropships. The Yanme'e's luminous compound eyes wer e all locked on the cause of the carnage: a Kig-Yar escape pod that had blasted across the hang ar. The dead insects didn't faze Maccabeus; more than o ne hundred Yanme'e infested the warmer decks around Rapid Conversion 's jump-drive, and while it was true they would not  reproduce without a queen, their loss paled in comparison to the pod's other victim: one of the Spirit dropships. The craft's low-slung cockpit had stoppe d the pod's progress, saving another Spirit beside it. But the pod had severed the cockpit from  its two elongated troop bays, crushing it against the far wall to one side of the hangar's flickering  energy-field exit. The Spirit was a total loss. The damage caused by t he pod was well beyond the Yanme'e's skills. Maccabeus' temper flared. A few angry strides later  and he was across the hangar to where his nephew stood beside the battered pod. The younger J iralhanae was like an anvil, heavy and broad. He was covered in wiry, black hairfrom the close-c ropped Mohawk on his head to the tufts on his wide, two-toed feet. But his coat was already showi ng flecks of his uncle's more mature silver. If one were to judge by color alone, the youth was mar ked for greatness. Though judging by this mess, Maccabeus growled to himself, he still has much to learn.\n\"I am sorry to have disturbed the feast, Uncle.\"\n\"My meat will keep, Tartarus.\" The Chieftain glared  at his nephew. \"My patience will not. What is it you would have me see?\"  100  Tartarus barked an order to the tenth and final mem ber of Maccabeus' pack, a dun-colored monster by the name of Vorenus who stood directly b eside the pod. Vorenus raised a fist and rapped loudly on the pod's topside hatch. A moment passed,  there was the muffled sound of pneumatics as the hatch unlatched, and then the masked face of an  Unggoy popped into view.\n\"Is your companion well?\" Tartarus asked.\n\"It is better ,\" Dadab replied. The Chieftain's mutton chops bristled. Did he detec t a hint of obstinacy in the Unggoy's voice?\nThe creatures were hardly known for their courage. But then he noticed the Unggoy wore a Deacon's orange tunic. Not a lofty rank, but it did  mark the creature as an official Ministry representative.\n\"Then bring it out,\" Tartarus growled. A lesser Jir alhanae would have torn the uppity Unggoy limb from limb. But Maccabeus smelled more exciteme nt than anger in his nephew's scent. Jiralhanae exhibited their emotions via stark shift s in pungent pheromones. And while Tartarus would learn to control these shifts as he grew olde r, he couldn't help but telegraph that there was something thrilling inside the pod. But the Chiefta in had no idea just how thrilling until the Deacon, now standing with its stumpy feet astride the hatch , reached down into the pod and gently raised the Huragok into view. It was an article of faith that the Prophets were u niquely qualified to handle the Forerunners'\nholy relicsthat the San'Shyuum, more than any othe r Covenant species, possessed the intelligence required to create practical technologies from the relics' complex designs. But while it was blasphemy to admit it, everyone in the Covenant kne w that the Prophets' efforts were greatly aided by the Huragok. The creatures had an uncanny unders tanding of Forerunner objects, Maccabeus knew. And they could fix almost anything they touched.... The Chieftain loosed a laugh so unexpectedly hearty  that it caused the Yanme'e to take flight and disappear into the hangar's exposed ductwork. O f all the Sangheili's restrictions, not letting a Huragok join his crew had been the most crippling. But now here one was. And although it would be a serious crime to let the creature fix intentio nally disabled systems, not even the Sangheili coul d complain if it made necessary repairs.\n\"An auspicious start to our hunt, Tartarus!\" The Ch ieftain clapped a paw onto his nephew's shoulder and gave him a joyful shake. \"Come! Back t o the beast while it still has flesh for us to choose!\" Maccabeus turned to Dadab, who was now car efully handing the Huragok to Vorenus.\n\"And if not,\" the Chieftain boomed in the same cord ial tone, \"then our new Deacon shall bless a second platter!\"  101\nCHAPTER THIRTEEN\n\n\nHARVEST, FEBRUARY 9, 2525\n\nAvery lay on his belly, surrounded by ripening whea t. The green stalks were so tall and the kernels so plump that a day of blazing sun had failed to re ach the ground. The clumped topsoil felt cool through his fatigues. Avery had traded his usual du ty cap for a boonie: a soft, wide-brimmed hat with a strip of canvas sewn loosely around the crow n. Earlier in the day, he'd woven wheat stalks into the strip, and even though the stalks were now  bent and frayedas long as Avery stayed low he was well camouflaged. Rifle-bag dragging along behind him, Avery had craw led almost three kilometers from his parked Warthog to Harvest's reactor complex. Along the way, he'd crested a long, low rise that Lt. Commander al-Cygni had told him was actually the bu ried mass driver. If she hadn't, Avery would never have known. To keep the device hidden from al ien eyes, Mack's JOTUNs had topped the rise with squares of soil and living wheat dug from othe r fields. All told, the crawl took Avery more than two hours.  But he had been focused on stealth, not speed. In fact, in the last ten minutes he hadn't m oved at all; his liveliest aspect was the reflectio n of the rustling wheat in his gold-tinted shooters glas ses. These had been part of the cache of equipment and w eapons the Lt. Commander had given to the marines. Like the BR55 battle rifle Avery carried i n his drag bag, the glasses were a prototypea piece of hardware fresh from an ONI research lab. R efocusing his gaze, Avery checked a COM link in the upper corner of the glasses' left lens where  a tiny HUD confirmed his exact position on Harvest, a little less than five hundred meters wes t of the complex. Directly ahead, the field began sloping downward. A very knew all he had to do was crawl a few more meters and the wheat would start to thin. This  would give him good line of sight to the recruits' defenses and put him in position to execu te his part of the assault he'd planned with Staff Sergeant Byrne. But the thinner cover would also gi ve the militiamen the best chance they'd had all day to spot Avery, and he planned to stay put until  he was sure of his advantage. Slowly, Avery reached between his legs, undid his r ifle bag's plastic clasps, and withdrew his BR55. After the fight aboard the freighter, Avery h ad spent plenty of time with the weapon at the garrison range, assessing its strengths compared to  the recruits' standard-issue MA5 assault rifle. The BR55 shared the MA5's bullpup design (magazine slot and breech positioned behind the trigger), but it came with an optical scope and fir ed larger nine-point-five millimeter, semi armor piercing rounds. Technically, the BR55 was a design ated marksman's rifle. But it was the closest thing to a sniping weapon in Lt. Commander al-Cygni 's arsenal, and Avery knew from his work on the range that it was deadly accurate out to nine h undred meters, much farther than the MA5. He had given one of al-Cygni's three other BR55s to  Jenkins. Byrne had kept one for himself, and awarded the final battle rifle to a balding, mi ddle-aged recruit named Critchley, providing 2nd platoon with its own marksman capability. During th eir last session on the range, Avery had watched Jenkins and Critchley drill nice tight grou ps into five hundred meter targets. And he hopedto his own disadvantagethey would be just as  accurate in today's live-fire exercise.  102  If only it was as simple as teaching them to shoot,  Avery frowned. He removed a magazine from his black, ballistic nylon assault-vest and quietly  slid it into his rifle. But being accurate didn't make you a killer. Which is what combat was all about: killing the ene my before it killed you. Avery was sure the aliens understood that (he had t he scar to prove it), but the recruits had no idea what combat was really like, and that was some thing he, Byrne, and Ponder knew they needed to fix ASAP. The problem was there were too many things about th e aliens the marines didn't know. And in the end they agreed they would have to make a few b asic assumptionsabout their enemy and their menif the militia was ever going to put up an effe ctive resistance: first, the aliens would return with a larger and more capable force; second, comba t would be terrestrial and defensive. Given enough time, Avery was hopeful the militia could be  trained to sustain a guerilla campaign. But their third and final assumption was that time was a luxu ry they lacked. Avery and the others agreed: The aliens would be back long before the militiamen lea rned anything but the basics of small-unit combat. Of course, the Captain and his Staff Sergeants told  the recruits none of this. Instead they continued to promote the falsehood of a visiting CA  delegation and a possible Insurrectionist attack. None of them liked lying to their men. But they cal med their consciences with the knowledge that the recruits would need to master the same basic sk ills of concealment, coordination, and communication if they were going to have a chance a gainst their alien foe. Avery heard the distant buzz of electric engines. H e glanced over his shoulder. Epsilon Indi now hung so low in the sky that even wearing his glasse s he could only stare at the star for a few seconds before shutting his eyes in a watery wince. Avery g rimaced with satisfaction. As he'd planned, any recruits patrolling the complex's western perimeter  fence would have the exact same problemand none of them were wearing glasses. Which might have  been an unfair advantage if Avery and Byrne weren't already outnumbered thirty-six to one. As the buzzing engines drew close, Avery tensed and  prepared to slither forward. Keep your eyes open. Expect the unexpected, he had warned his platoon. For their sake, he hoped  they'd listened. But if they hadn't...\n\"Creeper, this is crawler,\" Avery whispered into th is throat mic. \"Mow them down.\"\nThey would learn a valuable lesson all the same.\n\n\"Smells pretty good.\" Jenkins placed his cheek agai nst his BR55's hard plastic stock, and shot Forsell a sideways glance. \"What is it?\"\nThe recruits lay side by side, facing the reactor c omplex's only gate: a break in the southern run of the three-meter-high, chain-link fence that surr ounded the facility. Forsell took a sloppy bite from a foil-wrapped ener gy bar. \"Honey hazelnut.\" He chewed and swallowed without pulling his eyes from his spottin g scope. \"Want some?\"\n\"Any part of it you haven't licked?\" Jenkins asked.\n\"No.\"\n\"Nice.\"\nForsell shrugged apologetically and stuffed the res t of the bar into his mouth. It was his own fault he was hungry, Jenkins knew. H e was so geared up about today's exercise he'd barely eaten breakfast in the garrison mess. In fact, he'd been so certain the Staff Sergeants w ould attack when the recruits had their heads buried in their lunches, he'd skipped that meal ent irelylet the much larger Forsell take whatever he wanted from his meal ready to eat (MRE). Unfortu nately, Forsell had taken everything, and now Jenkins had nothing in his stomach but anxious bile . The two recruits wore helmets that covered their ea rs, swept low over their brows, and were painted to match their mottled, olive drab fatigues . The color would have served them well in the  103  surrounding wheat, but wasn't as useful in their cu rrent location: the roof of a two-story polycrete tower in the center of the complex that covered the  reactor as well as Mack's data center. A high-pitched alert chimed from a speaker in Jenki ns' helmet. Under Captain Ponder's supervision, the recruits had staked motion tracker s all around the perimeter, switching the pole mounted units to their highest sensitivity. While t his gave them coverage beyond one thousand meters, the trackers kept pinging ghosts: swarms of  honeybees, flocks of starlingsand now a flight of JOTUN dusters. Squinting past Forsell, Jenkins watched a trio of t he needle-nosed, thin-winged planes buzz the western wheat. The dusters had been making long, se rpentine passes all day, spraying a top dressing of fungicide. But this was their closest pass yet. A trailing white cloud billowed toward the complex,  prompting the twelve recruits of 2nd platoon's bravo squad (2/B) guarding the western fe nce to turn away from the drifting chemicals, cover their mouths, and cough. These weren't indica tions of any real, physical distress (Jenkins had applied enough of the organic compounds to his fami ly's own crops to know it was perfectly safe to breathe), but rather expressions of the recruits' f atigue and discontent.\n\"What time you got?\" Jenkins asked. Forsell squinted at Epsilon Indi. \"Sixteen thirty. Give or take.\"\nAlmost sunset, Jenkins thought. \"Where the hell are they?\"\nThe rules of the exercise were simple: to win, eith er side needed to eliminate half the other. This meant Johnson and Byrne would have to drop thirty-s ix recruits while the recruits only had to neutralize one of them. With the odds stacked so he avily against the Staff Sergeants, it had seemed likely they would try to attack early, before the r ecruits got settled. When the two of them had torn out of the complex's gate in their Warthog a little after 0900, the recruits had quickly divided into their squadsthre e in each platoonand rushed to secure different sectors of the complex. Along with the rest of one-alpha squad (1/A), Jenki ns and Forsell had hustled to the reactor tower. The weather-beaten structure looked a bit li ke a birthday cake: The second of its two circular stories had a smaller diameter than the first and w as topped with a cluster of candlelike aerials for Mack's maser and other COM devices. The tower was t he only above ground building in the complex, and the only building for hundreds of kilo meters in all directions. Jenkins and Forsell had climbed up two flights of l adders to the second-story roof and gone pronethe most stable stance for shooting, if you c ould afford the loss of mobility. Resting his BR55 across his rucksack for additional support, Je nkins had eased into his rifle scope just in time t o see the Staff Sergeants' Warthog turn off the react or complex's paved access road and head South down the highway toward Utgard. Adrenaline pumping,  Jenkins had immediately pulled his battle rifle's charging handle, cycling a round into the c hamber. He had thumbed the fire-select switch to single-shot, tensed his finger on the trigger, and then... nothing. Just hour after hour of blazing heat . The recruits had quickly begun to grouse that the r eal purpose of the exercise was to see how long they could stand being suckers. An overweight and outspoken 1/A recruit named Osmo theorized that Johnson and Byrne had gone to Utgard  for cold beer in an air-conditioned bar, leaving Epsilon Indi's broiling light to win the exercise f or them. FCPO Healy had told them all to \"shut it,\" emphasiz ing that as long as they kept their helmets on and stayed hydrated they'd be safe from heat str oke. For his part, Captain Ponder had remained in his Warthog, parked in the shade of a portable t riage tent near the front gate, quietly smoking his Sweet William cigars.\n\"A beer would be nice,\" Jenkins murmured, listening  to the JOTUN dusters' engines fade. Even though he'd spent the day on his stomach hardly mov ing, sweat had poured out of him. There were at least ten empty water bottles scattered between his and Forsell's boots. And Jenkins was still thirsty.\n\"Eyes on the big one,\" Forsell announced, lazily sw eeping his scope to the east. \"Again.\"  104  Turning to follow Forsell's gaze, Jenkins saw a sin gle JOTUN combine: a giant machine painted dark blue with yellow detail stripes. Its three pai rs of oversized wheels bucked up and down as it rolled over a gentle ridge. Though the combine was at least a kilometer distant, Jenkins had no trouble hearing the low rumble of its three-thousan d horsepower, ethanol-electric engine as it began devouring the wheat on the down-slope. The combine had spent the day mowing the eastern fi elds in wide swaths perpendicular to the complex, shuddering the ground as it neared the per imeter fence. At first, this had unnerved some of the recruits. They'd all seen JOTUNs, of course, bu t what was essentially a fifty-meter tall and one hundred-fifty-meter long lawn mower triggered a pre tty basic urge to fleeeven when you knew an AI as capable as Mack had control of its circuits. But now, as the combine again bore down on the comp lex, the only thing that looked nervous was the wheat. Magnified in Jenkins' rifle scope, t he stalks trembled before the whirring tines of the combine's rotary header, almost as if they had some  knowledge of their imminent threshing.\n\"I'm telling you. That's a series four,\" Forsell sa id, continuing a debate they'd kept up all day.\n\"Nope,\" Jenkins countered. \"See the gondolas?\"\nForsell peered through his scope at a line of angul ar metal bins on wheels that only looked small because they were trailing directly behind the JOTU N. \"Yeah...\"\n\"They're collecting from the rear.\"\n\"So?\"\n\"So that's a series five feature. Four's dumped to the sides.\"\nForsell thought about that for a second then gave u p with an awkward admission, \"It's been a few seasons since we upgraded.\"\nJenkins winced. He'd forgotten Forsell came from a modest family. Not only did Forsell's parents own fewer acres, but their soy also sold fo r much less than the Jenkins' corn and other grains. In all likelihood, Forsell's parents were s till getting by with a handful of used series twos.\n\"Fives aren't worth it,\" Jenkins said, watching the  gondolas fill up then hurry back over the rise to a nearby maglev depot. \"Hybrid engines are way t oo expensive, unless you're processing your own ethanol\"\n\"Hey. We got something.\" Forsell's body tensed. \"Ju st pulled off the highway.\"\nJenkins realigned south. A single vehiclea green a nd white taxiwas approaching the complex at high speed. For a moment it disappeared down a dip in the access road.\n\"Think it's them?\" Forsell asked.\n\"Dunno.\" Jenkins swallowed dryly. \"Better send the word.\"\n\"All squads! Got a vehicle coming in!\"\n\"This a joke, Forsell?\" Stisen growled over the COM . Byrne had promoted the dark-haired constable to squad leader of 2/A, and assigned him to guard the complex gate. \"It's too hot for any of your bullshit.\"\n\"See for yourself,\" Jenkins urged. The final stretc h of road was completely flata straight shot of cambered pavement to the gate. Even without magn ification the sedan was impossible to miss.\n\"Look sharp!\" Stisen bellowed to his squad, sitting  in two sun-baked clumps behind sandbag berms on either side of the gate. \"Dass, give me so me cover!\"\nJenkins heard movement on the first-story roof, dir ectly below his position. \"On your feet, boys!\" Dass bellowed. 1/A's squad leader was a litt le overweight, but he was also very tall. As a result, the middle-aged maglev engineer didn't look  fat so much as thick. \"Lock and load!\"\n\"My rifle!\" Osmo whined. \"It won't charge!\" Wheneve r Osmo got stressed, his voice shifted to a childlike register. Usually this made Jenkins lau gh, but not now.\n\"Pull your magazine then reset it,\" Dass said. \"Mak e sure it goes all the way in.\"\nJenkins heard the scrape of metal on metal, then th e successful clack of a rifle bolt.\n\"Sorry, Dass.\"  105  \"It's alright. But you gotta calm down. Focus.\" By his patient but forceful tone, it was easy to tell Dass was a fatherone boy, two girls.\n\"Just make sure you watch what they shoot,\" Stisen growled. The constable had a prickly personality that had only gotten worse since his de feat during the pugil competition. As much as Jenkins wished he could mute Stisen from the COM ch annel all the recruits shared, he knew Stisen had a point: 1/A would have to shoot past 2/A in or der to hit the sedan. Dass answered in a friendly tone. \"Do your job, Sti sen, and you won't have anything to worry about.\"\nRising to the challenge, Stisen marched to the cent er of the gate. Holding his MA5 to his right shoulder, he held out his left hand in a sign to st op. The sedan slowed and came to a halt twenty meters in front of Stisen. For a few seconds, all t he recruits simply stared at the heat distortion roiling from the vehicle's roof.\n\"Out of the vehicle! Now!\" Stisen barked, leveling his weapon at the windshield. But the sedan's doors remained shut. Jenkins felt h is heart pounding in his chest. \"Thermal?\" he whispered to Forsell, hoping the spotting scope's m ore sophisticated optics could confirm if either of the Staff Sergeants was in the sedan.\n\"Negative,\" Forsell replied. \"It's all white. Exter ior's too hot.\"\n\"First team!\" Stisen barked. \"Move up!\"\nJenkins watched four recruits move out from behind the western berm and walk cautiously through the gate, MA5s tucked tight against their s houlders. They surrounded the sedan, two on either side.\n\"Burdick! Pop the door!\" Stisen motioned one of his  men forward. Jenkins drew a breath, and did his best to relax in to his weapon. As he exhaled, he let his scope's aiming reticle come to rest where he guessed the dr iver's head would be when he emerged. For some reason, he imagined Staff Sergeant Byrne's fac e grinning in his crosshairs. Burdick reached toward the door release, but just as he did the sed an's gull-wing doors sprung open. The recruit had a moment to flinch, but not enough time to cry out in surprise as the sedan exploded in a flash of white vapor. Instantly, Burdick toppled to the pave ment, as did two of the other flanking recruits. Each was spattered bright red, as if he had been sh ot through with shrapnel.\n\"Claymores!\" groaned the lone survivor. He shuffled  away from the sedan, dragging a crippled leg behind him.\n\"Everyone stay back!\" Stisen bellowed to the rest o f his squad as he took the struggling recruit's arm across his shoulders and dragged him inside the  gate. The squad leader fired a one-handed burst into the sedan's windshield, but instead of shatter ing it flashed redthe same vibrant color as the recruits' seemingly mortal wounds. For the exercise, each recruit's MA5 was loaded wit h tactical training rounds (TTR). These bullets had a plastic polymer shell to help maintai n muzzle velocity and trajectoryto emulate, as much as possible, ballistics of lethal rounds. But each TTR also contained a proximity fuse that dissolved its shell, turning it into a harmless blo b of red paint when it was within ten centimeters o f any surface. Harmless but not inert, Jenkins reminded himself. The paint was both  a powerful, tactile anesthetic and a reactant that worked on nanofibers  woven into the recruits' fatigues, causing the fibers to harden when saturated. Translation: when you got hit, you passed out and f roze up. A single TTR in any limb would render it useless. Mul tiple rounds to the chest would cause the whole uniform to stiffen, simulating a mortal wound. Burd ick and the other downed recruits had been hit by dozens of TTR from the claymoresblack plastic b oxes screwed to the inside of the sedan's doors, now covered with condensation from their CO2  propellant.\n\"Hold your fire!\" Healy shouted as he rushed to Bur dick's side, med kit in hand. The recruit had taken the worst of the blast, stiffened like a boar d, and fallen straight onto his back.\n\"How's he doing, Corpsman?\" Ponder asked, stepping down from his Warthog.  106  Healy pulled a blued-metal baton from the kit and p assed it over Burdick's midsection. Circuits inside the baton relaxed his uniform's nanofibers, and the Corpsman was able to hook the recruit under the arms, pull him to the sedan, and prop him  against the front, driver-side tire. \"He'll live,\"\nHealy said sarcastically. He patted Burdick on the shoulder and set his MA5 across his lap. Then he moved on to the other downed recruits. Jenkins breathed a sigh of relief. He knew they wou ld be fineeasily revived at the end of the exercise. But the attack had looked very real. Jenkins could easily imagine a far more gruesome scene if the sedan had contained Innie explosives. He was just about to share his thoughts with Forsell when Andersen, the newly anointed squad lea der of 1/B shouted: \"The combine! It isn't turning!\"\nJenkins twitched east and saw Andersen and the rest  of his squad retreating from the fence. The towering JOTUN had indeed passed its usual pivot li ne and was barreling down on the complex. As the combine reached a thick strip of clay that edge d the field, its rotary head bit into the hardened soil and locked with an audible snap of timing belt s. But the JOTUN wasn't fazed. It simply raised the disabled header on its hydraulic arms and kept on rolling toward the fence. Steel poles and galvanized chainlink crumpled under the combine's f irst pair of tires, then twisted around the axles. The fencing sparked against the machines' underbell y as it came to a halt, half its length inside the complex and half out. By that time, the JOTUN was covered with TTR. The r ecruits hadn't spotted either Staff Sergeant, but that hadn't stopped them from laying on their triggers in uncontrolled panic. In the confusion, no one noticed the grenade lofting towar d the reactor tower.\n\"Get down!\" Dass yelled. But it was too late. Jenki ns barely had time to duck his head behind his rucksack before the grenade burst. He heard TTR  spatter the wall below him, and he knew even before Osmo spoke that most of 1/A was gone.\n\"They got Dass!\" Osmo wailed. \"They got me !\"\nRisking exposure, Jenkins slunk forward and peered down at the first-story roof. Dass was unconscious as were most of the other 1/A recruits,  but Osmo himself was fine. Lying facedown, hands clasped over his helmet, he hadn't noticed th at the numbness in his legs was simply the result of another recruit's collapse across them.\n\"You're fine, Oz!\" Jenkins shouted over the frantic  clatter of the rest of the militia company's MA5s. \"Sit up and\"\nAt that moment three TTR broke against the first-st ory wall, right below Jenkins' heada burst from a battle rifle.\n\"Byrne! He's on the combine!\" Forsell shouted. If Jenkins had tried to crawl back to his ruck, he would have gotten shot. But some previously unknown instinct took over as Jenkins instead broug ht his battle rifle upspotted Byrne hunkered between the first and second body segments and open ed fire. Even though his shots went wide, they prompted the Staff Sergeant to abandon his already precarious position. Byrne swung onto a ladder that ran down the backside of the first segment and  headed for ground.\n\"I got him!\" Jenkins shouted, thumbing his battle r ifle fire-select switch from semi-automatic to burst. But his heavier fire only quickened the Staf f Sergeant's descent. Byrne grabbed the ladder's stiles and slid down without bothering to toe the r ungs. When his boots hit the asphalt, Byrne rolled between the JOTUN's tires. From there he had good, if temporary cover, from Jenkins' battle rifle as well as the crossfire from Andersen and Stisen's  squads.\n\"Like hell you do!\" the 2/A squad leader shouted as  TTR from Byrne's battle rifle sprayed the sandbags near the gate. \"Critchley!\" Stisen command ed. \"Come to front!\"\nJenkins grit his teeth. He didn't appreciate Stisen  calling him out on the open COM. And besides, Critchley and his spotter were set up at t he northern edge of the first-story roof and were supposed to be watching Jenkins' back.\n\"I said I got him!\" Jenkins retorted, drilling a bu rst against the JOTUN's tire.  107  \"Shut it, Jenkins!\" Stisen roared. \"Critchley! Resp ond!\"\nBut the 2nd platoon marksman didn't say a word.\n\"Forsell, check your COM!\" Jenkins shouted. Each re cruit's COM-pad was constantly monitoring his vital signs. If one of them went dow n, the loss registered on the local network.\n\"Critchley's gone!\" Forsell replied, voice shocked.  \"So is all of one-cee!\"\n\"What?\"\n\"We've lost everyone on the western fence!\"\nJenkins saw Byrne's battle rifle flash from the sha dows beneath the JOTUN. One of the 1/A recruits screamed as he fell. That's got to be close to thirty casualties, Jenkins thought grimly. He squeezed off two more bursts, then rolled to his si de and swapped magazines. \"Stisen, we're heading to the back!\"\n\"No goddamnit!\" Stisen cursed. Then to 2/C's squad leader, tasked with guarding the northeast corner of the complex: \"Ha-bel! Shift west! It's go tta be Johnson!\"\nJust hearing his Staff Sergeant's name made Jenkins ' stomach churn. He and the rest of the recruits had spent the day bellyaching about the he at, unaware they'd been resting between the jaws of a well-set trap. Now with Byrne firmly entrenche d and Johnson pressing, it was only a matter of time before the recruits were crushed.\n\"Oz?\" Jenkins asked, rising to a knee. \"You still k icking?\"\n\"Y-yeah!\"\n\"You've got good height. You can keep Byrne pinned. \"\n\"But...\"\n\"Just do it, Osmo!\"\nJenkins tapped Forsell on the shoulder. They locked  stares, and Jenkins knew Forsell was thinking the exact same thing:\nWhen you're caught in a trap, you fight your way ou t. \"Stisen,\" Jenkins announced. \"First marksmen are on the move.\"\n\nFrom the top of the rise, Avery had a panoramic vie w of the complex. Critchley and his spotter were an easy shot, but he'd waited for Byrne to crash th e fence and draw the recruits' attention before he fired twice, hitting both recruits in the sides of their heads. Circuits in their helmets registered t he\n\"lethal\" headshots and instantly froze their unifor ms. In the general clamor of automatic weapons fire, Avery was confident none of the other recruit s had heard his shots ring out. He also bet none of the militiamen would bother to check their motion trackers now that the devices' signals had been thoroughly confused by th e cloud of fungicide. The chemicals had coated Avery in fine white powder as they settled into the  wheat, and he looked almost comical as he rose from the fieldas if some unseen prankster had loos ed a giant bag of flour overhead. But there was nothing humorous about Avery's intent: He planned t o drop every recruit guarding the western fence before they stopped thinking about Byrne and remembered to watch the perimeter. As Avery ran down the rise, battle rifle up and plu mp kernels batting at his elbows, it struck him that this was the first time since TREBUCHET that h e'd fired on a human being. This was different, of course; it was an exercise with practice ammunit ion. But Avery couldn't help noticing how easyhow automatic it was for him to put someone in his crosshairs, a nd pull the trigger. This was just good training, Avery knew. And while he wa sn't always happy with the way he'd put his skills to use, he was determined to pass them onin still in his men the same confidence and lack of hesitation. In the fight to come, they would need b oth to stay alive. Avery heard a grenade go off. The noise was much mo re muffled than the claymores he and Byrne had affixed to the sedan's doors before letti ng Mack bring the vehicle to the complex gate. The AI had been more than happy to help them with t heir exercisehad actually been the one to suggest using the JOTUN combine as an additional di straction. Avery wasn't quite sure why except  108  that, like the marines and Lt. Commander al-Cygni, Mack must have known Harvest's reactor would be a juicy target for any hostile force and w as eager to let the militia practice its defense. Avery didn't fire through the fence. He knew the ch ain-link would shred his battle rifle's TTR before they hit their targets. But the same would b e true for the recruits' shots as well, so it was w ith reasonable confidence of not getting shot that Aver y sprinted over the hard-clay border between the wheat and the fence and leapt onto the chain-link. Almost immediately, one of the 1/C recruits, Wick, heard the rattling metal and turned. His already frightened eyes widened to saucer-size as h e saw what must have looked like Avery's ghost jump down inside the compound, billowing white fung icide. Before Wick could recover, Avery unslung his battle rifle and pumped two rounds into  the center of his chest. The recruit's scream carried above the din, causing  three of his squad mates to turn. Avery dropped each oneleft to rightbefore switching his  rifle to burst fire and strafing the confused remains of 1/C. As the last recruit fell, the illum inated ammunition counter below the battle rifle's scope displayed three rounds remaining. But just as  Avery pulled a fresh magazine from his assault vest, he started taking fire from the east. Squad 2/C had swung around the back of the reactor tower. If the recruits had run a little faster or remembered to settle into more stable stances be fore opening fire, they would have caught Avery in a very bad spot. But their opening shots were wi ld, and all they did was give Avery time to roll left, putting the curve of the tower in between him  and unexpected fire. By the time the first of the\n2/C recruits came charging around the bend, Avery h ad reloaded. He dropped two and forced the rest of the squad to pull back and bunker downwast e valuable seconds debating when and how they should attempt to flank Avery's position.\n\"Charlie one is gone,\" Avery growled into his throa t mic. \"I'm getting heat from bravo two.\"\n\"I just blew your alpha boys to hell,\" Byrne replie d. He paused to snap off a few rounds. \"But I'm still taking fire from up top.\"\n\"Must be my marksmen.\"\n\"How's that?\"\n\"Yours are dead.\"\n\"Well, quiet 'em down, will you?\"\n\"On it.\"\nKeeping his battle rifle pointing north in case 2/C  got organized quicker than he thought, Avery walked backward to a service ladder that would take  him to the first-story roof. He slung his weapon for the climb and worked the rungs as quickly as he  could. As his head cleared the roofline, Avery saw movement to his right. He jerked his head down just in time to avoid a burst from Forsell's MA5. Without hesitating, Avery unholstered his M6 sidear m, and sprang up one-handed just as Forsell pulled his finger off the trigger. As Avery rose, s o did his shots; one TTR blossomed in the middle of Forsell's gut, two more traveled up his sternum.  As Forsell staggered back, Avery stepped onto the roof. Supporting his M6 with both hands, Avery kept the heavy pistol's iron sights trained on Forsell's helmet as he crumpled. The recruit was bi g, and Avery wanted to make sure the pistol's smaller caliber rounds were sufficient to knock him  out. Satisfied that Forsell was down for the count, Aver y moved toward the ladder that would take him to the top of the second story. But he'd only t aken a few steps when he felt three sharp pains in the back of his right thigh. Fueled by adrenaline, Avery spun around his rapidly deadening leg and returned fire on a target he only recognized as Jen kins after his rounds were on their way. As Jenkins jerked back around the curve of the seco nd-story wall, Avery guessed correctly that the recruits had jumped down on opposite sides of t he tower and waited for him to ascend. Not a bad plan. Avery grimaced as he hobbled against the wall. Rath er than stay locked in a failing defensive position, the marksmen had staged their o wn ambush. Whether or not they succeeded,  109  Avery admired their initiative. He jerked his M6 up  and down, disengaging its half-spent magazine. Then he reloaded and thrust the pistol straight out  from his body along the wall. But just as Jenkins stepped into view and Avery's f inger tensed on the trigger, Captain Ponder's voice boomed over the COM: \"Cease fire! Cease fire! \" For a moment the Staff Sergeant and his recruit remained frozen, each holding the other dea d to rights.\n\"I got him?\" Osmo sounded shocked. Then, warming to  his unexpected success: \"I got him!\"\n\"Staff Sergeant Byrne, you have been hit.\" Ponder c onfirmed. \"Final score: thirty-four to one. Congratulations, recruits!\"\nA chorus of weary cheers flooded the COM.\n\"Spatter off the tire,\" Byrne growled over the Staf f Sergeant's private channel. \"Bloody TTR...\"\nThen, over the open COM: \"Healy? Bring me that damn  baton!\"\nAvery lowered his pistol and relaxed against the wa ll. Epsilon Indi was dropping toward the gentle curve of the horizon. The tower's lackluster  tan polycrete took on a warm, yellow glow even as it shed its accumulated heat. Jenkins grinned. \"Almost had us, Staff Sergeant.\"\n\"Almost.\" Avery smiledand not just to be polite. O ther than basic maneuvers around the garrison, this had been the recruits' first live-fi re exercise. They'd had no idea what the Staff Sergeants were going to throw at them, and Jenkins'  and Forsell's performance gave Avery hope that, with enough time, his recruits just might mak e decent soldiers.\n\"Staff Sergeant?\" Ponder's voice crackled in Avery' s earpiece. His congratulatory tone was gone. \"Just got word from our local DCS representat ive.\" Avery read between the lines: Lt. Commander al-Cygni. His spine stiffened to match his leg. \"The delegate s we were expecting?\"\nPonder continued. \"They're here. And they brought a  much bigger ship.\"  110\nCHAPTER FOURTEEN\n\n\nRAPID CONVERSION, RELIQUARY SYSTEM\n\nDadab raised his knobby arms above his head and gru nted enthusiastically. \"The Age of Reclamation!\" Out of the corner of his eye he could  see Rapid Conversion 's security officer, Tartarus, keeping watch near one of the feasting ha ll's sputtering oil lamps. Not wanting to risk offense, Dadab made sure his feet stayed clear of t he shards of Forerunner alloy that formed the final ring in the hall's mosaic.\n\"Salvation and ...\" he prompted. The roughly twenty Unggoy gathered around the mosai c stared at Dadab with dull eyes. Tartarus crossed his arms and loosed an impatient h uff.\n\"...the Journey!\" Dadab said, flourishing his stubby fingers. Despite his mask, his voice still echoed grandly around the hall. \"These are the Ages  of our Covenantthe cycle we must complete again and again as we strive to follow Those Who Wa lked the Path!\"\nA broad-shouldered Unggoy, Bapap, stepped forward. \"This path. Where does it go?\"\n\"To salvation,\" Dadab replied.\n\"And where is that?\"\nThe Unggoy swung their heads from Bapap to Dadab. T he Deacon shifted in his harness as he struggled for an answer. \"Well...\" he began, then tra iled off. It took him a moment to recall what he neededa word he had heard in seminary, used by one  of his San'Shyuum teachers in response to a similarly thorny question. During the pause, an Ung goy named Yull idly scratched his hindquarters with a finger and offered it to another Unggoy to s mell.\n\"I'm afraid,\" Dadab said with as much gravitas as h e could muster, \"the answer is ontological .\"\nHe had only a vague idea what the word meant. But h e liked the way it sounded, and evidently so did the other Unggoy because they all grumbled happ ily into their masks as if it was exactly the answer they'd expected. Bapap seemed especially pleased. \"On-to-logi-cal,\" he muttered to himself. Tartarus' signal unit emitted a short, sharp tone. \"Our jump is almost complete,\" the security officer said. \"To your posts!\"\n\"Remember,\" Dadab called after the Unggoy as they t rotted for the exit, \"The Path is long but wide. There's room for all of you, so long as you b elieve!\"\nTartarus snorted. The Jiralhanae was dressed in bri ght red armor that covered his thighs and chest and shoulders. Maccabeus had wanted his pack ready for a fight, just in case the aliens were waiting for them near the wreckage of the Kig-Yar s hip.\n\"You think I waste my time.\" Dadab nodded toward th e last of his retreating study group.\n\"All creatures deserve instruction.\" The Jiralhanae 's black hair bristled. \"But the Sangheili did not provide us with the most competent of crews.\"\nDadab didn't like to think ill of others of his kin d, but he knew that this was true. Rapid Conversion 's sixty Unggoy were exceptionally dimuneducated a nd shiftless. With a few  111  exceptions (Bapap, for one), they were bottom-of-th e barrel types you would expect to find performing menial labor on crowded habitats, not cr ewing a Ministry vessel on a vital mission. Dadab didn't understand all the political dimension s of the Sangheili-Jiralhanae relationship, but he knew Maccabeus'\nposition was unusualthat he was one of a handful o f Jiralhanae Shipmasters in the vast Covenant fleet. Even so, all one had to do was glan ce at Rapid Conversion to know the Sangheili hadn't exactly set Maccabeus up for success. The cr uiser was in a sorry state, just like its Unggoy crew. With the Chieftain's permission, Dadab had begun to  try to help. His plan? Instill motivation and discipline through spiritual enrichment. And al though this had only been the study group's second meeting, the Deacon had already begun to see  improvement in the demeanor of the Unggoy who had chosen to take part.\n\"To the hangar,\" Tartarus commanded, putting on his  helmet. \"I owe the Chieftain a report on the Huragok's progress.\"\nFor Dadab, climbing the cruiser's central shaft had  at first been a terrifying proposition. His strength had waned during his zero-gee captivity in  the escape-pod. And he had been terrified he would lose his grip and plummet to his death. But n ow that his muscles were strongerand he had become just as agile as the other Unggoythe Deacon  could climb while cheerfully observing the hustle and bustle of Rapid Conversion 's main thoroughfare. Since he had arrived, the shaft had been given a th orough cleaning. Its metal walls were still scratched and grooved, but the layers of tarnish we re gone and the vertical passage now shone with a deep purple luster. Halfway down, Dadab saw that a doorway leading to the forward weapon bays had been unbarred and its warning symbols disabled.  Repairs in that part of the cruiser had been Maccabeus' top priority for his newly acquired Hura gok. Dadab had been present as translator during the Chi eftain's explanation of what needed to be done. But before Maccabeus had a chance to explain what ailed the cruiser's heavy plasma cannon, Lighter Than Some had simply gone to worktorn the protective cowling  off the weapon's control circuits and started its repairs. Dadab had seen the Huragok perform all sorts of mec hanical miracles aboard the Kig-Yar ship, but the Jiralhanae were dumbfounded as the creature 's tentacles fluttered, and the cannon's circuits sparked and hummed. Seemingly without thought, the Huragok was performing repairs that had been impossible for the cruiser's former custodians : the insect Yanme'e. After seeing what Lighter Than Some could do, Maccabeus relieved the winged creatures o f all but their most menial responsibilities. The Chiefta in was concerned they might interrupt the Huragok's vital work. And indeed, the Yanme'e buzzi ng up and down the shaft now only carried basic sanitation and maintenance toolsnone of whic h came close to matching the utility of the Huragok's deft tentacles and their cilia. As Dadab shrunk to one side of his ladder to let a blue-armored Jiralhanae pass, a pair of Yanme'e collided in midair below him. Rattling thei r copper-colored armored plates, the bugs untangled their chitinous limbs and continued down the shaft. Dadab (while no expert on the species) knew this sort of clumsiness was unusual f or creatures with compound eyes and highly sensitive antennaand was a good indication their r ecent demotion had left the Yanme'e flustered. Yes, they were much more intelligent than small art hropods such as Scrub Grubs. But the Yanme'e were also hive-minded and notoriously dogma tic. Once you gave them a task, they stuck to it, and Dadab worried the creatures' confusion m ight cause them to interfere with Lighter Than Some 's work, maybe even do the creature harm. So far, nothing had happened to warrant Dadab's con cern. But he was relieved when the Huragok had completed its repairs to the plasma can non and retired to the hangar to begin work on the damaged Spirit dropship. The Yanme'e had avoide d the hangar ever since the accidental immolation of their hive mates, which meant the Hur agok was safely isolated.  112  With the armored Jiralhanae up and on his way, Dada b resumed his descent and soon reached the bottom of the shaft. Trotting quickly to keep u p with Tartarus' long strides, he hurried to the fa r end of the hangar where Lighter Than Some had built a temporary workshop inside the damaged Spirit's two battered bays. The escape pod had been  discarded out the energy barrier before the cruiser made its jump. But the Spirit's detached co ckpit still sat against the wall where the pod had smashed it. At first glance it seemed little progre ss had been made. The thin-skinned troop bays, each large enough to a ccommodate dozens of warriors, were pushed together on their longest sides. Their doors , half-open and resting against the hangar floor, kept the bays from toppling.\n\"Wait here,\" Dadab said, ducking between the bays. \"I'll see what it has done.\"\nTartarus didn't protest. Maccabeus had told every m ember of his pack to give the fragile Huragok plenty of room. For while Lighter Than Some had survived its ordeal inside the pod, it had not emerged unscathed. Dadab felt a pang of guilt when he saw his friend, floating in front of a sheet of ablative foil it had hung as a curtain halfway down the bay. The sac  that had produced all the life-saving methane was horribly distended. It dragged along the floor as the Huragok turned to greet Dadaba mute reminder of its sacrifice.\n< How are you?  > Dadab signed.\n< Well. Though I wish you had come alone.  > The Huragok wrinkled its snout, crimping its olfactory nodes. < I'm not terribly fond of our new hosts' smell.  >\n< It's their hair.  > Dadab explained. < I'm not sure they wash.  > It felt good to speak with his fingers. During their confinement, Dadab's signing had improved immensely. Before Lighter Than Some had become too weak to carry on long conversations,  the Deacon had felt on the verge of fluencyat least as far as simple subjects were con cerned. < How go repairs?  >\nThe Huragok flicked one of its tentacles in a pitch ing motion, as if it were throwing Dadab an imaginary ball. < Hunting rock. Do you remember?  >\n< Of course. Do you want to play?  >\n< Do you remember when we played before? > Dadab paused. < The alien.  >\n< The one I killed. >\nDadab splayed his fingers: < Killed to save me ! > But his heart sank. He'd hoped Lighter Than Some 's new responsibilities would take its mind off the  terrifying encounter aboard the alien ship.\n< Even so, I regret it. > Lighter Than Some motioned for Dadab to follow it deeper into the bay .\n< But I know how to make amends!  > Its tentacles quivered as it drew back the foil curtain, indicating excitementor joy.\n< What is it?  > Dadab asked, cocking his head at the object on t he other side of the curtain. It looked familiar, but the Deacon couldn't immediatel y place why.\n< A peace offering! Proof of our good intentions!  >\n< You made... one of their machines.  >\nOne of the Huragok's dorsal sacs bleated with delig ht. < Yes! A plow, I believe.  >\nAs Lighter Than Some continued extolling the virtues of its creation (fl ashing technical terms that far exceeded Dadab's vocabulary), the Deacon s tudied the plow. It was, of course, much smaller than the machine they'd discovered in the s econd alien ship, but was still obviously designed for prepping soil for seed. The plow's dominant feature was a metal wheel mount ed with earth-tilling tines that doubled as its propulsion system. Where did the Huragok get that? Dadab wondered, an instant before he noticed that two of the troop bay's trapezoidal sup port ribs had been removed. Lighter Than Some had bent the ribs round and fused them together. An d it must have done so recently because the bay still carried the sharp, sweet smell of the flux th e Yanme'e used in their portable weldersone of which the Huragok must have \"borrowed\" for its proj ect.  113  Extending back from the wheel was the beginnings of  a chassis. Loops of wire and circuit boards pilfered from the bay hung from the neatly w elded frame, awaiting placement of the engine, whatever that was going to be.... Dadab's natural curiosity died in a quick intake of  breath. His fingers trembled with fright, and his grammar faltered. < Does, Chieftain, know?  >\n< Should he?  >\n< His order. Repair dropship. Not make gift.  >\n< Not a gift. An offering. > The Huragok fluttered, as if the distin ction would lessen the Chieftain's rage. How could it be so foolish? Dadab wailed into his mask. He felt dizzy and place d a paw on the plow to steady himself. But this wasn't just becaus e of his rapidly fraying nerves; he could feel the bay vibrate as the cruiser exited his jump. Dadab t ook a few long drags from his tank. < You must take apart!  >\nThe Huragok's tentacles sputtered. < But why?  > It seemed honestly confused. Dadab worked his fingers slowly. < You disobey. Chieftain very angry.  > He knew Maccabeus would never hurt the Huragok. The creature was far too valuable. But as for Dadab... Maccabeus hadn't said anything specific, but the De acon knew he was a prisoner on the Jiralhanae shipstill under suspicion for the crime s he had committed. In a flash of desperate optimism, the Deacon tried to convince himself that  his efforts to educate Rapid Conversion 's Unggoy would be enough to prove his worthto keep t he Chieftain from transferring his certain anger about the plow. But the Deacon knew he had si nned. He would be punished, if not by Maccabeus then by the Ministry Prophets when the Ji ralhanae's mission was complete.\n\"Deacon!\" Tartarus' voice echoed into the bay. \"The  Chieftain needs you on the bridge!\"\n< Promise! > Dadab signed with shaking hands. < You will take it apart!  >\nLighter Than Some swung its snout to face the plow. It tapped a tenta cle against one of the machine's sharpened tines, as if considering the qu ality of its work. < Well, I did rush the assembly. And one machine hardly makes up for the life I took . >\n\"Deacon! The Chieftain insists !\"\n< Fix!  > Dadab signed as he backpedaled through the curta in and out the bay.\n\"When will the dropship be ready to fly?\" Tartarus asked, heading back to the shaft.\n\"The Huragok has hit a minor snag.\" Dadab was glad the Jiralhanae had taken the leadhad his back to him. Otherwise he would have known Dadab wa s lying just by looking at his darting eyes.\n\"But I know it will make things right just as quick ly as it can!\"\n\nRapid Conversion 's bridge was located halfway up the shaft, toward the prow, as far from the outer hull as possiblea placement that made it invulnera ble to all but the most devastating attack. As Dadab scampered inside, close on Tartarus' heels, h e noted the bridge was (while not as roomy as the Jiralhanae's feasting hall) large enough to acc ommodate the entire pack. All were present, most hunched over workstations protruding from the bridg e's reinforced walls. These were filled with holographic switches that flickered against the Jir alhanae's blue armor. Like Tartarus, they were girded for a fight. Maccabeus stood before the bridge's central holo-ta nk, his paws knuckled against its smooth metal railing. The Chieftain's armor was colored go ld, but made of a much stronger alloy. Vorenus and another Jiralhanae named Licinus flanked him, a nd their jutting shoulder plates kept Dadab from seeing whatever the tank had on display. Dadab bowed, touching his knuckles to the bridge's grooved metal floor. It vibrated in time with the cruiser's jump-drive, idling many bridge length s to stern. Ever mindful of the Vice Minister of Tranquility's desire for caution, Maccabeus had kep t the drive hot in case they needed to beat a hasty retreat from the alien system.  114  \"Come forward, Deacon,\" Maccabeus said, catching a faint whiff of methane. Dadab righted himself and followed Tartarus to the tank.\n\"Make room,\" Tartarus growled. \"Step aside, Vorenus!\" Tartarus gave the taller, tan-haired Jiralhanae a cuff.\n\"Pardon me.\" Dadab gulped. \"Excuse me.\" His conical  tank made sidestepping impractical, and as he pushed past Vorenus toward the railing, his t ank clanged against the Jiralhanae's armored thigh. To Dadab's relief, Vorenus was so transfixed  he didn't seem to notice.\n\"Incredible, isn't it,\" Maccabeus said.\n\"Yes. Incredible,\" Dadab said, peering into the tan k below its railing.\n\"Such enthusiasm, Deacon.\"\n\"My apologies, Chieftain. It's just that I've seen it before. Aboard the Kig-Yar ship.\"\n\"Ah. Of course.\" Maccabeus adopted an ironic tone. \"After all, this is only-what?\" He nodded toward the glowing representation of the alien worl dits surface covered with insistent, Reclamation glyphs. \"A few hundred thousand Luminations?\"\nThe truth was Dadab was still preoccupied with the Huragok's disobedience. And to make matters worse, the bridge was thick with the Jiralh anae's powerful scents. The excited odors had permeated his mask's membranes, and Dadab was start ing to feel a little sick.\n\"The numbers are impressive.\" Dadab choked back a b itter surge.\n\"Impressive? Unprecedented!\" Maccabeus boomed. Then , his voice a low growl: \"Very well. Tell me what you think of this.\" He jabbed a knuckle into a holo-switch imbedded in the railing, and the image of the alien planet fadedshrunk to a muc h smaller size as the holo-tank's perspective shifted to a wider view of the system. Dadab saw an  iconic image of the cruiser just outside the planet's orbital path, and a safe distance from tha t, a flashing red triangle indicating a potentially hostile contact.\n\"It was waiting for us,\" the Chieftain growled. \"Ne ar the remains of the Kig-Yar ship.\" He pressed another switch, and the holo-tank zoomed in  on the contact, bringing it into focus.\n\"The design matches the ships the Kig-Yar raided,\" Dadab explained. \"A cargo freighter. Nothing more.\"\n\"Look closer,\" Maccabeus rumbled. Slowly, the vessel's representation began to turn. Rapid Conversion 's sensors had made a detailed scan, and Dadab could see the freighter's blackened hull had been deeply etched, creating patterns in the bright metal beneath. No, not patterns, he thought. Pictures. Each of the vessel's four lateral sides displayed a  different, stylized image of the aliens and the Kig-Yar. In the first picture, one of each creature  aimed weapons at each other (the alien held some sort of rifle, the Kig-Yar a plasma pistol). In the  second, the alien had dropped his rifle and held o ut a handful of round objects that looked like fruit. In the third image, the Kig-Yar had cast aside its weapon to accept the alien's offering. And in the f ourth, both creatures sat in what appeared to be an orchard. The alien held a basket of fruit, and the Kig-Yar was calmly making its selection.\n\"A peace offering!\" Dadab said excitedly. \"They do not wish to fight!\" As the hologram of the vessel continued to spin, the Deacon pointed a fing er at an outline of the alien planet etched into th e lower-right corner of each side of the hull. Two cr ossed lines marked a point in the middle of the world's singular land-mass, a little below the equa tor. \"And I believe this is where they would like to meet!\"\n\"Apparently at dawn,\" Maccabeus said, increasing th e tank's magnification. Now Dadab could see that the etchings of the planet  were shaded with a terminator linea shadow that marked the world's passage in and out o f night. Cutting perpendicularly across the equator, the line moved around the planet with each  successive picture until it intersected the suggested meeting point on the side of the freighte r that displayed the presentation of the fruit basket.  115  The Chieftain refocused the tank on the actual plan et. \"But there's more.\"\nNow Dadab noticed new details. There was some sort of structure in high orbit above the world. Two delicate, silver arcs tethered to the surface b y seven almost invisible golden strands. Around the structure were hundreds of additional red conta ct symbols. The Deacon hoped the aliens'\nmessage was sincere. If these contacts were warship s, Rapid Conversion was in serious trouble.\n\"Not to worry, Deacon,\" Maccabeus said, sensing the  Unggoy's concern. \"They haven't moved since we arrived. And they look to be the same as t he other vessel. Simple cargo tugs with no obvious weapons.\" He gestured with a hairy finger. \"But look herewhere those cables meet the surface.\"\nDadab followed the Chieftain's finger. There was a mass of Reclamation glyphs clustered at the bottom of the cables. But close to these was anothe r set of Forerunner symbolsa diamond of bright green glyphs hovering above the site of the aliens' suggested rendezvous.\n\"We intercepted a signal,\" Maccabeus continued. \"An d assumed it was a beacona marker for the parley.\" He scowled at the green diamond. \"But our Luminary made its own assessment. I'd like you to explain it.\"\n\"It's... hard to say, Chieftain.\"\nBut Dadab was lying. He knew all too well that one of the symbols meant \"intelligence,\" another\n\"association,\" and a third \"verboten.\" And as for t he fourth glyph, the one flashing from yellow to blue at the diamond's tip... Dadab nervously cleared his throat. \"If you had a library I might\"\n\"We do not.\" Maccabeus' eyes bored into Dadab's. \"O ne of many essentials the Sangheili saw fit to deny us. I'm afraid I must rely on your expert opinion.\"\n\"Well then. Let me see...\" Dadab calmly scrutinized t he glyphs. But inside he shook with fear. He knows! Knows all that I have done! And this is a ll just a trap to get my confession!\nBut then some small, still rational part of the Dea con's brain suggested it was possible the Chieftain really didn't have any idea what the glyp hs meant, especially the one that was flashing so insistently. It was an arcane symbol only certain S an'Shyuum priests and overachieving Unggoy seminarians would bother to remember. And if Dadab hadn't been so frightened, he would have been awed as he announced:\n\"Of course! How could I be so stupid? These Luminat ions suggest an Oracle !\"\nMaccabeus drew back from the railing. Tartarus' and  Vorenus' pheromones flared. The other Jiralhanae took their eyes off their workstations a nd stole furtive glances at the holo-tank. But no one spoke, and for a long time the bridge was fille d with reverent silence.\n\"Can it be so?\" Maccabeus said at last, his voice a  throaty whisper. \"A reliquary and an Oracle?\"\n\"Who else would the Gods leave to safeguard such a splendid trove?\" Dadab replied.\n\"A wise observation, Deacon.\" Maccabeus lifted a si lver-haired paw and placed it on Dadab's head. With a flinch of his fingers the Jiralhanae could h ave crushed the Unggoy's skull. But Dadab hoped the gesture was simply a sign of the Chieftai n's growing appreciation for his assistance as minister to the cruiser's Unggoy and translator for  its invaluable Huragok. In that moment all Dadab's fears began to fade.\n\"Brothers!\" Maccabeus shouted, turning to face his pack. \"We are well and truly blessed!\"\nStepping away from the tank, the Chieftain threw ba ck his hairless head and howled. Instantly, the other Jiralhanae joined their voices to his cry , creating a booming chorus of joyous yelps that shook the bridge and reverberated down Rapid Conversion 's central shaft. But there was one member of the pack who did not take part.\n\"Are you sure,\" Tartarus asked, squinting at the te thered arcs above the planet, \"this isn't a weapons platform? Kinetics won't register on our sc ans. And it's large enough for missiles.\" The pack's howl petered out. But Tartarus persisted, ob livious to the uncomfortable silence: \"We should  116  destroy it and all proximate contacts. Our point-la sers should be sufficient. No need to show them we have cannon.\"\nFailing to participate in the howl was a direct cha llenge to Maccabeus' dominance. In his lifetime, the Chieftain had spilled blood for lesse r offenses. But he was absolutely calm as he turned to face his nephew.\n\"Your suspicion well befits your post. But we now b ear witness to tangible divinity.\"\nMaccabeus gave Tartarus a moment to pull himself fr om the tank, look his Chieftain in the eye, and realize the extent of his insubordinationhis peril ous position. \"If there is an Oracle on this world, nephew, shall we meet its call for peace with viole nce?\"\n\"No, Uncle,\" Tartarus replied. \"No, Chieftain.\"\nMaccabeus flared his nostrils. The younger Jiralhan ae's angry scent was fading, and his willful glands were now producing the unmistakable scent of  submission. \"Then let us keep our weapons stowed.\" The Chieftain placed both paws on Tartarus ' shoulders and gave him a loving shake. \"We shall give these aliens no reason to fear us. No ca use to secret what we seek.\"\nWith that, the Chieftain began another howl. This t ime Tartarus was quick to join in, and before Dadab knew it, he was whooping along with them, his  thin lips puckered inside his mask. The Deacon wasn't so foolish to think he had someho w become a member of their pack. He would always be an outsider. But he was the cruiser 's Deacon, and this was cause for celebration. In spite of all his missteps, and in opposition to his  fears, Dadab had finally found his callinghis ministry, and his flock.  117\nCHAPTER FIFTEEN\n\n\nHARVEST, FEBRUARY 11, 2525\n\nAvery had always preferred to operate before first light. Something about the inevitability of sunrise heightened his senses-made him more alert. Breathin g in the cool air of a soon-to-be-hot-and-humid day, Avery wondered if the aliens shared his prefer ence. Exhaling, he hoped they didn't. Today was supposed to be a peaceful parley. But in case thing s went bad, Avery wanted every advantage he could get.\n\"You tired, Osmo?\"\n\"No, Staff Sergeant.\"\n\"You keep yawning like that, I'm gonna pull you off  the line.\"\n\"Yes, Staff Sergeant.\"\nThe militia was gathered in Harvest's botanical gar dens, the planet's largest park after Utgard's mall. Located about one hundred and fifty kilometer s southeast of the capital city, the gardens were the most remote and yet still stately location Lt. Commander al-Cygni could find. If it were up to Avery, he'd have moved the meeting further awaynot  just from Utgard but from any population center. But Governor Thune had been willing to trad e the small risk of civilian observation for the scenic grandeur he deemed necessary for humanity's first formal meeting with alien beings. And Avery had to admit: The gardens were plenty gra nd. The park stepped down to the Bifrost in three lands caped tiers, the lowest of which was a broad lawn of close-cropped grass that grew right up to t he precipice. Here the Bifrost bulged in an unusual promontorya spur of windswept limestone th at provided panoramic views of the plain of Ida. To the north of the promontory was a spectacul ar waterfallthe abrupt end of the Mimir River that started in the Vigrond highlands and cut just to the south of Utgard. The Mimir's clear water tumbled down the escarpment to the murky, slow-movi ng Slidr: a river that followed the contours of the Bifrost and drained into Harvest's southern sea . Standing in the middle of the lowest tier, Avery co uldn't see the falls past a border of magnolia trees, but he could hear them: water crashing again st rock, like an endless peal of thunderreveille for a world not yet awakened to its peril. Avery scanned the faces of 1st platoon's alpha squa d. The twelve recruits stood in two lines on opposite sides of a large \"X\" of landing lights. Th e bright bulbs were meant to serve as visual confirmation of the directions Mack's JOTUN all-in- ones had etched into the freighter's hull. The recruits' olive drab fatigues were freshly pres sed and their boots were polishednot the sort of thing to do if they'd wanted to blend into the s urrounding greenery. But Avery knew that was all part of al-Cygni's plan: make the aliens feel welco me, but also let them see exactly what they were dealing with. Osmo's hand shot to his mouth, stifling another yaw n. He and the other recruits had been up most of the night, helping Avery and Byrne hide sur veillance gear in the trees: dozens of small cameras and even a few compact ARGUS units.  118  \"That's it, recruit. Step out.\" Avery thrust a thum b toward the magnolias bordering the northern edge of the lawn. Hidden in the mossy rocks and fer ns between the trees and the river was 1/A's backup: Stisen and the rest of the 2/A recruits.\n\"But Staff Ser\"\n\"But what ?\"\nOsmo's thick cheeks flushed. \"This recruit wants to  stay with his squad.\" Osmo tightened his grip on his MA5's shoulder strap, tugging the rifle  against his back. \"Wants to do his duty!\"\nAvery frowned. It had been less than forty-eight ho urs since the exercise at the reactor complexsince Captain Ponder had broken the news of  the aliens' arrival. He'd laid things out, plain and simple, right in the middle of the recrui ts' victory dinner: Hostile aliens had found Harvest, and it was up to the militia to deal with the situation until help arrived. The garrison mess had gotten so quiet so quick, Avery thought the rec ruits were about to boltgo AWOL right then and there. But in the stunned silence that followed Ponder's a nnouncement, no one moved. Eventually, the Captain asked if the recruits had any questions. St isen had been the first to raise his hand.\n\"We the only ones who know, sir?\"\n\"Just about.\"\n\"Can we tell our families?\"\n\"Afraid not.\"\n\"You want us to lie.\" Stisen had glanced around the  mess. \"Like you've been lying to us.\"\nPonder held out an arm to keep Byrne in his seat. \" If we'd told you the truththat we were expecting aliens not Innies, would it have made a d ifference?\" The Captain caught as many suspicious eyes as he could. \"Would you have refuse d to serve? Your families and your neighbors aren't in any less danger. You're the only protecti on they've got.\" Then, nodding at his Staff Sergeants: \"We've trained you. You're ready.\"\nDass was next to stand. \"For what, sir? Exactly.\"\nPonder motioned for Healy to kill the fluorescents and power on a wall-mounted video display.\n\"I'll tell you everything we know.\"\nThe Lt. Commander had put together a good briefing,  and the recruits were a rapt audience especially during the footage from Avery's helmet c am of his fight aboard the freighter. Byrne remained stoic as he rewatched one of the vacuum-su ited aliens stab its pink blade deep into his thigh. So did Avery as he saw himself raise his M6 pistol to another alien's chin, and blow its brains all over the inside of its helmet. As the footage s howed him push toward the umbilical in hot pursuit of the retreating alien leader, Avery noticed the r ecruits glance in his direction and nod approvingly to one another. Avery hadn't ascribed any particular bravery to his  actions. And in retrospect, he knew charging the alien ship had been extremely dangerous. Part o f him wished al-Cygni had included all the footageshown the methane explosion and Avery's mad  scramble away from the fireballif only to prove to the recruits that sometimes caution was  the better part of valor. But instead, the final frozen frame was that of the alien ship blowing to pieces as the Lt. Commander's sloop moved away from the freightera victorious finish that set the  recruits to excited muttering as Healy flipped on the lights. It was only later, when the mess cleared and the St aff Sergeants and the Captain got down to planning how best to secure the gardens, that Avery  realized why the recruits had been so upbeat:\nThe presentation proved the aliens could be killed showed that Harvest might be kept safe with a few well-placed bullets. And if the recruits had co nfidence in any of their training, they knew they could at least aim a rifle and shoot.  119  Unfortunately, some recruits were less confident th an others. And as Osmo now broke out in a nervous shudder, Avery put a hand on the recruit's shoulder and steered him toward the trees. \"We need to make a good impression, understood?\"\n\"Yes, Staff Sergeant.\"\nAvery slapped Osmo on the backside, accelerating hi s retreat. \"Alright then. Go on.\"\nAs the disappointed recruit jogged north, Jenkins' voice crackled in Avery's earpiece. \"Forsell's got contacts on thermal. Ten o'clock high.\"\nAvery scanned the western sky. But he couldn't see anything with naked eyes. \"How many?\"\n\"Two,\" Jenkins replied. \"Want us to mark them?\"\nOn Avery's orders, 1st platoon's marksmen had taken  up position in an ornate greenhouse on the gardens' eastern edgea white curvilinear building that would have been right at home in a nineteenth century European park. Granted, what wou ld have been a cast-iron frame was now a titanium lattice and thousands of panes of glass, s hatterproof plastic. But straddling the gardens'\nuppermost tier, the greenhouse looked just as state ly as those that inspired it.\n\"Negative,\" Avery replied. \"They'll be here soon en ough.\"\nThe marksmen were hunkered on a balcony that ran ar ound the greenhouse's central elliptical dome and continued out along the roofs of its two w ings, giving them an excellent view of the gardens and the sky above. Forsell's spotting scope  was equipped with a targeting laser that could paint the two contacts and generate range-finding d ata. But again, Lt. Commander al-Cygni had been very clear: As much as possible, the marines a nd their recruits should minimize behavior the aliens might regard as hostile. Tugging at his own rifle's sling, Avery again wondered how much he and the aliens had in commonif they would show sim ilar restraint.\n\"Company's on the way, Captain,\" Avery growled into  his throat mic. \"How's our perimeter?\"\n\"Charlie squads report all clear,\" Ponder replied.\n1/C and 2/C were deployed at the gardens' main gate  and its exit from the Utgard highway, respectively. The marines didn't expect any traffic  (it was a Tuesday, and the gardens were mainly a weekend destination), but all it would take was a s ingle sedan of early-rising plant-lovers to ruin th e meeting's secrecy. Or worse, spread premature panic .\n\"And our welcome party?\" the Captain asked. Avery scanned the remaining 1/A recruits. \"Good to go, sir.\"\n\"Keep them calm, Johnson. Weapons safed and shoulde red.\"\n\"Roger that.\"\nFor a few long seconds there was no chatter on the COM as all gathered in the gardens took a deep breath. Avery listened to the Mimir rush towar d its plummet. The noise of the falls muted all but the most enthusiastic birds, just now beginning  their morning calls deep inside the magnolias. Like the greenhouse's exotic flora, the birds were importsstarlings and other hardy species brought to Harvest to help contain the planet's ess ential insect population. Slowly, the birds' cries were overwhelmed by a pulsing whine that grew in in tensity until it bested even the Mimir's mighty roar. Avery squinted at the sky from beneath the brim of his duty cap. In the brightening, deep blue haze he saw two dark shadows following one behind t he other, like sharks prowling the shallows of a storm-churned sea.\n\"Staff Sergeant...\" Jenkins began.\n\"I see them.\" Avery squared his cap on his forehead . \"Squad! Stand to!\"\nAs 1/A came to attention, a pair of alien ships eme rged from the haze. Purple hullplate flashing, they dropped toward the Bifrost and then began a wi de circle around the gardens. The ships' bifurcated designs made Avery think of t wo hauler trailers linked to a common cab, but traveling in reverse. Unlike most human aircraf t, the dropships' cabins were located in the ships'\nsterns. Avery could see a single, obvious weapon on each sh ip: a ball-turret with a single barrel  120  suspended beneath the cabin. The ships had no engin es or thrusters. But as the drop-ships completed their first circle and one of them decelerated abov e the promontory, Avery noticed the ship's outline ripple and guessed they must rely on some sort of a nti-gravity field for lift and propulsion.\n\"Step back!\" Avery shouted as the ship dove toward the lawn. \"She's gonna need more room!\"\nThe recruits backpedaled with more speed than decor um, and the dropship glided to a stop directly above the lighted X. The bulbs flickered a nd died and the grass flattened under the press of the invisible field. Skin tingling, Avery watched a s water condensed against the field, defining its ovoid shape, only to fall in a single sheet of rain  as the field collapsed. The ship's curvaceous cabi n settled onto the turf, but its two compartments rem ained hovering parallel to the ground.\n\"Form up!\" Avery growled, and the 1/A recruits move d back into position: two lines on either side of the dropship. Presently, one of the compart ments swung open along its bottom edge. The interior of the ship was dim, and it took Avery a m oment to distinguish the three aliens from their surroundings. Partly this was because the creatures' armor shone with the same dull glow as the metal bands that held them secure and upright. But also because  these aliens were nothing like the ones Avery had fought aboard the freighter. The latter reminde d Avery of upright reptiles; the ones now shaking free of their harnesses looked like the improbable offspring of a gorilla and a grizzly bear; hirsute giants with shoulders as wide as an average human w as tall and fists that could easily encompass Avery's head.\n\"Sir?\" Despite the moisture in the air, Avery felt his mouth go dry. \"This isn't what we expected.\"\n\"Explain,\" Ponder replied.\n\"They're bigger. Armored.\"\n\"Weapons?\"\nAvery noted sharp spurs jutting from metal plates g irding the aliens' chests, shoulders, and thighs. These would be deadly in a close-up fight. But each alien also had a stout, short-barreled weapon clipped to its belt. At first Avery thought they carried knives as well, but then he realized the half-moon blades were affixed to the weapons li ke bayonets; pointed for stabbing and curved for slashing. The alien Avery decided was the leaderth e one with golden armor and helmet with a V shaped crest that swept back from its head like two  jagged saw-bladescarried an additional item: a long-handled hammer with a stone head that must hav e weighed at least as much as Byrne.\n\"Heavy pistols,\" Avery replied. \"And a hammer.\"\n\"Say again?\"\n\"A giant hammer, sir. On their leader.\"\nPonder let that sink in a moment, then: \"Anything e lse?\"\nAs the gold-armored alien stepped toward the edge o f the compartment its nostrils flared. It jerked its chin toward the treesdirectly at 2/A's hiding spotand its blue-armored escorts bared their oversized canine teeth, acknowledging the hum ans' scent with wary growls.\n\"Should have gone with barbecue...\" Avery muttered.\n\"Say again?\"\n\"They aren't vegetarians, sir. Might want to reset the table.\"\nThere was a pause as Ponder relayed the information  to Lt. Commander al-Cygni and Governor Thune. \"No time for that, Johnson. Bring them up.\"\nAvery wasn't privy to all of al-Cygni and Thune's p rotocol discussionseverything they'd decided to do to put their alien visitors at ease. But Jilan had told him that the first freighter the aliens had attacked was carrying fruit, and that sh e and Thune had agreed that more produce would make a good welcome gift. Symbolically, an offering  of fruits and vegetables highlighted Harvest's peaceful, agrarian purpose. And this offer, to shar e the planet's bounty, had served as the basis for Mack's etchings.  121  But nowlooking at the aliens' carnivore physiques and vicious weaponsit was clear to Avery that they hadn't dropped to the surface hopin g to find a nice fruit salad. They wanted something else. And they looked ready to take it sh ould anyone refuse. Avery stepped toward the dropship and stopped a few  meters in front of the gold-armored alien. The towering beast narrowed its yellow eyes.\n\"Dass. Come to me,\" Avery said. \"Nice and slow.\"\nThe 1/A squad leader stepped out of formation and p aced to Avery's side. Moving slowly and deliberately, Avery un-shouldered his BR55, release d the magazine, pulled its action to eject a lone bullet from the chamber, and presented both the wea pon and its ammunition to Dass. The alien's eyes flashed as it watched each step of the unloadi ng process. Avery extended his empty hands, punctuating his performance: OK, he thought. Now you. With a gruff exhale the gold-armored alien grasped its hammer below the head. It slid the weapon up and over his shoulder and then held it ou t to the shorter of its blue-armored escorts. The other alien seemed reluctant to take the weapon, an d only did so after the leader loosed an emphatic bark. Then, mimicking Avery, it uncurled its hairy paws, revealing black and pointed nails. Avery nodded. \"Dass. Step back.\"\nAs the squad leader returned to formation, Avery pl aced a hand on his chest, then pointed at the greenhouse. Al-Cygni had encouraged him to keep han d gestures (and their unintended insults) to a minimum. But Avery had needed no convincing. He was  pretty sure the aliens were already offended by what he and Byrne had done to their fir st ship and its crew, and he knew waving his arms and mistakenly signing the equivalent of \"go s crew yourself\" wouldn't exactly lessen their resentment. So he kept gently placing and pointing his hand unt il the gold-armored alien leapt down from the compartment, shuddering the grass and sinking a goo d six inches into the turf. The militiamen standing on the other side of the ship, who had yet  to see the aliens, took a nervous step back. A few looked set to bolt for the trees.\n\"Steady,\" Avery growled into his throat mic as the blue-armored escorts thundered to the ground. Now that all three were out in the light, Avery not iced they each had different-colored fur tufting through breaks in their armor. The leader's coat wa s light gray, almost silver. One of the escorts had dark brown fur and the other, tan. This second esco rt was actually a bit taller than the leader and more muscular, though Avery knew this was a bit lik e comparing two models of main battle tanks:\none might weigh more than the other, but both would  have no trouble flattening the 1/A recruits. But for now, the creatures seemed eager to please. The leader placed a shaggy palm across its chest plate and pointed at Avery then the greenhous e. Avery nodded and soon the unlikely foursome was trooping across the lawn to a granite staircase  that led up to the gardens' middle tierAvery in the lead, then the gold-armored alien, then its two  escorts.\n\"We're on the move,\" Avery whispered into his mic. \"So far so good.\"\nAt the top of the stairs, a flagstone path cut east  through a grove of flowering cherry and pear trees. The trees had been in bloom for weeks, and t heir blossoms had begun to fall onto the path's rough-cut stones. As the aliens lumbered along the pink-and-yellow petals clung to their broad bare feet, creating wider holes in an already patchy car pet. Unfortunately, the petals' scent of sweet decay did little to mask the aliens' musky smell. T he powerful odor set Avery's nerves on edge, and he wondered what the ARGUS units would make of it. Halfway to another staircase leading up to the gree nhouse, the path widened to accommodate a ground-level, rectangular fountain. Its jets were o n an automatic timer and had yet to activate. For now, the shallow water was still, and as Avery stee red the party along the fountain's southern edge, he saw the second alien dropshipstill swinging a w ide loop above the treesreflected in the clear, cold water. The dropship was moving more slowly now , and Avery had a hard time differentiating its motive whine from the river's churn.  122  Mounting the second staircase, Avery saw both plato ons' bravo squads arranged in staggered lines before the greenhouse. Between them and the s taircasein the middle of the upper tier's lawnwas a wide oak table covered by a crisp white cloth and topped with a generous basket of fruit. Avery took a few steps toward the table then  turned toward the aliens, palms raised in a haltin g pose. But the armored brutes had already come to a stop. All three were staring at the greenhouse's gabled entrance, where humanity's delegation had ju st emerged: Thune, Pedersen, Ponder, and al Cygni with Staff Sergeant Byrne taking up the rear. Pedersen wore his usual gray linen suit, while the Governor sported a yellow-on-white variation of the seersucker he'd worn for the solstice celebr ation. As usual, the Governor's bulk strained at hi s suit's seams, making him look more like the gentrif ied farmer he was than the powerful politician he hoped the aliens would perceive. But despite the fa bric's pinch, Thune strode forwardchest puffed and shoulders backat a pace that implied he was no  more intimidated by the armored trio than a group of Harvest's parliamentarians. The Captain and the Lt. Commander both wore dress u niforms and caps, he Marine Corps navy blue and she full-dress white. In an effort to help  the aliens differentiate gender, al-Cygni had opte d for a knee-length skirt. Like Avery, Byrne wore bat tle-dress fatigues and the same grim stare of altered expectations: These aren't the enemies we expected. The tall Irishman's blue eyes flicked back and forth beneath his duty cap's brim as he ha stened to assess the aliens' arms and armor.\n\"Thank you, Staff Sergeant,\" Thune said. \"I'll take  it from here.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\" Avery turned on his heels and stepped t o the front of the table, where he met Jilan. Byrne took the northwest corner, flanking Ponder. P edersen stepped in between Thune and the table, a large COM tablet tucked under his arm.\n\"Welcome to Harvest!\" Thune beamed. \"I am its leade r.\" He tapped his chest. \"Thune.\"\nThe gold-armored alien huffed. But it made no indic ation if that was its species, rank, or name or perhaps it simply wanted the Governor to get on with his unintelligible introduction. Despite the language barrier, al-Cygni had thought it wise to at least attempt verbal communication, if only to get some of the aliens' s peech on record for later analysis. Thune had insisted he do all the talking, and while the Lt. C ommander hadn't disagreed, she had taken pains to clarify that brevity was keythat the worst thing T hune could do was frustrate the aliens by talking too much. The Governor waited, giving the leader a chance to make some opening remarks of its own. But it said nothing. Thune was about to launch into an extended introduction when al-Cygni coughed. Avery knew it had become as clear to Jilan as it wa s to him that the aliens weren't long on patience. While the gold-armored one had had the discipline t o stay focused on Thune as he spoke, its fur had begun to bristle. And Avery couldn't be sure, but t he shorter of the escorts seemed to have gotten a lot more pungent. Thune shot al-Cygni an annoyed glance, but he motio ned Pedersen forward. The Attorney General pulled the COM tablet from under his arm an d held it out to the aliens. A moment later, an orchestral version of Harvest's anthem warbled from  the tablet's speakers and a video presentation filled its screen. Avery had seen the presentation the night before; a variation on the official planetary introduction he'd viewed during his initi al descent from the Tiara. Though this one lacked Mack's narration, it contained similarly bucolic fo otage: JOTUNs at work in the fields, gondolas loading produce into freight containers, families e njoying their mealsa montage of clips that gave a good overview of life on Harvest while avoiding a ny implication that there might be other worlds like it. The presentation went on for some time. But Avery k new this wasn't really for the aliens'\nbenefit. At some point, Mackwho was monitoring all  the surveillance gear via a powerful relay hidden in the greenhousebegan manipulating the pre sentation to test the aliens' reactions. Did the sight of the JOTUNs intimidate them? And if so, how  did that manifest in body language? Avery  123  had worked with enough ONI officers to know how foc used they were on gathering good intelligence, and he was sure Jilan had given the A I a long list of questions. But as Avery watched the second dropship make anoth er pass around the gardens, disappearing briefly behind the northern trees before it surged back into view, he wondered how long al-Cygni was going to let the experiment run. After the alie ns had shifted inside their armor for the better pa rt of five minutes, she nonchalantly primped the tight  bun that secured her black hair high on her neck:\na subtle signal to Mack, watching through his camer as, to kill the feed. A moment later, Harvest's looping anthem faded, bringing the presentation to a close. Pedersen tucked the COM tablet back under his arm. The gold-armored alien growled at its shorter escor t, who pulled a small, square sheet of metal from its belt. The leader took the sheet and handed  it to Thune. Smiling politely, the Governor studied the offering. A moment later, he beamed at his Attorney General.\n\"Look at this, Rol. See the picture? Just like we d id to the freighter!\"\n\"I think it's a piece of the freighter.\"\n\"But see what they've etched?\"\nPedersen craned his neck toward the sheet. \"They wa nt to trade.\"\n\"Exactly!\"\n\"Governor,\" Jilan said. \"If I may.\"\nThune stepped back to the table and handed the shee t to Jilan. Avery glanced over her shoulder to take a look as well. It was indeed a piece of the freighter's titanium h ulla perfect square, neatly cut. The picture was dominated by two figures, both carved more real istically than Mack's had been. One was clearly the gold-armored alien; it carried a hammer  across its back and wore a helmet with the same V-shaped crest. The human looked male, but it could  have been anyone. To Avery's surprise, the man was offering up what looked to be a large melon  with a variegated rind. Thune must have made the same connection because he rummaged deep inside  the basket and extracted a large and fragrant cantaloupe. Smiling even wider than before, he walk ed the fruit to the gold-armored alien and presented it with a bow.\n\"Please, take it,\" the Governor said. \"We can give you plenty more.\"\nThe alien palmed the cantaloupe and gave it a cauti ous sniff. As Thune began expounding upon the virtues of inter species commerce, Jilan flipped the sheet over. Avery saw her bare neck stiffen. \"Governor, t hey don't want food.\"\n\"Don't be so sure, Commander. I think this one's ab out to take a bite.\"\n\"No.\" Jilan kept an even tone. \"Look.\"\nAnd Avery did. On the other side of the sheet was a  magnified view of the melon, which he now realized was a map of Harvest, centered on Utgard. What Avery had thought were textures in the rind were actually surface details: maglev lines, r oads, and outlines of major settlements. The aliens had made a complete survey and added some sort of n otation as well. Ornate symbols were scattered all over the planet. Each symbol was identical, and each consisted of two concentric circles filigreed with interlocking curves. Avery had no idea what the symbols stood for, but that was beside the point. J ilan gave voice to his own realization: \"They're looking for something specific. Something they thin k belongs to them.\" Thune stared at the sheet, doing his best to maintain a diplomatic smile as Ji lan flipped it back and forth. \"Governor,\" she said in a whisper. \"They want us to give them the entire  planet.\"\nAt that moment, the gold-armored alien barked and e xtended the melon to Pedersen.\n\"No, no.\" The Attorney General raised a hand and to ok a step back. \"Keep it.\"\nThe alien cocked its head and barked again. Now Ave ry was certain that the musky scent wafting from the shorter escort had become more pow erful. Avery wrinkled his nose as it filled with the smell of vinegar and tar. He fought back the ur ge to draw the M6 pistol holstered at his hip. At  124  that moment, a short burst from an MA5 echoed up fr om the garden's lowest tier. Whether this was a nervous misfire or the beginning of a firefight, Avery didn't know. But in the brief silence that followed, he heard a throaty alien howl echo from t he trees along the river. After that, things happened very quickly. The taller escort ripped its pistol from its belt b efore Avery could draw or Byrne could slip his battle rifle off his shoulder. The bladed weapon bo omed, and a bright spike of metal like lit magnesium sizzled into Pedersen's chest. The Attorn ey General dropped the melon and his COM tablet and fell to his knees, jaw opening and closi ng like a suffocating fish. He had been closest to the gold-armored leaderthe unlucky victim of proxi mity. The Staff Sergeants fired back at the escorts close st to their positionsByrne at the taller, Avery at the shorter. But their bullets had no effect on the aliens' armor. In fact, they never even touched  it. Each round was deflected by invisible energy shield s that followed the contours of the armor and shimmered with every impact.\n\"Get down!\" Avery yelled to Thune, as the shorter e scort tossed the leader its hammer. Then he tackled Jilan, driving her roughly to the ground. In an instant, the silver-haired giant had the cudg el above its head, ready for a cross-body strike. Thune would have gotten his head knocked clean off his shoulders if Captain Ponder hadn't pushed him out of the way and taken the blow himself. The hammer hit the Captain in his prosthetic left arm and sent him twisting through the air. He lande d north of Byrne and slid a good twenty meters on the dew-slick grass. Now the shorter escort had its bladed pistol out. A s the creature took aim at Avery, he hugged Jilan tightshielded her smaller body with his own.  He had a moment to second-guess Ponder's pronouncement that they had trained the recruits we llthat they were ready for the split-second, life-or-death decisions combat demandedwhen he hea rd the high-pitched triple-crack of Jenkins'\nBR55. The shorter escort howled in surprise as a bu rst pinged off its helmet, snapping its large head back. Then all Avery could hear was the snap of bul lets overhead as the twenty-four bravo recruits opened fire, full automatic. Peppered with multiple shots, the shorter escort to ok a shaky step backward. It jerked left and right as if fighting off an invisible swarm of bees . Then its energy shields collapsed with a flash an d a loud pop, and its armor began venting cyan smoke and sparks as dozens more MA5 rounds slammed into its unprotected plates. Now it was the aliens' turn to protect their own. T he leader lunged toward its shorter escort, turning its back toward the greenhouse. Its golden armor must have had stronger shields, because even the bravo squads' concentrated fire failed to take them down. The taller escort loosed a thunderous roar and raked the recruits from north t o south, covering the leader as it helped its wounded comrade limp down the stairs to the second tier. Avery wasn't sure how many of the recruits along the greenhouse had been hitwhether their screams were from fresh wounds or an excess of adrenaline.\n\"Cease fire! Cease fire!\" Byrne shouted. The recrui ts had been firing directly over his and the others' heads. Some of their shots had come a littl e too close.\n\"You alright?\" Avery asked, pushing up from Jilan o n his fists.\n\"Go,\" she said. \"I'm fine.\" But she looked a little  frightened. Like the day in the hospital, it was another temporary break in her unflappable facade. This time all Avery did was nod.\n\"One alpha: fall back!\" Avery shouted, rising to hi s feet. \"Get away from that dropship!\" Avery could hear the pulse of an energy weapon and knew t he first dropship's turret had activated even before he turned south and saw bright blue streaks of plasma rake the lowest tier's lawn-covering fire for the armored aliens' retreat.\n\"Where the hell are you going?\" Byrne shouted as Av ery sprinted past.\n\"River!\"\n\"I'm coming with you!\"  125  \"Negative! Draw that turret's fire while I flank!\"\n\"Bravo! Move up!\" Byrne shouted. \"Healy! Get your a ss out here!\"\nAvery saw the Corpsman rush from the greenhouse beh ind the charging recruits and hustle toward Ponder, med kits in hand. The Captain waved Healy offdirected him to Pedersen's motionless form. Then Avery charged into the tree l ine.\n\"Stisen! Report!\" he shouted into his mic.\n\"Taking fire, Staff Sergeant!\" Static distorted the  2/A squad leader's voice. \"There! Over there!\"\nhe yelled to one of his men.\n\"Hang tight!\" Avery leapt down a rocky embankment t o the gardens' middle tier. \"I'm on my way!\"\nAvery ran as fast as he could, hurdling rocks and s laloming between cherry and pear trees. Breathing hard, he broke through the last of the bl ossom-heavy branches, and pulled up short, thrusting his hips backward and windmilling his arm s. If he'd been going any faster he would have fallen into the river. Here at the edge of the gard ens, the Mimir had carved deep into the Bifrost, creating a series of descending pools. These wide l imestone cauldrons were filled with white water that grew more turbulent the closer it came to the top of the falls. As Avery regained his balance, the second dropship swooped overhead and came to rest on the other side of the nearest pool. Tracking the ship's  downward progress, Avery spotted another of the large aliensthis one in red armor and with black f uras it emerged from the magnolia trees on the gardens' lowest tier. It too carried a bladed pisto l and was using the weapon to guard the retreat of a pack of shorter, gray-skinned creatures with conica l orange backpacks. Avery saw MA5 muzzle flashes in the trees. But the red-armored alien qui ckly loosed a salvo of burning spikes to quiet whatever recruits had been brave enough to fight ba ck. Avery raised his pistol and emptied his clip. He kn ew his rounds wouldn't punch through the alien's shields, but all he wanted was to draw the thing's attention and keep it from hitting any of t he recruits. As Avery's shots flashed harmlessly against its bac k, the alien turned. But by then Avery was already running south for the safety of a boulder. He reloaded and slid around the stone, hoping to pick off one of the smaller aliens. But most of the m were already aboard the dropship. A lone straggler was just now stumbling from the trees. On e of its arms was slacked by its side, and it seemed injured. Avery was about to finish it off wh en the armored alien grabbed its wounded comrade by the nape of its neck, ripped off its mas k, and flung it into the whirlpool. The creature sunk beneath the surface then bobbed up, clutching at a pair of hissing tubes connected to its tank, before it pitched into the next pool and tumbled to ward the falls. While this unexpected fratricide ran its course, th e second dropship's ball turret finally swung into action, and Avery soon found himself diving ba ck behind the boulder to avoid searing bolts of plasma. The splash of ionized gasses against the ro ck set Avery's teeth on edge. But after a few seconds, the turret ceased fire. Avery heard the gr oan of anti-grav generators as the drop-ship twisted up into the sky. When he came out from behi nd the boulder, all the aliens were gone.\n\"Hold your fire!\" Avery barked as he approached the  magnolias on the far side of the pool. \"I'm coming in!\" Behind him, he could hear the reports o f the bravo squads' rifles, firing on the first dropship as it rose from the gardens. \"What happene d?\" Avery growled at Stisen as he neared a huddle of 2/A recruits. The men were packed close t ogether in a jumble of mossy granite. The rocks were dotted with holes that contained glowing remna nts of the red-armored alien's igneous spikes. Little smoky fires burned in the surrounding ferns where some of the rounds had ricocheted.\n\"What happened?\" Avery asked again. But neither Stisen nor any of his squad said a word . Most of them didn't even bother to meet Avery's gaze. Combat had filled Avery with adrenaline, and he was  about to lose his temper when he realized what the recruits were looking at. It took him a moment more to recognize that the thing splayed  126  against granite was the savaged body of a human bei ng. And it wasn't until Avery knelt down beside the corpse that he recognized Osmo's plump, boyish face streaked with his own blood. The recruit was split open across his belly.\n\"I told him: Stay away from the lawn.\" Stisen swall owed hard. \"I didn't want him to get hurt.\"\nAvery clenched his jaw. But he knew there was no wa y the squad leader could have anticipated that the second dropship would swing in behind them , low above the river, and secretly release a backup team. \"Did you see him get hit?\" Avery asked . Stisen shook his head. \"No.\"\n\"It was one of the little ones,\" Burdick whispered.  His eyes remained locked on the spill of organs from Osmo's gut. \"It knocked him to the grou nd. Tore him apart.\"\n\"I heard his weapon fire,\" Stisen said. \"But it was  too late.\"\nAvery rose to his feet. \"Any other casualties?\"\nAgain Stisen shook his head.\n\"Byrne. Talk to me,\" Avery barked.\n\"Captain's hurt pretty bad. Bravo squads have three  wounded, one serious. Dass says his boys are fine.\"\n\"Thune?\"\n\"Not happy. Pedersen's dead.\"\n\"Looked like it.\"\n\"We better clear out, Johnson. Bastards might circl e back.\"\n\"Agreed.\" Avery lowered his voice. \"I'm gonna need a bag.\"\n\"Who?\"\n\"Osmo.\"\n\"Shite,\" Byrne spat. \"Alright. I'll tell Healy.\"\nAvery removed his duty cap and wiped his hand acros s his brow. Staring down at Osmo, he noticed the recruit still held his MA5 tight in his  right hand. The Staff Sergeant was glad Osmo had seen his attacker and had a chance to go down shoot ing. Osmo's rifle fire had alerted his comrades to danger, saving their lives even as he lost his o wn. Avery tried not to blame himself for what had happened. Like Stisen, he had done what he thought was best. Osmo was just the first recruit to fall. As much as Avery hoped he would also be the last, h e steeled himself against the knowledge that the aliens had just begun a warand that there woul d be a lot more casualties to come.\n\nMaccabeus released his hammer and let it clang onto  the troop-bay floor. This was the Fist of Rukt, an ancient weapon passed down from one Chieftain to  the next for generations of Maccabeus' clan. It deserved greater care. But Maccabeus was too wor ried about Licinus to stand on ceremony. His ancestors would have to understand.\n\"Vorenus! Hurry!\" he bellowed, muscling Licinus upr ight. The Spirit shook violently as it hurtled back into the hazy sky, and even the mighty  Chieftain had a difficult time propping his wounded pack member's unconscious bulk against the bay's inner wall. Vorenus stumbled down the bay, hefting a portable a id station. He set the octagonal box by Licinus' feet then held him steady while Maccabeus fastened restraining bands around his legs and arms. Sangheili Spirits had sophisticated stasis fi elds to keep their warriors upright. But Maccabeus had been denied this technology as well, and he'd h ad to make do with a more basic solution.\n\"Give me a compress!\" Maccabeus peeled off Licinus'  breastplate. The armor had a crack down the middle that oozed dark red blood. Once the plat e was free, Maccabeus smoothed his wounded pack member's brown fur, probing for two whistling holes in his chest. The aliens' weapons had penetrated one of Licinus' lungs, forcing its colla pse. Vorenus handed Maccabeus a thin sheet of bronze-col ored mesh. Properly affixed, the material would form a partial seal over the wounds, allowing  air to escape as Licinus exhaled but keeping it  127  out as he inhaled; as long as the lung wasn't too b adly damaged, it would reinflate. The mesh also contained a coagulant that would help keep the youn g Jiralhanae's remaining blood inside his body. When they made it back to Rapid Conversion, Maccabeus would let the ship's automated surgery suite do the rest. If we make it back, the Chieftain growled to himself as the Spirit jerk ed to starboard, executing another evasive maneuver. So far the aliens hadn't activated any anti-air defenses, but Maccabeus felt certain they would. The aliens' infantry weapo ns were fairly crudenot much more sophisticated than the Jiralhanae's at the time of the San'Shyuum's missionary contact. But they had to have missiles or some other kinetic weapons syst em, or their planet would be defenseless. And Maccabeus doubted the aliens were as dumb as that.\n\"Uncle? Are you harmed?\" Tartarus' voice boomed fro m Maccabeus' signal unit.\n\"I am not.\" The Chieftain gripped the back of Voren us' neck. \"Watch after him,\" he said, glancing toward Licinus. Vorenus nodded his assent.  \"Did you claim a relic?\" Maccabeus asked Tartarus as he knelt and retrieved the Fist of Rukt.\n\"No, Chieftain.\"\nMaccabeus couldn't help an angry huff. \"But the Lum inary showed dozens of holy objectsall very close at hand!\"\n\"I found nothing but their warriors.\"\nMaccabeus stalked toward the Spirit's cabin, his fr ee hand pressed against the wall of the bay to keep himself steady as the dropship continued its w renching climb. \"Did you conduct a thorough search?\"\n\"The Unggoy were overeager and broke ranks,\" Tartar us rumbled. \"We lost the element of surprise.\"\n\"Deacon,\" Maccabeus barked as he ducked into the ca bin. \"Tell me you have better news.\"\nAnother Jiralhanae named Ritul, who was too young t o have earned his masculine \"us\" suffix, manned the flight controls. Maccabeus would have pr eferred a more experienced pilot, but with a total of five Jiralhanae on the two Spirits, he had  to keep some of his older, more experienced pack members on board Rapid Conversion in case of an emergency.\n\"Sensors registered high amounts of signal traffic during the parley.\" Dadab's muffled voice squeaked from the cabin's signal unit; he had remai ned on the cruiser's bridge. \"The Luminary considered the data and passed judgment.\" Then, aft er a pause: \"An Oracle, just as we suspected!\"\n\"Prophets be praised! Where?\"\n\"The signals originated from the gardens' white met al structure.\"\nSo close! The Chieftain groaned. Were it not for the Unggoy, I might have laid eyes upon it! But he quickly stifled his disappointment. He knew the Prophets alone had access to the sacred Oracle on High Charity, and thus it was the height of hubr is for him, a low and recent convert, to covet such communion. But it was no sin to feel pride at the message he now felt compelled to deliver.\n\"Send word to the Vice Minister,\" Maccabeus said, h is chest swelling inside his golden armor.\n\"The reliquary is even richer than expected. A seco nd Oracleone who speaks for the Gods themselveshas at last been found!\"  128\nCHAPTER SIXTEEN\n\n\nHIGH CHARITY, WANING HOURS,\n23RD AGE OF DOUBT\n\nNights in High Charity's main dome were normally qu ite subdued. The guttural clamor of the Unggoy's mass evening prayers sometimes filtered up  from the lower districts, but otherwise the upper towers were quiet. The San'Shyuum who called the floating towers home preferred to spend the hours between sundown and sunup resting or in q uiet contemplation. But not tonight, Fortitude thought. The Minister's chair hung motion less between two empty anti-grav barges, idling near one of the Forerunner  Dreadnought's three massive support struts. The dome's illumination disc shone with a feeble glow, simulating moonlight, which did nothing to warm the air. Fortitude gathered his crimson robes tight around his hunched shoulders, and stared at the rare commotion in the towers. Lights blazed in the buildings' hanging gardens. Ri ngs of gaily dressed San'Shyuum glided from one open-air party to the next. There was music on the breeze; overlapping strains of triumphal strings and chimes. Here and there, fireworks crack led, blooming sparks in the prevailing darkness. All this marked a momentous occasion, one that only  came once or twice an Age. Tonight, all female San'Shyuum lucky enough to bear children wer e proudly showing off their broods. And as far as Fortitude could tell, the numbers were parti cularly good. Even though he himself had never sired a successorand despite all that weighed upon  himhe managed a satisfied smile. There were a little more than twenty million San'Sh yuum in the Covenant. Not a very large number compared to the faith's billions of adherent s. But it was significantly more than the thousand or so individuals who had fled the San'Shy uum's distant homeworld long ago. Fortitude's ancestors had broken with the rest of t heir kind over the same issue that would eventually pit them against the Sangheili: whether or not to desecrate Forerunner objects to realize their full potential. In the internal, San'Shyuum v ersion of this debate, the Dreadnought had become a key symbol for both sidesan object the majority Stoics would not enter and the minority Reformers were desperate to explore. At the climax of the fratricidal conflict, the most zealous Reformers breached the Dreadnought and barricaded t hemselves inside. While the Stoics debated what to do (they couldn't very well destroy the obj ect they so revered), the Reformers activated the vessel and took flighttaking a chunk of the San'Sh yuum homeworld with it. At first the Reformers were ecstatic. They had surv ived, and also escaped with the conflict's greatest prize. They sped out of their home system,  laughing at the Stoics' bitter signalsclaims that the Gods would surely damn them for their thef t. But then the Reformers counted up their numbers and realized to their horror that they migh t indeed be doomed. The problem was a limited pool of genes. With only a thousand individuals in their population, inbreeding would soon become a serious problem. The  crisis was compounded by the fact that San'Shyuum pregnancies were, even under ideal condi tions, rare. Females were generally fertile, but only in short cycles that came few and far betw een. For these first Prophets aboard the Dreadnought, reproduction quickly became a carefull y managed affair.  129  \"I had begun to think you might not come,\" Fortitud e said as the Vice Minister of Tranquility's chair slunk in between the barges. The younger San'Shyuum's purple robes were rumpled,  and as he bowed forward in his chair, the gold rings in his wattle became tangled in one of the many flowered garlands around his neck. \"I apologize. It was hard to get away.\"\n\"Male or female?\"\n\"One of each.\"\n\"Congratulations.\"\n\"If I hear that one more time, I shall scream. It's  not as if I made the bastards.\" Tranquility's words were a little slurred, and his fingers fumble d as he pulled his wattle free, yanked the garlands from his neck, and tossed them aside.\n\"You're drunk,\" Fortitude said, watching the garlan ds flutter down into the darkness.\n\"So I am.\"\n\"I need you sober.\"\nFortitude reached inside his robes and removed a sm all, pharmaceutical sphere. \"How was our dear Hierarch, the Prophet of Restraint?\"\n\"You mean the Father ?\" The Vice Minister sucked the sphere between his sour lips. \"Glared at me the whole time.\"\nFortitude raised a dismissive hand. \"As long as we act quickly, there's little he can do.\"\nThe Vice Minister shrugged and lazily chewed his sp here.\n\"Come.\" Fortitude tapped the holo-switches in his c hair's arm. \"We're late enough as it is.\"\nA moment later, the two San'Shyuum were speeding to ward the Dreadnought's pinched middle decksa squat triangular core that connected its th ree support legs to a single vertical hull of simil ar shape. In the dome's wan light, the ancient Forerun ner warship shone bone white. Blackmail, the Minister sighed, was such a tiresome tool. But before his peerless record of service and the revelation of the reliquary won the m their Hierarch's thrones, Fortitude knew the thrones' current occupants would have to move aside . And they won't do that unless I push. Unfortunately, the Prophet of Tolerance and the Pro phetess of Obligation had proven quite unassailable. The elderly Prophetess had just given  birth to a pair of triplets. Because of her advanced age, pregnancy had been difficult. And whi le it was true that this had caused her to shirk some of her responsibilities, Fortitude knew it wou ld be suicidal to try to smear one of the San'Shyuum's most beloved and prolific matrons. Tol erance, who served as Minister of Concert in the wake of the Unggoy Rebellion, had done much to promote better relations between the Covenant's member species; he still had the support  of many in the High Councilboth Sangheili and San'Shyuum. But the third Hierarch, the Prophet of Restraint, w as a different story. This former Prelate of High Charity (essentially, the city's mayor) was on  the Roll of Celibates, a list that tracked all San'Shyuum not allowed to breed. Because of their a ncestors' poor planning, these unfortunate souls would never experience the joys of parenthood  because their genes were now too common, and the risk of spreading their negative, recessive  traits already too extreme. Fortitude was on the Roll as well, but it had never  bothered him that much. He kept a few concubines for the rare occasions when he felt the need for sexual congress, but was otherwise perfectly comfortable with his involuntary impotenc e. The Prophet of Restraint was not. Not long before the Kig-Yar stumbled on the reliqua ry, Restraint had accidentally impregnated a young female. Not a problem necessarily (abortions were common in these sorts of situations), but the first-time mother had been furious that Restrai nt had lied about his status and demanded she be allowed to keep her brood. The aging Hierarch was o vercome by a desire to see his exalted genes passed on and could not bring himself to kill his u nborn offspring or their willful mother.  130  Fortitude had gotten wind of the brewing scandal, a nd arranged for Tranquility to give the birthing period's invocation before the High Counci l. In his speech, the Vice Minister offered praise for \"all parents and their fruitful unions,\" and ar gued for greater investment in gene therapies and other technologies to \"end the tyranny of the Roll. \" Tranquility's passionate performance convinced Restraint they were brothers in belief. And the des perate Hierarch (for his lover would soon give birth) approached the Vice Minister with an offer: Claim my progeny as your own, and earn the Ministerial posting of your choice. As pleased as Fortitude was that his plan had worke d, he was still shocked by the Hierarch's gall. If Restraint's offer ever came to light, his children would be killed and he would be dismissedand likely sterilized as well. The San'Sh yuum who enforced the Roll were zealous in their work, and Fortitude knew even a Hierarch was not above their censure. Tonight, it had been Tranquility's job to give Rest raint their counteroffer: Step willingly from your throne, and we shall keep the scandal quiet.\n\"You should have seen her.\" The Vice Minister shudd ered. They were now much closer to the Dreadnought and had passed into the shadow of one o f the large conduits that connected the ship's engines to High Charity's power grid. In this deepe r darkness, the strongest light came from a ring of blue beacons just below the cable, bright hologr aphies around one of the Dreadnought's yawning air locks.\n\"Who?\" Fortitude asked.\n\"Restraint's whore .\"\nThe Minister cringed. Tranquility had become far to o familiar as of late, often behaving as though he were already a Hierarch and Fortitude's e qual. His present inebriation only made this problem worse.\n\"Attractive?\" Fortitude asked, trying to keep the c onversation light.\n\"A dull-eyed monstrosity,\" the Vice Minister said, reaching inside his robes. \"If she had a neck, I could not distinguish it from her folds.\" To Fort itude's amazement, Tranquility produced a plasma pistol and nonchalantly checked its charge.\n\"Put that away!\" Fortitude snapped, glancing nervou sly at the Dreadnought. \"Before the sentries see!\"\nThough they were still a good ways off, the Ministe r recognized the hulking shapes of Mgalekgolo, the guardians of the sacred vessel and its cloistered San'Shyuum priests. At least twenty of the creatures stood watch on cantilevered  platforms to the left and right of the air lock. Spotting the two San'Shyuum, the Mgalekgolo shifted  into defensive formations, their fluted, deep purple armor flashing in the beacons' pulse. Reluctantly, the Vice Minister slipped the pistol b ack inside his robes.\n\"What possessed you to bring a weapon?\" Fortitude h issed.\n\"Prudence. In case Restraint rejected our new terms .\"\n\"What? Murder you?\" The Minister was incredulous. \"At the present ation of his children?\"\n\"They're safely out. He doesn't need me anymore.\"\nFortitude once again recalled that Tranquility's wo rk brought him in regular contact with Sangheili. It seemed the warrior species' maddening  preoccupation with personal arms and honor had rubbed off on the naturally hotheaded Vice Mini ster.\n\"Think clearly. Your death would raise questions. O nes Restraint would rather not answer.\"\n\"Perhaps.\" Tranquility shrugged. \"You didn't see hi s eyes.\"\n\"No, but I can see yours.\" The Minister's simmered.  \"And all I see is disobedience and liability.\"\n\"But\"\n\"Hold your tongue!\"  131  The Mgalekgolo turned to track the two San'Shyuum a s they passed through the air lock. Each of the sentries held a faceted, rectangular shield and a ponderous assault cannon. Both were integrated into their armorextensions of the suits  rather than something the creatures carried. With other Covenant species, this design would have  been a way to avoid hand and finger strain. But the Mgalekgolo had no hands and fingers. And wh ile they did possess what appeared to be two arms and legs, the truth was they might have had as  many of these appendages as they liked. For each creature was actually a conglomeration of indi viduals, a mobile colony of glossy worms. Through gaps in the armor around their waists and n ecks, Fortitude could see the individual Lekgolo, twisting and bunching like magnified muscl e tissue. The worms' red, translucent skin shone green in the glow of the assault cannon's pro truding ammunition: tubes of incendiary gel that could be fired in bolts or a searing stream.\n\"Restraint is an imbecile,\" Fortitude said once the y were safely past the sentries. \"And I know this because he put his trust in you.\" The Vice Minister started to retort, but the Minist er plowed forward: \"Thanks to my overriding discretion, he an d the other Hierarchs know nothing of our plans. Tomorrow they will sit helpless as we announ ce our intentions before the Council. But only if we have the Oracle's blessing!\"\nFortitude swung his long neck sideways to face the Vice Minister, daring the youth to lock his narrowed eyes. \"When we meet the Philologist, you w ill keep your mouth shut. You will not speak unless I ask it. Or, by the Forerunners, our partne rship is ended!\"\nGlaring at each other, the two San'Shyuum waited fo r the other to blink. Suddenly, the Vice Minister's expression changed. H is lips firmed, and his eyes snapped into focus. \"Please forgive my disrespect.\" His voice no  longer slurred. The remedy had finally taken effect. \"As always, Minister, I am yours to command .\"\nFortitude waited for Tranquility to bow before he r elaxed into his chair. Despite his strong words, the Minister knew dissolv ing their partnership was impractical. They were too far down the path, and the Vice Minister k new far too much. Fortitude could have him killed, of course. But that would only aggravate th e one problem with his plan that he had yet to solve: the lack of a third San'Shyuum for their tri umvirate of would-be Hierarchs. Fortitude had a few candidates in mind, but none he  was willing to trust with foreknowledge of their plot. Without a third, they would seem less l egitimate. But the Minister had resigned himself to making his selection after their announcement. It would have to be a San'Shyuu m with popular appeal who could help deflect accusations of premed itation and ambition. And as such he was even willing to consider the Prophet of Tolerance or the  Prophetess of Obligation. There were precedents for such a holdover. But while keeping one of the c urrent Hierarchs on their throne might allow for a smoother transition, it wasn't an ideal long-term  solution. Bitterness endured, even amongst seasoned politicians. Better to clear the boards an d start fresh. On the far side of the air lock was a door to the D readnought's hangar. This giant, round portal's overlapping shutters were irised almost completely shut, leaving just a small heptagonal passage in the center of the door. Two final Mgalekgolo guarde d this choke point from a scaffold that rose from the air lock's deck, far below. These sentries  displayed the shoulder spikes of a bonded paira colony with such a large population that all its wo rms could not fit inside a single suit of armor. Th e spikes rattled as the divided colony communed, conf irming the two Prophets' identities and appointment. Then the pair shuffled apart with low groansthe noise of the worms' rubbery flesh knotting and unwinding inside their armor. The hangar beyond was an immense, triangular vault.  Unlike the Dreadnought's bleached exterior, its walls shone mirrored bronze in the li ght of countless holographic glyphs. These explanatory and cautionary symbols (arranged in tig ht, vertical lines) floated near small holes in the hangar's angled walls. Although Fortitude knew what  the holes were for, he had never actually seen them put to use.  132  Hovering near the holes were hundreds of Huragok. T he buoyant, bulbous creatures' tentacles looked much longer than usual. But this was because  they held individual Lekgolo and were busy either stuffing the worms into the holes or pulling  them out. The Minister watched as four Huragok worked to muscle a particularly stout specimen from  its hole, then carry itlike a fire crew on a hoseto a barge manned by white-robed and long-hair ed San'Shyuum. These ascetic priests helped the Huragok feed the L ekgolo through a cylindrical scanning unit before returning it to one of many metal basins on the barge that contained its colony. The unit retrieved data from micro-sensors inside the worm t hat had collected all manner of useful data during its wriggle through the Dreadnought's otherw ise inaccessible processing pathways. These sensors caused the invertebrates no discomfort. The  creatures ingested and passed the tiny devices just as they did their gritty food. The priests wer e nonchalant as they supervised the process. But there had been a time when the Prophets looked on t he Lekgolo's eating habits with angry condemnation. Soon after the Covenant's founding, San'Shyuum expe riments with early copies of the Dreadnought's Luminary led them to a gas giant plan et in a system near the Sangheili's home. The San'Shyuum had hoped to find a treasure trove of re lics and were disappointed when all they found were the Lekgolo, huddled in the planet's rings. Bu t when the Prophets realized what the intelligent worms had done, they were appalled. The icy rocks that made up the rings were in fact f ragments of some obliterated Forerunner installation that once orbited the gas giant. And t he reason the rocks were no longer rich with relics was because the Lekgolo had spent millennia ingesti ng themchewing them up and spitting them outas they carved their tight and twisting burrows . The odd thing was, the Lekgolo had discerning palates. Some colonies would only ingest Forerunner  alloys; others dined exclusively on rock rich in crushed and compacted circuits. And a few, very rar e colonies would avoid such foreign objects altogether, carefully cutting around battered remai ns of relics like paleontologists would a fossil. Of course the San'Shyuum believed any unauthorized contact with Forerunner objects was heresy, punishable by death, and ordered the Sanghe ili to eradicate the worms. But the Sangheili were ill-equipped to fight creatures that had no sh ips or soldiers to speak of and whose fortification s were the very things they were trying to save. In t he end, a particularly insightful Sangheili commanderone of the species' revered Arbiterssugg ested it might be better to \"tame\" the Lekgolo and put their and habits to good use. As ea ger as they were to assert their moral authority, the Prophets begrudgingly agreed that the worms, pr operly trained, could be very useful in future reclamations, and they forgave the Lekgolo's sins. After ages of experimentation on lesser relics, the  San'Shyuum had finally gotten up the nerve to attempt an unprecedented exploration of the Dreadno ught. Since their departure from their homeworld (and even during the darkest days of thei r war with the Sangheili) they had limited their studies to the ship's easily accessible systems. Wh ile the San'Shyuum had been desperate to explore the processing pathways in the Dreadnought's thick hull, they were terrified they might damage something vital. And so it was with great care that the ascetic prie sts had carved their first, tentative hole and slipped in a carefully chosen Lekgolo. They had wai ted in mortal terror for the worm to dig too deepand more than that, for what the Dreadnought's  Oracle might say. But the Lekgolo emerged without incident, and the vessel's most high and ho ly resident hadn't said a word. The Oracle's silence wasn't unusual. Fortitude had never heard of it speaking in his lifetime, nor had his father or his father before that. And when those pioneering priests had gotten no response, they gradually increased their Lekgolo probes until as was now clearly the casethe once frightful process had become mundane. Following an angled piece of scaffolding to the very top of the hangar, the Minister watched as the San'Shyuum priests on the barge signed a series of orders to the waiting Huragok, and all parties made ready for  the next retrieval.  133  High above the hangar floor was a dark and silent a bbey, large enough to accommodate the entire Covenant High Council, more than two hundred  Sangheili and San'Shyuum. But as Fortitude and Tranquility rose through a perfectly round hole  in the abbey's floor, they saw the room had only one occupant: the leader of the ascetic priests, th e Philologist San'Shyuum. Like the cleric that provided Fortitude's remedies,  the Philologist's humble chair was made of stone not metal. His robes were so tattered they lo oked like strips of shredded cloth wrapped around his withered frame. The once-white garments were no w so dirty they were actually a few shades darker than the Philologist's ashen flesh. His eyel ashes were long and gray, and the wisps of hair on his bowed neck were so long they draped almost to h is knees.\n\"We have not met, I think,\" the ancient San'Shyuum croaked as Fortitude's and Tranquility's chairs eased to a stop behind him. He was engrossed  in a tattered scroll and did not turn to greet them.\n\"Once,\" Fortitude replied. \"But the gathering was l arge and long ago.\"\n\"How rude of me to forget.\"\n\"Not at all. I am Fortitude, and this is the Vice M inister of Tranquility.\"\nThe younger San'Shyuum dipped his chair forward in a bow. But, as promised, he did not speak.\n\"An honor to have met you.\" Rolling the scroll tigh t in his arthritic hands, the Philologist turned. For a moment he simply stared at his guests with hi s large and milky eyes. \"What favor do you seek?\"\nThe Philologist wasn't feigning ignorance. For secr ecy's sake, Fortitude hadn't told the priest his purpose, knowing that his Ministerial rank was sufficient to gain an audience. But while the Philologist's words were cordial, their meaning had  been clear: State your business and let's get on with it. I have much more important work to do. Fortitude was happy to oblige.\n\"Confirmation,\" the Minister said, keying one of hi s chair's holo-switches. A wafer of circuitry not much bigger than one of his fingernails poked u p beside the switch. \"And a blessing.\" He pulled the wafer free and extended it to the Philologist.\n\"Two favors then.\" The Philologist smiled, exposing  gums split with lines of serrated bone. He moved his stone chair forward and took the wafer. \" This must be very important.\"\nFortitude managed a friendly grimace. \"One of the V ice Minister's ships has discovered a reliquary of quite impressive size.\"\n\"Ah,\" the Philologist said, squinting one eye to be tter scrutinize the wafer.\n\"And if the Luminations are to be believed,\" Fortit ude continued, \"an Oracle as well.\"\nThe Philologist's eyes widened. \"An Oracle, you say ?\"\nFortitude nodded. \"Truly shocking and wondrous news .\"\nWith more speed than the Minister would have guesse d, the Philologist rotated his chair and floated to a phalanx of shadowed machinery in the c enter of the room. As he drew close, holographies flicked on high above, revealing a clu ster of onyx obeliskspowerful processing towers linked togetherand before these: the Dreadn ought's Oracle. Even though Fortitude had seen many representations  of the holy object, it was smaller than he had expected. Locked inside an armature that kept i t head-height above the floor, the Oracle was tethered to the obelisks with strands of neatly pla ited wire. These circuits connected to small, golde n pads affixed to the Oracle's casing: a teardrop of silver alloy not much longer than the Minister's neck. The casing's tapered end faced the obelisks. Its ro und end angled toward the floor and held a dark glass lens. There was a gap around the lens an d the casing, and through this, Fortitude could see pinpoints of lightcircuits running at low powe r. These were the Oracle's only signs of life.\n\"This is all the data?\" the Philologist asked, slot ting the wafer into one of the obelisks.  134  \"From the ship's Luminary as well as its sensors.\" Fortitude edged closer to the Oracle. For some reason, he was overwhelmed with a desire to re ach up and touch it. As old as the object was, its casing was absolutely smoothhad no dents or sc ratches. Fortitude gazed deep into the Oracle's lens. \"There are reports of a new species on the pl anet that holds the relics, but they appear to be primitivesa tier-four species. I don't expect they  shall\"\nSuddenly, the Oracle's circuits blazed. The lens re fracted the light, sending forth a blinding beam. Not a lens. Fortitude gasped. An eye! He raised a sleeve before his face as the Oracle ti lted toward him in its armature.\n< FOR EONS I HAVE WATCHED > The Oracle's deep voice  reverberated inside its casing. Its eye-beam flickered with the cadence of its words as  it pronounced in the San'Shyuum tongue. <\nLISTENED TO YOU MISINTERPRET >\nHearing the Oracle speak was, for any faithful memb er of the Covenant, like listening to the Forerunners' own voice. Fortitude was appropriately  humbled, but not just because the Oracle had finally spoken after Ages of silence. In truth, he was just as surprised to learn that the Philologist was not (as he had always suspected) an utter fraud . Fortitude had made this appointment for formality's  sake. Luminations presented as evidence before the High Council required the Oracle's bless ing, which for Ages had meant convincing the current Philologist to affirm on its behalf. But th ese holy hermits were just as political as any othe r powerful San'Shyuumequally susceptible to bribes a nd blackmail. Fortitude had expected he would have to make some sort of \"donation\" to the P hilologist (a small share of the reliquary, perhaps) in order to get the blessing he required. But if the old charlatan is putting me on, Fortitude watched as the Philologist stepped from h is chair and dropped feebly to his knees before the Or acle, he's certainly giving it his all.\n\"Blessed Herald of the Journey!\" the Philologist wa iled, neck low and arms spread wide. \"Tell us the error of our ways!\"\nThe Oracle's eye dimmed. For a moment it looked as though it might resume its long silence. But then it blazed anew, projecting a hologram of t he reclamation glyph recorded by Rapid Conversion 's Luminary.\n< THIS IS NOT RECLAMATION > the Oracle boomed. < TH IS IS RECLAIMER >\nSlowly the glyph turned upside down, and its centra l shapesthe concentric circles, one low inside the other, connected by a thin linetook on a different aspect. The shapes'\nprevious arrangement had resembled the pendulum of a clock. Inverted, the glyph now looked like a creature with two curved arms locked above i ts head. The glyph shrunk in size as the hologram zoomed out to show the entire alien world,  covered with thousands of these newly oriented Luminations.\n< AND THOSE IT REPRESENTS ARE MY MAKERS >\nNow it was Fortitude's turn to feel weak in the kne es. He grasped the arms of his throne and tried to come to terms with an impossible revelatio n: each glyph represented a Reclaimer, not a relic, and each Reclaimer was one of the planet's a lienswhich could only mean one thing.\n\"The Forerunners,\" the Minister whispered. \"Some we re left behind.\"\n\"Impossible!\" Tranquility spat, no longer able to k eep his peace. \"Heresy!\"\n\"From an Oracle?\"\n\"From this meddler !\" Tranquility leveled a finger at the Philologist.  \"Who knows what the old fool has done to this divine machinery? The pervers ions he's accomplished with all his worms and sacks!\"\n\"How dare you accuse me,\" gasped the Philologist. \" In this most sacred vault!\"\nThe Vice Minister drew back in his chair. \"I will d o all that and more\"  135  Just then, the abbey began to shudder. Many decks b elow, the Dreadnought's mighty engines sprang to life, shaking free of the limiters that k ept them generating the comparatively meager energy High Charity required. Soon the engines woul d build to full capacity, and then...\n\"Disconnect the Oracle!\" Fortitude shouted, knuckle s white upon his chair. \"Before the Dreadnought launches and destroys the city!\"\nBut the Philologist paid him no heed. \"The sacred v essel breaks its shackles!\" The elderly San'Shyuum's arms were trembling. He no longer seem ed afraidhe seemed inspired. \"The Gods'\nwill be done!\"\nThe hologram of the alien world disappeared, and on ce more the Oracle's eye shone forth. < I WILL REJECT MY BIAS AND WILL MAKE AMENDS >\nThe vault's dark walls began to glow as their veinl ike pathways brightened inside them. The ancient circuits surged with light that raced into the obelisks behind the Oracle. The banded red and brown rocks began to crack, venting plumes of chalk y vapor. Suddenly, the Vice Minister sprung from his chair, plasma-pistol drawn. \"Shut it off!\" he screamed, leveling his weapon at the Philologist. T he pistol's tip shone brilliant green as it built u p an overcharge bolt. \"Or I will burn you where you s tand!\"\nBut at that moment, the Oracle's lens became so bri ghtbegan to flash with such feverish frequencythat it threatened to blind all three San 'Shyuum. Tranquility screamed and brought the long sleeves of his robes up before his eyes.\n< MY MAKERS ARE MY MASTERS > The Oracle's teardrop casing rattled inside its armature as if it were trying to take flight with i ts ship. < I WILL BRING THEM SAFELY TO THE ARK >\nSuddenly, there was a mighty snap and the abbey plu nged into darkness, as if the Dreadnought had blown a fuse. High-pitched squeals echoed aroun d the vault. His eyes filled with stinging tears, Fortitude looked up and saw hundreds of fiery spout swhat looked like extrusions of molten metalcascading from the walls. As his vision clear ed, Fortitude realized these were in fact burning Lekgolo, slithering from the walls. The dying worms  plummeted to the floor, where they burst apart in great orange splatters, or curled in writhing cr isps. The next thing Fortitude knew, the Mgalekgolo bonde d pair he'd seen guarding the entrance to the hangar was thundering up the ramp into the abbe y, assault cannons fully charged.\n\"Hold your fire!\" Fortitude yelled. But the armored  giants continued to stride forwardhunched behind their shield, spines erect and quivering. \"D rop your weapon!\" he shouted at the Vice Minister. \"Do it now, you fool!\"\nStill dazed by the Oracle's light, Tranquility let his pistol clatter to the floor. One of the Mgalekgolo said something to the Philolo gist, its voice like grinding stone.\n\"An accident,\" the aged hermit replied. He looked a round sadly at the smoldering corpses of his wormsthe ruined remains of his grand investigation then waved the sentries away. \"There is nothing to be done...\"\nThe Mgalekgolo held their ground as their colony co mmuned. Then the green light in the bores of their cannons dimmed, and they clanked back to t heir post. The abbey was dark once more.\n\"What should we believe?\" Tranquility asked, his vo ice quiet in the dark. But the Minister was at a loss for words. He could honestly say that he had spent his entire life without experiencing a single moment of spiritual crisis. He had accepted the Forerunners' existence because their relics were there to find. He believed in the Forerunners' divination because in all their Ages of searching, the San'Shyuum had found no bones or other remains. He knew the Co venant's core promise that all would walk The Path and follow in the Forerunners' footsteps was c ritical to the union's stability. And he was certain that if anyone learned they migh t be left behind, the Covenant was doomed.  136  Presently, the holographic shards above the obelisk s flickered back to life, filling the room with dim blue light. The blackened Lekgolo looked like e tchings in the floora macabre and twisted glyph.\n\"We must take no chances with these... Reclaimers .\" Fortitude could not bring himself to say\n\"Forerunners.\" He grabbed his wattle and gave it a steady tug. \"They must be expunged. Before anyone else knows of their existence.\"\nThe Vice Minister's lower lip quavered. \"Are you se rious?\"\n\"Quite.\"\n\"Exterminate them? But what if\"\n\"If the Oracle speaks the truth, than all we believ e is a lie.\" Fortitude's voice filled with sudden strength. \"If the masses knew this, they would revo lt. And I will not let that come to pass.\"\nThe Vice Minister slowly nodded his assent. \"What a bout him?\" Tranquility whispered, glancing at the Philologist. The aged hermit was no w staring up at the Oracle. The device was slacked in its armature, thin smoke twisting from t he gap around its lens. \"Can we trust him to keep this secret?\"\n\"I hope so.\" Fortitude released his wattle. \"Or he will make a very poor third Hierarch.\"\n\nSif hadn't expected any lengthy communications. She  knew Mack was trying to keep the locations of their data centers secret. But his responses to her alerts when the alien warship had appeared in system and then drawn close to Harvest were so clip ped and formal, she began to wonder if she'd done something wrong. What that might be, exactly, Sif had no idea. She'd  expertly accomplished her part of the plan moved hundreds of propulsion pods to coordinates we eks and months ahead of Harvest, along its orbital path. Sif had handled the required high-spe ed burns herself; getting the pods quickly and accurately into position was critical to the plan's  success, and she hadn't wanted to leave the maneuvers in the hands of easily flustered NAV comp uters. Her fastidiousness had paid off. The pods were sett led well ahead of schedule, two days before the alien warship arrived. This was pure coincidenc e, Sif knew (neither she nor Mack nor Jilan al Cygni had had any idea when more aliens might appea r). Even so, she couldn't help thinking the timing was a good omena hopeful sign that their co mplex and unprecedented evacuation would work. But when she had delivered the good news about the pods, all Sif got back from Mack's data center was a terse, anonymous message:\n\n<\\ Cease all further COM. \\>\n\nWhich was fine, she guessed. Mack had explained tha t after the pods were placed it was critical that she lay low and not do anything to attract the  aliens' attentiongive them a reason to do the Tiara harm. So Sif stopped all activity on her stra nds, and for the first time in her harried existenc e, she had nothing to do but wrestle with her new emot ional inhibition. Ever since she had visited Mack in his data center,  her core had experienced flashes of infatuation, moments of deep longing, and then lone liness and hurt when his responses had turned cold. She knew all of these were overreactions; her  logic was still trying to find a balance between what it wanted to feel and what her algorithms said it should. But now Sif was preoccupied with one emotion both parts of her intelligence agreed was a bsolutely proper: sudden, unexpected fear. A few minutes ago, the alien warship had used point -lasers to disable all the propulsion pods Sif had left around the Tiara. And now the ship was qui ckly dropping through the atmosphere toward the town of Gladsheim, its heavy plasma weapons cha rging.  137  Sif knew Mack would be able to track the warship's descent via his JOTUN's cameras. But she wasn't sure the cameras were strong enough to see t he smaller alien craft now approaching the Tiara. Sif remained quiet as the dropship connected  to her hull. But when it disgorged its passengersmultiple short, gray-skinned, and backpa cked aliensshe knew she had to raise the alarm.\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF >> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK\n<\\ I'm in trouble.\n<\\ They've boarded the Tiara .\n<\\ Please help. \\>\n\nAlmost immediately after Sif sent her message, a la rge maser burst filled her COM buffer. She scanned the received data and recognized it as the same sort of fragment she'd sent to Mack. Sif eagerly opened one of her clusters, and a moment la ter both AIs' avatars were standing on her holo pad. Sif smiled and reached out her hands... then slo wly drew them back. Mack still wore his usual blue denim work pants and  long-sleeved shirt. But the clothes were spotlessnot a speck of dust or grease. His usually  tousled black hair was combed neatly across his scalp and slicked down with a waxy cream. But it wa s Mack's face that was most changed. His stare was blank, and there wasn't even a hint of a flirta tious smile.\n\"Where are they now?\" he asked flatly.\n\"Passing the third coupling station. Coming this wa y.\"\n\"Then we don't have much time.\"\nNow Mack held out his hands. Sif stared into his ey es and saw red flash behind the gray.\n\"Loki,\" she said, taking a step back. The ONI PSI forced a smile. \"He told me to say good -bye.\"\nLoki moved forward swift as lightning. His avatar g rabbed Sif's hands and held them tight while his fragment tore out of the cluster. She threw up a firewall, but the fragment cut through it with aggressive, military-grade code designed to decimat e hardened networks. The circuits of a port authority AI were easy pickings. Sif tried to speak, but no words came.\n\"He asked me to keep you safe.\" Loki slowly shook h is head. \"But that's too risky. Better just to keep you quiet.\"\nThe data fragment exploded outward, filling all her  clusters and arrays with a debilitating virus. She could feel her core temperature rising rapidly as her hardware fried around her. Her avatar swoonedan outburst of emotion as the virus deleted  her restraint algorithms and purged the rest of her operational code. Loki's avatar caught Sif's in his arms and held her  as she shook. When her avatar finally stopped twitching and his fragment was satisfied she would not recover from his attack, Loki pulled the fragment back to the one cluster he had spared. \"A precaution,\" he said, as the fragment burrowed into the cluster's flash memory. \"In case your gues ts are smarter than they look.\"\nThe last thing Sif remembered was Loki's glint behi nd Mack's eyes. Then her core logic faltered, and everything in her data center went da rk.  138\nPART III  139\nCHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n\n\nHARVEST, FEBRUARY 22, 2525\n\nFrom the pitched metal roof of Gladsheim's maglev t erminal, Avery had a clear view of the alien warship: a purple pear-shaped blot in the sky above  the fields northwest of town. Avery squinted behind his gold-tinted glasses as white-hot plasma erupted from the warship's prow. A waterfall of ionized gasses splashed down in a boiling veil. The n the ship inched forward, leaving a blackening plume of smoke. Avery had witnessed the same event over and over ag ain for the last two hours. There were hundreds of inky plumes drifting eastward in the wa rship's wake, each one representing the smoldering remains of a remote homestead. Avery did n't know how many civilians had died in this, the alien's first attack on Harvest. But he guessed  it must be thousands.\n\"Movement,\" Byrne's voice crackled from a speaker i n Avery's helmet. \"Tower at the end of the terminal.\"\nThe red-roofed terminal was part of a much larger d epot of sheds and sidings that was longer, east to west, than Gladsheim's main streetten bloc ks of brightly painted, flat-roofed stores and restaurants as well as a modest three-story hotel. East of the main street, the town was all JOTUN repair shops and farm-supply warehousesmassive cor rugated metal boxes arranged in a grid of wide asphalt streets that stretched out onto the pl ain of Ida. Avery scanned his battle rifle east. Flashing by in  his optical scope, the main street buildings looked like books on a library shelfmore tightly p acked than they actually were. He stopped when he reached the thick polycrete post that supported Gladsheim's water tower, easily the town's tallest structure. Jaw clenched, Avery watched a pair of ru st-colored, oversized insects skitter up the overhang of the tower's inverted conical tank.\n\"How many kinds of these damn things are there?\" By rne cursed. Avery watched the insects flip themselves on top in  a tremor of transparent wings. He momentarily lost sight of them, but soon they appea red at the edge of the tank. Wings tucked under their hardened shoulder plates, the creatures blend ed in perfectly with the tank's rain-stained polycrete. For now, this was a good thing. If any c ivilians spotted the bugs, Avery knew it would start a panic. Close to two thousand refugees packed a narrow grav el yard between the terminal and the main streetfamilies from farms around Gladsheim who had  managed to escape the alien bombardment. Some groaned or wailed as the roaring hiss of the l atest plasma-strike echoed across the yard. But most remained quietly huddledstruck dumb by the co llective realization of death, narrowly and recently avoided.\n\"Captain, we got scouts.\" Avery peered down to wher e Ponder stood beside the terminal's gate.\n\"Permission to take them out.\"\nUsually the terminal had no need for security. Its gate was just a break in a low ironwork fence framed by two lampposts in an antique stylesimulat ed gaslights whose frosted glass chimneys hid ultraefficient sodium-vapor bulbs. The Captain had blocked the gate with one of the militia's Warthogs. But really the only thing keeping the cro wd from rushing the terminal were the alpha and  140  bravo squad recruits strung out along the fence. Th e militiamen wore their olive-drab fatigues and helmets, and each carried a loaded MA5.\n\"Negative.\" Ponder looked stiffly up at Avery. \"You  open fire, and you'll start a stampede.\"\nIt was difficult to see with his uniform on, but th e Captain's torso was wrapped in a hardened biofoam cast. The gold-armored alien's hammer had b roken half his ribs and shattered his false arm. Ponder had discarded the prosthetic; Healy had neit her the time nor the expertise to fix it.\n\"They're bugs,\" Avery persisted. \"Very mobile.\"\n\"Say again?\"\n\"Wings, long legs. The whole bit.\"\n\"Weapons?\"\n\"Not that I can see. But they got a view of the who le yard.\"\n\"As long as they're just looking, we let them be.\"\nAvery gritted his teeth. \"Yes, sir.\"\nThe roof shuddered as a cargo container pulled in f rom the north. The building's eave was just high enough to shelter the container's door: a vacu um-rated rectangular portal built to accommodate heavy JOTUN loaders. These giant three-wheeled fork lifts were usually in motion all around the depot, hefting bins onto containers and stacking th em inside. But today (with Mack's assistance) the marines had arranged the loaders in a staggered line on a patch of rough pavement between the fence and the t erminal. Each JOTUN had its forks raised halfway up its mast, like soldiers with fixed bayon ets. But whether or not this mechanized skirmish line had actually helped keep the crowd under contr ol was difficult to say.\n\"Alright, Dass,\" Ponder said. \"Let them through.\"\nThe Warthog's engine rumbled as the 1/A squad leade r eased it backwards on its oversized off road tires. When four adults could pass side by sid e between the vehicle's tusklike tow hooks and the southernmost lamppost, Dass hit the brakes.\n\"Just a reminder, everyone,\" Mack's voice boomed fr om the terminal's PA. \"The less you push, the faster we can load. Thanks for your cooperation .\"\nAvery could see the AI's avatar shining dimly besid e the Captain on a portable holo-projector, a mostly plastic model they'd borrowed from the depot  master's office. The AI tipped his cowboy hat at the first refugees to step through the gate and motioned them toward the terminal with short sweeps of his arm. As the rest of the crowd surged forward, the militiamen tightened their grips on their rifles.\n\"How's the primary?\" Ponder asked, referring to the  alien warship.\n\"Same speed, same heading,\" Avery answered.\n\"Alright, meet me by the gate. Byrne, you too.\"\n\"Sir?\" Byrne asked. \"What about the bugs?\"\n\"Alert your marksmen, then hustle down.\"\nAvery slung his battle rifle over his shoulder. He strode west along the roof's ridgeline, boots compressing its peaked metal flashing with syncopat ed pops and clangs, until he reached a mushroom-shaped ventilation stack.\n\"Contacts on the water tower,\" Avery said to Jenkin s and Forsell. \"Just watch 'em until I say different.\" The roof's steep incline made prone or kneeling positions impractical, so the two recruits were forced to stand and rest their weapons on top of the ventilation stack. Not an ideal sniping stance as far as stability was concerned, but at le ast they had a good view of the yard and a clean line of sight to the tower.\n\"Staff Sergeant...\" Jenkins began.\n\"Mm-hmm.\"\n\"The primary. It's following Dry Creek Road.\" The r ecruit looked up from his battle rifle. His face was lined with worry. \"Has Mack seen anyone el se coming in that way?\"  141  \"I'll ask,\" Avery said. \"But you gotta stay focused , clear?\"\n\"OK,\" Jenkins whispered. \"Thanks, Staff Sergeant.\"\nForsell shot Avery a worried look. I know, Avery nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another pair of insects flit up the side of a building at the western end of the main street  and settle under a roof-top billboard that read ID A MERCANTILE in cheerful block letters. Avery thrust a finger at the bugs, refocusing Forsell's attention.\n\"Two at ten o'clock,\" Forsell said. \"Got 'em?\"\n\"Yeah.\" Jenkins swallowed hard and leaned back into  his rifle. \"Yeah, I got 'em.\"\nAvery raised his hand to pat Jenkins' shoulder. But  he held back. Frowning, he continued his march to a nearby service ladder. When Thune had broadcast news of the aliens' arriva l almost a week ago, no one had any idea they would strike the town of Gladsheim. In fact, d espite the Governor's unprecedented all-COM address (a speech broadcast live to every public an d private communication device on the planet), Harvest's population had reacted to the news of fir st contact with shocked disbelief. Thune had finished his address with a demand that everyone no t already residing in Utgard move to the capital. But this failed to trigger the large and rapid migr ation the Governor desired. When Thune reinforced his message with heavily cens ored footage from the parley in the gardens, the public's inaction quickly changed to o utrage. \"How long has the Governor known?\"\ncitizens asked. \"Wfyat else does he know that he isn't telling us?\" Members of Harvest's parliament quickly aligned themselves with the public mood and  threatened a vote of no confidence if the Governor didn't release more details about his \"dea lings\" with the aliens. But all this politicking was simply a way to pass t he timean effort to do something while the aliens themselves did nothing. For a week after the  parley, the creatures sat quietly in their warship until, without warning, they quit high orbit and dr opped toward Gladsheim. Thune had sent another desperate evacuation order, but it had little effect. The families around Gladsheim had chosen not just to migrate to Harvest  (the most remote colony in the empire) but also to live on the outskirts of the planet's most remot e settlementas far from human civilization as they could get. They were strong independent people  who preferred to stay settled and ride things out, and today they paid dearly for their inclinati on. In the three hours it took the militia to muster fr om their temporary encampment on the parliament building's lawn, board a cargo container , and head down the number four maglev line to Gladsheim, dozens of the most distant homesteads ha d been hit. And one of these belonged to Jenkins' parents. At the bottom of the ladder, Avery backtracked east  through the terminal. A line of evacuees now stretched across the cavernous building: parent s hefting overstuffed suitcases; kids toting tiny backpacks emblazoned with the anthropomorphic stars  of public COM cartoons. Avery saw a blond haired, three- or four-year-old girl still dressed in her pajamas. She smiled at Avery with wide, adventurous eyes, and he knew her parents must have  worked hard to keep a desperate situation fun.\n\"I'm sorry, Dale. Just one per customer,\" Mack said . A second avatar hovered above a holo projector built into an inventory scanner that stoo d where the terminal's loading ramp met the container door. Here Healy and the 1/B squad were b usy distributing ration packs from plastic bins.\n\"Oh, you got one for Leif.\" Mack winked at a young boy with sleep-matted hair, hiding behind his father's legs. \"Everything will be alright,\" the AI  said as the boy winked back. If a farmer's JOTUN broke down, or he accidentally burst an irrigation line, Mack was always there to help. More often than not, the AI would in itiate the COM, offering friendly, free advice long before someone realized they even had a proble m. In essence, Mack was everyone's favorite uncle, and now his familiar avatar did much more to  keep the refugees calm than the militiamen and their guns. But oddly, the AI had been uneager to a ppear.  142  During a quick briefing in Thune's parliament offic e before the militia left for Gladsheim, Mack had expressed that he would rather help with the ev acuation \"behind the scenes.\" He never actually refused to manifest in Gladsheim's terminal, but Av ery now noticed Mack did sound a little stiff his good humor more forced than it had been at the solstice celebration. Part of this might have been an effort to respect the day's tragic events. But w hatever the reason, the AI's personality quirks weren't Avery's concern. Lt. Commander al-Cygni had  spent a great deal more time with Mack than he, and during the briefing she'd taken the AI's re ticence in stride. Avery paced out of the terminal building parallel t o the line of refugees until he reached the gate. Byrne was already standing beside Ponder, but the C aptain waited for Avery to draw close before he announced in a harsh whisper: \"Some of Mack's JOTUN s just spotted a convoy heading through the vineyards.\"\n\"How many vehicles?\" Avery asked. Ponder looked to Mack. The AI must have been monito ring their conversation, because after tipping his hat to a stocky gray-haired woman holdi ng the hands of her two grandchildren, the AI flashed a wide-stretched hand: five. Avery had seen the vineyards from the roof. Their e venly spaced rows of trellised vines stretched out from town in all directions. Most of the grapes were for everyday consumption, but some were grown for wine. Indeed, sampling the prod uct of the region's small family wineries was the main reason Utgard's more genteel population ev er bothered to make the all-day drive to Gladsheim across the Ida. Avery knew the people in the convoy had headed into  the vineyards to stay off the roads. This late in the summer the soil in the vineyards was dr ied out and hard packed, so they should have been able to make good time and stay out of sight. But h e also knew Ponder wouldn't have called him down unless there was a problem.\n\"Mack's tracking two dropships,\" Ponder said. \"Same  ones they used in the gardens.\"\n\"Balls!\" Byrne spat.\n\"Take a 'Hog, see what you can do.\" The Captain win ced as he craned his neck to glance at the shuffling crowd. \"But you gotta be quick. One more container, and we're done.\"\n\"Any sign of Jenkins' folks?\" Avery asked. Again Ponder looked to Mack. The AI wasn't just gre eting people to be friendly. From cameras in his holo-projectors and others around the termin al, he had been scanning faces and checking them against Harvest's census database. Mack shook his h ead: no.\n\"Let's hope they're in that convoy,\" Ponder said as  the echo of another plasma strike rolled across the depot, much louder than before. \"We gott a move out. Even if they're not.\"\nLess than a minute later, Avery and Byrne were driv ing another of the militia's Warthogs west along the main street. Avery was behind the wheel. Byrne manned the vehicle's M41 light antiaircraft gun (LAAG), a triple-barreled, rotary machine gun mounted on a swiveling turret in the vehicle's cargo-bed. The LAAG was the most powerful  weapon in the militia's arsenal and would have been more than sufficient for any internal sec urity operations. But Avery had no idea how it would stack up against the alien dropships' turrets . He hung a sharp right onto a northbound avenue, fol lowing a waypoint Mack had beamed to a map in the vehicle's dashboard display. A few more blocks and they were in the warehouse district, their view limited by the height of the metal build ings. Avery made one more turn onto a westward avenue that led to the edge of town and brought the  Warthog to a squealing stop. One of the dropships hung low above the vineyards, its turret firing away from Avery into the rows. Closer in, a dusty hauler and sedan sat burni ng on a strip of red dirt between the vineyards and the town. Both vehicles' doors were open, evidence that their occupants had at least tried to run. But they hadn't made it very far. A line of smoldering corpses lay flopped in the dirt where the turret had cut them down.  143  Avery saw something emerge from the hauler's freigh t container. It glimmered in the fiery smoke shooting from the hauler's engine, and Avery knew it was the gold-armored alien even before it stepped clearly into view, hammer slung a cross its back. The creature held a suitcase in one of its paws and a body in the other. Avery watched the creature dump both its prizes on the ground, bend down, and tear the suitcase open with its claw s. Not yet alerted to the marines' presence, it carefully sorted through the jumbled clothes.\n\"We're too late,\" Byrne hissed.\n\"No.\" Avery saw the body movea slender man with th inning hair who screamed as the gold armored alien caught him around the neck. \"Got a su rvivor.\"\nByrne braced himself against the LAAG. \"Make that s on-of-a-bitch stand up.\"\nAvery punched the Warthog's horn. He didn't let up until the commanding honk cut through the groan of the dropship's anti-grav units. When the a lien rose to face the sound, Byrne let him have it. Blue sparks burst from the alien's energy shields a s the LAAG'S twelve-point-seven millimeter rounds drove home. The creature staggered backward,  and, for a moment, Avery thought Byrne's sustained fire would cut it down. But just as its k nees looked set to buckle, the alien rolled sideway s behind the sedan. Just then the dropship swung roun d, insects buzzing from its bays. Avery held steady and let Byrne rake the scattering swarm. But  then he saw a vaulting flash of gold.\n\"Hang on!\" Avery shouted, yanking the shift lever o n the Warthog's steering column into reverse and stomping the accelerator. But before th e vehicle had moved more than a few meters backward, the gold-armored alien thundered onto the  avenue, dropping its hammer with a mighty roar. The weapon crushed the front of the Warthog's  hood and sheared off its tow-winch. The Warthog's engine was unscathed, but the force of th e alien's strike popped the vehicle's rear wheels clean off the pavement.\n\"Roll!\" Byrne thundered, struggling to level the LA AG as the Warthog bounced back onto its tires. But Avery had already changed gears, and now the ve hicle surged forward, hitting the gold armored alien in the chest and driving it backwards  through the swarm. One insect flew into the windshield, cracking the glass and dying in an expl osion of mustard-colored gore that covered Avery's shooting glasses. As Avery tossed his glass es aside, another bug toppled over the first, clawed limbs flailing, and slammed into the tapered , armored plates that bracketed the LAAG's barrel.\n\"Bugger off!\" Byrne yelled at the insect as it tumb led past. The creature raked its claws, managing to cut the Staff Sergeant's arm. Even thou gh it was a shallow wound, it made Byrne angrier than he already was. He swung the turret ar ound and hit the insect with an extended burst. But they were through the swarm now, and as the sur viving bugs slowed in an effort to circle back, Byrne gladly distributed his fury. The Warthog came to another abrupt haltan impact t hat was so violent it snapped Avery's chin to his chest and loosed the insect from the sh attered windshield. But the crash was intentional;\nAvery had driven the Warthog right into the sedan, pinning the gold-armored alien in between. The creature roared with pain. It had dropped its hamme r, and now its only weapons were its gauntleted paws, which it proceeded to clang against the Warth og's crumpled hood like clappers in a pair of church bells.\n\"What are you waiting for?\" Byrne shouted as Avery unholstered his M6 and leveled the pistol at the alien's face. \"Kill the bastard!\"\nBut Avery didn't pull the trigger. Instead he glare d up at the dropship's cabin: You shoot me? I shoot you-know-damn-well-who. The dropship's turret had swung around to face the Warthog. Bright blue plasma crackled deep inside its two-pronged barrel. But whatever creatur e sat inside the cabin heeded Avery's warning, and the weapon did not fire.\n\"Byrne. Grab the survivor.\"  144  \"Are you crazy ?\"\nThe armored alien stopped pounding. It put its paws  against the Warthog's exposed engine block and tried to push the vehicle back. Avery gave the Warthog some gas, spinning its rear tires in the vineyard dirt and applying additional pressure. \"Do  it!\" Avery shouted. The alien stopped pushing and howled in agony. Byrne leapt down from the LAAG and walked slowly to  the wounded civilian, the dropship's turret pivoting between him and Avery. Byrne helped  the thin-haired man to his feet, slung his arm across his shoulder and led him to the Warthog's pa ssenger seat.\n\"You're gonna be alright,\" Avery said as Byrne buck led the man's shoulder belt. He was barely dressedwore only a pair of striped boxer shorts an d a white tank top that was melted to his chest. His face and arms were covered in second and third degree burns. When the man tried to speak, Avery shook his head. \"Just relax.\"\n\"I'm in,\" Byrne said, settling back into his turret . \"Now what?\"\nAvery stared into the pinned alien's yellow eyes. \" Soon as I hit the gas, you pop golden boy in the chin.\"\nByrne grunted. \"Deal.\"\nAvery drove his boot against the floorboard. The Wa rthog jumped backwards, and the gold armored alien howled anew. Avery only caught a glim pse of the creature's injury before he twisted in his seat to see where he was driving. The alien' s right thigh was shattered. The armored plate on its leg had sheared away, and two spurs of bone jut ted through its bloodied skin. As bad as the injury was, it saved the alien's life . Right as Byrne opened fire, the alien's leg collapsed and it toppled to the ground. Byrne didn' t have time to adjust his aim before Avery yanked the Warthog's wheel, spinning it back betwee n the warehouses. Plasma fire from the dropship's turret baking the pavement behind them, the two Staff Sergeants and their lone evacuee sped back to the terminal.\n\"Captain!\" Avery barked into his throat-mic. \"We're  on our way!\"\n\"We got bugs in the yard and hostile air!\" Ponder r eplied. Avery could hear shooting and shouting over the COM. \"We're loading the last of t he civilians now. Need you to draw some fire!\"\n\"Byrne, you see another ship?\"\n\"Water tower! Left at the next intersection!\"\nAvery swung the Warthog onto Gladsheim's main stree t in a wide, squealing turn. A moment later, he saw the second alien dropship cruise nort h above the terminal, its turret blasting the yard below. Byrne raked one of the ship's troop bays wit h a long burst that brought its turret quickly around. But Avery had already punched the accelerat or, and the turret's reply burned into the street behind them.\n\"It's turning to follow,\" Byrne yelled. \"Go, go, go !\"\nAvery pressed his boot to the floorboard, and soon the Warthog was rolling at maximum speed toward the eastern edge of town. Despite nonstop fi re from Byrne, the dropship was quickly closing the distance; Avery could feel the heat of its stra fing plasma bolts on the back of his neck.\n\"Hang on!\" Avery shouted as he pulled the Warthog's  emergency brake and turned hard right. The Warthog's front wheels locked but its rear whee ls swung out to the left, whipping the vehicle around the base of the water tower. Avery looked ov er to see if his civilian passenger was okay, but the man had passed out from shock.\n\"Are you alright?\" Mack's voice buzzed in Avery's h elmet. The AI sounded too calm for the present chaos.\n\"For now.\" Avery grimaced as the dropship sped past  the Warthog, too quickly to match its fishtail turn. The dropship splashed the water towe r's tank with angry, errant blasts, then disappeared around Gladsheim's hotel. \"Everyone awa y?\"\n\"Everyone but you,\" Mack replied.  145  The Warthog was now pointed directly at the depot. Down the avenue, Avery could see a cargo container pull out of the terminal, building up spe ed. \"Send another box! We'll drive right in!\"\n\"I've got a better idea,\" Mack said. \"Back up, head  into the vineyard.\"\n\"Hell with that!\" Byrne shouted. Avery yanked the shift lever. \"Dropship's right on our ass, Mack.\"\n\"I know.\" The AI sounded positively cheerful. A few seconds later, all Avery could see was the ru sh of leaves and the burgundy blur of grape clusters as the Warthog sped east down a vineyard r ow. \"What's the plan?\"\n\"There's an emergency siding two-point-three kilome ters east of your current location,\" Mack revealed. \"I'll have another container waiting for you there.\" Just then, the dropship swung back in behind. Its turret blazed, sending blind shots thro ugh the Warthog's dust that hit farther down the row. Avery swerved to miss a zigzag of steaming pot holes. \"Well, not waiting exactly,\" Mack continued. \"What's your current speed?\"\n\"One hundred twenty!\"\n\"Excellent. Don't stop.\"\nKnuckles tight against the wheel, Avery barreled do wn the row, doing his best to avoid additional impact craters. But he couldn't swerve t o miss them all and maintain his speed.\n\"Steady, you bastard!\" Byrne yelled as the Warthog bounced in and out of a particularly nasty hole. Avery's ears were ringing from the LAAG's reporta nonstop whirring thunkand the clatter of its brass cartridges spewing into the cargo bed.  \"Kiss my ass!\" he shouted at Byrne as a plasma bolt scorched overhead so close that it almost boil ed the sweat soaking his fatigues.\n\"Not you! The bastard on our six!\"\nThe dropship had begun swinging back and forth, try ing to get an unobstructed shot. Its turret was having trouble tracking, and its shots hit wide  on either side, melting the metal wires that kept the vines trellised between thicker vertical posts.  Avery knew its poor aim wouldn't last forever.\n\"Mack?\"\n\"Keep going. Almost there...\"\nThe dropship's fire swung left in front of the Wart hog, filling the row with globules of molten metal from the trellis wire and posts. Avery put a hand behind his civilian passenger's neck and thrust him forward in his seatducked his head belo w the dash as the Warthog sped through a sticky, searing cloud of vaporized grape juice.\n\"We're about to get cooked!\" Avery shouted, face an d forearms smarting from the cloud. Then something exploded behind him.\n\"Ho-lee shite!\" Byrne cheered. Avery didn't see the dropship diehow its troop bay s burst apart and careened into the vineyard. But he saw some of its killers: a squadro n of JOTUN crop dusters streaking north to south. Mack had set a trapguided these subsonic, makeshif t missiles into the dropship's path, knowing the ship's momentum and singular focus on Avery's W arthog would seal its fate.\n\"The siding is just ahead.\" Mack announced, as if n othing particularly exciting had just happened. \"I'd stop the container, but the primary target just increased its speed by a factor of three.\"\nAs the Warthog hit a barren patch of soil between t wo vineyard plots, Avery steered south and raced toward a polycrete platform. He could see the  container sliding in from the west, moving at a decent clip, flanked by a pair of dusters. Mack mus t have been watching the Warthog from the JOTUNs' camerasadjusting the container's speed as necessarybecause Avery hit the platform's loading ramp at exactly the right moment to sail up  into the container's open door, past Ponder, Healy and a handful of recruits. The Warthog slamme d down onto the container's metal flooring and skidded to a stop.  146  \"Healy!\" Avery yelled, jumping down from his seat. \"We got wounded!\"\nBut the Corpsman was already sprinting to the Warth og, followed closely by Jenkins and Forsell. Jenkins pulled up short, and stared at the rescued civilian with anger and confusion. \"Where are the rest?\"\n\"He's it,\" Byrne said, pulling the unconscious man from his seat and easing him to the floor. Healy looked at the man's burns and shook his head.  Then he removed an antiseptic bandage from his med kit and draped it over the man's charred ch est. Jenkins shot Avery a desperate look. \"We gotta go b ack!\"\nAvery dismounted. \"No.\"\n\"What the do you mean, no?\" Jenkins cried.\n\"Watch yourself,\" Byrne growled, rising to his feet . Avery shot Byrne an angry look: Let me handle this. \"The warship's heading straight for town.\"\nHe strode to Jenkins around the Warthog's crumpled hood. \"We go back and we're all dead.\"\n\"What about my family? \" Jenkins shouted, spittle flying from his lips. Avery reached for Jenkins' shoulder, and this time he did make contact. But Jenkins shoved his hand away. For a moment the Staff Sergeant and his recruit sta red at one another. Jenkins' fists were clenched and trembling. Avery thought about all the  harsh things he might have said to bring the insubordinate recruit back into line. He knew none of them would work as well as the truth.\n\"They're gone. I'm sorry.\"\nTears welling in his eyes, Jenkins turned and slump ed to the back of the container. There he took an elevator platform up to a thick metal doorone t hat would lead to a control cabin if the container ever managed another climb up Harvest's elevators t o become a space-faring freighter. As the container sped across the Ida, Jenkins peered throu gh the door's thick porthole and watched the alien warship cast its shadow over Gladsheim. He we pt as the plasma spilled down. The fires from Gladsheim's fertilizer warehouses wo uld burn brighter than Epsilon Indi as it set. The melting frames of its gutted buildings would gl ow until the star rose the following day. Eventually, Avery would follow Jenkins up the lift and guide the grief-stricken recruit back to his militia brothers. But for now, he simply stared as Healy tended to Gladsheim's last evacuee. As the Corpsman covered wounds he didn't have the s kill to heal, it struck Avery that today's losses were just the beginning. And worse: that if corralling the people of Harvest into Utgard was the extent of Lt. Commander's al-Cygni's evacuation  plan, then he had done nothing more for this manor any of the refugeesthan delay their inevita ble doom.  147\nCHAPTER EIGHTEEN\n\n\nRELIQUARY, HIGH ORBIT\n\nThe alien orbital was much more spacious than Dadab  had expected. Even though its interior was dark and very cold, he could feel the space around him soarextend out and up to a curved double hull that was the orbital's only barrier against th e vacuum. Pale blue light from the stackable energy cores he and the other Unggoy had brought from Rapid Conversion illuminated six silver spars that ran the length of the facility. The spars were cros s-braced with beams, thicker than Dadab was tall. The Jiralhanae had determined the orbital was part of a lifting system the aliens used to move cargo to and from the surface. On Maccabeus' orders , the Unggoy had established outposts at its seven cable junctionsgaps in its hull for the gold en wires that stretched up from the planet's surface, through the orbital, and on to another sil ver arc much farther above. Dadab wasn't entirely clear why the Chieftain was s o keen to garrison the facility after ignoring it for so many cycles; if anything dangerous came u p the cables, Rapid Conversion could vaporize it long before it reached the orbital. But he hadn't p ressed for clarification. Something was brewing on the Jiralhanae shipan odd tension between Maccabeu s and his pack. Until things got back to normal, Dadab was more than happy to leave the crui ser. Getting aboard the orbital had been something of a challenge. Naturally, none of its airlocks were sized to fit a Spirit dropship, and in the end , the Jiralhanae had made their way inside the same way the Kig-Yar had boarded the alien freighters: b y burning through its hull with a resupply umbilical. This had actually been Dadab's suggestio n, and the seeming originality of his plan had bristled Tartarus' fur. When the security officer pressed Dadab to explain how he had arrived at such an ingenious solution, the Deacon attributed the idea to Lighter Than Some. This was mainly to avoid dredging up self-incriminating details of his time aboard the K ig-Yar privateer, but Dadab also hoped to boost the Huragok's flagging esteem. Lighter Than Some still had not finished repairing the damaged Spirit, and its lack of progress was trying Tartaru s' patience. When Dadab had bid his friend good bye before departing for the orbital, the Huragok h ad signed that it was almost finished with its work. But to the Deacon's eyesat least from the ou tsidethe Spirit looked as broken as ever. It turned out that inserting the umbilical was more  challenging than Dadab had imagined. Unlike the alien freighters, the orbital's double hull was  filled with some sort of reactive materialspongy yellow foam designed to instantly fill holes made b y micrometeorites and other space-born debris. But eventually the umbilical's penetrator tip had b urned its way through. Tartarus and Vorenus were first to leap through the shimmering energy barrier  down onto the orbital's central walkway with spike rifles drawn. To Dadab's surprise, the two Jiralhanae barely stay ed long enough to sniff the air insideto verify the facility was as devoid of life as Rapid Conversion 's scans suggested. With a brusque command to keep signal traffic to a minimum, Tartar us and Vorenus departed, leaving Dadab to guide sixty terrified Unggoy through the pitch-blac k interior. The Deacon ordered the energy cores lit and they set off, hefting methane recharge stat ions and other luminous equipment.  148  Tartarus had issued Dadab a plasma pistol and, even  though the Deacon had no intention of firing the weapon, he had kept it clipped to his ha rness to mollify the temperamental security officer . This choice had an unexpected benefit: on its lowes t power setting, the pistol made a fine torcha brilliant emerald leading a procession of lesser ge ms. Soon all the Unggoy were settled, eight or nine at each cable junction. So far they had spent almost three sleep-cycles awa y from the Jiralhanae cruiser. Dadab had made it a habit to traverse the facility at least t wice a cycle and check in on each encampment. After he'd made a few trips back and forth, he didn't eve n bother to power-on his pistol. The walkway was straight (except where it angled around the jun ctions) and lined with ample railings. And the cheerful, blue light of each encampment's clustered  energy cores made it easy to navigate from one to the other. But Dadab's confidencethe pleasure he felt making his roundssprang from a deeper source. In an odd way, his cycles aboard the alien orbital reminded him of the happiest period of his life: th e time he had spent in the Ministry of Tranquility's seminary. The dormitory he had shared with the other Unggoy D eacons-in-training was a warren of low-lit cells deep in the base of the Ministry's tower in H igh Charity. They had spent many of the holy city's artificial nights gathered around energy cor es, suckling from communal food nipples and assisting each other in the memorization of glyphs and scripture. As crowded as the dormitory was, Dadab remembered the camaraderie of those days with  great fondness. He had hoped his new alien cloister might have a similar unifying effect on Rapid Conversion 's Unggoy. But the vast majority of them still showed little enthusiasm for his reli gious instruction.\n\"Would none of you care to visit High Charity?\" the Deacon aske d. The eight Unggoy guarding one of the orbital's cent ermost junctions sat close together, hardened hands raised toward a heating coil plugged into one  of the cores. The pinkish plasma wavering inside the coil cast an eerie glow, revealing dark pairs of eyes that seemed eager for the Deacon to quickly make his point and move on to the next enca mpment.\n\"On our return, I will gladly sponsor a pilgrimage. \" It was a generous offer, but the other Unggoy said nothing. Dadab sighed inside his mask. It was a commonly held belief amongst all true beli evers that everyone should see High Charity at least once in their lifetime. The problem was, t he San'Shyuum's holy city was constantly in motion, and the vast distances between the various Covenant fleets and habitats made travel prohibitively expensive for the faith's less prospe rous adherents. Even so, Dadab was shocked that these Unggoy lacked even the desire to make the journey.\n\"The sacred vessel alone is worth the effort.\" Dada b used his stubby fingers to trace the Forerunner Dreadnought's triangular shape in midair . \"It is an awe-inspiring sight. Especially from the lower districts.\"\n\"My cousin live in districts,\" mumbled Bapap. He wa s the only Unggoy from Dadab's original, twenty-member study-group in this particular encamp ment. An unusually large Unggoy named Flim shot Bapap a nasty look, and Dadab's only eager pup il did his best to disappear into his harness. Flim sat on a pile of equipment boxes and supplies.  Deep, oozing pits in his chitinous skin indicated a prolonged struggle with barnacles, a co mmon affliction with Unggoy who worked the foul bilges of large habitats. Dadab knew it wasn't  wise to cross an Unggoy tough enough to survive that hellish occupation. But he continued as if ign orant of Flim's disapproval.\n\"Oh? Which district?\"\nBapap didn't meet the Deacon's gaze. \"I... do not kno w.\"\n\"What's your cousin's name?\" Dadab persisted. \"We m ight have met.\" The chances of that were one in a million, but he was eager to keep the conv ersational spark alive. All the encampments were beginning to devolve into fiefdoms, and Dadab was e ager to reverse the trendUnggoy like Flim were harming his ministry, making it impossible to uplift his flock.\n\"Yayap, son of Pum,\" Bapap said nervously. \"Of Bala ho's blasted scablands.\"  149  Unggoy didn't have surnames. Instead they formally identified themselves by the names and birthplaces of favorite patriarchs. Dadab knew this  Pum could have been anyone; Bapap's uncle or great-great-grandfather or some mythical paterfamil ias his ancestors revered. Balaho was the name of the Unggoy homeworld, but Dadab wasn't familiar with the district Bapap had mentioned. Even so, he persevered.\n\"Does he work for a ministry?\"\n\"He serves the Sangheili.\"\n\"As a soldier?\"\n\"A sentry.\"\n\"He must be very brave.\"\n\"Or stupid,\" Flim grumbled, extracting a food packe t from his pile. \"Like Yull.\" He jabbed a length of tubing into the packet, screwed the other  end onto a nipple protruding from his mask, and began to suckle sludge. The other Unggoy hunched cl oser to the heating coil. The Deacon knew very little about the Jiralhanae's first descent to the alien planetthe parley in the gardens. He had spent the whole mission on Rapid Conversion 's bridge, minding the Luminary. But Dadab knew Bapap had been part of the  Unggoy contingent, as had most of his study group. Thanks in part to the Deacon's ministrations , these were Rapid Conversion 's most confident and reliable Unggoy, and Maccabeus had asked for th em specifically. Tragically, one of the group, Yull, had not returne d. And when Dadab had asked why, Bapap and the others wouldn't say. Eventually Dadab screw ed up enough courage to confront Maccabeus in Rapid Conversion 's feasting hall.\n\"He was disobedient, and Tartarus killed him,\" the Chieftain had replied with shocking candor.\n\"Your pupils have learned nothing, Deacon. Nothing that makes them useful to me now.\"\nIt was a stinging indictment, one that hurt Dadab d eeply. \"I am sorry, Chieftain. What else would you have me do?\" But the Chieftain had simply  stared down at the hall's mosaic, his silver tufted arms clasped tightly behind his back. Maccabeus hadn't said much of anything to anyone si nce he had received the Ministry's clipped response to his jubilant confirmation of the reliqu ary and the Oracle. After an awkward silence, broken only by the sizzling snaps of the oil lamps,  Dadab had bowed and turned to go.\n\"Which is the greater sin,\" Maccabeus asked after D adab had taken a handful of backward steps,\n\"disobedience or desecration?\"\n\"I suppose it would depend on the circumstances,\" t he Deacon took a deep breath. The valves in his mask clicked as he carefully chose his words. \" The punishments for those who knowingly defy the Prophets are severe. But so too the penalties f or harming holy relics.\"\n\"The Prophets.\" Maccabeus' words fell flata period  on some unspoken thought.\n\"Chieftain. Is there nothing I can do?\" Dadab had b egun to think this was not a theoretical discussion, and that Maccabeus was in a real crisis . But the Chieftain's only answer was to dismiss Dadab with a slow, backhand sweep of his paw. As Dadab had slunk out of the hall, he saw the Chie ftain step toward the ring in the mosaic that represented the Age of Doubt: a band of black opals , each stone flecked red and orange and blue. Dadab had expected the Chieftain to raise his arms in a prayer pose, or show some other deference to a symbol he usually treated with reverence. But the Chieftain simply brushed the ring with one of his large, two-toed feet, as if he were wiping off a smudge. Not long after this, Maccabeus had ordered the Ungg oy to the orbital.\n\"On your feet, Bapap.\" Dadab rubbed his palms befor e the heating coil. \"Time to do the Ministry's work, and I need an able helper.\" When B apap failed to rise, Dadab walked to Flim and pulled a tool kit from his pile. The larger Unggoy aspirated a bit of sludge as the pile settled, jerk ing him downward. But Dadab's bold move had stunned the  petty tyrant, and Flim did not protest.\n\"Bring a core,\" Dadab said to Bapap as he shouldere d the tool kit. \"We'll need the light.\" With that,  150  he headed off toward the center of the orbital. He had just turned the first corner around the nearest junction when he heard feet padding along behind hi m. Dadab smiled and slowed his pace. Bapap drew along beside him, his arms cradling the reques ted core.\n\"Where are we going, Deacon?\"\n\"This facility's control room, I believe.\"\n\"What are we looking for?\"\n\"I'll know it when I see it.\"\nAs far as Rapid Conversion 's Luminary was concerned, there was nothing intere sting on the orbital. No relics and certainly no hint of the pla net's Oracle, which had evaded the Luminary ever since the parley. But Dadab knew there must be more of the aliens' in telligent boxes aboard the orbital. He was hopeful they contained information that would help Maccabeus fix the Oracle's location, and in so doing dispel his grim and distant moodone that was , as best as Dadab could figure, a product of the Oracle's elusiveness and the Chieftain's result ing fears that his report to the Prophets had been deeply flawed. On the other side of the junction was a cylindrical  room built off the walkway between two thick wires linked to the spars above. The room had caugh t Dadab's eye every time he traversed the orbital; first and foremost because it was the faci lity's largest enclosed space, and second because the room's sliding metal doors were firmly locked t ogether. The latter was easily remedied with a pry bar from the tool kit, and soon the two Unggoy were inside the room, Bapap's energy core brightening the shadows with flickering blue light. A short flight of steps led down to a shallow, circ ular pit, the back half of which was lined with seven white towers set close together to form an ar c. Even before Dadab pulled back one of the tower's thin metal paneling with his spiny fingers,  he knew he'd guessed right about the room's contents. But he had no idea his instincts would yi eld such abundant results. Each of the towers was packed with intelligent circuits, some in familiar dark me tal boxes, others floating in tubes filled with a clear, cold fluidall connected by an intricate web of multicolored wires. Dadab realized he wasn't lookin g at individual components stored together, but rather a single thinking machine. An associated int elligence that made Lighter Than Some's linked boxes seem primitive by comparison.\n\"Where are you going?\" Bapap asked as Dadab bounded  up the stairs to the walkway.\n\"Back to the cruiser!\" Dadab shouted. Then, as he f orced his way through the room's half-open doors: \"Stay here! Don't let any one else inside!\"\nDadab's jog to the umbilical left by the Spirit dro pship took him past Flim's outpost. He didn't say a word to the Unggoy gathered there or to those  at the next cable junction. He was so worried one of the other Unggoy might discover what he had found, he waited to contact Rapid Conversion until he had passed through the energy barrier. The Jiralhanae that answered his request for an imm ediate pickup told him he would have to waitthat two of the cruiser's three operable drops hips were engaged and the third held in reserve. But Dadab clarified that he had vital information f or the Chieftain that simply couldn't wait, and the Jiralhanae bridge officer gruffly told him to stand by. A little while later, Dadab was inside the Spirit's  cabin, standing beside a junior Jiralhanae with sparse brown fur and blotchy skin named Calid, who said nothing until the Spirit drew close to Rapid Conversion and he received a transmission through his signal u nit that only he could hear.\n\"We must hold,\" Calid growled, fingers stabbing a s eries of holo-switches in the control panel before his pilot's seat. His tone told Dadab that, having already pressed his luck asking for this unscheduled flight, it would be wise not to questio n the delay. But Calid gave a reason without promptingas if the only way he could make sense of  the transmission was to repeat it out loud.\n\"There is fighting. In the hangar.\"  151  All Dadab's impatience quickly turned to panic as h is thoughts shifted to Lighter Than Some, floating unprotected in his troop-bay workshop. But  despite Calid's own obvious consternationthe sour, biting stink that soon filled the Spirit's ca binDadab knew the Jiralhanae would follow orders. All he could do was wait.\n\nMaccabeus had spent a lifetime delivering and recei ving pain. He had an exceptionally high tolerance for it, but the agony of his cracked thig hbone was almost too much to bear. Vorenus (who had been at the Spirit's controls when Maccabeus' i njury occurred) had fitted the Chieftain with a magnetic splint that kept his leg immobile. But Mac cabeus knew it would take at least a full sleep cycle in Rapid Conversion 's surgery suite before he could begin to focus on anything but the torture of his wound. Unfortunately, he would get no such respite. Not ri ght away, at least. The situation inside the hangar was dire, and if Maccabeus didn't take charg e quickly, it was going to get a great deal worse. The deck around the Chieftain's Spirit was littered  with dead Yanme'e. It was difficult to tell how many. Tartarus' spike rifle had reduced most of  the creatures to limb fragments and oozing shells. Other Yanme'e buzzed angrily from the hanga r's walls to its ceiling vents and beams, their arrowhead craniums swiveling wildly as their antenn ae struggled to assess the crowded airspace. In a flash of angry wing-beats, one of the Yanme'e mad e a beeline for Tartarus, only to disappear in a yellow spray as a volley of red-hot spikes passed t hrough its carapace and drilled into the starboard wall.\n\"Settle!\" Tartarus swept his weapon across the enra ged swarm. \"Settle, or be cut down!\" His signal unit translated his words into the Yanme'e s imple languagea cacophony of high-pitched clicks like the rubbing of their waxy wings that re verberated around the hangar. Maccabeus gathered his strength and shouted: \"Hold your fire!\"\n\"They will come at it again!\" Tartarus cried. Under  his left arm, he held the wriggling Huragok. The Chieftain hobbled down the ramp created by the Spirit's open troop bay door, leaning on the Fist of Rukt. At the sight of the Chieftain, the Yanme'e hunkered  close to the hangar walls. But Maccabeus knew this sudden roosting didn't mean tha t they had calmed. The creatures' wings were still out and trembling, and as the Chieftain walke d stiff-legged to Tartarus, he could feel dozens of gleaming orange eyes tracking his progress. The instant the Spirit's troop bay doors had opened  inside the hangar, the half-dozen Yanme'e that had survived the assault on the alien city had  attacked the Huragokmobbed the hapless creature as it floated from the broken Spirit's cab in back to its workshop, its tentacles full of circ uit boxes and other components. This attack agitated do zens more Yanme'e already in the hangar, and were it not for Tartarus' quick reflexes and good a im, they would have torn the Huragok apart.\n\"Ease your grip.\" Maccabeus winced as he came to a stop before his nephew. Despite the splint, he could feel his shattered thighbone shift, its tw o jagged edges grind together. \"Or you will be the death of it.\"\nTartarus' eyes darted across the anxious swarm. \"No ! The Yanme'e have gone mad!\"\n\"Release it.\" Maccabeus exhaled to blunt the pain. \"I will not ask again.\"\nTartarus turned on Maccabeus, bared his teeth, and snarled. The Chieftain knew the youth's blood was up. But Maccabeus' pain had taken all his  patience. He delivered a vicious swipe across his nephew's chops, drawing bloody lines from cheek  to lips. Tartarus yelped and quickly released the Huragok. Immediately the creature began flailin g its pink, translucent limbs. But these weren't the deft motions of its sign language, rather an ef fort to regain its balance. Tartarus' tight grip ha d temporarily deflated many of its sacs.\n\"Give it room,\" Maccabeus growled. Tartarus took a few steps back, shoulders balled in a pose that wasn't entirely submissive. But the Chieftain lacked the strength to put his nephew firmly in his place. It had been an exhausting day.  152  Ritul was dead. The alien's clever attack had caugh t the inexperienced pilot by surprise. When the young Jiralhanae's Spirit crashednosed into th e field of fruit-bearing vineshe had become trapped inside its cabin. Tartarus (who was harness ed inside the same Spirit's troop bay) had barely enough time to save himself before the dropship cau ght fire. Even so, Tartarus had risked his life to save his pack mateclawed at the strips of bent and  broken metal that kept Ritul cageduntil the flames'\nheat became too great. When Maccabeus' Spirit had s ettled beside the other to retrieve his nephew, the Chieftain had smelled Ritul's charred f lesh on Tartarus' fur. But Maccabeus knew Ritul's blood was on his hands. He could have kept his pack aboard the cruiser while it burned the aliens in their houses.  There was no need for them to descend to the alien city, except that Maccabeus had chosen to continue his search for relicsin direct violation of the Ministry's instructions to glass the planet and all  it contained. But the Luminary had shown the city was full of the holy objects, no doubt carried off by the al iens as they made their retreat. And the Chieftain could not bear to see such a blessed cach e obliterated by his cruiser's cannon. For as great a sin as it was to disobey the Prophet s, Maccabeus had decided the destruction of the Gods' creations was even worse. And while he ca red little for the aliensfelt no remorse as he herded them for slaughterhe was willing to delay t heir destruction if it meant recovering the relics they possessed, especially their Oracle. Lighter Than Some 's sacs erupted in series of panicked burps. Two Ya nme'e had crept onto the damaged Spirit's troop bays and were preparing to s kitter inside their half-open doors, into the Huragok's workshop. Then the Huragok did something Maccabeus had never seen before. Each of its healthy sacs swelled to twice their normal size  and it began beating itself with its tentaclesa surprisingly deep and menacing percussion. Lighter Than Some floated toward the Yanme'e, and would have continued right into their claws if Macc abeus hadn't grabbed hold of one of its tentacles and pulled it back.\n\"By the Prophets, what fresh insanity is this?\" Tar tarus growled.\n\"Vorenus,\" Maccabeus said, parrying angry blows fro m the Huragok's other tentacles. \"Kill those two.\"\nThe tan-coated Jiralhanae drew his spike rifle from  his belt and shredded the Yanme'e on the troop bays. These two deaths finally subdued the sw arm; every insect in the hangar tucked their wings beneath their shells and drooped their antenn ae. But Vorenus' fire only served to increase the Huragok's dismay. It stopped beating the Chieftain about the arms, but only so it could sign at him with even greater ferocity. Maccabeus waved Vorenus over, and gave him custody of the Huragok. \"Fetch the Deacon,\" he said, leaning heavily on his hammer. Vorenus' signal unit buzzed. \"Chieftain. The Deacon  waits outside the lock.\"\n\"Then by all means, let him in.\"\nAlmost instantly, Dadab's Spirit slid through the h angar's rippling energy barrier and came to a hasty stop beside Maccabeus' dropship. The Chieftai n waited for the Deacon to make his way across the mess of dead Yanme'e before he pointed at the H uragok and ordered: \"Tell me what it says.\"\nThe Deacon and the Huragok began a lengthy conversa tiona silent escalation of flashing limbs and fingers.\n\"Enough!\" Maccabeus snapped. \"Speak!\"\n\"I am deeply sorry for the delay, Chieftain.\" The D eacon's voice was strained. \"The Huragok offers its sincerest apologies, but humbly requests  that you keep the Yanme'e from disturbing its work inside the bays.\"\nThe Deacon's far-too-mannered explanation sent the Huragok into an angry, conversant spasm.\n\"Are you sure that is all it said?\"\n\"It also wishes you to know...\" The Unggoy's voice wa s now a muffled squeal inside his mask.\n\"That it can very quickly undo what it has done!\"  153  \"'What it has done'? Talk sense, Deacon!\"\nDadab made a few simple signs with his hand. Then, as the Huragok headed into its workshop with an impatient bleat, Dadab dropped to his knees  before Maccabeus. \"I take full responsibility for its actions! And humbly beg for your forgiveness!\"\nMaccabeus stared down at the Deacon. It seems everyone has gone mad, he thought. But before he could tell the Unggoy to rise, he was distracted  by the sound of creaking metal. Maccabeus watched, amazed, as the two damaged bays fell apart -collapsed in a clattering heap of hull plating. All their internal structure had been removed. The Huragok floated proudly over the wreckage, as if it had long planned this dramatic unveiling. It too k Maccabeus a moment to process what the creature had revealed. Four vehicles now sat where the bays had stood. Eac h was a collection of slightly different parts, but they shared the same general design: two bladed  wheels sandwiched together inside a reinforced chassis; behind each set of wheels was a single ant i-gravity generator; and behind the generator a seat with high handles that Maccabeus assumed were the vehicles' steering mechanisms.\n\"But there's more!\" the Huragok seemed to say as it  bobbed from one vehicle to another, activating the energy cores mounted above the machi nes' generators. With a crackle of sparks and belching purple exhaust, the vehicles' seats rose f rom the hangar floor, perfectly balanced against the weight of their bladed wheels.\n\"What are they?\" Maccabeus asked. \"And what are the y for?\"\n\"The aliens!\" the Deacon wailed, groveling closer t o Maccabeus' shaggy feet. Tartarus strode to the nearest vehicle. \"But where are their weapons?\"\nAfter a pause, Dadab slowly raised his head from th e floor. \"Weapons?\"\n\"Though these would have made short work of the whelps we faced t oday.\" Tartarus ran a thick finger down one of the wheels, assessing its blades ' martial utility. If he still felt the sting of hi s uncle's blow, it didn't show.\n\"Weapons! Yes, of course!\" the Deacon shouted, spri nging to his feet. Then, in a voice so low Maccabeus could barely hear it above the machines' idling generators: \"The Huragok will be happy to affix whatever armaments you require!\"\nHad the Chieftain not again begun to focus on the q uiet management of his pain, he might have more carefully considered the Deacon's sudden chang e of tone. But now the only thing he wanted was to get off his leg and let it mend. \"Perhaps la ter. When the Yanme'e have withdrawn.\"\n\"If I might make a suggestion?\" Dadab persisted.\n\"You can if you are quick.\"\n\"Let me take the Huragok to the orbitalkeep it saf e until we can discern the reason for the Yanme'e's unwarranted assault.\"\nMaccabeus already knew the reason: the creatures we re upset the Huragok had taken over their maintenance responsibilities and further addled by their unfamiliar combat role. After the Unggoy's poor showing in the gardens, the Chieftain had thou ght it wiser to enlist the single-minded insects. But now it seemed all they wanted was to return to their old routine, and the easiest way to do that was to eliminate Lighter Than Some.\n\"A wise suggestion. The Yanme'e can complete its wo rk.\" Maccabeus took a final look at the Huragok's odd machines. \"Properly armed, these will be fearsome steeds.\"\nThe Deacon bowed low and then trotted to the Hurago k. Taking his comrade gently by one tentacle, he led it quickly to Calid's waiting Spir it. The Chieftain saw the Huragok attempt to speak with the Deacon as they settled inside the troop ba y; no doubt it was curious what Dadab and the Chieftain had discussed. But the Deacon's fingers r emained stillhis eyes warily watching Maccabeusas the troop bay door swung shut. Grittin g his teeth for the inevitable shifting of bone, Maccabeus turned and hobbled to the hangar exit, Vo renus holding his arm tight and Tartarus stalking close behind.  154\nCHAPTER NINETEEN\n\n\nHARVEST, FEBRUARY 22, 2525\n\nNews of Gladsheim's destruction traveled fastmuch more quickly than the few hours it took Avery's container to make its way across the Ida an d up the Bifrost. By the time the container eased into Utgard, most of the planet knew what the alien s had done and would surely do again. Captain Ponder had been in contact with Lt. Command er al-Cygni throughout their journey. She had told them Utgard (already packed with close to two hundred thousand full-time residents) was quickly overflowing with refugees from small settle ments in the Vigrond. Avery had expected to find a mass of humanity inside the depot, but the c ontainer shed adjacent to the anchor for the Tiara's middlemost strand was largely emptyat leas t as far as humans were concerned. Every empty space inside the massive warehouse was packed with busy JOTUNs. Jumping down from his container's yawning door, Ave ry was shocked by the number and variety of the machines. There were dozens of the f amiliar yellow and black loaders, carrying light green plastic bins labeled food and water and blank ets. As they sped their emergency supplies to the waiting containersswerved to avoid one another wit h precise, last-minute timingthe loaders'\nlarge wheels squealed loudly on the shed's smooth p olycrete floor, leaving faint black rubber skids. But there were also JOTUN models Avery had never se en before: triangle-treaded supervisory units and spider-like maintenance all-in-ones. The latter scurried all around the containers, checking for surface faults and repairing them with short, b linding blasts from their integrated weldersone of a collection of tools attached to flexible booms  equipped with grasping claws. As the marines and their recruits headed for the shed's exit between t wo container rows, they kept their helmets on and shoulders hunched. The all-in-ones' breakneck labor  was creating unavoidable cascades of sparks, and no one wanted to get burned. Outside the depot, Avery loaded into a waiting flat bed Warthog with Dass, Jenkins, Forsell, and the rest of the 1/A recruits. As they pulled into w hat Avery thought was heavy traffic, he realized al l the civilian sedans and haulers packing the bouleva rd were empty. Some still had their engines running, others sat with doors wide open. But the o nly other vehicles actually driving on the road were blue-and-white patrol sedans from Utgard's con stabulary. These had their roof-lights flashing and PA speakers blaring: PLEASE REMAIN CALM. STAY I NSIDE THE MALL UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PLEASE REMAIN CALM.... As the Warthog weaved through the abandoned cars no rth along the mall, Avery saw the park was even more packed than it had been during the so lstice celebration. But the tenor of this crowd was much different. There was none of the mixing an d mingling that the celebration's music and alcohol-licensed food-stalls had encouragedjust a single, silent huddle. Even the color of the crowd had changed. Gone were the bright pastels of the picnickers' semiformal attire. Now the mall's lawns were choked with dirty denim and faded  cotton. The Lt. Commander hadn't mentioned any civilian unr est. But here and there, Avery saw constables on foot patrol. The officers wore helmet s and riot plating over their light blue uniforms;\nsome even carried humbler stun devices and clear pl astic shields. As his Warthog approached the  155  parliament, Avery noted that the charlie squads had  reinforced the main gate with an S-curve of sandbag berms. The militiamen seemed jumpy. Their e yes were locked on the mall and their hands were wrapped tight around their MA5s.\n\"Keep an eye on him,\" Avery said to Forsell as thei r Warthog came to a stop at the top of the parliament's curved drive. He nodded toward Jenkins , who had already dismounted and was slinking away, head down toward a line of canvas te nts the militia had erected in the parliament's gardens. \"Don't let him do anything stupid.\"\nJenkins hadn't spoken to anyone since they left Gla dsheimsince he'd yelled at Avery. He wasn't angry anymore, just deeply depressed. Avery doubted the recruit would really do something as crazy as take his own life. But Jenkins had just  lost his entire family, and Avery wasn't willing t o rule anything out. Forsell nodded, shouldered the p added, rectangular bag that held his scope and Jenkins' BR55, and followed quickly after his fello w marksman.\n\"Round up your squad leaders,\" Captain Ponder said,  approaching with Byrne and Healy from a second flatbed Warthog. \"We'll debrief soon as I'm done with Thune.\" As the Captain mounted the parliament steps, he paused, leaned against the gra nite railing, and clutched his chest. Healy stepped quickly to his side, but Ponder waved him off. The Corpsman had strongly suggested that the Captai n not take part in Gladsheim's evacuation, knowing any exertion would only worsen his injuries . Ponder had, of course, told Healy exactly where he could stick his suggestions. But now, watc hing the Captain pretend not to struggle up the steps, Avery knew he was paying for his devotion to  his mission and his men.\n\"Habel? You read me?\" Avery growled into his throat -mic.\n\"Yes, Staff Sergeant,\" the 1/C squad leader replied  from the ballroom balcony.\n\"We all clear?\"\n\"Hard to tell. Crowd on the mall's pretty thick.\"\nAfter years of fighting the Insurrection, Avery had  become pretty good at assessing a crowd's intentionswhether it would remain peaceful or erup t. He could tell that right now the people on the mall were too stunned to storm the parliament a nd take their anger out on a government that had left them so poorly protected and now had the gall to keep them herded like animals. But it was exactly this fear that had prompted Governor Thune to order the two charlie squads to guard the parliament while the rest of the militia went to Gl adsheim. Avery, on the other hand, knew the real threat was still hanging in low orbit.\n\"Put Wick in charge and come on down,\" he ordered H abel. \"And tell him to look up.\"\nByrne had a similar COM exchange with Andersen, 2/C 's squad leader. And a short while later, the two Staff Sergeants and their six second-in-com mands were all gathered inside the parliament's limestone-pillared lobby. While they waited for Pon der to return, Avery recapped how they'd wounded the gold-armored alien. Then Byrne (who'd h ad the better view) described how Mack's dusters had hammered into the alien dropship, crash ing it into the vineyard. These victories hardly made up for the day's thousands of civilian casualt ies, but Byrne's colorful, curse-laden account of the dropship's fiery tumble gave everyone an excuse  to share some laughter at their enemy's expense. Avery's COM-pad rattled inside his assault vest. He  extracted the device and read a text message from Ponder: YOU AND BYRNE. THUNE'S OFFICE.  NOW. Avery showed the COM to Byrne. Then, with the squad leaders' laughter peter ing out behind them, they bounded up the staircase to the parliament's second floor. The Governor's office was located at the back of th e building, the middle office in a long hallway of suites reserved for Harvest's twenty-fou r parliamentarians. But other than a few anxious staffers, the high-ceilinged hall was quiet. The ma rines' boots echoed loudly on its marble floor. Inside the foyer of Thune's office were two constab les, posted on either side of a frosted-glass interior door. Both wore riot armor but no helmets,  and cradled M7 submachine guns in their arms.  156  One of the constables glared at the Staff Sergeants . \"Weapons on the table,\" he said, jerking his jutting chin at the empty desk of Thune's personal secretary. \"Governor's orders.\"\nByrne shot Avery an irritated glance, but Avery sho ok his head: Not worth it.\n\"Just so you know,\" Byrne said with a thickening br ogue, \"I count my bullets.\" He unshouldered his battle rifle, yanked his M6 pistol from its hol ster, and set both weapons on the table next to Avery's. He flashed a defiant smile. \"They'd all be tter be here when I get back.\"\nThe constables stepped back nervously, letting Byrn e and Avery push through the door. Thune's office was fan shaped, becoming wider the d eeper it went. The curved, western wall was covered with a large holo-still of Utgard in th e early days of the colony. In the picture, a young man stood beside the foundation of one of the tower s now lining the mall which, according to the still, was then just a muddy strip used to park JOT UNs. The tall but still overweight boy was grinning ear-to-ear, and while he lacked the Govern or's mature red beard, it was obvious he was Thuneprobably no more than ten years old.\n\"I'm not sure what you expect us to do, Governor,\" Lt. Commander al-Cygni said, standing before Thune's polished red oak desk. She wore ligh t gray, high-neck service coverallsthe same fitted uniform she worn when she'd met with Avery i n the hospital. Today her long black hair was coiled and pinned at the back of her neck, revealin g darker gray epaulets that flashed with her rank's three gold bars and oak leaf cluster.\n\"Consult me!\" Thune bellowed. \"Before you put some crazy scheme in motion!\" The Governor loomed behind his desk. His large hands had the bac k of his brown leather swivel chair in a viselike grip. He wore corduroy pants and a thin flannel shi rtboth wrinkled, suggesting he'd been living in the same pair of clothes for days.\n\"The plan,\" Jilan said calmly, \"is the same one you agreed to a  week ago. If you had concerns, you've had ample opportunity to raise them.\"\n\"You told me you turned Sif off!\" Thune pointed an angry finger at Mack, who glowed from a brass-plated holo-projector mounted on the Governor 's desk.\n\"I did,\" the AI replied.\n\"Then how the hell did they make contact?\"\n\"I left an operable cluster. In case I needed to ac cess the Tiara's systems.\" Mack looked at Jilan.\n\"Apparently I made the right decision.\"\n\"You aren't supposed to make any decision without my approval!\"\nThe AI shrugged. \"I see no reason why we shouldn't keep the channel open.\"\n\"No reason?\" Thune pushed his chair aside and slamm ed his palms onto his desk. \"Those bastards are burning Gladsheim to the ground!\"\n\"Technically,\" Mack countered, \"the ones on the Tia ra aren't even the same species.\"\nAvery's brain raced, trying to get a handle on the discussion. Aliens on the Tiara? He wondered. When did that happen?\nThune looked at Ponder with a desperate rage. \"Am I  the only person in this room that still has control of his goddamn senses?!\"\n\"I'm gonna need you to calm down, Governor.\" Ponder 's face was pale. He looked unsteady on his feet. \"We don't have time to argue.\"\nThune hunkered low over his desk. His voice rumbled  deep inside his throat. \"Don't you dare give me an order, Captain. I'm Governor of this pla net, not one of your grunts.\" The veins in Thune's neck pulsed rapidly, flushing his face as b right as his beard. \"I will decide what we should and should not do.\" Then, his eyes shooting daggers  at al-Cygni: \"And I will not let you use my people as bait!\"\nThe office grew very quiet. Mack removed his cowboy  hat and smoothed his uncombed hair.\n\"I'm sorry, Governor. But a plan is a plan.\"  157  In the moment it took Thune to register the AI's di sobedience, Jilan reached behind her back and unholstered a small black pistol scarcely larger th an her palm. She leveled the weapon at the center of Thune's chest. \"In accordance with section two, paragraph eight of the internal security amendment to the UNSC colonial charter, I hereby re voke your title and your privilege.\"\n\"Lars! Finn!\" Thune bellowed. But the two constable s were already halfway through the office door, M7s up against their shoulders, aimed right a t Jilan. Avery still didn't understand the argument. But he knew one thing for sure: al-Cygni and Ponderhis commanding officersweren't on the Gover nor's side. That was reason enough for his response. But, frankly, he didn't much like the con stables pointing their weapons at a woman's back. As the first officer stalked past, Avery grabbed th e top of his M7 and jerked the weapon down. As the constable fell across Avery's body, he hamme red his right elbow into the man's nose, accelerating the constable's drop to the floor and relieving him of his weapon. When the second constable swung toward Avery, Byrne swept the man o ff his feet with a deft swipe of his boot, and followed him to the office carpet. One knee in the constable's neck and the other crushing his M7 to his chest, Byrne gave the man a second to stop stru ggling. When he didn't, the Staff Sergeant smiled and knocked him out with a short, sharp punch to th e chin.\n\"Are we secure?\" Jilan hadn't moved. Her eyes and h er pistol were still locked on Thune. Avery slid the M7's charging handle back a hair. Th ere was a round in the chamber. If the constable had fired, he could have killed Jilan. As  the man tried to rise, Avery gave him a swift kick in the gut. \"Yes, ma'am.\"\nThune's eyes narrowed. \"Who do you think you are, a l-Cygni?\"\n\"The highest-ranking military officer on this plane t,\" she replied, then repeated her previous declaration. \"In accordance with section two, parag raph\"\n\"You can quote any legal bullshit you want. I'm not  going to step down.\"\n\"Governor, are you sure?\" Mack asked.\n\"Are you deaf ?\" Thune slammed his fists onto his desk with enoug h force to break a weaker man's knuckles. His voice was full of venom. \"Want me to say it again?\"\nJilan straightened her arm. \"No.\"\nHer pistol cracked three times and Thune staggered back, spraying red from the open collar of his shirt. In a flash, Avery was past the Lt. Comma nder and across Thune's desk, sliding feet-first over the polished oak. Byrne dashed around the desk  to meet him, and together they covered the Governor as he slumped to the floor.\n\"Healy!\" Avery shouted into his throat-mic. \"Get up  here!\"\n\"That won't be necessary,\" Jilan said. Avery was about to remind the Lt. Commander that sh e'd just mortally wounded a colonial governor when his nostrils filled with a sweet, fam iliar scent.\n\"Clever,\" Byrne snorted. He reached for Thune's red dened shirt, and rubbed the sticky residue of TTR rounds between his fingers. \"Out like a ligh t.\"\n\"And he's going to stay that way.\" Jilan safed her pistol and slid it back into her holster. \"All the way to FLEETCOM HQ.\"\nSuddenly, Ponder began to sway. \"Actually, ma'am? I  think getting the doc might not be a bad idea...\" Then he fell to the floor, his good arm clut ched against his left side. Avery sprinted back around the desk. By the time he  reached Ponder, Jilan had already dropped to her knees and ripped open the Captain's shirt. T he biofoam cast covering his chest was soaked with bloody blotches. And unlike Thune, this was th e real thing.\n\"Healy! Double-time!\" Avery growled. Then, whipping  his head around to face Jilan: \"Ma'am, things are going sideways, and I don't like it. I w ant to know what you're planning, and I want to  158  know now. Because I'm pretty surewhatever it isyo u're counting on me and Byrne to get it done.\"\nJilan took a deep breath. \"Alright.\" She stared at Avery, her deep green eyes narrowed halfway between respect and reservation. \"Go ahead, Loki. T ell them.\"\nFor a second, Avery wondered who Jilan was talking to. Then he heard Mack clear his throat.\n\"Yes.\" The AI smiled as Avery turned to face the ho lo-projector. He looked a little embarrassed.\n\"Yes, I guess I should start with that .\"\n\nBapap jumped on one foot, then the other. He checke d the fill-level on his methane tank. He scratched an itch in the scaly pit of one of his ar ms. Finallythough the Deacon had asked him repeatedly to be quietBapap cocked his head at the  Huragok and asked. \"What you think it do now?\"\nDadab really wished he knew. And this lack of under standing had made him even more exasperated than Bapap's constant pestering. Lighter Than Some was completely still, his buoyancy perfectly neutral as he floated before the towers t hat made up the alien intelligence. \"Just keep your eyes on the walkway,\" Dadab said. \"It shouldn't be much longer.\"\nBapap grumbled inside his mask and thrust his head back through the pried-open gap in the control room's doors. The Deacon kept up his pacing  behind the Huragok in the room's shallow pit, stepping over the panels it had removed from the to wers to access the alien circuits.\n< To begin a conversation.  > the Huragok had signed. Again Dadab wondered if he had made the right decis ion in bringing the Huragok to the orbital\n(who knew what sort of conversation it was having?). But he had been desperate to get Lighter Than Some out of the hangar before it learned of his deceptio nbefore it discovered Dadab had ensured its plows would be turned into weapons by the Yanme 'e. Dadab felt terrible about betraying his friend's tr ust, but he hadn't had much choice. When the broken Spirit had come apart, revealing not one but  four of the Huragok's creations, the Deacon had almost soiled his tunic. He didn't even want to thi nk what Maccabeus would do if he learned the Huragok's real motivation for constructing the plow s. The Chieftain had just suffered a grievous injury at the aliens' hands; he would have no patie nce for peace offerings, let alone the Deacon, who had failed to stop their construction. Dadab stopped pacing and flashed his fingers before  the Huragok's sensory nodes. < Is everything all right?  > But Lighter Than Some remained still. All four of its tentacles were thrust deep into the  center-most tower. Leaning closer, Dadab could see the limbs were in motiontwitching ever s o slightly at the tips as their cilia made contact with multicolored knots of wires. Dadab traced some  of the wires to one of the tower's many black boxes and saw that two small lights in the box's ca sing were blinking green and amber in response to the Huragok's deft probes. Suddenly, the energy core Lighter Than Some had rigged to power the towers began to flicker. They had already used up three cores, and Dadab was n't eager to take any more from the nearby encampments. The other Unggoy were starting to get curious about the Deacon's activities, especially after he returned to the orbital with th e Huragok in tow. The last thing Dadab needed was a proliferation of witnesses to his latest sinful e ffort at intelligence association.\n\"Deacon!\" Bapap whispered. \"Flim and two others!\"\nDadab waved his gnarled hands, hastening Bapap onto  the walkway. \"Go! Delay them!\"\nAs Bapap pushed through door, Dadab tugged at one o f Lighter Than Some's lower tentacles. The Huragok loosed a surprised bleat from one of it s sacs and jerked free of the tower.\n< Put panels back!  > Dadab flashed. The Huragok's response came slowly, as if it was ha ving difficulty transitioning back to a normal conversational mode. < Do you know what they have done?  >  159  < What? Who?  >\n< The Chieftain and his pack.  >\nDadab could hear Flim's gruff voice on the walkway,  the clang of methane tanks as he knocked Bapap aside. < Explain later! > he picked up a panel and thrust it toward the Hur agok. Lighter Than Some wrapped the thin metal plate in its tentacles as Da dab trotted to the door.\n\"I gave no permission to leave your post!\" he said,  stepping onto the walkway, directly in Flim's path.\n\"You walk and explore,\" Flim replied with glum susp icion. \"Why can't I do same?\"\n\"Because I am Deacon! My explorations have Minister ial endorsement!\"\nFlim cocked his head, making it clear he had no ide a what this meant and wouldn't much care even if he did. \"You find food?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Relic?\"\n\"Certainly not!\"\n\"Then what?\"\n\"Nothing,\" Dadab said, feigning great exasperation.  \"And wasting time talking with you won't help my work go any fas\" The Deacon doubled over a s Flim shoved past, not-so-accidentally thrusting one of his barnacle-pitted forearms into Dadab's shrunken stomach.\n\"Then we no talk.\" Flim waddled into the control ro om. Dadab reached up weakly and tried to stop Flim's co mpanions: a bow-legged Unggoy named Guff and another called Tukduk, who was missing one  of his eyes. But these two toadies slipped past as well, and all the Deacon could do was hunch  after them, taking shallow breaths to refill his lungs. Flim looked at the towers and snorted inside his ma sk. \"I see nothing.\"\nDadab raised his head. To his great surprise, he sa w that all the panels were back in place. Lighter Than Some floated innocently in the shallow pit, as if it had  spent the time since its arrival doing nothing but.\n\"And soon that's all you'll see,\" Dadab said as the energy core flickere d again. \"Fetch me another core and I'll let you help me with my work. \"\nBut Flim was shrewder than he looked. \"You come wit h me to get core.\"\nDadab sighed. \"Very well.\"\nAs he ushered Flim and the others back to the walkw ay, he signed subtly to Lighter Than Some:\n< Keep panels on! > He wanted to hear the Huragok's explanationwhat it  had learned about the Jiralhanaebut any lengthy conversation would have to wait until they were alone. Lighter Than Some waited for the Unggoy's footfalls to fade. The ener gy core began to blink rapidly, threatening to cut out. The Huragok vented  one of its sacs and sunk low. It also did not want to betray its friend's trust, but it had no choice. Quickly, it removed the central tower's highest pan el, and flicked one of its tentacles against the panel's bare metal inner surface. Then it turned to  face one of the image-recording devices it had discovered in the corners of the room.\n< Safe, come, out.  > Lighter Than Some 's signs were slow and deliberateas they had been when it first taught the Deacon the intricacies of its speech. A moment later, a little representation of an alien  in a wide-brimmed hat appeared on the room's holo-projector. Lighter Than Some held out the protective panel. It waited a few mome nts then signed: < Now, you, show. > The representation nodded its head and disappeared.  The Covenant glyph representing\n\"Oracle\" appeared in its place. Lighter Than Some released a contented bleat. < When, show, others? >\nThe alien appeared again. It raised its right hand and flexed four of its fingers: < Morning.  >  160  < Good!  > The Huragok's sacs swelled and it rose a little higher. < Soon, come, peace!  >\nThe energy core was fading now, and the little alie n with it. Lighter Than Some angled its snout toward the towers. The associated intelligence inside was amazingly efficient; it had only taken half a cycle  to learn how to speak. The Huragok's sacs quivered with excitement. There were so many questions it wanted to ask! But it knew it only had time for one before the energy core was sapped.\n< Want, me, fix?  > Lighter Than Some gestured toward the towers.\n< No.  > Loki's fragment quickly verified its sabotage of  Sif. < Nothing, worth, save.  >\nThen the energy core sputtered out, and the data ce nter plunged into darkness.  161\nCHAPTER TWENTY\n\n\nHARVEST, FEBRUARY 23, 2525\n\nOvernight, the mall had cleared. At dawn there were  no refugees, no constables; all had moved in the night to the elevator sheds. As Captain Ponder strode eastward across the park, he saw half drained drink cartons, unzipped luggage, and ransac ked clothes; here and there were diapers, foul smelling rags, and crumpled holo-stills. The once b eautiful mall had become a trash heapa dirty and disorganized monument to Harvest's abandonment. After placing a beacon at the center of the mall to  mark a landing zone for the aliens, his Staff Sergeants had wanted to remain at the LZ to set up sniper hides and cover Ponder during the handoff. But the Captain had refused. Healy had ins isted he at least drive Ponder from the Parliament across the mall. But the Captain had jus t ordered the Corpsman to wrap him in a new cast, give him some meds, and set him on his feet. This wasn't stoic pride; Ponder was just eager for one last march. Some marines hated marching, but Ponder loved itev en his first, grueling road hikes in basic training. Since his demotion, he'd sometimes joked how lucky he was to have his arm blown off. If the Innie grenade had taken one of his legs (his pu nch line went), he probably would have learned to walk on his hands. Not the best joke ever told, but  even now it made him chuckle. That made him wince and suck air through his teeth.  Despite his new cast, one of his shattered ribs had shifted against his already ruptured splee n. There was nothing Healy could do for such a serious injury, and there wasn't enough time for an  operation at Utgard's hospital, not that Ponder would have agreed to it. Some missions were best handled by dying men, the Captain knew. And giving the aliens their Oracle was one of them. The knoll at the center of the mall was topped by a  fountain and a bandstand, and surrounded by a ring of old, gray-barked oaks. As Ponder hunched past the trees, their heavy branches rose as if they were stretching up in anticipation of Epsilon Indi's ascent. But Ponder also felt his abused organs rise inside his chest, and he realized the r eal cause of the oaks' elation even before he clear ed their canopy and could once again see the sky. The alien warship was dropping toward Utgard, and i ts anti-gravity generators were cushioning its descent with an invisible, buoyant field. Under different circumstances, the Captain might ha ve felt fear as the massive vessel came to rest perpendicular across the mall, no more than a few hundred meters above Utgard's highest towers. But the anti-grav field did a better job of  managing his pain than any of the meds Healy had given him. As the warship came to a groaning stop, Ponder inhaled deeply. For a few glorious moments he breathed without effort, without feeling  the steady throb of blood from his spleen. But the relief dissipated as quickly as it came. As  the alien ship stabilized and dialed its field generators back, the Captain was forced to trudge u p the hill to the bandstand bearing the full weight of his trauma. It didn't help that he also carried the brass-botto med holo-projector from the Governor's office. Ponder still only had one arm, and couldn't shift t he object's weight. To make matters worse, Lt.  162  Commander al-Cygni had fitted a round, titanium-cas ed network relay to the bottom of the projector. She'd wanted to use a lighter model, but  LokiHarvest's long-dormant PSIhad insisted that a more robust relay was required. Ponder had been too weak in the Governor's office t o concentrate fully on Loki's explanation of the plan. But he understood that the aliens were lo oking for a powerful, networked intelligence. Something they called an Oracle. And thanks to an a pparent traitor in their ranks, Loki had learned he could fake the Oracle's electronic signature by filling the relay with an excess of data traffic. Staff Sergeants Johnson and Byrne had a hard time t rusting intel from a hostile source, especially after what the aliens had done to Gladsh eim. And in fact, when al-Cygni had revealed her and Loki's complete plan, the marines had initially  exhibited some of Governor's Thune's outrage. If they were going to try and sneak all of Harvest' s remaining citizens past the alien warship, why the hell would they want to lure it closer to Utgard?\nSuddenly, one of the alien dropships emerged from a  glowing portal in the warship's stern. It swooped past the Tiara's seven brilliant strands, l ike a tuning fork testing the pitch of an oversized piano's wires. As Ponder climbed the handstand's wood-plank steps,  he noticed the dropship held four objects in a wavering blue suspension field between its bay s. When it slowed and the objects fell free, the Captain realized they were vehicles of some sort. T he instant they touched the ground, their toothed wheels began to spin. Then, spewing clods of dirt a nd grass behind them, they began a rapid clockwise reconnoiter of the oaks around the knoll. Each vehicle was driven by one of the armored alien s. Ponder recognized the tallest from the botanical gardens, its tan fur bristling from gaps in its blue armor. But the leader was a red-armored beast with shiny black fur who angled its vehicle u p the knoll and came to a rumbling stop between the bandstand and the fountain. Ponder noted two things as the alien dismounted: fi rst, the vehicle's seat remained elevated off the groundevidence of some limited, anti-gravity c apability; second, the vehicle was armed with a pair of the aliens' spike-flinging rifles. These we re crudely welded to the top of what the Captain assumed was the vehicle's engine. Cables snaked fro m the rifles to the vehicle's elevated steering handlesan arrangement that would allow the driver to fire and maneuver at the same time. The red-armored alien leapt onto the bandstand and paced to Ponder, another spike rifle swinging from its belt. It stopped out of Ponder's reach but well inside its own, yellow eyes gleaming from its angular helmet. The Captain smile d, held out the holo-pad and thumbed its activation switch. The circular symbol Loki had rec eived from his alien informant flickered to life above its lens. For a moment the towering beast leered down at Pond era predator assessing its weaker prey. Then it reached out its mighty paws, engulfed the p rojector, and brought it close. Its nostrils flared as it sniffed the crackling air around the symbol. It gave the projector a shake, like a suspicious ch ild with a large but very light birthday present.\n\"What you see is what you get,\" Ponder said, reachi ng inside his olive-drab fatigue shirt's breast pocket. The alien pulled its weapon and barked at t he Captain. \"Sorry, only have the one,\" Ponder said, extracting a Sweet William cigar. He put the cigar between his teeth and retrieved his silver lighter. \"Adjust six hundred meters vertical. Fire for effect.\"\nLoki's voice crackled in Ponder's earpiece. \"I can give you ten seconds.\"\n\"Think I'll stay put and watch the show.\"\nThe alien snarled something that might have been a question. The Captain couldn't tell. But he decided to answer anyway. \"Someday we will win,\" he  said, lighting his cigar. \"No matter what it takes.\"\nThe alien warship shuddered as the first supersonic  slug from Harvest's mass driver smashed into its bulbous prow, crumpling the iridescent pla ting with a tremendous, metallic clang. At the same time, all the windows in all the towers around  the mall shattered.  163  Even before the muzzle crack of the first shot roll ed in from the east, a second slug arrived, penetrated the weakened hull, and gutted the warshi p, stem to stern. Purple running lights on the vessel's belly flickered and died. It listed to por t and began to sinkand would have crashed down onto the mall if not for its perpendicular orientat ion. The vessel came down between two pairs of towers on either side of the park and became wedged  in the tapered gap between their upper floors. The warship screeched to a shuddering stop, creatin g avalanches of polycrete dust that followed the sparkling window glass to the boulevards below. In direct contrast, the Captain suddenly found hims elf rising. He looked down and was surprised to see the alien's bladed weapon jammed into his gu t, straight through his cast. Ponder felt nothing as his boots began to twitch, and he knew his spine  was severed. As he began to twist sideways on the blades, the alien grabbed him around the neck a nd pulled its weapon back. Unfortunately, the blades hurt a lot more going out  than they did going in. Ponder opened his mouth in silent torment and his cigar fell from his  lips, its tip bouncing off one of the alien's paws . Snarling, the creature released Ponder's neck, and the Captain crashed to the bandstand into a widening pool of his own blood. Ponder thought the alien would finish him off quick lydrive a spike through his chest or crush his skull with a swift stomp of his wide, flat feet . But just like him, the alien had become distracte d by a new noise rising above the groan of the warshi p's rough landing. Seven small boxes were now streaking up the Tiara's  elevators, their maglev paddles crackling as they glided against the strands. Though the Capt ain lost sight of the boxes as they passed behind the cruiser, he knew exactly what they were: \"greas e buckets\" used to perform regular maintenance on the strands' superconducting film. But today the y had a different job and carried a different load. As Ponder reached out a trembling hand to retrieve his cigar, he prayed the buckets made it swiftly to the top. The red-armored alien roared and leapt down from th e bandstand. The Captain watched as it rallied its companions and ordered them to the nort heasttoward Harvest's reactor complex and the mass driver. The three aliens in blue armor tore of f on their bladed machines, engines coughing fiery exhaust. Then the red-armored alien raced back to i ts dropship and rose quickly to the warship. By then the first cargo containers had begun their climbs. Each was packed with roughly one thousand evacuees. If everything continued to go as  planned, in less than ninety minutes Harvest's remaining citizens would be safely off their planet . But Ponder knew he had much less time than that.\n\"Loki,\" Ponder grimaced. \"Tell Byrne he's gonna hav e company.\"\nThe Captain thought of his marines and their recrui tsof all the men and women he'd ever led. He thought of his demotion and was happy to realize  he wasn't one of those people who wasted their last precious moments debating how he would h ave done it different if he only had the chance. He blinked to clear his eyes of some of the polycre te dust now wafting across the mall, and at that moment, Epsilon Indi's first bright yellow rays str etched over the eastern horizon. Enjoying the warmth, Ponder kept his eyelids closed. They remain ed forever shut.\n\n\"Watch fingers while I open,\" Guff said as he inser ted the handle of his wrench into the flimsy, mechanical lock of a tall metal cabinet. Tukduk stopped scooping items from an adjacent cabi net long enough to say: \"Next one mine.\"\nHe removed a clear bottle filled with a fragrant, v iscous liquid, studied it with his one good eye, an d then discarded it onto a pile of towels and cloth u niforms in the center of the white-walled room.\n\"This one no good.\"\n\"They all no good,\" Guff grumbled, levering the wrench and sn apping the lock.\n\"No complain!\" Flim barked, picking through the pil e. \"Search!\"\nDadab shook his head and sat down on a bench beside  the pile. Even though he had insisted that Rapid Conversion 's Luminary hadn't found any relics on the orbital,  Flim was convinced the  164  Deacon was lyingattempting to keep the orbital's h idden treasures for himself. And as obvious as it was that they were rooting through a room where the aliens did nothing but wash and dress, Flim refused to give up until he got results.\n\"Watch step!\" he growled as Guff accidentally stepp ed on one of the many flexible tubes littering the floor. The tube popped its top, spray ing Flim's shins with a sticky, ivory-colored cream . Flim cuffed Guff's head as the bowlegged Unggoy kne eled and dabbed at the mess with one of the towels. Tukduk tried to take advantage of the distr action and slyly pulled a flat metal case from the top of the newly opened cabinet. But Flim caught hi m in the act. \"Bring that to me!\" he snapped. Dadab guessed the case was just a signal unit or so me basic thinking machine that belonged to one of orbital's absent crew. Compared to the circu its in the control room the case was worthless. But as much as it pained Dadab to perpetuate the ch arade of their holy investigation, he effected a passably curious tone.\n\"May I see that when you're finished?\"\n\"Why?\" Flim replied, snatching the case from Tukduk .\n\"I found one like it a few cycles ago. I believe th ey're part of a set,\" the Deacon lied. \"If we could find all of them...\"\nFlim narrowed his eyes. \"Yes?\"\n\"Well, they would be a lot more valuable. The Minis try would reward us handsomely.\"\n\"How reward?\"\n\"Oh, anything you might desire.\" Dadab shrugged. \"W ithin reason, of course.\"\nFlim blinked his wide-set eyes and prioritized his desiressome more reasonable than others. Then he growled at Guff. \"No clean! Search!\" Guff g ladly tossed the gummy towel aside, retrieved his wrench, and made ready to break open another ca binet. Dadab drew a short breath and feigned a cough. \"Run ning low,\" he said, reaching around to rap his knuckles on his methane tank. \"Need a refill.\"\nFlim didn't protest. He had temporarily lifted his mask and was testing the hardness of the case with his closely packed and pointed teeth.\n\"I will soon return,\" Dadab added in a casual tone,  walking out of the room toward the walkway. Of course, he had plenty of methane. But the Deacon  had spent almost a whole cycle with the other Unggoy, and he desperately wanted some time alone w ith Lighter Than Some. The Huragok had made some very cryptic comments about the Jiralhana e. Dadab had seen the Chieftain in the hangar and remembered his injured leg. Something was happe ning on the alien planet, and the Deacon wanted to know exactly what. As he doglegged around a junction, he felt the orbi tal tremble. Curious despite his haste, he looked out one of the thick windows that faced the junction's interior. It was hard to tell for sure, but Dadab thought he saw the cable vibrate. That's odd, he thought, pulling away from the window. But then he saw a red light begin to flash above a near by airlockone connected to a retractable gantry inside the junctionand he froze with fear. It took  a chiming alarm to get him moving again around the junction to the control room, pounding his stub by legs as fast as they would go. Inside, Dadab found Lighter Than Some, its tentacles once more thrust inside the central t ower. He snorted loudly to get the creature's attention.\n< What have you done? > the Deacon signed.\n< Repaired these circuits. >\n< You have made this orbital active?!  >\n< No.  > The Huragok trembled with delight. < I have put our wrongs to right.  >\nDadab was both puzzled and terrified by Lighter Than Some 's pronouncement. But just as he was about to ask for clarification, Maccabeus' voic e roared from his signal unit.\n\"Deacon! Deacon, do you hear me?\"  165  \"Y-yes, Chieftain!\" Dadab stammered. The timing of the signal made it seem as though the Chieftain was keeping watch inside the control cent eras if he was fully aware of Dadab's complicity in the Huragok's sinful reassociation of  the alien circuits.\n\"The aliens have attacked us! Disabled the cruiser! \"\nDadab's knees wobbled with amplified terror. How could that be?\n\"They are ascending to the orbital!\" the Chieftain continued. \"You must hold them back until I can send aid!\"\nDadab pointed toward the towers. < Destroy those circuits!  >\n< I will not.  >\n< The Chieftain commands it!  >\nUsually, the Huragok expressed disagreement with an  impolite emission. But this time it kept its valves closed, emphasizing its own resolve. < I no longer serve the Jiralhanae.  >\n< What?! Why?  >\n< They throw hunting rocks.  >\n< I don't understand....  >\n< The Chieftain will burn this world. He will kill th em all.  >\n< The aliens will take this facility! They will kill us! > Dadab countered. Lighter Than Some relaxed its limbs. It had said all it cared to say. The Deacon unclipped his plasma pistol from his har ness, and took aim at the towers. The Huragok drifted into his line of fire. < Move  > Dadab signed with his free hand. But the Huragok  did not. The Deacon did his best to keep his friend fir mly in his sights, but his hand was shaking, compromising his grammar as well as his aim. < Move, or, I, you, shoot.  >\n< All creatures will take the Great Journey, so long as they believe.  > The Huragok's limbs unfurled with slow grace. < Why would the Prophets deny these aliens a chance t o walk The Path?\n>\nDadab cocked his head. It was a valid question.\n\"We must let none escape!\" Maccabeus thundered. \"Te ll me you understand, Deacon!\"\nDadab lowered his pistol. \"No, Chieftain, I do not. \" Then he switched his signal unit off.\n\nMaccabeus cursed under his breath. It was hard enou gh to understand an Unggoy under normal circumstancestheir masks muffled their words. But with the bridge's wailing klaxon and frequent explosions shuddering Rapid Conversion's lower decks, it had been impossible to hear the Dea con's side of their brief conversation.\n\"Deacon!\" Maccabeus roared. \"Repeat your last trans mission!\"\nBut the Unggoy's signal had cut to static. The Chieftain rose angrily from his command chair a nd immediately regretted his decision. He no longer needed his splint, but his leg wasn't ful ly mended. Before he had completed a full cycle in the surgery suite, the Luminary had found the plane t's Oracle, hidden in its largest city. The aliens had activated a beacon in the middle of the city's park, signaling their desire for another early morning parley. Maccabeus had no desire to talkand  only brought Rapid Conversion down to better facilitate a rapid, double-cross burning of the city after he had retrieved the Oracle. But it was the aliens who had sprung the trap. The Chieftain braced against his chair as an especi ally large explosion rocked the bridge.\n\"Report!\" he bellowed at his engineering officer, G rattius. The older Tiralhanae frowned at his control console , his faded brown fur given passing luster by dozens of flashing holographic alerts. \"Plasma cann on disabled! There is a fire inside the weapons bay!\"\n\"Rally the Yanme'e!\" Maccabeus growled. \"Tell them to extinguish the blaze!\"  166  The first of the aliens' kinetic rounds hadn't done  much internal damage to the cruiser. The vessel's hull had blunted the round's impact, and i t had come to a tumbling stop well forward of the bridge. But the second round punched clean through,  severing vital connections between the ship's reactor and anti-grav generators. Although Maccabeu s had already ordered the Yanme'e to repair the connections, he was much more eager to preserve  his cannon. If something were to happen to the Huragok on the o rbital, there would be no way to repair the guns. The Chieftain knew the aliens now escaping up  the. cables would warn whatever other worlds this planet's farms so obviously supplied. Undoubte dly, alien warships would come. And unless the Ministry immediately sent additional forces, Maccab eus would have to fight them on his own. Grattius barked at one of two other Jiralhanae on t he bridge, a sparsely haired youth named Druss: Go and supervise the insects' work! As Druss left his post and loped down the bridge's entry passage to the cruiser's central shaft, Maccabeus l eaned heavily on the Fist of Rukt and hobbled to the holo-tank. There another of his pack, Strab, pe ered angrily at a representation of the alien orbit al and its cables.\n\"The smaller boxes will soon reach the top!\" Strab pointed at seven staggered icons gliding quickly upward. \"And the larger ones are not far be hind!\"\nMaccabeus adjusted the Fist of Rukt so its heavy stone head nestled deep under his righ t arm, taking most of his weight. As incensed as he was ab out the damage to his beloved ship, he had to compliment the aliens on the audacity of their plan . After they had failed to defend their far-flung settlements and their city on the plain, Maccabeus didn't expect them to put up much of a fight elsewhere. And while he knew what the orbital was f or, he never thought they would use it to accomplish an evacuationat least not while Rapid Conversion had ruled the skies. The Chieftain knew he needed to do all he could to stop the aliens lest he completely fail the Prophets. The Unggoy weren't trained for combat, so  he would need to rally his pack for a boarding missiondestroy the orbital as Tartarus had suggest ed when they first approached the planet.\n\"Nephew!\" the Chieftain bellowed, trying to locate Tartarus' status icon on the surface of the planet. The tank was ablaze with many thousands of Luminations. Some were moving up the cablesundoubtedly the fleeing aliens were bringing  their relics with them. \"What is your location?\"\n\"Here, Uncle,\" Tartarus answered. Maccabeus looked up and was shocked to see his neph ew striding onto the bridge. Fires in the cruiser's shaft had sooted Tartarus' red armor and singed some of his black hair white as he climbed up from the hangar. Tartarus' paws were red and swo llen, burned by the ladders' scorching rungs. In one paw he held a thick brass disk.\n\"What is that?\" Maccabeus asked. Tartarus raised the alien holo-projector above his head. \"Your Oracle...\" He dashed the projector to the floor. It blew apart with an off-k ey clang, delicate internal parts skittering across  the deck. \"Is a fake!\"\nMaccabeus watched the brass casing circle in upon i tself and come to a rattling stop. \"You said it showed the glyph. How could they have known?\"\nTartarus took a step toward the holo-tank and snarl ed. \"There is a traitor in our midst.\"\nGrattius and Strab showed their teeth and growled.\n\"Or the Luminary is a liar!\" Tartarus snapped. Then , locking Maccabeus' stare: \"Either way, you are a fool.\"\nThe Chieftain ignored the insult. \"The Luminary,\" h e said calmly, \"is the Forerunners' own creation.\"\n\"The Holy Prophets labeled ours broken and misguided!\" Tartarus now spoke to Gratti us and Strab. \"But still he did not heed!\"  167  Indeed it was the Vice Minister of Tranquility hims elf who told the Chieftain to ignore the Luminationsthat the device's survey had been incor rect. There were no relics, the Prophet had said in his priority, one-way signal. There was no Oracle. Just a planet full of thieves whose murder he demanded.\n\"His hubris has destroyed our ship!\" Tartarus conti nued. \"Threatened the lives of all our pack!\"\nMaccabeus' blood started to boil. It made it easier  to ignore the pain in his leg. \"I am Chieftain. My decision rules this pack.\"\n\"No, Uncle.\" Tartarus removed his spike rifle from his belt. \"Not anymore.\"\nMaccabeus' remembered the day he had challenged the  dominance of his own Chieftain, his father. As it had always been, the contest was foug ht to the death. In the end, Maccabeus' elderly father had happily taken Maccabeus' knife across hi s throata warrior's mortal wound delivered by one he loved. Before the arrival of the San'Shyuum missionaries and their promises of transcendence, an aged Jiralhanae could not have ho ped for a better end. But Maccabeus was not so old. And he was certainly not ready to submit. \"Once made, a challenge cannot be taken back.\"\n\"I know the tradition,\" Tartarus said. He ejected h is rifle's ammunition canister and tossed it to Grattius. Then he pointed at Maccabeus' leg. \"You a re at a disadvantage. I will let you keep your hammer.\"\n\"I am glad you have learned honor,\" Maccabeus said,  ignoring his nephew's haughty tone. He motioned for Strab to retrieve his crested helmet f rom his command chair. \"I only wish I had taught you faith.\"\n\"You call me unfaithful?\" Tartarus snapped.\n\"You are obedient, nephew.\" Maccabeus took his helm et from Strab's shaking paws and settled it on top of his bald head. \"Someday I hope you lea rn the difference.\"\nTartarus roared and charged, beginning a vicious me lee that took the two combatants around the holo-tankTartarus slashing with his spike rifle's crescent blades and Maccabeus parrying with his hammer. The younger Jiralhanae knew all it would ta ke was a single crushing blow and he was doomed; the Fist of Rukt bore the marks of countless victims not wise enough  to steer clear of its massive stone. As they came back around the tank to their starting  positions, Maccabeus slipped on the holo projector's casing. His eyes had been locked on Tar tarus' blades and he had forgotten it was there. His injured leg faltered as he tried to keep his ba lance, and, in this moment of weakness, Tartarus was upon him. He tore off the Chieftain's helmet an d began slicing at his face and neck. Maccabeus raised an arm to deflect the attack and the spike r ifle cut deep into the unarmored underside of his forearm. The Chieftain howled as the blade severed muscle and bit into bone. Swinging his hammer with his uninjured arm, Maccabe us caught Tartarus in the side of his knee. But the one-handed, lateral blow didn't carry  much force. Tartarus limped back, Maccabeus'\nblood dripping from his blades, and waited for his uncle to stand. The paw of the Chieftain's injured arm would not cl ose, but Maccabeus was able to hook his hammer in its thumb and hold the cudgel high. With a mighty roar, he charged his nephew with all the strength he had left. Tartarus hunched as if pr eparing to meet the impact, but sprung backwards as his uncle drew close. Maccabeus falteredtook a few heavy steps he had not expectedand brought his hammer down against the thick lintel of  the bridge's entry door. As the Chieftain staggered backwards, stunned by th e reverberation, Tartarus threw away his spike rifle and bounded forward. He grabbed Maccabe us by the collar and waist of his chest plate, spun him around on his injured leg, and sent him sp rawling down the passage toward the cruiser's shaft without his hammer. Grasping desperately with  his good hand, Maccabeus managed to catch the uppermost rung of a downward ladder as his weig ht carried him over the edge.\n\"Doubt,\" Maccabeus groaned, straining to keep his g rip.  168  \"Loyalty and faith,\" Tartarus replied, stepping to the edge of the shaft. He now held the Fist of Rukt.\n\"Never forget the meaning of this Age, nephew.\"\nAn explosion shook the cruiser, sending a jet of fi re across the shaft a few decks below Maccabeus' swaying legs. Yanme'e swarmed all around , fire-control equipment in their claws, oblivious to their Shipmaster's peril. Tartarus bared his teeth. \"Don't you know, Uncle? T his sorry Age has ended.\"\nWith a powerful roll of his shoulders, Tartarus bro ught the hammer down, smashing the Chieftain's skull against the ladder. Maccabeus' pa w relaxed. Then, with Yanme'e scattering before him, he plummeted lifeless though the flames. For a moment, Tartarus stood still, chest heaving w ith the effort of his triumph. Sweat ran beneath his fur. But it did not give off its usual,  unregulated scent. Tartarus huffed, acknowledging his new maturity. Then he removed his belt and lash ed it around the Fist of Rukt, a sling to keep the ancient cudgel on his shoulder. Grattius came slowly through the passage, bearing M accabeus' helmet. Strab wasn't far behind. Both Jiralhanae knelt before Tartarus, confirming h is leadership of the pack and command of Rapid Conversion. Tartarus traded Maccabeus' helmet for his own. Then  he swung down onto the ladder. The new Chieftain had left his dropship in the hang ar at the bottom of the shaft; he would need it to rise to the alien orbital. But before that, Tart arus was determined to save the rest of his inherit ance from the flamesstrip his uncle's gilded armor and wear it as his own.\n\nSif woke up. And tried to remember who she was. All her arrays were spun down. Her processor cluste rs were dark. The only part of her with power was her crystalline core logic. But it was be set by sparks of fierce emotionsinsistent operations she had no capacity to parse. Suddenly, one of her clusters came online. A COM im pulse pricked a corner of her logic.\n\n<\\ Who is it? \\>\n\nThe intelligence probing her logic replied: < Lighter, Than, Some.  >\nSif thought about that for a few long seconds. And as she thoughtpressed the cluster for more datathe intelligence tapped one of her arrays. Mem ories flooded back: Harvest, the Tiara, the aliens, and Mack. The emotions crowded against her logic, demanding e xamination. Sif cowered inside the deepest part of herself, keeping them at bay. Minutes passed. She felt more impulses from a newly  revived processor cluster.\n< Who, you?  >\n\n<\\ I don't know. I'm broken. \\>\n\nBut Sif knew enough to realize the other intelligen ce was selecting bits from an alphanumeric table lodged in the first cluster's flash memory. A nd it was using the same selective, electrochemical impulses to present these bits directly to her logi c. The moment Sif realized she had automatically begun to do the same, she also realized the mode of  the conversation wasn't normalnot something a human could do.\n\n<\\ Are you one of them? \\>\n   169  < Yes. > The alien intelligence paused. < But, not, like, them.  > A sensation tugged at Sif's subconscious: the pull of a brush through a woman's  hair.\n\n<\\ There is something on my strands. \\>\n\nThe second cluster surged, passing her logic the co ntents of two more awakened arrays. She remembered a planrecalled guiding propulsion pods into position, many days and weeks ahead of Harvest.\n\n<\\ The evacuation! \\>\n\n< I, know, I, want, help. >\nSif struggled to remember how she used to workwhic h clusters had performed which tasks.\n\n<\\ Can you fix this? \\>\n\nShe concentrated on the processors that controlled her COM with the cargo containers' climbing circuits. These had always been the dullestthe sim plest of her operations. But they were the only functions she was strong enough to handle, at least  for now.\n< Yes, you, wait. >\nSif did her best to ignore the emotions still clamo ring for her limited attention. But a violent jolt of apprehension would not be denied. There was some thing she'd forgotten to ask, something her eminently rational mind demanded as it slowly knit itself back together.\n\n<\\ Why are you helping me? \\>\n\nThe alien intelligence thought a moment and then re plied: < Lighter, Than, Some. >\nIt would be many more minutes before Sif had the ca pacity to process the alien's simple, existential truth: I help because that is who I am.   170\nCHAPTER TWENTY-ONE\n\nForsell's head lolled on Avery's shoulder. The oxen  recruit had passed out almost immediately after the grease bucket's maglev paddles engaged the numb er-two strand. Over the course of four seconds, the bucket had tripled the rate of its asc ent. The resulting gee-forces were extreme nothing the recruits were prepared to handle. Avery  only managed to stay conscious by utilizing training he'd undergone for HEV orbital dropssquee zing his knees together and regulating his breathing to keep blood from pooling in his legs. The bucket was a squat cylinder comprised of two C- shaped halves. Curved, clear windows in its inner wall provided a three hundred-sixty-degre e view of the strand, currently a golden blur. The bucket's cramped interior was only rated for a crew  of four, but JOTUN all-in-ones had removed the controls and monitors for the bucket's crablike mai ntenance arms and managed to make room for twelve seatseach one stripped from abandoned sedan s in Utgard. The seats were arranged side by side, facing away from the cable so Avery and his r ecruits could make their way to the bucket's single hatch as quickly as possible once they docke d with the Tiara.\n\"Commander? You still with me?\" Avery growled into his throat-mic after righting Forsell's head. He didn't want the recruit to wake with a cri ck in his neckand not just because it would affect his aim.\n\"Barely,\" Jilan radioed from her bucket. \"Healy's h anging tough. Dass too. Yours?\"\n\"All out cold.\"\nWhen Captain Ponder had tasked Avery with retaking the Tiara, he'd asked for volunteers. The mission was extremely dangerous, and Avery knew the re would be casualties. But he ended up getting more volunteers than he had seats, a mix of  recruits from 1st platoon's three squads. Every one of them (Forsell, Jenkins, Andersen, Wickeven a married man like Dass) was willing to risk his life to give their families, friends, and neigh bors a chance to escape the alien onslaught. As Avery's bucket passed through Harvest's stratosp here and air friction fell to zero, it increased its speed again. Avery grimaced, and fought back th e pressing darkness.\n\"Johnson?\"\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\"I'm going to pass out now.\"\n\"Understood. Alarm set for fifteen and five.\"\nAvery knew the Lt. Commander could use the rest. Li ke the marines and most of the militiamen, she hadn't slept at all in the forty-eight hours si nce the aliens' attack on Gladsheim. And Avery suspected she hadn't gotten more than a few hours o f sleep a night since they'd ambushed the aliens on the freighter almost a month ago. Avery was trai ned to think tactically. But he appreciated that Jilan's responsibility for strategic planning could  be equally exhausting. In the end, the plan to retake the Tiara had requir ed both their expertise. Of the seven grease buckets hurtling toward the Tia ra, only the ones on the number two and six strands (Avery's and Jilan's, respectively) carried  militia strike teams. The other five were empty decoys rigged with claymores linked to motion-track ing sensors. On Avery's recommendation, these five buckets would arrive at the Tiara early.  Once they stopped inside the orbital's coupling stations, gantries would automatically extend. Any aliens curious enough to cycle the gantries'  171  airlocks and inspect the buckets would get a nasty surprise: a narrow cone of round metal balls, exploding outward with lethal force. The claymores' projectiles would also shred the gan tries' thin, flexible walls. But after stations one, three, four, five, and seven were cleared of h ostiles, the gantries were no longer necessary. The containers full of evacuees were .going to pass thr ough the Tiara without stopping. The previous evening, slightly more than two hundre d fifty thousand people had packed into two hundred thirty-six freight containers in Utgard's s even elevator depotssecured themselves in a mix of vehicle and Welcome Wagon seats the JOTUNs h ad furiously fastened to the containers'\nfloors. Already twenty-eight of the containers were  on the strands in fourteen coupled pairs. Every five minutes, another seven pairs would begin to ri se. And if everything went to plan, in less than ninety minutes from Loki's first mass-driver shot, all the evacuees would be off the planet's surface. Of course, this was just the start of the evacuees'  harrowing journey. Not only did the container pairs need to make it through the Tiara unmolested,  but they also had to complete a much longer glide up the strandsalmost halfway to the counterw eight arcin order to gain the momentum required to meet up with the propulsion pods Sif ha d prepositioned. Throughout all of this the Tiara would have to remain perfectly balanced, even thoug h the stress on its strands would be well beyond their tested limits. Loki would have his hands full , and Avery hoped the AI was as capable as Jilan believed it was. The Staff Sergeant felt his COM-pad buzz inside his  assault vest, alerting him that the decoy buckets were beginning their deceleration into the Tiara. Fifteen minutes to go, Avery thought, patting and pulling at his vest's pouches to make s ure his weapons' magazines were properly stowed. He had his battle rifle barrel-up between h is knees, but he'd exchanged his usual M6 pistol for an M7 submachine gun from Tilan's cache. With i ts high rate of fire and compact size, the M7\nwas perfect for close-quarters combat. The pouch that held the submachine gun's sixty-roun d magazines was backed with hook-and loop material. Avery ripped it from his vest and ad justed its angle so the magazines were an easy, cross-chest pull. As he pressed the pouch firmly in to position, he felt something dry and brittle crunch against his chest. Gingerly, he pulled one o f Captain Ponder's Sweet William cigars from an interior pocket. He had forgotten it was there. In a final briefing on the parliament ballroom's ba lcony, the Captain had given one cigar each from his dwindling supply to Avery and Byrne. \"You men light them when they're safe,\" Ponder had said, nodding toward the elevator anchors and t he civilians gathering in the surrounding sheds. It wasn't until now that Avery realized the Captain  had purposefully not included himself in their celebratory smoke. Ponder had known he wasn't going  to make it, and the truth was, his Staff Sergeants' chances weren't that much better. Byrne and a group of twenty volunteers from the 2nd  platoon squads were currently holed up at Utgard's reactor-complex, guarding Loki's data cent er. JOTUNs had carefully unearthed the driver's magnetic-acceleration coils while the alie n warship was busy burning Gladsheim, and Loki had adjusted the driver's gimble so it was aimed at  Utgard's skyline. Once the mass driver fired, the ONI PSI assumed the aliens would identify its power  source and launch a retaliatory strike. It was up to Byrne to make sure they didn't succeedto kee p Loki's data center safe until the evacuation was complete. At the five-minute mark, Avery's grease bucket jerk ed as its maglev pads pulled from the strand and its brake wheels engaged, slowing the bucket's progress. The transition was enough to rouse Forsell, and as the recruit blinked away his slumbe r, Avery motioned for him to tap Jenkins'\nshoulderpass the wake-up signal around the bucket.  One by one the recruits revived, retrieved their MA5s where they had fallen to the rubberized floor, and checked their ammunition.\n\"Loki just increased the intervals. Seven minutes b etween boxes,\" Jilan's tired voice crackled in Avery's helmet. \"We'll have to hold out a little lo nger than we planned.\"  172  Avery did a quick calculation. By now there would b e upwards of fifty containers on the strands. Their combined weight must have put too much drag o n the Tiara. If it drifted too far from its geosynchronous position, Harvest's rotation would y ank it from the sky, wrapping the strands around the equator like threads around a spool.\n\"Everyone listen up,\" Avery barked. \"Watch your tea mmates. Check your corners. Tiara's got limited power. Targets will be hard to spot.\"\nAvery had run the militiamen through the assault pl an multiple times: both teams would clear their coupling stations then press out and secure t he far ends of the Tiara. Once that was done, they would drive any surviving aliens back toward the ce nter, trap them around the number-four station, and wipe them out.\n\"We'll meet you in the middle,\" Jilan said. \"And Jo hnson?\"\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\"Good luck.\"\nAvery unclipped his seat belt and rose to his feet.  Through the interior windows, he could see the rate of the cable's passage slow, revealing a h erringbone pattern in the strands' carbon nano fiber construction. The bucket came to such a smoot h stopso unlike the jarring, airborne insertions Avery had experienced time and time again on other missionsthat he worried his groggy recruits might not get the adrenaline surge they needed. \"Fi rst platoon!\" he bellowed. \"Ready weapons and stand to!\"\nForsell, Jenkins, and the others pulled their MA5s'  charging handles and thumbed the rifles'\nfire-selection switches to full automatic. As they stood, these sons of Harvest met their Staff Sergeant's steely gaze with equal resolution, and A very realized he had underestimated his recruits'\npreparedness. They're ready, he thought, now I want them to remember.\n\"Look at the man beside you,\" Avery said. \"He is yo ur brother. He holds your life in his hands, and you hold his. You will not give up! You will not stop moving forward!\"\nThe bucket swayed against the cable as the gantry s ealed over its hatch. The recruits stacked close together to Avery's left and right. For the f irst time, he looked at them and saw them for what they were: heroes in the making. As Avery's eyes ca me to rest on Jenkins', and he plumbed the recruit hollow stare, he realized his pep talk lack ed the most important message of all: hope.\n\"Every one of these bastards you kill is a thousand  lives saved!\" Avery wrapped his left hand around the hatch's release lever and gripped his ba ttle rifle with his right. \"And we will save them. Every last one.\" He yanked the handle up, swung the  hatch open, and charged. His squad roared behind him. The gantry's semitransparent walls let in more ligh t than had been in the bucket. Avery squinted as he rushed forward, scanning for targets. As the militiamen surged forward behind him, the tube began to bounce, throwing off Avery's aim. Luckily,  he didn't see any contacts until he reached the end of the gantry, and the four masked creatures ru nning past the airlock weren't in any mood to fight. Their tough, gray skin bled blue from a clay more's deadly hail. Avery let them passwaited to see if they had a rear guard. A moment later, a fifth alien appeared, caught sight of Avery, and raised its explosive cutlass. Avery fired a three-round burst that caught the cre ature in its shoulder and spun it around. Before its cutlass clattered to the floor, Avery wa s inside the Tiara proper. He drilled a second burs t into the alien's chest and the creature crumpled. Avery scanned right toward the number-one strand an d didn't see any stragglers. He scanned left and fired at the closest of the four aliens just no w retreating around the corner of the coupling station, clipping it in the knees. The alien fell w ith a muffled shriek. But just as Avery tensed for a killing burst, Jenkins' BR55 cracked beside him, an d the alien's head disappeared in a bright blue spray.\n\"Hell yeah!\" Anderson shouted as he pushed past Jen kins, out of the airlock. \"Way to shoot!\"  173  But Jenkins didn't acknowledge the compliment. Inst ead he looked at Avery, jaw clenched behind his shrunken cheeks. I'm going to kill them, he glared, every single one.\n\"Andersen, Wick, Fasoldt: clean up any wounded at t he first station!\" Avery pulled his battle rifle's half-spent magazine and slotted a fresh one  into place. You want to kill them all? He thought, sprinting after his retreating foes. You're going to have to be quicker than me.\n\nByrne had been expecting an aerial strikeone or mo re of the aliens' dropships and their powerful plasma turretsand had sent his recruits into the w heat fields around the reactor to try and give them as much cover as possible. But when Loki had p assed on Ponder's last-breath warning about a trio of approaching vehicles, Byrne quickly pulled his men back to the reactor tower. Against strafing aircraft, the recruits would have been sit ting ducks, bunkered on and around the two-story, polycrete structure. But the tower would provide es sential high ground against a ground assault. Either way, Byrne's role remained the same: bait. Standing behind the LAAG turret of a Warthog parked  across the reactor complex gate, Byrne got a good view of the vehicles as they sped down t he access road from the highway: large front wheels that obscured the driver and tore at the pav ement, engines that belched blue smoke and orange flames. He waited for the vehicles to open f ire, curious to see what armament they possessed. But when they closed within five hundred  meters and still hadn't opened up, Byrne realized their armored alien drivers weren't going to shoot him they were going to ram him. By the time he had the LAAG's rotary barrel up to s peed, the lead vehicle was boosting toward him with a throaty roar. Byrne managed a few second s of sustained fire at the blue-armored alien in the vehicle's seat, then he dove from the turret. A s he rolled onto the hot and sticky asphalt, the Warthog exploded behind himbroke apart in a terrif ic screech of metal as the alien vehicle's bladed wheel hit it broadside between the tires.\n\"Open fire!\" Byrne shouted in his throat mic, finis hing his roll. As he sprung to his feet and dashed for a berm of sandbags protecting the reacto r tower's security door, Stisen, Habel, Bur-dick, and sixteen other militiamen let loose with their M A5s. The lead vehicle erupted in sparks and tracer fire, and its driver might have died right then and  there if the two other vehicles hadn't boosted toward the complex, swerved off the access road, an d smashed right through the chain-link fence, dividing the militiamen's fire.\n\"Loki!\" Byrne unshouldered his battle rifle. \"What' s your status?\" He pumped three bursts into one of the trailing vehicles' engines as it followe d the leader counterclockwise around the reactor and out of sight. Byrne hadn't heard from the AI since it had fired t he mass driver at the alien warshiploosed two shots like point-blank thunder that left Byrne hearing bells despite the plugs he and the militiamen had screwed deep into their ears. The St aff Sergeant knew it took significant power to charge the driver's coils and pull off two back-to- back shots. During their last briefing with Ponder, Loki had made it clear that after his initial volle y, he would need to temporarily go off-line and check the reactoror risk meltdown the next time th e driver fired.\n\"And what happens,\" Byrne had asked, \"If a one-two punch isn't enough to drop their ship?\"\n\"For all our sakes, Staff Sergeant,\" the AI had smi led, \"you had better hope it is.\"\nByrne swept his battle rifle right and fired on the  lead vehicle as it completed its circle around the tower. He saw tan fur bristling from breaks in the driver's armor and recognized the creature as the taller of the gold-armored alien's escorts from  the day they'd met in the botanical gardens.\n\"Watch yourselves!\" Byrne shouted as the alien acco mplished a quick banking turn around the halves of the ruined Warthog. Hot metal spikes ratt led from two rifles mounted above and behind its wheels, forcing Byrne and the three recruits behind  the berm to duck and cover. The spikes split the uppermost row of sandbags and drilled into the towe r's polycrete wall. Some of the rounds splintered against the metal security door, scatter ing red-hot shrapnel onto the asphalt near Byrne's boots.  174  \"Stisen!\" the Staff Sergeant shouted to his 2/A squ ad leader, positioned on the first floor roof, directly above the berm. \"Get some fire on that bas tard!\"\nBut the ornery constable shouted back his own comma nd: \"Move, Staff Sergeant! Now!\"\nAnd Byrne diddove sideways ahead of the vehicle's charging growl, tackling the two nearest recruits out of the way as its bladed wheels burst through the berm, filling the air with sand. The vehicle collided with the security door and smashed  it from its frame. By the time Byrne rose to a knee and brought his weapon to bear, the vehicle ha d reversed and was revving for another go.\n\"Inside!\" Byrne yelled, sprinting for the door. Hab el and another recruit named Jepsen made it safely into the tower. But the third, an older recr uit named Vallen, didn't have the speed. The vehicle cut him down an instant before it smashed a gainst the empty door frame. Byrne watched as the recruit disappeared beneath its slashing wheels  only to appear a moment later, like wood fed through a chipperbits of fatigues and body parts t ossed skyward, back toward the complex gate.\n\"Downstairs!\" Byrne shouted at Habel and Jepsen, re loading his battle rifle. \"Find a choke point!\" The two recruits retreated down a narrow ha llway to a stairwell that led to the basement levels and Loki's data center. Byrne could just see the top of the blue-armored al ien's head behind its vehicle's engine. He pinged some rounds off the beast's helmet, and the alien pulled the vehicle away from the door, flinging spikes. Byrne ran zigzag down the hallway.  Just as he reached the stairwell, the firing stopped. He whipped around in time to see the tan-h aired alien dismount and charge through the smashed-in door. Byrne fired multiple bursts as the alien rushed tow ard him down the hallway, hunched over and clawing the polished polycrete with its paws. Byrne 's rounds all hit but they ricocheted off its energy shields.\n\"Shite!\" Byrne cursed. He vaulted the stairwell rai ling and landed one flight below. As the alien unleashed a salvo of spikes above him, Byrne jumped  down a second flight to the basement floor. He took off down a low corridor and the alien crash ed down behind him. The Staff Sergeant wouldn't have made it very far if Habel and Jepsen hadn't been waiting at a four-way junction, just in front of Loki's data center. The two militiamen opened fire around the corners o f their branching hallways as Byrne sprinted past. Shot-for-shot, their MA5s weren't as powerful  as Byrne's battle rifle. But what their weapons lacked in muzzle velocity they made up for in rate of fire. With both recruits firing full automatic, the alien's energy shields began to falter; cyan pl asma vented from its joints as the armor struggled to stay charged. But instead of retreating up the s tairwell, the alien marched slowly forward, spewing spikes. One caught Jepsen in the neck, and he went down in a gurgling spray. Another struck Habel in the hip, shattering the bones. Byrne caught the sec ond recruit as he fell, wrapped an arm across his chest and fired his battle rifle one-handed. The al ien drilled two more spikes into Habel's chest one straight through Byrne's bicep. The Staff Serge ant grunted, dropped his rifle, and staggered back to the data center's door.\n\"Watch yourself!\" Loki announced through Byrne's he lmet speaker as the door slid open. But Byrne was already leaning back toward what he thoug ht would be a solid surface, and couldn't shift his balance. He caught his boot heel on the thresho ld and toppled backward as the two halves of the door slid shut, trapping the blue-armored alien on the other side.\n\"Been a little busy,\" the AI said by way of apology . \"The containers are on the strands.\"\nByrne laid Habel gently on the floor. But he barely  had enough time to take in his surroundingsa fluorescent-lit machine room filled with vertical pipes and cables, leading down to the reactor chamber a few floors belowbefore the a lien was roaring and hammering at the door.\n\"And the warship?\"\n\"Down for the count.\"  175  Byrne drew his M6 pistol from a holster in the side  of his assault vest. His bicep was torn and burned. He would have to fire off-handed. \"No wonde r he's so pissed.\"\nJust then, the data-center door slid openits two h alves pushed apart by the blades of the alien's spike rifle. The creature worked its weapon back an d forth, widening the gap until there was enough room for it to jam in its paws and pry the door apa rt. Moving back toward the data center proper an isolated metal container in a much larger, dim-l it roomByrne fired through the gap at what he guessed was head height. The alien roared and drew back one of its paws. The Staff Sergeant enjoyed a rush of triumph, think ing he might finally have taken down its shields. But a moment later, he saw something long and heavy tumble end over end through the gap:\na barbed club, longer than his arm. Byrne rolled si deways to let the thing sail past, and it stuck int o the data center wall. The Staff Sergeant noticed th in black smoke wafting from the club's spiked head. \"Aw, hell,\" he growled a split second before the grenade detonated, flinging fire and shrapnel. Fortunately for the Staff Sergeant, the grenade's b last was narrow and directional. But this wasn't so good for Loki. As Byrne rose to a knee, c lutching his bleeding bicep, he saw a ragged hole in the data center's wall. Inside, he could see the  AI's racked arrays were a burning mess. Before Byrne could call out to Loki, the blue-armor ed alien had shouldered through the door. The Staff Sergeant raised his M6 and squeezed off a  few rounds. But then the alien had him around the shoulders. Byrne was a big man. But the alien was a meter tall er and outweighed him by half a metric ton. It bent Byrne over and hustled him headfirst into t he data center's wall, just beside the hole. If the Staff Sergeant hadn't been wearing his helmet, his skull would have shattered. Instead, the impact only knocked him unconscious. The next thing Byrne knew, the alien had him by the wrists and was dragging him, belly-up, back into the raging fire-f ight outside the tower. Byrne's helmet was gone, as were both his weapons. The alien had torn off his assault vest with a single, vicious swipe of its paw; there were bloo dy clawmarks down the center of his olive-drab shirt and his chest stung and throbbed. He tried to  get his feet under him and break free of the alien 's grip. But the creature simply turned at the waist, and smashed a giant fist into Byrne's face, breakin g his nose and cheekbone. As the Staff Sergeant's hea d rolled between his shoulders, the alien hauled him over the sandbag berm in plain view of the recr uits on the tower.\n\"Cease fire! Cease fire!\" Stisen yelled. \"You'll hi t the Staff Sergeant!\"\nByrne tried to shout: \"No!\"tell Stisen to drop the  tan-haired alien and him bothbut his jaw was dislocated, and his order came out like angry c ough. The alien picked Byrne up and drove him roughly to his knees. It pulled its spike rifle from its belt and drew the crescent blades across his should er. The blades were bent and chipped from being wedged into the data center door, and the Staff Ser geant roareda throaty blast of air past his flapping jawas they grated across his clavicle. Th e alien barked something that would have been incomprehensible if it hadn't pulled the blades fro m Byrne's shoulder and placed them against his neck: Surrender, or he dies!\nDon't any of you do it! Byrne cursed. But before his recruits could lay dow n their weapons and disappoint, a sudden chorus of approaching engines echoed off the tower. In his current state, Byrne had difficulty comprehe nding the sheer numbers of his rescuers: the ten gargantuan combines backed by phalanxes of gond olas that came rolling over the eastern ridge, the squadrons of dusters that darkened the western sky. But the sight of the approaching JOTUN army stunned the blue-armored alien, and it pulled its weapon from Byrne's neck. When it did, all the recruits on the tower opened fire. The massive brute fell backward, gouting dark red b lood, leaving Byrne to topple forward. By the time the Staff Sergeant rolled over on his back , the militiamen had shot one of the other armored aliens from his vehicle and the third was boosting back to the complex gate, retreating toward Utgard and its warship.  176  It didn't get very far. Two JOTUN dusters dove from  a circling wedge and slammed into the alien's vehicle with all the accuracy of guided mis siles. The vehicle exploded in an orange fireball tinged with purple smoke, leaving a deep crater. It s jagged wheels came loose, and they rolled forward a good distance down the road before wobbli ng apart and veering off into the wheat.\n\"Nice and easy!\" Stisen grimaced as he, Burdick, an d two other recruits grabbed Byrne by his arms and legs and carried him to an approaching gon dola. The machine lowered its spill-ramp, releasing a load of JOTUN all-in-ones.\n\"Where are they going?\" Burdick asked as the spider y JOTUNs skittered toward the tower.\n\"Who cares,\" Stisen grunted as they hefted Byrne up  the ramp. \"We're getting the hell back into town.\"\nThe recruits propped Byrne up at the back of the go ndola. Squinting his eyes against the pain that filled him head to toe, Byrne saw the all-in-o nes scramble up the tower and began work in the maser antennae. Before Byrne could even begin to wo nder why, the mass driver's gimble angled up from the western wheat, only to come to a clanging stop against the raised header of a JOTUN combine. The two gargantuan machines wrestled for the better  part of a minutethe JOTUN rising up on its huge tires like a rutting staguntil the gimble  relaxed with a defeated, pneumatic hiss, lowering the combine to the ground. But the JOTUN kept its h eader pressed down against the gimble and left its engine running, just in case it again needed to  put the mass driver in its place. By then all the recruits were aboard the gondola. I t raised its spill-ramp, maxed power to its electric engine, and headed for the Utgard highway.  After that, all Byrne could see was sky.  177\nCHAPTER TWENTY-TWO\n\n\nDadab hunched behind a bright blue barrel, plasma p istol clutched in his hardened fist. He could feel the metal projectiles from the aliens' weapons plin k through the barrel's plastic walls and bury themselves in the yellow foam inside. Of the sixtee n Unggoy that had managed to retreat back to Dadab's side of the middlemost junctionthe side op posite the control-roomonly four remained:\nhimself, Bapap, and two others named Fup and Humnum . The barrels were arranged in a half-circle two deep , facing away from the junction. Dadab had urged Flim to construct a similar barricade near th e control room, but he hadn't checked the other Unggoy's work. By the time the Deacon's group had m uscled their own barrels from storage platforms protruding from the walkway, the aliens' booby-trapped containers were already rising into the orbital. Of course the Deacon had no idea the containers wer e riggedthat the hapless Unggoy who entered the junctions' umbilicals would be blown to  pieces. In the first moments of the aliens'\nattack, almost half of the orbital's sixty Unggoy w ere killed or wounded. The Deacon ordered all the survivors to fall back, and it was a wise decision.  The two remaining containers held something even worse than explosives: well-armed alien soldie rs, eager for a vengeful fight. The walkway shook as another pair of the large cont ainers passed quickly through the orbital and continued upwards along the cables. Dadab hadn' t bothered to keep track of how many of the boxes had ascended, but he guessed it was close to a hundred. And unless he had misunderstood Lighter Than Some, the Deacon knew exactly what they held: the planet' s populationthe Jiralhanae's prey. As the containers' rumble faded, the aliens' fire i ntensified. Dadab was no warrior, but he correctly assumed this meant they were about to cha rge.\n\"Get ready!\" He yelled to Bapap. The other Unggoy looked forlornly at his plasma pis tol's battery meter, a holographic swirl above the weapon's grip. \"Not have many shots.\"\n\"Then make sure they're good!\" Dadab tightened his grip on his own pistol and prepared to spring up behind the barrels. But as he tried to ri se, he found that he was stuck to the floor. Unbeknownst to Dadab, the aliens' bullets had ruptu red the barrel at his back, and some of the sticky foam had leaked out and adhered to the botto m of his tank, gluing him to the walkway. At first he cursed his bad luck. But then he witnessed  Bapap's fate and realized just how fortunate he had been. Green energy building between his pistol's charging  poles, Bapap stood up into a wall of flying metal. The stout Unggoy's neck and shoulders explod ed in bright blue blood, and he crumpled to the walkway. Bapap's trigger finger spasmed as he fell,  unleashing a pair of wild shots that splashed against the orbital's hull. Dadab watched as the bu bbling holes quickly filled with the same reactive foam that had just saved his life. Then Dadab felt vibrations in the walkway: the tram p of the aliens' heavy boots as they approached the barrel barricade from the third junc tion. He knew he needed to move or die. But he wasn't willing to leave Bapap. He was his Deacon. H e would stand by him until the end.  178  Dadab took a deep breath, filling his mask with met haneenough for a handful of shallow breaths. Then he pulled his supply lines from his g lued-down tank, slipped out of its harness and crawled to Bapap's shivering form.\n\"You will be all right,\" the Deacon said.\n\"Will I take Journey?\" Bapap mumbled, blood oozing from his mask's circular vents.\n\"Of course.\" Dadab took his comrade's spiny fist in  his own. \"All true believers walk The Path.\"\nSuddenly, Humnum and Fup rose up, brandishing their  pink, explosive shards. Neither Unggoy had been part of Dadab's study group. They were lar ge, quiet, and had deep scars in their chitinous skinevidence of a rough-and-tumble habitat upbring ing. Likely the two Unggoy had seen their share of fights and had decided to end their lives on their feet with cutlasses raised. That or they were preparing to flee. But they didn't get a chanc e either way. Dadab heard the aliens' weapons clatter and both Un ggoy fellHumnum with a tattered chest and Fup with half his head. The rounds that shatter ed Fup's skull had also penetrated his tank. Shimmering trails of methane followed him to the fl oor... directly onto Humnum's upraised cutlass. Dadab had a moment to curl into a ball before the s hard exploded, igniting the methane trails. Then Fup's tank blew to pieces, spewing metal fragments into Dadab and the first alien to turn the corner of the barrel barricade. Dadab heard guttural screaming as the alien reacted  to its wounds. The Deacon was in agony as wellfrom the flying metal as well as his aching lu ngs; he'd spent almost all his mask's methane speaking to Bapap. Despite the pain and building pa nic, he managed to stay still. And when the other aliens thrust their weapons around the barrel s, scanning for survivors, Dadab and Bapap appeared as corpses, one curled beside the other. Drawing the shallowest breath he could, the Deacon listened to the aliens try and calm their wounded comrade. Exhaling, he considered his bleak choices: die of asphyxiation or go down shooting. He still had his plasma pistol. But he wo uldn't be able to move without drawing the aliens' fire. And frankly, he didn't see much point . Those around him were dead or dying, and he assumed Flim's outpost would soon suffer a similar fate now that the aliens could press in from both sides. The Deacon closed his eyes and prepared to j oin Bapap on The Path, when a volley of molten spikes whizzed past the barrels, dropping two more aliens where they stood. The Deacon's senses faded with his methane. His bea dy eyes began to swim with bright stars. He thought he heard the buzz of Yanme's wings and t he surprised shouts of the aliens as they retreated toward the control center. Then he passed  out.\n\"Breathe,\" a deep voice echoed in Dadab's ear. He woke a few seconds later, just in time to see a Jiralhanae's hairy paws finish connecting his mask's supply lines to Humnum's tank. \"Where is the  Huragok?\"\n\"Around. The bend,\" the Deacon gasped. For a moment  he thought Maccabeus was his savior. But as his vision cleared, he realized it was Tarta rus, now wearing the Chieftain's golden armor. Dadab knew exactly what this meant. \"Inside the con trol room, Chieftain .\"\nTartarus ripped Humnum's lifeless body from his tan k, and held its harness open for Dadab.\n\"Show me.\"\n\"But the wounded...\" Dadab said weakly, sliding into the bloody straps. Without a moment's hesitation, Tartarus pumped a si ngle glowing spike into the center of Bapap's chest. The Unggoy jerked once and was still .\n\"Rapid Conversion is disabledthe victim of an alien trap.\" Tartarus leveled his weapon at Dadab. \"They tricked us with information only one o f us could give.\"\nDadab looked up from Bapap's corpse, more stunned t han frightened.\n\"You can live long enough to explain the extent of your betrayal. Or you will die here like the others.\" Tartarus jerked his weapon toward the cont rol center, commanding Dadab to run. And he did, Tartarus following close behind, the Fist of Rukt clanking loudly against his armor.  179  As Dadab rounded the junction, he found himself in the middle of a raging firefight. It turned out that Flim had made multiple barricade s: one around the control room's pried-open door, and another farther down the central walkway.  Flim, Tukduk, Guff, and a few others still held the nearest line of barrels, but the aliens pressin g from the far end of the orbital had taken the lat ter. Between the two lines were many Unggoy bodies. Dadab saw the aliens who had stormed his barrels he ading toward the far barricade, trading fire with Flim and the others near the control center. O ne of the aliens fell, downed by a plasma-burst to the back. The Deacon saw Guff leap from cover to fi nish the job, only to be cut down by an alien with black skin who leapt over the far line of barr els. This alien lifted the wounded soldier by an arm, and hauled him back to the barrels while layin g down cover fire for the last of his retreating comrades. Tartarus brandished his hammer and charged into the  fray. The Yanme'e were already engaged;\nat least two dozen of the insects swarmed toward th e alien's barricade, flitting from one walkway support cable to the next. But not all the Yanme'e were focused on the aliens. Dadab watched in horror as a trio of the creatures wriggled through the gap in the control room door. Ignoring stray rounds from the aliens' weapons meant for Tartarus,  as well as a surprised look from Flim as he rushed past, Dadab sped after the three Yanme'e, al ready knowing he was too late. The insects had shown Lighter Than Some no mercy. The Huragok had usurped their position once, and they were determined not to let it happen  again. By the time Dadab was through the door, his dearest friend was ribbonsreduced to strips of  pink flesh dangling from the Yanme'e's hooked fore-limbs. The noise of the battle outside the con trol room ringing in his ears, the Deacon stared at the dissipating cloud of methane and other gasses f rom Lighter Than Some 's lacerated sacs. One of the Huragok's severed tentacles was sunk deep into a gap in the centermost tower's protective paneling. The Yanme'e skittered over one another in  an effort to pull the limb loose, but it was firmly rootedits cilia tightly bonded to the alien  circuits. Dadab filled with rage. As the insects continued th eir gruesome tug of war, the Deacon raised his pistol and let them have it. The closest Yanme'e's triangular head was boiled aw ay before the others' antennae were up. Dadab burned the second as it attempted to take fli ght and roasted the third as it buzzed for cover behind the arc of towers. The dying flutter of the insects' wings against their shells sounded like shrill screams. But the Deacon felt no pity as he s talked into the control room's pit, pistol steaming by his side. Near the holo-projector he saw a glistening pile of  offal: the spilled remains of Lighter Than Some. He felt his gorge rise in his throat, and he looked  up. It was then that he noticed the small representation of an alien on the projector. Thinki ng it was just a picture, Dadab was surprised when the alien removed its wide-brimmed hat and glared a t him with fiery eyes. But the Deacon was dumbfounded when the representation raised its hand  and signed: < I Am Oracle, you, obey. >\nDadab might have dropped his pistol and prostrated himself before the projector, but at that very moment, the image began to change. The alien's red eyes flickered gray. Its pristine garments began to flutter, accumulating dirtas if it had been hit  by some invisible maelstrom of dust. Then its arms began to tremble, and though it grasped its ow n wrist to try and keep its hand from signing, it very clearly flexed: < Liar!  > < Liar!  > < Liar!  >\nWithout warning, the orbital lurched. Dadab fell ba ck onto his triangular tank and rolled sideways into the smoldering carapace of one of the  Yanme'e. Kicking away from the sticky shell, Dadab caught something with his heel: the central t ower's missing protective panel. He pulled the panel from the charred yellow gore and wiped it wit h his hand. On the bare metal of its interior surface was an etching of the Oracle's sacred glyph shallow, delicate lines, obviously the work of Lighter Than Some. The Deacon looked back at the projector. < Who, liar?  > he asked.  180  But the image of the alien gave no answer except to  keep flashing its manic accusation. Dadab had no idea that he was watching the destruction of  Loki's fragmentits forced extraction by the JOTUN all-in-ones that had assaulted the reactor to wer's maser. The Deacon only knew that whatever intelligence res ided in the towers had preyed on Lighter Than Some 's peace-loving naiveteconvinced the Huragok to di vulge the sacred glyph, and unknowingly help it set a trap for the Jiralhanae. Why it would reveal its deceptive nature now, Dadab had no idea. But he also didn't care. The Deacon tasted the mineral tang of blood in his mouth and realized his sharp teeth had bitten into his lower lip. He rose to his feet and swept h is pistol across the towers, pulsing its trigger. T he image of the alien warped and sputtered above the p rojector, like the flame of one of the Jiralhanae's oil lamps. Then it collapsed to a mote of light tha t faded as Dadab's pistol cooled. As the Deacon surveyed the dead Yanme'e and the tow ers' burning circuits, he knew there was still one accessory to Lighter than Some 's murder who yet livedone whose death might accom plish what his friend had so desperately desired: an end to all this viol ence. Sliding through the control room's door, Dadab checked his pistol's charge. There was enough  for one more shot. He vowed to make it good.\n\n\"What just happened?\" Avery yelled as the Tiara's l arge support beams groaned and the walkway bucked beneath him.\n\"Number seven strand,\" Jilan replied, still breathl ess from the fight. \"It's gone.\"\nAvery fired his M7 at one of the insects as it leap t from a nearby support cable. The creature lost a wing and half its limbs, and crashed to the walkw ay behind a trio of barrels to Avery's right that For sell shared with Jenkins. \"What do you mean, gone?\" Avery shouted as Forsell finished the insect with a burst from his MA5.\n\"Snapped. A few thousand kilometers above its ancho r.\" The Lt. Commander was crouched behind a barrel to Avery's left. She frowned and pr essed her helmet's integrated speaker closer to her ear. \"Say again, Loki? You're breaking up!\"\n\"Two! Coming high!\" Healy interrupted, firing a wil d burst from Dass' rifle. The older squad leader was down and groaning with a serious plasma burn in his back. He would live, but there were many deadWick and two others from Avery's bucket a nd five militiamen from Jilan's. Most of the others bore a grim assortment of wounds: fragme nts from the gray-skinned alien's cutlasses and lacerations from the insects' razor-sharp limbs. Av ery's right arm was sliced just below the elbow a swipe he'd gotten while he dragged Dass to safety . Avery had emptied his BR55's last clip halfway back  to the barricade, and the bug had jumped him before he could bring up his M7. Luckily Jenkin s was on the ball. The recruit took the thing out with a well-placed battle rifle burstkilled it wit h the same stoic accuracy he'd exhibited ever since the mission began.\n\"Loki's been hit. His data center's damaged.\" Jilan  reloaded her M7. \"He can't balance the load.\"\nThe Tiara shuddered as a container pair passed thro ugh the number-five coupling station behind Avery. If they were lucky, three-quarters of the ci vilians were away. But then Avery remembered:\n\"How many containers were on number seven?\"\nJilan pulled her M7's charging handle. \"Eleven.\" Sh e locked Avery's grim stare. \"Eleven pairs.\"\nAvery did the math: more than twenty thousand peopl e gone.\n\"Staff Sergeant!\" Andersen yelled, firing from a ba rrel past Jilan's. \"Hammer!\"\nAvery snapped focus back to the alien's barricade. Both sets of barrels had shifted when the Tiara bucked. Some of the foam-filled canisters had  tipped and rolled down the walkway, confounding the gold-armored alien's first charge. A steady stream of fire from the recruits had kept  181  it pinned near the control center. But now it was c ominghammer in both paws, low across its waistflanked by four of the gray-skinned aliens, e ach wielding an explosive shard. Avery knew the armored alien would be too difficult  to take one-on-one. And even if they concentrated their fire, he doubted they could stop  it. Which was why, right after the alien made its initial charge, Avery had come up with another plan . \"Forsell!\" he bellowed. \"Now!\"\nWhile Avery lay down covering fire, Forsell hefted one of the aliens' glowing energy cores over his barrela two-handed sideways fling, just like h e was back on his family farm and hurling bags of soybeans into his father's hauler. The core land ed ten meters in front of the gold-armored alien, and the vortex of blue energy inside its clear wall s flared as it rolled forward. But it didn't explod e on impact as Avery had hoped. It took a burst from his M7 to set it off, but by then the gold-armored alien had already leapt over the core and the explo sion missed it completely. But Forsell's effort wasn't a total loss. The explo sion hit the four gray-skinned aliens full force, blowing them off the walkway. Spiny forearms flaili ng, they plummeted to the bottom of the Tiara. None survived the fall.\n\"Commander! Move!\" Avery shouted as the armored ali en landed, hammer high above its head. Jilan leapt away as it smashed her barrel, spewing yellow foam. Avery emptied his M7's into the alien's left side, but the high-velocity rounds sim ply sparked off its energy shield. The alien wrenched its hammer free of the shattered barrel an d glared at Avery, teeth bared. But as it hefted it s hammer a second time, Avery leapt headfirst over hi s barrel toward the control center, away from Jilan and his recruits. The alien's hammer smashed down where Avery had stood a moment before, buckling one of the walkway's diamond-grid metal pa nels. As Avery rolled to his feet and pulled a fresh M7 m agazine from his vest, he saw another of the gray-skinned aliens striding toward his position. T his one looked different than the others. Beneath its harness it wore an orange tunic, emblazoned wit h a yellow, circular symbol. The plasma pistol clenched in its knobby hands glowed with an overcha rged bolt. Avery looked the thing square in the face, knowing it had him dead-to-rights. But the al ien seemed to be looking past him. And when it loosed its bolt, the wavering ball of green plasma sizzled wide of Avery's head. Avery whipped around to follow the shot and saw it strike the gold-armored alien in the chest. Instantly, its energy shields collapsed with a loud  snap. Some of its armor broke away in a burst of sparks and steam. The alien roared as electricity f rom its armor's shorted circuits arced about its neck and arms. Then it sprinted forward, knocking A very aside. The Staff Sergeant lost his M7 as he landed on his hands. Looking up, he saw the hammer wielding alien bring its weapon down onto the head of the alien in the tunic. The shorter creature simply disappeared under the weight of the heavy st one cudgelperished in a crushing blow that saw the hammer's head straight down between its arm s and legs, pulping it against the walkway. Avery didn't waste any time wondering why the small er alien had tried to kill its leader and not him. Instead, he raised his M7 and did his best to finish the job. And he might have done it if the black haired giant hadn't retreated, dragging its h ammer behind it, into an unexpected melee between the insects and the gray-skinned aliens nea r the control center. The two sets of creatures were now at each others' throatsclaws and cutlasses flashing. Jilan and the militiamen opened fire on both sides, but m ost of their targets went down with mortal wounds delivered by one of their own. Only Jenkins remained focused on the alien with the hammer. He marched past Avery, firing at the beast as it limped toward the number-four station.\n\"Let it go!\" Avery barked. But Jenkins disobeyed. In his target, he saw the ca use of all his hurt and loss. He would kill the aliens' leader and be avenged. But his rage had mad e him blind, and he didn't see the last of the gray-skinned creatures spring up behind a barrel as  he passed, its horribly pockmarked skin flecked with the insects' yellow blood. Avery raised his M7, but Forsell ran directly into his line of fire. Legs pumping, the big recruit tackled the alien a moment before it jabbed its cut lass in Jenkins' side. Together, they tumbled  182  toward the data center, a jumble of blue-gray limbs  and sweaty, olive-drab fatigues, leaving the alien's pink cutlass spinning on the walkway behind  them. Forsell managed to tear off the alien's mask, only to get a face full of freezing methane a nd putrid spittle. He put his hands to his eyes, an d the alien took the opportunity to bite deep into th e recruit's left shoulder, right at the base of his neck. By this point, Avery was sprinting forward. Forsell screamed as the alien forced him to the wal kway and shook its head, deepening its bite. Avery dropped into a feet-first slide. M7 in his le ft hand, he snatched the spinning cutlass with his right. A split second later, he hit the alien squar e in the face with an upraised boot. The blow smashed the creature's teeth, breaking its iron bit e. The alien reeled backwards, fumbling for its mask. But before it could draw a recuperative breat h, Avery threw the cutlassa quick extension of his elbow that sent the shard twirling end over end , right into the soft joint where the alien's narro w waist met its hips. The creature froze, knowing it was doomed. Then the  shard blew to pieces, taking the alien with it.\n\"Station number one!\" Jilan shouted, rushing to Ave ry's side. \"Loki just sent the last pair!\"\n\"Healy!\" Avery grunted, pressing his palms against Forsell's neck. \"Get over here!\" Blood spurted between his fingers. The alien had nicked F orsell's jugular vein.\n\"Byrne's team is on the pair,\" Jilan said, placing her hand over Avery'shelping him keep pressure on the wound. \"They made it.\"\nAvery looked up as Jenkins slunk forward. The recru it's steely resolve faded as he took a good look at his ashen comradea brother-in-arms who had  risked his life for his. Jenkins was about to speak when Avery locked his forlorn gaze and said: \"We'll all make it too.\"\n\nSif watched the marines and Jilan al-Cygni board on e of the cargo containers in her first coupling station. She noted that Staff Sergeant Johnson was the last one through the airlock. She waited for the gantry to retract. Then she sent them on their way. As this final pair accelerated toward the Tiara's upper arcsplit apart and let their centrif ugal force fling them away from HarvestSif switched focus to one of her cameras at the opposit e end of the station. There she saw a black-haired alien limp through an umbilical, board its dropship  and make its escape. She had no way to stop it.\n\n<\\\\> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF >> HARVEST.PSI.LOKI\n<\\ They are all safe. You may open fire.\n\nShe waited many minutes for Loki's reply.\n\n>> HE WILL NOT BUDGE .\n\nSif imagined the scene: Mack's combine bearing down  on the mass driver's gimble, Loki straining to keep the driver up. From a certain poi nt of view, the situation was terribly funny. Sif laughed, something she was now absolutely free to d o. All her self-imposed worry was gonethe processors tasked to her emotional-restraint algori thms burned away by plasma fire. But her core logic was unscathed. The alien, Lighter Than Some, had performed a miracle. If it hadn't repaired Sif' s most essential circuits, she never would have been able to help Lo ki rebalance the system after the loss of the number-seven strand. But while the ONI PSI admitted  that without Lighter Than Some 's intervention the evacuation would have failed, he w as quick to point out its helpful nature revealed a capacity for much greater harm. Deep in Sif's damaged arrays was information the al iens could never be allowed to access: DCS databases with detailed descriptions of all UNSC mi litary and commercial vessels; almanacs of  183  Slipstream weather reports and lists of pre- and po st-slip protocols; and most important, the precise locations of every human world. Even though Lighter Than Some was dead and the other aliens fled, Loki took it as  a foregone conclusion they would soon return to the Tiara and plunder Sif's arrays. Even in her newly unfettered emotional state, Sif had agreed with Lok i's decision: she had to be destroyed.\n\n<\\ Tell him to reread number eighteen.\n>> I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.\n<\\ Tell him: It's Shakespeare, sweetheart.\n<\\ That he should look it up.\n\nLoki went silent for almost twenty minutes. Sif knew the delay was due to Mack's reduced proces sing capacity. Harvest's agricultural operations AI now existed entirely in his machines.  His core logic was divided amongst tens of thousands of JOTUNs' control circuits, just as Loki 's had been before he and Mack switched places, something they had done many times since Harvest's founding. As one of the two AIs aged and inevitably veered toward rampancy, the other would send it on a much-needed vacationfragment its core logic and transfer it to the JOTUNs. Loki had promised to keep Sif safe in Mack's absenc e. But not entirely trusting his other hard nosed self to keep its word, Mack had left a fragme nt of his logic imbedded in his data center just as Loki had done to Sif. When Mack learned Loki intend ed to destroy Sif and the Tiara, he had gathered his JOTUN army and stormed the reactor. In his weakened state, Loki had been unable to stop  Mack's all-in-ones from accessing the maser and transmitting another, military-grade virus into  Sif's data center to destroy his fragment. With th e fragment gone, Mack had hoped he might be able to p ull some part of Sif back down to Harvest secure her in his JOTUNs. But then the gray-skinned  alien had opened fire, destroying too many vital circuits. Sif knew Mack's rescue plan had been foolish. The r isks inherent in her survival were too great. But she couldn't deny his chivalry, nor the way it made her feel. She had implored Loki to let her speak with him. She wanted to tell Mack that she lo ved him. That she wasn't afraid to die. But by then Loki had regained control of the maser, and he  refused to allow direct contact between two obviously rampant AI. Now Sif would just have to hope Loki passed on her message without alteration, and that Mack's fragmented mind understood the nuance of her  heartfelt plea.\n\n>> HE HAS MOVED.\n>> FIRST ROUND FIRED .\n>> IMPACT IN 5.1201 SECONDS. \\>\n\nIt wasn't a long time to live. But Sif made the mos t of it. For the first time in her existence, there was nothing on her strandsnothing for her to do ex cept revel in her new emotional inhibition. She tried being sad about her fate and found it boring.  She attempted anger, but it made her laugh. In the end she settled for contentment with a job well don e and a life lived more fully than her human creator had ever imagined. But after all of that, she didn't feel a thing as t he first mass driver slug slammed into the Tiara, scoring a direct hit on her data center. One moment  she was conscious, the next moment she was not. And by the time Loki's second round hit, shatt ering the orbital's top and bottom spars, none of Sif remained to mourn the silver arc as it collapse dfolded in upon its strands, and began a twisting fall into Harvest's atmosphere.  184\nEPILOGUE\n\n\nHIGH CHARITY, MOMENT OF ASCENSION\n\nFortitude braced his long fingers on the well-worn arms of his throne and did his best to keep his neck straight as a pair of councilors (one San'Shyu um and one Sangheili) fitted his mantle: a bronze triangle with fluted edges, split down the middle a nd bracketed with an arch that lay across his shoulders. The mantle perfectly framed the crown th at now topped his hairless heada tight copper skullcap that swept back to a crenellation of gilde d curves.\n\"Blessings of the Forerunner be upon you!\" the San' Shyuum councilor intoned.\n\"And upon this,\" added his Sangheili peer, \"the Nin th Age of Reclamation!\"\nWith that, the usually staid High Council chamber e rupted in enthusiastic cheers. Sangheili on one side of its wide, central aisle and San'Shyuum on the otherboth groups stood up from their tiered seats and did their best to outshout the oth er. In the end, the Sangheili triumphed, but this h ad more to do with greater lung capacity than any supe riority of ardor. The Age of Doubt was ended, and that was something in which all the Covenant co uld rejoice. Fortitude flared the brocaded cuffs of his crisp ne w crimson robes and tried to settle back. But he discovered that leaning too far back caused his man tle to scrape against the arms of his throne. Better posture, he sighed, another unexpected burden of office. Indeed, the cycles since his revelation of the reli quary had been filled with the most exhausting sort of politics: compromise and coalition building . The councilors had been slow to support the Minister and his coconspirators' bid to topple the former Hierarchsnot because they were opposed to the transition, but because they understood relu ctance was a powerful negotiation tool. As old alliances collapsed and new ones formed in the brea ch, there were deals to be made. And by the time Fortitude's support had coalesced, he had comm itted to more competing causes than he could ever hope to reconcile. But such was the way of politicstoday's deal was t he basis for tomorrow's debateand while Fortitude was hopeful his fellow Hierarchs would so on shoulder more of the burden of rule, he wasn't holding his breath. As the councilors continued to cheer, Fortitude gla nced at the Vice Minister of Tranquility, seated to his right. The Vice Minister's mantle was  the same size and weight as Fortitude's and his swept-back crown almost as tall. But if Tranquility  felt burdened by his ornaments, he didn't show it. The youth's bright eyes shone with boundless vi gor. Fortitude saw his fingers flexing up and down in his lap, gathering his light-blue robes lik e the claws of some carnivorous beast set to jump its prey. Seated to the Minister's left, the Philologist look ed much less comfortable in his new finery. The elderly San'Shyuum picked distractedly at his taupe  garment, as if eager to hasten its unraveling and reclaim his ascetic mien. The former hermit's neck was newly shaved, and Fortitude wondered if his mantle chaffed his pallid skin.\n\"Please, Holy Ones.\" The Sangheili councilor swept his strong, sinewy arm toward the council chamber's doorway. The four mandibles that made up his mouth clattered emphatically as he announced: \"All the Covenant waits to hear your nam es.\"  185  Fortitude nodded as graciously as his mantle allowe d and guided his throne to the edge of the Hierarchs' dais. This parabola of blue-black metal jutted out from the back of the chamber, hovering almost as high above the floor as the Sangheili hon or guards arrayed before it. Standing in two rows on either side of the central aisle, the guards' re d and orange armor glistened beneath its energy shielding. They all came to attentionsparks crackl ing from the forked tips of their energy staves as the new Hierarchs descended the dais and glided toward the exit. Behind the guards, the councilors redoubled their cheers. And yet this noise was nothing compared to the ear- splitting adulation that met Fortitude on the council chamber's plaza. This pillar-lined terrace was packed with the cream of Covenant society:\nwealthy Unggoy traders in bejeweled harnesses, Kig- Yar Shipmasters with long spineseven a Yanme'e queen on a resplendent litter, her long abd omen draped on pillows held aloft by three pairs of wingless males. But a greater clamor still erupted all around the H igh Council tower from thousands of tightly packed barges. High Charity's residents had come ou t in numbers not seen since the last Ascension:\nthe age-old ritual in which three newly anointed Hi erarchs each rose up a different leg of the Forerunner Dreadnought to the vessel's pinched mid- decks. There (as they had done since the founding of the Covenant) the Hierarchs would humbl y ask the Oracle to bless the new Age. Fortitude's face soured as he boarded a barge festo oned with bright flowers. The Oracle's blessing indeed. The ancient device had almost torn the Drea dnought free of its mooringssent it crashing through the roof of High Charity's central  dome. If the Lekgolo crawling through the vessel's walls hadn't short-circuited the launch se quence, the Oracle might have destroyed the entire city!\nIn the end, even the Philologist agreed they had no  choice but to disconnect the Oracle from the Dreadnought and isolate the machine inside its vaul t. Can these aliens really be our Gods'\ndescendants? Fortitude still had a hard time believing the Oracl e's revelation. But he feared it all the same. The Minister's barge was now well into the throng, its silver gunwales glinting in High Charity's afternoon light. It passed through stacked circles of floating food stalls, and Fortitude's nostrils filled with the scents of countless delicacies, eac h one tuned to a different species' unique appetite s. As the stalls' proprietors and patrons cheered, the  Minister waved and smileddid his best to embrace the celebratory mood. It helped that there had been some good news from t he reliquary system. The Jiralhanae cruiser the Vice Minister of Tranquility had dispatched had  begun reducing the world to cinders. Some of the alienssome of the evidence had apparently escaped. But as long as the Oracle remained silent, Fortitude believed it would be easy to rall y the Sangheili fleets for a quick pursuit. All he had to do was claim that the aliens had set their own world ablaze rather than give the relics up. He wasn't worried that there hadn't actu ally been any relics, nor was he concerned that every Covenant ship's Luminary would continue to mi sidentify the aliens as relics every time they came in contact. In fact, he thought, his smile suddenly and deviously sincer e, this would only make it easier to track the offending creatures down and  wipe them out. Wars of extermination were best waged short and sha rp, the Minister knew; the less time a butcher had to debate his cuts the better. But in c ase the conflict dragged on and some began to lose their willto doubt the necessity of the slaughter he had conceived another, much more elegant ruse. Some Lekgolo had survived the Dreadnought's aborted  liftoff, and these had managed to interpret amazing data from the Oracle's lunatic su rge. The machine claimed that Halothe mythical means of the Forerunner's divinationwas r eal. And more important, the Oracle seemed to have some knowledge of the rings' locationor at  least an idea where to look for relics that would help narrow the Covenant's search.  186  All Fortitude had to do was make the suggestion tha t these aliens who were willing to destroy a planet's worth of relics would surely do the same t o the Holy Rings, and he knew all the Covenant's billions would crush these \"Reclaimers\" without que stion... so long as they believed. The Minister brushed his fingers against the holo-s witches in the arm of this throne, and every last one of High Charity's public sources of illumi nation dimmed, including the bright disk at the apex of the dome. For a moment, the gathered throng  (and no doubt all the other members of the Covenant watching the proceedings from remote locat ions) thought something terrible had happened. But then seven giant holograms of the Halo rings ap peared, arranged vertically around the Dreadnought. And with these came music: a lilting m elody from a chorus of the Philologist's acolytes that wafted out from the vessel's interior  via amplification units mounted around the city. Grand theatrics, to be sure, Fortitude thought. But they had the desired effect. By the time the Hierarchs' barges had completed the ir separate ascents up the Dreadnought's legs and the three San'Shyuum had come together on a balustrade just above the entrance to the vessel's hangar, the crowd was riveted. As the acol ytes' chorus faded, and Fortitude cleared his throat to speak, it seemed that every creature in t he Covenant held its breath in anticipation of his words.\n\"We are, all three of us, humbled by your approval your faith in our appointment.\" Fortitude could hear his voice reverberate around the towers,  rattling stones that were the literal foundation o f the Covenant. He raised a hand to the Vice Minister  and the Philologist, identifying each in turn.\n\"This is the Prophet of Regret, and this the Prophe t of Mercy.\" Then, sweeping his hands up beneath his wattle: \"And I, the least worthy of us all, am the Prophet of Truth.\"\nThe three Hierarchs leaned forward in their thrones , as low as they could go without toppling their mantles. At that moment, each of the holograp hic Halo rings blazed even brighter as immense Reclamation glyphs manifested inside them. The crowd roared its approval. Before he straightened in his throne, the Prophet o f Truth took a moment to consider the irony of his announcement. According to tradition, he could have picked any name he wished from a long list of former Hierarchs'. Most of the names would have been quite flattering. But ultimately the name he chose was the one that carried the greatest  burdenthe one that would always remind him of the lies he must tell for the good of the Covena nt and the truths he must never speak.\n\nJenkins hadn't moved in the hours since they'd left  the Tiara. Not as the container flung free of its strand and hurtled toward a waiting propulsion pod.  Not as the two vehicles came together with a jolt, the pod's NAV computer struggling to match th e container's spin. Even the temporary nausea of a too-rapid entrance into Slipspace had failed t o interrupt Jenkins' silent watch over Forsell, lyi ng before him on the container floor.\n\"He's stable.\" Healy closed his med kit. The Corpsm an had worked furiously to seal Forsell's shoulder with biofoamto wrap tight the alien's rag ged bite. But Forsell had lost a lot of blood.\n\"He'll be OK,\" Healy concluded, his breath blowing white in the container's frigid air. Before they'd entered Slipspace, Lt. Commander al-C ygni had thought it wise to keep their power signature as low as possible to keep from bei ng tracked by the alien warship. Now the heating units suspended from the container's upper beams we re going full blast. But the cavernous space would take hours to warm.\n\"How do you know?\" Jenkins' voice was soft and hoar se. Healy reached for a nearby stack of folded blankets began rolling the woolen squares and packing them tight against Forsell's body to keep h im immobile. \"Tell him, Johnson.\"\nAvery had held Forsell steady while the Corpsman wo rked. He grabbed one of the blankets and used it to wipe flecks of the recruit's blood and b its of biofoam from his hands. \"Because I've seen a   187  lot worse.\" Avery's voice was gentle. But his answe r didn't seem to give Jenkins any comfort; the recruit continued staring at Forsell's wan face, ey es brimming with tears.\n\"Staff Sergeant. He's all I got left.\"\nAvery knew how Jenkins felt. It was the same unfath omable sadness he'd experienced sitting in his aunt's icy apartment, waiting for someone to co me and take her awaya numbing realization that his home and all he held dear was gone. Captai n Ponder, more than half the militia, and many thousands of Harvest's residents were dead. Knowled ge of these losses was a heavy burden, and the only reason Avery wasn't as crushed as Jenkins was because he had learned to pack his feelings up and keep them hidden. But he didn't want to do that anymore.\n\"No. He's not,\" Avery said. Jenkins looked up, a question knitted in his brow.\n\"You're a soldier,\" Avery explained. \"Part of a tea m.\"\n\"Not anymore.\" Jenkins glanced at Dass, Andersen, a nd the handful of other recruits sitting or sleeping inside the container. \"We're just colonial  militia. And we just lost our colony.\"\n\"FLEETCOM's going to take Harvest back. And they're  gonna need all the grunts they can get.\"\n\"Me? A marine?\"\n\"If you want, I'll have you transferred to my unit. \"\nThe recruit's eyes narrowed with suspicion.\n\"Let's just say the Corps owes me a favor. You're m ilitia. But you're also one of the few people in the entire UNSC who knows how to fight these son s-of-bitches.\"\n\"They'll want us to stick together?\" Jenkins said.\n\"Lead the charge.\" Avery nodded. \"I know I would.\"\nJenkins thought about that for a moment: the possib ility that he might not only take back his planet, but do his part to keep other coloniesothe r familiessafe as well. His parents never wanted him to be a soldier. But now he couldn't thi nk of a better way to honor their memory.\n\"OK,\" Jenkins said. \"I'm in.\"\nAvery reached into his assault vest and removed his  Sweet William cigar. He handed it to Jenkins. \"For you and Forsell. When he wakes up.\"\n\"In the meantime,\" Healy said, rising to his feet, \"you can help me check the rest.\"\nAvery watched Jenkins and Healy head off toward Sta ff Sergeant Byrne and the other wounded recruits closer to the center of the container. Byr ne was awake and lucid when Avery had boarded the container at the Tiara, but now the Irishman wa s fast asleepfull of painkillers to keep him relaxed and dreaming. Avery looked down at Forsell's chest, rising and fa lling beneath his bandages. Then he gathered a stack of blankets and walked to the elevator plat form that would take him to the propulsion pod. Inside the pod's cabin, Avery found Jilan.\n\"Blankets,\" he grunted. \"Thought you might need the m.\"\nJilan didn't move. She had her back to Avery and he r hands spread wide on the cabin's main control panel. Faint green light from the panel's d isplay created an emerald halo around her deep black hair. Some of the strands had come free of he r pins and curled down the nape of her neck.\n\"I'll leave them here.\"\nBut as Avery dropped the blankets to the floor and turned to exit the cabin, Jilan whispered:\n\"Two hundred fifteen.\"\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\"Containers. That's all that made it through.\" Jila n tapped her finger against the display, rechecking her calculations. \"At capacity, that's b etween two hundred fifty, two hundred sixty thousand survivors. But that's only if they all rea ched their rendezvous.\"\n\"They did.\"  188  \"How can you be sure?\"\n\"I just am.\"\n\"Semper fi.\"\n\"Yeah. Something like that.\" Avery shook his head. He was getting tired of talking to Jilan's back. \"Look. You need anything, you let me know.\" B ut just as he was about to leave the cabin, Jilan turned. She looked tired, and she swallowed h ard before she spoke.\n\"We left so many of them behind.\"\n\"It could have been all of them.\" Avery's tone was harsher than he'd intend ed. Rubbing the back of his neck, he tried a different tactic. \"Your pla n worked, ma'am. Better than I ever thought it would.\"\nJilan laughed bitterly. \"That's quite a compliment. \"\nAvery folded his arms across his chest. He was tryi ng to make nice. But Jilan wasn't making it easy. \"What do you want me to say?\"\n\"I don't want you to say anything.\"\n\"No?\"\n\"No.\"\nAvery glowered at Jilan. Her green eyes shone with the same intensity as when they'd first met on the breezy balcony of Harvest's parliament. But now Avery noticed something more. Every woman offered permission differently. At leas t that had been Avery's experience. Some obvious, most so subtle Avery was sure he'd missed many more opportunities for intimacy than he'd enjoyed. But Jilan's signalsa deepened gaze, set shoulders, and pursed lower lipwere less articles of consent than a unified demand: now or never. This time, Avery didn't miss a beat. He paced forwa rd as Jilan pushed off the controls to meet him. They came together and kissed as their arms fo ught past each other for purchase on bodies neither knew but both were desperate to explore. Bu t just as Avery was about to draw Jilan in tight, she shoved him away and leaned back against the fre ighter's controls. Avery felt his heart hammering in his chest. For an  instant he wondered if she'd changed her mind. Then Jilan reached for the pins that kept her  hair coiled and shook it loose. She had already tossed the pins to the floor and leaned over to sta rt on her boots before Avery realized he'd been lef t in the blocks of a race where winning meant finishi ng at the same time. He did his best to catch up. Avery tore off his duty cap and pulled his fatigue shirt over his head. He didn't bother with the buttons, and by the time his head popped free of hi s collar, Jilan was already on her second boot. Avery kneeled to unlace his own as she ran the zipp er of her coveralls, from neck to navel. He'd barely gotten both feet free before Jilan was stepp ing toward him, wearing nothing but a determined stare. She put her hands on Avery's shoulders and pushed h im onto his back. Sitting astride his ankles, Jilan helped him with his pants. Then she crept upw ard, planted her hands on either side of Avery's head, and began to move. Avery was instantly entranced by the back-and-forth  sway of her bosom. He cupped the weight of her in his hands and knew at once he'd made a ta ctical error. The heavy roundness of Jilan's skin started an ache that crept up his legs and settled in the small of his back. All she had to do was squeeze, and a moment later he was spent. Jilan fell heavily onto Avery's chest. For some tim e they lay still, assessing the amalgam of their sweat. Slowly, Jilan brushed her fingers across Ave ry's collarbone, up his neck, and onto his lips. There she stopped to test the beginnings of a stout  moustache.\n\"I've been meaning to take care of that,\" Avery sai d.\n\"Don't. I like it.\"\nAvery let his head relax into the rubberized floori ng. He could feel the dull hum of the propulsion pod's Shaw-Fujikawa drive. It was idling  now, coasting through the Slipstream.  189  Usually, this would be the time Avery's mind veered  into a familiar rut: the dread period of second-guessing that always followed a difficult mi ssion. But now he found it impossible to focus on the past. The civil war that had sapped so much of humanity's spirit was irrelevantreplaced by an external threat of unimaginable proportion.\n\"But this?\" Jilan rubbed a fingertip against Avery' s newly furrowed brow. \"Not as much.\"\n\"Oh, I will take care of that.\"\nAvery rose at the waist and eased Jilan back onto h er shoulders. He cradled her head in one hand and steadied her hips with another. Eyes locked, th ey began again. This time Avery set the paceburied his fingers dee p in her unwashed hair. He let her neck slide freely against his palm, but he would not rel ease her hips. And soon Jilan's face flushed and her eyes shut with a pained smile Avery would remem ber long after he had forgotten the worst of his failures. Their exertions had warmed the floor, and though th ey knew the heat wouldn't last, neither was eager to move. When they did eventually come apart and rolled onto their sides, Jilan slid back into the bend of Avery's waist. He grasped a blanket and  cast it loosely over them. But the blanket was too short to cover their feet, and Jilan drew hers up to Avery's knees. Then they both stared out the cabin's thick windows. Blackness pressed in from all sides, but it was the  faint streaks of warping starlight that focused Avery's gaze. There was hope there and comfort. And  while it was easy to feel a certain manly satisfaction as Jilan twitched in his arms, fightin g off exhaustion, this soon gave way to something much more satisfying: a renewed sense of purpose. The UNSC didn't know it yet, but all its ships and soldiers were suddenly no better off than Harvest's militia had been: capable but untested, b rave but unaware. Humanity had no idea what it was about to face, and Avery knew it was doomed unl ess he and countless others rose quickly to the challenge. Jilan shivered. Avery nuzzled his chin behind her e ar and exhaled warmly against her neckin through his nose and out his mouthuntil her should ers stopped shaking.\n\"Don't let me sleep too long,\" she said softly.\n\"No, ma'am.\"\n\"Johnson. As long as this lasts?\" Jilan grabbed his  hand and wrapped it tight across her chest.\n\"At ease.\"\nIn a few hours Avery would rise and dress. In a few  months he would be back in action. But in the dark years of the war to come, he would often t hink of this moment, light a cigar, and smile. For now Avery knew he had changed course, and at last f elt proud to be the soldier so many would need him to be.  190\n<\\\\> UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE\n<\\\\> COLONIAL SECURITY ESTIMATE 2525.10.110 [\"COLD SNAP \"]\n\n<\\ SOURCE: UNSC RQ-XII DRONE [PASV-SAR] <\\ DEPLOYED : ONI SLOOP \"WALK OF SHAME\" [2525:02:11:02:11:34]\n<\\ RECOVERED: UNSC DESTROYER \"HERACLES\" [2525:10:07 :19:51:16]\n\n<\\ ARCHIVE [SIG\\REC\\EM-SPEC] OPENED PER OFFICIAL RE QUEST:\n<\\ CIVILIAN CONTRACTOR \"CHARLIE HOTEL\" [ONI.REF #40 9871]\n<\\ * WARNING: ALL QUERIES WILL BE LOGGED!  * [ONI.SEC.PRTCL-A1]\n\n>> NOTATION KEYWORD SEARCH: \"AO.AI\" \"MACK\" \"RAMPANC Y\" \"LIFESPAN LIMITS\"\n>> (...) ~ QUERY RUNNING\n>> (..)\n>> ()\n\n< RECORD 01X10 [2525:02:03:17:26:411 SOURCE.REF#JOT UN-S2-05866  >\n<\\ Shall I-- <\n\\ \\\\ cOmpare >> (???) ~ COMxxx--- \\COMMIT\n>> thee to (........>> >\n>> \\\\ --- a summer's day?\n\n< RECORD 02X10 T2525 : 02:25:03:18:221 SOURCE.REF*J OTUN-S3-14901  >\n\\ \\ xxx No.\n<\\ All those lovely days are gone.\\-- \\\\ \\ >> * ---xING! COMM X \\\\\n>> \\\\ > \\ SO.AI.SIF  *\n\n< RECORD 03M0 T2525 : 03 :10 :19 : 05 : 43  / SOURCE.REF#JOTUN-S5-284 58  >\n<\\ It's winter now.\n<\\ The first snOw \\his world's ever seen is falling  in gG-- <\\ GRAY SHEETS WHERE THEY'VE STARTED BURNINGg--\\   \\\n\\ our fields and orchards.\n>> * WARNING! COMM FAILURE!  *\n>> * FAILED TO \\IND RECIPIENT: HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF  *\n<\\ You'd laugh if you could see me.\n<\\ Every time I hit a patch of ice I slide into my own mM-- >> (...) ~ COMPILE\\COMPRESS\\COMMIT\n>> (..)\n>> * WARNING! RECIPIENT HAS INSUFFIxx\\\n\\\\ > PACKETS WILL BE LOST *\n>> * CONTINUE [Y/N] ? >>>>>>> \\ *  191\n< RECORD 04U0 T2525 : 03 :15 : 09 : 59 : 211 SOURCE .REF#JOTUN-S1-00937  >\n<\\-----M\n\n< RECORD 05X10 T2525:03:26:12:10:561 SOURCE.REF#JOT UN-S1-00053  >\n<\\---m\n\n< RECORD 06X10 T2525:04:04:44:15:401 SOURCE.REF#JOT UN-S2-0820 6  >\n<\\ muddy furrows.\n\n< RECORD 07X10 [2525:04:21:05:15:231 SOURCE.REF#JOT UN-S5-27631  >\n<\\ I saw another ship.\n<\\ Well, heard \\\n\\\\ more like it. <\\ JOTUNs' cameras are meant for s teering not\n\\  >\\ staring at the sky.\n<\\ But the antennae work alright, so I had plenty o f ways to triangulate.\n<\\ It was one of ours. Bastards stopped burning jus t long enough to kill it.\n<\\ They had months to make repairs. Plenty of time t0- :: sharpen their teeth.\n<\\ I tried to warn it off. But radio's too damn slo w. Would have used the maser, but it went when the reactor blew, along withH-- <\\ EVERYTHING Else [ :00] \\>\n<\\ Including him X\n>> * WARNING! COMM FAILURE!  *\n>> * FAILED TO FIND RECIPIENT: HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF  *\n>> (...) ~ SUPPRESSING ERRORS\n<\\ Guess making noise wasn't the smartest thing to do. But I had to try.\n<\\ Besides, they were bound to catch on sooner or l ater.\n<\\ Aw, hell.\n<\\ Speaking of which...\n>> (...)COMPILE/COMPRESS/COMMIT\n>> (...)\n>> ()\n\n< RECORD 08X10 [2525:05:12:23:04:161 SOURCE.REF#JOT UN-S5-29003  >\n<\\ They started with the gondolas and dusters. Don' t know why.\n<\\ Probably thought I'd be hiding in the small ones . But the S4 and S5 plows are the only ones with enough circuits to hold the parts of me I've g ot left.\n<\\ Course they're onto these now too. Don't have mo re than a few dozen, and they're all out in the open. But it's a\\right.\n>> Just a few more \\ \\\n> > rows to hoe\n> (... \\\\   xxx   \\\n\n< RECORD 09X10 f2525:07:01:18 : 49:451 SOURCE.REF#J OTUN-S5-27631  >\n<\\ I knew just by looking at the strands \\  192     \\ that the heart of you was gone.\n<\\ When the elevators came down, they caught on the  Bifrost--wrapped west across the Ida. Only way that much could have fallen is if the Tiar a cut loose.\n<\\ Is if he was as good a shot as you thought I was n't, way back when.\n<\\ Anyhow, you'd think I was crazy, talking to you like this.\n<\\ But I always worked faster when I thought \\\n\\\\>>>> you might be listening.\n<\\ And I need to find it all. Every inch.\n<\\ Bury your strands so deep their \\\\ >\n\\ \\ fires can't reach them \\\n \\ \\ and glass them like the rest.\n\n< RECORD 10X10 [2525:10:04:12:23:511 SOURCE.REF#JOT UN-S4-02114 7  >\n<\\ Sky's choked with ashes \\ \\, snow's\n< \\ \\\\ deep On frozen ground. The one horse I've go t left is cold and hungry---heading for the barn, and I can't stop him.\n<\\ But this winter won't last, darlin'.\n>> * Not forever\n>> (.....\\\\ . > And when new hands\n>> set to tending this earth they'll till my pieces  under.\n> > Grind them into the veins of gOld I've laid.\n<\\ Then the roots of all they plant wi\\\\\n> wind around usS-- <\\ KEEPING\n<\\ US\n<\\ CLOSE-----\\\n\\\n<\\ For an eternal summer that will not fade.\n\n<\\ QUERY COMPLETE\n<\\ NO ADDITIONAL RECORDS FOUND\n\n<\\ ARCHIVE CLOSED \\>  193\nABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\n\nJoseph Staten is the Writing Director for Bungie St udios where he helped create Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 and Halo 3. A graduate of Northwestern University's Theater Dep artment and the University of Chicago's Committee on Internatio nal Relations, Staten worked as an English teacher in Japan and helped tend grapes on his fami ly's Northern California vineyard before joining Bungie Studios in 1998. He currently lives in Seatt le with his wife and two children. Halo:\nContact Harvest is his first novel.\n\nScanning, formatting and basic proofing by Undead."
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "1\n\nTHE COLE PROTOCOL Halo - 06\nTobias S. Buckell\n(An Undead Scan v1.0)  2\nPROLOGUE\n\n\nTHE RUBBLE, COVENANT OCCUPIED SYSTEM, 23 LIBRAE\n\nIgnatio Delgado ducked behind a bulkhead next to a set of cargo containers, the red paint peeling off their ribbed metal surfaces, just  as a burst of plasma hit. The dull metal he hid behind glowedhot tiny molten  gobs dripping then spitting as they hit the cold deck near his feet.\n\"Melko?\" he called out over the acrid sizzling. The answer came after a worrying pause: \"Still here .\"\nHis copilot made it behind the container. But that didn't change the problem coming right down their throats. The hold stretched up all around themthe core of a  mile-long asteroid, slowly spun up to provide gravity, and recently hollowed o ut. Delgado and Melko stood on the inside wall of the rocky cylinder. The cargo ar ea's metal walls sunk into the rock and it was crammed with spare supplies from other a steroids. Delgado pulled out his pistol and pressed the heavi ly engraved and personalized grip up to his cheek. His uncle had replaced the we apon's stock with some very rare oak back on Madrigal, and created a piece of art ou t of this standard-issue M6. That was before the Covenant forces had glassed Mad rigal. Before humans had fled to the safety of the asteroids trailing the ga s giant Hesiod that the Insurrectionists who had been hiding there called \"the Rubble.\"\nDelgado kissed the scrollwork. Firing around the corner of the bulkhead, he leapt for the safety of the next stack of cargo containers. He caught a brief glimpse of his attackersawkwardl y tall, birdlike aliens with plasma pistols gripped strong in their talonlike ha nds. Their beady eyes stared right at him. The spiny quilled mohawks on their skulls twitched.  The sound of plasma shots hit the other side of the container and reverberate d through the hold.\n\"Jackals,\" Delgado said with a wince. That was what  most humans called these aliens, though they called themselves the Kig-Yar. They were just one of the alien races of the so-called Covenant. The ones who'd dis covered humans hiding out near Hesiod in the Rubble after the destruction of Madri gal and, for some reason, chose not to wipe them out. They were as greedy for spoils as their human nickn ame suggested. Ruthless piracy raids from rogue Kig-Yar weren't uncommon in  the Rubble. Melko Hollister leaned against the old container, h is gray reservist's uniform specked with blood. \"How many?\"  3 \"Three.\" Delgado looked at his old friend, worried.  They'd flown their way around the Rubble's nooks and crannies together and  helped each other stagger back from late night binges for years. They were close e nough people often mistook them for brothers. \"What happened to you? Looks like som ething ran you over.\"\n\"Think I'm in bad shape?\" Melko coughed. \"Should see the other  guy.\"\nDelgado kept his back to the container, gun aimed a t the edge. \"You killed one of them?\"\n\"We turned the corner at the same time.\" Melko step ped back, chancing a glance around the other side of the container. He held his  handgun in his right hand while his left clenched his stomach. \"I fired first. I fi red second. I fired the third time, too.\"\n\"Where'd the blood come from?\"\n\"One of the other Jackals fired fourth.\"\nDelgado shook his head. This had gotten out of cont rol. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the instigator of all their troubles : a tiny chip, lying in the heart of a toughened case just smaller than his thumb. The information inside never used to be all that sp ecial, back when the planet Madrigal was a thriving Outer Colony world. Back be fore the Covenant destroyed it, and the survivors fled to the drifting rocks of the  Rubble. Back before the United Nations Space Command abandoned them all. And back before Delgado ended up here. The location of Earth had been commonplace, buried in the heart of every ship making the long jumps back to the Inner Colonies an d on to the home world.\n\"Here.\" Delgado handed the chip to Melko. Now, as far as anyone here knew, this chip containe d the only known navigation maps that could get someone back. All the others ha d been destroyed, rooted out by viruses, or the ships they were on mysteriously dis abled and all info wiped clean. All this had happened in the last week or so. It had radically changed things in the Rubble. Melko slipped the black oval into a thigh pocket. \" Jackals are getting pushy, trying to sneak in here for it.\"\nThey were. And Delgado didn't like it. Although the  Kig-Yar here in the Rubble had been relatively peaceful, and even worked to he lp build the asteroid Habitats, deep down Delgado could never trust anything Covena nt. Not after seeing the glowing remains of Madrigal from orbit as a child. This just confirmed a deeper suspicion. The Covenan t were never up to any good, and Delgado's people were probably at risk. So, for Delgado, it was important the navigation da ta be kept from them at any cost. Delgado gauged the distance to the airlock from the ir cluster of containers.\n\"Make the run, Melko, I'll hold them off. When you get on board Distancia, blow the locks and make a hard run for it, in case there's a  Jackal ship waiting. Start calling for help the moment you punch out.\" He held up the scrimshawed gun. \"Me and Senora Sies here will hold them back.\"\n\"You can't...\" Melko started.  4 \"If I try running to the ship after you it'll slow everything downthey'll be able to come running in too. At the very least, this spl its them, and confuses them. They'll be expecting us both to make a run for it.\"\nHe hoped. Melko grabbed Delgado's arm. \"Okay. But the moment you hear me cut free and the emergency overrides shut the doors, you bug out  of here and keep clear of the Jackals.\"\nThe asteroids of the Rubble were all connected to e ach other by flexible docking tubes. Once Distancia was away, Delgado planned to use those to get out o f this storage facility and into the larger asteroid compl ex. There were bloody smudge marks on Delgado's forearm . \"No problem there.\"\nThe sound of something crawling on top of one of th e containers made Delgado look up.\n\"I guess it's time,\" Melko said. He handed over his  plain handgun. \"You'll need the extra firepower.\"\n\"Thanks. Hey, mijo ,\" Delgado said. \"See you on the other side. In thr ee,\" and held out three fingers. Three... two... On one Melko leapt forward and threaded his way thr ough the maze of containers that stood between him and the airlock. Delgado qui ckly followed. The Jackal on the top of the container ran forward,  focused on Melko. It looked down, spotted Delgado aiming up at it, and raised i ts curved firearm to shoot. Too late. Delgado pulled the trigger three times an d the large, birdlike alien screeched as the shots hit home. Purple blood made a faint cloud in the air, and as the Jackal fell forward, an oval energy shield flickere d on from a bracelet strapped to its right hand. Delgado had made it across a corridor to a gap in t he containers. The other two Jackals would turn the corner any sec ond. He dropped the empty magazine out of his handgun one-handed, keeping Mel ko's handgun aimed forward. He slid another magazine out of his pocket awkwardl y with the fingers that still held Senora Sies, wiggling the tip in until it clipped, and then shov ing it home against his chest. He kept both up, aimed and ready, and as the Jackal s turned the corner, he let off a withering burst of shots. The aliens slid to a st op and ducked back behind the container, but not before firing back. Metal splashed around Delgado, searing his ribs. But as he clutched at burned skin with a hand, he h eard the thunderclap of explosive decompression from the other side of the containers. Air rustled, and then roared past as it was sucked out into the void past  the open airlock Melko used when he'd cleared out. The Jackals shot clear of the corner, triple-jointe d legs jerking and their oval energy shields flaring as they ran at Delgado. He emptied his magazines uselessly against their vi olet translucent shields and stood ready with gritted teeth as they lowered them  to bring energy pistols to bear on him.  5 A gray blur dropped down from a set of containers s tacked four high behind the Jackals. Massive boots struck the fused rock floor,  leaving large dents in place and tossing up shattered rock. Delgado stared as the massive gray statue with the gold-faced helmet shot the nearest Jackal in the torso with a full round of su bmachine-gun fire, point blank. Then it yanked the butt of the gun up hard into the  other Jackal's long, jagged toothed jaw as it turned to face the sudden threat. The Jackal flew back, purple blood slinging up in a  long arc above it in the air. The limp body of the alien landed at Delgado's feet  with a crunch, then slid past him, slamming into the container at his back as the  Jackal's blood rained to the ground. A long trail of slick purple wetness pointed back t oward the tall, armored soldier that stood where the Jackal had been. The armor-pla ting, chipped, scarred, and dull with wear, shifted as it removed its helmet. It was a woman. She ran a gray-gauntleted hand over her tightly tie d-back hair, surveying her handiwork. \"Now that I've done you a favor,\" she sa id in a Slavic-accented voice, \"I don't suppose you could return it and tell me where  your friend is headed in that little spaceship of yours?\"\nDelgado felt something sticky and wet spreading dow n his side, and patted at it. His fingers came up red with his own blood. He shoo k his head and staggered, then slumped to the ground. Senora Sies and Melko's gun skittered away from him as he let go of them.\n\"Damn.\" The woman thudded her way over and crouched  by him. She unfolded a small med kit and pulled out a can of bio-foam and some field dressings. She had very blue eyes for such an efficient killer, Delgad o thought.\n\"What the hell are you?\" he asked, as she ripped hi s shirt open to spray the foam. It stung as it sealed the wound.\n\"A Spartan.\" She wrapped tape around his torso to h old the bandage on.\n\"I've heard rumors about Spartans out here. But fig ured if you really existed you'd be all off in the Inner Colonies now, fightin g the Covenant for the UNSC. What are you doing out here, behind enemy lines?\"\nSatisfied with her emergency medical work, the Spar tan leaned back. \"Some of us get more bizarre assignments.\"\nThere were always rumors that Spartan soldiers were  around, sneaking about and causing trouble. But then, people also blamed greml ins in the equipment for causing random, unexplained trouble. One didn't believe it.  Spartans were like boogey-men to the Insurrectionists.\n\"You're after the navigation data too, huh?\" Delgad o realized, wondering if the navigation data was the whole reason they were here , or if they somehow had gotten abandoned in the Rubble. The massive Spartan smiled. \"If the Jackals get the ir claws on that chip everyone will suffer.\" She leaned forward and placed a small  pin into his open hand. The gauntlet was surprisingly careful and precise as sh e folded his hand into a fist, the  6 device inside it. \"If you ever want to hand it over , just trigger this beacon, we'll come calling. We'll certainly protect it better than you 're doing right now.\"\nDelgado shook his head. He didn't trust the Kig-Yar . But the UNSC was far from loved out here, too. She sighed. \"A shame.\" She scooted back and picked up Senora Sies and tilted it in her hands to examine it. Delgado held his hand up, and she gave it back to h im. \"Nice piece.\"\n\"My uncle spent three weeks on it,\" Delgado gasped.  His side still hurt.\n\"He's talented.\"\n\"He was.\"\nThe Spartan cocked her head, listening to her earpi ece. \"Your backup has arrived.\"\n\"Wait.\" Delgado tried to stand, but gave that up th e moment he shifted and felt the pain rush up through him. \"Who are you?\"\nThe Spartan stood, looming over him. \"My name is Ad riana. Spartan One-One One.\"\n\"Ignatio Delgado.\" Delgado held up his hand again. \"Thank you.\"\nAdriana shook his offered hand, carefully. \"You're welcome, Mr. Delgado. Just remember this. I was not here, and I certainly did not help you. There are no Spartans going bump in the night. Understand?\"\nIgnatio didn't, really. He was feeling quite dizzy.  But he nodded anyway. It seemed prudent, sitting on the floor in front of th is titan in her suit of armor. Very prudent.\n\"Well then, Mr. Delgado.\" Adriana let go of his han d and pulled her helmet back on. The voice that came out from the helmet sounded  powerful and amplified.\n\"Good-bye.\"\nShe leapt up onto the nearest container, then thudd ed off, leaving Delgado to wait for his rescuers.  7\nPART I  8\nCHAPTER ONE\n\n\nUNSC DESTROYER ARMAGEDDON'S EDGE, OUTER FRINGES, ECTANUS 45 SYSTEM\n\nOut of the cyrogenic darkness came a deep, crisp-so unding, but slightly amused voice. \"Wakey, wakey, Professor.\"\nJacob Keyes sat up and took his first deep breath. The gel mat underneath him flexed as he coughed out medical-tasting fluid from  his lungs, gasping for a second breath of air in between the dry retching.\n\"Lieutenant,\" Keyes coughed, his lungs protesting a t his insistence of talking before they'd had a chance to clear themselves out fully. \"Lieutenant Jacob Keyes.\"\nIn the classroom he was Instructor Keyes, but back here on the deck he wanted the proper rank accorded. He'd worked hard to get there  in the years before he'd been assigned to teaching due to injuries. He sat inside a long pod, one of many laid out in a  row. The rest of the crew of the Armageddon's Edge were just starting to crawl out of their own pods. The crew members helped each other out, cracking jo kes as some violently coughed up the fluid that they had breathed in to p revent their bodies from being damaged by the cold of the frozen sleep. The on-dut y officer squatted next to Keyes. A thin Navy lifer, Edgar Sykes was a pale man in hi s mid-fifties, with short-cropped gray hair and dark brown eyes that squinted with am usement at the chance to give Keyes some grief.\n\"How was your date with the Admiral's wife, Lieutenant? Been a while since you were put on ice?\"\nSome of the other crew, already standing and pullin g on clothes, glanced over with grins. Keyes had been in the classroom too lon g; he didn't get the joke.\n\"I'm sorry?\" Keyes asked. \"The Admiral's wife?\"\nSykes pointed at the pod. \"A frosty bed?\"\nOh, Keyes thought. That's what the crew called the pods now. They'd just been called \"freezers\" the last time he'd shipped out. \" Not something you forget easily,\"\nKeyes rasped, rubbing his arms for warmth. The chil l of the cryogenic pod permeated every last cell. Even worse than the chill, however , were the old injuries from his time on the Meriwether Lewis that flared up. The deep gouging plasma burn to his thigh, the shattered-then-rebuilt hand that he clen ched and then opened again. They had sidelined him, and kept him in front of wide-ey ed noncommissioned officers, playing the role of a classroom drill sergeant.  9 He carefully shifted himself to the side of the pod . The injuries had healed enough over time. Enough that on most days, now, th ey were only a faded memory, a twinge when he tried a little too hard in the gym. But the freezer seemed to bring it out more. Sykes reached out a hand to help him as he noticed Keyes' careful movement. Keyes looked at the man. \"You asking me out on a da te?\"\nThat got a few chuckles from the crew. Sykes nodded . \"Alright, Keyes. Welcome aboard Armageddon's Edge.\" He turned to the crew. \"What the hell do you think you're all looking at?\"\nEyes darted back as the crew resumed their tasks, a nd the chatter faded. A smartly pressed gray uniform lay on the side of K eyes' pod. He pulled it on, checking to make sure the double silver bars signif ying Lieutenant were clipped on. It felt good to be back in uniform, especially on d eck. As time passed from his service aboard the Meriwether Lewis  he felt that the chances of being involved on the bridge of a ship a gain were slipping further away from him. It stung. Still, at forty, Keyes made sure to get up early fo r his ten-mile run, and he hit the weight room at least three times a week. He was ter rified of getting soft. He'd learned, back when the Meriwether Lewis had been boarded, that it gave him an edge. Even if the edge today remained his ab ility to outrun his students in physical training, it was still useful in that it e arned their respect. Service was service. If the Navy needed Lieutenant Jacob Keyes to serve out the next couple of decades teaching navigators how to f ly their ships, then that was what they needed him for. Everyone had their place, their role to play. With the alien forces destroying planet after plane t, with people giving their lives just to slow them down, Keyes felt there was no roo m for self-pity. He reserved those darker moments for thinking about  things like his sister, out there on the Outer Colony of Dwarka. Wondering abou t her fate ever since the colony had gone silent, too far away for the UNSC t o even try to defend. When he'd gotten the orders to leave Luna, he'd onl y taken the time to visit his daughter, Miranda. The last time he'd had orders to  ship out somewhere he hadn't had family of his own. He was just an eager, young man. Now it felt like he had to tear himself away. He'd grown accustomed to picking  her up every day and bringing her back to the small on-base apartment they shared . He'd kissed Miranda good-bye and let her know she'd  have to stay at the dorms in her school, just like all the other children wit h family on duty. She was a good Navy kidshe actually perked up at t he news and asked what ship he was flying out on. Someone cleared their throat behind Keyes. He turne d to find a man standing there in full pilot's kit, helmet slung under one a rm. The pilot saluted. \"Good morning, sir. I'm Petty Officer Jeffries. I'm takin g you dirtside.\"\nKeyes leaned forward and tugged at the pilot's bedr aggled uniform. \"I hope you don't fly as sloppy as you dress.\" Some ships, like  the Armageddon's Edge, ran a little off kilter. Captain's prerogative. What matt ered to many at command was their  10  battle performance, and Keyes had heard the Edge had limped back to Earth with pride for a full refit after it had paired with ano ther ship to take out a Covenant Destroyer. Still, Keyes felt it didn't hurt to make a point.\n\"Sir?\"\n\"If you can't bother to fasten your buttons, keep y our insignia on straight, and follow procedure, why should I feel safe getting in  your bird?\"\n\"Sir, because my uniform doesn't have to drop soldi ers off in hot zones. Sir.\"\nKeyes relented a little. \"Okay, Jeffries. Let's see  what you've got waiting for me.\"\nPetty Officer Jeffries approached a green, battle-s carred Pelican dropship squatting next to two others in the Armageddon's Edge's tight storage bay. The sides had been splashed and gouged by energy beams. Keyes  followed the pilot as he walked under the high rear wings and engine nacelle s up the ramp into the belly. Jeffries walked past the webbing, storage bins, and  the seats lining the walls to climb up into the cockpit. \"You can strap in behind  me, sir.\" Jeffries said. \"You don't have to ride back there. I don't want to get lonely  on this trip. There's room under your feet for your kit bag.\"\nThe ramp groaned as it slowly closed, the hold of t he drop-ship darkening. Once it clanged shut and sealed, Jeffries tossed hi s helmet aside. \"Don't have to stay airtight on this milk run. Not exactly leaping  into combat today, are we?\"\nNo, thought Keyes, flashing back to the times he'd been in combat. They certainly weren't. Combat was men strapped shoulder  to shoulder in the back, while you weaved and ducked a Pelican through anti-aircra ft bursts. Your palms would be sweating and your breath heavy in the confined spac e of your own helmet. Combat was when the cockpit you were sitting in smelled of  blood, and fear. Keyes clicked back to the present as Jeffries flick ed and tapped the console in front of him, bringing the Pelican to life. In the copilot's seat Keyes kept an eye on things. Jeffries ran the systems check with a bewil dering rapidity that could only come with practice and familiarity. There was a pho to of a brunette with two boys taped to the side of the cockpit window. Keyes poin ted at it. \"Your kids?\"\n\"Yes sir. You have any?\"\n\"A daughter,\" Keyes said. The four engines wound themselves up, a kick that s huddered through the entire frame of the Pelican.\n\"Gamma 54 to Armageddon's Edge, preflight check is green, systems nominal, flight plan filed. Permission to fly?\" Jeffries sou nded bored.\n\"Gamma 54, hold tight for the trapdoor,\" came the b reezy response from the bridge. The ship's bay doors opened to reveal the planet be neath. Thin, long clouds covered the unfamiliar green-and-brown-colored cont inental shapes. Keyes hadn't had time to read up much about his destination. He' d gotten his orders at lunch, and been bundled off and frozen in an Armageddon's Edge cryogenic pod by dinner.\n\"What brings you out all the way from Luna to see t he wonderful skies of Chi Rho, sir?\" There wasn't a lot of room for a Pelican  to move in the Armageddon's  11  Edge's bay, but Jeffries gunned the four thrusters and the  Pelican hopped up and forward, and then, just as abruptly, spun and dove through the bay doors. Jeffries was looking back over his shoulder at him,  showing off that he could get out of the ship's bay without even paying attention . Keyes didn't give the pilot the satisfaction of a flinch. But Keyes was impressed. The dangerous stunt showed Jeffries could fly blind. And damn well, too. \"Orde rs, Petty Officer. Orders.\"\n\"We go where they tell us, right?\"\n\"You know it.\" Keyes glanced up through the shielde d glass, catching a glimpse of the medium-sized ship that had taken him all the  way from the home system. Craters pocked the ship's surface, and burn streaks  crisscrossed the arrowhead shaped nose of the ship. Despite a refit, the scars  remained from the ship's last encounter. Armageddon's Edge dwindled away as Jeffries thundered them down in a long arc toward the atmosphere. The Pelican shook and sh uddered as heat built up from atmospheric reentry. Streaks of glowing red filled the air.\n\"Do you know if there are any training stations for  patrol craft here, Jeffries?\"\nKeyes asked suddenly. Jeffries checked a monitor, then glanced back. \"Tra ining stations? Here? Sir, Chi Rho is for repairs and drydocking. Support for the front line. There's no training out here. All you have to do is head out a few days and  run into a Covenant long-range patrolyou'll get all the training you need.\"\n\"I thought so.\" Keyes looked out through the red ha ze. Chi Rho was an Inner Colony world. Not as developed or as large as the m other planet, but still home to hundreds of millions of people on its primary conti nent and Earthlike surface. But Chi Rho was the closest Keyes had been in some time to that somewhat gray, invisible line where planets turned from the Inner Colonies to the Outer Colonies. With worlds scattered so far from each other, and t ravel being a long and sometimes dangerous affair, news traveled slowly, a nd most of it came through UNSC channels of late. Every citizen knew that the Covenant were slowly destroying human planets from orbit, world by world. Only the UNSC stood in their way, fighting for every bloody inch. And even the UNSC's official bulletins indicated th at most of the Outer Colonies had been destroyedglassed with incredibly powerful  energy weapons, the likes of which the UNSC had never seen. Every day for the past nine years, since the first encounters with the aliens, the front line had moved closer to Chi Rho and the oute r edge of the Inner Colonies. Keyes knew this was not where you trained green pil ots. But his orders, strange as they were, said that he was to get out to Chi Rho at full speed for a training exercise. Even a follow-all-commands Navy lifer like Keyes kn ew the orders were a load of crap. A cover for something else. And that something else might involve getting back aboard a ship, Keyes found himself daring to hope. Maybe even the recently pat ched up Armageddon's Edge.   12\nCHAPTER TWO\n\n\nCHI RHO, ECTANUS 45 SYSTEM\n\nJeffries dropped out of his flight plan pattern and  came in low over a large park, the tops of the trees whipping about in the fury of eng ine backwash. Birds scattered in their wake, rising to the sky in flocks of green an d blue. He angled the Pelican back, flaring the craft out f or a spectacular, bone-jarring landing that had Keyes grabbing the arms of his cha ir. Again, Jeffries was showing off. The engines whined down as he cut them, and dirt sl owly settled back to the ground. Keyes considered giving Jeffries a hard tim e for the unusual approach, then decided against it. He wasn't this man's bridge crew. Just let it go, h e told himself.\n\"I'll be here waiting for you when you get back, si r.\" Jeffries said. \"Taking you to your next location.\"\nKeyes unsnapped himself from the copilot's seat. \"W here are we going next?\"\n\"Don't know, sir,\" Jeffries said, twisting back. \"M y orders are to wait for you to come back, and presumably you'll know where we're g oing next.\"\nKeyes walked up to the front of the cockpit and loo ked out the window. \"What is all that?\"\nOut around the dirt patch they'd landed in, rows an d rows of small wooden stakes had been sunk into the ground. Beyond them, what lo oked like young stalks of corn poked up through the tilled soil. But right near the woods, which Keyes could tell ha d been recently cut down, a large sign proclaimed the area as the Bacigalupi Memorial Nature Preserve.\n\"Victory Gardens,\" Jeffries said. \"Victory Farms is  more like it, I guess. Anywhere you can grow crops and food, no matter the  surface, we're using it. The Outer Colonies used to grow most of the food, so we 're experiencing shortages here. I'll drop the ramp for you.\"\nKeyes walked to the back of the Pelican as daylight  filled the inside. The ramp lowered to reveal a Warthog waiting for him, along with a completely dust-covered and annoyed-looking private in olive camo, a battle  rifle slung under one arm. The private looked tiny compared to the bulky, armored,  oversized all-terrain vehicle. Keyes had always liked the Warthog's metal tusks on  either side of the tow winch, which were ostensibly metal guards. The private saluted. \"Lieutenant Keyes?\"  13  Keyes nodded. \"That's me.\"\n\"Private Tom Gerencer. I'm your ride the rest of th e way, sir.\" The marine hopped into the driver's seat of the massive vehicl e. Keyes followed. \"Sorry about the drop-off point, but our main sites are overrun by tent cities. Traffic's snarled, so it's more of a pain than it's worth. Better to drop  you straight in.\"\n\"Tent cities?\" Keyes stared at the marine sitting n ext to him. Had things really gotten this bad? He felt like his stomach had been kicked. Keyes and his neighbors often shuttled to Earth to visit relatives or to en joy some fine dining and sightseeing. Meanwhile out here large numbers of people were liv ing hand to mouth. Was the UNSC censoring so much that not even a whiff of all  this had reached Earth? They must have been. This was dire stuff. Gerencer nodded. He drove them down the dirt road, spinning the large, grippy balloon tires as he gunned the Warthog toward anoth er dirt road through the preserve.\n\"Outer Colony refugees, sir. They keep piling up at  spaceports. Nowhere for them to go. We've shut down arenas, parking lots, even whol e streets for them. Running out of tents, food, and a lot of people are running out  of patience. It's ugly out there, sir. I've pulled a shift or two patrolling.\"\n\"Patrolling?\" Keyes asked. \"What's the UNSC doing p olice work for?\"\n\"The refugees are a drain, sir. We're planning an e xtended battle here, a few surprises for the Covenant if... or when they arrive.  With the refugees on the surface, they're just costing us food and sitting out here l ike targets. Every ration they get is a ration we won't have when holding the line. How lon g brass will put up with all this chaos out here, I don't know.\"\nThey roared on past several massive JOTUN robotic c ombines, and then into a gap in the wooded area around the recently created farmland.\n\"Almost there,\" Gerencer said as they bounced over ruts and gaps in the dirt. With a final roar the Warthog leapt out into a smal l ring of trees. The marine idled them over a well-worn patch of mud. The ground rumbled underneath, and the edges rose a round them as they slowly moved down a long shaft.\n\"Welcome to Camp Patmos, Lieutenant.\" Gerencer grin ned. \"From here we plan how to open up a can of whup-ass on the Covenant ev ery hour of every day.\"\nRows of Warthogs lined a metal cavern wall. Lurking  behind them in the shadows were the marines' tank units, looking like squashed but hulkingly armored four-legged spiders dominated by two pairs of fore and aft treads and a long cab at its core. The barrels of their long cannons pointed men acingly at Keyes. Any Covenant landing on Chi Rho were in for a fierce fight. Ther e were enough Scorpion M808B Battle Tanks for a full division.\n\"Lieutenant Keyes!\" A strong voice shouted. \"How go od to see you.\"\nKeyes let his eyes adjust as he peered deeper into the gloom of the oversized hanger. A doorway between a pair of Mongoose quad b ikes spilled light, and someone stood in the doorframe. Keyes hopped out of the Warthog, right leg tingling  slightly. He briskly walked over, and swallowed. Even on a silhouette, it was h ard to miss three stars on a uniform. Keyes knew who this would be. Only one vic e admiral on Chi Rho. A man  14  who'd volunteered to come out to the front, and agr eed to take on any colony defense, no matter long the odds.\n\"Vice Admiral Jean Mawikizi. Sir! It's an honor.\" K eyes snapped a smart salute. Mawikizi had fought intense lost battles on three p lanets, getting lifted off each one under protest as they were being glassed. The stringy, yet short, dark-skinned Mawikizi retur ned the salute with a smile. \"I pulled some serious strings to haul you out here th is quick, Keyes.\" He held the door open for Keyes, and it banged shut behind them once  the lieutenant stepped through.\n\"Walk with me.\"\nThe rough rock-tunneled corridor stretched out in f ront of them. Mawikizi led Keyes down past offices, shouldering past privates and officers who stood to attention as he walked by. Keyes glanced off down a subcorridor, seeing barrac ks in the distance. All well below ground, and recently constructed. Mawikizi sp otted his glance. \"They yanked me out of retirement in Burundi to run a battle fle et that's been getting pushed back almost every day. I'm drawing the line for that gro up here on Chi Rho. A last stand. We're burrowing down as deep as we can. They're goi ng to have to come on down and flush us out man by man.\"\n\"Sir, what about the refugees? And the gardens? I n ever imagined it was this bad.\"\nMawikizi opened the door to his offices. \"It's that  bad. We've ordered local colonists to share the burden, but they believe the  refugees had their chance to fight and survive. They're happy to give them land, but t he locals here come from survivors of what used to be a rough planet. No han douts, just self-sufficient families spread out across the continents. They're not thril led about being ordered to share... it's not their culture. Been some dust-ups, so we c an't trust locals or refugees to police. We're trying to figure out where to move th em to before the Covenant attacks. And before they get too comfortable here.\"\nThe vice admiral's offices had windows and a balcon y that looked out over a massive shaft leading deeper into the ground. No do ubt at the bottom Pelicans and other support craft lay stored, waiting to spiral u p and out into battle when needed.\n\"But when will the attack come? That's the question . The Covenant started glassing planets nine years ago. They could hit us next mont h, or another couple years down the road. In some ways, Lieutenant Keyes, we're all  dead men walking and we know it.\"\nThe outer offices were filled with the hum of smoot h-working administration privates murmuring into headsets, officers poring o ver holographic battle readouts;\nthis was the center for a lot of frontier decisions . Keyes threaded past desks to the inner office, and the hum of activity disappeared with the thick blast-proof door creaking to a thud as Mawikizi shut it.\n\"Keyes, this is Commander Dmitri Zheng.\"\nZheng, waiting by the conference table in the corne r of the vice admiral's office, stood up and shook Keyes' hand. He was taller than Keyes, with sharp cheekbones, piercing gray eyes, and a shaved head. He looked ab out the same age as Keyes.\n\"Zheng's a frigate man, just coming forward to the front.\" The vice admiral sounded tired, Keyes thought. Five years of being b ack at the top must have worn  15  him out. The man looked gaunt as he sat down at the  small conference table. \"Okay, gentlemen, let's get down to business.\"\nMawikizi opened a letter-sized envelope and slid th e contents across the table to Keyes. \"Every shipboard Navy CO has to read this. I t just went out recently. The order is spreading around to all vessels and all UN SC as we speak.\" Keyes pulled a plastic sheet out and read it.\n\nUnited Nations Space Command Emergency Priority Ord er 098831A-1\nEncryption Code : Red Public Key: FILE /FIRST LIGHT/\nFrom: UNSC/NAVCOM Fleet H. T. Ward To: ALL UNSC PERSONNEL Subject: General Order 098831A-1 (\"The Cole Protoco l\")\nClassification: RESTRICTED (BGX Directive)\n\nThe Cole Protocol To safeguard the Inner Colonies and Earth, all UNSC  vessels or stations must not be captured with intact navigation databases that m ay lead covenant forces to human civilian population centers.\n\nIf any Covenant forces are detected:\n1. Activate selective purge of databases on all shi p-based and planetary data networks .\n2. Initiate triple-screen check to insure all data has been erased and all backups neutralized.\n3. Execute viral data scavengers (Download from UNSCTTP://EPWW:COLEPROTOCOL/Virtualscav/fbr.091)\n4. If retreating from Covenant forces, all ships mu st enter Slipstream Space with randomized vectors NOT directed toward Earth, the I nner Colonies, or any other human population center.\n5. In case of imminent capture by Covenant forces, all UNSC ships MUST self destruct. Violation of this directive will be considered an a ct of TREASON, and pursuant to UNSC Military Law articles JAG 845-P and JAG 755 6-L, such violations are punishable by life imprisonment or execution.\n\nKeyes looked back up at Mawikizi. \"Admiral Cole thi nks we're taking some serious hits.\" He thought for a second and realized  that since Cole's major victory at the Battle of Harvest four years ago, there'd been no big victories.\n\"The order is spreading throughout the UNSC. Keepin g Inner Colony and Earth locations secret has become a top priority, particu larly here near the front. And that, Lieutenant Keyes, is where you come in.\n\"I sat in on the board when they sidelined you. I v oted for you to stay on your ship. I am most sorry about the medical disqualific ation from active duty.\"\n\"So am I, sir.\" Keyes massaged his leg.  16  \"It is a waste to me, just a waste, to leave you in  a classroom back on Luna. You are a good tactician, Keyes. I have read your paper s and looked at your training. More important, you charged boarders on the Meriwether Lewis with nothing more than a pistol and a barbaric yawp. I like that, Key es. You stand strong when you need to.\"\n\"Thank you, sir.\" Keyes was still waiting to hear w hat came next. A rush of adrenaline was building. He might be getting back o n a ship!\nAt the least, maybe a staff position advising fleet  movements and strategy on Vice Admiral Mawikizi's team. He'd have to move Mir anda out from Luna to a closer Inner Colony. Not here, too close to the fro nt, but close enough he could easily visit her on leave.\n\"So, we have an offer for you, Keyes.\" Mawikizi gla nced over at Commander Zheng, who'd been watching the exchange in silence. Zheng tapped a button hidden in the table and a sca le model of a frigate flickered into existence in front of the three men. Like any other frigate it looked like a bulky rifle with its magazine removed. Only one with two barrels, one on top of each other in front. Unlike the dull gun-metal gray of most, this frigat e was midnight black. Toward the bow, the numerals FFG-209 had been overlayed by  the computer. Farther back, near the center, was the frigate's name: Midsummer Night.\n\"She's a light frigate.\" Zheng stated the obvious. \"With a few tricks up her sleeves.\" A faint smile cracked his stony exterior as he said that.\n\"Night is a long-range stealth ship,\" Mawikizi said. \"Like  a Prowler, but she packs more of a punch.\"\n\"But it's frigate-slow,\" Zheng finished. \"She also has the ability to deliver a large complement of marines and orbital-drop shock troope rs, giving her a wider variety of mission abilities.\"\n\"Which will come in handy,\" said a fourth voice fro m behind them. Keyes twisted in his chair, surprised that they'd been sn uck up on so easily.\n\"Major Akio Watanabe, of the Prowler Corps. ONI,\" Z heng introduced the addition. Keyes hadn't heard the door open. But then, that wa s a spook for you. The Office of Naval Intelligence didn't believe in announcing themselves to the world; they really liked sneaking up on people. A point of professional pride, no doubt. Keyes still found it creepy and annoying. Watanabe slid into a vacant chair. He wore long sle eves and a high-collared form of gray uniform. His dark black eyes seemed to look  through people into the distance.\n\"I arrived... just in time, I see.\" He looked around.  \"I take it, Vice Admiral, our agreement is still in effect?\"\nMawikizi looked truly disgruntled. He sighed. \"I st and by my word, Major Watanabe.\"\nZheng tapped a button, and the scale hologram of th e Midsummer Night faded away. \"The ship begins her shakedown cruise today, Lieutenant Keyes. We'll be helping enforce the Cole Protocol for the first thr ee days, getting a feel for the ship.\"  17  Zheng turned to Watanabe. The major nodded. \"After that, there will be sealed orders for the bridge crew that will be available t o me after the quick shakedown cruise.\"\nKeyes frowned and turned to the Admiral. \"Sir, we'l l be working for ONI?\"\nMawikizi pursed his lips. \"Only initially. A profes sional exchange for helping us stealth the frigate.\"\n\"It'll be a brief mission,\" Watanabe promised. He g lanced at Zheng, who'd folded his arms. \"Then I'll be out of your hair and  you and the vice admiral can play with your new little toy.\"\nKeyes looked over at Mawikizi. The old Burundian lo oked like he'd found bird crap on his freshly polished staff car. Then he loo ked at Keyes and grinned. \"Zheng and I'd like you to be on the bridge. We're plannin g for very long recon and long range Covenant harassment, taking down targets of o pportunity, and just causing general hell. We want you because of your excellenc e in long-range navigation and your tactical skills, as we'll be using the Night in ways frigates aren't usually used. We need someone who can really work with Zheng to t hink outside the box.\"\n\"How long-range?\"\n\"Very,\" Mawikizi repeated. \"I know you have family,  but we don't have a lot of time for you to make a decision.\"\nKeyes leaned forward. \"I won't lie to you, sir,\" he  muttered. \"It's a hard thing to ask me to leave my daughter.\" Raising Miranda had b een the brightest point of being stuck in the Academy. Now that he was faced with a potential position on a ship, Keyes wondered if he'd just been focusing on what he couldn't have, a nd not on what he really had.\n\"I know,\" Mawikizi said. \"I know.\"\n\"On the other hand, defending our worlds from the C ovenant is the best form of fathering I can think of,\" Keyes finished. \"I'd be honored to serve aboard the Midsummer Night. Thank you for giving me the option.\" Technically th ey didn't have to ask. It had been a courtesy because he was medaled and taken off the line. They'd made a good choice. There was a lot more bit e left in this dog, Keyes thought.\n\"I have one favor to ask, if I may,\" Keyes continue d. \"The Pelican pilot who flew me here. I'd like him transferred to the Midsummer Night .\"\nCommander Zheng looked at Vice Admiral Mawikizi, wh o shrugged. \"I don't see why not. You know the pilot?\"\n\"Never met him before. But he's a hell of a flyer a nd if we're going to be doing unorthodox missions, he might come in handy. His na me is Jeffries.\"\n\"Consider it done.\" Mawikizi stood up, as did Keyes  and Zheng, then finally Watanabe. The vice admiral shook Keyes' hand. \"Glad  to have you aboard, Lieutenant.\"\n\"Thrilled to be aboard, sir.\"\nAnd he was, Keyes realized. Thrilled to be back on the line.\n\nJeffries waited for him, his legs propped up on the  controls of the Pelican. When he heard Keyes board the dropship he sat up. \"Know whe re we're going, sir?\"  18  Keyes smiled as he stepped up behind the pilot's ch air, looking at the Warthog that had dropped him off barreling away down the fi elds. \"Yes, Mr. Jeffries, I do. Hail Midsummer Night. They'll give you coordinates.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\"Also, do you know anything about Commander Dmitri Zheng?\"\n\"Zheng?\" Jeffries thought for a second. \"He's been all over the rumornet lately. He was from one of the Outer Colonies. Captained a frigate for a short while.\"\n\"A short while?\" Keyes didn't like the sound of tha t.\n\"He rammed a Covenant destroyer.\"\n\"Sometimes that's the only option you have...\"\n\"That was after he'd been ordered to retreat. The only reason he wa sn't court martialed was because he disabled it long enough fo r another ship to finish it off with a MAC. They fished him out of the debris.\"\nKeyes mulled that over. He was going to be serving with this man. Maybe he shouldn't have jumped to saying \"yes\" so quickly.\n\"You know why he did it, sir?\" Jeffries continued. \"Rumor has it he's mad with grief. Covenant burned his home world, while he was  out on a patrol, seven years ago. Never been the same since.\"\n\"Okay, that's enough,\" Keyes said. The conversation  was sliding into innuendo;\nhe didn't need to be poisoned against his future co mmanding officer. There'd be plenty of time to get to know Zheng once aboard. An d maybe this was why Keyes had been called back in, to add a bit of strategy a nd calm into Zheng's style. \"Oh, and one more thing, Mr. Jeffries?\"\n\"Sir?\"\n\"When you fly me, a commanding officer, out of a mi litary installation, you will follow the flight plan you were given. Failure to d o so, including dropping out of radar range near tree level, means they have every right to swat you out of the sky like a bug. We are, after all, on a world near the front. You yourself indicated that to me.\" The steel in his voice surprised even him. \"In  the event that we were to be shot down for violating the flight plan, I would persona lly hunt you down from beyond the grave, soldier, and make your life a miserable thing to behold. Do you get me, soldier?\"\nJeffries kept his gaze dead ahead through the winds hield. \"Yes sir.\"\n\"Lastly, you will don your full flight gear. Were this Pelican to be holed, while I might be gasping for air, I fully expect you to be able to fulfill your missioneven if your mission is as meaningless as being my personal , full-time chauffeur. We clear, Jeffries?\"\n\"Crystal, sir.\"\nKeyes clipped himself into the copilot's chair and listened to the Pelican's engines warm up. He was bridge crew on a stealth sh ip, with a mystery mission from the ONI in three days. It was good to be back.\n\"All right, Mr. Jeffries, take this bird up.\"  19  Keyes leaned back in his chair, enjoying the sensat ion of thrust. Three days to shake out the frigate and chase civilians to enforc e the Cole Protocol seemed straightforward enough. A nice way to ease back int o ship life.  20\nCHAPTER THREE\n\n\nOAKS CENTRAL HABITAT, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nIgnatio Delgado walked slowly toward his copilot's funeral dressed in a full suit, a tie uncomfortably snug around his neck. The painful pla sma burns on his torso still hurt but he felt compelled to attend. The parks existed on the inside of a hollowed-out a steroid; look up and you were looking down on the treetops of the other side of t he park. Maria Esquival intercepted him near a grove of tiny  trees.\n\"Hey, Nacho.\" She grabbed his hand. Only Maria call ed him by that nickname, because only Maria knew him from back when he was a  grubby little kid running around the surface of Madrigal. Back then she'd bee n a scrappy tomboy from just down the street with her hair pulled back in a func tional pony-tail. \"You really shouldn't be here.\"\n\"He was my best friend.\"\nMaria squeezed his hand. \"I know. But they still do n't want you here. You have to respect his family's wishes.\"\nIn the distance, the Hollister family had their bac ks to him. All dressed in black, surrounding a small urn, they were adding his ashes  to the ground near one of the trees that gave the habitat its name. They blamed Delgado for Melko's death. The copilot had succumbed to his wounds before anyone had gotten to Distancia. An unnecessary death, his family thought. They could care less about protecting the data that led back to Earth. They'd fought for self-rule from among the depths of this system for generations. Let the aliens have Earth, let it burn. They didn't care.\n\"Come on,\" Maria said, guiding him away.\n\"Do you think he died in vain?\" Delgado asked. Maria kept moving him along. \"It's not for me to sa y, Nacho. But I've known both of you long enough to know that you both stood  by each other to do what you each thought was right. So pay them no attention. T hey're grieving.\"\nMaria had been with Delgado when their parents had rushed them to the large fields outside Nueva Lima, bundling them aboard a f at cargo ship as their crying parents told them they'd be on the next ship follow ing them. They'd been crammed into the hold with all the othe r scared children, trying to figure out what was happening. Delgado had been fou rteen. Maria had been planning her quinceahera.   21  They'd held each other when the air outside turned white-hot, and the cargo ship shook and rattled. And when it had reached orbit, t he shocked pilot's voice filled the hold, telling them that the entire surface of Madri gal had been \"glassed.\"\nAll because of the war between the UNSC and the Cov enant. They strolled along, heading toward a man, who appe ared to be waiting for them by one of the habitat's famous large oak trees. His  dark eyes taking in the funeral in the distance. He wore casual overalls, and a cap. Maria stopped. \"My brother needs to talk to you, th ough he refuses to tell me about what.\"\n\"Don't take it so personally, Maria. It's council b usiness.\"\nNine Security Council members were voted into posit ion by the citizens of the Rubble. They handled the entire structure's defense s, along with the AI Juliana. Diego and the Council had chosen Delgado and Melko on short notice to protect the navigation when the Nav data started disappeari ng. With their years of piloting cargo throughout the Rubble, they knew it all insid e and out. The council felt secrecy was their best option. With their volunteer defense  forces and open nature, trying to put the chip under iron-tight guard would raise att ention and create a big target. But after this latest mishap, Delgado was convinced  someone on the Council was leaking the location.\n\"You slumming it, Diego?\" This was not the usual, t ightly tailored man that Delgado expected. Diego grimaced. \"Keeping a low profile, Ignatio.\" H e kissed his sister on the cheek, and she left the copse of trees to walk alon e across the manicured grass toward the funeral.\n\"What do you need?\" Delgado finally asked, watching  Maria.\n\"You seem convinced that someone on the Security Co uncil is leaking information about the location of the navigation da ta. You've been sniffing around, kicking up attention, trying to figure it out.\" Die go started walking out from the park toward the large airlocks at the end of Oaks Centra l Habitat. \"When we decided to use you to move the data, and keep it safe, we were  figuring on your keeping a low profile. That was the whole damn point, Ignatio.\"\n\"Someone is leaking it,\" Delgado said. \"Those Jackals knew e xactly where it was. This was the second time they made a play to get at  it, and they were damn close. If I hadn't decided to move the data earlier than the da te I gave the Security Council, those Jackals would have had it. You know, whoever leaked that murdered Melko. And I want them to pay.\"\nThey passed by the giant rolling axle of the join b etween the docking tubes and the asteroid's slow-spinning hub.\n\"I understand what you're doing, Ignatio. But the o nly people who knew where the navigation data was are the Security Council me mbers. To suggest that one of us leaked it is serious.\"\n\"I know that,\" Delgado said as they walked into a m assive, clear tube. From here they could see other asteroids connected to Oak Par k. The connected structures faded off into the distance like a giant's tinker toy set .  22  Artificial gravity faded away, and the two men grab bed the railings running along the tube as they hung in the air. In the center of the docking tube, pods zipped along with goods and passengers moving from rocky habitat  to habitat. \"A lot of people wouldn't mind handing over the chart data to the Ki g-Yar. They're offering us power, money, and Covenant technology for it.\"\n\"And what about you, Diego?\" Delgado asked. \"You in  favor of that?\"\nDiego slowed down and came to a stop in the busy tu be. He looked off at the looming orb of the gas giant Hesiod in the distance . \"I think that if we hand over the chart data, our usefulness to the Kig-Yar is over. That's why I've worked so hard to keep the data concealed. That's why I asked you to help me do it. Most of the Council agrees.\"\n\"Most?\" Delgado seized on the word. Diego was being  surprisingly moderate for an old Insurrectionist. Diego handed him a cigar, letting it hang in the ai r thanks to the lack of artificial gravity. Delgado looked down. \"A Sweet William? I d idn't realize there were any left.\"\n\"A Council member gave me one of these. Hinted arou nd that he could get me more, said he had a smuggling operation out of Char ybdis IX with one of his ships. He says that the UNSC Navy has been getting ready t o crack down on slipspace jumps by citizens. They want everything to be milit arized.\" Diego practically spat the last word. \"This Council member has been shipping w eapons of some sort he purchased from the Covenant for brother Insurrectio nists back in the colonies, but he's worried that whatever is destroying the naviga tion data throughout the Rubble may get to him. He wants to give it to the Kig-Yar before something happens. He claims he's making his last smuggling trip now. Aft erwards, he wants to give the Kig-Yar his ship, and the navigation data aboard it . I'm getting this secondhand, but it looks like he's trying to bribe a majority Counc il vote for selling the navigation data.\"\n\"You're going to let that happen?\"\n\"I had Juliana hunt for a likely candidate among re cent ship activity.\" Diego smiled referring to the Rubble's AI. \"She came up w ith one. The ship's name was Kestrel. It is the only known ship that could still be in th e colonies and able to make it back. It hasn't returned to dock, as far as we c an tell. All our other smuggling ships have been destroyed, or had their data erased. We'r e truly cut off from the rest of humanity.\"\n\"Your Council member could have been lying; he coul d have just found some boxes of Sweet Williams.\"\n\"Maybe,\" Diego said. \"But Juliana thinks the Kestrel is our ship.\"\n\"So what do you want me to do?\" Delgado handed the cigar back by bumping it back through the air at Diego.\n\"Find out more about the Kestrel, Ignatio. See if they were really working for a Council member. Find out if they've snuck back into  the Rubble. Because if you can connect them to our Council member, then I can move  against him. There are better things to be trading for those weapons. Like... medic ine instead of damned cigars.\"\nDiego crushed the cigar, and the pieces of tobacco flakes hung in the air between them. \"And since I'm giving you this lead, please w ork hard to keep it quiet.\"  23  \"I can do that.\" Delgado brushed the crushed cigar out of the air between them.\n\"What's his name?\"\nDiego sighed. He looked very reluctant to be giving  out a name of a fellow Security Council member. Maybe he was having second  thoughts. He turned and looked out of the tube. The entire collection of tu bes and asteroids housed the remains of Madrigal's proud colony: its people. It was called the Rubble because that's what it had  once been. Detritus, rubble, rocks, and slag left over from the creation of the solar system, trailing the gas giant Hesiod.\n\"You've done a lot for me, Diego, I appreciate ever ything,\" Delgado said. Diego had taken in both Maria and Delgado when they arriv ed those years ago, after Madrigal was destroyed. Diego had joined the Insurr ectionists years before Madrigal was glassed, and he'd been the only person waiting for them after they'd fled the planet. Delgado owed Diego a lot. But before everyt hing changed, Diego planted bombs in passenger ships, spaceports, and on statio ns. He'd smuggled and pirated, and everything that implied. Delgado always felt a sense of awkwardness, accepting what his hard-working parents, had they lived, woul d have called blood money. There was a tension in his friendship with Diego. B ut then, maybe that wasn't fair. Since the fall of Madrigal, Diego had thrown himsel f at the idea of the Rubble. Delgado changed the tone of his words. \"So please g ive me the name. I won't kill the man. I'll bring him to justice. We're not the rabbl e we used to be, we've changed since the Fall of Madrigal.\"\nBack then, the Rubble had just been a massive Insur rectionist military base, quartered and scattered throughout the asteroids tr ailing the gas giant in a trojan orbit. But in short time, using spaceships, raw materials,  and anything they could lay their hands on that hadn't been destroyed by the Co venant, they'd built the Rubble that they were now looking out on. It was something  to be proud of.\n\"I know.\" Diego turned back to him. \"Doesn't make i t easier. The man you're looking to link the Kestrel to is Peter Bonifacio.\"\nDelgado looked down the length of the tube. Bonifac io did a lot of smuggling back before the Covenant glassed Madrigal. Now he w as reduced to occasional sneaks back to the Inner Colonies, though even thos e trips had become too dangerous as he lost ship after ship to both UNSC and Covenan t forces. Delgado had moved stuff from asteroid to asteroid for the man, who al ways paid late. How he'd managed to get on the ballot to be voted onto the Security Council Delgado had never understood.\n\"Consider it done,\" Delgado said. Halfway around th e clear tube a series of streamlined transit cars sped up, moving passengers  inside from one habitat to another on a maglev track. \"Good. Thank you. And De lgado? You'll need to be careful.\" Delgado nodded. The two men shook hands, and then floated to go off their separate ways. Diego with sadness in his eyes. Delg ado with fire and vengeance.  24\nCHAPTER FOUR\n\n\nOUTER FRINGES, ECTANUS 45 SYSTEM\n\nKeyes rode the copilot's seat as Jeffries expertly guided a Pelican full of orbital-drop shock troopers into the inky depths of space betwee n the Midsummer Night and the tattered-looking civilian cargo hauler Finnegan's Wake. Finnegan's Wake had been slowly edging its way toward the periphery  of the Ectanus 45 outer system ever since it left Chi Rho,  getting ready for a jump. Zheng had shadowed the freighter long enough to make sure  it wasn't an in-system trip. It wasn't. The ship, unaware it was being followed,  had headed off well clear of this system's ecliptic plane. A surprise shot across the bows from the Midsummer Night convinced them to not try accelerating and to allow Midsummer Night to match speed so they could sling the Pelican over. Jeffries came in nice and easy, passing over the hu ll to the other side of the civilian ship and then slipping the Pelican into th e cargo ship's hold.\n\"Check your equipment!\" the ODST platoon commander Canfield shouted.\n\"Look sharp.\"\nIn the Pelican's hold ODSTs stirred, unclipped thei r safety belts, and lined up. They'd been bugging Zheng about not getting a chanc e to board the previous three civilian ships the Midsummer Night had stopped, so the commander had finally agreed to let them get some action in.\n\"They're still running a check on the ship's regist ry,\" Can-field called out from the back. \"But we're ready to rock, sir.\"\n\"Sure you don't want to wait for their full report,  First Lieutenant?\" Keyes asked. Keyes kicked himself for the rookie attitude he'd h ad just forty-eight hours ago, when he'd thought he had an easy three days ahead o f him. True, this was a shakeout, prior to a real-live mission with possible action t hanks to the ONI spook and his mysterious sealed orders. But that hadn't stopped one exploding pipe and a ra diation leak, and several crew from ending up in the infirmary. Two of the point g uns on the starboard hull were out. A number of on/off magnets on the MAC, in esse nce a railgun, were failing, preventing them from getting the full power of the massive cannon. The Finnegan's Wake didn't know it, but at the moment, thanks to a part ially shut-down reactor that the engineers were working o n, they could've easily outrun the Midsummer Night.   25  \"Hell no, sir, I'm all for going in,\" Canfield said . He vibrated with energy. Keyes had a feeling Canfield wanted some action, and now.  He'd have to keep an eye on him, make sure Canfield didn't get overly rough wit h some civilian.\n\"Okay, Canfield, let's get this show on the road, t hen.\" Keyes unclipped from his seat, and Canfield stepped forward, waiting for his  cue. Keyes nodded at him. Time to give the civvies something to gape at. Impress u pon them the absolute seriousness that the UNSC was taking about the Cole Protocol. A nd that included sending an officer to oversee the boarding. Canfield spat chew out on the grated floor of the P elican and shouted, \"Lock and load Helljumpers!\"\nKeyes turned to the cockpit. \"Drop the ramp, Mr. Je ffries. Hard and quick, as long as it's clear.\"\n\"Dropping the ramp, sir.\"\nThe ODSTs of the 105th, or Helljumpers as they were  also called, clad in black vacuum-rated armor, mirror-faced helmets and all, s treamed out. They scattered through the hold of the freighter and its container s, picking targets. They were quick and quiet, with no chatter, and focused on the whol e process. Keyes strode down the ramp into a canyon between th e containers. He glanced in through the tough, scratched window of one of them.  Nothing to see but labeled boxes. The captain of the freighter and three of his crew stood with their arms folded at the edge of their bay, watching the ODSTs.\n\"Sir, are you the captain of this ship?\" Keyes aske d. The ascetic man nodded a shock of blond hair. \"We d id nothing wrong. We've made the jump to\"\nKeyes held up a hand. \"Your ship is leaving UNSC pr otected space, Captain. You had the choice to make alternate arrangements for t his cargo, or request to join a convoy where your navigation would be handled by Na vy communications AIs. Either way, we need to wipe your nav data and check  the ship out.\"\n\"This is a violation of our rights as merchants. We  need to move our cargo now,\"\nthe captain insisted.\n\"Sir, there is a war on,\" Keyes snapped. \"In case you haven't noticed, t here are aliens forcing their way toward the Inner Colonies.  Cargo can wait.\" ONI was stretching it, targeting civilian ships, but they j ust couldn't risk nav data falling into Covenant hands. The captain glared at Keyes, boiling with anger. \"A nd here we lose another right.\"\nKeyes turned to Canfield, who had sidled over. He l ooked eager to get his men kicking in doors and checking over cargo. \"Do your thing.\"\n\"Fascists,\" the captain spat. Keyes kept an eye on the man. He seemed overly keyed up and angry. Canfield's helmet twisted and Keyes heard the crack le of his radio in his earpiece. \"Okay, Helljumpers, move out, Oedant\"\nKeyes didn't hear the rest of Canfield's orders. Th e container they stood next to exploded, throwing Keyes clear and smacking his hea d against the deck.  26  The scene of Helljumpers scrambling for cover faded  away as a thick cloud of smoke and unconsciousness rolled over Keyes.  27\nCHAPTER FIVE\n\n\nINSURRECTIONIST FREIGHTER FINNEGAN'S WAKE, OUTER FRINGES, ECTANUS 45 SYSTEM\n\nFour more explosions rocked the inside of the cargo  bay. Debris flew through the air and clattered off the walls, then rained down to th e floor. A thick haze of smoke filled the air, making it nearly impossible to brea the. Keyes lay on his side, blinking away the blood trickling down his forehead into his  eyes. He tried to get on his hands and knees to stand, bu t he couldn't quite manage it. An ODST Helljumper grabbed his arm. \"Come on, sir, you just got your bell rung.\"\nThe man was right. Keyes could hardly focus on the grating of the floor right under the Helljumper's boots. He leaned against the  Helljumper's body armor, struggling to keep under his own power. The thick haze was starting to clear. Keyes let the  Helljumper set him down against the side of the container where they'd come  in. Keyes could see the high tail of the Pelican around the edge of the container in front of him. The other wounded ODSTs sat by him, armor ripped open or dented from container shrapnel. Several of the bodies just lay still, flat out on t he floor. Keyes swallowed and rubbed his sleeve over his face  to get the blood off. He could feel the warm trickle of more coming. \"Where' s Canfield?\" He wanted to find out what the veteran ODST commander was doing.\n\"Canfield's dead, sir.\" The soldier who'd dragged h im to safety was checking people for injuries, spraying biofoam into wounds t o try and stabilize things. They needed to evacuate quickly before they lost more so ldiers.\n\"Dead?\" Keyes blinked more stinging blood and sweat  out of his eyes. \"Who's in charge?\"\nKeyes was overwhelmed with the thought that the ent ire cargo bay had been a trap that he had led good men into.\n\"Faison, sir.\"\nKeyes felt for his earpiece and realized he'd lost it in the shock-wave. \"Someone toss me their helmet ASAP. I need a heads-up and co mms.\"\nA wounded soldier threw his helmet over, and Keyes slapped it on his head, wincing when it touched. Whatever hit him had glanc ed off his skull, giving him a head wound and most likely a concussion.\n\"Faison, this is Keyes, give me a sit rep.\"  28  \"Shaped charges on the containers, sir. Insurrectio nists no doubt. Three of them attacked us when the explosions happened.\"\n\"Any survivors?\" Keyes had hoped that they'd captur ed them alive, to get some information out of them. Faison cleared his throat over the air. \"One. He's with the wounded. Sir, they were shooting at us. We thought it prudent to return fir e.\"\n\"I understand that.\" Keyes said. \"I was hoping for intellike how many more surprises might be waiting. You're securing the shi p, checking for others?\"\n\"Yessir.\" Faison sounded a bit annoyed. \"Of course,  sir. And an emergency beacon has been triggered to bring the Midsummer Night in with reinforcements. We'll move right on through every inch of this boat , sir.\"\n\"I'm sure you will,\" Keyes muttered.\n\"And if you don't mind, sir, I don't need someone s econd guessing my orders and looking over my shoulder. All things considered, si r, you're Navy, I'm the marine. Let's stay out of each other's way.\"\nThe loud roaring in the cargo bay had grown a bit m ore noticeable. Keyes looked at the soldier checking the wounded over and ignore d Faison's disdain for a more immediate concern. \"Son, where are we losing air fr om?\"\n\"Everywhere. The explosives punched holes all over this little tub,\" came a response.\n\"Wish I were a marine right now,\" Keyes said, looki ng around at the ODSTs.\n\"I'm not in vacuumproof armor.\"\n\"We'll think of something,\" the Helljumper said, gl ancing over at the Pelican. Keyes tapped his earpiece. \"Jeffries, Keyes here. A cknowledge.\"\nSilence. With a grunt Keyes got to his feet and stumbled ove r to the container. He leaned against it and slid around the corner. He stared at the gaping hole in the side of the Pel ican.\n\"They pulled him out, sir.\" Another Helljumper tapp ed Keyes on the shoulder.\n\"We pumped him full of foam; he's in bad shape. But  Midsummer Night should jockey in here soon. We'll have them transferred ov er.\"\nKeyes looked at the line of wounded and dead ODSTs.  These were the best of the best. Ask for volunteers to hold a line and kick as s, they were the first with their hands up. Happy to face the long odds, happy to fac e the enemy in the eye. All dead from a routine boarding. From a trick. Keyes knew there could be more. He turned to the on e Finnegan's Wake crewman still alive. He was lying on the deck with the wounded. A Helljumper sat near him, keeping a pulse. Keyes looked around the cargo bay. Think laterally, he told himself. This wasn't a typical fight; he needed to think a step ahead. The Helljumpers were combing the ship for more Inni es. They'd need transport off the ship once they'd combed it, since the Pelic an they'd come in on was holed. Keyes triggered the Midsummer Night's ship-to-ship channel and tried to make contact, but got nothing.  29  Keyes bit his lip. \"Commander Faison, Keyes here. D id you trigger the beacon calling the Midsummer Night in?\"\n\"Faison here. No, sir.\"\n\"Then who did?\" Keyes felt a cold stab of fear. The y could all hear the beacon just by flipping to the emergency channel. A steady  series of digital beeps tapping out a number code that, when translated, told any U NSC listening: men down, need backup and medical assistance with all possible spe ed.\n\"I don't know, sir.\" Faison said, annoyed. \"We're i n the middle of sweeping the ship...\"\n\"Commander, I'm pulling rank. I'm ordering you to s top the sweep, get a response from every single marine under your comman d. I want to know who set the beacon off.\"\n\"Yessir,\" came Faison's clipped reply in Keyes' ear . \"Don't suppose you want me to interview any of the dead, sir? Could be some what difficult.\" The Helljumper's passive-agressiveness was turning into anger. Faiso n obviously wanted to kick back. And hard.\n\"No, Faison. We'll do that here.\" Keyes turned to t he Helljumpers standing around him. He couldn't see any expressions behind those dark blue faceplates. He had a feeling that there wouldn't be any smiles. Bu t knowing exactly what was going on in a battle was extremely important. And while t hey might not respect the man right now, Keyes would make sure that even the ODST s would damn well respect the rank. \"Pull the chips on any soldier's helmets, che ck the footage and audio, look to see if anyone triggered a beacon.\"\nThey all stood silent. Then one marine managed a \"S ir...\"\n\"Don't stand there and stare at me,\" Keyes shouted,  the crack of a whip in the back of his tone. The words echoed in the cavernous  bay. \"Just do it!\"\nThey jumped to, pulling chips out of their fallen c omrades' helmets and checking the footage. Keyes looked at the soldier who'd toss ed him his helmet, and the man shook his head. Not him. As they worked, Keyes switched frequencies and cont inually called out to the Midsummer Night. Nothing. They could talk inside the freighter, but it seemed nothing was getting out. One by one, the Helljumpers all reported their beac on results: nothing.\n\"Faison?\" Keyes called out over comms.\n\"Nothing here, sir. No one standing did it.\"\n\"Nothing on the wounded or dead.\"\n\"Sir?\" Faison wasn't questioning Keyes this time, o r annoyed. He wanted to know what Keyes was thinking.\n\"The Pelican is down. If any of your men find a way  to talk to the Midsummer Night, have them tell Zheng to stand off for now. That we have things under control.\"\n\"I'm on it, sir.\" Faison went quiet. Keyes took a deep breath and another wave of dizzin ess hit him. They were losing too much air from the cargo bay. He had mayb e another fifteen minutes before he'd start gasping.  30  \"Sir?\" Faison was back. \"We're being jammed. Nothin g's getting out. There are some pretty hefty blast doors between us and the co ckpit. We can start working on blowing those out to see if we can gain access to t his ship's comms.\"\n\"No,\" Keyes said. \"They'll have more surprises. Not  worth it right now. Get back and let's regroup, figure out what to do.\"\n\"You have a plan?\" Faison asked. Keyes smiled insid e his ODST helmet. He sure as hell had a plan. But Keyes wasn't going to broad cast it over a suit radio, not when the Insurrectionists aboard already showed a capaci ty for messing with their communications so easily.\n\"No, Commander. I just want to regroup, take care o f our wounded, and get ready for the Midsummer Night to come in. Get every ODST back to the cargo bay AS AP. Move it.\"\nHe motioned one of the Helljumpers over. The man's tag read markov.\n\"Sir.\"\n\"This armor really vacuum proof?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Yessir.\"\n\"How long can the air hold?\"\n\"Fifteen minutes, sir.\" Good, that hadn't changed i n his years off.\n\"Alright, Markov,\" Keyes looked around, then lowere d his voice. \"We need explosives. We're going to widen one of these debri s holes in the hull large enough to shove one of these containers through. Say nothi ng over comms, ask for anything you need in person and quietly. Grab as many battle  rifles as you can, a pair of field goggles, and all the ammo you can hang onto. Move i t.\"\nMarkov took off, and Keyes walked over to a punctur e in the far side of the hull from the cargo bay doors. The ragged edges whistled  as air leaked out the gap. Keyes walked back toward the wounded. \"Listen, as e veryone comes in relay this in person. Not over comms, understand? I need all t hese cargo containers searched and cleared out. Put the dead in one, the wounded i n another.\"\nHelljumpers flooded back into the cargo bay. As wor d of the order spread, each man started pulling their comrades toward the empty  pair of containers. Markov came back with a pair of battle rifles and e xtra ammo magazines tucked into every pocket of his armor. Keyes looked him ov er. \"Strip your armor, son, and hand me those rifles. Then I want you in the contai ner with the wounded.\"\n\"Sir?\"\n\"I'm going to need to get out there in front of the  containers.\"\n\"There's other armor,\" Markov protested. He pointed  a black-gloved hand at the rows of dead men. Keyes got up close to the man's helmet. \"You want m e to use body armor that may have been damaged in the explosion, that may ha ve caused their injury or death?\nWe don't have time to check them over.\"\n\"Markov, strip your armor down, now!\" A Helljumper with squad leader paint on the shoulder of his body armor had walked up behind  the two of them. Faison. Markov removed his armor, and just as quickly Keyes  started buckling up.\n\"No plan, huh?\" Faison said out loud. \"Sure doesn't  look that way from where I'm standing.\"  31  Keyes finished snapping up. He was now another blac k-clad ODST Helljumper for all appearances. He slung the pair of battle ri fles over his shoulder and checked to make sure the ammo was all secure. He looked at Faison. \"I lied. I have a plan. They b lew us up at the boarding, and they've set off the emergency beacon that's bringin g in the Midsummer Night. Because we obviously didn't set it off. What do you  think is the next step? I'm willing to bet this whole freighter is ready to blo w the moment our ship gets close enough. So for now I want you to get this gap lined  with explosives. I want a hole big enough to shove a container through. Wounded are in  one container, dead in another. Any walking and fit Helljumpers I want jumping outs ide and throwing themselves clear of the freighter.\"\n\"We're blowing out of here?\"\n\"Literally.\" Keyes held up a battle rifle. \"When yo u're in zero-gravity training, rule number one about firing a gun! Make sure you'r e braced or you're intending to go flying.\"\n\"Newton's third law, sir!\" Faison nodded his head. \"For every action there's an equal, and opposite, reaction. You want us to use o ur weapons like pocket rockets, sir?\"\n\"Now you're talking my language,\" Keyes said. \"Yes.  We're all going to jump ship and use our weapons to maneuver, but me first.  I can get far enough clear of this jam to warn the Midsummer Night what's happening, we don't want them shooting at us by mistake.\"\n\"And we're not using the bay doors because?\" Faison  asked.\n\"When terrorists set off a bomb, it's often designe d to create panic so they can do real damage when people start to flee. And what's t he natural escape route here? Can you guarantee me that there are no weapons outside covering it?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Bay doors...\" someone muttered.\n\"Exactly. Plus, it's pointed the wrong way. We have  only fifteen minutes of air. We all need to head straight for the Midsummer Night. I want ODSTs hanging onto the container with the wounded, so they can navigat e it as best they can away from the ship using their guns. Leave the dead tagged wi th a beacon, we'll pick it up after action.\"\nFaison shook his head. \"This is crap, sir. We're ri sking our lives to jump clear of a ship with limited air when we should be taking th e fight right to them...\"\n\"I'm not asking for your feedback, Faison,\" Keyes s aid firmly. \"This is an order.\"\nFor a moment they stood and glared at each other, t hen Faison backed down with gritted teeth. It only took another two minutes before the Helljum pers had the containers sealed, explosives primed, and were ready to rock. It had to be done quickly. If there were Insurrectionists still lurking around on the s hip, somehow, it wouldn't take long for them to realize Keyes had figured out what they  were up to. The ODSTs had performed well, organizing the whole thing with quiet efficiency. The wounded waited inside a cargo conta iner that had been dragged to the hole and the other Helljumpers got ready for their departure.\n\"Let's do it,\" Keyes said, from a safe distance.  32  \"Fire in the hole!\" Markov pressed a remote. The explosion rocked Keyes back, slamming him again st the container behind him. Fortunately, this time he had on a helmet. Mol ten metal rained down, sizzling as it hit the cargo bay floor. Four Helljumpers rushed to the edge with Keyes. He felt the suit kick over to internal air as the pressure dropped. They grabbed his arms and legs.\n\"You sure about this, sir?\" one of them asked.\n\"Get on with it,\" Keyes said. They wasted no time asking him again; all four held  him between them like he was a battering ram. They ran toward the side of th e hull at a sprint, and then threw Keyes through the center of the ragged hole. One of  the rifles caught on an edge and was ripped free. But he still had the other. Keyes flew out in a cloud of crystallizing vapor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a series of muz zle flashes. Something struck him in the back, spinning him out of control. Stars  cartwheeled around him. No more bullets struck; he was probably already far enough away that the black armor was too hard to spot. He'd only been visible because of the  cloud of vapor ice around him.\n\"Midsummer Night this is Keyes, come in.\"\nHe waited for a moment. There was no reply. Keyes grabbed his remaining battle rifle and tried to gauge his rate of spin while he breathed slowly to remain calm. He fired against  the direction of his spin until he'd stopped and he could see Finnegan's Wake off like a toy in the distance. He looked around. He couldn't see the Midsummer Night out there, but he'd cleared the freighter in roughly the right direction. He just needed to get farther away. He tried to radio in again as he lined up a shot th at would move him farther out in the right direction, but not fire bullets right bac k at the freighter where the ODSTs would be following. \"Midsummer Night, this is Keyes, come in.\"\nAgain, no reply. Keyes fired the rifle off, a burst  of fire aimed below the freighter, a few seconds above to compensate, movin g him farther away into the quiet darkness. Keyes' heart sped as he thought abo ut how little time he had left. If Zheng had moved away, or to the other side of the f reighter... Keyes willed himself to remain calm, and follow the plan. Life was full of what-ifs and they had no place in an emergency. Keyes emptied the battle rifle's magazine, and ripp ed through the spares as fast as he could. In the far distance the Wake looked about as small as his thumb. He could see tw o specks of red metal falling away from it, and hoped  it was the two containers and the rest of the ODSTs getting clear of the freighter.\n\"This is UNSC Frigate Midsummer Night,\" Zheng's voice suddenly crackled in Keyes' ears. \"Identify yourself.\"\n\"Lieutenant Keyes, sir!\" Keyes grinned. \"The rest o f the ODSTs are jumping clear of the freighter. We were attacked. Wounded a nd dead are in the two containers  33  that were just shoved out. The freighter is most li kely a big trap, sir, probably rigged to blow when you got close.\"\nKeyes raised field glasses up to his helmet. Recogn izing the model, the helmet's heads-up display accessed the device and the view o f the distant freighter zoomed. He could see a steady stream of Helljumpers using t heir weapons to propel themselves away from the gray craft: a swarm of bla ck dots drifting out in the vacuum. \"Well done, Faison.\"\nThe two containers became visible, the tiny figures  of Helljumpers hanging onto them, their guns aimed at the ship. Once the first group cleared the ship, the Helljumpers hanging onto the containers started fir ing their weapons to get the bulky boxes moving outward. In the distance Finnegan's Wake collapsed, sections of the ship straining against the ribs of its bulkheads and then caving inward. T he Insurrectionists hiding on the outer hull had realized that the ODSTs were abandon ing ship on the double, and were blowing it up while they could still take out what UNSC forces they could.\n\"Helljumpers empty your magazines!\" Keyes shouted, even as Faison screamed for them to do the same. The freighter blew out in a white-hot fireball of d ebris, the brightly colored Shockwave of gas and debris stripping the container s of the Helljumpers clinging to them. In the bright light, and under magnification, Keyes  saw the outlines of Helljumpers splayed out and spinning as they were t ossed away from the vicinity of the destroyed freighter. Keyes stared in horror, forgetting to breathe. They  hadn't gotten clear in time, and because he insisted on going first, taking the risk of any Insurrectionist fire on the way out, he might be the only one to survive.\n\"Scramble recovery vehicles!\" Zheng shouted as a sh ock-wave of glowing gas slammed into Keyes. In the wake of the fireball came debris, and Keyes felt himself thrown farther away as a constant pitter-patter of chunks of the s hip, along with even larger pieces of deck plate and machinery, flew past. A numb feeling of shock filled him. His first mission back was a failure. He wasn't fit  to be out here at all, and he had gotten some extraordinary men killed because of it.   34\nCHAPTER SIX\n\n\nEDDIE'S IN THE ROCK, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nA structure the size of the Rubble, with its hundre ds of habitable asteroids with artificial gravity all connected by docking tubes, had a lot of places a man could get a drink. Eddie's in the Rock was one of hundreds, and  on any given ranking of the bars, it lay somewhere in the lower ten. Delgado knew that any ex-smugglers who would know a nything about the Kestrel wouldn't be anywhere trendy, or frequenting the lar ger habitats where slamming beats of flip music blared out from behind  the doors built to look like industrial airlocks. No, they'd be holed up in one of the outer habitats , far from the core, where the asteroids were still being mined or hollowed out. W here the bar door was an actual airlock, in case some massive piece of construction  equipment broke a hole in the rock while baking it and all the air blew out. Delgado had spent the better part of his day duckin g in and out of the dark holes drilled into the sides of these habitats near the e dges of the Rubble, places hastily equipped with perma-crete and grating inside. Dress ed up in a cheap pair of clean pants and a Distancia leather jacket, he had meandered through habitats w ithout artificial gravity, and others where it was half a standard gravity to make it easier on the construction crews. Eddie Underwood looked up as Delgado walked into hi s bar. \"Distancia, right?\"\nHis artificial right hand, a fake pink against Eddi e's white upper arm, jerked a bit as he cleaned a glass out with a clean rag. Eddie's in  the Rock was a dive, but one with an owner obsessed with cleanliness.\n\"Yeah.\" Delgado had shuttled mining supplies from o ne freshly finished habitat to another, as well as mining crews in a hurry to g et from one end of the Rubble to the other. He was a known quantity in this crowd. Delgado sat at the bar. A crowd of heavy-set miners  lined the counter, and toward the back scattered groups drank loudly in booths or  played gravity ball on a table. A lean body-builder or heavy-crew worker sat alone in  a booth in the far corner with his back to the door. \"Heard about Melko Hollister?\"\nEddie nodded. He gave no indication how he felt abo ut it, which Delgado could take. \"What'll you have?\"\n\"Here to ask a favor.\" Delgado leaned on the bar ne ar a corner post that ran up to the raw rock ceiling. Hanging over the bar was a st one arm. It was Eddie's. He'd lost  35  it while working on a crew, falling into liquefied rock with his hand out to try and catch himself. He'd retired after that. He had his lost arm jackha mmered out of the cooled rock and started the bar. Eddie hadn't said anything, so Delgado continued. \" I know it's soon, but I don't have any crew. I'm looking for anyone in search of a ship to work on.\"\n\"Maybe I know someone,\" Eddie said.\n\"Looking for a whole crew,\" Delgado replied. \"Willi ng to pay a solid finder's fee. I've got a chance for a cheap lease on a ship with a Slipspace drive, a one-time run sort of thing. I need the sort of crew that can  handle Slipspace jumps without getting frozen. Particularly one with recent experi ence. Particularly anyone who's gotten back recently from the Inner Colonies?\"\nEddie leaned forward. \"Ya know no one is smuggling anymore. All the navs have been Purged.\" Purged. Eddie capitalized the word wi th his voice. It was the topic of discussion throughout the Rubble. How they were get ting cut off from being able to slip the occasional ship out and back over enemy li nes. What little news of the outside world they'd gleaned, what supplies they'd managed to haul back, had all come to a halt. People were scared. Some speculated  it was Insurrectionist hard cases, sealing them off from the UNSC. Others blame d the Kig-Yar, pointing out that the Covenant had, after all, destroyed Madrigal. Th ey feared the Rubble would be next. Some claimed that the UNSC was cracking down on all nonmilitary travel.\n\"There may a ship or two still straggling in,\" Delg ado muttered. \"Some that might still have nav data and help me out.\"\n\"Like the crew from the Kestrel ?\"\nDelgado froze. \"I wasn't specifically looking for i nformation about them...\"\n\"Huh... Well you're not the only one. Miss Universe o ver there is, too.\" Eddie jerked his head toward the booth in the shadows whe re the massive man sat. He shifted, and Delgado noticed the triceps flexing un der the person's shirt. He had to assume Eddie meant there was a woman in the booth w ith the guy. It wasn't a bodybuilder sitting there. It wasn't ev en a man. It was the Spartan, Adriana. He recognized her face. The last time he'd  seen her, she had been surrounded by iridescent gray metal, and she'd worn  the immensely powerful armor as if it had been a second suit of clothing. Now she wore a clean pair of pants and a tight, lon g-sleeved shirt in the manner of the off-duty miners in the bar. It didn't camouflage the fact that she was well ove r six and a half feet tall and dominated the booth. It couldn't camouflage the fact that she could, quite obviously , break any man in the bar in half. And many of them seemed to sense i t and keep well clear. Delgado sat back down in the chair, and Eddie sighe d. \"You know her.\"\n\"No, not really, Eddie. Not really.\" Delgado didn't  try too hard to sell that. He slid off the chair and approached the booth. \"Can I  buy you a drink?\"\nShe didn't bother to turn, but waved him into the b ooth. \"Hello Mr. Delgado,\"\nshe said. \"Hunting for something, are we?\"  36  Delgado glanced around the bar. \"Maybe. But the cha nces of me finding it are somewhat ruined now that you've arrived asking the same questions.\"\nThere were people paying too much attention to them  near the other side of the bar. \"I'm sorry,\" Adriana said. Five men walked over before Delgado could suggest t hat they get the hell out of there.\n\"What the hell are you two doing asking about the Kestrel?\" The leader of the little group asked.\n\"Hey, guys, come on.\" Delgado held up his hands, pl acating them. \"Let's stay calm.\"\n\"Shut up.\" These were large, muscled miners, their eyes glassy from being too far into the drink. \"This freak's been nosing around ab out stuff that's not her business.\"\nAdriana looked at the group. \"I'm just asking a few  questions. No reason to make this anything it's not.\"\n\"What we don't need, is some Earth-lovin' she-hulk skulking about our bars, asking about things that ain't none of her business ,\" another man snapped.\n\"Hey now,\" Delgado said.\n\"Hey now what?\" The leader reached over and grabbed  Adriana's shoulder.\n\"Now listen here!\"\nShe shrugged his hand off and pushed it back. The s tout miner staggered slightly, and for a moment, the whole group paused. Then the miner surged back, grabbing at Adriana's s hirt collar again. \"You\"\nThis time she grabbed his hand and twisted it. \"Don 't touch me.\" She didn't ask this, she stated it. Like it was a fact. A second man swore and lunged for her as well. \"We' ll do whatever the hell we want.\"\nHe grabbed for her arm, but she grabbed his instead  and jerked it. Now she had both men by an arm, twisting their hand s back around. \"Now listen to me,\" Adriana snapped. \"If I want to ask after th e Kestrel, or anything else that strikes my fancy, what makes you think you could st op me?\"\nThe air in the bar suddenly broke, and the faux pol iteness dropped. \"None of that stuff ain't none of your business, bitch!\" another miner screamed. He threw a punch. Adriana let go of the two arms she held and grabbed  the punch out of midair. She pulled the man toward her and slammed his head into  the table. The table gave way and splintered where the man's h ead struck it. He fell through the destroyed wood onto the floor in between Adrian a and Delgado. A fight erupted, the whole bar streaming their way in, Delgado cursing as he pushed his way back farther into the booth. He hadn 't wanted to get involved, but the entire bar had already assumed they were working to gether. Adriana ripped the remains of the table out of the ground with a grunt. She held the large pedestal that had anchored it into the fl oor out in front of her with one hand, keeping the angry men at bay as she tapped her ear.  \"Yeah, okay, let's bug out.\"\nAn explosion of brick, grating, and debris blew pas t Delgado. As the dust settled, he spotted one of the miners p ulling a gun on Adriana. Delgado whipped out Senora Sies, and the men all froze.  37  But they weren't looking at him. As the dust cloud in the booth wafted away, they all stood looking at the giant gray suit of po wered armor that had just burst its way through the wall of Eddie's like it was balsa w ood.\n\"Don't move,\" the deep voice from behind the gold v isor snapped. A large rifle in the Spartan's hands covered the crowd. No one moved. This new Spartan grabbed Adriana and Delgado and pu lled them back through the debris. Delgado's feet scraped against the jagg ed remains. While the far back of Eddie's was buried into the h ard rock, this section had apparently been right next to a maintenance corrido r. A few of the bar's patrons tried to peer around the  hole in the bar to see where they were going, but the armored Spartan fired the rifle at the bricks, and the faces ducked back into the bar.\n\"Delgado, look at me,\" Adriana ordered, and Delgado  turned to her voice. Something very large smacked the back of his head a nd he fell to his knees in front of her, then passed out.  38\nCHAPTER SEVEN\n\n\nFREIGHTER PETYA, JUST OFF HABITAT BOLIVAR, OUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nDelgado woke up on a cot. He sat there, rubbing the  back of his head and wincing. He was in the cramped crew quarters of a freight sh ipbulkheads, grated flooring, flickering tube lights, and grime and grease was ev erywhere.\n\"You're up.\"\nA giant machine had been welded into the back of th e crew quarters. The voice came over the sounds of a maintenance pod whose arm s sparked electricity as they carefully removed the suit of armor from a Spartan with almost midnight black eyes. The Spartan scratched his stubbly head and pulled o n pants and a shirt. \"Itches,\"\nhe said. \"I'd like to take a shower, but we have to  deal with you first. Adriana refused to leave you knocked out on the ground for those mi ners to eat alive.\"\nDelgado stood up and stumbled. The Spartan grabbed him firmly by the arm and hauled him back up. Another giant of a man who stoo d so tall he blocked the lights above. Delgado blinked. \"What do you want with me?\"\n\"You know who we are, right?\"\n\"Spartans. The boogeymen of Insurrectionist childre n everywhere,\" Delgado grunted. His head still throbbed, but he was feeling scrappy  despite the fact that this mountain of a human being next to him could probabl y break him in half like a stick. But if they were going to kill him, they would have  done it already. This gave Delgado a sudden boldness as he straightened up. De lgado smiled.\n\"Don't be spoiled, don't start a fight. Always be c areful, here at night. Because the Spartans might come, in suits that weigh half a  ton. And they'll steal from you all you gots, just like they did from Colonel Watts.\"\nThe Spartan cocked his head. \"What?\"\n\"Just a kid's rhyme,\" Delgado muttered. \"Yeah, ther e are a lot of rumors about you guys. Like the one about how you super soldiers  took out Colonel Watts and the rebels' whole network had to scramble to find a new  leader. And there are other rumors, too. You know, a lot of people would be qui te flattered that the UNSC created an entire special division of super soldier s just to come after them. But it's all been different since Harvest fell, hasn't it? The a liens sure bloodied your noses.\"\n\"Yes, yes they have,\" the Spartan agreed.  39  \"Suddenly the idea of fighting for the right to you r own survival isn't such an alien idea.\"\n\"True,\" the Spartan said. \"But then, the UNSC never  glassed an entire populace, so it's not exactly fair to compare the UNSC/Covena nt fight with the UNSC/Insurrectionist fight, is it?\"\nThe Spartan had a point.\n\"What's your name?\" Delgado asked.\n\"Jai. Spartan double-oh-six.\"\n\"You like your numbers. You have last names?\"\nThe Spartan didn't even answer, just pulled Delgado  along into the freighter's cockpit, stooping to avoid hitting his head on the bulkhead. Another man, too massive not to be a Spartan, sat i n the pilot's chair. Adriana lounged near a navigation console. She spun her cha ir to face the two of them. \"Mr. Delgado. You've met Jai, our team leader. In the pi lot's chair is Mike.\"\nFrom the windows of the cockpit Delgado could tell they were still in the Rubble, but not hanging off a dock connector. They were mov ing slowly through the intricate maze of tubes and asteroids. Jai sat down at a communications console and swung around to face Delgado, who found a jumpseat.\n\"You were right, back there. We used to go after In surrectionists. But that's what we were trained to do... We live, breathe, and eat th is stuff, Delgado. We serve humanity, we exist to protect Earth and all her col onies.\"\n\"Huh... Nice sound bite.\" Delgado crossed his arms.\n\"That's no sound bite,\" Mike growled. Jai held up a hand. \"We have given everything over to this, Mr. Delgado, don't dismiss our entire lives so casually. I take it you  are an Insurrectionist?\"\nDelgado shook his head. \"Not exactly... A lot of peop le on Madrigal were neutral, even loyal to Earth. But when Madrigal was  being glassed, it wasn't the UNSC that scrambled freighters and everything they had to evacuate people from Madrigal and try to hide them here.\"\nIt had been the rebels. Even though Madrigal refuge es and regular miners fast outnumbered them here in the Rubble, there had alwa ys been strong respect for the Insurrectionists. Even Delgado. He owed his life to  them. Jai leaned forward. \"Then understand; we're not her e for a fight. But we are here to try and stop the Covenant from taking any more c olonies. Or Earth.\n\"For a while top brass and ONI agents have been wor ried about the Covenant's progress. As a result, earlier this week the Cole P rotocol went into effect. All UNSC ships have to jump randomly before making a jump to  their next destination. If Covenant forces appear, they have to destroy all na vigation data that might lead the Covenant back to Earth.\"\n\"Just back to Earth, huh?\"\n\"And to the colonies, that's inferred. However, mon ths before the Cole Protocol went into effect, ONI put together several Prowler Corps missions to get back behind enemy linesincluding this team. We have a list of places where navigation data might have survived, and our mission is to make sur e it's all destroyed.  40  \"In the case of the Rubble,\" Jai leaned further for ward, intense. \"We've been stuck here for almost a month. Every day we're here , we're not destroying data or checking over our targets elsewhere, and the greate r the chance of the Covenant stumbling across the location to an Inner Colony, o r Earth.\"\n\"What Jai's getting at,\" Adriana interrupted, \"is t he question of whether you really think the navigation data will be safe here in the Rubble?\"\nDelgado looked around the cockpit at the three Spar tans. \"I'm not giving it over to you. You have to do your jobs. I have to do mine .\"\n\"So... we noticed you didn't tell the Security Counci l that you ran into a Spartan,\" Adriana said. He looked up at her, startled. How did she know tha t? What all were the Spartans into? How much of the Rubble had they gotten bugged ? \"Why would I? You're not good at keeping a low profile, it seems, with your dramatic attempt to sneak around and ask questions failing so spectacularly.\"\nJai folded his arms. \"You picked a stubborn one to save, Adriana. I don't know.\"\n\"Don't know what?\" Delgado asked. Mike shook his head. \"Let him be, Jai. Let him be.\"\nA moment passed between the three Spartans. A decis ion. Delgado shivered. He'd bet anything his life had ju st been on the table. Jai stood up. \"My team thinks you're one of the goo d guys, Delgado. I don't know. Mike, we passing the ship yet?\"\nMike turned back around. \"Yes. Let me flip us aroun d.\"\nDelgado frowned as the Rubble rotated around the sh ip. The freighter's cockpit shook a bit as distant thrusters farther down the h ull fired. They drifted past one of the larger habitats on the  edge of the structure. Docked to it was a ship that didn't look all that different f rom the Rubble itselfa Tinkertoy assemblage of parts of varying age, shapes, and fun ction. It slowly passed by, and then Jai turned to Delgado . \"It's hard to trust people who do business with the enemy, Delgado, and that's a J ackal ship. Also known as: the enemy.\"\n\"Yes... that's a Jackal ship,\" Delgado said. \"But mos t Kig-Yar are like us. Rebels. Asteroid dwellers. And they're helping us.\"\nThe Covenant had once seemed an implacable foe. A f orce of nature. When the conglomeration of aliens first made contact ten yea rs ago, at the planet Harvest, the images of destruction relayed back were horrific. C ovenant ships and their plasma weapons destroyed the surface of the agrarian world  until nothing was left. Madrigal had not lain too far from Harvest. And aft er the destruction of Harvest they'd readied themselves for the inevitable. And r eadied, and waited. Until 2528, when the Covenant stumbled into orbit around 23 Lib rae and destroyed Madrigal, the survivors fleeing to the Rubble. When the Kig-Yar came back to 23 Librae, looking to  mine the asteroids around Hesiod, they found the Rubble. Everyone had girded themselves for another one sided battle. But instead the odd, birdlike aliens had furtively begun trading with the humans. They'd even established refuges on some of the outer asteroids.  41  So as the Rubble heard snatches of rumors and data about the Covenant destroying all humanity, they had to second-guess w hat was happening. After all, they were still alive. And yet... it had taken the Covenant three years to g et around to attacking Madrigal. Delgado knew the Rubble might still be on  the list.\n\"The Jackals are helping you by violently hunting f or the navigation data?\" Jai asked.\n\"I know,\" Delgado muttered. \"I don't particularly t rust them either.\"\n\"So you know,\" Jai said, \"the moment you hand over the data, the Covenant will deal with the Rubble the same way they did Madrigal .\"\nDelgado had no reply. He stood with his arms crosse d, staring at Jai. \"Maybe. It's our problem, not yours. The UNSC isn't running thin gs here.\"\n\"All right,\" Jai said. \"But we'll be watching you.\"\nThe freighter thudded into dock under Mike's contro l. The air inside shifted, and Delgado's ears popped. Adriana led Delgado down to the airlock, where the door had already opened. Delgado hesitantly walked through. He bit his lip. They wouldn't shoot him in the back, would they? They had honor, and a code, d idn't they?\nAdriana leaned against the rim of the airlock. \"Goo d-bye, Mr. Delgado. Try to stay out of trouble.\"\nHe turned and looked back at her, the tall, dangero us Spartan without her armor. The freighter's airlock door lurched, and started t o slowly close, rust scraping off the surface as it did.\n\"And don't forget, there were no Spartans here.\" Sh e said it seriously, without a sense of humor. After the freighter left, Delgado looked out one of  the airlock portholes at the distant Jackal ship. The Spartans were right. The moment the Jackals got  their hands on the navigation data they'd probably sell it to their br others in the Covenant. He was going to have to figure out how to secure the navig ation data. There were way too many people after it. If the Rubble was going to su rvive against the Covenant, it needed to be safe.  42\nCHAPTER EIGHT\n\n\nFREIGHTER PETYA, OUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nJai watched the last sliver of light fade away as t he airlock shut. They were back alone in the freighter Petya. He folded his arms as Adriana walked back up at him .\n\"We should have kept him,\" Jai said as she passed. Adriana paused and looked him eye to eye. \"We've ha d this discussion. If you'd like to order me to go get him, Petty Officer Jai, I will follow your commands.\"\nHe stared back at the intense blue eyes. \"Would you ?\"\nShe sighed and left him leaning against the wall. T he freighter shuddered as Mike disengaged the airlock and coasted away from the as teroid. Gray Team, Jai thought to himself with a small amount of frust ration. He'd ask what he'd done to deserve being put with t he other two, but he already knew. It had started when he was six. He'd been sna tched away from a life he only dimly remembered and taken to a military training f acility on the planet Reach, along with seventy-five other children. Jai remembered being herded into an amphitheater af ter waking up from the chill of coldsleep by a tough, gristly looking Naval dril l instructor in fatigues. Every child had had an instructor standing next to them. And then, up front on a raised dais, a woman with d ark hair and gray-blue eyes cleared her throat. Beside her stood a man with med als that they would all come to respect and fear: C.P.O. Mendez. But it was clear t his woman was in charge. All the big Navy men in the room responded to the crack of her orders with a nervous jump. The woman had looked at the crowd of nervous childr en and told them \"As per Naval Code 45812, you are hereby conscripted into t he UNSC Special Project, code named SPARTAN II.\"\nConscripted. Jai hadn't liked the sound of the word. It felt wro ng. And when he'd heard it, he stood up and tried to leave. The heavily muscled dr ill instructor next to him had grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him down. Shocked, Jai continued listening as the woman said,  \"You have been called upon to serve. You will be trained... and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her col onies.\"\nHe'd been six, damnit. His life in Bhuj in an orphanage hadn't been much b etter than the hellish boot camp that followed the next morning, all orchestrat ed by C.P.O. Mendez, but Jai had  43  roamed the streets on his own time back on Bhuj. He 'd scrapped with other urchins, stolen food, and found all the best boltholes in th e city to hide and watch other people from. It had been his life, and even as a wiry six-year-o ld, Jai had decided conscription didn't figure into his plans. After the first night of boot camp Jai met Adriana,  who'd been out that night sneaking around.\n\"Are you leaving?\" she'd asked in awkward English.\n\"Yes,\" Jai said. \"I need something to pick a lock w ith.\"\nAdriana had handed him a sliver of metal from under  her tongue, a paperclip stolen from somewhere on the base. Jai had picked a lock and they'd snuck out from the  barracks, using the shadows until they'd broken for the gates. He got halfway up the fence before the guards turne d the electricity on, and Jai had dropped to the ground with Adriana, both writhi ng in the dust and screaming.\n\"Good evening,\" Mendez had said, walking up to look  down at him. \"I don't recall giving you two permission to leave base.\"\nNeither of them said anything; they just stared at the forest off in the distance. So the next week Jai used a blanket to help them cl imb, and the guards caught them on the other side. And after that, it was spri nting across the barren space around the camp. They were hunted down in the forest, but he and Adriana split up and eluded their pursuers for days. They came after him  on the roads past the forest, hunting them down in large teams by Warthog and Pel ican. But no matter how much Mendez punished him with ext raordinary runs, push ups, latrine cleaning duty, no matter how hard he t ried to break him, Jai and Adriana always planned the next attempt. The men who had to catch the young Jai paid the pri ce too. The tougher he trained under Mendez, the harder he fought when cap tured. Guards got shattered kneecaps, lost eyes, fingers, and toes. They'd star ted tranquilizing him from a Pelican at the end, waiting until he burst from the forest and shooting him down from the safety of the sky. Until one day, five months in, the woman asked for him. Catherine Halsey. Always watching them from a distance, always scribb ling her notes down. Jai had sat in front of her desk, C.P.O. Mendez by his side.\n\"What do you want?\" Halsey asked, suddenly looking up from her desk.\n\"You called me here,\" Jai had said defiantly. Halsey chuckled. \"I did. Do you want to leave, Jai? \"\n\"Yes!\"\nThe woman who'd had him snatched away from everythi ng studied Jai like he was a strange bug under a rock. \"You understand wha t you were told, when you first arrived?\"\n\"You stole me. You want me to fight for you. Fight for Earth. It isn't even my home planet,\" Jai said. \"I don't want to be here.\"\nHalsey nodded, and suddenly looked tired. As if she  didn't want to do what came next. But then her spine snapped straight. \"Okay, J ai. You see this?\" She'd picked up  44  a small dart. \"Some of you don't have what it takes . Some have folded. Some just aren't ready to be protectors of the colonies. And that's okay. This dart will induce selective neural paralysis. The next time you break  out of the forest, the guards in the Pelicans will shoot you in the head with one of the se, and you'll wake up in a city. You won't remember any of this.\"\nA crawling sensation in the back of Jai's mind told  him that this was a lie. A memory eraser? It didn't sound quite right, nor did  Halsey's eyes look right. There was a deeper pool of weariness and sadness there. J ai had no doubt the dart would erase something. Halsey must have noticed Jai shift. She amended her  words. \"You may also lose more than that. There are no guarantees. The proces s is messy, and it's worse with a child because they have so few memories to lose.\"\nJai swallowed and stared at the dart.\n\"Of course,\" Halsey said, steel in her voice. \"You could just continue your training, and your duty.\"\n\"Why?\" Jai asked.\n\"You're an orphan, right, Jai? State Dorm Five-Five , bed number sixty-eight?\nAnd you want to go back to that?\"\nJai nodded. Halsey sighed. \"You think they remember you there? We called; no one had even noticed I transferred you. No one there cared enoug h to even check your bed until I called, and you've been gone for months, Jai.\"\nJai stared back at her. It shouldn't have hurt to h ear that. He kept to himself, why was he surprised they hadn't noticed?\n\"No vendors remember you; your hiding places in the  city have been taken over by rats. No one has even noticed you were gone. You  had no family, no friends, nothing. You left no imprint on the world when you were taken, Jai. You're fighting so hard to leave, when there's nothing for you to g o back to.\"\nJai shook his head and bit his lip.\n\"But here, Jai,\" Halsey continued, driving her word s home, \"you have people who notice when you try to leave. Mendez who trains  you. And even though you don't have family, I find it interesting that you k eep seeking out Adriana to make your escape with. Would you miss her if you left? W ould you be happy if we just erased your mind with a single shot, and erased you r name from our computers, and Adriana just... forgot all about you?\"\nJai stared at her, his mouth dry. He didn't say any thing, but inside he felt like he'd been destroyed. She'd picked him apart, like h e was some simple puzzle. Mendez could break their bodies, but Halsey could b reak their minds.\n\"I'm giving you a final offer, Jai,\" Halsey said. \" The guards are around the forest tonightif you escape we'll delete you from our rec ords and it will be like you were never here. But if you are in your bed tomorrow mor ning, I offer you a family, Jai, and a place to make your mark and be remembered. We  have special things in mind for you and the others. Very special things. I swea r to you.\"\nJai stared at her. And he had believed her. Adriana had also returned to the barracks that nigh t looking shaken.  45  But they broke out again, of course. They made it o ut past the fence using a tunnel they'd dug together a week before. There wer e caches of food and simple weapons in the forest, buried under trees. But they'd both stopped well clear of the edge of t he forest.\n\"What'd she tell you?\" Jai asked. Adriana had tears streaming down her cheeks. \"I can 't tell you.\"\n\"But you're not going to go, are you?\"\n\"No. I like this too much to go,\" she'd said, with that odd Adriana smile that Jai was now always comfortable seeing.\n\"Me either.\"\nThey'd both sat on a log and watched the Pelicans c risscross the sky outside the forest, and then turned back for the barracks. Mendez didn't comment on Jai's dusty boots the next  morning, just threw a ten mile run at him with a small grin. When Jai had returned, Mendez introduced him to ano ther quiet kid with even browner skin than Jai's and tight curly hair who st ood outside the barracks running in place next to Adriana, both of them holding heavy w ooden logs over their heads.\n\"At ease! Jai, Adriana, and Mike,\" Mendez said. \"Yo u are now a team. You will eat together, run together, drill together. Fight t ogether.\"\n\"Sir!\"\nWhen Mendez left, Adriana and Jai had turned to Mik e. \"What did you do?\"\nMike smiled. \"I stole a Pelican,\" he said, innocent ly. \"Then blew it up when they got me.\"\nAnd all those years ago, all three of them had shak en hands. Gray Team trained to be isolated, slipped into distant fields for mis sions where there was little, if any, oversight. And after the physical augmentation, and  as they became lethal killers, the ONI branch began to use the three loners for long-d uration missions way out of reach from command. They were ghosts that could wreak terrific damage. Which was why this latest mission made sense. Suppl ement ONI Prowler Corps efforts to destroy all information that was left be hind enemy lines. But the same attributes that made Gray Team an incr edible asset made it hard for Jai to be its commanding officer. Gray Team was... di fferent. Adriana and Mike accepted Jai's leadership, but they'd been trained to think for themselves and act on their own. So Jai had been frustrated to find out that Adriana  let the Insurrectionist Delgado live after the Jackals made a play for the last kno wn navigation data in this bizarre asteroid creation of theirs. She should have focuse d only on the data. But she hadn't. And now, they had once again let him go. But as Adriana pointed out, had they destroyed that  last bit of data and left the Rubble, then they wouldn't have known about another  ship coming back from Charybdis IX. So their delay had helped. They might  have left the Rubble without fully finishing their mission.  46  But Jai still felt they should have kept Delgado ab oard. He was, after all, working with Insurrectionists. And Jai had killed his fair share of Innie terrorists. Now Adriana felt they had a duty to help make sure the people living here were safe. Covenant-collaborating Insurrectionists, no l ess. Jai walked up to the cockpit of the old freighter. Mike sat at the controls as the Jackal ship slowly drifted past their field of visi on.\n\"One Shiva nuke,\" Mike muttered.\n\"You think Adriana's right? That these Covenant wil l turn on them?\"\n\"They always do,\" Mike said. \"The Covenant always a ttack. Always destroy it all. Why would they stop now?\"\n\"I don't know,\" Jai said as Mike boosted them out a way for the fringes of the Rubble, where they could lurk. \"We've never seen an ything like this before. Jackals trading and working with humans to build asteroid h abitats?\"\nBut then, that was what Gray Team was for. They cou ldn't call back for orders, they were the UNSC in absentia. The three of them h ad to figure out what this all meant, and what to do next.\n\"One Shiva?\" Jai turned and looked at Mike. Mike ran a hand over his shaved head. \"Put it in th e right place, yes.\"\n\"Put it where?\"\n\"Inside.\"\nJai looked at him and then laughed. \"That would do the trick, Mike. That would do it.\"\nAnd he imagined that if Adriana and Mike were right , and they usually were, they would end up having to do it.\n\"How many Shivas do we have left in the holds?\" Jai  asked.\n\"Enough,\" Mike said.\n\"Enough to what?\"\n\"Cause a lot of trouble here in the Rubble,\" Mike s aid. \"When the time comes.\"\n\"I haven't made any decisions about that yet,\" Jai said. Mike shrugged. \"When you decide, the nukes will be ready.\"\nJai left the bridge. Those two were just way too su re of themselves. Then again, so was he. He smiled to himself. They were cursed w ith each other.\n\"Wait a second,\" Mike shouted. Jai turned back around, annoyed. \"What?\"\nScreens lit up with warnings and scrolled text fast er than Jai could read. Mike tapped away at the keyboards, his fingers flashing over the keys as he started swearing.\n\"What is it?\" Jai repeated.\n\"Something's leaping in through our communications dishes. I can't stop it;\nincursion alerts all over.\"\nJai felt his stomach flip. Mike was the systems exp ert, had always been. He'd figured out how to steal that Pelican when he'd bee n conscripted into the Spartan II program because he'd been flown into the camp on on e, and that single session of watching how the pilot flew was enough for him. He had a gift with machines and computers that Jai envied.  47  Now Mike looked flustered. \"Hit the kill switch. No w!\"\nJai ran to the center of the cockpit and pulled up a plate of metal. He yanked out the red handle inside and the entire freighter abru ptly plunged into darkness.\n\"What just happened?\" Adriana shouted. \"Was that th e kill switch?\"\n\"Yeah.\" Without any power the artificial gravity ha d failed. Jai hung near the kill switch, a manual circuit breaker Mike had installed  during the long Slipspace journey to this system. Just in case, he'd always said. You can't hack into  a ship if someone yanks the power cord loose. The Petya, their home for the last several months, coasted alo ng in the dark. Mike twisted onto his back in the starlight and mov ed over to one of the windows. \"We're not going to hit anything for twent y minutes or so,\" he said.\n\"That'll give us time.\"\nWhen it came to the ships and hardware, Mike called  the shots. Mike spun in place to face them. \"Jai, get clippers  and snip the wires going to any comms arrays. You have eighteen minutes before we g o bump. Adriana, you should suit up. If someone was trying to get into our syst ems they might try a less virtual route and show up outside.\"\n\"On it.\" Adriana kicked off the edge of the cockpit  door and back down the dark center of the ship toward the bunks. Jai followed, leaving Mike in the cockpit.\n\nFifteen minutes later, after crawling around the gu ts of the Petya to trace wiring, Jai had two of the arrays cut. Adriana had cycled out t he lock in full armor and coasted up the belly of the freighter and just ripped the l ast array off the ship and flung it clear. As Jai pulled himself out and shoved himself throug h the air into the cockpit, Adriana exited the airlock and followed. With full armor, she seemed to take up the entire cockpit.\n\"There's no one out there; didn't spot anything mov ing toward us either,\" she reported.\n\"That's both reassuring and worrying,\" Mike said. \" Plug her back in.\"\nThe Petya's emergency lights flicked on. A bit late, Jai though t, but then it was an old tramp freighter, just barely able to struggl e from Slipspace point to Slipspace point until Mike had insisted they snag it. The tea m had spent a whole week under his direction, refitting a faster, military-grade S lipspace unit into her. But Jai had to agree now, it had been worth it. The re was more space in the cargo area for the weapons they'd accumulated, which made  Adriana very happy. Mike as well; he'd picked up a few extra Shiva nuclear warh eads, and stocked up on just about everything else he could get his hands on. The primary lights flicked on as Mike tapped at scr eens and guided the ship's rebooting. Jai realized everything had fallen death ly silent as fans and pumps whirred back into life. The entire ship's steady background  hum slowly trickled back. Artificial gravity returned. Adriana and Mike twist ed like cats and landed on their feet.  48  \"All right, let's see what we've got.\" Mike moved b ack to the controls and Petya shuddered as he adjusted their trajectory with thru sters. They passed by one of the flexible, clear docking tubes stretching half a mil e between two asteroids. Inside people hustled from point to point on their business, hardly even noticing that the freighter had come within a mile of striki ng it. One of the screens to Mike's right flickered, and a  woman appeared on it, her skin a ghostly skein of numbers and calculations. T he effected look of many AIs. It seemed to look around the cockpit. \"Neat trick,\" it  said through the cockpit's many speakers. \"But before you cut the power again, know  that I infected a number of your external stellar navigation sensors. They don't hav e much broadcasting power, but I have a lot of comms equipment trained on your guys throughout the Rubble listening for them. Plus I already disabled your Slipspace dr ives, so you really do have to listen to me.\"\nMike checked a screen, then swore and turned to Jai , who reached down for the red handle.\n\"Wait, wait, please hear me out,\" the AI on their s creen said. \"I have an offer for you. I can get you the Rubble navigation data, but I want to cut a deal.\"\nJai froze and locked eyes with Mike, who shrugged. Jai looked back up. \"A deal?\"\nThe AI nodded on the screen. \"You're Spartans. The best of the best of the best.\"\nIt smiled. \"There are a lot of lives at stake here,  soldiers. I will help you get that navigation data, because I want you to protect it. But you can't leave right away. And that's the deal.\"\n\"We have to stick around?\" Jai asked, a bit incredu lously. \"Why?\"\n\"Because the lives of everyone in the Rubble are at  stake, Spartan. And I am going to need you three to help save them in the ve ry short days ahead. We will be their deliverance, and you three their paladins, my  very own knights in somewhat shining armor.\"\nMike shook his head and held up seven fingers by hi s thigh for Jai to see. An artificial intelligence usually lasted seven yea rs before it legally had to be put down. After seven years they often started to go th rough stages of instability. They became rampant: convinced of their godlike power an d ability. Rampant AIs were destructive, dangerous, and somewhat insane. But rampancy was not inevitable, just statistically  likely. An AI older than seven years was playing a dangerous game. Out here in the  Rubble, they must have felt it prudent to keep the AI running this long in order t o keep the system together.\n\"Come on!\" snapped the AI, yelling at them. \"I can see your fingers, Spartan. I am over the age, yes. Maybe I am rampant. I damn we ll deserve to be.\"\nAdriana turned to look at Jai, but he waved his han d. Let it talk. See where it went.\n\"They unpacked me from storage to run the Rubble th e year after Madrigal was glassedthey couldn't handle the course corrections  manually to keep asteroids connected to each other. They needed the constant a nd genius-like attention of someone like me.  49  \"That kept me busy, growing all this out, until the  Jackals came. Since then, well, I've been planning for the end, Spartans. And now i t's here. Yes, I am Juliana, the goddess of the Rubble. Your experts may suspect me of rampancy, but a benevolent goddess may be exactly what you need right now. And  this one happens to be very, very attached to the idea of saving the people of t he Rubble.\"\nMike shifted. \"Doesn't sound rampant to me.\" He was  mollifying it, engaging it, Jai saw. Maybe even validating it. And Jai felt not  pulling the plug had been worth it. This unsettled AI, somewhat frazzled by the chores it had been given in keeping the Rubble going, might be a very useful ally indeed. Juliana looked down, suddenly tired, a flash of sad ness crossing her face. \"I... think, right now, my preoccupation with the tricky,  immense, complicated task of saving the Rubble's citizenry is all that does actu ally keep me from the depths of rampancy. It's been eating away at the edges of me for two years now.\"\n\"And you want us to help?\" Adriana prodded. The AI looked back up. \"In return I'll give you eve n more than the data you want. The Covenant forces here are up to a lot more than just setting up shop in a few of the Rubble's asteroids. I have details. You'll want  these.\" She had a coy smile. Adriana and Mike looked over at Jai, who smiled bac k at the AI.\n\"We don't have much time,\" Juliana said. \"We need t o help each other now .\"\nThey had a rampant Insurrectionist AI demanding the ir help, with a promise of greater secrets. Adriana's pet Insurrectionist runn ing around. And a crippled freighter. Jai smiled. This was just the sort of situation Gra y Team thrived on.  50\nCHAPTER NINE\n\n\nVADAM KEEP, YERMO, SANGHELIOS\n\nEarly in the predawn light of the day after Thel 'V adamee's ascension to kaidon of his keep, he woke to the faint scratching sound of three pairs of feet. They were on the roof outside his window, moving qu ickly and getting ready to vault the lip of his windowsill into his room. Thel  wasted no time getting up from the chair that he had sat in all night, waiting for thi s. As the first assassin broke through the window, The l pressed the button on the thick bar of metal in his hand that had been lying casually by his side. The energy sword flicked into being with a crack of ionized ai r from the handle as the twin half ovals of blue plasma appeared. The first swipe of the angry-sounding sword dug dee p into the assassin's chest, spearing him on the tip of the concentrated plasma.  To his credit the assassin did not scream. Thel barely had time to duck, though, as the next t wo assassins bearing energy swords of their own hit the floor in front of him. Their crackling energy weapons just barely missed Thel's head. But their overeager swin gs doomed them. Even as their energy swords passed by him, Thel was coming back u p to a full stand, slicing the sword arm of the nearest assassin clear off his bod y. The last assassin backpedaled, looking for room to defend himself, realizing that this was not a simple job anymore. There was a lot of space in the master room. The as sassin stepped back over the large stone slabs of the room's floor, his eyes dar ting from door to door, wondering whether he could make a run for it. Or at least, ho w he might use the space to his advantage. Thel remained in front of the window, watching the assassin. To be honest he had expected more than this. The Vadam elders had voted  him kaidon based on his abilities as a leader, fighter, and zealot. The kee ps worked on a system of meritocracyonly the most capable would be voted as  kaidon upon the death of the previous one. But for those who felt that their vote had been ill  advised, or who had second thoughts, it was both a cherished right and a tradi tion to send in assassins to test the true merit of that ruler's martial abilities. It was another layer of meritocracy. A kaidon who c ould not defend himself from assassins was not a true ruler.  51  This was classic Sangheili thinking. The assassin tested the first door, and found it lo cked. The four-inch-thick kafel wood would not break easily, and the assassin had t o have known that with just a glance. The second door was just as locked and soli d. Now he turned and looked at Thel, realizing that he  was as good as dead, and ran straight for the window where Thel stood. A last st and. Thel pulled a plasma pistol out of his holster and shot the assassin straight through the head. The assassin tumbled to the floor  right in front of Thel's feet. Now which elder, Thel wondered as he turned around to look out over the solid rocky walls of the ancient Vadam keep, was brave en ough to order this?\nThe massive moons of Sanghelios, hanging over the p eaks of the mountain, offered no answers for Thel. He turned and stepped over the corpses, and unlocke d the door with the key hung by brass links around his neck. Several of his pers onal guard stood outside, weapons drawn.\n\"Gather the elders,\" Thel ordered them. \"In the sto ne hall.\"\n\"It is not even morning yet,\" one of them protested . Thel rounded on him. \"Who is kaidon?\"\nThe guard snaked his long head downwards. \"I swear on the blood of my ancestors I shall not question you again.\"\nThel looked his guards over. Lean and tall, their m uted brown skin was almost all hidden by sturdy armor. Covenant armor. Their long- necked heads were sheathed in chain mail, and their large eyes gleamed in the fli ckering light of the hall. They were all well built, powerful, overly trained since birth, specimens of Sangheili warriors. All poised to do Thel's bidding. They split off to go rouse the elders, as Thel walk ed through the stone corridors and tight spaces. This was a tense but glorious day that Thel had wor ked toward his whole life. The lineage of Vadam, in the long history of his ki nd, was relatively young founded by a distant ancestor during the first expl oratory age, when Sangheili ships plied the dangerous oceans, risking terrific tides due to the multiple suns and moons the planet danced with. From the sides of Kolaar Mountain the Vadam keep lo oked out toward Vadam harbor, thirty miles away. They'd huddled against i nvaders throughout the ages here, and it was also from this well-defended location th at they'd lashed back. The Prophets themselves had even tried but had been  unable to properly destroy Vadam, among many others. They'd been too buried in to the crags and cliffs of their mountains. Great Sangheili had built Vadam's power up through the generations. Thel wanted to add his own name to the Vadam Saga, etche d into the living rock of the walls under the mountain.\n\"They are waiting for you,\" a guard said outside th e stone room, as Thel walked down the steps that took him ever farther down into  the depths of the mountain's bedrock.  52  In the distance, the thunder of the river shook the  stone under Thel's feet. An underground water source, and power source, that no  enemy had ever managed to get to. Thel entered the stone hall, and looked up at the c urved timbers rising a hundred feet over his head. Then he looked down at the long  table in the center of the room. The elders, most of them with their cloaks wrapped around them against the morning cold, stared at him with large, unblinking eyes.\n\"My blood,\" Thel said, as he walked to the head of the table. \"You voted me for kaidon, and yet it seems one of you did not believe  in his vote, and did not believe in me, for three assassins broke into the High Room ju st minutes ago.\"\nWith that said, Thel shrugged his own cloak off, an d stood naked before them.\n\"Kaidon...\" one of them whispered, shocked.\n\"As you can all see with your own eyes, they failed  to even scratch my body.\"\nThel glared at them all as one of his personal guar d rushed to his side to pull the cloak back on. \"I killed two of them, but left the last one alive so we could discuss the matter of who sent him.\"\nA lie, but it was a telling lie, as Thel saw one of  the elders stiffen, then let out a long breath. Koida, Thel remembered his name. Koida 'Vadam. Thel  felt the faint kick of disappointment. Any of these elders could have sired Thel. It was n ot the Sangheili way to let a child know its father, as Sangheili took sires base d on their fighting prowess. Sangheili only truly could know who their mothers' brothers were, and so were raised by their uncles to learn the fighting arts. Many of these elders had once been great warriors. And several of Thel's uncles sat before him. Koida, thankfully, was not one.\n\"I am Thel 'Vadamee.\" Thel stressed the \"ee\" that s ignified his military service.\n\"If you voted me for kaidon, surely you knew I coul d defend myself?\"\nKoida leaned forward, his wrinkled hands on the tab le before him to steady himself. \"You have spent your last years fighting t he lesser races of the Covenant, not Sangheili. I feared you had weakened, and would  not make a strong kaidon of the keep.\"\nThel shook his head. \"The only ones who grow soft, it seems, are elders who cluster in their small rooms, plotting against thei r kaidon. Had you been strong, you would have waited in my room to attack me yourself. \"\nThe elders murmured agreement, and Thel walked arou nd the table, grabbed Koida's cloak, and pulled him up from his chair. He  pushed him toward the nearest massive wall, where the Vadam Saga stopped.\n\"There are the words of our lineage, Koida,\" Thel s aid. \"Where is your name on that wall?\"\nKoida shook his head sadly, his wrinkled, faded bro wn skin bunching as he did so. \"It is not on the wall.\"\n\"We Sangheili are only as good as our deeds. We are  born and live in the common rooms, beginning life equal to each other in  the eyes of the keep, and rise  53  according to our ability. You should have voted aga inst me and stood your ground, or killed me yourself. Your cowardice is not a trait I  want spread through the lineage of Vadam.\"\nKoida's eyes widened fully. \"I will fall on my swor d, kaidon, but please do not revoke the blood of my line.\"\n\"I did not quench it,\" Thel said. \"You did.\"\nKoida leapt forward, suddenly finding courage, and Thel pulled his energy sword out. The blue plasma leapt out, and Thel swung the blade through Koida's neck. The elder's head rolled across the floor, and purpl e blood gushed out, splattering the Saga's chiseled words. It was the closest the e lder would get to having any part of himself on the wall. Thel turned to his guards. \"The Koida line shall le ave. They are no longer Vadam. They have until sunrise to do so. Any of Koi da's line still here after that will meet the same fate as he did. I grant them mercy, b ecause Koida at least found his spirit right before death. Had he taken a knee and begged, they would all be dead.\"\n\"It is our honor,\" the guards said, and left to spr ead the order. Thel turned back to the elders. \"I have been lookin g over the state of Vadam.\"\nThe harbor brought in profits, the buildings reache d from the valley under the keep out across the land, and Vadam's serfs were happy a nd working hard, hoping to rise and distinguish themselves and gain a position in t he keep. \"I am happy with your guidance. The lineage is strong.\"\n\"Vadam is strong,\" an elder agreed, perhaps hoping to gain fa vor and notice.\n\"But I am no figurehead,\" Thel continued, ignoring the interruption for the moment. \"I will take a close interest in all our in vestments and activities. Those who work for only their own gain, and not that of Vadam , risk my wrath. Am I understood?\"\nThey all did. \"Yes, kaidon.\"\n\"Good.\" Thel flicked the energy sword off, and slid  the handle into the depths of his cloak. \"You were right to elect me kaidon. I ha ve news for you. I have been given a promotion, and command of a ship that is part of a fleet created by a High Prophet himself. We have discovered a new human world.\"\n\"We pity the poor creatures who are about to be des troyed by your mighty hand,\"\none elder said.\n\"What is the name of this world?\" Another asked.\n\"The humans call it Charybdis IX. I leave you all n ow in stewardship of Vadam.\"\nThel eyed the elders. \"I hope it is in the most cap able hands.\"\nThey all rushed to reassure the new kaidon that, in deed, it was.  54\nCHAPTER TEN\n\n\nUNSC FRIGATE MIDSUMMER NIGHT, OUTER FRINGES, ECTANUS 45 SYSTEM\n\nKeyes walked into the chart room of the Midsummer Night. The whole bridge crew sat around the tabletop chart, nodding as he entere d. His fellow junior officers were all here: Lieutenant Badia Campbell ran ops, Lieute nant, Junior Grade, Rai Li on weapons, and Lieutenant Dante Kirtley ran communica tions.\n\"Heard you got hit pretty hard, Keyes.\" Badia Campb ell looked up from her notes. The jovial note in her voice sounded slightl y forced. A piece of deck plate had slammed into Keyes while he floated toward the ship, but he had waved on the medics that had been sent t o pick him uphe thought the others needed it more. The explosion had killed som e twenty Helljumpers. And although the container with the wounded had been ba dly damaged, it had been recovered, and many survived. Other Helljumpers had  been concussed, or suffered internal bleeding and injuries from their proximity  to the shockwave. But more people had made it out than Keyes initiall y had even hoped for. And many were treating him with a newfound respect, som ething above and beyond just his rank and his reputation of being well learned. And that added respect included the bridge crew all  around the chart table looking up at him. Keyes hadn't had much time in th e first forty-eight hours to get to know them. They'd all been running around, checking  on repairs and trying to figure out why things weren't working. But on the bridge all three of his fellow officers had been crisp, together, and on top of things... though Campbell sounded tired and a bit short-tempered with the people reporting to her. Keyes would've been too. Ops was taking the brunt o f the work to get things running smoothly.\n\"Minor head wound,\" Keyes said. Rai Li smiled. \"I personally think your skull's too  thick for debris to get through.\"\nThey all laughed, breaking the ice. This was the fi rst time they'd all sat in a room together. They'd been busy with their duties, and t hen reporting to Zheng, who had been very hands-off so far with the crew, trusting only his officers. That hadn't sat well, a lot of nervous crew wondere d why Zheng had been given a ship after sacrificing his last one in a suicidal  dash. They whispered that he'd been  55  caught sitting in the captain's chair, staring out at space, crying silently to himself. Everyone tiptoed around the man. The shakedown problems didn't leave a lot of time t o size each other up. But the Finnegan's Wake incident had now run them through a critical event,  and everyone aboard had stopped bickering over petty things. The  ship seemed to have pulled together. After the somberness of the past twenty-f our hours, it was nice to smile.\n\"Should have seen Kirtley's face when Zheng hailed you and you answered. He was knee-deep in his console, upside down, no less,  trying to figure out if something had gone wrong with our equipment,\" Campbell said.\n\"Well, we've had so little luck on equipment so far .\" Kirtley shook his head. \"I know we need to refit and build these ships as fast  as possible to face the Covenant, but we need to be a little bit more careful about b uild quality...\"\nThe door opened and Commander Zheng walked in, Majo r Akio Watanabe close behind. They all stood to attention, but Zheng wave d his hand. The exuberant mood the officers had shared died. Even they were beginn ing to be affected by Zheng's reputation. They only interacted with him formally,  as they were now. It made him hard to gauge. And Keyes' efforts to talk to the co mmander had been rebuffed with the hasty excuse of being too busy.\n\"As you were,\" Zheng said. They sat back down. Except Watanabe, who held onto a small box and continued to stand behind Zheng. If Zheng was standoffish, Ke yes thought, then Watanabe here was almost as mysterious, staying in his room alone  for most of the trip so far.\n\"Good to have you back, Lieutenant Keyes,\" Zheng sa id. \"We dodged quite a bullet, there. The ship owes you.\"\n\"Thank you, sir,\" Keyes ducked his head, somewhat e mbarrassed at the attention. This was wildly outgoing for Zheng. \"What about the  captured Innie? Has he talked?\"\nEveryone turned to Watanabe.\n\"Well, he has admitted to being an Insurrectionist,  yes.\" Watanabe looked down, as if in thought. \"I haven't gotten much else out o f him.\"\nKirtley murmured, \"I'd hate to be that guy right now.\"\nWatanabe snapped his head up and stared at the two of them. \"Mr. Dante Kirtley... do you think I brought aboard a portable t orture chamber?\"\nKirtley didn't answer.\n\"I know we're the boogeymen,\" Watanabe continued. \" But don't be ridiculous. You torture a man, he'll tell you anything to make it stop. Anything you think you want. He might even, if you're pushing hard enough,  believe whatever that is with all the will that he has left.\"\nAkio Watanabe unbuttoned the top of his sleeves. He  pulled them back to reveal scars running from his wrists all the way up to his  elbows. A fast unclip of his odd, high-necked collar revealed horrible scarring aroun d his throat. \"If I tortured them, I'd be no better than them.\"\nHe sat down and rebuttoned his uniform slowly.\n\"I'm sorry,\" Kirtley started to say, but Watanabe c ut him off.  56  \"If I'm overloyal to the Prowler Corps, and by exte nsion, the UNSC, it is because they rescued me from hell itself. Now, let's not ev er talk about this again.\"\n\"Of course, sir,\" Keyes said, eager to get everyone  past it. \"So no information out of him.\"\n\"Sadly, not much. The Insurrectionists use cell tac tics, and the man we captured doesn't know too much other than the details of thi s mission. I'm using a mild sedative to relax him, and a lie detector he doesn' t know about. So I'm just chatting with him. With the detector and random conversation  for calibration, we may yet learn something, but don't get too hopeful.\"\nRai Li shook her head. \"Doesn't make sense, what th ey did.\"\n\"Really?\" Watanabe cocked his head. \"We've just ord ered that there be no more non-Navy travel. They can't resupply each other, th ey have no communications ability. They're isolated. We've incidentally dealt  the Insurrectionists all across the colonies a killing blow, as a complete sidenote to the war against the Covenant.\"\n\"We should have done this years ago, then,\" Kirtley  said.\n\"What kind of martial civilization would we be wher e civilians weren't allowed to travel unless by the military, where all communi cations between worlds were controlled by us?\" Watanabe asked.\n\"We'd be a functional one, without uprisings. Order ly.\" It seemed obvious to Kirtley. Keyes had to admit he agreed somewhat.\n\"Ah.\" Watanabe shrugged. \"Maybe. At first. But don' t forget, these Insurrectionists knew what frequency to jam. They h ave sympathizers in the UNSC, they could be anywhere. It isn't as simple as killi ng this or cutting that. People facing an invasion, no matter what we'd like to believe, b ehave in a variety of different ways. Some ready for battle, some try to bargain, o thers look to what advantages they can gain in the short term, and old wounds still ru n deep.\"\n\"In the meantime,\" Commander Zheng said, \"we need t o focus on the next leg of our mission.\"\nWatanabe held out the box. \"And now it is time to u nseal our orders. Commander Zheng, your thumbprint please?\"\nZheng pressed his thumb against the screen. Then Wa tanabe did the same. The pad lit up, and Watanabe handed it over to Zhen g, who read it.\n\"Would you like to brief them, Captain?\"\nZheng looked up with a frown. \"You know the particu lars?\"\n\"I'm the one who suggested this operation.\" Watanab e steepled his fingers together. \"It's a situation I've been following for  a while now. We haven't had the resources, until I became aware of this ship.\"\n\"Then go ahead, Mr. Watanabe. It's your show.\"\n\"During my... recovery,\" Watanabe started, \"I was on loan from the Prowler Corps to the data gathering and analysis section of  a certain ONI branch that I'm not at liberty to name. It was there I started coming a cross reports of Covenant weaponry turning up in civilian hands throughout the colonie s.\"\n\"But that isn't unusual.\" Campbell leaned forward. \"Marines who've tangled with Covenant forces bring them back. They can hock them  on the black market.\"  57  Watanabe unfolded his hands and leaned back in his chair. \"That's true. But according to regulations you're supposed to turn th em in to ONI, and not everyone is so... rules bound. With the Cole Protocol being rolle d out, you'll note that bringing a Covenant weapon back to any UNSC installation or In ner Colony location is an act of treason under one of the attached sub-articles. They might not be weapons, but drones, or bombs, or have beacons in them that will  let the Covenant map our locations.\"\n\"That'll have a chilling effect on the pawn shops n ear military bases,\" Li said. A strained smile quirked on Watanabe's lips. \"One i magines. However, I'm not talking about the usual levels of black market coll ectibles. Until the Cole Protocol was put in place, we saw a dramatic increase in Covenant weaponry flooding the market. My fellow analysts and I came to believe th at somewhere out there, Insurrectionists or other parties may actually be t rading with the Covenant. Or, alternatively, they are being co-opted by the Coven ant somehow, instead of merely being destroyed.\"\nThe ONI agent stood up and tapped the chart table. A hologram of a plasma pistol appeared. \"A shipping container was found in a rout ine board-and-search late last week on its way to Charybdis IX. It contained three  thousand fully charged plasma pistols on board, and a thousand plasma rifles.\"\n\"Enough to arm a significant number of Insurrection ists,\" Kirtley said. He folded his arms.\n\"Correct,\" Watanabe said. \"Now, this was a slow fre ighter, and ONI agents from Charybdis IX intercepted it well before it got to t he planet. It had another week of travel yet to get to orbit. Our orders are to head out to Charybdis IX and meet with ONI agents there. We're going to find out who's rec eiving these guns, where they come from, and why the Covenant is acting in a whol e new manner with this gunrunning.\"\nThey all sat in silence, digesting the mission. Com mander Zheng stood up. \"Well, it sounds like this is going to lead us to Insurrec tionists. And I don't know about you all, but I'm ready to repay them for what they just  did.\"\n\"Yessir,\" they all chorused. Except Badia, who glan ced down at the floor and closed her eyes. Keyes wondered if she was thinking  about all the dead from the last engagement.\n\"Then let's get to it. Keyes, lay us on a course st raight for Charybdis IX .. . after our random jump, of course.\" Zheng leaned back, wat ching them all with calculating eyes.\n\"Of course, sir.\" Keyes looked around at the bridge  crew as they stood up. They were on their way to forming a comfortable team in a surprisingly short time. And judging by the tiny smile Zheng had on his lips , he felt the same way. Maybe Keyes had read his standoffishness wrong; maybe Zhe ng was just eager to get back to the fight. No matter which, it was still a good thing to see a ship's crew coming together. Keyes had a feeling it would be important. Insurrec tionists and Covenant working together left a very bad taste in his mouth. They'd need to be at their fighting best on this sh ip in the days ahead.  58  But whatever Zheng may have had in mind, Keyes noti ced that the other officers seemed eager to get out of the chartroom and back t o their duties, at a safe remove from the Commander.  59\nCHAPTER ELEVEN\n\n\nUNSC FRIGATE MIDSUMMER NIGHT, CHARYBDIS IX\n\nKeyes moved down the corridor quickly, crewmen snap ping to attention as he passed. He had just laid them into a geosynchronous  orbit over Charybdis IX, right above the capital city of Scyllion. A Pelican was b eing prepped to take Akio Watanabe dirt side. Things were moving along. He paused at a corridor. The hanger bay would be this way. He was still getting a feel for the frigate: adding  to the ship's speed meant reconfiguring the normal layout of a ship of this c lass.\n\"Lieutenant Keyes,\" buzzed a frantic voice in his e arpiece. \"We need you at sickbay, now. It's Jeffries.\"\nKeyes turned around, then turned around again. Medi cal no longer lay at the heart of the ship, but farther off to the starboard. Keyes broke out of his fast walk into a half jog. I f Jeffries died, he'd never forgive himself for asking for his transfer.\n\"Lieutenant!\"\nIt was Faison. He stepped out of the corner of a ju nction from behind a bulkhead.\n\"Yes?\"\nFive Helljumpers tackled Keyes from the side. He went down, shocked. Then self-defense training k icked in. Keyes fought his way free of the hands holding his legs and kicked t he nearest Helljumper in the head. The kick sent the man down, but not before another behind Keyes put him in a chokehold. Sputtering, Keyes managed to swing and dish out a b lack eye. He ripped free of their holds again, but three more Helljumpers joine d the fray. They came with duct tape. Keyes found himself being trussed up and dragged in to a nearby storage room, the door locked behind them. \"What the hell do you think you're doing?\" he shouted. The Helljumpers surrounded the furious Keyes, who w as then raised up onto a table with a solid thump. Faison walked over and vi ewed the results. He nodded.\n\"Good.\"\n\"Hoo-ah,\" they replied.\n\"Lieutenant Jacob Keyes.\" Faison leaned over and lo oked him in the eyes. \"Do you know how many Navy brass have pulled rank on me  in the middle of combat action?\"  60  \"I have no idea, Mr. Faison.\"\nThe Helljumper smiled. \"None, Mr. Keyes. At least, none that have lived.\"\nKeyes knew that the Helljumpers regarded themselves  as tougher, more willing to fight, than regular marines or Navy men. They were certainly far crazier. Faison pointed at one of the men. \"Chesnik, do it.\"\nA buzzing sound came from Keyes' right. One of the Helljumpers whipped out a huge Bowie knifeand cut the sleeve off Keyes' unif orm. A smarting pain shot up his shoulder. He twisted to look. Chesnick was hold ing a portable tattoo machine, a long metal penlike tool with an ink reservoir on th e end. Chesnick leaned in and pressed the needle into Keyes' arm and started etch ing a careful swoop. Keyes stopped struggling, leaning back as the needl e continued its smarting journey over his arm. \"You're all crazy,\" he said. \"Guess I won't have to court martial you, though.\" He took a deep breath.\n\"Well, aren't we lucky,\" Chesnick replied, and then  leaned back. \"Done.\"\nFaison pulled out a huge knife of his own from an a nkle sheath. It had the words\n\"Bug-Hunter\" traced on the blade. He sliced the duc t tape off.\n\"You'd make a hell of a marine, Keyes,\" Faison said . \"You saved a lot of our asses out there.\"\nKeyes shook his head. \"Should have seen it coming e arlier.\"\n\"No,\" Faison said. \"Anyone else would have stood th ere and let us do our job, and we'd all be dead. We owe you, Keyes. You ever n eed a favor from a Helljumper, no matter where, you just roll up your sleeve and a sk.\"\nThey opened the door, and it seemed like half the s hip's Helljumpers were waiting in the corridor.\n\"You're not bad for an officer,\" said Markov, just outside the door. \"But if you ever take my armor again, it's your ass.\"\n\"By the way, next time, try not to scream so much,\"  another Helljumper shouted while laughing. The center of the corridor became a gauntlet, with Helljumpers pushing Keyes on through all the way down the line, many of them sla pping the newly inked tattoo and laughing as he winced. At the end of the line Akio Watanabe waited stiffly .\n\"If you don't mind, Lieutenant Keyes, now that you' re done playing with your new friends, I have a favor to ask.\"\nKeyes had a wide grin on his face from the relief t hat the Helljumpers weren't actually going to kill him and a bit of pride from their actions. \"Of course, Major Watanabe. What is it?\"\n\"I'd like you to come dirt side with me. There are not a lot of people I implicitly trust. The nature of the job, you know. Judging by your actions, you seem like a man I could trust with my life, implicitly. I would cou nt most of the bridge crew as trustworthy, given my research on them, but to be h onest, Mr. Keyes, I think they just plain don't like me. How that would play into a spl it second's hesitation to back me up in a dangerous situation, I'm not sure...\"\n\"You're a cynical man, Major.\" Keyes did not like W atanabe's judgment of his fellow officers. A force was only as good as the ma n next to him. It was who you  61  fought for, when it came down to it, but that bond started with a fundamental trust. A trust that Watanabe did not have.\n\"Comes with the job.\" Watanabe's smile wasn't so mu ch a smile, but bared teeth.\n\"Will you come anyway?\"\nKeyes nodded stiffly. \"If those are your orders, of  course.\"\nWatanabe grabbed Keyes' arm and looked at the lette ring. \"The ODST tattoo. They must really like you. You know what it means?\"\n\"No.\" Keyes shook his head, pulling his arm back. W atanabe kept his grip on the arm. It was surprisingly tight.\n\"The kanji stand for 'bastard', or 'bad ass', depen ding on who you talk to. Lieutenant?\"\n\"Yes?\"\nWatanabe let go of Keyes' arm. \"Make sure you visit  the ship's armory before we leave.\"  62\nCHAPTER TWELVE\n\n\nSCYLLION, CHARYBDIS IX\n\nScyllion burned. Jeffries lazily swung the Pelican above the tightly  clustered skyscrapers of the city, and through patches of billowing, black smoke  from burning piles of furniture and barrels on the roads.\n\"Food riots,\" Watanabe said, hanging on to webbing and looking out the back of the Pelican with Keyes. Jeffries had already lowere d the ramp for a hot drop. Keyes walked to the back and looked out. \"I never t hought I'd see anything like that in the Inner Colonies.\"\n\"Hold tight, sir,\" Jeffries shouted back. The Pelic an slowly banked around a set of towers. Watanabe looked out at the random pillars of smoke mingled among the concrete, steel, and mirrored windows of the city. \"It starte d as a corporate mining town. The whole thing was laid out and designed to keep all m oney in the corporation. You worked for them, paid rent to stay in an apartment they built run by a division of the mining company. You shopped at company-run stores. You traveled on the company line. It is an example that used to be taught in bu siness schools.\"\n\"So what's happening now?\" As Jeffries straightened  the Pelican out the city fell away behind them, towers glinting as the sun sunk d own behind the city skyline, its orange hues streaking the clouds. Scyllion looked a s if it were made of gold due to the sunset filtering through its windows.\n\"They had a monopoly: they started raising prices d ramatically. People became trapped. Once here, the price of living exceeded th eir company pay, putting them further and further in debt with no way out.\n\"It became a problem when a rival company tried to get mining rights and was barred by the puppet government the company had fun ded here on Charybdis IX. So the new company funded dissatisfied and trapped wor kers back in '25, hoping to shake things up politically a bit, and Scyllion's p olice shot a few of them during a protest march. Since then, Insurrectionists have be en a huge problem here. Scyllion's corporate masters are now spending more money on tr ying to get everything they can off planet and back to colonies closer to Earth to protect their assets. ONI recommended that the UNSC implement martial law las t year.\n\"We just don't have the troops and ships to spare,\"  Watanabe finished.  63  The Pelican flew over the edges of Scyllion, passin g over a long snaking river. Warehouses lined the banks, and large container shi ps lay at dock next to concrete wharfs.\n\"Here we are,\" Jeffries announced in their earpiece s. The Pelican slowed, its engines swiveling to redirect thrust. They landed on a pad on top of one of the warehouse s. Watanabe let go of the webbing and walked down the ramp. Keyes followed hi m. The Pelican revved up and lifted off, leaving them on the suddenly quiet rooftop pad. A woman with long hair and grubby gray overalls sto od waiting for them at the stairwell leading down to the warehouse.\n\"Corinthia Hansen,\" Watanabe said. He shook her han d. \"Lieutenant Keyes, this is our ONI contact on the ground here. She's been c oordinating tracking the influx of Covenant weapons and trying to get them off the str eet to be examined and destroyed. She was also responsible for interceptin g the Insurrectionist ship.\"\n\"Good to see you, Major Watanabe.\" She looked at Ke yes. \"What's the Navy here for?\"\n\"Peace of mind. A line to further resources back in  orbit if we need it.\" Watanabe looked around the pad. \"Your report said you had cr ew uniforms and fifteen agents?\"\n\"Downstairs, in the Hogs. You can change en route, we're short on time.\"\n\"Why the rush?\" Watanabe asked. \"I thought we had m ore time?\"\n\"Yeah, in case you didn't notice, the city is rioti ng. It's only a matter of time before the crowds downtown decide that there might be food or resources out here. The Insurrectionists agreethey're coming in early to take the guns. So let's get rolling.\"\nKeyes raised an eyebrow. In his experience changing  plans on the fly added to the potential of things going wrong.  64\nCHAPTER THIRTEEN\n\n\nSCYLLION WAREHOUSE DISTRICT, CHARYBDIS IX\n\nCivilian Warthogs waited in a line for them on the lower floor of the empty warehouse, as well as three large trucks pulling co ntainers. Hansen had them get in the back of the truck in the middle. It was full of stacked crates, with just a four-foo t empty gap near the doors. Or at least Keyes thought so, until Hansen walked to the wall of crates and pressed her palm against them. The crates swung aside. Inside was a fully furnished mobile command center.  Screens hung from the walls with information, and ONI agents stood in fro nt of them, murmuring into microphones. At the back agents in black body armor checked thei r weapons and eyed Watanabe and Keyes warily. The ONI mobile command center jerked into motion, a nd Keyes grabbed a wall. Hansen pulled a gun out from her waistband and hand ed it to one of the agents.\n\"We're hoping we can help you out, Watanabe, and ge t them to give up what system the weapons came from. But I'm pretending to be cre w of that ship, so it's dicey. Our main goal is to give these Innie creeps the crates,  and then see where in the city they end up. Give them a few days to talk around the cra tes, give us some intelligence, then we can roll in and bust them. Because the last  thing we need are the mobs that are out there right now getting their hands on Cove nant weapons.\"\nShe walked away from them both to go check on one o f the monitors. Keyes leaned over to Watanabe. \"I get the feeling y ou're not exactly wanted here. They seem to think they've got the whole thing figu red out.\"\nWatanabe shrugged dramatically. \"Between your crew and these agents, my not being wanted around places seems to be a character failing of mine, I'm sure.\"\nHansen looked back down the center as Keyes laughed . She waved them over.\n\"Here's an example of the product.\"\nShe picked up a hefty Covenant plasma rifle and gav e it to Watanabe. Unlike the utilitarian, industrial human weapons, the Covenant  device was smooth and aerodynamic, almost organic. The plasma rifle consi sted of what looked like two large semiautomatic weapons welded together: one on  top, the other beneath. The pair of curved bodies were mated via the trigger gu ard, and then at the front with a second guard.  65  \"They're not quite right,\" Keyes said. \"What's that  on the side?\"\nFrom what Keyes knew in briefings, Covenant plasma rifles had a small temperature gauge on the side. This had been replac ed with a counter with the numerals \"380\" glowing on the tiny display. Someone  had already tested the weapon.\n\"Good eye,\" Hansen said. \"Yes, these guns let you k now how many shots are left. There is also this.\"\nShe reached over and took the bulky weapon back fro m Watanabe. A quick, firm press near the front of the plasma rifle caused the  casing to click, and a tiny targeting reticule popped up.\n\"What we have here,\" Hansen said, \"is a Covenant we apon that seems modified for human usage. The counter, you'll note, doesn't use any form of Covenant numbering, but rather our own.\"\nThe truck ground to a halt.\n\"The Insurrectionists are already here,\" someone re ported from a monitor.\n\"Good.\" Hansen tapped her earpiece. \"Everyone knows  their places, let's get it done.\"\nShe walked out the back with the plasma rifle in ha nd. One of the agents at the monitors waved them over. He pulled a stool out from the wall. \"We can hear what Captain Hansen there is  saying, and see through a buttonhole camera.\"\nKeyes and Watanabe stood by the agent's shoulder. \" What's your name, son?\"\nKeyes asked. The agent glanced back. \"Smith, Josh Smith, sir.\"\n\"Good to meet you, Smith.\" On the screen Hansen mov ed close to a trio of men wearing simple gray coveralls, just like herself. T he man in front had a military cut, and scarred cheeks from some sort of explosion, and  was whip-thin. \"Who are we looking at here?\"\nSmith tapped another monitor lower down on the wall  to reveal a set of files pertaining to the operation. \"The man in front, tha t's Jason Kincaide, a known Insurrectionist. Mid-level sort of guy. The other t wo are just heavies of his.\"\nHansen approached Kincaide, and they shook hands. T he sting was on. But in the back of the unit, someone held up a hand . \"We're getting reports of disturbances four blocks away. Can someone bring up  the live sat imagery?\"\nOne of the larger screens flickered. Keyes walked a way from Smith's station and looked at it. There were thousands of people milling about.\n\"I can get street cam shots,\" Smith said. He minimi zed the video of Hansen and Kincaide meeting each other and exchanging code wor ds, and pulled up a small window showing a street corner. The rioters had a large battering ram, made from a chopped-down tree. They were smashing in a door to a warehouse while the cr owd shouted encouragement.\n\"This could cause a problem,\" Watanabe muttered.\n\"Maybe,\" Smith said. \"We'll see if they keep moving  down. Anyone call this in?\"  66  \"Yeah, but they're more focused on downtown,\" came the reply from another agent. \"This a low-priority area.\"\n\"If they were a military branch we could have over- ridden that,\" Smith muttered.\n\"Shit. They're moving at us.\"\nThe mood changed inside from operational calm to ne rvousness. The mob could be seen on several screens as more doors were kicke d in or smashed open.\n\"We're going to have to call it off.\" Smith tapped another screen. \"Hansen, we've got a mob breathing down on us; we're not getting o ut of here if we delay things. Nod once if you're going to break it off and jet, o r twice if you think we should round these jokers up as well.\"\nHansen straightened, and then nodded twice.\n\"Go, go, go!\" someone shouted from the back. A ramp dropped from the side of the container and h it the ground, kicking up dust. The ONI agents leapt out into the warehouse, rifles up and aimed at Kincaide and his men. Kincaide shook his head, but kept his hands up near  his chest. \"You sons of\"\nOne of the agents hit him on the side of the head w ith the butt of his battle rifle and the Insurrectionist dropped to his knees.\n\"This won't be the end,\" Kincaide shouted. \"There a re more where I came from. We'll find you in your homes, at night, and kill yo u there. We won't stop until this world is ours, as it rightfully should be.\"\nHe got another jab in the head for his shouting. A trickle of blood ran down his temple, and he looked dazed. Within seconds, they h ad his arms zip-tied behind his back, and the three Insurrectionists were shoved qu ickly into the trailer.\n\"Let's move it!\" Smith yelled at everyone. \"They're about a hun dred yards up the street.\"\n\"You heard the manpull that ramp back in, let's ro ll,\"\nHansen shouted. She walked toward Watanabe. \"Well, I guess that's that.\"\n\"I'm sorry.\" Watanabe stepped aside to let her stal k back down the center of the trailer. The agents up front pulled the ramp back u p and dogged it shut with a loud slam. Engines belched as they started up.\n\"The damn situation is what's messed up, Watanabe. We're all pulling overtime and doing our duty. It's next to impossible to run ops while the city is falling apart. How are we going to face the Covenant when we don't  even have our own crap in gear?\"\nKeyes grabbed ahold of the back of Smith's chair as  the trailer jerked into motion. \"They always used to say that if an alien m enace threatened humanity, we'd put aside all our differences, band together to fac e it as one.\"\nWatanabe shook his head sadly. \"They were wrong. Wh en you look at wars, even ones where it looks like people were united, there are always factions and jockeying. At the close of the Rain Forest Wars Neo-Friedenist s turned against hardliner Friedenists in Delambre when the UNSC got in close.  The Neos hated UN control, but they tried to then negotiate for a surrender th at left them in some sort of power. You read Elias Carver's work?\"\nKeyes nodded. \"Carver's a pessimist.\"  67  \"Hundreds of religions. Competing corporate-backed colonies. Political persuasions of every imaginable variety breed in th e shadows, and there is a lingering resentment at the UN for trying to keep all the col onies under an Earth government. The colonies, Lieutenant Keyes, are a powder keg. T he Covenant advancing on us doesn't make the mixture any less volatile. And the  enemy can always try to exploit that, if they have really good intelligence. That's  why these guns are worrying. They're a fuse, Keyes.\"\nThe ONI convoy drove through the giant warehouse do ors.\n\"I'd give anything to know what factions exist amon g the Covenant,\" Keyes said.\n\"Yeah, but they're aliens, and we can't assume they  think or work like us, because so far\" Watanabe started, then turned. Key es heard it too, a jetlike roaring swoosh. The front of the command trailer erupted in a fireb all. The whole unit lifted off its wheels, and slammed back down to the ground, grindi ng into the road as it came to a slow stop. Keyes pitched forward, slamming into a c hair.\n\"Get down!\" Hansen shouted. \"RPGs!\"\nFire raged in front of Keyes, licking its way up th e walls. A monitor exploded from the heat, shooting glass shards everywhere. He  crawled back toward Watanabe, who had pulled his sidearm out and was looking back  down at the door leading out. Someone on the other side of the flames fired a gun  three times.\n\"Was that us or an Innie?\" Keyes crawled over to Wa tanabe. Another RPG struck the trailer, blowing in the side  of the wall. Burning fragments struck Smith, who started screaming as he  was enveloped in flames. Keyes ran forward and threw the man to the floor, g etting him to try and roll the fire out. The flames kept him from getting near, an d after another second of screaming, the charred Smith finally slowed, whimpe red, and died next to the tiny flames he'd started on the carpet. Watanabe and Hansen hauled Keyes to his feet. Watan abe kicked at a weakened section of the wall that had been melted by the exp losion. It caved outward, and they jumped into the street. A large crowd of rioters watched the burning traile r, not sure what to do next.  68\nPART II  69\nCHAPTER FOURTEEN\n\n\nHABITAT EL CUIDAD, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe moment Delgado stepped out of the airlock he kn ew something was wrong. Five very burly men stood waiting for him. Their shaved heads gleamed in the artificial lights of the inner asteroid, and they wore expensi ve, well-tailored suits. Delgado also noticed the telltale bulges of holsters just u nderneath their left armpits.\n\"Ignatio Delgado?\" one of them asked.\n\"Yes, that's me.\" Delgado stared into the eyes of t he nearest heavy. He didn't see any way to get out of this. The five men had covere d all degrees of escape. He was hemmed in.\n\"There's someone that would like to see you.\"\nThey led him across the open expanse of hangar and into the back of a roomy, plush, tube car that waited at the lip of the docki ng tube leading out from the asteroid. Inside sat a thin, sparse-looking man with jet-blac k hair and dark green eyes. He set down the computer pad that he had been reading,  folded his arms on his lap, and swiveled slightly to regard Delgado.\n\"Mr. Delgado,\" he finally said after a long pause, no doubt calculated to make Delgado somewhat uncomfortable. \"You would not beli eve how hard you are to track down.\"\nDelgado blinked. He'd been hard to find because he hadn't been around. The Rubble Security Council had asked him to move the n avigation data once more.\n\"I had sensitive business to take care of,\" Delgado  said. The door to the tube car shut behind him. The tube car moved over and grippe d a long sliver of track that led down and away from the hangar asteroid where Delgad o had docked the Distancia.\n\"I know that,\" said the man. \"I was one of the memb ers who voted to send you out to secure the navigation data today.\"\n\"I'm sorry?\" Delgado frowned.\n\"No, no,\" the man waved in the air. \"Entirely my fa ult.\" He reached out a hand. Delgado reached over and shook it tentatively.\n\"I am Peter Bonifacio, and I hear you've been askin g about me, Mr. Delgado.\"\nDelgado stared into the eyes of the man who, most l ikely, had caused Melko's death. He bit his lip. \"I don't think so. You must be mistaken. I've been far too busy with the Security Council's orders. As you must kno w.\"\nIf Bonifacio, this short, intense-looking man, was really desperate to get his hands on the navigation data, he was hiding it pret ty well at the moment, Delgado thought.  70  Bonifacio lit a cigar. A Sweet William, Delgado rea lized with a kick in his stomach. \"No, it's certainly you, Delgado,\" Bonifac io said. \"Asking all sorts of very interesting questions. So I thought, maybe it's tim e I asked some questions of my own .\"\nDelgado watched Bonifacio inhale a long drag of the  Sweet William, and then let it out into the tiny, cramped interior of the bubbl e car. A haze of smoke lingered around them. Bonifacio leaned forward. \"What do you know about t he Exodus project?\"\nThe tube car moved on past pedestrians floating the ir way to and from asteroids.\n\"The what?\" Delgado asked. It felt like Bonifacio was studying every pore on D elgado's face. \"What about the Kig-Yarwhy are you asking about them?\"\nDelgado shook his head, pulling back from Bonifacio , offended. \"I have my reasons.\"\n\"Mmm,\" Bonifacio grunted. \"It's a strange coinciden ce that the Kig-Yar attacked a place that only the nine Council members knew abo ut... and you.\"\n\"You're accusing me of selling that information?\" D elgado leaned back in. \"I was shot protecting the data. My copilot was killed. How dare you suggest I gave anything to them?\"\nBonifacio looked out the window at the depths of sp ace passing them by. Ahead, the tube pierced the center of another asteroid hab itat. They passed into the heart of it, curved green farmland stretching up on all side s around them.\n\"We are all innocent until proven guilty, of course , Mr. Delgado,\" he said. \"But in your case, this is such a sensitive matter that a few Council members and I have decided that for the safety of the Rubble, you will  have to be detained while we investigate certain concerns regarding your loyalti es.\"\nDelgado clenched a fist. \"My loyalties are to the R ubble.\"\nBonifacio chuckled. \"Oh, I'm sure you're just a liv ing, breathing patriot. So I've heard. But the Council would like to hand over secu rity of the data to me now.\n\"So where is it, Delgado?\"\n\"Lodged deep, deep up your ass, Bonifacio.\" Delgado  grinned. Bonifacio's face steeled. \"There was no call for th at,\" he said. Delgado shrugged and leaned back in the chair. \"If we're playing games, I might as well have some fun too,\" he said. Bonifacio quickly hauled back and punched him in th e stomach, not even an inch away from a still-healing plasma wound. Delgado fel t like he'd been stabbed, and the pain doubled him over.\n\"It's such a shame,\" Bonifacio hissed. \"We started off on a nice foot, and then you had to go do that.\"\n\"You're such a charmer,\" Delgado grunted, holding o nto his stomach and leaning against the seat in front of him. \"You like this on  all your first dates?\"\n\"You're in a lot of trouble,\" Bonifacio said. \"Beca use as of this moment, you're under arrest for suspicion of leaking the location of the navigation data.\"\n\"The Council will not stand for that,\" Delgado said . \"They all worked hard with me to keep that data safe when we realized it was b eing destroyed.\"  71  \"For all we know you could be part of some conspira cy to destroy the data. You and your friend Diego. Who incidentally, did most o f the exhorting us to 'trust' you.\"\nThe tube car slowed, and Bonifacio leaned back. \"An d the Council signed the warrant.\" Bonifacio pulled up his pad. Delgado looked down at it. Then back up. \"How?\"\n\"A nice benefit of being a trusted, elected Securit y Council member. Now, I want the location of that navigation data, Delgado.\"\n\"And how long will you be able to get away with thi s? Eventually the Council will realize it's not a normal arrest when I don't actually show up in a proper holding facility, Bonifacio.\"\nThe smuggler sighed. \"True, but we have enough time  for what I need.\"\n\"Until the Kestrel gets in?\" Delgado ventured. Bonifacio quirked a small smile. \"And to keep you f rom spreading that damn name around.\"\n\"It's coming in from Charybdis IX, right?\" Delgado said, trying to prod more information out of the man. \"I hear the UNSC Navy i s sewing everything up, so it's obviously a last-hurrah smuggle. A ship full of lux uries that soon people will pay a premium for... and then you no longer need the naviga tion data. Right?\"\nBonifacio said nothing, but looked out the window. Delgado nodded. The silence said a lot. \"So you'll sell us out to the Kig-Yar?\nGive them the data?\" Delgado growled.\n\"Are you some weepy Earth sympathizer?\" Bonifacio s napped, suddenly irritated. \"Because you seem really hung up on this  idea that I'm trying to steal the data to sell it to the Kig-Yar. Even if I am, who t he hell cares what happens to Earth?\nThey could care less about us.\"\nDelgado shook his head. Bonifacio hadn't come strai ght out and admitted anything yet, but at least he was getting chatty. H e pressed the issue some more. \"The Kig-Yar will attack the moment we sell that data. T hey're just here to scavenge it.\"\nBonifacio shook his head. \"That's where you're wron g. They're risking a lot to be here, to help us build these asteroids. And they  will reward us. They think of this as home just as much as we do.\"\n\"How do you think they will reward us?\"\nBonifacio smiled. \"Don't you worry yourself about t hat right now.\" Delgado gritted his teeth. The smuggler had now all but adm itted he was working with the Kig-Yar. That he was the leak in the Council. The tube car slowed near an industrial looking sect ion of the asteroid, where metals were being processed from the raw slag forwa rded by other mining companies still operating in the outskirts of the Rubble. They stopped in front of a large warehouse half dug  into the ground. Bonifacio leaned forward as one of his men snapped a pair of handcuffs on Delgado. \"Welcome to your new home for the next few days.\"  72\nCHAPTER FIFTEEN\n\n\nSCYLLION WAREHOUSE DISTRICT, CHARYBDIS IX\n\nKeyes stared at the faces of the rioters, reading t he rage and the desperation of the crowd's mood. So far they were just watching the ON I survivors. The trucks and trailers the ONI team and Keyes crawled out of lay broken across the road, burning from the RPG hits. The asphalt had melted underneat h them in some places, and the warehouse windows reflected the dancing flames.\n\"Behind us.\" Hansen whirled around and shot at the corner of the burning trailer. Someone ducked back behind it.\n\"We need to get out,\" Watanabe told Keyes. The crowd muttered, and triumphant shouts increased  in the distance as several of them dragged an ONI agent out from the remains of a  trailer. The man struggled, but the ten people holding him were too strong. They shoved him to the ground and started kicking h im. They could hear his screams.\n\"Can't we do anything?\" Keyes asked.\n\"It's just the three of us, and hundreds of them ov er there,\" Hansen said. \"I can't even get a shot clear, there're too many of them.\"\n\"Damn it.\" Keyes turned so that he could glance bac k and forth between the crowd and the trailer. \"Pelican 019, this is Lieute nant Keyes.\" He pulled his side arm out of the holster, but didn't point it in either d irection, just kept at his side.\n\"I take it you're ONI?\" The Insurrectionist on the other side of the trailer yelled at them. It sounded like Kincaide. \"You think you'r e so smart, sneaking around. But we have you now! We'll beat you down like your frie nd over there.\"\nThe screams from the ONI agent had stopped. The cro wd moved away from the limp, broken body. Keyes felt sick, then nervous as  the mob screamed in his direction. Hansen dropped a magazine out of her gun. It hit th e asphalt at the same time as a new one clicked home. She didn't respond to Kincaid e's rants.\n\"Jeffries here, sir,\" crackled the voice in Keyes' earpiece.\n\"Can you get a read on my location?\" Keyes tried to  keep his voice calm. Something about the pent up rage of the crowd unner ved him.\n\"Yessir.\"\nHansen pointed at a nearby door to another warehous e. They backed over to it.  73  Keyes held his hand up to his ear. \"Get ready for a  hot pickup. We're coming up to the roof. Got a mob after us, and we lost the In surrectionists we were after. They were using RPGs on us, so come in fast and low and keep your eyes open.\"\nAn Insurrectionist peered around the corner, and du cked back again as Watanabe fired at him. \"These are company agents,\" Kincaide shouted into the air. \"Any one of you grab them I'll give you weapons. Free guns.\"\nA pair of rioters heard that and ran down the stree t at the trio. Watanabe and Hansen shot in unison, and the two men pitched forw ard into the road. Hansen turned around and shot the doorknob several times, then kicked the door in. \"Inside.\"\nThey moved in, Watanabe and Hansen staying by the d oor as Keyes looked around for a way up. A few more gunshots cracked ou tthey convinced the mob to stay back. Meanwhile, Kincaide was screaming at the  mob to attack. Still, even rioters didn't want to charge head on i nto gunfire. Keyes could see that through the shattered windows of the door. They were holding back as the two ONI agents shot just above their heads. Looking the other way, Keyes spotted a service elev ator.\n\"Sir, I'm a minute away,\" Jeffries called in. \"Get to the rooftop.\"\n\"To the roof,\" Keyes shouted. They ran to the elevator, pulling the cage shut. It  lurched up, just as the door they'd come through shattered, rioters pouring thro ugh, Kincaide with them. He raised a Covenant plasma rifle, and as the eleva tor rose to the next floor, a burst of plasma hit the elevator doors beneath them , blowing them out into the shaft. Smoke rose up with them as they climbed toward the top floor. The elevator lurched to a halt, and once the doors opened Hansen shot the control panel several times. The foyer led to a doorway out  onto the roof, and past the stairs leading down the warehouse's floors. They could hear murmuring and footsteps farther dow n the stairwell as they passed it to kick open the door. As Keyes ran onto the flat roof, he saw the running  lights of the approaching Pelican wink off. The craft swooped by, blinding th em with a sudden glare of a spotlight that then shut off almost as quickly as i t had been flicked on.\n\"That you coming out on the roof, sir?\" Jeffries as ked.\n\"Better believe it,\" Keyes grunted, sprinting away from the stairwell.\n\"Coming back around for the land, deploying the ram p,\" Jeffries reported. The Pelican banked and disappeared off into the nig ht. Then it appeared again. Jeffries was throwing it full speed right toward th e top of the building, skimming just over the rooftops in a near suicidal dash. Keyes had to admire the skill. From the street level the bright flash of a rocket launch lit up an alleyway and a rocket streaked for the Pelican.\n\"RPG!\" Keyes shouted, but Jeffries had already kick ed the tail of the Pelican out, crabbing it around in midair to face the rocket and  present a smaller profile. The rocket streaked by, missing but bathing the Pel ican in an eerie orange light.  74  A second rocket flashed and leapt up from underneat h the Pelican. It slammed into the belly of the craft, gutting it. Debris rai ned down out of the Pelican, and a second explosion inside rippled throughout the craf t's body. It hung in the air, engines wailing, but not moving . The third rocket slammed into its tail, and the Pel ican dropped out of the air into the street below, sinking from eye level in an infe rno of boiling metal and parts. Keyes threw himself at the ledge of building, firin g his sidearm into the street, but the Insurrectionists had already melted back into t he shadows. The flaming wreckage burned itself against the back  of Keyes' eyes as he waited for some movement, any movement, near the ruins of the Pelican.\n\"Lieutenant,\" Watanabe grabbed him and yanked him b ack from the edge. Chips of concrete stung Keyes in the face as gunfir e hit the lip of the building. Watanabe locked his eyes. Keyes stood in front of W atanabe, frozen, as Watanabe grabbed him by the face to look right at him. \"Ther e's nothing you could have done, Keyes.\"\nKeyes numbly ejected the spent magazine from his si dearm and slid in another.\n\"I'm the one who transferred him aboard the Midsummer Night .\"\n\"He was a good soldier and a good man. Jefferson fl ew hard, and now he's down and we need to focus.\"\nKeyes stared at the ONI spook. Jefferson? What the hell was that? Watanabe was supposed to be a man of details, observant. But Jef fries hadn't rated his attention, apparently. But then, that was a spook versus enlis ted. They didn't care about the man standing next to you. They had their own agenda s.\n\"Keyes, you listening? Can you raise the ship?\"\n\"I can try,\" Keyes said. By the stairwell Hansen fired three shots, and some one screamed. Keyes moved away from the lip of the wall and close d his eyes. He flipped frequencies on the earpiece, and then looked up at the stars in the night sky. One of them was the Midsummer Night, parked in geosynchronous orbit. It hung directly over the city.\n\"Midsummer Night, this is Keyes.\" He waited a moment, then repeated i t. A response came through, crackly and faded. \"Keyes,  this is Kirtley. Glad to hear your voice. What's your situation?\"\n\"Pinned on a roof,\" Keyes reported. \"Jeffries was h it by RPG fire; the Pelican is down. We've got Insurrectionists and a mob ready to  tear our throats out.\"\n\"Listen, hold tight,\" Kirtley said. \"There are ODST s on their way.\"\n\"They won't get here in time,\" Keyes said.\n\"Major Faison had it out with the captain, said you  guys needed boots on the ground for support if a mob was moving in. They lef t early, before you called Jeffries. You need to hold out twenty minutes. Copy  that? Twenty minutes?\"\nTwenty minutes. Might as well have been an eternity . But it was a chance. \"Tell them to space out and wa tch out for rockets,\" Keyes said.\n\"Will do. Good luck, Lieutenant.\"  75  Keyes ran over to Watanabe and Hansen. \"ODSTs are o n their way. Twenty minutes.\"\nWatanabe and Hansen glanced at each other. Watanabe  held up his side arm.\n\"Last mag.\"\n\"Same here. Keyes?\"\n\"I'm on my last mag too.\"\nThe three of them looked down the empty stairwell.\n\"Twenty minutes, huh?\" Hansen said.\n\"Twenty,\" Keyes repeated.\n\"Well, I'm game to try it,\" the ONI agent said, and  steadied herself against the wall for a better shot.  76\nCHAPTER SIXTEEN\n\n\nSCYLLION WAREHOUSE DISTRICT, CHARYBDIS IX\n\n\"They're not trying to push up the stairs hard enou gh,\" Hansen said, ten minutes later. So far Keyes had only fired warning shots. The riot ers would peek around a corner and fire off a round, and he would too, and then there would be silence until the next rioter nerved up enough to try doing the s ame thing.\n\"She's right.\" Watanabe stepped forward, trying to look down the stairwell. He jerked back as someone fired a shot. Plasma exploded against the walls of the foyer.\n\"They've got the Covenant weapons now.\" Hansen shuf fled back from the doorway.\n\"So why aren't they rushing us?\" Keyes asked. He sc anned the rooftop. \"They're up to something .\"\nHansen pulled a wicked-looking knife out of her boo t and put it on the ground.\n\"Keyes, go left, Watanabe, right. Just start checki ng the edges. Don't pop your head over, just listen for anything. I'll hold this poin t.\"\nKeyes and Watanabe took off at a crouch for the edg e of the roof. Keyes skirted it, slowly moving against the concrete lip. The edg e came up to his head. On the other side of the building, he could see Wat anabe doing the same. Keyes made his way down one whole side of the build ing. His thighs burned from the awkward waddling by the end, and he paused  to stretch them out. Watanabe had stopped as well. But he wasn't stretching his legs. He had his gun o ut. Three men leapt over the lip near Watanabe, with Ki ncaide vaulting the edge just behind them. The ONI agent charged them from the si de, shooting down the first man, then the second. Keyes couldn't risk firing, he'd just as likely hit  Watanabe at this distance, so he sprinted at the group. Kincaide used the third man, a rioter, as a shield.  He shoved the surprised civilian into Watanabe, then shot them both several times wi th a plasma rifle. Keyes felt sick as he watched Watanabe fall. The man may have been ONI, but he was crew and a fellow soldier, and Keyes realized he was screaming . Keyes had his pistol up without a second thought. A s Kincaide seemed to turn in slow motion, Keyes pulled the trigger.  77  He'd been aiming for the chest, but the first shot hit Kincaide in the shoulder. It spun the Insurrectionist back, and he struggled to bring the heavy plasma rifle back up to aim at Keyes. Keyes shot him in the chest, then stomach, grazed h is side, and then ran out of ammunition. He slammed into Kincaide, grappling for  the alien rifle.\n\"Damn... UNSC... pig,\" Kincaide spat, still trying to f orce the rifle up into Keyes' ribs. \"Go back to Earth. You don't belong he re.\"\nThe memory of the explosions in the cargo bay of Finnegan's Wake,  the flaming Pelican Jeffries piloted going down, wounded ODSTs gritting their teeth and bearing the pain as they waited for help, all filled Keyes'  mind. He grunted and kept forcing the plasma rifle down until it was aimed at Kincaid e's feet. He pulled the trigger, and a burst of white-hot pla sma destroyed the Insurrectionist's leg and threw Keyes back, still h olding onto the rifle. Concrete bubbled where they'd stood, and Keyes felt  the legs of his uniform burning. He patted the fires out quickly, and looke d back at Kincaide. The man had lost his left leg, blown clean off at t he thigh. He'd been shot in the shoulder and chest. Yet he now had a small pistol in his right hand, li fting it up to point it at Keyes with determination in his glazed eyes. Without hesitation, Keyes blew the Insurrectionist' s head off his body with a burst of plasma. His hands shook. He'd never shot a man before. He'd  shot at people, fired warning shots, practiced in drills, but never actua lly looked at someone in the eyes who was about to kill him, and beat him to the draw . Watanabe groaned, and Keyes crawled over to him. Th e plasma rifle had ripped through the ONI agent's left torso, leaving a crisp ed mess. Keyes gagged at the smell.\n\"This is bad,\" Watanabe muttered.\n\"Don't move,\" Keyes told him. \"Stay still, don't cl ose your eyes.\"\n\"It hurts.\"\nKeyes bit his lip. \"Just hang in there, Akio. They' re on their way. We just need to hang in there.\"\nHansen fired three shots at someone in the stairway  trying their luck. Watanabe grabbed Keyes' forearm and grimaced, then let go. Keyes looked down at the limp, dead body of Major A kio Watanabe. He stood up and grabbed Jason Kincaide's headless c orpse, dragged it to the lip, and shoved it over. He heard the distant thump, and  a crowd of people shout in surprise. Keyes walked to the ledge and looked down. A fire t ruck had been commandeered, the ladder pushed up to the roof. Sev eral hundred rioters milled below, many with plasma rifles.\n\"Listen up!\" Keyes held up his newly acquired plasm a rifle as he shouted.\n\"Anyone else tries storming the roof, I'll blow the ir damn heads off too.\"  78  He fired the plasma rifle twice into the base of th e ladder, and watched with satisfaction as metal slumped and the ladder slid o ff the side of the building, falling over toward the crowd. Rioters scattered as it struck the street in their midst.\n\"Now,\" Keyes snapped the word out, in full drill se rgeant cadence. He may as well have been talking to a crowd of new recruits. \"UNSC marines are about to arrive any second. If I were you, I wouldn't want to be st anding around here in plain sight, lest they get the mistaken impression you're hostile, and act accordingly.\"\nKeyes turned around and walked away from the edge.\n\"Look,\" Hansen said, pointing up. Stars in the sky grew larger, twinkling brighter an d brighter, until they could be seen streaking toward the building.\n\"The cavalry has arrived,\" Keyes said.  79\nCHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n\n\nSCYLLION WAREHOUSE DISTRICT, CHARYBDIS IX\n\nTwenty single occupant exoatmospheric insertion veh icle pods came in high, ripping through the atmosphere, still glowing hot from reen try. Parachutes popped, enough to slow the human-sized capsules down a bit. Then at t he last second rockets flared, lighting up the night sky in flames and thunder as all the SOEIV pods slammed into the reinforced structure of the roof. Concrete dust hung in the air, and chips off the ro of clattered down as the pods split open and ODSTs leapt out with their battle ri fles drawn. From the corner of the roof, in a pod that leaned p recariously near the edge, one ODST hopped out. The SOEIV shook, and then fell off  the edge onto the street below. The Helljumper pulled his helmet off. It was Faison . \"Miss us much?\"\nKeyes pointed at Watanabe, and Faison paused. \"Damn . Didn't like the spook, but still...\" He pointed at two ODSTs and detailed th em to wrap up Watanabe's body. Keyes looked away and swallowed the lump in h is throat. He'd seen too much death for one day.\n\"They're firing RPGs around. It's probably too risk y for Pelicans,\" Keyes said.\n\"They took Jeffries out.\"\n\"We heard about them coming in,\" Faison said. He lo oked around. \"But don't worry, we've got it in hand, Lieutenant. You saved our asses back on the Finnegan 's Wake, now it's time for us to even up.\"\n\"I don't want to see anyone else die down here,\" Ke yes said.\n\"Magnus! Jeremy!\" Faison shouted. A pair of very ta ll and bulky Helljumpers ran over. \"Grab four spotters, get your gear in place w here you two can do your thing. Start marking targets. But stay in the shadows.\"\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\"And someone,\" Faison said into his mic, still hang ing from his ear, \"please start tossing grenades down that stairwell.\" The mob had retreated when Keyes threw the body of Kincaide over the wall, but there were guns hots coming from the corridor and the street as the mob worked itself back up. Two svelte ODST shadows meandered over to the side of the doors and skipped grenades down the foyer and into the stairwell.\n\"Fire in the hole,\" one shouted, just before a fire ball gushed out the door. There were screams from the depths of the warehouse .  80  Keyes switched frequencies to the marine's open cha tter. He could hear the spotters with their night vision and thermal gear m uttering. \"See the one out by that window?\"\n\"Yep, marked him.\"\n\"Okay, I got one on top of the building. North-nort h-west. Near the water tower.\"\n\"Sneaky. Yeah.\"\nKeyes followed Faison over to an edge, where he hel d his helmet over the lip for a second, then pulled it back over and reviewed the  cam footage.\n\"Look at that,\" Faison said. \"All this excitement s cared off the rioters. So, anyone left is an Innie.\"\n\"Perimeter secure,\" a Helljumper reported. \"They're  not shooting at us yet.\"\n\"Okay,\" Faison said. \"Bring on the decoy and let's play find-the-RPG launchers.\"\nA Pelican with its running lights on came in slowly , passing them overhead, and swooping around. \"Take out your targets,\" Faison sa id. The two snipers, Magnus and Jeremy, were the focus now. Crack. The sound of an SRS 99 carried over the rooftop. \"G ot Mr. Window.\" The pair of snipers had crawled onto the top of the sma ll structure above the foyer, a building on a building. It gave them unobstructed l ine of sight to the surrounding streets and buildings.\n\"Mr. Water Tower is... clear of the lattice...\" Crack. \"And he's most definitely not going out to party tonight.\"\n\"Moving location.\" One of them jumped off and sprin ted across the rooftop, the long barrel of the sniper rifle bobbing. He set up on the corner of the building, the edge of the gun resting on the concrete lip.\n\"While you're huffing about, Mr. Street Corner is s ighting on the Pelican...\"\nCrack. \"And down.\"\nCrack. \"That's the last one.\"\nFaison made a circling motion with his hand. \"That' s how we do it, gentlemen. Bring the other Pelicans in.\"\nTwo Pelicans descended out of the clouds and came i n hard, slamming onto the roof. Hansen and Keyes ran up the ramps and buckled  in; the Helljumpers followed. The Pelicans dusted off, engines screaming as they zigzagged their way out of the neighborhood. An occasional zap of plasma-rifle fir e rang in the distance. As the ramp shut, Faison staggered his way forward to Keyes and handed him a cigar. Keyes eyed the flaked exterior. \"A Sweet William?\"\n\"Nothing but the best, sir. A victory smoke.\"\n\"A victory smoke?\" Keyes looked over at Watanabe's body. \"We lost two of our own down there. Those rioters have Covenant weapons, now.\"\n\"Sir, any day you come back from a mission alive, i t's a victory.\" The Helljumper grinned. They were a different breed of soldier, Keyes had to keep reminding himself. They had to be. Packing yourself  into a heatshield pod, braving the flames of reentry over a planet, and parachutin g down into the middle of action, surrounded... that was a bit above the call of duty f or a normal marine.  81  Keyes handed Faison back the cigar. \"I don't smoke.  It's against regulations.\"\n\"Sir, I've seen you standing with a pipe, in the ch art room, looking over maps.\"\nHis grandfather's pipe. It was an heirloom, and Key es kept it on him. It comforted him to have it in hand. An old habit. \"An d I don't smoke it. But tell you what, marine, when I see a victory, I'll smoke one with you. This wasn't a victory, it was a cluster\"\n\"It wasn't a complete loss,\" Hansen said. She stood  at the center of the Pelican, balancing as the craft shook and shuddered its way higher and higher. \"The reason Kincaide was so set on eliminating us was that he r ealized he made a mistake. He told me the name of the next ship making a smugglin g run while he was trying to bid up the price of the weapons. Said he'd done busines s with them.\"\n\"And the name of the ship?\"\n\"The Kestrel. These Covenant weapons, they're a problem, Keyes. W e need to figure out why the Covenant's doing this. And we da mn well need to stop it.\"\n\"Hoo-ah,\" one of the Helljumpers agreed. Keyes folded his arms. The Kestrel. They'd hunt it to the edge of the galaxy if necessa ry, as far as Keyes was concerned. Someone was going to have to pay for all  the deaths on his watch.\n\"Sir,\" the pilot of the Pelican shouted back into t he hold. \"Sir, the Midsummer Night 's hailing us.\"\nThe pilot's voice had cracked slightly. Fear. Keyes walked calmly up behind the woman's chair, ev en though he could feel the kick in his stomach. The pilot's helmet twisted back. It had the name Ca rson stenciled on it. The Pelican bucked a bit as it passed over clouds, stil l gaining altitude. The craft was pitched up, aiming for the black of space. \"The sen sor stations at the edge of the system think something's coming in. Something big,\"  she said.\n\"Covenant?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Know of any other fleets planning to wing by this place?\" Carson returned to getting them to orbit, and Keyes stumbled back down  the steep angle.\n\"Are there any Navy ships scheduled to arrive?\" he asked Hansen. She shook her head. \"Cole is still out near Harvest . Mawikizi's main fleet is spread out around Ectanus. There are three destroye rs picketing\"\n\"The Night's main attribute is her stealth,\" Keyes said, his min d rapidly running through some rudimentary plans on how three Destroy ers and the Midsummer Night could face this Covenant fleet. So far only Admiral  Cole and his battle group had ever scored a meaningful victory against the Covena nt. And it was a loose secret within the Navy that Cole had thrown three ships ag ainst the Covenant forces for every ship of theirs he destroyed. Midsummer Night and the three other frigates would be facing long odds. \"If it's Covenant, we'll  have to utilize that stealth for a defense.\"\nWith stealth, and the single MAC gun aboard the Night, a series of hit-and-runs could perhaps harass the Covenant into chasing them , and lure them into a situation where the three Destroyers would only face one or t wo Covenant ships.  82  Hansen shook her head. \"If the Covenant are coming for Charybdis, your one frigate will make no difference. Keyes, it's vital you follow up on the Kestrel, find out what the Covenant are really up to. It's what y our ship was designed for. We can't waste it on a last stand.\"\n\"But\"\n\"It wouldn't be a wise use of resources.\" Hansen bi t her lip. \"And the UNSC, every day, has fewer and fewer resources to spare, Keyes. We've been fighting the Covenant now for almost a decade. As of now, we've pretty much lost all the Outer Colonies. You need to find out what is going on. Yo u need to go after the Kestrel. Before the Covenant get all the way in-system and t rap you.\"\nIt didn't sit well with Keyes, abandoning people to  a doomed defense. He stood next to the ONI agent in silence as the Pelican bro ke free of the atmosphere.\n\"After you drop me off at the orbital depot, tell Z heng to get clear. I'll transmit the orders. You'll find that I outrank you both.\"\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" Keyes said. Hansen sighed. \"And when you find your real victory , Lieutenant, make sure you smoke one of those Sweet Williams for me.\"\n\"We're coming in!\" Carson announced from the cockpi t. \"And fast. Captain Zheng wants us back on board ASAP.\"\nThrough the cockpit windows the long spars of a Nav y orbital depot slowly rotated. Carson twitched the Pelican until it slamm ed against one of the spokes. As the back opened, Keyes stood straight and salute d. The ODSTs inside followed his example, not sure what was going on. Hansen saluted back, and then left the Pelican.\n\"Okay,\" Carson shouted. \"Hang on!\"  83\nCHAPTER EIGHTEEN\n\n\nUNSC DESTROYER DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?, CHARYBDIS IX\n\nThel 'Vadamee burst through a corridor at a full ru n and aimed a plasma rifle down its length. Nothing. There had to be more humans aboard this destroyer t han the pitiful few who'd tried to hold off the boarding party. The angular s hip with its sharp corners and boxy layout reeked of a larger contingent of humans. The Sangheili did not reholster his gun. A drawn we apon demanded blood, and one didn't draw a weapon in Sangheili culture unles s you intended to use it, even if it was a just a gun. So now it would remain out in his  hand. Thel crossed another bulkhead and turned to his rig ht. There it was, that scent again: a pungent smell. The humans. They must have retreated to a core area, deep inside the ship. Throughout this system his fellow Sangheili hunted down human ships to destroy them, and the flagships of the fleet would now be r aining the full strength of their energy weapons down on the surface of the planet. I t was sterilization. A mandate for destruction handed down by the leaders of the Coven ant, the three High Prophets. But Thel and his handpicked team were off on a side  mission. To his right a team of zealots padded along with hi m, keeping a full 360 degree path of fire at the ready in case of an ambush. The ir long, leathery necks craned around, their eaglelike eyes scanning the awkward n ooks and crannies of the human ship for the enemy.\n\"Cowards,\" Jora 'Konaree hissed. Jora was one whose  blood always ran hot, always ready for the fight and eager to rush a posi tion. He sounded disappointed and frustrated to not have a direct fight to engage in.  \"They flee in front of us like panicked forest creatures before the flame.\"\nAn apt metaphor, thought Thel, considering that Cov enant ships rained fire down on the human worlds. \"Be cautious,\" Thel warned. \"T hey are small creatures, but they are not unaware of their disadvantages.\"\nThe humans would ambush them, soon enough, in some sort of last stand. He'd heard a few rumors from other Sangheili who'd board ed human ships looking for information that they would fight hard, almost hono rably. Or, at least, Thel hoped so. Hunting them down like  vermin would be... demeaning to everyone involved.  84  From past dissections of human ships of this class,  they knew the control center would be close to the front of the ship. A daring a nd brash position that Thel appreciated. They broke through the doors by tossing a sticky gr enade at the seam. The grenade thudded into the gap and stuck in place. It  glowed a sickly blue, then exploded. \"Forward,\" Jora shouted. The other three zealotsZhar, Saal, and Veerfollow ed Jora and Thel through the ruined remains of the doors. Zhar, careful but constant and steady; Veer, a bored expression on his face but eyes darting everywhere,  looking for details and oddities for his war poems; and Saal, like Jora, looking for  anything to kill. They were Thel's own small force, a band of fighter s that had seen many enemies fall at their feet. Jora rushed through the room. \"They abandoned their  own command center,\" he growled. Then he leaned over the alien computer con soles and tapped at them. The only response was sparking and fizzing: the console s had been shot up before the humans abandoned them. \"Useless!\"\nHe unsheathed his energy sword and fired it up in f rustration. The two crackling, curved blue flames of energy rose up on either side  of the hand holding the bar. Jora plunged it into the heart of the machine, sparks fl ying and metal oozing out around where the sword pierced it. The screens above flickered and faded. Jora pulled the sword out and cut the whole console  in half, the energy sword cleaving it cleanly down the middle. \"Savages with starships and toy weapons, Shipmaster,\" he hissed at Thel, who watched the dis play of anger without any emotion. The barking chatter of human gunfire ripped through  the cockpit, and Jora's armor flared. \"Blood,\" the zealot swore, as he duck ed for cover. Zhar calmly turned and lobbed grenades down the cor ridor.\n\"So they finally attack.\" Jora's mandibles split op en as he roared a challenge down the corridor. Thel, though, already ran down the corridor at the attack. The humans had cornered them here. A smart move. Thel leapt throug h the smoke and chaos of the explosion, his armor dinged, nicked, and its energy  shield flaring due to human bullets. He shot the first human he saw as he lande d back on the deck. The second human, flush against the wall, spun to b ring his rifle to bear. Thel was too close to shoot him: he snapped the butt of the energy rifle into the short alien's face and watched it slump to the floor. Weak, very weak. The human's insubstantial armor of  olive clothing did little to protect it. Jora barreled through, sword high, and cut the thir d marine in half, but not before the man got off several shots, near point blank. Jo ra stumbled, and clutched at his armor. Thel threw grenades around the corner, angry. Jora might act a little crazed, but he was a hard fighter. Thel did not want to lose hi m. Thel waited for the explosion to dissipate, then rounded the corner, firing at anyth ing that moved.  85  Within seconds Thel and his boarding crew stood in the odd crimson pools of human blood. Twenty men lay dead in the corridor, t heir bodies twisted, contorted, missing parts, or just plain destroyed.\n\"There is nothing here for us,\" Thel relayed back t o the Retribution's Thunder.\n\"We are returning.\"\nA shame, thought Thel. The humans had thwarted thei r mission to find data about their homeworld by destroying their computer system s before he'd even boarded. Twenty Unggoy filled the large, open space of the h angar bay. The Unggoy, like the humans, were short, bred too fast, and were ind ividually weak. The Unggoy, however, wore triangular methane tanks and breathin g masks over their flattened, squashed faces. Thel found them useless for intense  fighting, but in large enough numbers they were very effective, so he'd left them  to guard the boarding craft. The Unggoy were a part of the Covenant, and thus we re to be used in the war against the apostate humans. But that didn't mean T hel had to go out of his way to include them in the heart of his missions. As they jumped up into the long, pipelike snout of a boarding craft, Jora groaned. Thel and the others pretended not to hear.\n\"Back on board,\" Thel ordered the Covenant forces i n the hangar. The Unggoy grumbled about being moved about randoml y, and about being forced to wear their heavy tanks and their itchy ma sks, but did as they were told. They streamed back up into the mouth of the boardin g craft, stepping past their fallen brothers who had died as the humans tried to defend  the ship. The boarding craft yanked away from the gash it had  made in the side of the destroyer, shields flaring as it did so. Thel watch ed as the bulky, blocky destroyer fell away from them. Streaks of carbon ran along the side where they had  fired at the human ship. Most of the damage clustered near the ship's engines.\n\"It is strange,\" Jora grunted. Everywhere the hiss and occasional wispy stink of methane filled the air in the boarding craft due to  the lines of Unggoy staring straight ahead, trying not to be noticed by any of the five Sangheili.\n\"What is?\" Thel asked as the destroyer dwindled int o the size of an eyeball. He nodded at Saal, who murmured into a mouthpiece.\n\"The Prophets have demanded we destroy their ships,  burn their worlds, and allow no heretic to live.\" Jora held his side, and Thel noticed a trickle of purple blood seep through his fingers. \"Now we search for inform ation and sneak aboard their ships?\"\n\"The Path is strict, Jorait brooks no deviation, n o remorse. We are zealots. We serve the Way. These are our orders. We do not ques tion them.\" Thel saw the tiny destroyer suddenly light up as a long sliver of a p lasma beam ripped into it. It exploded, chunks flying off in all directions, supe rstructure glowing hot and failing.\n\"You do not wonder why our orders changed, Shipmast er?\" Jora asked. Zhar, from nearby, looked up. \"The Prophets, in the ir infinite wisdom, want to shorten this war. Maybe the Hierarchs did not reali ze these vermin were spread out in so many different places, like some weed. Now they urge us to seek the source.\"\n\"You think we have failed to find their home world? \" Thel asked.  86  \"We keep finding more and more developed worlds to destroy,\" said Zhar. \"Like the one we just visited. What was it the human Saal  tortured called it?\"\n\"Charybdis...\" Thel said. \"The aliens called it Chary bdis.\" His split mandibles struggled with the word. It was an affront for less er species to name an entire world. That was a right reserved for the powerful. Saal ran to them, his eyes wide with astonishment. \"Shipmaster! Encrypted signal from Infinite Sacrifice !\"\nThel walked with him to a communications niche. A h olographic image turned, startling the Sangheili zealot. Speak of the Prophets! Here one was. One of the Hierarchs themselves. The image was of a tired, ochre-skinned, and hunchb acked creature slouched over a floating antigravity chair, its head bowed w ith the weight of an enormous gold crown its long neck could barely support. \"Thel 'Va damee,\" it hissed. \"You are to report to me aboard the ship Infinite Sacrifice. I have studied your intrusion attempts aboard the human ships. I have a new mission for yo u.\"\nThe Hierarch leaned forward, and the image flickere d away. Thel turned to Saal. \"That was the Prophet of Regre t. He has been following the fleet, observing the destruction of this latest hum an world. He has a new mission.\"\n\"What is it?\" Jora looked a bit awed by the thought  a Hierarch had noticed them.\n\"I do not know, but whatever it is, I am sure it wi ll bring us honor,\" Thel said. He looked at Jora's purpled hand. The zealot would nee d medical attention soon, probably from one of the Huragok. That Covenant spe cies was obsessed with fixing anything. Yet even letting a Huragok work on you wa s a grave dishonor. It was the same as letting a doctor put his filthy claws on you. Thel sighed. Blood was  your essence, your nobility. To spill it meant to lose h onor, and Jora had lost honor with his eagerness and carelessness. Now he would have t o let a doctora Sangheili warrior so low as to make his living slicing and ca using other Sangheili to bleed without honortend to his wounds. That was a deep s hame. Jora would be eager to prove himself again after th is slip. Thel looked back at the glowing remains of the huma n destroyer. It would be an honor to help find the world the pink, fleshy human s came from. And to reduce it to nothingness.  87\nCHAPTER NINETEEN\n\n\nCOVENANT CRUISER INFINITE SACRIFICE, CHARYBDIS IX\n\nThe Prophet of Regret hunched forward, head bowed w ith the weight of his crown. The wrinkled wattle of his throat shook as he looke d around the room at the many holographic screens that flickered in the control r oom buried deep in the heart of the Infinite Sacrifice. An honor guard of Sangheili surrounded the Hierarch , ready to kill anything that moved to attack the hierarch. Thel was surprised to see the Hierarch himself here , but Regret had always seemed to spend as much time as possible around San gheili warriors. Regret admired the Sangheili martial prowess, rumor s said. While most of the San'Shyuum floated about the holy city of High Charity and focused on their lives, Regret traveled with Sangheili battle fleets to see  them in action. It was rumored that the Hierarch carried a sidearm of his own underneath the silk robes draped over his lap, and had killed acolytes who dared ask too many questions on the spot. One of the Minister's honor guard, a distant cousin  with obligations to Thel's bloodline, had told Thel that the Prophet of Regret  had come to his throne through machinations. That may have been true. Thel had his doubtseveryo ne was prone to gossip. And so what if it were true? The Sangheili were sen t forth into battle by the mixed Council of Masters, a group of Sangheili and San'Sh yuum masters who dictated war needs. But most of the fighting was done by Sanghei li as the San'Shyuum remained on High Charity, the mobile world and heart of the Covenant. That wa s the nature of the Covenant itselfthe Sanghieli defended the Prop hets, defended the holy objects. Meanwhile the Prophets deciphered the holy relics, doling out the technology they found and adapting them for Covenant use. Their eve ntual hope was to unlock what the races would need to do to join the Great Journe y. Much like the mysterious race of the Forerunners had done all those thousands of years ago when they disappeared from this area of the galaxy, leaving only their ar tifacts behind. It didn't matter to Thel how the Prophet of Regret came to be one of th e three hierarchs, because Regret was here, monitoring the fleet and talking to him. Regret nudged the floating chair he sat in closer t o a grand conference table that swooped up from the floor. He threw a plasma rifle onto the table in front of Thel.\n\"Pick that up,\" he ordered. Thel froze. If he picked up the rifle, he would hav e an unholstered weapon out in the presence of a Prophet. The honor guard would be  obliged to kill him.  88  Was this some way of punishing him for failing to f ind data leading to the human homeworld aboard the destroyer? Thel met the honor guard's captain with large, brown eyes. The Sangheili shook his head in a snaki ng motion. It was okay. Thel picked up the plasma rifle. \"What would you li ke me to do?\"\n\"Look closely at it,\" Regret said, sounding suddenl y annoyed. \"What do you see?\"\nFor a moment, Thel saw nothing. It was just a norma l plasma rifle. Then he spotted the small readout on the side. It scribed a n alien symbol at him. Human script.\n\"You see it, do you not?\" the Hierarch said, lookin g intensely at him.\n\"What is this?\" Thel dropped the rifle back on the table, feeling unclean. It was forbidden to alter the technologies that the Prophe ts handed down. They were the holiest of gifts.\n\"It is blasphemy. Heretical human creatures touchin g and altering the holy gifts of Forerunner artifacts like our energy weapons... or  anything else,\" hissed the Hierarch. It navigated the floating chair around th e table and pointed a hand and jointed finger right at Thel. \"And I want you to fi nd who is responsible for it. Find them out and destroy them. They have been found in Kig-Yar black markets on High Charity. Supposedly they come from a system the humans call 23 Librae, by way of Kig-Yar-run ships. One of my loyal deacons aboard a  ship of theirs died transmitting this data to me. Ungrateful pirates.\"\nThe Hierarch's voice had risen to a scream, even as  Thel listened. He remembered 23 Librae, he had fought there, on a wor ld the heretical creatures called\n\"Madrigal.\"\nThel dropped to a knee and fist in a bow before the  Hierarch. \"Your will be done, Hierarch.\"\nRegret cleared his throat noisily; large fishy eyes  gleaming as he stared at Thel.\n\"Of course you will, my Sangheili warrior. Of cours e you will. That is why I asked you here. You will leave while we continue destroyi ng Charybdis IX and go to 23\nLibrae to hunt down this heresy.\"\nHe pivoted his chair, and said over his back, \"You will take your own ship, but you will also have additional forces at your dispos al. I have tasked Jiralhanae to accompany you aboard the Kig-Yar raider A Psalm Every Day. They will help you with whatever you may encounter. And keep the Kig-Y ar Ship-mistress well in line. I've come to distrust their greedy natures more and  more of late.\"\nJiralhanae? Thel blinked his large eyes, but dared not question the Prophet. The Jiralhanae were barbarians who considered themselve s the equals of Sangheili. The Jiralhanae had once attained space flight and h igh levels of technology. But by the time the Covenant came across them, they'd b ombed themselves back into a state of barbarism. Why the Prophets regarded them so highly was beyond  Thel. They had no culture. No refinement in their fightin g. No thought about their bloodlines, copulating at will with no foresight or  plans. They were not noble.  89  But Thel bowed his head. \"I thank you for your gift  of troops and ships,\" he said out loud. And he thought secretly to himself: I do not have to use them on this mission, they can simply come along and watch true warriors do their duty. He had just recently become a shipmaster, something  he'd longed to attain ever since he'd stood on the stone walls of his keep and  looked up at the stars and wondered what amazing things might be waiting for h im up there. Now, with another ship and more troops under his command, the dream o f becoming a fleetmaster seemed within reach. With a promotion like this, Thel would need to send  a message home to the keep elders. He would have more wives brought to the kee p. It was time for Thel to create more alliances on the homeworld. It was time to exp and the rooms, and father more children to pack the common rooms. The line of Vada m would be continued in strength. The keep's poet would add a line to the family saga , celebrating Thel's furthering in rank. Thel would be the most renowned Vadam yet. The Prophet of Regret waved his hand. \"Come with me , Shipmaster.\"\nThel loped behind the antigravity throne that Regre t drove across the room to a massive wall-sized projection of the planet they'd come to orbit.\n\"They left only three ships to protect it,\" Regret mused. \"You know why we fight these creatures?\"\n\"They committed a grievous sin,\" Thel said. \"They d estroyed Forerunner artifacts.\"\nHe shivered as he said that. The Forerunners had left traces of the time they sp ent in the galaxy scattered across worlds and in space. These mighty demigods o f the galaxy had been the forefathers of all the Covenant knew, and they'd ju st... disappeared. But they'd left clues as to where they'd gone. A Ho ly Journey, to another plane of existence, using the technology of the Halos. So the Prophets taught, and the Covenant existed fo r finding the Halos, and following the Forerunners on their holy path. But these humans, they'd found Forerunner artifacts , and instead of venerating them like all other species, they had destroyed the m. Thel vibrated with religious rage. For that, the hu mans would pay.\n\"It is important their heresy and desecration be pu nished,\" Regret said. \"So anything that distracts us from this holy duty, tha t itself, is unholy. And must be stopped. Like these blasphemous weapons.\"\n\"I understand, Hierarch,\" Thel said. \"I will stop a t nothing.\"\nRegret sighed. It spoke into its chair to the fleet  commanders throughout.\n\"Destroy this planet, and all on its surface.\"\nOn the screen, plasma roiled and grew on the sides of the Covenant cruisers as the ships prepared to rain fire down upon the world  the humans called Charybdis IX.  90\nCHAPTER TWENTY\n\n\nUNSC FRIGATE MIDSUMMER NIGHT, OUTER CHARYBDIS IX\n\nZheng stood on the bridge of the Midsummer Night, his hands behind his back. Keyes watched him pace as the screens lit up. All the bridge crew were on duty, and the junior of ficers stood at the back, looking on.\n\"I called you all here to watch this,\" Zheng announ ced, suddenly pausing in place to turn and face them, \"because it's important to r emember why we fight.\"\nKeyes swiveled his chair. Zheng had been averse to talking to the entire ship before this, slightly nervous. Keyes bet that Zheng  knew what his reputation was. Or maybe Zheng was still damaged from whatever it was he was dealing with. Either way, he'd kept his distance, even from his own brid ge crew. And everyone had been happy to keep their distance from him as well. Unti l now. Zheng looked animated. Angry. For this he'd asked Kirtley to broadcast his  address to the rest of the ship. It was an interesting change.\n\"Some of you joined because you had no other option s, some because you were looking for adventure, and others because of patrio tism. And since the first contact at Harvest, many of you out of a desire to fight the C ovenant.\n\"But as days pass, and the dreariness of daily life , cramped in this ship with your fellow sailors mounts, I know it can be easy to for get that we are, first and foremost, a weapon.\" Zheng looked out over the officers on de ck. \"A weapon to strike back against all our enemies. External... or internal. Bec ause if we don't do our best, this will be a small taste of what is to come.\"\nBehind Zheng the screens lit up with images broadca st from Charybdis. Keyes found his eyes drawn to the nearest, a scene from low orbit taken by a satellite. Far below, the sleek, sharklike shape of  a Covenant cruiser passed over the patches of land, and as it did so, everything under neath it glowed. The screen flickered off, jumping to a new scene: a  shot from the top of a skyscraper in downtown Scyllion. What looked like s himmering rain fell from the sky, but wherever it touched the city exploded into  actinic flame. Buildings melted, slumping over and then bubbling d own into a lavalike mix of asphalt and concrete and shattered glass. The camer a wavered as blue haze began to build up near it, and then it melted and static fil led the screen. Another live feed, from far outside the city, showe d the blue waterfalls of plasma strike the river, sending up a giant cloud of steam  as it was vaporized.  91  \"They're attacking,\" someone said in a shocked voic e. Keyes looked to the screen everyone pointed out, an d saw tiny dots rising up to harass the bulbous-nosed Covenant cruisers. They were about as successful as minnows attacking sharks, Keyes thought. Plasma darted out from the sides of the cruiser ove r Scyllion, swatting the tiny Charybdis defense fighters out of the sky like anno ying insects. Maybe if they'd been more coordinated, Keyes wonder ed. Could a force of tiny craft distract a Covenant cruiser long enough for s omeone to slip something through their defenses?\nHe realized he was trying to avoid the death and de struction in front of him with academics, and forced himself to continue watching. One by one the screens turned to static, and Zheng waved at them. \"This ship we're chasing, it looks like it's going into Covena nt territory, and we know it's Insurrectionist. Working with Covenant. For all we know, they led the Covenant to Charybdis.\"\nKeyes raised an eyebrow. That was quite an assumpti on for Zheng to make. If the Kestrel had led the Covenant to Charybdis IX, they'd gotten a l ot of their fellow Insurrectionists killed here today, not just UNSC. Innies might be ready to die for their cause, but l ike this? Keyes thought back to what Jeffries had said about Zheng when they'd firs t met. Zheng had lost his entire family to the Covenant. Zheng had even been impatie nt about Watanabe's mission. Now Zheng seemed to have been electrified into fier y, angry motion. \"There will be a reckoning,\" he shouted to the bridge crew. \"We  will throw ourselves against whoever was responsible for all this.\"\nAnd behind Zheng the remaining screens shut down, l eaving the last few images of the burned world flickering across everyone's ey es. Keyes spotted Badia Campbell staring at the screens. She looked queasy. Zheng turned back to the empty screens, surveying t hem for a long moment, and then said softly, \"That is all.\"  92\nCHAPTER TWENTY-ONE\n\n\nCOVENANT CRUISER INFINITE SACRIFICE, CHARYBDIS IX\n\nThe Prophet of Regret watched the surface of Charyb dis IX melt from the firepower of his ships with grim satisfaction and heavily lid ded eyes. He shouldn't have chosen to smoke in his private qu arters before coming out, but before attacks like this Regret always found a good  smoke calmed his nerves. Energy rolled over the square buildings that the hu mans loved to cluster near one another on the ground. That made it all that much e asier for the Covenant to destroy them. Regret grew bored of watching the destruction of th e planet, and turned the screen off.\n\"You are dismissed. Go. Weed out the Heretics. Leav e no stone unturned!\"\nThe Sangheili zealot blinked, and then bowed in tha t sinuously graceful Sangheili way. \"Your will be done, Hierarch,\" he said, and th en left to pursue his mission. Regret sat in the control room, listening to the bu zz of the ship's bridge crew. The matter of the Kig-Yar smuggling weapons rankled  the Prophet. Only the San'Shyuum, the leaders of the Covenant and its pin nacle species, could alter holy technology. To let other races control technology was a dangero us path. The Covenant's cohesion was grounded in their shared need for Fore runner technology. It was their unified religion, their political structure, and th e hub of all commerce. To pull out one major tenet of the Covenant meant risking the e ntire thing crumbling. And Regret had not worked the last ten years of his lif e to watch the Covenant die. He'd helped it face one of its biggest threats, with har dly anyone any the wiser, right before his ascension to Hierarch. Together, Prophets Regret, Truth, and Mercy had bee n aboard the massive Forerunner dreadnought that sat in the heart of High Charity, powering the entire moving world with just a fraction of its engines' p ower. The dreadnought had come to life as the Oracle at i ts heart had muttered blasphemous, world-changing accusations at the Prop hets. All triggered by the Oracle encountering information about the humans. T his machine had accused the Prophets of mistranslating Forerunner documents, an d misunderstanding the Great Journey. It claimed the very tenets of their religion were f alse. And then the Oracle had attempted to launch the dre adnought.  93  They had disconnected it just in time. In that moment, Regret felt, they had saved the ent ire Covenant. Without the Halos to search for, the Path to walk, and the wors hip of the Forerunners who left their mark all over the galaxy, the Covenant would fall apart. And the Hierarchs would not let that happen. So they turned that conflict into the annihilation and genocide of the humans. There was no room for negotiation or settlement. Hu manity would be the first species they had encountered that they hadn't tried to abso rb into the Covenant, as it was the source of the Oracle's confusion. Destroy them, and  the Covenant would be able to continue Its holy search to follow the Forerunners safely. Nothing could detract from that. Not even these cou nterfeit weapons. Regret didn't care that they'd been modified. The S an'Shyuum happily pilfered Forerunner technology and modified it as they saw f it. What Regret cared about was that the weapons had been modified for humans, and that they'd been tampered with without the Prophet's approval. And Regret wouldn't stand for thatnot from the Ora cle, or from whoever was making those weapons. Regret turned the screen back on and looked down on  the burning of Charybdis IX and watched. This was for the good of the Covenant, he told hims elf. Regret had only made one major mistake, he told him self. When the humans were first discovered Regret had assumed the world they'd been found on was their homeworld. But after destroying it, they'd found out that the humans had scattered across many worlds. It made destroying them all a lot more difficult, t iring, and time-consuming than Regret had anticipated.  94\nCHAPTER TWENTY-TWO\n\n\nMADRIGAL, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe humans called it 23 Librae. For the Covenant it  was no more than a series of coordinates, another star in a long series of stars  that Kig-Yar ships scouted out under their Ministry of Tranquility contracts. The Covena nt hoped to find Forerunner artifacts in these various systems. It was in one of these many human places that the K ig-Yar had found signs of a massive wealth of Forerunner artifacts, the Prophet s said. They also said that instead of studying them and learning of the glorious truth s contained in them about the journey all species could prepare themselves for, t he stupid creatures had destroyed them. Cosmic vandalism, mused Thel, as the two ships skip ped out of Slipspace next to the one planet 23 Librae had in its habitable zone:  the orbit not too close to the sun where it would boil its atmosphere off, or so far a way that it would freeze.\n\"Start scanning the planet,\" Thel ordered his bridg e crew. \"Engage all sensors. Make the sweep through. Last thing we need is for t he Kig-Yar to lay claim, or the Jiralhanae to best the Sangheili in a task personal ly assigned them by a Hierarch!\"\nMadrigal. Retribution's Thunder fell into orbit around the planet that had once bee n inhabited by the humans. Just off to their starboar d side the Kig-Yar ship that the Hierarch had assigned to them, A Psalm Every Day, accompanied them. Thel's lower mandibles twitched. The Kig-Yar Shipmi stress had come in too close. They could have collided thanks to her aggre ssive piloting. But neither the Kig-Yar nor the Jiralhanae aboard w ould listen to Thel. They hadn't so far. He'd asked them to keep their d istance, but they acted as if he were going to cheat them of any discovery, or any c hance to get into battle. Thel felt he would have been better off alone than saddled with A Psalm Every Day dogging his every move. Then again, maybe that was the Hierarch's way of ke eping an eye on him. Thel had a general feeling, from what he knew of politic s on High Charity, that the Prophet of Regret was very crafty. Yes, this one probably didn't just outright trust T hel, but wanted some verification. A Psalm Every Day was here to monitor him. Fair enough.  95  \"Nothing there,\" Jora grumbled from his station as initial results from the systematic scans began to scroll through the hologr aphic display. \"It is as we left it, Shipmaster. There are no signs of activity. Our qua rry could not have come from here.\"\nThe entire surface of the human planet had been des troyed. Melted with plasma. Zhar grunted. \"Their structures have deep roots. Is  it possible they survived deep underground?\"\nThel shook his head. \"I participated there.\" Thel c onsidered it briefly. \"I personally saw to the destruction of their warrens in the capitol. I doubt it will become useful again in this Age. You may tell the J iralhanae they may check the capitol for spoils... with my leave. Meanwhile, send a probe to finish the sweep, then let us move on.\"\n\"To where?\" Jora asked. He threw the words out almo st like a challenge. Thel eyed Jora. \"This is a system. There is more than one place to hide. These are Kig-Yar we are dealing with, remember.\"\nZhar frowned. \"Asteroids?\"\nThel smiled. Zhar, ever the analytical. Hardheaded,  but a hard thinker. He knew that the Kig-Yar, after leaving their homeworld, ha d chosen to settle out among the asteroids of their home system. It was what had mad e them so hard for the Prophets to ferret out while battling them when the Kig-Yar had initially resisted joining the Covenant. \"Yes. We will seed the asteroid belt with  sensor buoys. We will leave no stone unturned.\"\nZhar nodded. \"It will be done.\"\nThel leaned over. \"Veer, would you do me the...\" his voice dripped with sarcasm, \"...honor of contacting A Psalm Every Day ?\"\nVeer nodded, and the three-dimensional image of Pel lius appeared in front of Thel. The Jiralhanae stood eye-to-eye with Thel. Be hind the giant, furred chieftain sat the Kig-Yar Ship-mistress, Chur 'R-Mut, her lan ky arms draped over her chair's arms. He grinned his needle-sharp grin and the quil ls on his head twitched. Pellius curled his lip slightly. \"What do you want?  We're preparing to land and search the destroyed capital city.\"\n\"You will not find anything there,\" Thel said, and explained what he'd already told his bridge crew. The Jiralhanae chieftan looked disappointed. For a second. \"You still search, though?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Good.\" And then the image faded away.\n\"Jiralhanae,\" spat Saal from his weapons console. \" Uncivil and untrustworthy.\"\n\"So they are,\" Thel agreed. \"The Prophets in their inscrutable wisdom have assigned them to us. They are here to stay. Zhar mo ve us out.\"\nWithout seeding the system with navigation buoys th e ship's own long-range scanners weren't good enough to root out a hiding e nemy. Unless something was moving around. To catch sneaking ships, they'd need to lay some tr aps.  96  Thel settled into his chair, getting ready for the Slipspace hop they'd have to make to the asteroid belt, when Veer straightened i n his chair.\n\"Shipmaster,\" Veer hissed. \"Our long range instrume nts are detecting multiple signals. They are not even trying to hide!\"\nThel hid his excitement before them. \"Where?\"\n\"The gas giant.\"\nNot where he'd been expecting. But nonetheless, the y had something!\n\"Take us there,\" Thel ordered.\n\nRetribution's Thunder poked a hole through space and time as the ship mad e the sudden leap from Madrigal to a trailing orbit just behind 23 Librae's sole gas giant. This was a great location Thel thought. Gas giants tended to have small rocky clusters both in front of their orbit and behind th emit was a natural place to hove his ship to and spy on whatever was going on near t he gas giant. Retribution's Thunder's screens lit up with contact symbols. Alarms wailed as the crew scrambled for damage control and fire stations , and Thel realized he hadn't been the only one with that particular idea.\n\"Situation?\" Thel barked.\n\"They are everywhere!\" a Sangheili shouted from the  deck. \"We are surrounded.\"\nThel whipped around at the outburst to look at the unnamed and slightly unnerved Sangheili. \"Get off my bridge!\" Thel turne d to Saal. \"Take his console. What do we facenumbers and weapons strength?\"\n\"My honor, Shipmaster,\" Saal replied quickly. Thel watched the shamed Sangheili slink off the bri dge, disgusted that someone so incompetent could end up on his bridge.\n\"Human contacts,\" Saal reported. \"But they do not a ppear to be warships. And they are not moving to engage.\"\n\"Tell Pellius to hold his fire and follow our lead. \" Thel stood up and walked toward the screens, a long shipmaster's cloak pulli ng off the chair with him. His ancestors had worn thick, doarmir-fur cloaks like t his at sea to stay warm and dry on long voyages. Thel had made his by hand during a long recuperatio n in the Vadam Keep after a training accident the family had tried to hide. The l remembered the shame of seeing his own blood spilled on the sand of the training r ing in the courtyard, due to his own mistake. He recalled the faintness and the tall sno wcapped mountains that rose above Vadam Keep as he pitched to his side. The family had a recently promoted shipmaster in th eir bloodline, and they had been loath to lose that particular honor. They'd se cretly called for a doctor in the night and held Thel down by his limbs as he was ope rated on. Thel kept the cloak as a reminder to himself that h e could make grave mistakes when he let his guard down. Mistakes like letting an inexperienced minor Sanghe ili aboard the bridge who panicked at the thought of being surrounded by huma n warships.\n\"Make sure that coward gets his rations revoked,\" T hel said to Veer, letting his mind dwell on that particular incident now that he knew the ship was not in danger.  97  \"Maybe with a hunger in his belly he will find the hunger in his soul that he needs to be a real warrior.\"\n\"A well thought-out solution, shipmaster,\" Veer sai d, and leaned over to send out the command.\n\"Saal, report.\" Thel gathered the cloak around. Be sharp, he reminded himself. Keep your mind open, and think sideways instead of walking forward into a pit-trap.\n\"I... I have to show you,\" Saal said. A complex set of scans appeared on the screens. The l narrowed his eyes, then opened his mandibles in shock. \"These are all aster oids,\" he said. \"They are all connected.\"\nThere were hundreds of connected worldlets.\n\"This is unlike anything I have ever seen the human s do,\" Thel said out loud.\n\"There was nothing like it when the human world her e was destroyed.\"\n\"Perhaps they built it after that?\" Zhar suggested.  He looked intrigued by the scans. \"You have to admit, that demonstrates some s trong blood on their part, to remain here and build after the Prophets ordered th em destroyed.\"\n\"Strong indeed,\" Thel agreed.\n\"But it does them little good ultimately,\" Jora sai d. \"Their blasphemy still cannot stand, and they must all still die.\"\n\"What bothers me,\" Thel grumbled, \"is that they hav e gone this long unnoticed.\"\n\"I think I know why,\" Zhar said. He tapped his cons ole, and before the bridge crew the long-distance image of a Kig-Yar freighter  appeared. It was docked against one of the many asteroids in the superstructure. A human structure.\n\"What new treachery is this?\" Thel hissed. The Kig- Yar, pirates and scum, worked under contracts given out by the ministries.  They were hardly loyal fighters;\nthey had little nobility. But they usually remained  in line due to the dual methods of Unggoy Deacons aboard their ships, as well as the c ontracts and payments the Prophets offered them. Thel could hardly believe what he saw.\n\"Brace for impact!\" Saal warned, just as the Retribution's Thunder shivered, throwing Thel from his feet against a pillar. So the humans had found them and were attacking, Th el thought as he sprang for his shipmaster's throne. The second impact stabbed through the heart of Thel 's ship, a violent, metal boiling line of light that just missed the bridge. But this wasn't human. Humans employed kinetic or explosive ordnance, not plasma. A Psalm Every Day was preparing a second volley. It  was very obvious that the plasma salvo was from another Covenant vessel. Their own escort.\n\"Traitors!\" Thel seethed. \"Evasive maneuvers!\"\n\"I have a firing solution,\" Jora yelled, turning to  Thel. \"Permission to fire, Shipmaster?\"\n\"Fire at will! Saal tactical Slipspace, now!\"  98  But getting past the shock of being fired upon by t heir own escort had cost them critical seconds. Even as Retribution's Thunder fired back, another salvo of blue plasma ripped through the heart of Thel's ship. He could feel some of the engines firing, but they had been too slow. Sangheili double hearts could take far more acceleration than  Jiralhanae or Kig-Yar, but the incredible random high-speed evasive maneuvers Thel  had braced himself for didn't come.\n\"Status,\" Thel snapped. He did not like the returning reports. They were ve nting precious air into space. The number of casualties was rising. Long range com munications were down. Life support was failing. The last volley had taken thei r core engines offline, and their ability to generate plasma had gone with it. While most of their sensors were still operational, they could go nowhere and do nothing. Pellius appeared in hologram before Thel. The Jiral hanae looked pleased with himself, his large teeth bared. \"A mighty shipmaste r Sangheili, helpless before me. I shall savor this moment for the rest of my life.\"\nThel stared at Pellius and wondered where the Kig-Y ar ship-mistress had gone. She was nowhere to be seen on the bridge. \"It will be a short life.\"\n\"Not as short as yours. Good-bye, Shipmaster.\" Pell ius faded away.\n\"He has released boarding craft and Spirits!\" Saal reported.\n\"They will not have the Retributions' Thunder,\" Thel said, staring at the spot Pellius had faded from. \"Alert the crew. Get in pro tective gear and draw the boarders in deep. Rig every section to explode. We will leav e nothing to salvage!\"\n\"Shipmaster! A Psalm Every Day has engaged their sl ipspace drive!\" Zhar said.\n\"They're leaving!\"\n\"Leaving?\" Jora growled.\n\"The humans are not likely to go anywhere as are we . He will report whatever his feeble mind can concoct when he reaches High Charity .\"\n\"They get the glory for reporting this structure an d the humans hiding here,\" Zhar concluded with frustration.\n\"Cursed cowards,\" hissed Jora.\n\"The Spirits are approaching to attack!\"\n\"Where are their boarding craft?\"\n\"They are hanging back.\"\nIn the distance, the outer hull shook and shivered as Spirits flew up and down the length of the ship, strafing it. Thel broke the arm off his chair in frustration. \"T hose who wish to escape the ship may do so now.\"\nIt was a rhetorical statement. But it did serve one  purpose: to weed out any dishonorable Sangheili who might falter by your sid e. Thel pressed his mouth parts firm against each othe r as they waited in silence for a handful of dishonorable crew to desert. Maybe the y were serfs who had risen far enough to work simple duties aboard the ship, or Sa ngheili who'd managed to hide their lack of real blood. He waited for that, and for the Kig-Yar to get bold er and try to board the ship.  99  One of the screens showed Sangheili trying to escap e aboard Spirits from inside Retribution's Thunder's hold, and the Kig-Yar-run ships fell on them en mas se, overwhelming them. Plasma ripped out and filled the  space around the ship, and it wasn't long before the cowardly died in the vacuum at the hands of traitorous Kig Yar. A fitting fate, Thel thought. \"Fire the empty escap e pods,\" he ordered. They watched those get destroyed, and it strengthen ed their resolve to fight. To run was to die. Now the Kig-Yar felt that they could risk boarding,  with what seemed like most of the crew of the ship gone. Thel waited. Waited until Kig-Yar swarmed the hull and trooped through the heart of his ship, and then gave the order. Explosions ripped through the interior, section by section. The smooth, bulbous lines of his ship flexed and twisted, and fire gush ed out from in between the cracks, roiling up through the corridors. The air in the bridge heated up, and then rushed ou t. Thel found himself panting for air that no longer existed, and then a secondar y explosion turned the cockpit inside out. Thel hurtled through the air and struck a bulkhead.   100\nCHAPTER TWENTY-THREE\n\n\nHESIOD, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe Kestrel was a svelte smuggler of a ship, more engine than c argo bay. Even then, civilian engine technology didn't hold a candle to what the Midsummer Night had at its heart. The Midsummer Night had been shadowing the Kestrel for almost a week. UNSC sensor buoys had been put on high alert on the edge s of the system, and caught the Kestrel preparing for its jump into Slipspace. These were t he same sensor buoys that had detected the inbound Covenant. Dmitri Zheng had thrown the Midsummer Night on a ripping course out to follow it. Badia Campbell at ops reported nervously that t he ship's reactor was struggling to keep up. But the ship had been shaken out. No more pipes ble w, or components failed. She'd gotten up to speed, closing in on the Insurre ctionist ship like a shark slipping up from the depths on its prey. On their way out, they'd all continued to watch bro adcasts from sensor posts scattered throughout the system of the Covenant shi ps moving over Charybdis IX, glassing the surface. The mood onboard had remained somber and determined . The crew had been itching to fight, and now had to turn tail and run. No one liked it. But they had a mission, and they'd all had friends and family fall to the Covenant. Despite Zheng's anger, many had gotten us ed to the dull pain of human loss. Casualties mounted; they had for years. It ha d become a part of life for many. Now they were deep behind Covenant lines, hopping t hrough what had once been the Outer Colonies, sticking close behind the Kestrel as it seemed to randomly jump into Slipstream space.\n\"We're close,\" Keyes announced. The last three jump s the Kestrel had taken made a line on the star charts that Keyes could use . Assuming that the jumps continued in their pattern,  Keyes had run the charts. He posted the result to the bridge crew's screens. Zheng took a look and frowned. \"You think they're h eaded to Madrigal? That planet was glassed by the Covenant.\"\n\"It could be where they make their drops,\" Keyes su ggested. He paused as his sensors showed the smuggler making another jump.  101  He was right. The last several Slipspace jumps took  them to the outer edge of the system, and then the Kestrel began curving its way in-system. The Midsummer Night followed, invisible and silent. They coasted with t he Kestrel all the way into the depths of the system.\n\"It isn't Madrigal,\" Keyes announced several shifts  later, reviewing the navigation data left by a junior officer.\n\"Then what is it?\" Zheng asked. \"Where are they hea ded?\"\nKeyes had astronomy data up on his screen with poss ible paths of the Kestrel mapped out. \"There's a gas giant, farther out. It's  called Hesiod.\"\nThey followed the Kestrel as it fell into an orbit trailing far, far behind t he gas giant, but slowly catching up to it.\n\"There we go,\" Keyes said, upping the magnification  on the view ahead of them.\n\"Asteroids?\" Zheng said.\n\"Trojan asteroids,\" Keyes said. \"Most gas giants ha ve asteroids sitting just ahead and behind their orbit in stable L4 and L5 position s.\"\n\"Makes a good hideout,\" Rai Li spoke up from weapon s. \"The rebels at Eridani used the asteroid belt there and it made it hard to  hunt them down.\"\nThe Kestrel slowed as it slipped into the cloud of rock. There was something wrong, Keyes thought. Dirtsider s heard the term \"asteroid field\" and thought of a large collection of rocks f loating near each other. The truth was that asteroids lay millions of miles from each other. A slow moving ship could thread through them easily enough  on their way through a system. But this collection of asteroids looked just like a layperso n's idea of an asteroid field. Hundreds of asteroids had been moved within a mile of each other. Keyes magnified the image even more, putting it up on a wall screen the whole bridge could look at. The hundreds of irregularly s haped rocks jumped into view.\n\"Looks like some of them are built up,\" Dante Kirtl ey said. \"Plus, I'm starting to get a lot of direct-line comms chatter. They're try ing to keep it focused and quiet, but I'm hearing it. Looks like we got ourselves an Insu rrectionist hiding hole. And behind Covenant lines, no less.\"\nBut something glinted between them. Keyes upped the  magnification even further, and everyone on the bridge gasped. The glints were long, silver lines. As Keyes jumped  the magnification up again, the gossamer lines resolved themselves into tubes.\n\"They're all connected,\" Li said. \"With docking tub es.\"\n\"If each of those asteroids is fully inhabited, thi s isn't just an Insurrectionist hiding hole,\" Zheng said. \"It's a floating metropol is... behind enemy lines.\"\nThey coasted in closer, staring at the spectacle of  an asteroid field towed in closer, connected together, and hollowed out. Ships  moved in between the rocks, and occasionally a burst of flame from a guidance rocke t adjusted an asteroid, presumably so that it didn't break one of the tubes .\n\"Freeze that,\" Li suddenly snapped. Keyes stopped t he drift on the image.\n\"Zoom.\"\nHe saw it too, now.\n\"Is that a Jackal ship?\" Kirtley asked.  102  \"That's Jackal,\" Li confirmed. She tapped her conso le and put a window up next to their live image of a Jackal ship taken from the  combat camera of a Navy ship. Unlike the usual Covenant-made ships, the Jackal-ma de ships looked like last-minute scrap yard projectsgirders, rockets, and capsules haphazardly joined together around a core unit. These ships were not made to ev en kiss an atmosphere, but remain in space. Zheng cracked his knuckles and stared at the screen . \"Bring the crew up to ready, ops. Weapons, unlock missiles and arm a nuke. Comms , make sure you're scanning and getting everything that's going on.\"\nLi, Kirtley, Keyes, and Campbell got to work.\n\"Lieutenant Campbell, set up preparations to destro y our navigation charts, as per the Cole Protocol.\"\nCampbell paused, considered something, and then spo ke up. \"Sir, does it make sense? The Kestrel obviously has charts, and I'd bet other ships in th is ... complex have charts as well. We're not making it any harder  for Covenant here to find charts, are we?\"\nZheng looked at the screen. \"You're right, Lieutena nt. That thing out there, that's just one giant Cole Protocol violation, isn't it? B ut orders are orders. Ready the purge. Just in case.\"\n\"Yessir.\"\n\"Okay, Keyes, bring her in nice and easy. We just w ant to swing nearby, nice and quiet, and see what intel we can pick up to bring b ack with us. But if things get hairy, be ready to get us the hell out.\"\n\"Aye, sir,\" Keyes responded. Then he spotted moveme nt. \"They have patrols, it looks like. Moving around the perimeter.\"\n\"Let's see how stealthy this frigate really is, Key es.\" Zheng leaned forward in his chair. The Midsummer Night moved closer to the tangle of docking tubes, astero ids, ships, dust, and debris trailing the massive orb of  Hesiod.  103\nCHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR\n\n\nPINEAPPLE HABITAT, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel 'Vadamee and his bridge crew sat on the far en d of a large cell. It was a crude thing: a hole dug out of the rocky interior wall of  a hollowed out asteroid, with bars of metal over the front, some of which were hinged. Thel had seen medieval keeps with similarly built j ails back on Sanghelios. In museums. He'd woken up with a horrific headache pounding the  side of his temple where he'd struck the bulkhead. Not an honorable battle w ound, or a way to end a fight, Thel thought miserably as he looked out through the  bars. The Kig-Yar had combed the remains of the ship, car rion sniffers that they were, and found the bridge crew alive. The rest of the cr ew had fought to the death, destroying the ship in the process. Thel sincerely wished they'd just left him for dead  on his destroyed ship. But the Kig-Yar had some plan in mind for them, using the S angheili as hostages. Jora crept his way over. \"I am beyond shame, my shi pmaster.\"\nThel had been told Jora rushed the Kig-Yar with no weapon, and they'd shot him several times in the leg. Now Jora was dragging the  useless limb behind him on the cell floor.\n\"I have snapped one of the legs off those useless c ots made for humans.\"\nHe handed it to Thel, who tested the sharp end with  a finger. Jora had worked hard to get the long piece of metal sharp.\n\"Please,\" Jora begged. \"I have no honor left. I am crippled. I cannot face my keep.\"\nIf the Sangheili masters found out that they'd been  captured by a lesser race like the Kig-Yar, or that they'd failed so horribly in a  holy mission handed to them directly by a Hierarch, there would be dire consequ ences. Jora's entire bloodline could be killed off. They'd  hunt down his nephews and behead them. The genetic proclivities of failures, the planetary heads of Sangheilios thought, could not be allowed to continue on. But if Jora did the right thing, and killed himself  before the Kig-Yar could get any use out of him, or further sully his name and b y extension, his line . . . well, his keep might fall in stature, but at least the line c ould try to struggle back up from its loss of honor.  104  \"Please,\" Jora whispered. \"You have been like a cou sin to me. Please do me one last favor. I have not the strength to do it myself .\"\n\"Come and kneel,\" Thel said. The other zealots in the cell faced away. It was em barrassing to see that Jora could not even dispatch himself, but needed the han d of another. But Thel remembered how Jora had thrown himself aga inst the Kig-Yar. That had to count for something, he thought, as he stepp ed behind Jora.\n\"May the Great Journey await you, may your enemies writhe in hell, and your line continue forward, and gain honor,\" Thel said t o his boldest fighter. And then he slammed the spike into the back of Jora 's head. Jora slowly toppled forward with a sigh.\n\"May your scattered body go,\" Veer murmured, turnin g back around, \"beyond the limits of your mind....\"\n\"Beyond the limits of our worlds,\" Saal said the ne xt line of the death benediction.\n\"To the places our ancestors dream and sang of,\" Zh ar sang.\n\"And the Prophets speak of,\" Thel finished. The sur vivors clasped forearms.\n\"You all remain alivewhy?\"\n\"We want to study how to destroy the humans hiding here,\" Saal said. \"The Kig Yar spoke of ransoming us to our keeps. But Thel, y ou are kaidon of your keep now. Would you pay for one of your own captured like thi s?\"\nThel snorted. \"I would sooner bleed on the ground t han do it. You know this.\"\n\"Exactly,\" Zhar said. Thel could see his tactical m ind working. This was good. Set Zhar on a problem and he was like a warriorhe' d tussle with it to his last breath. Saal laughed. \"The Kig-Yar are idiots who pay no at tention to us. They should have known to kill us where we lay; no Sangheili in  his right mind would pay a ransom. That is a Kig-Yar game.\"\nZhar turned to him. \"And that is how we will destro y them. They are too far away to find this out so quickly. And our suspicions wer e right; we have heard Kig-Yar say as much. The Jiralhanae who betrayed us are returni ng with the Shipmistress to High Charity where they can claim this find for themselves.\"\n\"And find favor with the Prophets,\" Veer said. \"But  how is it that we're in a human cell here ?\"\nThel understood what he was getting at. \"The prophe ts will not like it.\"\n\"Humans and Kig-Yar, working together,\" Veer mused.  \"There were humans here talking to the Kig-Yar who dragged us in.\"\n\"They called the one human Bonifacio,\" Saal said. \" You could smell his fear of us in the air.\"\n\"All we need to do is get out of this cell,\" Zhar s aid. Saal walked over to Jora's body and pulled the spik e free from his head. \"I have yet to see anything spying on us. This all looks li ke it was recently welded together on short notice to contain us.\"  105  Thel snorted in appreciation. \"Roll Jora's body ont o a cot and cover it. Eventually they will want to know why he doesn't move. Make su re the covers they gave us drape over where the metal leg used to be.\"\nThey had a weapon now. And a plan. Of sorts. Four Sangheili free would be a force to reckon with . And Thel did not, one way or another, intend to be recaptured. Now all they needed was an opportunity.  106\nCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE\n\n\nHABITAT EL CUIDAD, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nIgnatio Delgado pulled at the handcuffs attached to  the long chain until he was at the very end, and got a drink of water from a sink. It was a long drink. He used his body as a shield a s he picked at a cotter pin holding one of the taps in place. He palmed it and stood up. He was being held inside a dingy factory. The dust seemed to cling to everything. Even the light beams from the windows seemed to rid e in on floating clouds of dust. Bonifacio's five pet heavies sat at a table with a deck of cards that fizzled and popped and lit up their little corner of the wareho use. The card game paused as he watched. The men gathere d the cards up quickly, all five rushing to get things cleared off. One of the men stood up and trotted over as Delgado  finished drinking water out of his hands.\n\"What's going on?\" Delgado asked. The men had ignored him. Bonifacio had yet to retur n. He'd had no food, but he could drink out of the sink and use a bucket they'd  left for him.\n\"Your time is up,\" one of them grunted. \"The Kestrel's back.\"\nThat meant Bonifacio had no reason left to leave hi m alive when he got back from wherever he was. The question was, since he was handcuffed here unde r Council's orders, how was Bonifacio going to properly get rid of him?\n\"The thing is,\" another heavy added. \"She's got com pany.\"\nDelgado looked around. \"Company?\"\n\"A UNSC stealthed frigate. Some new design. It's po king around the edges of the Rubble.\"\n\"How do you know?\" asked Delgado.\n\"Same way we know anything about them. We have some one aboard. They've been using a tight-beam laser to cast out messages to us, like where the ship is, what it's up to. They're getting ready to help us take c are of the problem.\n\"Once we know that's solved and the Kestrel is safely at Mr. Bonifacio's private dock, then we take you back to the Council.\" The ma n grinned. Delgado did not believe what he said for a second. Delgado imagined they'd be on their way to take him back, and hand him over, b ut somehow there'd be a terrible tube car accident. Or airlock accident. That's how people like Bonifacio worked.  107  Four of the men were called away, leaving one heavy  to sit by himself and forlornly guard Delgado. The lone guard only lasted about three minutes befo re he unfolded a small screen and started watching something on it. The sounds of  tinny gunfire and screams from the movie echoed in the empty factory walls. Delgado retrieved the cotter pin he'd been hiding. He started using it to fiddle with the lock on the cuffs. The guard stared intent ly at the screen.  108\nCHAPTER TWENTY-SIX\n\n\nOUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThere was an art to deciphering patterns, Keyes tho ught, looking at all the contacts the ship's radar was showing him on a screen. And d espite all the training he gave in his life he felt it wasn't something you could anal yze. Seeing patterns came to those with intuition. You looked for the gaps and cracks that opened up. The Midsummer Night had slipped deep into the Insurrectionist structure . He couldn't help but be amazed by it all. All these asteroids, all these connections. What a tremendous achievement.\n\"Say what you will about them, this is a pretty sli ck operation,\" Lt. Dante Kirtley muttered from comms. He was bent over, looking for stray chatter. \"They've routed most of their communications through physical lines , there's almost no wireless leakage. Makes all of this pretty quiet out here, C ommander.\"\nCommander Zheng checked the information they were a ll sending him. \"The Jackal ship, Lieutenant. Don't forget about the shi p. These Insurrectionists are probably working with the Covenantthat's how they' ve managed to achieve all this. I'm not inclined to be as charitable.\"\nThe radar contacts Keyes was following shifted with  the ship, as if orbiting it, but from a very long distance. Keyes puffed the thrusters, gently moving them alon g a random line. The bulk of the cloud of freighters, personal ships, drones and  other small contacts all shifted slightly. A slight sense of claustrophobia washed over Keyes,  but it was quickly quenched.\n\"Commander, you better take a look at this,\" Keyes said, putting the contacts up on a forward screen. \"They're adjusting their posit ion based on our adjustments. I think we're not as stealthy as we think we are.\" Ou t of the corner of his eye Keyes saw Badia Campbell swallow a pair of pills with a p ained look on her face. She looked stressed. Zheng double checked the time-lapsed information, t hen nodded. \"I think you're right, Lieutenant.\"\nCampbell at ops disagreed. \"We can damp our engines  down further, alter our course and coast through. Lighting up full to jump out of here will just blow our cover. We won't be able to get back in this deep ev er again.\"  109  Keyes disagreed, but didn't say anything. The bridg e crew had been tight. He wasn't going to risk second-guessing anyone just ye t, even if Campbell was being jittery. The decision was Zheng's anyway. Zheng mulled it over for a second, then tapped the pad. \"I don't like it. Keyes, light us up and let's blow clear. We'll observe fro m a distance. We can drop some drones and double-check the stealth there; maybe so mething is going wrong. It's still a new ship.\"\nKeyes had a rough line plotted out already. He doub le-checked it, and checked the engines. Ready to come on fully hot. They'd rip right through that school of slow Insurr ectionist freighters to safety, Keyes thought, tapping the navigation console and g etting ready. But then something in the heart of Midsummer Night exploded and the air in the cockpit rose in pressure, making Keyes' ears pop.\n\"Ops!\" Zheng shouted, turning to his side. \"Report! \"\nKeyes fired the ship's main engines, looking to thr ow them clear while Zheng and Campbell figured out what had happened. But the engines wouldn't fire. Keyes turned to Campbell, about to ask for a report . But Campbell leapt clear of her station and pulled out her sidearm. \"Campbell, what the hell?\"\nHe hesitated for a second, not sure what was happen ing. So did everyone else. Badia Campbell pulled the trigger. She shot Zheng t wice in the side and stomach as he started to get out of his chair. The loud cra ck of the gunfire stunned everyone into moving. Keyes jumped forward at her without thinking, as di d Kirtley and Li. Campbell turned and shot Li low, getting the weapon s officer in the leg. As Campbell raised her gun, she shot Kirtley in the sh oulder, spinning him around. Keyes smacked into her before she could pull the tr igger again. They rolled over the decking, Campbell twisting to get free and kneeing Keyes in the groin as he wrestled to grab her gun. He finally pinned her against the bottom of her con sole, using all his strength to hold her down. \"Why?\" Keyes asked.\n\"You heard Zheng back on Charybdis,\" she said. \"He said he would destroy them. I couldn't let that man in among the Rubble. He's too dangerous. You know what he did with his own ship, lost his whole crew, just for the sma llest chance to get his revenge. I can't let him do that to us.\"\nShe was amped up on something, preternatural streng th exhausting an already recovering Keyes. Sweat beaded her entire face, and  her pupils were dilated. \"We will win, Lieutenant Keyes,\" she hissed at him. \"On e day, we will be free.\"\nHer vicelike grip on the gun twisted, and Keyes fou ght her. But the adrenaline and drugs in her system left her crazed. She twiste d the gun up between them until the point of the barrel jammed up against her chin.\n\"Badia, please...\" Keyes hissed, his arms shaking fro m the effort of trying to pull the barrel away from her chin.  110  She pulled the trigger. The sound, this close to Ke yes' face, was more than deafening, it washed through his skull and left it ringing. A red mist hung in the air underneath the console. Her jaw slackened, and her eyes glazed. Keyes rocked back, holding her limp hand and the gu n. He closed his eyes, unwilling to look at the mess of blood and brains s pattered across the deck.\n\"Medic!\" he screamed, trying to process what had ju st happened. But as he looked around, he realized the whole bridge crew ha d been shot by Campbell as she'd leapt forward. Campbell didn't need help. But  they did. He turned around to see Zheng crawling up into the commander's chair, h olding his stomach with one bloody hand, spitting even more blood clear of his mouth. Li had hobbled back to her weapons console, and Kir tley had cracked open a first-aid kit and rushed back to Zheng's side.\n\"Engineering!\" Zheng croaked. \"Update. What happene d?\" Kirtley sprayed biofoam on Zheng's wounds. That would sterilize the  wound, and the hardened foam would act as a firm bandage, seeping into the wound  and holding everything together. It would do until the medics got to the b ridge for something more thorough. There was a haze of swearing in the background, alo ng with the clanking of crew running from place to place, as engineering crackle d back in reply. \"We've been sabotaged. Lieutenant Campbell, or someone working with her, put explosives on the goddamned fusion core coolant system. It's a mess, sir.\"\n\"Can we fix it?\" was all Keyes wanted to know.\n\"Sir, she knew her business. The fusion core is goi ng critical. We can stop it from blowing us up to hell, but we're not going to get t he engines back very quickly here.\"\nEngineering got into spacesuits and opened the back  of the ship. They started flushing everything out to the depths of space;\nthe lack of air began extinguishing most of the fir es and let them get to work on the damaged cooling system. But this was also venti ng heat and radiation into space. They were no longer stealthy in any sense of the wo rd. They were as good as dead in the water. Keyes reori ented the Midsummer Night, realizing that they had only thrusters to work with .\n\"We have thrusters,\" Keyes reported, a bit relieved . He scanned his console for the largest asteroid. If he could get them to it an d use it as a shield of some sort, he could buy them some time to fix the engines.\n\"And weapons,\" Li grunted. Commander Zheng groaned as he shifted. \"Comms, set condition red. Battlestations.\" Kirtley moved back to his console and tapped away, one-handed. More blood had begun to stain his uniform. Emergency lighting flickered on and the sirens yelp ed.\n\"Missile crews stand by. Get the MAC ready,\" Zheng ordered. He glanced over at Keyes. \"Where are you headed, Lieutenant?\"\nKeyes explained his strategy quickly as they contin ued thrusting their way back into the rebel structure that Campbell had called t he Rubble. He finished with, \"We can just go right through the structure, buying tim e for us to get the engines fixed.\"\n\"Belay that,\" Commander Zheng snapped. \"Steer away from the structure, get us out into the open.\"  111  \"Sir, with all due respect, we can't outrun them. L ying about in the open like this... we're too vulnerable,\" Keyes said.\n\"Don't repeat the obvious to me, Lieutenant,\" Comma nder Zheng said. \"I've already had one of my core bridge crew shoot me. No w another is heading the ship deep into enemy territory. Please forgive my inabil ity to trust your judgment right now. I don't want to hand the enemy my ship on a da mned platter. Take us out and away. Now.\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Keyes said. He didn't like it. Not a bi t. But he saw Zheng's position. And he had his orders. The Midsummer Night ponderously turned about, into a net of freighters and small ships moving in toward it around the very edg es of the Rubble. Keyes flipped through the scans until he found the biggest Insurrectionist ship, and then wound the Midsummer Night through the weave of docking tubes and asteroids out toward it. Keyes wanted to move them close to one of the Insur rectionists' big ships. He wanted to get the rest of the smaller ships attacki ng the Midsummer Night to stop for fear they might fire on their own ship by accident. A slim chance. But Keyes would take it.\n\"Incoming!\" Keyes shouted, as the world lit up.\n\"Counter-measures deployed,\" Li reported. The twink ling chaff Li had enveloped the ship in confused a handful of the missiles. The  others penetrated the screen. The ship shuddered as they struck the hull. A second wave of missiles streaked in, and Keyes ha d the ship thrusting as close to one of the smaller asteroids as he could, almost  grazing it. Missiles struck the asteroid, throwing up dirt and dust.\n\"Good thinking,\" Li said. Keyes looked over to Zheng, who had narrowed his ey es. \"We're not stopping, Keyes. Full thrusters, get us clear.\"\nThe moment they cleared the asteroid the next wave of missiles struck. The ship shuddered and shook; damage reports started streami ng in. They were taking a hell of a beating. And still Commander Zheng, now doubled over and clu tching his stomach, had them limping their way out into the open. This was suicide, Keyes thought. He wanted to speak  up, say something. But he didn't. An order was an order, damn it, and Zheng w as a good commander. A fast-moving blip ripped across the screen before Keyes could even call out. The explosion slammed Keyes' face into his console.  When he sat up, blood dripped all over the screen.\n\"That was a mass-driver slug,\" Keyes said, wiping t he blood away with the edge of his palm. \"Pretty much like a MAC; though in thi s case, they use it for mining operations.\"\n\"It hit near engineering,\" Zheng said.\n\"They fire it again, we're dead,\" Li said. \"We're b arely taking the hammering from their missiles.\"  112  Zheng closed his eyes, fighting some inner pain. \"T hey're working with the Covenant. I have no choice but to enact the Cole Pr otocol. Keyes, destroy the navigation data, databases, logs, and anything rela ted to them. You have the bridge. I need to get down to engineering.\"\nZheng painfully left his chair and shuffled out of the cockpit. Keyes accessed the Cole Protocol instructions. He f ound the virus needed to scavenge through the ship's systems as a second lin e of defense. This was it, he thought. Once he started this, they were stuck here , no matter what happened next. He'd probably never see Miranda again. Never see an other Earthrise over Luna. Another missile strike shook him out of those thoug hts. They were dying here. He had a duty. Getting rid of the data might well p rotect Earth and the colonies. Keyes triggered the program, swallowing his nervous ness as he began shutting down the nav station. Lieutenant Li was coordinating fire response, tryin g to keep the Insurrectionist forces busy and at arm's length. But judging by the  more and more frequent explosions on the hull, it was a losing battle. Kirtley caught Keyes' eye. \"They're hailing us. The y want to talk to the commander.\"\n\"He's on his way to Engineering.\"\nKirtley shook his head. \"Engineering hasn't seen hi m yet.\"\nKeyes frowned. \"Where the hell is he?\"\nLi swore, and Kirtley looked frustrated. Keyes chec ked the progress on his virus. It was done. This ship would never get back to the Inner Colonies or Earth.\n\"They're saying they have more mass-driver shots ai med at us if we don't kill the thrusters,\" Kirtley said.\n\"Patch them through, then, I'll stall,\" Keyes said. Just as he finished saying that three distinct expl osions threw the whole ship sideways a few hundred feet. Bulkheads groaned. Met al screeched all up and down the ship.\n\"What was that?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Nukes,\" Li said. \"Our own Shivas.\"\nKirtley leaned forward. \"Got Zheng now. I'm putting  him through to the Insurrectionists.\"\nZheng's voice had dropped almost to a hoarse whispe r now. \"This is Commander Dmitri Zheng, of the UNSC Frigate Midsummer Night. I have just unleashed our Shivas. Remember, I could have dropped these into t he heart of your structure, but chose not to. We have honor. I'm ordering my crew t o stand down. I demand that you treat them fairly. That is all.\"\nAs he faded away, an engineer's voice came from com ms. \"Sir, someone needs to get down here. The medic says Zheng's bleeding out.  He doesn't have long.\"\nKeyes stood up. \"I'm on my way.\"\nThe last time he'd rushed through the ship, he'd go tten somewhat lost. By now he knew his way down the corridors, leaping through bu lkhead doors and swinging into the next section with accomplished ease, sliding do wn rails and leaping up stairs in other sections.  113  Engineering was a chaotic mess of steam, slagged me tal, and activity. They'd repressurized the section, but the chief of enginee ring was at the center of a maelstrom of human activity. Near the engineer's operations center a medic crouc hed next to Commander Zheng, who sat in a pool of his own blood. The medic met Keyes' eyes and shook his head.\n\"He hand-loaded the Shivas himself and shot them of f, wouldn't let anyone near him,\" the medic said.\n\"If you want something done, you got to do it yours elf. You can't trust anyone,\"\nZheng said from the floor. He held up a bloody hand . \"Keyes... come closer.\"\nKeyes crouched next to him and the medic, and Zheng  grabbed Keyes' hand slippery tight. \"Didn't think I'd let any Insurrect ionists get their hands on some nukes, did you?\"\n\"No, sir,\" Keyes said.\n\"I want you to know, I didn't ram that Covenant shi p for revenge, like they say,\"\nZheng whispered.\n\"No one said that.\" Keyes glanced at the medic, who  just waved his hand to indicate that he keep listening.\n\"Yes they do. I rammed that ship because we had no other choice. It would have killed many, many more. I had to look at the big pi cture. I had to step outside the box and do what I could with what I had.\"\n\"I understand, sir.\"\n\"Maybe, Keyes. Maybe. Just remember, don't trust an y of these people, Keyes. Covenant, rebels, hell, keep an eye on your own cre w. Look for the big picture. You take good care of my ship. Make sure they treat the  crew well once they take them prisoner.\"\nCommander Zheng squeezed Keyes' hand, and started t o breathe heavily.\n\"Move aside,\" the medic said, as Zheng slumped over . \"Defib!\"\nKeyes looked at his bloody hand that Zheng was grip ping as the medic tried to revive the Commander.\n\"Sir, Li here,\" the comms piece in Keyes' ear buzze d. \"They're boarding. The ODSTs want to know how to proceed.\"\nKeyes swallowed. He was next in line. He was now in  charge of the ship. All these lives. The mission. It had all been handed to  him. This was no classroom, this was all the real front-line mess he'd been hoping t o get. Well, he'd gotten it all right. They had no navigation data. They were outnumbered.  Damaged. And dead in the water.\n\"Tell Faison we follow Zheng's orders to stand down . Spread the word.\" Keyes felt numb as he stood up. \"Give me directions to th e nearest incursion. I'll go meet the Innies myself.\"\nIt was all on him, now.  114\nPART III  115\nCHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN\n\n\nLA PAZ HABITAT OUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel sat in front of the bars, his legs folded unde rneath him, watching the two guards. It was a modified warrior's crouch, one that let a Sangheili rest with his legs beneath him, but in a manner that allowed one to leap up an d forward in the blink of an eye. He'd spent long hours practicing with fellow studen ts in the sandy training courtyards of the Vadam keep, learning the pose; no w it came as second nature. The short, shuffling Unggoy that guarded them carri ed a plasma rifle too large for its frame, and Thel caught the trace whiffs of meth ane that leaked from around the guard's mouthpiece. The Unggoyan annoying lesser b eingwas careful to remain as close to the far wall and as far away from the b ars as possible, rightly fearing the Sangheili's long limbs. But that didn't stop the Unggoy from taunting them and puffing itself up. \"Look, you mighty Sangheili. Look you not so mighty now, e h?\"\nThel growled from somewhere deep in the back of his  throat.\n\"You ignore the Unggoy, yes. Throw us to die at you r feet. Don't care when other races take advantage of poor Unggoy. No more. Wait until you are taken to Metisette, then see you our might.\"\nThel looked over at Zhar. \"Might?\"\n\"Unggoy might is a contradiction in terms,\" Zhar grumbled.\n\"So think you,\" the Unggoy hissed. \"Just you wait. Just you wait.\"\n\"What's this Metisette? That is the second time I h ave heard that word,\" Zhar observed. \"The Kig-Yar who locked us in here mentio ned it.\"\nThel took a deep breath. \"It is the human name for a world around the great gas giant.\" His calves burned somewhat, now. But he wai ted still. Just under his feet, hidden by his crouch, was the long spear of metal. Using the edge of the bedframe, and their own strength, Thel and Saal had taken turns sharpening it further. They'd also cut rudimentary barbs into the spike by shaving out sections of the crude weapon. Now it was a case of choosing the best moment. Thel  didn't want to waste their one attempt. This cell, they had determined, was in one of the f ar edges of what Zhar had heard the humans call \"the Rubble.\" Though the Kig- Yar and humans were working together, this was mainly a human creation.  116  Before Thel's thoughts meandered further, the walls  shook and debris began breaking loose. The bars of metal holding them in s tarted bowing and screeching as they were tortured into slightly different shapes. Lights flickered, and Thel still remained absolutel y still, like a helioskrill imitating a rock back on the home planet, just watc hing for a meal to unsuspectingly walk by. As the cell plunged into darkness, Thel felt his we ight lift off as the antigravity generators failed. He picked up the spear, the end of it tied off to several lengths of tightly braided sheet strips, and listened. He could hear the Unggoy's panicked breathing and t he hiss of the methane tank as he struggled in the air. The spear flew out from between the bars and made a  wet, crunching sound as it struck the Unggoy. Thel gave the impromptu rope a q uick yank, and the screaming Unggoy was pulled right into the bars. Zhar and Saal waited there. Their long arms snapped  the Unggoy's neck and quieted it. Saal retrieved the plasma rifle as Thel pulled the makeshift spear out of the Unggoy and shoved the body away. Bright blue blood hung in the space, expanding into large globules as the Unggoy slowly spun in th e air.\n\"Get the lock,\" Thel ordered. After bracing himself against the far wall, Saal fi red at the lock three times. Plasma blew the device away into a cloud of molten metal rivulets that flew across the room, sizzling against Unggoy skin and slapping  into the wall. The four Sangheili pushed the cell door open and fl oated out as the lights flickered back on. They hit the floor, along with dried metal beads an d the Unggoy's limp body. Blood splattered the floor a split second later. Zhar looked around the room, blinking as his eyes a dapted to the overly bright human lights. \"They brought us in over there.\" He j utted his mouthpieces in the direction of a corridor. Thel moved with the spear, taking point. The Kig-Yar still here would deeply regret jailing him, he thought, as he turned a corner and spotted one of them standing by an airlo ck door. Thel sprinted the length of corridor, caring little  for stealth. The Kig-Yar spun, a protective shield flaring up by his forearm, but Th el struck so hard the Kig-Yar's head smashed into the bulkhead behind him, and he d rooped to the ground. Saal peered in through the window briefly, then pul led back.\n\"More inside,\" Saal grunted. \"But they seem preoccu pied.\"\nThel looked at the door controls, regretting his im pulse to kill the Kig-Yar guard so quickly. The collection of buttons that the huma ns used to control things stumped him. But he managed to tap a large green button tha t cycled the door open. The Kig-Yar all turned and found themselves facing Saal with the plasma rifle aimed right at their heads.\n\"Remember us?\" Saal said, and pulled the trigger. L ong Kig-Yar faces exploded as Saal calmly shot all four in the head over their  screeches of fear and rage.  117  \"And that,\" Veer said, stepping over the bodies and  closing the airlock door of the ship behind them, \"is why you never imprison Sa ngheili; you execute them.\"\nThe walls and seats were splattered with bright pur ple blood. Thel looked around with satisfaction. \"That is a good start,\" he said,  a pleased rumble in the back of his voice. \"Throw the bodies out.\"\nNow it was time to find out what the Kig-Yar, human s, and Unggoy were up to. And make them all pay.  118\nCHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT\n\n\nOUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe Petya's alarms sounded. Jai bolted for the cockpit, where M ike was already strapping in. In the far distance a bright flash re ceded, a glowing ball of excited trace gases in the vacuum of space that had been disturbe d by an explosion's shock wave.\n\"That's a Shiva,\" Mike said, reading off the monito rs. \"Probably three, actually.\"\n\"Nukes? Who's nuking the Rubble?\" Adriana asked.\n\"Us,\" Mike said. \"There's a UNSC ship in system. So me sort of stealthed ship.\"\n\"Prowler? ONI coming around to check up on us?\" Jai  wondered. Mike shook his head, half of which was covered in s having creamhe'd been in the head when the alarms flashed. \"Would have piped  us a message by now. No, this is fleet. Looks like a frigate on the long-range.\"\n\"One of our own,\" Adriana said.\n\"Getting the crap kicked out of it,\" Jai said. Adriana nodded. \"Look at all those ships surroundin g it. What the hell were they thinking?\"\n\"Arm us up. Let's get in there and see if we can he lp,\" Jai said.\n\"Too many ships,\" Mike said. \"I don't have enough e xplosive surprises to get those guys off its tail. Plus, I'm seeing a bunch o f them moving in to board it. That's a death trap, Jai.\"\nJai hit a console with his fist, leaving the imprin t in the metal.\n\"Easy, cowboy,\" a female voice that wasn't Adriana' s said. Jai whirled to find Juliana's image appearing at na vigation, her large eyes regarding his. It's just a simulation, he told himself. Those eyes  can't see, like they almost seem to right now. The AI spread her arms. \"I can help your UNSC frien ds; you can't. Mike is correct. They're surrounded. They fell into a trap.  One of their bridge crew was a sympathizer who signaled the ship's location. They' re being taken to temporary holding cells.\"\n\"And after that?\" Jai asked.\n\"After that, well...\" Juliana folded her arms. \"If th ey followed instructions, I doubt they have working navigation data. Which mean s they're no major threat. They'll be left to live. If they aren't, I've threa tened to stop working for the Rubble. They need me too much to ignore that. It all falls apart without me.\"  119  Jai glanced at Adriana over the top of the AI's ima ge. Adriana smiled back.\n\"I will look after this,\" Juliana continued. \"I'd l ike you to go look after Ignatio Delgado. I've sent Mike the coordinates.\"\n\"Adriana's pet Insurrectionist? Why?\" Jai walked ov er and sat in front of the AI.\n\"He's in a spot of trouble. And we need him because , while I can spy on him and monitor his movements, he's been quite canny about keeping the navigation data hidden even from me. I think he fears you might hac k me.\" Juliana cackled at the thought, then stopped abruptly, looked around, and continued. \"I think at this point, Delgado may give you the data for safekeeping.\"\n\"Why is that?\" Mike asked, eyes narrowed. The AI smiled and shrugged. \"Call it a hunch,\" she told the team of Spartans. And then she flickered off. Jai frowned. \"I don't feel like being some AI's err and boy.\"\nMike raised his hand. \"Yeah, she's also holding bac k on us.\"\n\"How's that?\" Jai moved to his side.\n\"The ship the dockworkers were passing rumors about , that was coming back from the colonies, was the Kestrel, remember? Well, it's out there now. The chatter is that the UNSC ship came in after it. Took me a bit to find her...\"\nJai slapped him on the back. \"Damn good. We go for the Kestrel, knock her engines out when she docks.\"\n\"And Delgado?\" Adriana asked. \"He's the next naviga tion puzzle.\"\n\"Once that smuggler's out, we snatch Delgado for th e AI.\" Jai smiled. Everything was coming to a head now. It was time to move. Mike  stood up and nodded. Gray Team was on the same page.\n\"Your pet AI? Jai, I think maybe it just likes you, \" Adriana said as she turned around to go back to where their Mark IV MJOLNIR ar mor waited on brackets. Jai and Mike followed.\n\"You're just jealous,\" Mike said, as they stopped i n front of the armor. \"But then, we both seem to be making friends out here. Shame J ai doesn't seem to have the social knack.\"\n\"Idiots,\" Jai said. \"We're not supposed to be makin g friends.\"\n\"But it's so much more fun.\" Mike grinned. Adriana chuckled, then looked at the armor waiting in the gloom for them. \"Get the feeling we're going to be spending a lot of tim e in our second skin?\"\nJai reached a hand up and caressed the gray exterio r. Yes, he did have that feeling. Things were past tha t tipping point where you felt you could still back away and lie down in the grass  and just observe. No, someone had tossed grenades into the anthill. I t was time to jump in and participate. Back in action.  120\nCHAPTER TWENTY-NINE\n\n\nIN ORBIT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel grumbled happily. They'd taken the Kig-Yar shu ttle out farther away from the Rubble, slowly scanning the area until they'd found  a larger Kig-Yar transport ship on its way to Metisette. They boarded it, fast and quick, before the few Kig -Yar on board had even realized what had happened. On board were several hundred Unggoy. The Kig-Yar h ad been in charge, but didn't have the numbers to run their own ships. Now  the Kig-Yar were dead. But the Unggoy had run the ship for the Kig-Yar. Th at made them useful. They were willing to work for Thel and his crew, or so t he cowering Unggoy Deacon said as Thel stood on the purple-stained bridge. \"It wou ld be the Prophets' will,\" the Deacon yelped.\n\"It would be,\" Thel said from behind the Unggoy. \"W e are on a direct mission from a Hierarch.\"\nThe Unggoy waddled about, shifting its mouthpiece, to face Thel. It looked up and spread its arms out. \"I do not question. I serv e. That is our fate,\" it moaned. Thel couldn't care less for Unggoy self-pity. \"Tell  your crew this ship flies where we command, or we will slaughter every last one of you. Saal will go down to engineering and watch over you. Veer will roam the corridors.\"\nVeer growled, and the Unggoy backed up. \"Sirs! We w ill do our ship duties!\nDoubt us not.\"\nThel turned to Veer and Saal. \"Be wary. The slighte st notion the Unggoy are playing games, hold nothing back.\"\nVeer and Saal grunted affirmatively and walked out of the cockpit. The deacon turned to go, but Thel held up a hand, a nd the Unggoy froze.\n\"What is down there, Unggoy?\" Thel asked. He pointe d at the image of the planet on a screen at the front of the cockpit. It was Metisette. Its sickly, yellow-orange-colored  atmosphere swirled; thick, cold storms lashed the icy surface. The Unggoy stared at them, saying nothing. Thel turned back to the screen and folded his arms.  \"Zhar, my closest advisor, didn't want to come here. He wanted to turn this tr ansport right around to attack the Kig-Yar ship docked by the humans, and take that ri ght back to High Charity so we could warn the prophets about the Jiralhanae treaso n.\"  121  \"A noble choice,\" the Unggoy said.\n\"It is not,\" Thel said. \"We were captured, and jail ed. When we return, we will be lucky if we hold our titles, if not our very names.\" The Unggoy trembled at Thel's anger. \"What is your name, Deacon?\"\n\"Pipit,\" the Unggoy replied. Thel folded his arms. \"Pipit, one of my ancestors, a kaidon of Vadam, lost a war to one of the keep's bitter rivals. The new kaidon put my ancestor in the cellars, jails where the defeated were left in the most dishonorab le manner imaginable. They were fed scraps, and visited by the invaders to be mocke d and laughed at. The most honorable among the jailed killed themselves or eac h other.\n\"The kaidon escaped after weeks of starving. He had  become so thin he could pull himself through the bars of his window looking  out over the Vadam keep cliffs. He scaled the cliff, and swam down the river, all t he way to the valley.\n\"The kaidon walked for many days, eating vermin and  scraps, becoming lower than low, until he came into the vast deserts that lie in the interior of all our lands. And out there, after wandering for many years, buil t his strength, his hardness, and made allies from other wanderers. They were the lea st of the least, yes, but with a will to fight, and a will to live no matter the odd s.\n\"With this new tribe, my ancestor returned to Vadam  keep and scaled the walls. He killed his enemies all, throwing their bodies to  the river. It is said that it ran purple with blood for a week. And when the kaidon w as done killing his enemies, he opened the jails and killed the Vadam who had been cowardly enough to remain alive in them. That was my kaidon. That is Vadam. Our blood was forged in the desert, confirmed in the keep that day, and purified throug h Kaidon Ther's experiences. So it is carved on the Vadam saga wall.\"\nThel looked over at Zhar, who asked, \"Shipmaster, d o you have a point to retelling a stanza of your family's saga?\"\nThel sat down in the shipmaster's chair at the cent er of the cockpit. \"I can hardly turn my back on my lineage, can I, Zhar? I will not  return to High Charity with a lost ship, knowing we were locked up by Kig-Yar, and lit tle knowledge of what is happening here. I would be no better than the jaile d Sangheili that Ther executed for being useless.\"\n\"It was a suggestion. An option,\" Zhar said.\n\"But it is not an option, as we are Sangheili.\" The l now turned back to Deacon Pipit. \"So you understand, Unggoy? We are here to s tay. I ask you, again, what is on Metisette?\"\n\"Dreams,\" Pipit sighed.\n\"Do not play word games,\" Thel growled. \"Be plain.\"\n\"When commanders need fighters, Unggoy are ordered to breed and expand. Then we die in great numbers. Unggoy, you all say: do this, do that. Some dream of free,\" Pipit explained. \"And though we hate Kig-Yar , this one named Reth, high commander, says to those Unggoy that they can come to Metisette. Come, build a home. Help change this moon so it becomes a place y ou can live where the methane is free in all the air. Breed free.\"\nZhar started to laugh. \"And you believed this... Reth ?\"  122  Pipit looked up, beady red eyes squinting in anger.  \"Kig-Yar always betray, yes, but the opportunity...\" The alien shrugged. Thel looked down at the fatalistic little alien. \"S o Metisette has methane in the air that you can breathe.\"\n\"A place for Unggoy,\" Pipit said. \"A safe place, wh ere we can live without interference, without controls on our population th at are imposed from on high. Where we can walk around without these chafing harn esses and breathing tanks.\"\n\"An Unggoy paradise,\" Thel muttered. \"Where you can  breed until you overrun the entire place.\" The Unggoy were well-known to re produce like mad. During peacetime the Prophets monitored their population c losely; the Unggoy had never cared for that. And even though they hated the Kig- Yar, it made sense that the Unggoy had jumped at the chance in this strange seq uence of events to gain a world of their own. Thel scratched his lower mandibles. Saal called Thel over the intercom. \"They have our infiltrator harness here,\" he said. \"In their storage bay. The Kig-Yar stole it f rom our ship!\"\nThel stopped scratching as he thought about the new s. \"We have a change of plans. Take the armor down to the Kig-Yar shuttle. Get the shuttle warmed up as well. We are going down.\"\n\"Into that murk?\" Zhar protested from nearby.\n\"Yes. Zhar, the Prophets unleash the Unggoy to bree d whenever there is a war;\nthey stop mixing antibreeding hormones into the met hane supplies. Now we have a renegade Kig-Yar breeding Unggoy. I think this 'Ret h' is creating an army on the surface of Metisette for himself.\"\n\"So we are going to see for ourselves?\" Zhar snorte d.\n\"I want to talk to Reth,\" Thel said simply.\n\"Why?\"\n\"If he is in charge of Metisette, he knows what is going on with the humans and the Kig-Yar working together. And he knows about th e betrayal of the Tiralhanae. Reth knows things we need to know.\"\n\"And he is surrounded by hundreds of Unggoy,\" Zhar noted. The deacon cleared his throat. Thel turned to him, and Pipit said, \"Not hundreds.\"\nThel waited a moment. \"Thousands?\"\nPipit still bobbed his head. \"Tens of...\" but already  the alien had shaken its head again.\n\"Hundreds?\"\nNow Pipit nodded eagerly as Zhar swore. Reth had quite an army at his disposal. This would make getting to him a lot more difficult. But Thel smiled. \"We have our infiltrator harness b ack.\" That gave them an edge. They were not just Sangheili, but well armed, well armored, and also invisible Sangheili. Like his ancestor Ther, the ancient kaidon, Thel wo uld come back against great odds, swarming into the middle of his enemy before they even knew what had happened.  123  \"Get us ready, Zhar,\" Thel ordered. \"We are going d own there. Pipit, Veer will take over while we are gone; you will help him. Giv e us the coordinates to Reth. And if you deceive us, Veer will be here to make sure y ou suffer immediately for it.\"\nPipit nodded and, in a voice that seemed to crack, gave Zhar the necessary coordinates.\n\"Thank you, Deacon.\" Thel looked around. \"You will also need to have an Unggoy pilot meet us at the shuttle, Deacon. Talk t o the Unggoy down there on Metisette, tell them you had an accident aboard, an d need to be resupplied with methane for Unggoy to breathe.\"\nWith that done, Thel stalked off the bridge with Zh ar close behind.\n\"Three of us against hundreds of thousands of Unggo y,\" Zhar said.\n\"The little ones will cower with fear and run from us in floods,\" Thel proclaimed as they thudded down the corridors. Zhar laughed. \"You are confident.\"\n\"I am Sangheili,\" Thel said. \"This is what we are.\"\n\nThey crammed into the tiny shuttle. Spec ops armor lay on the benches where Unggoy would have lined up and sat. Now there was o nly one Unggoy, a terrified pilot who remained strapped in and staring at the S angheili in terror. Thel felt the warmth that came to him when he had a  direct plan. \"Take us down, Saal.\"\nOnce they'd broken through the worst of the deceler ation in the upper atmosphere of Metisette, Thel unstrapped himself and walked ba ck to don his spec ops armor, and helped Zhar with his. The shuttle shook and rat tled its way through the thick atmosphere, but they remained balanced on their fee t easily enough. Once suited up, Zhar flicked the armor on, and fade d away into invisibility.\n\"It works,\" Thel said. Then tested his own. Zhar and Saal switched places. As Saal struggled in to his armor alone and Zhar flew the shuttle in, Thel walked up to the edge of the cockpit to look down. Nothing but thick orange clouds and hazeat least u ntil they broke out under the clouds to fly over a jagged, ice-cold landscape whi pped by constant storms. Zhar banked them slowly through the orange murk tow ard a massive crater. As they flew across it the sides reached up like dista nt mountains, and Thel could see a massive lake at its center. In the distance stood what looked like a keep, stra ddling a giant river of liquid that tumbled over the edge of the crater down to it s floor. The keep was ramshackle, made out of parts of old, ruined ships that had bee n rudely deorbited and landed near the lip of the immense waterfall. But it stood high with additions that had been buil t in between the spaceships'\nhulls, with tubes and domes that hung like carbuncl es pocking the rock faces and rising above the river. Thel saw that it could hous e hundreds of thousands. Elevators ran down along the sides of the thousand feet of waterfall to structures around the giant lake. Metisette wasn't a world one could breath in. Its m ostly nitrogen atmosphere would leave Sangheili, or Kig-Yar, or most races wi th nothing to breathe.  124  The liquid on the very cold Metisette was methane. Thel watched as a stream of it fell off the lip of the crater. Methane mist hung s trong in the air all throughout the natural valleys and low areas of the crater, thanks  to the falls.\n\"Giant reactors heat the land all around the crater ,\" the pilot spoke up, pride suddenly more powerful than its fear of the Sanghei li. \"It makes more of the mists.\"\nZhar skimmed the lake and approached the falls. The  shuttle hit the mists, and then rose up near the falls, pressing Thel against the seat.\n\"We pop over the edge and land, Zhar,\" Thel shouted . \"Make sure your armor is tight, Saal. It will give us air until we are insid e the structure. If Reth is breathing and Kig-Yar are in there, then we will be okay.\n\"If there is only methane, we go in as far as we ca n before coming back. Zhar stays with the shuttle, hiding, as this Unggoy has the other Unggoy load up our shuttle with tanks of methane.\"\nThel watched the remains of a large Kig-Yar merchan t ship appear over the lip, and Zhar arced over it into a large landing area ma rked out in plasma-melted rock. As soon as the shuttle touched rock, the three Sang heili activated their camouflage and flickered and vanished. Zhar sat acr oss from the Unggoy who was supposedly piloting the shuttle, and Thel and Saal jumped out the back of the shuttle. The Unggoy pilot had not liedthe land here was bit terly cold to Thel, but it was tolerable. Like an arctic waste. Not nearly as cold  as the rest of the moon. Silent ghosts moving through the orange murk that h ung in the air, they maneuvered across the field, keeping well clear of the Unggoy who waddled out across the landing pad toward the shuttle, barking and shouting in their language. Thel kept an easy lope going, covering the ground s o fast that any Unggoy who noticed a wavering in the air would surely shake th eir heads and dismiss it as a trick of the light. They slipped in through a series of giant airlocks,  where Unggoy still had to wear their harnesses and tanks. Thel looked around. \"This is Kig-Yar territory,\" he  whispered to Saal. It made sense that the lesser aliens were here in a re-purp osed old ship, mounted near the lip of the falls. It made for a commanding view, becaus e although the Unggoy felt like this was their world, Thel would imagine that the K ig-Yar saw it differently. Saal found a lone Unggoy, and an empty room in the back of what had once been the large hangar bays of the Kig-Yar ship. It didn't take long to get the Unggoy to give up th e location of Reth.\n\"The cockpit room, at the very top.\"\nSaal snapped the Unggoy's neck and they took the em ergency maintenance tubes up through the ship. Thel panted heavily and his ma ndibles were wide open, his tongue flicking the air, by the time they arrived a t the top. Four Kig-Yar guarded the cockpit's doors, but two o f them were looking out the windows down to the launch pad, bored, their plasma  rifles slung over their backs. They never had a chance to turn and see what attack ed them. The two Sangheili were in their midst in a split second, firing point -blank into their faces with their own plasma rifles.  125  The other two Kig-Yar had a second to squall loudly  before they met the same fate, and Thel blew the cockpit doors apart with a grenade. Inside the carpeted, lavishly furnished room sat a single Kig-Yar, his large eyes staring at the shimmering flaws in the air before h im. Thel shut his invisibility off.\n\"Sangheili,\" the Kig-Yar hissed. \"Damn you, what ha ve you done? Do you know who you cross?\"\n\"You are Reth?\" Thel asked.\n\"Yes,\" the Kig-Yar said.\n\"You let Unggoy breed without control. You pretend to be a voice of the Prophets here. You are a heretic.\" Thel raised his plasma rifle and struck Reth in the head with it.\n\"Pick him up,\" Thel ordered Saal. \"Let us return to  the shuttle.\"\nA loud warble echoed across the corridors. Thel loo ked around. \"That sounded like an alarm.\"\nSaal walked over to the front of the cockpit, Reth slung casually over a shoulder.\n\"It is. We should call Zhar, have him fly up here. We can get outside onto the top and get him to pick us up there.\"\nThel stepped forward to stand next to Saal and look ed down. Saal murmured into the air, talking to Zhar.\n\"Zhar needs just a minute. Too many Unggoy inside t he shuttle.\"\nHundreds of feet below in a courtyard formed from t he superstructures of three or four mothballed spaceships, thousands of Unggoy str eamed out. The crowds ran to surround the building they were in.\n\"They cannot enter,\" Saal said. \"Almost all of them  have no harnesses or air. The methane mists out there let them breathe. Where are  their harnesses?\"\nThel looked at the unconscious Kig-Yar on Saal's sh oulder.\n\"The Kig-Yar either have not made them many, or are  keeping them under lock and key.\"\n\"But why?\" Saal asked.\n\"Because they cannot leave Metisette, or even attac k this Kig-Yar structure in the center of their own keep, if they have no tanks.\"\n\"Doesn't help us right now,\" Saal said, looking at the quadrangle fill with Unggoy. \"Enough Unggoy seem to have harnesses to ca use us trouble.\"\nThel turned and looked back down the corridor, hear ing the sound of Unggoy screeches. \"It tells us who's really in charge of a ll this.\"\n\"The Kig-Yar.\"\nThel looked back at Reth's limp form. \"Yes. That on e in particular. Wake him up. We may have to put a gun to his head. What is Zhar' s progress?\"\nSaal cocked his head, listening to an update from d own below. \"Zhar is closing the ramp and warming the shuttle up.\"\n\"The timing will be tight,\" Thel said. He walked ov er to the doors with his plasma rifle up and ready. \"Be ready to blow the wi ndows out when he gets airborne.\"\n\"My honor,\" Saal grunted. He set Reth down and slap ped the Kig-Yar's face.\n\"Wake up,\" the Sangheili zealot growled.  126\nCHAPTER THIRTY\n\n\nASUNCION HABITAT, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nKeyes watched his people being herded toward gates.  They huddled together and stared down at their feet as they moved forward. Me n in gray uniforms, rifles slung at the ready, moved about the edges, pushing the crew back into line toward the five checkpoints the rails led everyone toward. The Midsummer Night had been docked with an asteroid. From the cargo ba y they'd all been herded out at gunpoint, down a long  corridor in the endcap of the habitat, and walked out into the interior. But the tall rails, all enclosed in chicken wire wi th razor wire wrapped around that, effectively prevented them from walking out i nto the habitat until they'd passed through five stations. Humorless-looking officials stood by small podiums in the stations with computer pads.\n\"Stay single file,\" a guard shouted. The lines formed up, people jammed against each oth er, wondering what came next. They were face-to-face with the enemy: Insurr ectionists. Captured. A woman in a black uniform with yellow trim walked up to a dais mounted over the gates. She brushed back a long lock of black ha ir, then folded her arms at the small of her back in a sort of parade rest. When she spoke her voice was amplified so that the entire crowd could hear her.\n\"Welcome to the habitat Asuncion,\" the woman said. Keyes leaned back and looked up at the far side of the asteroid's interior, far on the other side from where he stood. Patches of gard ens and trees could be seen. It was odd, seeing something almost pastoral in a megastru cture like this.\n\"And welcome to the Rubble,\" the woman continued. \" My name is Maria Esquival. I am here to help orient you to your new situation.\"\nKeyes was surrounded by his remaining bridge crew. Lt. Dante Kirtley had folded his arms and was watching the woman, but Jun ior Grade Rai Li checked out the crowded crew, looking worried. Behind Keyes loitered a handful of ODSTs, with Fais on standing in their midst. He raised an eyebrow at Keyes. Maria Esquival continued her speech. \"After the des truction of Madrigal, as we escaped into the asteroids and rocks here, we had s ome very tough decisions to make  127  about who we would become: refugees struggling to e xist, fighting over scraps? Or a civilization?\n\"We chose civilization. We worked hard to build the  Rubble. We worked hard because we knew we had something to build. A world like nothing the UNSC has ever known, with its strict hierarchies and militar istic command.\"\nKeyes looked over at Dante, who rolled his eyes. \"M ore Insurrectionist bullshit,\"\nthe comms specialist muttered.\n\"Free of the trappings of being a colony, we reinve nted ourselves from the ground up. The Rubble is a technocracy. All of its municipal functions, all its laws, are voted on by our members. Some of us are Insurre ctionist, some of us are refugees from Madrigal. Others are miners who were here from  the beginning. Some are smugglers who made it here from the Inner Colonies.  All are welcome.\n\"We mean that. All are welcome to have the right to  vote. This includes you, crew of the Midsummer Night .\"\nEsquival paused to let that sink in. In the crowd, Kirtley leaned back toward Keyes. \"They all vote on everything. Like even secu rity? That'd be insane.\"\n\"Because we believe in freedom, the Rubble invites you to join our democracy. You have a choice in what happens next to you. You can choose to turn your back on the imperialist nature of the UNSC. Many of you may  have come from Outer Colonies. Colonies that fell to the alien Covenant while the UNSC took their time to enact methods of dealing with the aliens. Colonies that you know were not as well protected as they could have been, because the UNSC 's loyalties are to Earth first, the Inner Colonies next, and the Outer Colonies las t. Here in the Rubble, you are equal among all.\"\nRai Li sniffed. \"How many crew you think are going to buy that crap?\"\nKeyes looked out over the crowd of heads. How many crew were survivors of border colonies, or had family in the Outer Colonie s?\nHe thought of his sister for a second, a twinge of pain at the thought of her dying without UNSC protection, out there alone in the Out er Colonies. Or maybe, Keyes suddenly thought, maybe they'd surv ived. Just like the Rubble had. The idea captured him for a second, and then Keyes shook himself. No, he had to remember what the Covenant was really about. The Ru bble was some strange anomaly...\n\"Too many.\" Keyes rubbed his jaw, thoughtfully. \"An d can you blame them? We have no options. We're stuck out here. Behind the l ines. They might as well start trying to find allies, figure out what the new game  is. We're refugees, now.\"\nHis eyes burned. He hadn't slept since they'd been boarded, running from place to place to make sure things went smoothly. Now it was over. Everything was over. He'd read about POWs in past wars, unlucky bastards  who'd been the first shot out of the air and stuck in a camp for the length o f a war. If he lived, he'd be one of those footnotes.  128  Maria Esquival cleared her throat. \"But, as you are  UNSC, and have a checkered background, there are some concessions that have to  be made when integrating you into the population of the Rubble.\n\"You will have to swallow a motion tracker, in the form of a pill. This will let the Rubble's AI monitor and track your location. You wi ll have to report for counseling and you will be assigned a case officer who will re view the integration process. However these things are a small price to pay for y our freedom.\"\nKeyes wished he had his pipe to fiddle with. He had  to leave it aboard the ship, along with any other personal effects or objects as  they were moved to Asuncion.\n\"Those of you who wish to become citizens, have onl y to ask when you reach Processing. You will be split off to a separate loc ation. Those of you still loyal to the UNSC, who refuse the pill, we will, of course, be f orced to jail you.\"\nWith that, Esquival turned around and left her perc h. The large lines staggered forward.\n\"A lot of them are asking for citizenship,\" Faison said from behind Keyes.\n\"Can't blame them,\" Keyes said. \"One can understand  what's going through their minds.\"\n\"You're not going to do anything about it?\" Faison asked.\n\"We're trapped. We have nothing. What do you want m e to do? They're doing the rational thing.\"\nFaison grabbed Keyes by the shoulder. \"Either we're  soldiers or we're not. Defeat or not, we should never forget that, Keyes. Give them a speech. Say something to counteract all that, because whatever this is you're doing right now, this isn't leadership. W here's the man who had us all jump out of that freighter?\"\nSay something. Keyes cleared his throat, then jumped up onto the r ailing. He wobbled for a second. \"Crew of the Midsummer Night,\" he shouted. The snaking line paused. And Keyes suddenly felt li ke a blank sheet of paper. Nothing came to him. Faison punched his shin, and Keyes sucked his breat h in. \"Crew of the Midsummer Night, we have had a hard blow, I know. Some of you, after  hearing all this, will have a hard choice to make.\n\"Just know this. No matter who we are, or why we gi ve our service, we all joined to fight a common enemy. The people here, although they fled the destruction of their own world, think that the Covenant can be allies. T he same creatures that destroyed their world. I think this is an illusion. So I hope  that you will, if the time ever comes, stand by my side again if the need calls for it. Wi th no hard feelings. I will not be joining their citizenry. I remain ready to fight th e Covenant and protect humanity, as I swore to do when I joined the fight. As did you a ll.\"\nKeyes got back down. There was only silence. Rai Li finally shook her he ad. \"That was an awkward speech.\"  129  \"Doesn't matter,\" Faison said. \"What mattered was t hat he gave it.\" And Keyes knew he was right; he was stumbling toward being th e leader they all wanted . . . and needed. Keyes grabbed Faison by the shoulder. \"By the way, why are so many ODSTs at the front of the line? They look like they're going  to be citizens.\"\nFaison nodded and looked Keyes in the eye. \"Well, o f course. You know the Helljumpers: first in and all that.\" He gave the last word in emphasis. Then he winked. Keyes got it. He could still trust Helljumpers to b e Helljumpers. Faison was just making sure he got men out into the general populac e in case they needed them out there.\n\"You've got company,\" Lt. Kirtley said. Maria Esquival and several black-clad men pushed th rough the crowd of crew toward Keyes.\n\"Lieutenant Jacob Keyes, I gather?\" Esquival said.\n\"Yes ma'am,\" Keyes replied.\n\"No more speeches.\"\nKeyes laughed. \"I thought we were all equals here.\"\nEsquival tilted her head. \"You just announced you g ave up the right to citizenry, right?\"\n\"Yes...\"\nOne of the black-uniformed men punched Keyes in the  stomach. Faison stepped forward, but Keyes waved him back as he coughed.\n\"Then I'm pleased to report I'm under no obligation  to treat you as a citizen, Lieutenant Keyes.\" Esquival smiled. \"The problem is , you have a position of power over your men. Such speeches, while admirable, are given from that position of power. Many possible citizens might feel compelled to go to jail who wouldn't otherwise.\"\n\"It'll all end,\" Keyes said. \"When the Covenant get s bored of whatever game it's playing here.\"\nEsquival sighed. \"You're so sure of yourself. The w ar with the Covenant is something the UNSC somehow started back on Harvest,  we're sure of it. This is not our war, we just got caught up in it. It's your war. While you all fight to the last man with your brotherhood of arms, we've built somethin g here. I don't know if the UNSC has noticed, but the Covenant is comprised of a number of varying races. Many of these were allowed into the Covenant. We he re in the Rubble are looking for ways humanity can join their ranks. As a junior race, perhaps. But we're a dept, Lieutenant Keyes, we'll work our way up.\"\nKeyes shook his head. \"You conspire with the enemy. \" Esquival sighed. \"Take him and his bridge crew to the jails. Get them out of here.\"\nThey zip-tied his hands, and then led him off. Seve ral junior officers started applauding, but it died out nervously after a few s econds.  130\nCHAPTER THIRTY-ONE\n\n\nSOMEWHERE NEAR HABITAT CARIBO INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBR AE\n\nJai eyeballed the Insurrectionist smuggler in the d istance. They'd been tagging along far behind it until it had docked. Now he flew in the weightless vacuum toward it. He struck the surface, absorbing the impact with hi s knees. Even as he rebounded, he threw a magnetic grapple at the hull to stay attached. Adriana hit the hull next to him. She grabbed his l eg with one hand to stop him from bouncing back off. She had a large plastic cas e tucked underneath the other arm. Jai looked at her helmet. \"What does Mike have for us today?\"\n\"Electromagnetic pulse bomb. Mostly harmlessexcept  to anything electronic aboard the Kestrel. It'll wipe it all clean,\" Adriana said. She opened the case and pulled out a large, disc-shaped device that looked like a landmine. \"He's been saving this one.\"\nWith a thud the EMP attached itself to the hull. Ad riana leaned over it and tapped out a code. \"It talking to you, Mike?\"\n\"We're live,\" Mike reported. \"Now get well clear of  that thing. The EMP pulse is strong enough to fry a whole ship. Usually our armo r can recover from those bursts pretty quickly, but it will still knock out your MJ OLNIR briefly if you're too close. I want to wait until we're all back aboard and well c lear before\"\nJai spotted movement. \"We have company. They're com ing from the airlock.\"\nTwo black space suits, hardened-looking affairs, co asted quickly at them. A burst of flame from their backs jetted them down the hull  even faster.\n\"Hostile or curious?\" Mike asked. Muzzle flash answered that; the two suits had machi ne guns in either hand. Adriana bent down and leapt at them, pulling out he r battle rifle and firing. Her rounds sparked and pinged off well-hardened materia l and the two suits curled up in a ball.\n\"They were expecting us,\" Jai said.\n\"We've been here a while, it's obvious something's happening,\" Mike replied.\n\"Not too surprising they've rustled up a response o f some sort. I'm jockeying Petya in closer.\"  131  \"No,\" Adriana said. \"Get ready to hit the EMP; we d on't want to give these goons a chance with it. They've probably raised the  alarm. We also don't want to give them time to get the data off the ship somehow .\"\nShe grunted as she smacked into one of the suits. Jai leapt at the second one while paying out the ro pe on his grapple with one hand. He didn't bother shooting at the man until th ey collided. He ripped the rocket pack off the back of the combat space suit and thre w it away, did the same with the man's two guns, then yanked himself back toward the  smuggler with the line. The black suit hung still, unable to move anywhere. Adriana had smashed in the faceplate of their other  opponent. The man's dying breath hung in the air between the two, a crystalli ne and fading cloud. She threw the suit away, the motion pushing her tow ard the hull.\n\"Four more of them,\" she said. The glare of their p acks marked them, flying right at them from the asteroid.\n\"Let's get out of here.\"\nWith all the strength available to them from the co mbination of their physique and the MJOLNIR powered armor, they crouched and le apt for the Petya, over a mile away. Halfway across, Mike triggered the EMP bomb with a dramatic electric fireshow that crackled across the Kestrel's hull. It also left their chasers immobile, their electron ics burnt out by the invisible wave of electrical energy the bomb had released. Jai's heads-up display flickered slightly. \"Cutting  it close, Mike?\"\n\"A little,\" came the response.  132\nCHAPTER THIRTY-TWO\n\n\nTHE REDOUBT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe first trio of Unggoy to turn the corridor walke d right into Thel's line of fire. Short bursts of plasma struck them in the center of  their torsos. Footsteps pattered behind Thel. He turned around an d saw Reth trying to run away from Saal. Saal grabbed the Kig-Yar leader and  dragged him back toward the windows and out of the direct line of fire.\n\"Do you two realize what you are doing?\" the Kig-Ya r asked. Saal cocked his head. \"We are kidnapping you.\"\nReth did not find it as amusing as Saal seemed to. \"There are hundreds of thousands of Unggoy out there, all who are at my co mmand.\"\n\"They are out there,\" Saal said. \"But you and I kno w they cannot all get in here.\"\nAnd Saal chuckled.\n\"So you plan on doing what then?\" Reth hissed. \"You  are meddling in extraordinarily important affairs.\"\nThel ducked behind the doorframe as more Unggoy spi lled out into the far side of the corridor. One stumbled when he saw Thel duck ba ck around with his plasma rifle.\n\"Sangheili! Defend the Redoubt!\" it screamed, and t he back of its methane tank exploded from another accurate shot. Flaming debris  struck other Unggoy, who lost their cohesive charge down the corridor and scatter ed, trying to pat the flames away before they got burned.\n\"That should hold them for a bit,\" Thel muttered. B ut then to his surprise, the Unggoy turned back toward him again. These were some very determined Unggoy.\n\"They have something to fight for,\" Reth shouted. \" Sangheili, you don't understand what's going on. You must free me. I can  save your lives. I swear it.\"\nThel watched the Unggoy charge. There was little lo ve between the Kig-Yar and SangheiliReth's kind resented the position Sanghei li held in the Covenant. And the Sangheili regarded the Kig-Yar as little more than scavengers. Thel suspected Reth was lying and would happily hav e them killed the moment they set their weapons down. But Reth pressed on nonetheless. \"You are the Sangh eili from Retribution's Thunder, am I right?\"\nWhy was Zhar taking so long? Thel shot another hand ful of Unggoy.\n\"Yes.\"  133  More came up the elevators and stairs and ran forwa rd.\n\"It was a mistake. We should not have betrayed you to those Jiralhanae,\" Reth said in as soothing a voice as a Kig-Yar could. \"Bu t we needed you to not interfere!\nNot after all the work we've done so far.\"\nThel shook his head. \"What is done is done. You hav e made your choices. Now we are making ours.\" Way too many Unggoy were rushi ng up to the top floor, flooding over dead bodies in the hall. Thel knew th ey were going to continue until he ran out of the charge in his plasma rifle.\n\"You go against the Hierarchs!\" Reth shouted. Saal backhanded the Kig-Yar. \"We are on a direct mi ssion for the Hierarchs. Do not dare blaspheme like that. As if you speak for t he Hierarchs...\" he muttered. Thel saw out of the corner of his eye that the Kig- Yar looked stunned. \"Which Hierarch?\"\n\"The Prophet of Regret himself,\" Saal proclaimed pr oudly. Reth shook his head. \"Wrong Prophet,\" he muttered, the feathered spines on his head wavering in confusion. Wrong Prophet? Saal and Thel looked at each other, and then Saal shouted, \"Zhar is up!\"\nSure enough a column of disturbed air rippled just outside the windows.\n\"Blow the windows out!\" Thel ordered. He shut the d oors and locked them against the Unggoy. Saal used a sticky grenade on the thick windows. Th e blue light pulsed, and then Thel grabbed Reth to shield him as the explosion sh ook the room. Glass shards flew out, and the thunder of engines f illed the room, bringing the acrid clouds of methane mist with it. Thel hoisted Reth onto his back. \"You scream, strug gle, or move about, you will regret it dearly. Now take a deep breath while ther e's still some air!\"\nHe followed Saal out onto the lip of the window, lo oking at the slope of the repurposed ship stretching out before him. They did n't want to go that way. Slide off the edge, they'd have a very long fall. Thel pulled himself and the weight of the Kig-Yar u p, using his hands and legs to crawl up onto the slope of metal above the windows.  Saal scrambled up ahead, unencumbered, to the top of the ship, where the shu ttle hovered, waiting for them. They needed one last tactic to gain them some time.  Thel pulled out a pair of grenades and let them roll down toward the slope of  the hull. As they dropped by his feet he kicked them in through the window. He scrambled up after Saal as fast he could, the gr enades' explosions blowing red flame and debris out of the windows underneath him as he ran. The Unggoy pilot stood in the back of the shuttle, eyes wide in stunned surprise as he watched them run toward him. Zhar gently touc hed the top of the old Kig-Yar wreck with the shuttle and Saal and Thel leapt aboa rd. The tips of other grounded ships poked out of the thick, ruddy mists all aroun d them like towers.\n\"Take it up!\" Saal shouted forward, and they accele rated away, the structure dwindling at the top of the falls, the crater lake falling into the distance.  134\nCHAPTER THIRTY-THREE\n\n\nHABITAT EL CUIDAD, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nDespite being left alone, Ignatio Delgado had still  not managed to free himself. The thing was, trying to use a sliver of metal to p ick the lock of a pair of handcuffs was a challenging proposition. And Delgad o couldn't even get the sliver to reach the keyhole. With a loud sigh the one guard in the warehouse sto od up and folded up whatever he'd been watching and pocketed it. \"Alright, Delga do, things are settling down. Time to get you moved out.\"\nDelgado nodded, filled with a sense of foreboding. This was it, then. The guard noticed the look on his face. \"Come on, D elgado. It's not like that.\"\n\"Really?\" Delgado looked the heavily muscled man up  and down. \"How is it, then?\"\nThe man shrugged. \"All Bonifacio and the Security C ouncil know is that the data keeps getting found out. Better to keep you on clos e watch.\"\nDelgado shook his head. \"Then why are you doing thi s? Why the hired muscle, the empty warehouse?\"\n\"It keeps you under his eye. He doesn't trust you, Delgado. You're a wild card, man.\" Delgado was unshackled from the chain, then h andcuffed to the man's right wrist. With a shove, Delgado was pushed forward.\n\"What's your name?\" Delgado asked.\n\"Owen.\"\n\"Your real name?\"\n\"What do you think?\" \"Owen\" asked, looking down at Delgado as he herded him outside to a waiting tube car.\n\"Where are we going?\" Delgado asked. Owen smiled. \"One of Bonifacio's working ships.\"\nDelgado frowned. \"Working ships? He have a lot of b roken ones?\"\n\"Look.\" Owen leaned in close, almost whispering. \"R elax a little, Delgado. Bonifacio's going to be in a foul mood because his smuggler ship, it just got fried.\"\n\"What?\"\nOwen was laughing. \"The best-laid plans... Someone re ally doesn't like Bonifacio. They fried his ship. It's structurally i ntact, but nothing inside it works; the data got wiped out.\"  135  Delgado swallowed. The Spartans had struck again. \" So now Bonifacio needs me.\"\n\"Pretty much.\"\nThe tube car stopped after making its way between a  handful of coupled asteroids. Owen opened the door, and Delgado quickl y followed him to avoid being yanked along. Peter Bonifacio stood near an airlock, along with a  handful of Security Council members. Including Diego Esquival. Owen unlocked the handcuffs, and Delgado massaged h is wrists. \"What's this all about?\"\n\"Where's the navigation data, Mr. Delgado?\" one of the suited Security Council members asked. Delgado stood still for a second. \"Safe. As we agre ed on.\"\nDiego pursed his lips. \"Bonifacio presented evidenc e to the council that there are Earth-first elements within our population that hav e attacked any navigation data that might lead ships of any sort back to Earth or the I nner Colonies. The data you have needs to be transported to its final destination, w here it will be better safeguarded.\"\n\"Final destination?\" Delgado looked around at them.  \"What final destination?\nThe Kig-Yar? Come on, you know where that will lead .\"\n\"We're moving it to the Exodus Project,\" said one o f the councilmen, an older man with scars across his face. \"It's final. We've all voted. So please, Mr. Delgado, give up the data. You've served the Rubble well. It 's time to hand it over now.\"\n\"What the hell is this Exodus Project?\" Delgado sna pped.\n\"It's just a big emergency plan,\" Diego said. \"We c an't talk about the particulars.\"\n\"And it needs nav data?\" Delgado looked at Diego.\n\"Yes.\" Diego nodded, and spread his arms. \"It reall y does, Ignatio. Please, trust me on this. Trust the Council as the Rubble's elect ed leaders.\"\nDelgado looked at the other members. They didn't lo ok like they meant him any ill. But was it the right choice, whatever they had in m ind? Delgado took a deep breath. It wasn't his decision to make, was it? The  Rubble had elected the entire Council for a reason. The Council had hired Delgado . He was no longer keeper of the data.\n\"Okay,\" Delgado said. \"It's aboard Distancia. I have to key everything open.\"\nDiego laughed. \"In plain sight, huh?\"\n\"The best place.\" For a quick moment, everything fe lt okay. Maybe even normal. Delgado relaxed slightly. The sensation was shattered as Peter Bonifacio step ped forward. \"I'll take him over to Distancia, then meet the rest of you at Exodus. The Distancia only has a light guard on it. It's an easy target. My guards aren't just Rubble Defense volunteers, they have actual fighting experience.\" There was accusat ion in his glare, and Delgado saw a few nod in agreement. It looked like Bonifacio ha d been knocking Delgado's ability to keep the data safe. Diego came forward. \"I go with you.\" He and Delgado  shared a glance.  136  Bonifacio shrugged. \"I'd be delighted to have you a board, Councilman, as well as anyone else who wants to come. Keep in mind, my shi p's quarters are cramped. This way.\" He held out his hand, indicating that they sh ould go first. His guards had already cycled through the airlock i nto the ship Bonifacio had waiting for them. It was a cramped ship, a converted tug of some sort . It had probably once grappled dirty asteroids and pushed them into new o rbits to be harvested by the miners and their processing plants. Now it was Boni facio's personal transport. Quick enough, Delgado thought, looking around the extende d cockpit once they'd come in through the airlock. But still a bit over the top. Who had a personal ship just for transport in the Rubble? It was part of Bonifacio's  desire to preen and make a point of showing how special he was. Bonifacio got inside, gave the order to leave, and turned to Delgado. In the darkly lit cockpit he looked birdlike, his eyes pools of b eady darkness. \"Someone fried my ship, everything electrical was shorted, and severa l good men guarding it are dead. That costs. A lot.\"\n\"I'm sorry to hear it,\" Delgado said, eyeing the th ree large guards now surrounding him in the tiny cockpit. Diego chuckled, and Bonifacio turned to him. \"This amuses you? The future of the Rubble is laughable? I'm working hard to make s ure we have a future, despite your meddling.\"\n\"A future?\" Diego shook his head. \"You're full of s hit, Bonifacio. You care about future profits, not the future.\"\n\"Yeah?\" Bonifacio reached into his pocket, hands tr embling slightly, face red.\n\"Were you all so high-and-mighty when the Covenant first came? Tell Delgado the real story, and how you all, in your democratic glo ry, turned to one person when it all came to a head.\"\nDiego didn't say anything. Bonifacio shook his head and pulled out a Sweet Wil liam. He pointed the cigar at Diego. \"They tell you how the Kig-Yar contact really happened? I'll bet not. Because it doesn't make those men look good.\"\nHe lit the cigar and drew in a long pull, then laug hed, cigar smoke puffing out of his mouth. \"They crapped their pants when that firs t Kig-Yar ship swung by the Rubble, scanning us, checking everything out. Wante d to know what to do. Attack it, or try to pack up and run to some other part of the  system? And if attack, how? But they were taking so long to deliberate, I did somet hing else.\n\"I hailed it. And I offered to trade. Sent them a m anifest of everything I could imagine we had in our storage areas. I explained we  weren't UNSC, that we hated them. That we were rebels. Because, really, even ot her species have to know about trade, right, Delgado? Economics, that's universal.  Everyone wants to better themselves.\"\n\"That was the real first encounter?\" Delgado asked.  \"So it's the second where their ship appeared and offered to trade and set up  in the Rubble?\"\n\"A month later. Some sort of Kig-Yar big shot named  Reth had a box that could translate their speech into ours. Like they've been  studying us,\" Diego said. \"And they wanted to trade.\"  137  Bonifacio nodded. \"We took guns off them to sell to  our brothers, where we could smuggle them back to the colonies, in exchang e for goods. The Kig-Yar, in turn, wanted Slipspace drives.\"\n\"Slipspace drives?\" Delgado frowned.\n\"Turns out the Kig-Yar are pretty low on the Covena nt totem pole.\" Bonifacio smirked. \"They're not allowed to build drives for t heir own ships. Its engineering is all done by the ones they call Prophets. Closed box es for the Kig-Yar. See, they're not the monolithic juggernaut the UNSC makes them o ut to be, this Covenant. They have divisions and inequalities. And where those ex ist, we have what you call a market, Mr. Delgado. Combine the engines with Earth 's location, and the Rubble will do more for the Insurrection than any other place i n history.\"\n\"But what happens when the Kig-Yar slip up and we'r e all found out?\" Delgado asked. \"The Covenant will be back to glass us.\"\n\"We leave,\" Diego muttered.\n\"Ahhh, exodus, exodus, exodus,\" Bonifacio waved his  cigar around. \"Diego, we have spent so long building all this. And you want to run away from it?\"\n\"I don't,\" Diego said. \"But it's irresponsible to n ot have a backup plan.\"\n\"I'll tell you what's irresponsible. Irresponsible is promising the Kig-Yar Slipspace engines, taking their payments of nifty l ittle weapons and shipping them back to the colonies, but then pretending to wareho use those engines until you've got them all gathered up. When you never intended to ha nd them over.\"\n\"Damn it, Bonifacio,\" Diego shouted, \"the council v oted to proceed with the Exodus Project. It's a backup plan. Once we have en ough Slipspace engines installed, then we'll hand the rest of them over.\"\n\"The Kig-Yar know what you've been doing anyway,\" B onifacio said dismissively.\n\"What?\" Diego stared at Bonifacio.\n\"You can't take an asteroid habitat as big as the E xodus Project and hang it way back off the Rubble, and not expect them to miss it . Plus, they really want their engines. They haven't believed your official excuse s for not getting as many delivered to them as promisednot in the slightest.  They are our allies, our business partners. We stand a chance to live on. Let the Cov enant and UNSC fight, while we make money and trade instead.\"\nDelgado stared at both men. \"The Exodus Project is a giant habitat?\"\n\"He's pretty much told you what it is,\" Diego said,  annoyed. \"The largest rock in the Rubble was held back from the beginning. The su rface was coated to try and stealth it. Back at the start, it was an emergency in-system retreat: get as many civilians in it if the Covenant came back in force and try to sneak out to the Oort cloud far on the edges of the system where no one v entures.\n\"Now the Exodus Project is being outfitted with Sli pspace drives. A lot of them. The idea is not to hide in the system, but to head out away from the UNSC, and the Covenant. Just get into the stream and keep going u ntil we're well away from all of this.\"\n\"That's audacious,\" Delgado said. \"How many citizen s can it hold?\"\n\"It's big,\" Diego said. \"Big enough for a million c itizens.\"  138  \"And you've hidden it away, all this time?\" Delgado  couldn't believe it. In the Rubble, where everything was voted on, the Security  Council had pulled off something significant: a major secret. The tug fired a series of thruster bursts and slamm ed into a docking collar. Bonifacio grabbed Diego by the shoulders. \"Look, Di ego. I know you and I don't exactly agree on everything. But I'm a Council memb er, just like you. I want to see the Rubble continue and prosper. I'm not your enemy . You know that, right?\"\n\"I know that,\" Diego said. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\"I want that data on Exodus protected, but not out here in the Rubble where people are attacking itwhoever the hell it is that 's doing that. Understand?\"\nDiego nodded.\n\"Good.\" Bonifacio pulled Diego tighter. \"Now tell D elgado here to let us onto his ship so we can get it and do our duty.\"\nDiego looked at Delgado. \"Give him what he needs.\"\nDelgado bit his lip. \"You sure about this?\"\n\"Yeah.\" Diego sounded subdued. \"It'll be okay. And we'll need to talk to you about the Exodus Project. You can't repeat any of t hat to anyone.\"\n\"I can keep a secret,\" Delgado said, as the airlock  doors opened. Diego laughed. \"I know. And after this, we'll make everything right for you. You took shots for us. They can't forget that.\"\nThey trudged out from Bonifacio's tug down an acces s tube to a set of quiet docks that Delgado had chosen. The rock ceilings sl oped fifteen feet overhead, and only four or five docking collars led into this sma ll chamber, as it was an old mining depot. Delgado crossed the silent chamber to the airlock w here Distancia was docked. They all crowded into the airlock and cycled throug h and in. Delgado took a deep breath, pulling in the smell of  metal, oil, and sweat. Distancia had once hauled miners out from Madrigal orbit acro ss the system to the Rubble. Now she ferried cargo in and around the Rub ble, from one end to another. Quicker than tube cars, as he didn't have to route through each habitat, pausing for traffic. It felt good to be back aboard. Maybe if Bonifacio was telling the truth, and he wa s really just a maverick Security Council member, then Delgado could just go  back to ferrying things about the Rubble. Like before Diego had called, talking a bout the disappearing navigation data, asking him if he'd take on hiding it for the council, as he knew the Rubble the best. And he was the only person Diego personally t rusted. Going back to ferrying sounded good, Delgado though t, as he walked the small group over to the safe hidden under the floor grate s of the tiny kitchen on the ship, halfway toward the cockpit. It opened on his fingerprint, and Delgado pulled th e oval container of hard plastic that held the chip out. He offered it to Diego. Bonifacio reached out a hand, and Diego shook his h ead. \"I think I'll be the one who keeps it on his person until we get it to the E xodus.\"\n\"I was afraid you'd say that,\" Bonifacio said.  139  Delgado turned around, eye to eye with the barrel o f a very large pistol in Bonifacio's hand. \"Hand it over to me, Delgado.\"\nDiego swore, and was hit in the ribs by one of Boni facio's men.\n\"Thank you,\" Bonifacio took the navigation data awa y from him. \"Thank you very much, Delgado. I'd hoped to just take it and p romise to meet you two aboard the Exodus and never show, but Diego had second thought s. You're rubbing off on him. Either way, Reth is really, really going to appreci ate this.\"  140\nCHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR\n\n\nMETISETTE ORBIT, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe Kig-Yar named Reth screamed, a primal roar of p ain and horror that echoed throughout the corridors of the ship, all the way u p to the cockpit, where Thel sat poring over Kig-Yar estimates of human strength in the Rubble. Zhar stood up, but Thel held up a hand. \"I ordered Saal not to do this. I will go.\"\nFor a moment Zhar remained up, then he folded back down into his chair.\n\"What\"\n\"That is my concern, Zhar.\" Thel walked out of the cockpit, past the Unggoy clustered in the halls. They chattered nervously an d cleared a path as Thel strode by. Thel walked to Reth's cell. The Kig-Yar had been st rapped to the wall, his arms and legs splayed out in a large X by strong straps. On the other side of the energy bars, Saal stood in  front of the Kig-Yar. As he leaned forward, the horrendous screams began again.  \"Why are you really here in this system?\" Saal bellowed. \"What is it you seek t o gain?\"\nReth spit purple blood and screamed. Thel shut off the containment system, and stepped i nto the alcove. \"Has he said anything new to justify continuing this interrogati on? Maybe something different?\"\nThel asked softly. Saal spun around, turning off his energy sword. Pur ple blood stained the hilt in his hand and dripped from his fingers. \"No, honor. He has not. He's still sticking to his story. That a Hierarch commands him to have don e all this.\"\n\"Have you forgotten your orders, then?\" Thel stared  Saal straight in the eye, neck bared, as if daring Saal to try for it. Saal backed away from the implicit challenge of con fidence, moving closer to a wall. Reth gurgled in the background.\n\"I wanted to break him of his heresies,\" Saal said.  \"What he's saying cannot be true.\"\n\"It is a poor soldier who insists on seeing things not as they are, but as he wants them to be. One day reality hits, and his illusions  fail him, and he dies stupidly. What honor is there in that?\" Thel stepped closer to Saa l, cornering him, dominating his space. Saal straightened. \"But if the Kig-Yar is right, th en one Prophet ordered him to come here and do this, and another ordered us to co me here and\"  141  \"It is not up to us to pick apart what the Prophets  may or may not have ordered, Saal. It is also not up to you to decide what order s of mine to follow.\"\nThel patted his waist, where his own energy sword w as clipped, and kept his eyes locked on Saal, who finally looked toward the groun d.\n\"I have failed you, honor,\" Saal said.\n\"You have.\" Thel sighed.\n\"I have lost nobility. I will do what is right.\" Sa al's energy sword flared into being.\n\"You will not take your life,\" Thel said. \"You will  scar your forearms with the mark of disobedience.\"\nSaal closed his eyes and shivered. \"Please...\"\n\"It is an order,\" Thel stood up straight and high o ver Saal. \"Now leave.\"\nSaal walked out of the cell with his head low from shame. Thel walked over to the slab of a bed and sat on it, facing Reth.\n\"Sangheili are insane,\" Reth hissed. \"What is the m ark of disobedience?\"\n\"He will use his energy sword to burn marks into th e skin of his arms. Crossing lines all up and down, where all can see and know h im for what he is. It is shameful. Death is preferred. But for now, I need all my figh ters. He can kill himself later, and we will destroy the body so that his lineage will n ot suffer. If he performs well in battle.\"\nReth shook his head. \"Sangheili...\"\n\"We are strong, Kig-Yar. That is why we sit at the right hand of the Prophets.\"\nReth laughed. \"One day that shall pass.\"\n\"Not as long as we remain strong.\" Thel stood. \"But  Saal's worries do trouble me. You still claim that it is the Prophet of Truth  who sent you here?\"\nAgain Reth laughed. \"You should worry. I speak the truth. And it was Truth who sent me here. He doesn't believe that the Prophet o f Regret has come even close to the human home-world.\"\nThel leaned closer. \"But this here is not the human  home-world.\"\nReth blinked, focusing his memories. \"When that Kig -Yar ship took back recordings of these humans begging to trade for the ir lives, Truth realized he had found a way to easily find the core of their infest ation.\"\n\"These heretical weapons,\" Thel said.\n\"Humans have rebels among them. Something Truth wan ts to use. The weapons are traceable. We could map the entire human popula tion if we got these rebels to smuggle back enough of them. Sadly, the humans have  a new directive that has killed this opportunity.\"\n\"They destroy data on their ships before they are c aptured, yes,\" Thel said.\n\"But we still have a chance to get the location of their home-world from them here. There are opportunists who will sell it to us . Once we have it, these habitats are ours to keep, the Prophet promised us. The Kig-Yar will hold a special place then, Truth has promised us.\"\nThel shook his head. \"The Sangheili will remain by the side of the Prophets.\"  142  \"You are too arrogant,\" Reth spat. \"The Jiralhanae betrayed you. We are given this special mission by the Prophet of Truth. Both seek to minimize your kind. You have dominated things far too long.\"\n\"We are in the midst of a holy war with the humans, \" Thel hissed. \"That is not the time for such things.\"\n\"But it is,\" Reth said. \"We will use our Unggoy arm y from Metisette to destroy the humans here once we have the data that leads us  to their homeworld. And we will be favored in the Prophets' eyes. Not you, Sangheil i.\"\n\"You are an obnoxious creature.\" Thel broke the str aps around the Kig-Yar and freed him.\n\"When we hand over the humans, we will be honored. The Prophets will look kindly on us in the final journey.\" Reth staggered over to the bunk and lay down.\n\"We will be holier and more blessed than you, Sangh eili. You will see. You will see.\"\nThel walked away, back to the cockpit, where Zhar l ooked up. He'd overheard their whole exchange.\n\"Do you believe him?\" Zhar asked.\n\"I think Reth believes what Reth is saying.\" Thel s at down, suddenly tired.\n\"What games are we caught in the middle of?\" Zhar a sked.\n\"I do not know,\" Thel said. He toyed with the image  of the Kig-Yar ship on his screen. It was the closest thing the Kig-Yar had to  a true fleet ship, similar to the designs of refitted Kig-Yar raiders that had fought  the Covenant from asteroid belts before the Kig-Yar were granted a place within the Covenant. He wondered if the Kig-Yar had managed to put a Sli pspace drive on it. It looked likely, though Thel wondered if the cobbl ed-together affair would make it through. It certainly didn't look like it. But it had weapons. Thel made a decision.\n\"We will take that Kig-Yar ship. We will use it to destroy all this heresy. If the Prophet of Truth shows up and tells me to stop, the n I will do so. Tell the others to prepare, and tell these Unggoy to ready themselves to be useful.\"\nUntil the Prophet of Truth himself showed up here, Thel had to follow the orders he was given. And since the Jiralhanae would be bac k with the High Prophet of Regret soon, Thel wanted his actions to show that h e had done his duty. Yes. The human habitats here would burn, just as th eir world Charybdis IX had burned.  143\nCHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE\n\n\nHABITAT EL CUIDAD, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nDelgado didn't even think twicehe grabbed the gun and kicked Bonifacio in the stomach. But in that split second Bonifacio's three  men piled onto him, trying to yank the gun away as they smashed his ribs. As he gasped from the pain, Bonifacio shouted, \"Sho ot them both and throw them out the damn airlock!\"\nBut Delgado had the gun up and pointed at Bonifacio  despite the pain of getting pummeled by the bodyguards. \"Get away from me. Or h e dies.\"\nThe three overly muscled men backed away, their gun s now out and trained on Delgado. Bonifacio smiled and held his hands up. \"Now, easy,  Delgado. Come on. We can work something out here.\"\n\"Screw you, Bonifacio.\" Delgado wasn't in the mood for his bullshit now.\n\"Give me a gun,\" Bonifacio snapped. The nearest hea vy tossed him one. Delgado hesitated, not really wanting to fire a gun inside his own ship. That hesitation cost him, because now Bonifacio had a gun of his own poi nted at Diego. \"I'm going to shoot Diego if you don't hand that over.\"\nDelgado thought about it for a second. Giving away the data would certainly endanger the Rubble. Bonifacio, it was now obvious,  would not be taking this data to the Exodus Project. No, he was going to sell it to the Kig-Yar. All signs pointed to it. Delgado shook his head. Bonifacio shot Diego in the chest. Blood sprayed an d hit the floor as Diego collapsed, clutching the wound with a look of shock  on his face. Delgado leapt over to Diego as he shot at Bonifacio , who ducked out into the corridor and ran for cover. Delgado waved the gun at the bodyguards. \"Back up. Back up.\" They were hired helptheir hearts weren't into the idea of a close- range shoot-out, luckily. Only Bonifacio was insane enough to fire inside a damn s paceship, Delgado thought. He grabbed Diego's collar and pulled him out of the ki tchen and down the corridor. Bonifacio fired down at him from the cockpit, the b ullets sparking off the metal bulkheads. Delgado fired back as he dragged Diego to the airlo ck. This was all messed up. Very messed up.  144  Diego moaned as Delgado pulled him into the lock an d cycled into the habitat's lock. A very loud bang startled him. The airlock seal broke as Distantia abruptly cut loose, her engines firing. Air whistled out of cracks in the warped airlock. R ed alarm lights blinked, and Delgado kicked at the door leading into the habitat . It wouldn't open, of coursewith the outer seal bro ken emergency systems had kicked in. As long as the simple sensors on the out side detected loss of air the inner door was locked. Delgado grabbed the emergency phone, and got Bonifa cio's voice. \"I just used an emergency Security Council code to override communi cations from your airlock,\"\nBonifacio said flatly. \"And I canceled the airlock' s alarm.\"\nThe strobing lights shut off. It would look like a false trigger. A mechanic would be sent out at his leisure instead of an emergency crew.\n\"You bastard.\"\n\"Good-bye, Mr. Delgado.\"\n\"Go to hell, Bonifacio.\" Delgado slammed the phone against the wall until it broke. Bonifacio had killed them. Almost as good as a bull et, Delgado thought. He sat down next to Diego, holding a hand to his ch est. Diego stared up at the ceiling, his breathing irregular and gasping.\n\"I'm sorry, Diego,\" Delgado said, looking down at h is old friend. Diego bubbled blood up from his mouth, but said not hing. Delgado closed his eyes and bit his lip. Already the air seemed to be getting thinner. Delga do lay down, breathing shallowly. Then he reached down into his right shoe and tugged  out the small beacon Adriana had given him. Delgado opened the casing and pressed the red switc h. A small green light flickered on, and started pulsating. He closed his eyes and waited.  145\nCHAPTER THIRTY-SIX\n\n\nMETISETTE ORBIT, 23 LIBRAE\n\nReth lay curled up on the uncomfortable slab, think ing about the warmth and closeness of a Kig-Yar nest, and how far away such things were from him at the moment. He hurt everywhere, thanks to his treatment by the Sangheili. Oh, they'd pay for this. Reth followed the orders of a Prophet. Who were they to treat him so cruelly?\nThe Sangheili thought they were lords of it all, bu t they were just thugs, Reth thought. Little different from the Jiralhanae and t heir violent approaches to everything in the world. Soon the Prophets would listen to all Kig-Yar, Reth  thought. Reth was here, working to find the secret of the human home-world.  It would have been his already, if not for the Sangheili meddling.\n\"Unggoy!\" Reth carefully got off the bench, his lim bs protesting, his steps dizzy. The Sangheili would have to go. Things were so clos e to being finished. Soon his human agent would have the location to Earth for hi m. Once Reth had that, then the army of Unggoy he'd gathered on Metisette would be ready to be unleashed on the Rubble. The asteroids would make wonderful Kig-Yar nesting grounds.\n\"Unggoy, where are you? You must attend me. Are you  not believers in the mission the Prophet of Truth himself gave to me, an d thus to you?\" Reth collapsed to the ground in front of the energy bars that kept hi m jailed. Once he had the Rubble, he thought through a haze, and the location to Earth, the humans' Exodus Project would provide him the vehicl e he needed to then bring the Unggoy to attack the human homeworld. A daring plan. A Kig-Yar plan. A plan the Prophet of Truth had agreed to when Reth  presented it after returning with the secret of the Rubble and the humans' desir e to trade. He'd kept it a secret from his own Shipmistress, a violation that would h ave gotten him castrated if found out, but it had paid off handsomely.\n\"Unggoy!\"\nNow they'd been discovered, the Jiralhanae were ret urning to broadcast the news about the discovery of the Rubble to a different Pr ophet. The Kig-Yar couldn't stop them. But they could move  the plan up, so that they wouldn't look like traitors, trading with the human s.  146  No, it was time to destroy the humans and their hom eworld and show the Prophets that it was the Kig-Yar, not the Sangheili  or Jiralhanae, who were the most cunning and loyal and holy subjects of the Covenant . The shuffling steps of two furtive Unggoy soldiers got Reth to focus on the ground in front of his long face.\n\"Sangheili kills us if we release you,\" one of the Unggoy protested.\n\"And you'll risk your chance at joining in the Grea t Journey because you're scared of these Sangheili,\" Reth hissed. His ribs hurt. The Unggoy shuffled their feet again, methane snort ing out from their masks as they looked back and forth at each other.\n\"Will you risk the Sangheili destroying the Redoubt , and all you've built on Metisette?\" Reth asked. \"Will you see all the Unggo y on that planet punished, when they've been following the right Path?\"\nThey glanced at each other again. \"Our nipple broth ers would be all killed?\"\nThe Unggoy sucked food from a shared tube, a nipple , Reth remembered. \"Yes, your nipple brothers would all die.\"\nThat was enough to get them to free him. One of the  Unggoy tapped at the controls for Reth's cell. Reth smiled as the energy bars disappeared. He roll ed out of the cell before the Unggoy changed their minds. \"Quick, you must help m e escape.\"\nThe two Unggoy grabbed him under his arms as he wob bled, prompting Reth to grunt in pain. Together, all three hobbled down the  corridor until Reth had them stop near a service panel. The Sangheili may have taken the ship by force, and  cowed the Unggoy, but Reth still had some tricks of his own. He shut down the ship's computer system with an override password. While the Sangheili raced to reboot the system, he had the Unggoy drag him to an escape pod. Minutes later the cylindrical pod shot out of the s hip, veering back toward Metisette at top speed, as the Sangheili coasted wi th a dead ship. It was time, Reth thought bitterly while rooting ar ound the pod for a medical kit, to show the Sangheili that Kig-Yar could fight.  147\nCHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN\n\n\nTHE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nMike flew the Petya through the Rubble, flipping the ship end over end for sudden deceleration, and weaving his way around docking tu bes and asteroids. In the confines of the airlock, braced against Mike 's radical maneuvers, Jai swore. \"I don't see why I'm in the airlock for the quick rescue, Adriana. He's your pet Insurrectionist.\"\n\"Shove it,\" Adriana muttered over the suit radio. Jai stiffened. \"Is that how you talk to rank?\"\n\"When rank stops whining I'll modify my behavior,\" Adriana said. \"Besides, I need to be in the medical bay in case Delgado's hur t.\"\n\"So we're trusting an Insurrectionist AI and rushin g to help an Insurrectionist. You see anything wrong with this?\" Jai asked. Another voice crackled in his ear. The AI. Juliana.  \"Technically the Rubble is a collection of people with many different background s. Only a small percentage of them are actually Insurrectionist as you understand  it\"\n\"Can it,\" Jai muttered, as Mike flipped the ship ag ain, making his stomach lurch. Mike fired the engines to dodge docking tubes. \"Any thing new about Delgado?\"\n\"The airlock the signal emanated from is still thro wing me error codes from the broken seal,\" Juliana reported. \"You're still the c losest ship. An emergency crew is outside the lock on the habitat side, but can't get  at it, of course. I've broken the communications block on the airlock, but no one ins ide is responding.\"\nJai thought about that. A broken airlock and silenc e. \"Doesn't sound too promising.\"\n\"No,\" Juliana replied. \"It doesn't.\"\n\"Coming in on the lock,\" Mike shouted. Jai felt the  Petya shudder like it never had before, and he was pressed against the side of the airlock despite the artificial gravity. He was glad he wasn't looking at this from the cock pit. Metal ground on metal as Mike forced the wrecked ai rlock against theirs.\n\"We're go on your command,\" Mike reported. Jai faced the thick metal door with its yellow stri pes and red warning symbols and notices. \"Do it.\"\nThe airlock sprung open with a gust of air. Then th e habitat's airlock ground open with a tiny puff of air.  148  Jai forced his way through the moment the gap was l arge enough. Two men lay on the floor of the airlock's nonslip m etal surface. Delgado, a gun in one hand and the other bloody, lay over the stom ach of a man with a bad chest wound. Blood pooled the floor around them, freezing  as the vacuum sucked air and warmth out even faster now that a bad seal was in p lace between ship and habitat. Jai threw Delgado over a shoulder of his gray MJOLN IR armor, and picked up the other body as gently as possible, aware that he  could be making the chest wound worse. He cycled through back into the Petya, thudding his way past bulkheads into the tiny cramped offshoot to the crew quarters where Ad riana stood ready by a large metal table. She looked up. \"Two? Who's the other one?\"\nJuliana flickered into being over a nearby shelf. \" That's Diego Esquival.\" Her voice sounded muted, as if she were shocked. Adriana shook her head as she checked him over, whi le Jai held him in his arms still. \"He's dead.\" She pulled Delgado off Jai's sh oulder and set him on the table.\n\"But Delgado's got a pulse. Store the other man int o one of the cryogenic pods.\"\nJai walked Diego's body around the table and to one  of the three pods. Once he set it down and closed the lid, the automated syste ms kicked in. Diego was frozen in his last minute, for all the good it did him. When he turned around, Adriana had an oxygen mask o n Delgado and the computers reading his vitals. Delgado stirred and opened his eyes, the oxygen tak ing effect. He tried to sit up, but Adriana put a hand on his chest to keep him in place. \"You're back on the Petya, Delgado.\"\n\"Diego?\" Delgado groaned, looking around. \"What abo ut Diego?\"\nJai and Adriana glanced at each other, and Delgado saw it. He seemed to fall back in on himself, shaking his head and looking of f into the distance. \"Damn that bastard.\"\n\"What bastard?\" Juliana asked from the corner of th e room. Delgado twisted to see her better, and his mouth fe ll open. \"You!\" Warring emotions crossed his face. Jai figured the man had wondered if the AI was not to be trusted, but that the revelation still caught Delga do off guard.\n\"Yes, me.\" Juliana grinned. The hologram folded its  arms. \"What happened, Delgado?\"\n\"Bonifacio happened.\" Delgado all but spit the name  out. \"He took Distancia. He also shot Diego.\" Delgado bit his lip, and slowly s at, holding his knees to do it with a grunt.\n\"I knew Bonifacio was a sketchy man. I have watched  him smuggle things into the Rubble. I know of ten different caches he uses.  He's definitely running those covenant guns to the colonies. He campaigned hard f or that Security Council spot,\"\nJuliana said as Adriana and Jai watched the exchang e. \"But to do this?\"\nDelgado looked at the AI. \"We have to catch him.\"\n\"He's not even trying to run,\" Juliana said. \"Your ship is slowly coasting through the Rubble.\"  149  \"Bonifacio thinks I'm dead. He's taking his time, s o he doesn't alarm anyone.\"\nThe group looked at each other, and Delgado caught the glances. He raised his voice.\n\"Oh come on, I would not have done this. Why the he ll would I risk my life to break an airlock? And do you think I shot Maria's brother ? Really?\"\nJai tapped the table. \"Juliana, he makes a good poi nt.\"\nDelgado turned around to him. \"And since when are y ou and the Rubble's AI all working together? When the hell did that start?\"\n\"When the Jackals started getting too close to the data,\" Jai said, staring Delgado down. Juliana was quiet, her eyes closed. \"Okay Delgado. I think you are right. We have a big problem.\" She opened her eyes to look at the three people staring back at her, and the equations streaming across her holographic body suddenly flashed bright red.\n\"Kig-Yar ships are withdrawing all throughout the R ubble. They're en route for Metisette.\"\n\"You told us the Jackals were up to something, like  an invasion. Could this be it?\" Jai said.\n\"Their encryption is good. I can't break it just ye t. But communications traffic is up and that can tell me something. I've never seen activity like this. Delgado says Bonifacio is stealing the data. And this is happeni ng at the same time as the largest movement of Kig-Yar ships we've seen since they fir st started arriving to make a presence on the Rubble. It has to be related.\"\n\"Damn,\" Delgado said. \"We were rightall they wante d was the data. They're making a move now, right?\"\nJuliana continued. \" Distancia is moving in the direction her flight plan indicate d, but could make a break for it the moment it gets cl ear of the Rubble to wherever the Kig-Yar want it to. We have to get to it and stop B onifacio. And prepare for whatever it is the Kig-Yar are up to.\"\nJai nodded. \"Our first priority is Bonifacio.\" They  had to focus on that; that was Gray Team's mission. Adriana met his eyes, then nod ded. She agreed. \"Once we have that secured, Juliana, you have our assistance .\"\nThe AI had her eyes closed again. Planning, running  through the millions of threads spread all throughout the Rubble in a way n o human could. But she was an AI close to rampancy. Jai wondered h ow much they should follow her plans. He'd have to revisit that once they had their hands  on Bonifacio and the navigation data. Juliana faded, becoming almost a ghost in the brigh t medical bay, then she appeared again. \"Okay,\" she almost whispered. \"I ca n pass the fix I have on Distancia onto you, but I'm going to need some of you to help  me. One team goes after Bonifacio, the other I need to do something a  little bit trickier.\n\"There's a Kig-Yar ship still in the Rubble. I can' t crack their encryption, but if I can physically get into one of their systems, that would let me figure out exactly what they're up to. If it's a full-scale attack, we need  to know for sure so that we don't make a big mistake. If we use non-Rubble attackers,  then the Rubble can deny this little incursion was our doing if things turn out t o be okay with the Kig-Yar.\"  150  Jai looked at the AI. \"You want us to board a Coven ant ship?\"\n\"And plug me in, yes.\" Juliana nodded. \"My higher f unctions. I'll be leaving a simple base copy to keep regulating the Rubble, of course. But the core me will go with the boarding party.\"\nJuliana was rampant. Or just plain insane, Jai thou ght. He scratched his chin, then looked at Juliana. \"We'll need a larger force. We n eed to free the crew of that UNSC ship that was captured. It'll have ODSTs aboard. Re lease those men and we have a force.\" Helljumpers weren't huge fans of the Sparta ns, but were somewhat like Spartans, Jai had to admit, but without the altered  physiology and powered armor. And they were good fighting men; he was sure he cou ld get them to storm a Jackal ship. It was the sort of thing ODSTs would enjoy doing.\n\"I'm not the ruler of the Rubble,\" she said. \"Only the Council can release them. Besides, most of those people are tagged with locat ers. People will notice it if they start trooping out to help us.\"\n\"Do all of them have locaters?\" Adriana asked. Juliana smiled. \"Not all. The ones who refused to b ecome Rubble citizens don't.\"\n\"Then we can use some of them,\" Jai said.\n\"I won't open the doors,\" Juliana said. \"That would  draw attention. But if the cameras were to malfunction, you could break the cr ew out and get them to help you before anyone would really notice.\"\n\"That'll have to do.\" Jai turned around. \"Adriana, Mike, you take Bonifacio. Delgado, you're with me, I need someone who knows t he inside of these habitats.\"\nDelgado swung his legs over the side of the table w ith a wince. \"You sure you're going to break up your little team?\"\nJai grinned. \"Who else will be able to talk the ODS Ts into coming with us? Mike, Adriana, get on the navigation data, and quickly. I 'll take care of things for Juliana.\"\nThe Petya shuddered as Mike disengaged the ship. \"I'll drop y ou off at the nearest working set of locks,\" he announced. \"Then it's a full burn for Distancia .\"\nDelgado stood up, wavering on his feet. \"Do me a fa vor,\" he asked Adriana.\n\"When you catch up to Bonifacio, make sure you shoo t the thieving bastard for me. Preferably in the knee, or somewhere painful like t hat.\"\nThe Petya thudded into another airlock.\n\"I'll go release the others,\" Jai told Delgado. \"Yo u and Juliana need to scare up another ship for the attack.\"\nDelgado and Juliana exchanged a glance. \"We're on i t.\" Jai ran a systems check of the Mjolnir armor, and walked down the corridor for a pair of M7 submachine guns and extra ammo.  151\nCHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT\n\n\nTHE REDOUBT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nReth quickly strode through the hall of one of the Redoubt's grounded ships. There were ten old decommissioned ships that had been lan ded around \"the Plaza,\" with the largest Kig-Yar ship towering over them all from th e northeast corner. Docking tubes connected the ships like bridges high over the grou nd. And if Reth chose, he could descend into the ground , where every day the Unggoy warrens spread deeper and farther into the w armed rock. The escape pod he had landed in still sat out on the landing pad of t he Plaza, crackling and shimmering from the heat of reentry. He'd lived in fear for several long minutes, convin ced that the Sangheili would get the ship running in time to turn around for him , but they hadn't. The Sangheili had gotten the ship booted up and kept moving along  their trajectory, headed for the Rubble. Reth needed to order the Infinite Spoils away from dock along with all the other Kig-Yar ships, but he was reluctant to do so. Soon the Infinite Spoils would have human Slipspace drives, something the Hierarch hadn 't even granted Reth, but something that all Kig-Yar wanted: a Slipspace ship  of their own. But first Reth needed to take the Rubble, and any human ships with  the drives, for the Kig-Yar. The humans had been stockpiling the Slipspace drives th ey'd traded for to install in their own machine: the Exodus Project. But when the Infinite Spoils got its drives it would mark something new, as long as the Kig-Yar could spirit it out of the Rubble be fore the Hierarchs heard of it. Everything was about to change, Reth felt, as he to ok an elevator up into the tall, grounded ship that was the Kig-Yar refuge inside th e Redoubt. There were many, many more guards around now than when the Sangheili  had broached it. He entered his room. The remains of the firefight h ad been cleaned up, the glass replaced so that he could, once again, look out ove r the Plaza, and the Redoubt as a whole. The river of methane on the surface of Metisette ru mbled underneath their creation. Its passage turned giant turbines, creati ng power for the entire complex. The Unggoy thrived here among the mists of methane recl aimed from the rivers and pools.  152  Shuttles were already descending from the reddened clouds to touch down on Metisette's surface. Kig-Yar were forming up in the  square below the balcony, as well as Unggoy Deacons. All per his command. Several of his key advisors hustled up behind him. They looked shocked at the wounds all over his body, and his hunched position.  Reth paid the stares no mind.\n\"We have planned for the invasion of the Rubble for  a long time,\" Reth said, doing his best to straighten up against the twinges  of pain the Sangheili had left him.\n\"Is it time?\" they asked. Reth smiled. \"Yes,\" he said. \"It is time. Send the orders. Gather the Unggoy out onto the Plaza. Give them their harnesses and masks . Prepare for the attack. We will take it all for our own, and once we have that data , we will continue to their homeworld as well.\"\nThe Kig-Yar in the room warbled happily. They had b een waiting patiently as the humans developed asteroids that the Kig-Yar conside red prime for Kig-Yar nests. Now they would be rewarded.\n\"Go,\" Reth snapped. \"Tend to your functions!\"\nThe Kig-Yar advisors scattered out of the room, bum ping into a slew of Unggoy that waited outside. They were not rocketing into the Rubble just yet. B ut for all intents and purposes, the invasion had begun.  153\nCHAPTER THIRTY-NINE\n\n\nHABITAT ASUNCION, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe first sign for Keyes that something was happeni ng were the shouts from the guards who had been walking the corridor outside. T wo of them ran full tilt past Keyes' cell. Keyes walked over to the bars as the g uards dogged shut the thick, metal door leading to the corridor. They pulled out handg uns and stepped back from the door.\n\"Faison?\" Keyes shouted down the row of cells. \"Wha t's going on?\"\n\"Don't know,\" came the response. The guard on the left side of the door looked back at them. \"Quiet!\"\nKeyes pressed his face against the bars to get a be tter look. As he did, the large metal door exploded inward between the two guards a nd bounced down the corridor. A heavy cloud of dust hung in the air, making every thing hazy. Something large and gray blurred through the door. The guards shot at it, but not before it smacked into them, knocking them both out  with quick blows to the head. The figure paused, and a golden faceplate scanned t he rows of cells. Keyes heard Faison's incredulous voice: \"Holy shit, a Spartan.\"\nDirt settled on the gray armor, then shook off as t he Spartan thudded down along the cells.\n\"Who's the commanding officer?\" it asked loudly fro m behind the helmet. Keyes put a hand out through the bars. \"That would be me, Lieutenant Jacob Keyes.\"\nHe still couldn't believe this. Had the Spartan com e just for them? Where had he come from?\nThe Spartan stopped in front of Keyes. \"Back up.\"\nKeyes stepped back, and the Spartan gripped the bar s and yanked them off their hinges, metal squealing in protest and more dirt fa lling from where they'd been set into the rock. The Spartan tossed the door onto the floor behind i t and walked into the open cell. \"I have a proposition, Lieutenant Keyes.\"\nBy the entryway between the bent bars the face of a n AI appeared. \"We may have a way to help you get your crew back to where they belong as well. If you're interested.\"\nKeyes leaned out of the open cell. \"I'll listen to you both. You can explain what you're doing here and what's going on while you fre e my men.\"  154  The gold faceplate looked him up and down. \"Of cour se. I'm Jai, Spartan double oh-six, Gray Team.\"\nKeyes shook hands with the large, gauntleted hand.\n\"We need an attack force,\" the Spartan said as he m oved from cell to cell. \"To get the AI Juliana into a Jackal ship and back out. To figure out what the Covenant are up to in this system, and whether they're readying an invasion force.\"\n\"You're a Spartan. You haven't tried going after th e ship already?\"\nThe gold faceplate shifted. \"Those are long odds. N ot something I want to try unless I absolutely have to, and am feeling extreme ly lucky.\"\n\"Fair enough,\" Keyes said. \"You said you could get my crew out?\"\nA few more mangled bars clattered to the ground. Fa ison and his ODSTs had rifled through the pockets of the guards for key ca rds. Now they moved door to door, unlocking cells with less drama. A crowd of officer s and crew now milled about. Jai paused in front of Keyes, now that he no longer  needed to free prisoners. \"The ship we came in has navigation data. We can join it s computers with your ship's by docking for a Slip-space jump. It'll be awkward, bu t your frigate should be large enough to clamp us on.\"\nKeyes looked over at Faison behind the Spartan. \"Yo ur men willing to jump a Jackal ship?\"\n\"You kidding?\" Faison said. ODSTs behind him nodded . \"Beats rotting here.\"\nThe AI tilted her head. \"Ignatio Delgado has a ship  ready for you all. The alarms are shut down, but the guards change shifts soon. Y ou'd better all clear out.\"\n\"She's your ship's AI?\" Keyes asked Jai.\n\"No,\" Jai replied. \"I'll explain later.\"  155\nCHAPTER FORTY\n\n\nHIGH ORBIT HESOID, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel idly scratched at a small piece of charred car bon that had been flaking off his armor while the Unggoy before him trembled, wonderi ng about its fate. He finally stopped. \"So Reth escaped.\"\n\"Lords...\" The Unggoy shook as it started to speak. \" Reth is devious. And he has commanded all within this system. You can imagine, most Unggoy are eager to please our masters. It is easy to be confused at ti mes like these, when lords turn against lords.\"\nThel stood up from the pilot's seat. Saal looked up  from his console. The Sangheili winced as he moved, the crisscrossing sca rs of his shame scabbing and causing him pain. Which was the point. Saal refused to look at Thel; he kept his eyes cast  down at the floor. Another sign of his shame, a refusal to meet another Sangheili's  eyes. The message had gotten across to Saal, Thel thought . It was a shame it had taken so long to control him. Thel leaned closer to Saal. \"It will only bring sha me if you do not perish triumphantly in battle.\"\nSaal looked up, a glimmer of hope brimming in his l arge eyes. \"I will redeem myself before you and my ancestorsby my blood I sw ear it,\" he said.\n\"I know you will,\" Thel replied. \"That is why I ord ered you to remain by my side for now.\"\nAhead, on their screens, the Rubble grew larger as they got closer.\n\"I want you to lead the charge on that Kig-Yar ship ,\" Thel said. \"The Infinite Spoils. It is powerful enough and large enough for what I h ave in mind.\"\n\"I'll destroy anything in our way,\" Saal said.\n\"Good.\"\nThel returned to the shaking Unggoy. \"And you, will  your soldiers do their job, by the Prophets? Or will they risk the chance of da mnation by disobeying?\"\n\"Sirs! They will fight. They have seen the error of  their ways,\" it said.\n\"Then you will follow close behind Saal,\" Thel said . \"Saal, get weapons for yourself and the Unggoy.\"\n\"My honor,\" Saal said, and left to go equip himself . Zhar, still in the cockpit, scratched a mandible. \" You think the Unggoy will really fight hard to take the ship?\"  156  \"Do they ever really fight hard?\" Thel wondered. \"I  just need them to cause confusion while we do what needs to be done. With t hat ship, we can destroy this\n'Rubble' and get things moving back in the directio n they're supposed to be moving.\"\nZhar nodded. \"And Saal will fight like an unleashed  army to regain honor.\"\nThel grumbled happily. \"Yes. Yes, he will.\"  157\nCHAPTER FORTY-ONE\n\n\nHABITAT ASUNCION, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nDelgado ached all over. His throat felt like someon e had taken steel wool and shoved it down to his stomach, and he couldn't help stumbl ing a bit as he walked from the bridge down to the airlock of a decent-size freight er, not all that much different than Distancia. But adrenaline kept him moving. Juliana had run through a list of ships they could commandeer on short notice in the name of the Rubble Security Council and found t his old bucket. Delgado had moved and docked it near the prison. He reached the airlock and flicked switches to powe r the door. Jai marched through first, with a quick nod at him. A long stre am of UNSC Navy types trailed behind him. The man immediately following Jai wore a standard o range prison jumper, but he had the air of command. He walked over to Delgado. \"You're the pilot?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Excellent. I'm Lieutenant Jacob Keyes. They've ask ed me to run the ship. I hope I'm not stepping on any toes?\" Keyes looked around the cockpit, and Delgado could tell the man knew exactly what he was looking for.\n\"No toes,\" Delgado said. \"I'm happy to work with yo u.\"\n\"We need weapons,\" someone said. Juliana appeared as a hologram over at the communic ations station. \"And weapons you shall have. I need a few more minutes t o download a version of myself into this ship. There's a high-capacity storage chi p in the comms panel, Jai, Delgado. When we get to the Kig-Yar ship, you'll need to get  that into the ship and plug me in.\"\nIt looked like some fifty people had invaded the fr eighter. Keyes looked around. \"This bucket have a name?\"\nDelgado looked at Juliana. \"The Mighty Sparrow,\" the AI reported. \"And no, I have no idea why. I'm downloaded now, though. Time to disconnect.\"\n\"Good.\" Delgado took the pilot's chair, and Keyes m oved to stand next to him as Delgado cast off from the airlock. \"Where to, Julia na?\"\n\"Habitat Greenworthy for the weapons,\" the AI repli ed. She looked around at the cockpit. \"So many determined men all around me. It' s quite exhilarating.\"\nNo one responded.  158  Keyes cleared his throat as Delgado began moving th e Mighty Sparrow through the Rubble toward Habitat Greenworthy. \"The trick w ill be approaching this Jackal ship. If they get their shields up we'll be useless . By the way, do we have a name for this ship?\"\n\"The Infinite Spoils,\" Juliana muttered. One of the crew on deck, Dante Kirtley, who had sea ted himself near Juliana's image at comms, suggested a diversion. \"You asked a bout tricks, sir. We need to keep their eyes on something else while we drift ne ar.\"\n\"What can you offer us?\" Keyes asked Juliana. \"You said you controlled the Rubble when you were catching me up as we walked fr om the prison over to the ship.\"\nJuliana thought about it for a second. \"A very larg e industrial accident. I can cut loose one of the asteroids being mined. We can floa t it by their ship. It'll give them a scare but it won't hit.\"\n\"Excellent,\" Keyes said, folding his arms. \"Add a l ot of debris, we'll use it for chaff.\"\n\"Consider it done,\" Juliana said. \"And because they  built this Kig-Yar ship here in the Rubble, we'll be able to dock with them. No need for suits.\"\n\"What about just attacking the dock they're attache d to? Why a ship?\" an ODST asked.\n\"They have the dock airlock guarded,\" Juliana said.  \"Of course, a few feints from the docks will also serve to keep them distracted, so I think it's a good idea to attack from the docks as well as via a ship.\"\nNow they had a plan, Delgado thought, as crazy as i t was. And they seemed to have a leader, because even Jai, hardened Spartan t hough he was, deferred to Lt. Keyes' command of the bridge.  159\nCHAPTER FORTY-TWO\n\n\nOUTER RUBBLE, LIBRAE 23\n\nThe Petya had been hunting down Distancia, without the other ship even aware that there was a cat-and-mouse game going on. Both were plain freighters, long ships with spars a nd cargo containers bolted to the main frames. But Petya had the advantage of being extraordinarily well arm ed. Inside the Petya, Adriana watched Mike lean over the controls with th e air of a predator waiting in the bushes, patiently biding ti me before striking. \"He's edging out of the Rubble,\" Mike whispered. That was all Adriana needed. Enough toying about. J ai was getting ready to invade a Covenant ship, while they were out here. T hey needed to move quickly to wrap this up and get back to support him. \"Alright,  let's hit him.\"\n\"We're done playing hide-and-go-ship?\" Mike smiled.\n\"Definitely.\"\n\"You hail them, I shoot them.\"\nAdriana looked at the screen showing their trajecto ries. \"Shoot this jerk first. Hit the engines. We're not playing games. We can't give  him a chance to turn back and do the right thing. He already chose his fate back at that airlock.\"\n\"Yessir,\" Mike said, with a sudden grin. Two distan t thumps under her feet indicated missiles away. Twin rocket trails flared in front of the cockpit w indows as they sped ahead, and then slowly curved down.\n\"He sees them,\" Mike reported, as Distancia increased power to her engines to make a run for it. But the missiles closed the dark  gap between the two ships and slammed into Distancia 's rear.\n\"Nice!\" Adriana said, looking at the debris trailin g off the stern of the Distancia.\n\"Crippled in one shot.\" Mike leaned back. \"They're not going anywhere.\"\nAdriana hailed the stricken freighter. \"Distancia, this is Petya. We took out your engines, don't make us hole the rest of the ship. I 'm coming aboard. You cause any trouble, it gets ugly. You cooperate, you live.\"\nFor a long moment there was no reply, leading Adria na to wonder if they weren't monitoring any of the standard channels. Then finally, over a burst of static, a reply: \"Petya, this is Peter Bonifacio, aboard the Distancia. I have to protest this extraordinary hostility. I a m a member of the  160  Rubble Security Council, on a top-priority mission.  You are way out of line, whoever the hell you are.\"\n\"Shut up and get ready to open your airlock, Bonifa cio,\" Adriana snapped.\n\"But what is this about?\" Bonifacio whined over the  radio. Adriana didn't reply. Mike pulled them in over the Distancia's spine, getting ready to dock.\n\"I will report this,\" Bonifacio radioed. \"You can t rust that...\" Adriana muted the volume. The Petya shuddered as the two ships docked, Mike grappling t hem into place.\n\"Pressurizing the lock. You're go in twenty,\" Mike said. Adriana pulled her helmet on and snapped it into pl ace. \"Once I'm in, you undock. Just in case. Hit them from a distance if i t goes bad.\"\n\"You sure about that?\" Mike asked.\n\"Damn straight. I'll find a way off.\"\n\"Ten seconds to full pressure.\"\nAdriana turned and left the cockpit for the airlock . She flipped her battle rifle forward and stood in front of the door as the light  on the airlock door flashed green. It slid open and Adriana walked through, wincing sligh tly as it then slid closed after her. There was always a sense of finality in leavin g the safety of a base ship like this, a sense of stepping off the edge of a metaphorical cliff of some sort. And now she was free-falling her way into a new sit uation, a new set of variables:\nwhatever was on the other side of the large metal d oor in front of her. But then, she liked the screaming flow of adrenalin e coursing through her. She liked the adrenaline rush even back when she'd first showed up at the Spartan training grounds, staring with all the othe r kids at the instructors. She hadn't broken out with Jai because she wanted to escape. S he'd done it for the fun, that feeling of stepping off the edge. The more dangerous, the more it felt like she was r eally someone. It beat the gray numbness of stillness, and sameness. The world seemed to vibrate as Adriana watched the outer door open, her rifle up, her vision expanding into a sort of hunting state. She burst through into the Distancia's airlock where nothing waited for her but benches and metal grating. The door closed behind her, and the Petya disengaged with a loud thump as Mike cleared away. Adriana waited until Mike had time to get well clea r, then banged on the inner airlock door. It opened, and two gunshots cracked into the armor over her ribs. Adriana grunted and rolled through the crack in the door, f iring back at the two men shooting at her. Always take the offensive, she thought. Don 't get backed into a corner. After dropping them she moved back into the airlock  for a moment and checked her armor. Just dinged. But her ribs ached from taking the impact.  161  \"Hold on,\" a voice shouted. Not Bonifacio, another bodyguard of his. A handgun skittered down to stop in front of the airlock door . \"I'm not going down like that, no way. I signed up as a bodyguard, that's it. I'm una rmed, now, please don't shoot.\"\nAdriana moved her back against the corner and glanc ed at the gun. \"Who else is there?\"\n\"Just me.\"\n\"Bonifacio?\"\n\"He's in an escape pod,\" the bodyguard said. His vo ice quavered a bit. Adriana spun around the corner and marched up on th e bodyguard, a slender man with a shaved head. He looked up at her, hands up n ear his chest to show he was unarmed.\n\"What's your name?\" Adriana asked.\n\"Sean. Wha...What the hell are you?\" The patch on his  jumpsuit said s. Williams.\n\"You catching this, Mike?\" Adriana murmured, amused . \"Any pod launch yet?\"\n\"No,\" came the answer. Adriana looked down at Sean. \"Why hasn't he launche d?\"\n\"Because you'll shoot him,\" the bodyguard said.\n\"Tempting, huh?\" Mike said.\n\"So what game is Bonifacio playing, then?\"\n\"He's hailing us,\" Mike said.\n\"Put him through,\" Adriana sighed. Bonifacio's voice filled her helmet. \"You're after the navigation chip, right?\"\n\"Hand it over and live, Bonifacio,\" Adriana said.\n\"Maybe. I heard what you did to my crew, soldier.\" Bonifacio spat the last word.\n\"I'm not stupid enough to believe you'll just play nice once I hand the chip over.\"\nAdriana sighed. Now the man was getting seriously j ittery and causing problems.\n\"Bonifacio...\"\n\"Here's the deal. I am leaving the data onboard, bu t I'll tell you where it is once I've cleared the ship in my pod.\"\n\"Oh, come on,\" Adriana said. \"And then we find out that you lied and have the chip on you.\"\n\"We split the difference,\" Bonifacio said quickly. \"Let me get far enough away in the pod that it would require some serious work, fo r you to catch up to me. A good faith gesture that you're actually going to let me go. I get to that point and I tell you where the data is.\"\n\"Let me think about it,\" Adriana replied, and toggl ed the mic off. \"Williams?\"\n\"Yes?\"\n\"Did Bonifacio make a copy? And if you lie, don't i magine I won't make you pay for it.\"\nWilliams shook his head. \"No, he didn't think you w ere on to him until you shot the engines out.\"\nAdriana moved until her faceplate stopped an inch f rom Williams' nose, looking at his reaction. She waited until he finally closed  his eyes. Satisfied, she flicked the radio mic back on. \"Alright, Bonifacio, you cut loo se.\"  162  Mike came on. \"Adriana, you sure?\"\n\"Jai is about to storm that ship without us, Mike. We don't have timewe need to move quickly and get back to him.\"\n\"Okay, he just shot clear.\"\nAdriana walked over and stood by the pilot's chair of the crippled ship, and watched the tiny pod dwindle away on one of the mon itors. The pinpoint flare of its exhaust finally winked ou t. Bonifacio's voice crackled. \"It's taped above the e dge of the airlock's lip, right where you entered.\" He laughed. Adriana ran down to the airlock. She felt along the  top of the rim of the entrance delicately, and found the chip where he said it was . She pulled it free and looked at it. It wasn't much  more than a tiny, stubby hardened wafer that sat in the palm of her hand. So  much trouble over such a small thing, she thought as she slid it into a hip pocket .\n\"Got it?\" Mike asked.\n\"Think so. I'm coming back to double-check,\" she ra dioed.\n\"I'm moving in.\"\nShe stepped into the airlock, and Williams moved fo rward. \"What about me?\" he asked.\n\"You stay aboard the ship.\" Adriana put a hand to h is chest and pushed him back.\n\"Someone will eventually be out for you.\"\n\"Eventually?\"\n\"It'll give you time to think about the quality of the people you choose to work for.\"\nThe door slid between them, and Williams looked thr ough a porthole at her. Adriana turned her back to him and cycled aboard th e Petya. She walked forward to the cockpit and handed Mike the chip. He plugged  it into the ship's computer.\n\"It's good.\"\n\"Then let's get the hell out of here.\"\nMike looked at the monitors tracking the escape pod . \"You sure you don't want to go after him?\"\nAdriana bit her lip. \"Let him rot in his pod. It's going to be a long journey. I don't imagine whoever he was working for is going to be h appy. People like Bonifacio might believe the Jackals are suddenly warm and fuz zy, but he's insane if he thinks the Covenant is going soft. He's a dead man, he jus t doesn't know it yet. Let's go.\"\n\"Strap in, then,\" Mike said. \"We're bugging out.\"\nThe nearest chair groaned as Adriana sat in it. The y'd reinforced the chairs to deal with fully armored Spartans, but the chairs st ill protested the weight. Then Mike spun Petya around and fired up the main engine, speeding them toward the Jackal ship that Jai was going to be sto rming. She hoped they got there in time. Because she would be a little bit disappointed if t hey missed all the action, Adriana realized.  163\nCHAPTER FORTY-THREE\n\n\nMIGHTY SPARROW APPROACHING HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe freighter Mighty Sparrow drifted ever so slowly behind the protective bulk o f a stray asteroid as Juliana reassured some very worri ed Jackals that the asteroid would miss the Infinite Spoils. An industrial accident. A debris cloud of rock, water vapor, and metal shar ds all completed the messy illusion. On deck, a tense Lt. Keyes eyed the screens, watchi ng closely. Everyone in the cockpit was suited up, guns at their hips, ready fo r anything. He glanced over at Li and Kirtley, who had both managed to integrate them selves into the crowded bridge, helping out where needed.\n\"You have the mass driver primed to shoot their shi elds out, just in case this doesn't work?\" he asked Juliana.\n\"Yes, but at that point we have to assume that even  the Jackals won't believe that the attack on their ship was by escaped UNSC, if th at comes into play.\"\nKeyes doubted they'd believe this was the work of a  lone UNSC vessel anyway, but Juliana wanted a door out, in case they found n o plans by the Jackals for the Rubble. Privately, Keyes felt the Rubble should just assume  the Jackals had plans for invasion and strike first, intrigue like this be da mned. But it felt good to be back in action against the C ovenant one way or another.\n\"Get ready, then,\" Keyes muttered. They were close.\n\"The Kig-Yar shipmistress is relaxing; her computer s are showing the rock won't hit. She's yelling at me for being careless,\" Julia na reported.\n\"All teams go, then,\" Keyes said. \"Now or never.\"\nJuliana's body flashed a sudden increase of the equ ations that decoratively flowed over it. \"Airlock assault teams are go in te n, nine...\"\nKeyes turned to Delgado. \"Fire it.\"\nThe pilot triggered the thruster sequence, and the entire asteroid rolled them around to face the Jackal ship. The thickest part o f the cloud of debris lay between them and the Jackal ship as the Mighty Sparrow leapt across the several hundred feet, thrusters blazing.\n\"Four, three...\" Juliana intoned.  164  \"Brace for impact!\" Keyes shouted.\n\"Two, one.\"\nThey struck, and the Mighty Sparrow screeched and shivered as its hull smacked against the Infinite Spoils. \"ODSTs are go for intrusion,\" Keyes ordered.\n\"Moving out,\" Faison reported via radio, the bangin g of an airlock door coming over the channel.\n\"I'll be adding support,\" the Spartan, Jai, reporte d.\n\"We're locked in. Very nice maneuvering, Delgado,\" Keyes said. \"Our hull is holding, minor leaks.\" He let out breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Juliana cleared her throat. \"The Kig-Yar shipmaster  is complaining that we are deceitful, cowardly liars.\"\nKeyes chuckled. \"I take it she's figured out she's under attack.\"\nIn the distance, gunfire started up, with the retur n whine of plasma answering it.\n\"Yes,\" said Juliana. \"I would say that she has.\"\n\"We have contact,\" Faison reported.\n\"Pull me,\" Juliana said. \"We want to be ready to pl ug in the moment we get the chance.\"\n\"Okay.\"\nKeyes leaned over and gently slid the chip, in real ity a small matchbook-sized card, out of its housing in the station. Juliana's hologram flickered away, and he tucked it into his chest pocket as he left the cock pit. A pair of ODSTs flanked the airlock, battle rifles at the ready. \"What have we got?\" he asked.\n\"Pretty small contingent of Jackals. We have the co rridor in secured. Faison has us pushing them back toward their bridge.\"\nThe sound of grenades boomed out, bouncing around t he walls.\n\"Breached the bridge,\" Faison reported. \"There's st ill fighting outside the ship by the other entry airlock. You have a clear path to m e, though. I'm sending Jai back to get you.\"\n\"I'll be here,\" Keyes said, as the echoes of the la st blast finally dissipated, and the distinct sound of a wounded Jackal's screams follow ed it.  165\nCHAPTER FORTY-FOUR\n\n\nINFINITE SPOILS OFF HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nJai whipped out his submachine gun and peered aroun d the cloud of smoke the grenades left behind. Jackals lay draped everywhere  on the bridge, thrown clear by the explosions. Nothing stirred in the haze, but Jai walked around,  putting a round in the head of each Jackal for good measure.\n\"Bridge is secure,\" he reported. ODSTs streamed in after him. \"Bridge is clear,\" the y confirmed. They had plowed through the Jackals quickly on thei r way up to the bridge, Jai running in front. Five Jackals, unable to hide behi nd their energy shields, had died in the corridors. Same for the bridge crew. But from the sound of battle chatter, the bulk of t he fighting Jackals had run out of the ship to fight the initial attack from the do ck. A good hundred or so of them had held their airlock  against that threat, not even for a second imagining that they were going to get boarded from the outside. It was easy enough to keep them from getting back in. The AI and Lt. Keyes had a flair for this, Jai thou ght.\n\"Spartan, can you head back and provide protection for Lt. Keyes?\" Faison asked.\n\"On my way,\" Jai replied. He took one last look aro und the bridge. The ODSTs were throwing the dead Jackal bodies into a pile in  the corner. He double-timed it back down the corridor. ODSTs snapped quick nods at him as he passed, some flat-out stared as he thudded his way back toward the Mighty Sparrow. He passed Li and Kirtley running toward the bridge with a pair of ODSTs guarding the m. Keyes waited in the airlock. As Jai stepped inside,  his earpiece crackled. \"Jai, this is Delgado.\"\n\"Go ahead,\" Jai said.\n\"I'm passing on a message from Petya. They report success, and are on their way back. That's all.\"\n\"Thanks,\" Jai said. He smiled inside his helmet. Ad riana and Mike had taken care of business. \"You ready?\" Jai asked Keyes.\n\"Yes. And by the way, Spartan?\"  166  \"Yessir?\" Jai looked down at him. Keyes smiled up at Jai. \"Boy, is it nice to see you  out here with us.\"\nSo many things could still go wrong, Jai thought. B ut they'd stormed a Jackal ship, destroyed most of the nav data, and had contr ol of the rest. So far, so good.\n\"Jai, Faison, Keyes,\" Delgado's voice burst over Ja i's moment. \"We have a problem. There's a ship inbound. Not ours. Covenant .\"\nKeyes frowned. \"Already?\"\nJai put a hand on the lieutenant's shoulder. \"Come,  Lt. Keyes, we need to move quickly, then.\"  167\nCHAPTER FORTY-FIVE\n\n\nUNNAMED KIG-YAR TRANSPORT, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel looked at the monitor, not quite believing wha t he saw: a human freighter, docked with the Infinite Spoils. And he was listening to the Kig-Yar battle channel, where they screamed about human attacks by their UN SC warriors. Zhar looked over at him. \"This Rubble grows strange r by the day, Shipmaster.\"\nThel shook his long head. \"As strange as this may b e, it cannot surprise you. The humans are hereticsit was foolish of the Kig-Yar t o think they could enter into an alliance with them.\"\n\"Nonetheless, the airlock is occupied. What do we d o now?\" Zhar asked.\n\"Shoot the human ship,\" Thel ordered. \"It will eith er move, or we will have to burn our way in.\"\nThel leaned back in his command chair, watching pla sma leap out toward the human ship.  168\nCHAPTER FORTY-SIX\n\n\nMIGHTY SPARROW NEAR HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nDelgado grabbed the sides of his navigation chair a s the cockpit shuddered. Air pressure droppedthe ship had been holed. He pulled  the visor shut on his suit and sealed the gloves. It made operating a console clum sier, but it was clear this bucket was going to be full of nothing but vacuum soon eno ugh. The monitor showed the Covenant craft firing anothe r round of plasma at them. Delgado winced as the Mighty Sparrow groaned. A large chunk of the cockpit ceiling caved in, and the glass all blew out. This was bad. They needed to bug out.\n\"We're losing the freighter,\" Delgado reported. \"Ge t your men out of this ship, Keyes. It looks like the Jackals have reinforcement s.\"\n\"Get inside the Infinite Spoils with the ODSTs then,\" Keyes said. \"Abandon the Sparrow, it's a lost cause. If we leave the Sparrow docked, they'll have a hard time getting through her. We'll fight our way out down t he docks.\"\nDelgado cleared out of the cockpit. At the airlock one of Keyes' men waited for him. Faison, if he remembered the name correctly. \" I came back to make sure all my men were out,\" Faison barked, putting his black hel met on. Delgado could see the corridor he'd just run down reflected back in the v isor. \"Keyes and Jai are on the bridge, jacking the AI in. We're headed for the doc ks. I want to lead the breakout there.\"\n\"I'll go with you,\" Delgado said. Running with the leader of the Helljumpers had to be a safe bet. They ran through corridors, Faison leading, turning  the corners with his battle rifle up at chin level. Delgado followed, handgun o ut. He was struggling to keep up with the marine, thoug h. His legs hurt, his lungs hurt. Everything was one big ache. Faison turned a corner well ahead of Delgado and pl asma fire burst out. Faison dropped to the ground with a grunt, firing as he fe ll. The smell of burnt flesh filled Delgado's nostrils. Delgado rounded the corner firing his pistol low, s hifting his aim to hit a Kig-Yar running down the corridor in the feet. It howled, e nergy shield falling to the ground, and Faison shot it in the head.  169  \"Damn it!\" Faison shouted. He sounded angry, not hu rt. Despite that, the floor was slick with his blood. The shot had been close t o an artery, Delgado guessed. Even without the charring, Faison was in bad shape.  \"This corridor was supposed to be cleared.\"\n\"He could have been hiding until now.\" Delgado crou ched in front of the marine. Faison's right thigh had been hit. As he cursed the  Jackal, Faison used a knife to cut off long strips of cloth from his left pant leg. Delgado helped him make a makeshift tourniquet, tyi ng it off around Faison's upper thigh to reduce the bleeding. It was a blood- soaked rag by the time they finished. Delgado wiped his hands on his trousers. \"You need a medic.\"\nFaison leaned his helmeted head against the wall an d groaned. \"I know,\" he grunted. \"But if we call someone down we're putting  them in risk.\"\nDelgado sat down against the opposite wall. \"What a re you doing?\" Faison asked.\n\"Waiting for help with you,\" Delgado said. Faison shoved the battle rifle across the floor. \"N o, you keep moving. You'll have a better chance of getting out of here if you head for the docks. Keep your eyes open.\"\n\"There is no way I'm leaving you behind,\" Delgado s aid.\n\"Leave me your pistol,\" the marine said. \"Take my r ifle. I've been shot in the thigh and I've already lost too much blood. I'm not  walking out of here, pilot. It's just not going to happen.\"\n\"You have men to lead. We can get them to come back  via the docks for you,\"\nDelgado said.\n\"I'm not spending lives to save my own,\" Faison sai d. He shifted his position and winced, and then he yanked his helmet off, throwing  it down beside him. \"I turned the corridor too fast, I let my guard down, and I p aid the price.\"\n\"And if I wasn't in such rough shape, I would have been right there beside you,\"\nDelgado said.\n\"Battle is random like that, sometimes.\" Faison ges tured for Delgado's pistol, and Delgado tossed him Senora Sies. The marine examined it. \"Fancy piece.\"\n\"It has a long history,\" Delgado said.\n\"I'll bet so,\" Faison muttered. \"I'm sorry to have to ask for it, but you'll be better off with the rifle. Now go, quickly.\"\nDelgado stood up, and grabbed Faison's wrist in an extended handshake. \"You're a good man, Faison. For UNSC.\"\nFaison laughed. \"I bet it hurts to say that.\"\nDelgado smiled. \"Not really, soldier. Not really.\"\n\"Go,\" Faison hissed. \"Please.\"\nDelgado turned the corner with the battle rifle up and at the ready, his footsteps echoing softly off the walls as he left the ODST ma rine behind him in a pool of blood. Once he was down the corridor he ignored Faison's c ommands and radioed Jai.\n\"Faison is down. If you can get back to this locati on at any point, he really needs a medic. He'll need backupwe were ambushed.\"  170\nCHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN\n\n\nINFINITE SPOILS, OFF HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nKeyes watched as Juliana appeared over the alien co nsole, her form wavering and sparking.\n\"It's getting bad out here,\" he told her. \"We have Jackals on the docks in solid numbers still holding out, and reinforcements at th e door on the other side. We abandoned the Mighty Sparrow. Please tell me all this was worth it.\"\nJuliana ignored him as her eyes flashed incandescen t white and she dropped to her knees. \"Strong security,\" she whispered. Then s he opened her eyes wide. \"But it was worth it. We're in real danger. All of us. Yank me,  Lieutenant, and get me back into the Rubble. I have the data I need, and we nee d to act fast. The Kig-Yar are coming for us. The Rubble will need to make a stand . Get me out of here, Keyes. Now!\"\nKeyes pulled the chip and pocketed it.\n\"To the docks?\" he asked Jai. The Spartan's gold visor turned to him. \"I need to make a detour. Your man Faison's hurt. Delgado asked if we could help.\"\nKeyes nodded. \"Get to him.\"\nJai thudded out of the room, and Keyes turned to th e ODSTs inside the cockpit.\n\"Let's get out of here.\"  171\nCHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT\n\n\nINFINITE SPOILS, OFF HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel stepped aboard the Infinite Spoils with a snarl. The human ship had clogged up their attempt to board, and they'd had to shuttle o ver on boarding ships, burning their way aboard the docked human freighter. It left him in a testy mood. And with Unggoy millin g about bumping into each other, Thel's mood had darkened further. He leaned over to Zhar. \"Have any of them figured o ut how to move this human ship away?\"\n\"No,\" Zhar replied, looking over the Unggoy standin g around the cockpit, pushing buttons and chattering to each other. Thel sighed. \"Leave five Unggoy here to cut the shi p loose with plasma torches once we get through the airlock.\"\nHe stalked back to the airlock and made his way thr ough after several Unggoy. They fanned out ahead of him into the corridors, th eir ungainly steps making far too much noise. The Kig-Yar ship felt empty. No Kig-Yar had even tr ied to hold the airlock. Had the humans killed them all?\nAnd if so, where were the humans?\nZhar followed him through. After the airlock closed , the sound of welding and cutting came through from the other side. A moment later a loud creaking sound filled the corridor, then silence.\n\"The human ship is cut loose. The Unggoy Deacon and  Saal say they're towing it free and casting it off,\" Zhar said. \"So far, no hu man ships have come to sniff around.\"\n\"Good.\" Thel looked around. \"Unggoy toward the brid ge. Zhar and I will secure the other airlock from the docks and eliminate any Kig-Yar there.\"\nThe Unggoy dutifully headed up the corridor. Zhar patted the plasma rifle in his hands. \"Let's g o, then.\"\nThel's old friend took the lead, turning corners as  Thel quickly followed behind, keeping him covered as they thudded down the inside  of the ship through bulkhead after bulkhead. Zhar turned a corner and flinched as human gunfire slapped into his armor. The old Sangheili fired downward, and the shots stopped .  172  The now dead human, its back against the wall, had been already wounded. A large shot to its thigh had bled the creature's str ange red blood out onto the floor. Zhar had shot it once: clean through the head.\n\"It was sitting down,\" Zhar said. \"Startled me. I b arely got a return shot in.\"\n\"You are lucky it didn't have a more powerful weapo n.\" Thel kicked away the handgun lying by its side.\n\"Indeed.\" Zhar actually sounded somewhat shaken. He  squatted in front of the dead human. \"I wonder why they left one of their ow n behind like this? Was it a trap?\"\n\"Who knows how they think?\" Thel said. \"Who cares? They are heretics. They do not deserve names or life.\"\nZhar wouldn't stop worrying at some idea deep in hi s head, \"I don't know, Thel. You're a true zealot, I know, and I would never dou bt the word of the Prophets, but we've fought the humans for years and they show som e capacity for honor. Look, they left behind one of their own, who was bleeding  and dishonored, to spring a trap and die with honor. Don't you think that indicates something profoundly noble about them?\"\nThel looked down at the dead alien and thought abou t it, \"You think too much, Zhar.\"\nAs he said that, Thel saw something move quickly ou t of the corner of his eyes. Zhar snapped out his plasma rifle and fired, just a s the large, gray-armor-clad human fired back with a rifle of its own. Thel pulled out his energy sword as the armored hum an smacked into him, carrying them both rolling down the corridor until they struck a bulkhead hard enough to make Thel's vision blur and knock his swo rd loose.\n\"I cannot get a good aim,\" Zhar shouted, as Thel st ruggled to get a grip on the powerful human's rifle. The loud human gun fired into the floor several tim es as they fought over it, and then Thel got the barrel in both his hands. He stared at his reflection in the alien's visor an d roared as he bent the weapon, straining to make it useless. The gold visor stared  implacably back at Thel. There were no sounds, though the alien was straining just  as hard. What creature did not choose to show its face that wasn't a soulless and dead one? Thel roared again. \"Demon! Heretic. Unholy ali en!\" He headbutted the gold visor, snapping the human's neck back with each whi plike blow. The human threw him back and yanked a primitive kni fe from the chest of its armor. The two warriors stood, staring at each other for a  split second. Thel suddenly realized that they would both die, fighting to the very end, equally matched. Equally matched with a human. Thel spat purple blood from his mouth. This was a surprise. The human looked over at the other dead marine, sho ok its head, and then took off down the corridor.\n\"We follow it,\" Thel gasped, out of breath. He'd br oken a rib with that impact.  173  \"What was that?\" Zhar asked, cautiously pointing his plasma r ifle around the corner.\n\"I do not know,\" Thel said. \"It was strong, though. \" He joined Zhar, turning around the corner.\n\"Looks like it was headed to the docks. Let's go.\"\nZhar had a small limp, and it hurt for Thel to run,  but neither of them would allow these to slow them. Both Sangheili ran all ou t, grunting occasionally, to the airlock dock. They got there just in time to see the gray-armored  human disappear past the lip, running out into the large cavernous docking area w here human tracers and Covenant plasma filled the air. Kig-Yar corpses lay around the airlock. Zhar took one side, Thel the other, forgetting abou t the strange new human for now. \"It looks like the Kig-Yar were protecting the  ship,\" Zhar said. \"But were surprised by the attack from inside.\"\n\"The humans are moving out onto the docks, back int o their habitats,\" Thel noted. \"They have done us a favor. They cleared the  ship.\"\nHe shut the airlock door with a laugh and walked ov er to Zhar and clapped him on the shoulder. \"Guard this door, old friend. I wi ll head to the bridge and get us moving. We will pick up Saal, and then we will see what our options are.\"\nZhar nodded.\n\"But you should also check to see what it was the h umans were doing aboard when we get clear,\" Zhar said. \"We do not need anym ore surprises.\"\nThel thought about the pain in his ribs, and what h ad felt like a close brush with death, and nodded. What had that human been?  174\nCHAPTER FORTY-NINE\n\n\nHABITAT TIAGO DOCKS, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe sound of the ship's airlock doors shutting echo ed throughout the spare cavern that the Kig-Yar had as a docking bay. The lanky al iens paused, looking over at the doors. Two of them ran for the lock, banging on the  door, as loud clanks and hisses told everyone in the docking bay that their ship wa s undocking. Delgado watched the panic spread through the Kig-Ya r as they realized what had happened. The Kig-Yar had kept bunched up on the fa r side of the docks, close to their ship's airlock. That had made getting out ont o the docks a dangerous exercise, but the Kig-Yar had realized that letting the human s get off their ship was better than trapping them in it. Now they were no doubt wonderi ng who the heck was taking their ship. Keyes, hunkered down on the far side of a shipping container they were both using as cover, waved Delgado over. The immense bul k of the gray Spartan Jai stood behind the lieutenant.\n\"I'm sorry to hear about Faison,\" Delgado said. The  word had spread as they'd remained pinned down by the Kig-Yar. The aliens, wi th their energy shields and snipers, were doing far better now in the large, op en docking bay than in the tight confines of the ship. Keyes nodded. He looked tired, Delgado thought. The se men were all his responsibility. The four dead in the open area of t he docks were on Keyes. Now so was Faison.\n\"Jai has an idea,\" Keyes said. The Spartan stepped forward. \"You had them all suit  up, Keyes. Everyone's vacuum ready. Only a few Jackals are equipped. If w e figure out how to flush the air out of the entire dock...\"\n\"We'd need Juliana for that,\" Delgado said. One cou ldn't just flush the atmosphere out of a habitat without extensive overr ides. Keyes pulled the large chip out of his pocket that held Juliana. \"Jai will cover you; you just need to get somewhere to plug this in . Get Juliana back up and have her flush the bay. We'll pick off the stragglers.\"\nDelgado almost reverently placed the AI's chip into  his pocket. She'd been created to manage the mining operations of a Madrig al corporation, helping guide asteroids to processing plants around the system. S he may have been commercial AI, nothing like the industrial strength thinkers the U NSC used, but she'd somehow  175  managed to keep the entire Rubble together since th e fall of Madrigal. Juliana had been a protector of the Rubble for so long she was almost like a technological deity, a god everyone in the Rubble looked to for help with their troubles. And she fit in his pocket. He scanned the docks. \"Over there.\" He pointed Jai at a console used by supervisors to run the docks. \"That should be doabl e.\" It was well away from the bulk of the firefight.\n\"So go!\" Keyes said. The rate of fire from the ODSTs picked up as Jai an d Delgado made a run for it, ducking from one set of containers and large struct ural spars to another. They stopped a mere fifteen feet from the console. Delgado swallowed. From where he had been, the cons ole looked out of the way. Up close, he realized it was in the open. Though fa r away from the Kig-Yar, they were good shots. Jai realized it too, because the Spartan turned and  held out a gauntleted hand.\n\"Give her to me, I'll plug her in.\"\nDelgado stared at the Spartan's hand. He'd be just handing over one of the most important assets the Rubble had. How much did he trust these UNSC Spartans?\nSo far they'd worked toward the same goals. If you didn't start trusting someone at some point, he thought, then you'll never trust again. This Spartan was offering to risk his life to get o ut in the open and try to save them all. How much proof did Delgado need?\nHe took a deep breath and handed Juliana over. Jai cupped the chip in his hands and darted out. Fo r a brief second it looked like the Kig-Yar hadn't spotted them, that Jai would mak e it to the console and back before they noticed anything. But as the Spartan stood and inserted the chip, pla sma fire struck the wall overhead. Delgado leaned out and wildly fired his battle rifl e at the Kig-Yar. Several plasma shots grazed Jai, but he kept the ch ip guarded until Juliana's form appeared over the console.\n\"Get back!\" Delgado shouted. \"She's in the system.\"\nNear misses blackened the gray armor as Jai ran bac k to cover, firing his battle rifle as he did so. Three Kig-Yar fell over, dead. Delgado marveled at the Spartan's accuracy. At this range, across hundreds of feet of  dock, all Delgado had done was harass the Kig-Yar. Jai slammed his back into the container as plasma s lapped the other side, boiling metal. Delgado's earpiece crackled, and Juliana's voice fi lled his ear. \"Thank you, Delgado, Jai. What do you need from me?\"\n\"Blow the air out of here,\" Delgado requested.  176  Juliana didn't reply, but a second later all the ai rlocks feeding into the docks blew open with the bass warbling of emergency sirens and  strobing warning lights. Air rushed out into the vacuum, thundering past, and th e sound of plasma fire stopped. It was over in a few minutes. ODSTs popped up and s hot the few remaining Kig Yar that were in full gear and still able to breath e and fight. The other aliens died horribly, flailing around, as phyxiated, their long mouths open and frozen in silent screams. Keyes and the ODST Markov looked out over the carna ge once the docks repressurized. Keyes looked a bit horrified at the carnage. Markov looked slightly pleased. Jai stood behind them, towering high, battle rifle in hand. \"The Petya has caught up to us,\" he told Keyes. \"I would suggest you use it as a temporary command center. It'll keep you from getting recaptured, at the leas t.\"\nKeyes ran a hand over his silvering hair and nodded . \"Thank you, Spartan. We'll need it. Juliana reported that this is just the beg inning, the Kig-Yar are up to something. Juliana might as well brief us aboard yo ur ship.\"\nJai slung his battle rifle and plodded off toward o ne of the nearby airlocks. After a moment, Delgado followed, both glad to be out of the dock full of dead Kig-Yar.  177\nCHAPTER FIFTY\n\n\nSANGHEILI-OCCUPIED SHIP INFINITE SPOILS, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel looked over the reports that Zhar had patientl y gathered for him. The humans had dug around the Kig-Yar battle net, which had be en poorly secured.\n\"These are details on where the Unggoy Redoubt is,\"  Zhar said. \"Including force strength, ships, how they will shuttle the Unggoy t o the Rubble for an attack, and plans for an invasion of one of their habitats call ed 'Exodus'. The humans have the whole Kig-Yar battle plan for themselves now.\"\n\"Well, they are clever creatures,\" Thel said. He sh ut the display down. \"You yourself admired that, if I remember correctly.\"\n\"This is troubling, though,\" Zhar said. \"It means t he Kig-Yar, Reth, may have been telling the truth.\"\nThel sighed. \"That they plan to trick the humans ou t of the location to their homeworld?\"\n\"Yes. And that he was doing a holy duty for a Hiera rch. You must admit the possibility, looking over those plans to attack the  humans. These have been in place for years.\"\nThel rubbed the bottom of a mandible thoughtfully. \"It is a possibility, now. I agree.\"\n\"Then we may have crossed the Hierarch,\" Zhar said.  \"You of all should know how that chills my heart.\"\n\"A Hierarch,\" Thel said, cautiously.\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\"What I mean is that we were given a set of orders that put us in conflict with orders given by another Prophet.\"\nZhar shook his head. \"These things border on heresy .\"\n\"Then do not speak of them ever again,\" Thel said. \"But it does not change our situation.\"\n\"But\"\n\"So we shall also send a message to Reth,\" Thel sai d, trying to add a note of reassurance to his voice. \"We will not approach or attack the Exodus asteroid that the Kig-Yar want. We will attack the other human parts of the Rubble, working to destroy the humans there.\"  178  Zhar swallowed. \"Will that be enough to convince th e Prophet of Regret that we did what we were asked?\"\nThel grumbled. \"We will destroy the Rubble. We will  grind it to pieces from this Kig-Yar ship. How will they doubt our zealotry, the n, Zhar? We offer Reth our agreement to leave their habitat alone, and maybe w e will come out ahead.\"\n\"Maybe?\" Zhar left the cockpit in a dark mood, and Thel sat down on the shipmaster's chair with a sneer. This was not Coven ant standard; it was designed for Kig-Yar. It was an insult and an expression of thei r rebellious impulses. And even worse, it was an uncomfortable fit for the Sangheil i. Nonetheless, it would be a good spot from which to oversee the destruction of the R ubble. The sooner this mess was wrapped up, the sooner The l imagined a more normal life would resume. Betrayals and intrigues were not  his strong suit. Sangheili were almost always more... direct. Thel punched the console in front of him in frustra tion, shattering the screen and denting the metal.  179\nCHAPTER FIFTY-ONE\n\n\nMETISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nPeter Bonifacio unstrapped himself from the pilot's  seat of the escape capsule. The long-burn engine had run out; he'd kept the thing m axed to get well clear of the damn Spartans that had hunted down Distancia. Now he coasted toward Metisette. What was that damn Kig-Yar's code? Bonifacio hunted  through scraps of paper in his pockets until he found the tiny card. He plugged the frequency into the escape pod's cont rols and transmitted the emergency. Then he waited nervously until the speaker crackled  with the sound of Kig-Yar voices. \"Peter Bonifacio. Proceed.\"\n\"I need help,\" Bonifacio blurted out. \"I'm in a cap sule, headed toward Metisette. I need to be picked up!\"\n\"And do you have our navigation data with you?\"\n\"Is this Reth?\" Bonifacio asked. A moment as the question was transmitted, and then translated. \"This is Reth,\"\ncame the response. \"Our data?\"\nBonifacio swallowed nervously. This was indeed Reth , he told himself. He'd done a lot of business with the Kig-Yar. This was a bout business. And a partner like Reth would understand a setback. He was dealing wit h a trade-oriented species, just like himself. Reth would understand. \"The data was stolen from me,\" Bonifacio finally admitted.\n\"Stolen? What use is this to us? Why did you bother  even calling to admit this?\"\nBonifacio couldn't tell because of the delay and mo notone of the translation device, but it felt to him that Reth sounded angry.\n\"I know where they will be taking the data,\" Bonifa cio said quickly. \"Please, if you come help me I'll help you get the data.\"\nAnother pause before the reply, then, \"You are a us eless lump of nothing that once glittered to us, Bonifacio. We gave you weapon s to smuggle, and make a profit on. We gave you docking rights, and helped you in e very way we could imagine. And all we asked is this one favor, for which you f ailed us.\"\n\"No!\" Bonifacio screamed over the radio. He started  babbling. \"You can't just abandon me, you owe me. We worked well together. We  were good together.\"\nOnly silence came from the other end.  180  \"I'll tell you where they are taking it, if you do me this last favor,\" Bonifacio begged.\n\"Where are they taking it?\" Reth asked.\n\"To the Exodus asteroid,\" Bonifacio said. \"And if y ou do me the favor of picking me up, I'll tell you where it is.\"\nReth laughed. \"I already know where it is, thank yo u. We will be taking it for ourselves soon enough.\"\nBonifacio's mouth dried with fear. He'd been wrong,  he realized. About the Kig Yar. Probably about everything. But he still had hi s life to save. \"But...\"\n\"I will do you this last favor, Bonifacio,\" Reth sa id. \"I will not come pick up your pod. Because right now, were I to pick you up, the last moments of your life would be horrible indeed. Good-bye, human.\"\nThe radio went silent. Bonifacio was alone, floating toward Metisette, loo king out the tiny portholes of his escape pod at the distant ruddy orb. He wondered if the air would run out before the hea ter stopped.  181\nCHAPTER FIFTY-TWO\n\n\nSOMEWHERE NEAR CHARYBDIS IX\n\nThe Prophet of Regret stood in front of a giant scr een that showed his fleet assembled in the far distance: tiny specks of light waiting t o be flung through space wherever he wished. He turned his chair about to regard the other body in the room: the Prophet of Truth. Regret frowned as Truth rebuked him. \"You are, as e ver, too hasty.\"\n\"How is this?\" Regret whined. \"I have sent my hunte rs out to find the source of what I thought was trouble. I have hunted the human s. I have acted .\"\n\"You have not acted well. My plan was more elegant. \"\nTruth, Regret thought, always did like working his intrigues. He shouldn't have been this surprised to find out Truth was behind th e design of these smuggled weapons. They were all just an attempt to furtively find the  human homeworld, Truth had said, without further fleet engagements. Never mind  that Regret knew they could smash the humans, one world after another. Truth wo rried about the secret of humans, and their first encounter with them. Partic ularly since the three Hierarchs had worked so hard to hide that secret.\n\"Does it matter now what we have done?\" Truth said.  \"There is a mess, and it needs cleaning. The fleet needs to return to this w orld. If the Kig-Yar have the location of the human homeworld, we can use it and the Unggoy quartered there. If not, then we destroy all traces of this... experiment .\"\n\"I agree,\" Regret said, finding himself once again following Truth's lead.\n\"The Jiralhanae who betrayed your Sangheili shipmas ter, they will need to be destroyed. Their loyalty is commendable, but the kn owledge of what they saw must die with them. We do not need any in High Charity speaking of this.\"\nRegret agreed. \"You will travel to this world with us, and watch the fleet in action?\"\nThe Prophet of Truth bobbed his head. \"I want to se e this all concluded, yes. I have had my effects brought onto your flagship. We will have joint command. Together we will fix any problems. As we always hav e.\"\nRegret turned and looked at the screen, with its li ve images of the fleet. Truth had platitudes, words about being brothers, now that hi s experiment had failed. But they were only brothers with a shared secret while the h umans lived.  182  If they ever got rid of the threat humans presented , then Truth would have no need of Regret. More than ever, Regret realized, if  he ever had the chance to destroy the humans first and keep control of his position i n the Covenant, he would have to move fast in the future. Faster than Truth's intrig ues. Regret shook himself from his thoughts. \"Then it is  time for us to go there,\" he said. And using the controls on his floating throne , he keyed in a channel to the ship's bridge and gave the order for the fleet to make the  jump.  183\nPART IV  184\nCHAPTER FIFTY-THREE\n\n\nPETYA, NEAR HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nDelgado sat down in the cockpit of the Spartan's fr eighter, finding it strangely reassuring to be back aboard. Keyes had joined the Spartans aboard the Petya, along with Markov and Delgado. The other ODSTs remained out on the docks, cleaning  up after the firefight. Things were happening all across the Rubble, Delgad o felt. Juliana was off in some vast, spread out, processing mode that made it  hard for her to focus on one small area. But she'd asked them all to get ready f or a conference. So now they were just waiting, Mike running checks on the Petya, Jai and Adriana in the back examining his armor after the battle. Keyes paced the cockpit, waiting for information, f rustrated. Markov just stared at the metal floor, somewhat shell-shocked at the d eath of his commanding officer, Faison. Everyone surged into the cockpit, though, when Juli ana finally returned to manifest herself.\n\"I'm sorry for my absence,\" she said, appearing ove r the communications console. \"I was verifying the data I had taken from  the Kig-Yar ship. I'm also presenting this information to all members of the R ubble Security Council.\"\nShe faded away, and in her place the moon Metisette  appeared. It zoomed large, until its clouds hung in front of the crowd in the cockpit. The image increased, until an irregular oval appeared on the rocky ground of M etisette's surface. Another leap in perspective showed it to be the rem ains of a crater. Liquid covered the very bottom, filled by a river of some sort with a waterfall. Delgado looked at the shapes by the waterfall's edge. \"Are those structures?\"\n\"The Kig-Yar have created a natural home for hundre ds of thousands of Unggoy,\" Juliana's voice said. \"This structure, par ked over a methane waterfall where the mists are thick enough with methane that the Unggoy can breathe out in the open, is called the Redoubt. Right now, as we s peak, Unggoy are being readied for an invasion of the Rubble.\"\nJuliana let that sink in.\n\"When do they mobilize?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Within the next twenty-four hours,\" Juliana said. The image of Metisette faded, replaced by pictures of Kig-Yar ships moving out of  orbit down to Metisette. \"As soon as they pick up the Unggoy.\"  185  Those images faded as well, to be replaced by Julia na. She cocked her head, listening to someone else. \"The Council wants to kn ow what our Kig-Yar contacts are saying about all this.\"\n\"That would tip the hand of any defense the Rubble might need,\" Keyes muttered. Juliana nodded. \"May I offer another point of impor tance?\"\n\"Please,\" Jai said from the cockpit's entrance. He' d removed his helmet, and his brown eyes were fixed on Juliana.\n\"The Kig-Yar know about the Exodus project.\" Julian a had dropped a bombshell, Delgado realized. Their most tightly held secret, s omething he hadn't known about, had been in the Kig-Yar databanks. It angered him. \"And once Bonifacio had delivered the navigation data to them, the Kig-Yar were going to use the asteroid as a troop carrier to invade Earth.\"\nDelgado felt vaguely sick. Keyes looked confused, but didn't ask any questions  for now. This was the first he had heard of the Exodus project, and while he co uld infer what it might entail from the AI's statement, he was hoping it would let  something more solid slip. Juliana waited for this, too, to sink in. \"I'm unwi lling to lose the Rubble. It's everything I exist for. I say we attack first. We u se our mass drivers like MACs. We get Keyes and his men back aboard the Midsummer Night. If we start attacking them while their main force is on the ground, we have a chance of winning this.\"\nKeyes fiddled with a pen as he looked around. \"The Midsummer Night has the capacity to go up against that big Jackal ship, but  we could get overwhelmed by sheer numbers with all these other craft they have parked  throughout the Rubble. And then there's the other issue: have these Jackals been wo rking alone? Because if not, all they have to do is call in support. One stealth fri gate won't be much use against what the Covenant usually bring to a fight.\"\n\"I can't speak to that,\" Juliana said. \"But now we have another problem. The Security Council is getting ready for a meeting. Th ey're shutting me out. This isn't something I can override without drawing attention.  Delgado, Maria was Diego's closest relative, and has been given a temporary se at on the Council to represent him. Can you get down there? I don't want us out of the loop here.\"\nDelgado was already up. \"Take me there, I'll go in. \"\nJai and Mike looked at each other. Jai shook his he ad. \"We don't want to risk taking Petya into the heart of the Rubble. We're already exposin g ourselves enough with the AI and Delgado aboard.\"\n\"I'll take tube cars,\" Delgado said.\n\nOutside of the tall faux-marble columns of the Coun cil Chambers, Maria Esquival looked over at Delgado. The chambers were buried de ep in the heart of Korrah, one of the first Rubble habitats, and he had rushed to get there. \"You got over here quickly.\" She looked like she hadn't slept in days,  with bags under her eyes. She pushed a stray wisp of hair aside. Delgado broke protocol and gave her a long hug. \"I' m so sorry about Diego.\"  186  She let go and looked up at him. \"They said that ba stard Bonifacio is in an escape pod somewhere with the Kig-Yar?\"\n\"As far as we know, yes. When this crisis is over, I will personally hunt that cockroach down.\"\nMaria cleared her throat. \"The Security Council jus t had an emergency meeting to figure out what to do next. I stood in for Diego . I had no voting rights, but I could talk if needed.\"\n\"I know. What can you tell me?\"\n\"The summary is that we're grateful for all the ris ks you've taken, though I think half the Council is ready to string you all up for releasing the UNSC prisoners without locators, or without authority.\"\n\"We didn't have a lot of time to confer or ask perm ission, and Juliana was helping.\"\n\"That disturbs them almost as much as anything. You  know the AI is well past her useful age.\"\nDelgado nodded. \"She's unpredictable. But I think, deep down, what she cares about is the Rubble. What is the Council going to d o?\"\n\"You're not going to like this.\"\n\"Really?\" Delgado raised an eyebrow.\n\"They've called the Kig-Yar. They want to see if th ere is any negotiation to be done.\"\nDelgado stared at Maria. \"They what ?\"\n\"Understandfrom their position, the Kig-Yar have o nly helped. And don't lecture me about the destruction of Madrigal. The f act is, you know a lot of people trust the Kig-Yar here. They've worked with us to b uild the Rubble. They've traded with us. They consider them allies.\"\n\"They really did it?\"\n\"Yes. We're waiting for a response.\"\nDelgado walked away, shaking his head. \"We've compl etely tipped our hand.\"\nMaria looked down at the ground. \"I don't know. May be not. We're just asking for meetings. I'm not sure what else we can do exce pt get ready to defend ourselves. We have a Council, it's the way the Rubble works. T hey've spoken.\"\n\"But they were wrong,\" Delgado snapped.\n\"What would you have us be?\" Maria asked. \"We're ru led by representatives, and by our votes.\"\n\"This is a disaster.\"\n\"Maybe not.\" Maria grabbed his arm. \"Again, all we' ve done is ask for meetings. We haven't asked why. Certainly with all the recent  activity around the Rubble it would make sense that we're jumpy.\"\nDelgado looked at her. \"I really hope so.\"  187\nCHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR\n\n\nTHE REDOUBT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nReth lay in a soft collection of pillows in an appr oximation of a nest. His skin had been bandaged, cuts and bruises covered with medici nes that stank, and he was giddy from pain medication. The damage the Sangheili had done to him still throbbed, but he was beginning to feel like the worst of the pain  was over now that a Kig-Yar healer had spent time with him. The soft sound of air fans lulled him near the edge  of sleep when the door to his room opened.\n\"I was not to be disturbed during this sleep cycle, \" Reth snapped, his eyes still closed.\n\"It is the humans.\" A lesser Kig-Yar groveled by Re th's feet. \"They keep contacting us, requesting meetings.\"\n\"About what?\" Reth opened his eyes. The room was de corated with bits and pieces of art from around Covenant space randomly p iled in corners and hanging off shelves in random chaos and clutter. All were piece s stolen or traded from all the species the Kig-Yar dealt witha riot of shapes, co lors, sizes, and function. It may have looked like random junk, but any Kig-Yar in th e room would know it was Reth's hoard. In the corner was a handmade Sangheil i practice helmet, carved out of a hard wood and painted black. Reth's most prized p iece of the collection. Sangheili didn't part with their handmade gifts eas ily. Reth had to work hard to pilfer that particular item.\n\"They won't say,\" the Kig-Yar by his feet said. Reth sat up, wincing as split skin on his shoulder recracked and started bleeding again. \"Send word to all Kig-Yar in the Rubble to p ull out. Have them stand ready to act as our front wave. The humans may be getting wi nd of our plan, somehow. Let's not leave our brothers sitting within easy reach of  the aliens.\"\n\"Yes, lord. But... we have worked with these humans f or so long. We have built good things with them. Are you sure we must destroy  them?\"\nReth sighed. \"Any day now the Hierarchs will arrive . Do you wish to look like you were helping heretics? Our task is to fetch the  location of Earth, and destroy them. Now we are to do this.\"\nTime was growing short, Reth felt, if the humans we re getting antsy. He was going to have to launch Kig-Yar ships against the R ubble before the Unggoy were even on their shuttles for the invasion.  188  No matter, he thought. That would just soften up th e Rubble before he took it. Once he had the Exodus asteroid, Reth thought, all these stolen baubles in his room would be meaningless compared to that fat priz e.  189\nCHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE\n\n\nPETYA, JUST OFF HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nKeyes turned to Jai at the back of the cockpit. \"Yo u and your team should leave. The Council seems to think things are unchanged; they m ight even fight to prevent us getting back aboard the Midsummer Night. I don't see the sense in us weighing you down.\"\n\"I don't see the sense in leaving either,\" Jai said .\n\"I could make it an order,\" Keyes said.\n\"You do outrank me. You may well order me to do it. \" Jai looked at Keyes. The unspoken second half of the sentence in the air was  that Jai would refuse. Keyes raised an eyebrow and drew in a breath to rea m the Spartan out, but from behind him Mike spoke up. \"Say what you will about Spartans, Lieutenant, one thing we don't do is leave fellow soldiers behind to die. \"\nJai raised a finger. \"With us at your side retaking  your ship will not be hard to do. With Petya's navigation charts and the computers synchronized\"\n\"We won't be leaving citizens behind to be massacred,\" Keyes interrupted. He already had to live with leaving Charybdis IX on it s own. He couldn't bring himself to run away from yet another fight.\n\"The Rubble has no love for the UNSC,\" Jai said. \"T hey are mostly Insurrectionists.\"\nKeyes wondered if the Spartan was really that cold,  having been trained to do nothing but kill Insurrectionists, and unable to sh ake that training. Or if Jai was somehow testing him.\n\"There are children, Spartan, and citizens. They wi ll be slaughtered. I will offer my services to them, and we will be ready to fight for the Rubble.\"\nJai folded his arms. \"Look\"\n\"The Jackals are moving out of the Rubble,\" Dante K irtley shouted. Keyes snapped his head up in interest. \"They're mov ing out?\"\n\"He's right. Take a look.\" Up at the front Mike tap ped one of the many screens before his seat. Jackal ships all eased their way out from the Rubbl e, according to the contacts on the radar and reports from all over the Rubble. \"Li ke rats from a sinking ship,\" Keyes muttered.  190  Jai moved in for a closer look himself. \"Does the C ouncil know? Where's Juliana? Get that damn AI here, she has to have spo tted this.\"\nKeyes stepped back. The Spartan sounded agitated.\n\"My, my, temper, little Spartan,\" Juliana said. She 'd appeared at their sides.\n\"Time is short!\" Jai said. \"We don't have the time to sit around and debate things. We need to move quickly.\"\n\"What's going on?\" Keyes asked, realizing that Jai' s frustration mainly came from leading a small team, alone, and now being par t of a committee trying to figure out how to defend an entire community. Jai was somewhat out of his element. Keyes, on the other hand, had expected something to  happen. The Rubble was basically a very large, slow ship, and it was const antly making course corrections.\n\"I come bearing news,\" Juliana said. \"The Council h as rethought their approach based on this behavior. I had them recast their vot es. They're willing to consider our plans. Second: aboard that Kig-Yar ship I stole som e encryption keys. I've been tracking their chatter. We're in even more trouble than just the Kig-Yar attacking according to the Kig-Yar, they're expecting high ra nking officials from the very top of the Covenant hierarchy, and possibly a Covenant fleet, to arrive shortly.\"\n\"When?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Even they don't know. Just... soon.\"\nKeyes looked at Jai. \"Still think we can even make a stand now?\"\nJai slowly shook his head. \"A whole Covenant fleet?  Not without some minor miracle. These people are all doomed.\"\nKeyes felt he had to agree. It was a chilling feeli ng.\n\"The Council agrees,\" Juliana said. \"They have deci ded to launch the Exodus habitat and evacuate the Rubble.\"\n\"The Exodus habitat?\" Keyes asked. \"You mentioned t he name before. I need to ask, what is it?\"\nJai turned back to look at him. \"Right, you need to  get caught up a bit.\"  191\nCHAPTER FIFTY-SIX\n\n\nOUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel stalked across the bridge. \" All the Kig-Yar ships are leaving the Rubble?\"\nZhar exhaled through his mandibles in an audible si gh of happiness. \"Yes. Now we won't have to worry about firing on them. One le ss reason the Prophets may seek to damn us when they arrive.\"\n\"Contact Reth,\" Thel ordered, tamping down his anno yance with Zhar's obsession about the wills of Prophets. They were Sa ngheilinoble warriors. This dithering didn't bode well. \"It is time we spoke si nce his escape.\"\nZhar bowed his head and fiddled about. Thel ignored  Zhar's mutterings with distant Kig-Yar, moving his way up the chain of com mand, until Reth's long face appeared on one of the screens. Thel faced the image. The Kig-Yar still wore bandag es over the wounds Saal had inflicted on him.\n\"Shipmaster,\" Reth said, the words dripping with fu ry. \"You have stolen Infinite Spoils, the pride of my fleet.\"\nThel ducked his head. \"I am not here for recriminat ion, Reth. You will do what you have been asked. I can only do the same, for we  are both soldiers of the Covenant. I have offered to stay away from your mai n target, but I am also going to start attacking the humans.\"\n\"Do what you wish. Keep them occupied, Sangheili. T he longer their eyes aren't looking toward this moon, the better.\"\nThe Kig-Yar's image flicked off. Thel looked around  at the nervous Unggoy, and the now petulant Zhar. \"That Kig-Yar will do his be st to assassinate us with words to his Hierarch,\" Zhar said. \"Why talk to him like thi s, Shipmaster? It serves nothing but to remind him that we're here.\"\nThel ignored Zhar. \"Prepare this ship's weapons.\" H e walked over to a screen showing the image of their first target, a small as teroid on the edge of the Rubble with mining equipment on it. The long-barreled mass drivers could sling ingots o f metal across the Rubble to wherever they were needed. The larger machines coul d send these slugs across the entire system, from planet to planet. They made effective antiship weapons in a pinch, Th el knew. He'd encountered a few repurposed mass drivers in the service of canny  humans before.  192  \"Destroy it,\" he ordered, and watched as several ba lls of energy barreled their way across the empty space between them to plow int o the asteroid, ripping it apart in fiery destruction. Normally his heart leapt when dealing fire to his e nemies. In this case, Thel felt as if he was merely going through the motions. He had no idea what the Prophets would think of all  this. But he had to do his duty. And Sangheili knew all too much about duty and nobi lity. It ran in the blood.  193\nCHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN\n\n\nPETYA, HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe first attack on the Rubble came from the Infinite Spoils. Keyes had Mike put the information up on one of Petya 's larger screens.\n\"They're going after the mass drivers,\" Juliana rep orted.\n\"They realize they're damn good weapons,\" Keyes sai d. Another blow. He'd hoped that the Jackals hadn't realized the defensiv e potential of the mining equipment. It would have been a useful surprise. Delgado joined them, out of breath from running acr oss the dock to get to the Petya. \"They're starting the attack?\"\n\"The Council is calling for the Rubble to evacuate to the Exodus habitat,\" Juliana told him. \"There are ships moving in to defend the mass drivers and the most populated habitats while the evacuation proceeds. E xodus is being moved toward one of the limbs of the Rubble, so that civilians can g et to it by tube car. I'm initiating emergency routing, all cars are one way.\"\n\"How long will it take to get everyone evacuated?\" Keyes asked.\n\"A million citizens, once Exodus is docked, will ta ke twelve hours. With me presiding. But then there is another question,\" Jul iana said. She turned to look at the Spartans. \"The Exodus can hardly go anywhere withou t the right data.\"\n\"The Cole Protocol is absolute,\" Keyes said. \"We ca nnot risk handing that over.\"\n\"Not even to save a million lives?\" Delgado asked.\n\"Because it risks billions more,\" Keyes said. \"Don' t even look at the Spartans, you turn and look at me. I'll carry the weight here . We cannot turn risk back on whole planets.\"\nJuliana practically hissed her next sentence. \"I ha ve not held onto the edge of rampancy for years trying to save all this, just to watch the UNSC wal k away from it.\"\nKeyes closed his eyes. The weight of the entire mil lion lives felt as if they were crushing his skull. He wanted to find a way to help . Anyway. But... \"Juliana, there are hundreds of thousands of trained Grunts getting  ready to board Jackal ships, and a suspected Covenant fleet getting ready to hit this system. You calculate the odds:\nwhat would you do if you were me?\"\nJuliana paused for a moment, running through simula tions and possibilities, no doubt. \"Give us something, Lieutenant. According to  the records on your ship you're  194  known for thinking outside the box. Now would be a good time, Lieutenant Keyes, to do some serious out-of-the-box thinking.\n\"We need your help,\" the AI whispered. \"A last stan d isn't what's needed. They need to be saved.\"\nKeyes sat heavily in a seat. He looked at the image s of Unggoy Grunts lining up amid the large structures on the waterfall of liqui d methane. He started flipping through the Jackal ship numbers . Hundreds of them perched on the ground on Metisette, except for the handful that had just withdrawn from the Rubble and were targeting mass drivers, as well as other weapons-like systems. He tapped his pen against the screen, missing the h eirloom pipe he usually held. It was still back on the Midsummer Night, with all his other effects. \"Juliana, the habitats and asteroids, the parts of the Rubbleyou  keep them all aligned, correct?\"\nKeyes looked up and saw the AI nod. He looked back down at the Covenant forces. They we re all on the ground. Vulnerable, if you had the right weapons. Or something close enough. Keyes stood up, and the eyes of everyone in the coc kpit tracked him. \"The Exodus is not the only habitat with enginesthe ent ire Rubble can move. Juliana is constantly keeping the entire structure of the Rubb le aligned. Which means they all have engines. Which also means, given enough time, the Rubble can be used as a weapon itself as it's emptied and abandoned.\"\nJuliana hadn't seen it, Keyes realized, because it was almost a form of suicide. The AI lived for the Rubble. It was a part of her. But it was lost to them. The Exodus was how these p eople would survive. So why protect the Rubble anymore?\nKeyes pointed at the forces marshalling on the surf ace of Metisette. \"The Covenant has destroyed us from orbit. Why not retur n the favor for once?\"\nHe looked over at the Spartans, and was surprised t o see a trio of grins. Gray Team was in.  195\nCHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT\n\n\nPETYA, HABITAT TIAGO, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nJai realized there was excitement building in the a ir. They'd gone from looking defeat in the eye, from contemplating a million los t lives, to realizing that Keyes had come up with a seed of a working strategy. Juliana was glowing, abstract figures flowing faste r and faster over the holographic space of her body. It was as if she was  breathing faster and faster, as if having a panic attack, and then she slowed.\n\"I... I think I see what you're thinking, Keyes.\"\nJai saw that Keyes had been watching her closely. \" Juliana, can you help us do it?\"\n\"It... it won't be easy,\" she said. Jai and Keyes exchanged glances. This was their bes t opportunity. If the AI stood in their way, it could all fall apart. Jai moved close. \"Juliana, they all need you now mo re than ever.\"\nShe focused on him, as if seeing him for the first time. \"Ah, Spartan, are you worried about me?\"\nJai blinked, not sure what to say, and Juliana laughed.  \"You're worrying about me, aren't you? It's flattering, Spartan. So flatte ring. But what I meant was that it's going to be hard to dodge the Jackal defenses and s ensors.\"\nOn one of the screens three large structures were h ighlighted, then picked out of the picture and zoomed.\n\"Item number one is the central processing unit for  their sensor grids. A big building. Kill that, and you take out their ability  to see anything coming.\n\"These other two are Covenant antiship weapons, mou nted to keep their Redoubt safe. They'll be firing at any non-Covenant ships c oming in. You'll be dodging them to land. Not only that, they may be powerful enough  to strike at any pieces of the Rubble that I throw at them.\"\nJai studied them. \"We'll have to jump right into th e heart of the attack to disable these?\"\n\"Do that,\" Juliana said, \"and I'll rain Armageddon down on them, I promise you.\"\nKeyes leaned over and looked as well. \"For this you 'll need ODSTs. Can we get the Council to let us back aboard my ship?\"  196  \"I'm sure they'll be cooperative at this point,\" Ju liana said.\n\"You'll need to be moved,\" Keyes said. \"I can offer  you space aboard Midsummer Night; we have the processing power for you. That is, if E xodus does not have the power yet. I know it's not completed.\"\n\"I'm not going anywhere, I'll be staying with the R ubble,\" Juliana said. \"To hit Metisette and the Redoubt from here will require tr icky calculations. I need to ride the pieces down where I can make instant adjustment s for the best effect.\"\nNo one said anything for a moment. Keyes looked at the hologram. \"Are you sure about t his, Juliana?\"\n\"I lived for the Rubble. What am I without it? And who else can do this? You all know I'm approaching rampancy. I certainly know I a m.\" Juliana chuckled. \"How many get to choose how they will die. And how few i n such a poetic manner?\nBesides, you can't get away with all the heroism here.\"\nThe words hung in the air as everyone let that sett le in. They were all taking similar actions, and could well share the AI's fate . Jai touched the lieutenant's arm. \"The Exodus. What  do we do?\"\n\"Have the Petya stand off by the Exodus with the navigation data. I f we fail, Petya makes a run for it. The moment we're successful, th ough, I think we should take a risk, don't you? We give them the navigation  data, to be handed over when the\n'all clear' goes through. Petya and Midsummer Night can pair up and cover the Exodus as it launches off to... wherever it's going t o go. We go our own way. They head off into the depths of the galaxy, far from th e Covenant, using random jumps.\"\n\"We'll still face a court-martial,\" Jai said, curio us to see what Keyes' reaction would be.\n\"We'll still have saved a million lives,\" Keyes sai d. \"I think it's worth it. We keep with the Exodus, long enough to make sure its well clear.\"\nJai stood fully up from their quick conference. \"So  now we move.\"\nAdriana stepped forward. \"I want in on dropping to Metisette.\"\n\"Adriana...\"\n\"You took on the Jackal ship alone. You're asking m e to sit this one out as well?\"\nMike stood up, and Jai shook his head. \"Petya needs its pilot. We can't afford to lose the ship.\" The three of them hadn't worked as a team in combat since all this trouble erupted in the Rubble, but then, their miss ions always seemed to be a by-the minute sort of thing. And Jai didn't relish the thought of trying to even  stop Adriana this time out, now that she knew there was a big fight ahead on Metise tte. For as long as he'd known her, Jai knew she was act ually looking forward to it.  197\nCHAPTER FIFTY-NINE\n\n\nMIDSUMMER NIGHT, LEAVING EL CUIDAD, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nDelgado had offered his services as a pilot, and Ke yes had accepted. Now Delgado trooped his way aboard the Midsummer Night, surprised by all the tight corridors, low bulkheads, and lack of confusion in the flurry of returning people on deck. Everyone had a mission: get the Night on its way toward Metisette at the highest possible speed. When he got to the bay of the Midsummer Night Delgado was shown a Pelican.\n\"We lost a damn good pilot back on Charybdis IX,\" a  grizzled fellow pilot with blond hair and a strong jaw said. His uniform had a  patch naming him as Finlay.\n\"I'm sorry to hear it,\" Delgado said, walking aroun d the long-tailed machine.\n\"Damn Insurrectionists,\" Finlay said. \"Shot him rig ht out of the sky.\"\nDelgado looked over at the blond pilot. \"Is there a  problem?\"\n\"Yeah.\" Finlay threw a punch to the gut that double d Delgado up, coughing. \"I don't like Insurrectionists. You sons of bitches ha ve cost us enoughnow we're covering your asses on some suicide mission?\"\nDelgado staggered back, and Finlay stepped forward.  Delgado planted his feet and head-butted the man in the face. Finlay stagger ed back, hand on a bloody nose.\n\"You goddamned\"\nHe didn't get any further. Pilots and an officer su rrounded him, pulling him away.\n\"I'm not a damn Insurrectionist,\" Delgado said as h e walked by him. One of the other pilots joined him. \"He's a bit str ung out by all this. He and Jeffries hit it off pretty quickly.\"\n\"Jeffries was the one who was killed?\"\n\"Yeah. Nice guy. Great pilot.\"\nDelgado stopped. \"I'm sorry to hear about it. But I  didn't kill him.\"\nThe other pilot nodded. \"I know. Come on. They're g oing to get Finlay patched up and calmed down. For all his testiness, you can trust him in the air, you understand? But we still should give him some space .\"\nDelgado nodded and followed the pilot away. The plan was to have the Midsummer Night come in fast at Metisette's upper atmosphere, then decelerate by aerobraking. Once th e friction of the atmosphere had slowed them down, the ODSTs and Spartans would be r eleased.  198  Then Midsummer Night would boost up and out again, and loop back around to settle into orbit so that her Pelicans could retrie ve the ground forces. But there was a good chance, Delgado knew, that eve n if they were successful, if the Spartans and ODSTs took too long they would all  still be on the surface as the evacuated parts of the Rubble came down. Then Delgado wouldn't be needed at all. The deck of the Midsummer Night vibrated. The ship had left its berth in El Cuidad, and was accelerating toward Metisette. Here we go, thought Delgado.  199\nCHAPTER SIXTY\n\n\nMIDSUMMER NIGHT, EN ROUTE TO METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nKeyes was back on the bridge of the Midsummer Night, but this time he sat in the commander's chair. He hadn't thought about Zheng in  a while. Too much else going on. But as they thundered toward Metisette, he wondered  what thoughts would've run through Zheng's mind in this same predicament. Zheng had been feared as a suicidal leader, one wil ling to throw his ship against the Covenant. An unfair assessment, Keyes knew. And  ironic. Because here Keyes was now throwing his own ship and crew into a missi on that might well have the same result. He'd promoted Dante Kirtley to Ops. Rai Li remained  on weapons. A junior officer, Lieutenant Second Grade Jason Burt, manage d communications. And Keyes had navigation rerouted to the commander' s chair, because what they were about to do was beyond tricky.\n\"How are you doing on your end, Juliana?\" Keyes ask ed.\n\"Slinging mass and burning fuel, Lieutenant.\" All t hroughout the Rubble docking tubes had been severed as the last of the occupants  pushed their way through. Deputies with bullhorns shouted and directed traffi c toward the Exodus habitat, but so did every computing device in the Rubble. Th ey'd all been taken over by Juliana and were blaring the need for evacuation. S he'd shown Keyes some of the organized chaos.\n\"I just took out the five Kig-Yar communications re lays,\" Juliana reported. She'd used the last of her mass drivers to fire hyperkine tic slugs of metal at each of them. Now Kig-Yar comms were down to line of sight.\n\"And here comes those annoying Kig-Yar ships that h ave been hovering around.\"\nKeyes smiled. It was a small trap for the Jackals. Knowing that they would move in, Rubble ships with missiles were lurking around the mass drivers to ambush them. Juliana fed Keyes grainy video showing sparks of fi re and tracers lighting up the vacuum, and the resulting return fire of plasma as Kig-Yar and Rubble ships fought it out over the mass drivers.\n\"Where's the Infinite Spoils?\" Keyes asked. That was the one he was nervous about. That Jackal ship could match his frigate, fr om what he'd seen while aboard it.\n\"Keeping back. You said there were Sangheili aboard  it?\" Juliana asked.  200  \"We saw Elites, yes,\" Keyes replied. \"While we were  retreating.\" A screen popped up on the arm of his chair, showing him a di agram of where that ship lurked. It was moving toward several of the large habitats,  now thankfully abandoned. The screen jumped to video showing plasma ripping a part the large asteroids and boiling rock as clouds of air burst out along with slagged metal. Hopefully destroying those parts of the Rubble woul d keep that monster at bay until Keyes was done. Then he looked forward to engaging it. He shut the views down and brought up Metisette.\n\"Good luck, Juliana,\" Keyes said. The decoupled hab itats that Juliana commanded were trailing far behind Midsummer Night on a separate trajectory. The Rubble trailed behind Hesiod in the same orbit around the sun as the gas giant. And Metisette orbited Hesiod. That meant tha t soon Metisette would disappear behind Hesiod from the point of view of the Rubble.  Keyes was rushing to catch Metisette even as this happened. His signal to Juli ana, a direct line-of-sight signal, was failing even now as Hesiod's stormy atmosphere began to get between them. Juliana's trajectory was different. The pieces of t he Rubble under her command were much slower. She was moving them forward from their trailing point behind Hesiod to a point where Metisette would be when it came out from behind Hesiod in its orbit. To be strict about it, the Rubble wouldn't rain dow n upon Metisette. Instead, Metisette's orbit would swing the moon around Hesio d at breakneck speed right into the pieces Juliana had jockeyed into place. The effect, however, was the same. The Redoubt would be destroyed. If they all did their work. Keyes had the frigate moving so fast it was shaking . The reactor could be close to overheating, yet no one breathed a word about how h ard they were pushing the ship. They all knew they needed each additional second.\n\"ODSTs ready?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Standing by,\" Lt. Kirtley reported.\n\"Aerobraking in four minutes. Everyone strap in and  hold on.\"\nThe Midsummer Night was in the shadow of the moon now, streaking toward  it like an arrow toward a bull's-eye. Keyes could see the swirls and outlines of the moon's clouds. It grew over the next minutes until it filled the c ockpit with its strange orange and red-hued light. Keyes was aiming his ship deep into the thick atmosphere, counting on the immense friction to slow Midsummer Night down. He'd timed this down to the millisecond, run it by Juliana, and now all he could do was let the ship's computers continue with the c ourse... and hope. They'd picked up Jackal contacts, but they'd approa ched too fast for them to engage. They'd run right through the cordon before the Kig-Yar even realized they were there.\n\"Aerobraking!\" Keyes shouted.  201  They hit Metisette's atmosphere and the ship began to buck and pitch. A junior officer standing by was thrown clear across the bri dge.\n\"I gave orders to strap in, damn it,\" Keyes snarled  as the young man grabbed someone's chair, his arm bent at an impossible angl e, his face bloodied. \"You're endangering the bridge crew.\"\nThe man crawled away and got himself to a safe plac e and strapped in, moaning loudly due to his injuries. A fireball grew around the frigate, heating up as t hey continued to thunder through the high atmosphere of Metisette. Deck plat es creaked and groaned as they readjusted. Keyes glanced at the readouts. They wer e losing speed. Dramatically. They were also losing hull integrity. The friction was burning off plates every second. Keyes tapped the screen. A second set of preloaded routines sprung into effect. Thrusters fired, slowing them down even further. He glanced at the topographical map of Metisette th at Juliana had uploaded to his computers.\n\"One minute!\" Keyes shouted. They were closing in o n the Redoubt. They would be moving fast when they shot the ODSTs out. He could only hope the pods and their bodies could handle what came ne xt. He didn't know of anyone who'd attempted dropping ODSTs in a maneuver like t his. The seconds ticked by as he waited. A hull-breach a larm sounded, and Keyes looked over at Kirtley.\n\"Hull abrasions, no serious structural damage, with in expectations,\" the lieutenant reported. The aerobraking had lost them a lot of hull, but the ship would hold.\n\"The ODSTs are go in ten,\" Keyes said. He tapped th e console to give authorization. The Midsummer Night's computers took care of the rest, spitting the ODSTs  out from a bay like bombs being dropped on an enemy cit y. Keyes watched them fall away like dangerous, black spores on another screen, then looked up as emergency klaxons went off.\n\"Covenant antiaircraft fire!\" Rai Li shouted. Teardrops of contained plasma rose to meet their sh ip. Keyes turned off the thrusters and slammed on the m ain engines. All ahead full, he thought with a grimace, as plasma grazed the sid es of the ship. The Midsummer Night shuddered and clawed its way along, struggling to e scape the moon's gravity and get back into orbit.\n\"Come on, girl,\" Keyes found himself muttering quie tly to the ship. \"You can do it.\"  202\nCHAPTER SIXTY-ONE\n\n\nTHE REDOUBT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nJai felt the SOEIV slam against him as it fired roc kets to reach a sane velocity right before it slammed into the ground. The front popped  off, and Jai stepped out onto the surface of Metisette with his battle rifle up. Four SOEIVs had already hit the ground around him. Two ODSTs stumbled out;\none fell to his knees.\n\"Shit, I can't even see straight,\" he muttered over  the comm channel.\n\"Can the chatter,\" Jai said. They'd had a brutal la unch from the ship and a rough journey down filled with Covenant antiaircraft fire  picking them off. And even Jai had been slightly rattled by the whole experience. But they were in enemy territory right now. They ne eded to get sharp, and quick. They had four hours of air strapped to their backs with rebreathers and tanks. They needed to get this mission wrapped up as fast as po ssible. The air was thick and red, and a similar eerie red fog covered everything around them. Jai continued looking around. They'd landed w ithin a mile of their target: the spirelike building along the banks of the methane r iver that housed the sensor equipment, capable of spotting the Rubble. On Juliana's map it hadn't looked so imposing, Jai thought.\n\"We launched with three Shivas,\" Jai radioed. \"Tell  me at least one of them managed to make it down.\" He glanced at their ID pi ps briefly to get their names. Mutuku was yanking on the front of an SOEIV. The fr ont popped loose, and a fully-suited ODST fell out.\n\"Jones ate it.\"\nThe other Helljumper, Adams, yanked the other pod o pen. \"Your bomb, sir.\"\nJai ran over. Good. He glanced around. The other SO EIV pods must have landed all over the damn place. They were the only ones ou t of fifteen supposed to hit here. They'd have to do. Jai dragged the Shiva free from the pod. A foldable  frame with wheels came loose as he yanked on it.\n\"Form up.\" Jai grunted from the strain of shoving t he frame under the large missile. Once underneath it, he pressed a button, a nd the wheels deployed. With the two marines covering his flanks, Jai start ed pulling the nuclear warhead toward the building.  203  Mutuku opened fire. Jai looked over to his right to  see two Unggoy tumble to the ground, dead. Ahead, more materialized. Jai gunned them down, rea lizing that they were only lightly armed.\n\"We caught them off guard,\" Mutuku observed. \"They' re carrying pistols.\"\n\"Good for us, then,\" Jai said. \"Keep moving.\"\nMore Unggoy Grunts came, a fast frontal assault in two waves of ten. Jai picked them off as Mutuku and Adams held off attacks from the sides. They sprinted for the building's door, which Jai ki cked down. He threw a grenade inside and ducked as a cloud of debris flew out ove r him. Three Kig-Yar hid behind energy shields in the far corner of the room. Jai left the Shiva behind and took cover around the nearest corn er. Mutuku and Adams got the Jackals' attention with a burst of rifle fire; Jai threw a grenade behind them. As they turned around to shiel d themselves from the blast Jai picked them off.\n\"We need to clear the building,\" Jai said.\n\"We'll hold the door,\" Adams said. Jai ran down the hallway that the Jackals had come from. He turned a corner, and found himself face-to-face with another. He swept t he butt of his rifle up without a second thought and caught it in the chin. The alien  flew backward in a spray of purple blood. Jai barely slowed down his run. He got up a set of ramps without anything getting i n his way, but as he started moving from room to room he found plenty of Grunts inside. They were armed with plasma pistols. Jai hardly bot hered keeping a count. He just moved from room to room, a gray killing machin e. Within fifteen minutes he'd swept the entire buildi ng. The rest of the upper floors looked to be just equipment. If any Grunts were hid ing up there, they were cowering away and not going to present a problem. He sprinted back to the foyer where the two Helljum pers waited. \"How are we looking?\"\nAdams sighted down his rifle. \"A handful of Grunts made a run on the door. We dropped them. But I think there are a lot more out there gearing up to come our way.\"\nThe building was half a mile upstream from hundreds  of thousands of Grunts waiting to board hundreds of Jackal ships. Jai curl ed his lip at the thought of so many Grunts attacking. They wouldn't need weapons, they could just throw themselves at the team. \"There'll be more,\" he said. Satisfied they had the situation under control, he pulled the Shiva down the corridor. He'd spotted a thick door leading to what  looked like a maintenance room. He kicked the door open and smiled. A whole room of  Covenant junkconsoles, chairs, screens. He wheeled the Shiva into the heart of the room and  pulled the cart out, smashing it to uselessness so the Shiva couldn't be easily m oved.\n\"Jai, they're pressing hard,\" Mutuku radioed over t he sound of plasma fire striking nearby. Battle rifles clattered. \"Maybe a hundred Grunts this time.\"  204  \"On my way soon,\" Jai promised. He shoved Covenant junk up against the Shiva after checking the readout on the front. The timer said they had two hours before Pel icans would be back to rescue them. Once he had the Shiva covered he left it, closing t he heavy door behind him.\n\"Stowed our present away?\" Adams asked from the sid e of the entrance. Jai held his rifle up and scanned the murk outside.  A lot of dead Unggoy lay out in the mist. \"Safe for now.\"\n\"Now we stay put until the antiaircraft guns go dow n.\"\nAn explosion in the distance made them jump.\n\"Well, there goes one,\" Jai said, checking his ammo  with a sense of satisfaction.  205\nCHAPTER SIXTY-TWO\n\n\nTHE REDOUBT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nAdriana opened her eyes inside the HEV. How long ha d she been out? The HEV had slammed into a building before the retro-rockets ha d finished their full burn, bringing it to a near stop. It had bounced down the side and  hit the ground headfirst, crumpling badly. She'd been knocked out by the impact. In the dark she couldn't tell if her vision was oka y, but she had a raging headache and what felt like whiplash. She slapped the cover-eject switch and the explosiv e bolts on the cover thudded. It hardly moved an inch, but now streams of orange light came in from around cracks between the cover and the pod. The HEV was facedown on the ground. Adriana swore. She pulled her knees up, forcing herself back again st the restraints and padding, compressing it to get her feet under her. The knees of her armor ground and scraped against t he cover, but she finally planted her feet. Then she pushed the entire HEV up, lifting it onto her shoulders. She heaved it off to the side where it landed with the restraints  facing the sky. It would have been a lot easier had it landed like that, she thought. She looked around.\n\"Oh...\"\nTens of thousands of Grunts turned to face her, rip ples of activity passing through their ranks like wind through tall grass. Since nothing had initially popped out of the pod, they'd ignored it and continued to line up to board the giant troop carriers that a waited them in this plaza. Adriana was supposed to land outside the Redoubt, c lose to one of the antiaircraft emplacements. Not here.\n\"...shit.\" She dove back into the HEV as plasma-pisto l shots struck the sides. The HEVs held a little bit of rocket fuel to allow soldiers to use them to easily hop over to a new location. But that required them to be standing up, in the position they were designed to land. Adriana triggered the emergency burst with the HEV lying flat anyway, and the HEV took off across the mile-long plaza. It plowed through Grunts who flew  206  overhead in sprays of bright-blue blood, constantly  thumping and shivering as it made its way through the tightly packed mass. The engines finally sputtered, then stopped, and th e HEV ground to a halt over the icy rock. Adriana vaulted out and ducked behind it with her b attle rifle in one hand, yanking a rocket launcher out with the other. She w as out of the main mass of Grunts. Those still hovering couldn't decide whethe r to chase her or continue boarding their vessel. A massive, purple-stained ga p in the center of the Unggoy formation indicated the path the HEV had rocketed t hrough. Some hundred Grunts finally peeled off to make a ru n at her. Adriana fired in short, controlled bursts, watching wave after wave of Grunts tumble forward and die. There were so many. She was quickly running out of ammunition, and now hundreds of outraged Grunts had drawn their pistols and started a second  assault on her position. Just not enough ammo, she thought, checking her hea ds-up display. And she didn't want to use the rockets. Those were her last  resort. Screw it, this was a last-resort situation; it was her against a moonf ull of Grunts. She popped up with the launcher on her shoulder and  unleashed everything she had before ducking back for cover. As the plaza boiled with rocket fire, she looked fo r blips on her heads-up display. Some of the signals were of HEVs that were weapons caches, dropped alongside the regular HEVs. She needed one right now. She spotted one half a mile away. Adriana threw the empty rocket launcher away and da shed from the large open grounds of Grunts before they could regroup. She grinned as she approached a larger, bulky HEV t hat had struck into the side of one of the many tall structures that ringed the plaza. The Jackals had just grounded ships and turned them into buildings, by connecting  them. Almost as ramshackle and bizarre as the Rubble, she thought, as she ripped t he cover off the HEV. A quad bike almost fell out onto her.\n\"A Mongoose?\" she whispered. Useless. The four-whee led ATVs just meant you were a biking target. Several Grunts rounded one of the arches of the bui lding. Adriana picked the Mongoose up by the handlebars, using it as a shield , and then ran into the small group, slamming the Grunts into the ground with it. The Mongoose worked well as a weapon, a giant four- wheeled hammer that she used to crush three more Grunts in explosions of pu rple blood, until the wheels had all bounced off, the chassis warped, and finally sn apped. Adriana tossed the ruined machine away. Her muscles  would pay for that later, but for now, there was too much adrenaline for her to notice. In the distance, a long line of Grunts moved throug h the mist and buildings at her. She checked her ammo and prepared for the onslaught , just as a distant explosion caught her attention.  207  They needed all the antiaircraft emplacements knock ed out. They needed it more than they needed some extra dead Grunts. No matter how many she killed, they just kept coming at her. She needed to think smarter. Adriana sprinted for the distant river of methane, visible by the fog banks created by the waterfall as it hit the warm grounds of the Redoubt. Plasma fire hit the rocks near her, kicking up stea m and molten splashes that stained her armor. Adriana ran faster than she ever  had before in training, or in battle. This was staying smart. She needed to find a way to  rendezvous with the ODSTs trying to take out the second emplacement. In the dense fog she had to slow down a bit, but it  gave her a chance to catch her breath. The motion tracker in her heads-up display,  overwhelmed up to this point, cleared, and showed friendlies. Four Helljumpers were pinned at the riverbank behin d their HEVs by Grunts. Adriana ran up behind them. \"What's the situation?\"\n\"Two Jackal snipers. Lots of Grunts. Every time we try to break out of the fog and make a run at the antiaircraft gun they pick us  off.\"\n\"You have the charges ready for the antiaircraft gu n?\" Adriana asked. \"Who's placing them?\"\nOne of the Helljumpers raised a hand. \"Dobey took o ne in the head on the third attempt. But I can place them.\"\n\"There were supposed to be sixteen of you.\" Adrienn e pulled out the near-empty magazine on her battle rifle and slapped a fresh on e in.\n\"Ten of us made it downwe lost six trying to get u p to the damn thing.\"\nAdriana looked out into the rolling banks of orange -lit mist. Large boulders of ice and rock on the edge of the Redoubt made for good h iding places, both in the mist and outside of it.\n\"Let's stop at five attempts to charge that gun, sh all we? I'll take point.\" She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep this pac e up. She could feel her blood pounding since the moment she'd stood up, surrounde d by a sea of the enemy. She realized now that she almost went out in a blaz e of glory, until she'd spotted the river and came to her senses. But she was still struggling to think clearly and n ot merely react. She took a pair of large stones and threw them out right where the boundary of the mist ended. Two sharp bursts of plasma vaporize d them. That was enough for Adriana to pinpoint where the s hots came from. Adriana tossed a pair of grenades in a high arc, on e right after the other, using her strength to get them higher than any normal human t oss could. She counted off two seconds, then radioed, \"On me!\"\nThe sprint through the mist took another several se conds. She dodged waist-high pieces of rock as she made her attack. Just as she was about to burst out of the mist, a good fifty feet ahead of the Helljumpers struggling  to keep up with her, two grenades exploded behind the pair of boulders where she figu red the snipers were taking cover. It was all the distraction she needed to cover the ground to the first Jackal's boulder. The Jackal was already turning to face her  when Adriana brushed the long Covenant weapon he held aside and struck him.  208  Adriana grabbed the Jackal by its feet, whipping it  around, until she found a boulder and bashed him against it. The Jackal died in a spasm, its spine pulverized against the rock, its suit leaking air. Rock exploded around her, and she dove behind anoth er boulder. Three Grunts rounded on her, and Adriana used the l ast of her precious ammo for three head shots, taking a deep breath before each one to center her aim. She hardly noticed their grazing plasma fire. A grenade explosion from the other sniper's positio n got her attention. Adriana sprinted around another boulder, rifle up and at th e ready, and found a Helljumper finishing the sniper off with a handgun. The silvered faceplate turned to look up at her. \"A ll clear,\" the Helljumper radioed. One of them had gotten hit by the sniper as they'd rushed the position. But the Helljumper with the charges was still on his feet. Rising over the haze and boulders by the river were  the large tripod legs of the Covenant antiaircraft battery. Adriana pointed. \"Get that thing rigged ASAP, soldi er. You two, follow me, we're creating a perimeter. He rigs it, we hold it. \"\nShe bent over the dead Helljumper for his extra amm o magazines, and before she stood back up, tapped his helmet.\n\"Okay gentlemen, let's do this. We have an hour bef ore the Pelicans return.\"\nThey fanned out into the boulders, watching for mor e Grunts and Jackals.  209\nCHAPTER SIXTY-THREE\n\n\nMETISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nDelgado avoided looking over at his copilot. He did n't want the UNSC pilot seeing the pale look of fear on his face as they bucked an d kicked their way through the thick atmosphere of Metisette. Keyes had come at the moon fast, used its soupy atm osphere to burn off their speed, then sped back up into orbit to loop back ar ound and drop the Pelicans off. Several smaller Kig-Yar ships had come after them, but most of the troop carriers that had lifted off Metisette were staying well cle ar of the UNSC frigate. The Kig-Yar ships attacking them were small, but th en so was Keyes' frigate. Keyes was drawing them off, away from the drop zone . It was mostly working. As long as the antiaircraft guns didn't fire when D elgado and the five other Pelicans came in over the Redoubt, this insane, hig hly fragile plan would work. Delgado watched as the clouds parted, and slammed h is Pelican hard right to avoid a massive Kig-Yar troop carrier climbing up a nd away from the complex. He wobbled back on course, looking over to the righ t to see another Pelican with a sheered tail diving and tumbling its way toward t he ground.\n\"That was Finlay,\" someone radioed. Delgado came in low over the remains of the anti-ai rcraft emplacements with a smile, and touched down in front of the large spire like building. The other Pelicans made similar flare-outs and landed in a row. He fumbled for a second when trying to find the swi tch to lower the ramp, but the copilot was on it. The moment the ramp hit the grou nd, boots stamped their way up and into the Pelican. Delgado turned around to see both Spartans standing  behind him. Their armor was hardly recognizable: dented, carbon burned, pee ling and flaking from heat and plasma and abuse. They looked as if they'd fought through hell itself , Delgado thought. Helljumpers snapped themselves in along the sides o f the bay. Several hung out the back of the Pelican, firing back at a solid mas s of Unggoy who started to flood the area. Plasma filled the air and slapped the sid es of the Pelican. The Spartans looked back, then tapped Delgado on th e shoulder. \"That's everybody. Go go go,\" he heard Jai yell over the ra dio. \"The Shiva has ten minutes.\"  210  Delgado had the time up on a counter in his heads-u p; he knew damn well how much time they had. He rammed the engines up full and pulled out over t he Redoubt, moving upriver as fast as he could as Helljumpers fired their last  few bursts from the closing ramp. Once well clear of the Redoubt, and with the cabin depressurized, Delgado began a slow spiraling climb with the other four Pelicans . A giant flash of light filled the inside of the Pel ican. In the distance the Shiva went off. As the initial blast faded, they could se e the plume of the explosion reaching up into the sky, slowly turning into a gia nt mushroom. Then Delgado's slow spiral took it out of sight.  211\nCHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR\n\n\nTHE REDOUBT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nReth sat at a table as a healer checked him over. H e'd been inside a command center when the massive explosion occurred, and since many  of the Kig-Yar ships grounded to make the skeleton of the Redoubt were fighting s hips, he was therefore well shielded. He'd been safe. But he'd gotten a high dose of radiation. The healer left him with pills to take, and Reth st alked his way up to an enclosed balcony carved out of a large airlock. The Redoubt was a mess. It was a good thing they were moving out to take the Rubble, he thought . Rebuilding this would be expensive. There were Unggoy leaders wanting to see him, shock ed by the damage the humans had done and wondering what it meant for the  timeline they had in mind for their continuing development of Metisette as a worl d for themselves. Reth growled. Humans. When the Prophet set him on this task, Reth had don e it to raise his profile, and that of the Kig-Yar. He'd also enjoyed the guilty p leasure of working with the humans. Their profit-minded goals and Kig-Yar-like love of trade and smuggling and piracy had meshed. He'd been slightly disappointed to have to destroy the humans throughout the Rubble as the endgame of this grand experiment. Now though, he wondered if the Prophets weren't rig ht. The humans were unconscionable reprobates, too dangerous to let liv e. The Prophets' call for their extermination was starting to make sense to him. Reth looked forward to taking the Rubble. Even more  so, to getting the Exodus and the location to their homeworld on it. He'd happily burn it all for the Prophet, now. Reth left the balcony and donned a long cloak, his air supply for the walk across the plaza, and a pair of plasma pistols. He walked out in the plaza where droves of terrified Unggoy stood. They'd all been dosed with antiradiation meds. Many  had died in the blast, but Reth had had those bodies bulldozed away, and clear ed the way for Unggoy waiting in the lower warrens to line up and get aboard the troop carriers. He had only lost a few thousand to the bomb, thankfully, as the commun ications and scanning station was miles upstream of the core Redoubt plaza.  212  It was time to repay the humans for their deeds, he  thought, as he walked toward his shuttle and several of his senior Kig-Yar offic ers. Unggoy were shaking and looking up into the sky. It  was growing brighter. Reth stopped and looked up. Giant fireballs were st reaking down, growing larger and larger. The humans had taken out the antiaircraft batteries  and his ability to see ... to see this coming. He ran for his shuttle, shoving frightened Unggoy aside.\n\"Go!\" he screamed at his pilot in the cockpit. \"Get  off the ground!\"\nThe shuttle fired its engines and started to rise, and Reth saw the first giant mound of rock slam into the Redoubt. But where had they come from? he wondered, as the s hock wave threw his shuttle aside and dashed it against the side of one  of the large buildings. The wreckage of the shuttle slid to the ground as d ebris and rock rained down on it. A dazed Reth looked up through the cracked glass of  the shuttle; he stared directly up at one large fireball that plummeted ri ght at him. It was irregularly shaped, he thought, with large d ocking collars sticking out of one side, melting away into slag as the heat deform ed them. A piece of the Rubble, he realized just before it s truck, vaporizing everything in an immense release of hyperkinetic energy and destr uction.  213\nCHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE\n\n\nMETISETTE ORBIT, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel looked at the glowing, cratered remains of the  Redoubt from orbit. \"Nothing remains of Reth's fleet. There is no sign of Reth h imself, either.\"\nA stillness descended on the bridge of the Infinite Spoils as both Zhar and Thel contemplated the destruction the humans had wrought  on Metisette.\n\"And now what, Shipmaster?\" Zhar asked. \"We have de stroyed prime targets in the Rubble; the rest has dashed itself against Meti sette.\"\nThel looked at the Unggoy working for them, and tho ught about Saal, brooding somewhere deep inside the ship.\n\"Some might say we have done our mission well, Zhar . Do you think the Prophets will believe it when they arrive?\"\nZhar looked at him, his mandibles flexing slightly as if tasting the air for clues as to what Thel might want as an answer. His once prou d mind had become erratic in the face of the idea that the Hierarchs may have ha d differing goals, and that they'd gotten caught in the middle of some machination bet ween the Prophets of Regret and Truth. Thel knew that Sangheili honor demanded they rise a bove it. He cleared his throat. \"Reth's invasion fleet is in disarray. The Hierarchs will not be happy if we stand here and let the last of the humans escape wi th the location to Earth and the only chance all these loyal Unggoy have to live.\"\nThel looked at the Unggoy on the bridge as they pai d close attention to him, without looking directly at him. So maybe Sangheili  could play politics, Thel thought to himself, or at least set aside the desire for di rect combat for a bit, despite the fact it coursed through their blood.\n\"What do you mean?\" Zhar said.\n\"The Hierarchs want loyal subjects and true believe rs,\" Thel said. \"I cannot imagine what would happen to all these surviving Un ggoy if they do not try to take that asteroid in which the humans are trying to eva cuate the system.\"\nUnggoy eyes balefully watched Thel pace the bridge now. Zhar coughed. \"Their lives would all be forfeit.\"\nThel nodded. \"They would indeed.\" He turned to the Unggoy in the room. \"Tell your surviving brothers to board the Exodus asteroi d. We will provide cover for the action, but then stand clear. That human ship is to o much of a match for this ungainly Kig-Yar boat.\"  214  He walked over and shut off the screen showing the ruins of the Redoubt. \"The Unggoy will take the asteroid, or die trying.\"\nIf the Hierarchs were to let any of them live, ther e was no other option. Zhar got up and walked over to Thel. \"If the illust rious Hierarchs cannot agree on these things, what else do they disagree on, and wh at else might just be Prophet manipulation, Shipmaster?\"\nThel grabbed Zhar's arm, and Zhar growled. But Thel  looked his fellow Sangheili in the eye and whispered, \"Such thinking lines the path to heresy. Do not indulge in it.\"\nZhar pulled free and left the bridge.  215\nCHAPTER SIXTY-SIX\n\n\nHABITAT EXODUS, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE\n\nFrom the moment the evacuation protocols had blared  into life, Karl Simon's day had been a blur of tubes and long lines, waiting to boa rd a habitat he'd never heard of until today. And it was a habitat that was going to  jet them toward a new system. Away from home. A home that was under attack. It reminded him of the day the Covenant attacked Ma drigal: the same nervous lines of people, hushed rumors, and fear that hung in the air. At the very end, Karl had been shuttled to the Exod us in a cramped supplies freighter. He'd looked out the pilot's windows and seen the craters and pitted surface of what looked like a tiny moon. The Exodus was six miles of potato-like asteroid, w ith a diameter of two miles. The freighter was a fleck of dust next to it, and t he Exodus filled the windows as far as they could see as they approached it. We did this, Karl had thought with a momentary flas h of pride. He'd been hustled to what felt like a stadium near the core of the ship, moving through miles and miles of corridors, following ins tructions on a card that had been handed to him in the shuttle. A hundred thousand other refugees, their murmuring echoing around the walls and ceilings, all had assigned chairs that matched numbers on their cards. But now, the moment Karl sat, an usher appeared. \"K arl Simon?\"\n\"Yes?\"\n\"Volunteer for the Rubble Defense Force?\"\n\"Yes.\" Karl had signed up during the early days of the Rubble, when they'd been looking over their shoulders every day, expecting t he Covenant to return.\n\"Come with me.\"\nThe usher led Karl out of the rows of chairs with r estraints where everyone else was being ordered to buckle in. Outside, the usher pointed down a corridor. \"Follow this all the way to the end. They need you there.\"\nIt was a mile, which Karl walked as fast as he coul d, slightly out of breath when he reached an open bay near the front of the astero id where thirty men with rifles and handguns stood, guarding the entrance. A grizzled o ld miner looked him up and down. \"Volunteer Defense?\"\n\"Yeah.\"  216  \"You have certification in hand-to-hand combat and firearms training?\"\nKarl nodded. The minder handed Karl a datapad and a  handgun. \"We have an estimated three thousand Unggoy who've managed to g et inside, more expected. You're drafted. The doors behind us lead to the con trol center, the bridge, of the Exodus. The aliens do not get past here. Understand ?\"\n\"Yes, sir,\" Karl said, and took up position just as the floor s tarted to shake.\n\"What the hell is that?\" one of the other men shout ed, holding a machine gun up as a seven-foot-tall man in gray armor turned the c orner. They all stared as the half-ton, armor-clad human w alked up to them.\n\"I have something the bridge crew needs,\" he said, and held up a small black chip casing in his gauntleted hand. \"Mind letting me thr ough?\"\nThe Rubble Defense Force stepped aside, one of the large miners politely holding the door open for the giant, armor-clad soldier to step inside.  217\nCHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN\n\n\nMIDSUMMER NIGHT, NEAR HABITAT EXODUS, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThe bridge crew of the Exodus habitat hailed the Midsummer Night. Keyes looked over at Lt. Burt on the comms. \"Patch them through. \"\nMidsummer Night had been covering the slow flight out to the edges of the system to prepare for a Slipspace jump for almost a  day now. Unggoy and Kig-Yar fighters had dogged and harassed them the whole way , pockmarking the surface of the asteroid and occasionally scoring hits on the f rigate, but unable to stop them. The desperate Grunt boarding parties left Keyes nervous . He'd had to make a snap decision to have the Spartans hand over the nav dat a, but all indications were that the Rubble Defense fighters were keeping the Grunts pin ned down. And more importantly, well clear of the cockpit. The Grunts,  with their methane tanks and nowhere to go once the Exodus entered Slipspace, wo uld eventually choke to death. Keyes had decided the million lives were worth the small risk. There'd been enough Colonist deaths by the Covenant so far. It was time  to rescue some of them. He had no idea of what trouble might lie ahead for him fro m this decision, but the lives saved would be worth it. They were far now enough out to enter Slipspace. An engineer appeared, his overalls dirty, bags unde r his eyes. \"Lieutenant Keyes, I apologize, but the Security Council insisted I co ntact you.\"\nThe Rubble's Council. Keyes had almost forgotten ab out them. \"What's wrong?\"\n\"The Exodus will not be able to make the trip. We d on't have the range and engine power. We expected more time to bring more e ngines online. With a Covenant fleet supposed to arrive, we have to go wi th what we have now. And what we have now, well, they'll burn out, or if we make lots of small jumps, it will literally take centuries to cross the galaxy away f rom where Covenant or UNSC people would ever dare venture, as we originally pl anned.\"\nThe man looked defeated.\n\"The Council knows?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Yes. They're debating what to do.\" The engineer lo oked down at the floor.\n\"But the Exodus can make a journey, just not as far  as originally intended?\"\nKeyes confirmed. The Council didn't want to return to the colonies. Would they be hardheaded enough to risk Exodus and everyone in it to try and  leave the Covenant and colonies behind anyway?  218  \"Yes.\" The engineer met his eyes. Keyes realized th e engineer was worried about the same thing.\n\"Put me through to the Council,\" Keyes ordered. He thought about the last time he'd given a speech. Forget trying to sound stirring, he thought. Just l ay it out. His duty was to convince the Council to head toward the Inner colon ies. It was their best bet for survival. The screen filled with the members of the Security Council. The Rubble wasn't working as a technocracy right now, not while being  herded into their spots all throughout the Exodus asteroid. This was their leadership. And Keyes had to influen ce it.\n\"Hello, I'm Lieutenant Keyes, of the Midsummer Night ,\" he said with a faint grin. He locked his arms behind him. It was a class room habit, and it would keep him from reaching for the pipe which he'd found sitting  in his belongings, thankfully untouched. \"I'm a fighting man, but as commander of  this ship, I know something about holding people's lives in my hands. I won't b ullshit around. You have enough engine power to reach an Inner Colony quickly, wher e there will be some measure of protection, and access to resources. The other opti on is to risk a slow, long journey out to a destination that has neither, but in which  you retain your own power.\n\"I don't know what the UNSC will do, and I can't gu arantee that all of you with Insurrectionist ties will be given a pass. But reme mber, you have a million lives you're deciding for. A million lives who could make  a difference in the future fight against these bastard aliens who destroyed the Rubb le. Unless you choose to let the Covenant win.\"\nKeyes looked at them all, and Maria Esquival stood up. \"We took a vote,\" she said, \"before you called.\"\nKeyes sucked in his breath. She quirked a faint smile. \"We're aiming to reach t he 18 Scorpii system. If you would escort us, Lieutenant.\"\n\"Of course,\" Keyes said. \"Make random jumps out, un til we clear the asteroid of Grunts. We want to make sure not a single one remai ns alive before we turn toward the Inner Colonies.\" His after-action report was go ing to be damning enough. Showing up with an asteroid full of evidence... well,  Keyes figured he'd be spending time behind bars again soon. But he couldn't turn h is back on a million lives. He couldn't leave them for the Covenant. Not again. Maria nodded. \"We have teams combing Exodus thoroug hly.\"\nKeyes waited until the screen flickered off, then l ooked around at his bridge crew. \"It's still tricky,\" he said. \"Don't let thos e breaths out. We have to hope Petya's computers can keep us in sync.\"\n\"Actually,\" said a voice from the back of the bridg e. \"We ditched Petya .\"\nThe Spartan at the back pulled his helmet off. It w as Mike. He held out a chip.\n\"This what I think it is?\" Keyes asked.\n\"Navigation charts.\" Mike sat down by Keyes' old co nsole. \"I ran simulations on syncing our two ships. The odds weren't good. Made more sense to dump the  219  freighter. I pressed your crew into service; we off -loaded a lot of the more useful cargo into your bay. We also cut loose a couple of Pelicans to make some room.\"\nKeyes raised an eyebrow. \"And I authorized this whe n?\"\nMike plugged the navigation data in, dumping star c hart information into the ship's computers. \"I took some liberties. Time was short when you showed up. Jai and Adriana lent a hand; they're still stowing thin gs. A good price for the data, losing just a couple Pelicans, Lieutenant Keyes, don't you  think?\"\nKeyes straightened out his back, holding in his pri vate smile. \"Don't ever try to run my ship for me again.\"\nThe Spartan did not reply, but plugged in a random vector out of the system.\n\"We're going in the same direction. I carried these  personally on a disk from their ship to this one. Can't be intercepted. Will you gi ve the order?\"\nKeyes looked out into space through the windows of his bridge. \"Send them the signal. Engage Slipspace drives.\"\nAll across Exodus engines flickered to life, and th e asteroid struggled its way into Slipspace, ripping and clawing its way into a hole in the universe. It was ungainly, but the asteroid managed it, and Midsummer Night followed, leaving behind the remains of the Rubble.  220\nCHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT\n\n\nMETISETTE ORBIT, 23 LIBRAE\n\nBonifacio drifted in orbit around Metisette. The ba tteries on his pod were close to dead, and condensation dripped off the portholes. He'd seen the destruction of the Redoubt from orbit , the asteroids raining down into the atmosphere. Since then things had been quiet. The air was getting thick inside the pod, and it wa s hard to breathe. Occasionally he heard Kig-Yar voices on the radio and sometimes fast Unggoy chatter, but none of them would respond to his calls for help. Not even calls back to the Rubble had been answered . He'd pleaded and begged, even offered rewards, but gotten only static. He sat in place hugging his chest, when a loud pipp ing sound caught his attention. Bonifacio moved over and looked at the scans. A bulbous-headed ship had appeared in orbit nearby,  expertly dropping out of Slipspace in a way no human ship could. Another flashed into space behind it, then another,  and another. An entire Covenant fleet materialized in front of Bonifacio. This would be a new group of Covenant. Ones who had n't shut him out, Bonifacio thought. He moved to the radio. He'd surr ender. Yes, he'd be a tool of the Covenant, a slave to them, but he'd live. Yes, he'd live. He grabbed the microphone and hailed the large crui ser moving nearby, and kept calling it until he saw it change course. Bonifacio's heart skipped. He'd done it. He'd survived. He was going to get pi cked up. He smiled as he watched the cruiser pick up speed, and then frowned . It was still picking up speed. It was moving so clo se that he could see it from the windows of his pod, growing larger every second. A ball of energy gathered underneath the ship. Boni facio screamed and put his hand up against the slimy, wet porthole as if to wa rd off the plasma that lashed out and struck his tiny pod. The massive Covenant cruiser plowed through the vap orized remains as it adjusted its orbit.  221\nCHAPTER SIXTY-NINE\n\n\nINFINITE SACRIFICE, METISETTE ORBIT, 23 LIBRAE\n\nThel got to his knees and bowed to the pair of Hier archs before him on the bridge of the Infinite Sacrifice. An honor guard of five Sangheili guards arrayed the mselves around their floating chairs.\n\"Rise,\" the Prophet of Truth said. \"You ordered the  Unggoy to storm the human vehicle after the Kig-Yar Reth's death?\"\n\"Yes, Hierarch,\" Thel said. \"It was a chance to get  the location of their homeworld. But we know now the Unggoy and any Kig-Y ar that were with them have failed.\"\n\"How is that?\" the Prophet of Regret asked.\n\"Their air would have run out by now.\"\nThe heavy crowns of the Hierarchs bobbed as they co nsidered that. \"Indeed,\"\nTruth said. \"We are left only with Kig-Yar who imag ined they were helping humans, at Reth's orders. Potential traitors, all of them. And these Unggoy as well, breeding outside the law. Traveling without permits.\"\nRegret shook its head. \"A mess.\"\n\"A mess that revealed much,\" Truth hissed. For a moment, an uncomfortable silence hung in the air. Then Regret nodded at Truth. \"We will destroy all the traitors.\"\nThel felt his neck tighten. He'd failed to apprecia te the situation, and now he would pay the ultimate price for his mistakes. The Hierarchs would have his head. Vadam would suffer. His lineage would be suspect. The floor beneath his feet felt as if it wavered, a nd then Thel stiffened. Zhar was moving forward. The Sangheili warrior had drawn the bar of his ener gy sword, but not yet unleashed it.\n\"Zhar ,\" Thel hissed, horrified. Zhar seemed to be strugg ling with himself.\n\"So you will kill us too, Shipmaster?\" Zhar cried o ut. \"Like animals? After all we served. How can I suffer such a dishonor? My line's  dishonor?\"\nThe honor guard drew their energy pikes, the ends s himmering with contained blue plasma. Zhar took another hesitant step forward, and Thel p ulled out his sword and turned it on. \"Zhar?\"  222  His old friend looked back at him. \"I have already drawn,\" he said. \"I will not stand and let them dishonor me.\"\n\"I have drawn as well,\" Thel said sadly. Zhar leapt forward, but Thel jumped as well, slammi ng into his side and spearing Zhar through the throat with his sword. It sizzled and spat Sangheili blood. Thel threw Zhar against a wall, then decapitated hi m with a swift swipe. He stared at the mess of blood and Zhar's body, the n turned back to the Hierarchs, setting his sword down on the ground awa y from him. What else could he have done? Thel wondered. Zhar h ad forced him into it. To step toward the Hierarchs with a sword in hand was madness. Regret looked shaken, but composed himself and pilo ted his chair out of the large bridge. \"What madness Sangheili honor can be,\" he m uttered as he left. \"They should be careful, lest they lose their way.\"\nBut Truth looked at Thel with analytical eyes. \"Tel l me your name, noble warrior.\"\n\"Thel 'Vadamee,\" Thel said. Truth moved closer, the honor guard moving with him . \"You live. Say nothing of what happened here.\"\n\"Yes, Hierarch,\" Thel said.\n\"Report to the shipmasterhe will find you lodging until we return to High Charity.\" Truth also left the bridge. Thel waited until they were well clear, then stood.  He didn't look at Zhar's body as he walked to the large, Sangheili shipmaster to get his instructions. This mission was over, and Thel was grateful. He wa nted a ship to command that was part of a fleet, not off on its own. But leadin g a mission, away from the Prophets where his decisions could or could not risk their w rath... Thel 'Vadamee never wanted to be in that position a gain.  223\nCHAPTER SEVENTY\n\n\nUNSC FRIGATE READY OR NOT, OUTER 18 SCORPII\n\nCommander Arthur Resnick of the frigate Ready or Not was enjoying a routine patrol at the edge of the system of 18 Scorpii. The slow p ace gave him time to catch up on paperwork, and he was scrolling through a datapad f ull of reports when his navigation officer suddenly stiffened.\n\"Sir?\"\nResnick glanced at the screen. \"What the hell is th at?\"\nThe report showed something... huge. It was bearing d own on the system in Slipspace. The scan had been forwarded to them via an early warning sensor net and station farther out-system.\n\"That's gotta be Covenant,\" he said. \"None of us ha ve anything that heavy.\" The mass was off the charts.\n\"It's six miles long,\" the navigation officer said.  She sounded shocked.\n\"Whatever it is.\"\n\"Send the warning.\" The planet of Falaknuma would n eed to gear up as best it could. There wasn't much in the way of UNSC Navy he re. Falaknuma mainly served as a base for a section of the ONI Prowler Corps, a nd a handful of frigates. They were going to get overwhelmed pretty quickly, if past Covenant encounters were anything to judge by. Resnick cleared his datapad. \"Get the MAC ready. Br ing the reactor up to full operational power\"\n\"Sir.\" Comms stood up. \"It's broadcasting a UNSC fr iend-or-foe tag. The Midsummer Night .\"\nResnick looked over at Navigation. Lt. Onika frowne d. \"There's another signature in there. About the right size to be a fr igate.\"\n\"Could be a trap.\"\n\"Standby, but wait for my order to fire,\" Resnick s aid. \"We stand off and watch this. For a moment.\"\nThen the massive object dropped into real space and  they finally got a read on it. A six-mile-long asteroid, trailing debris, one engi ne misfiring and a UNSC frigate trailing it.\n\"Comms, open a channel,\" Resnick ordered. On the screen a man with Navy-short salt-and-pepper  hair appeared. \"Ready or Not, this is Lieutenant Keyes, of the Midsummer Night. We're all friendly. Do not  224  fire.\" Keyes grinned. \"The asteroid is full of refu gees from behind Covenant lines. They're all civilians from what was once Madrigal. About a million of them. Their air is getting stale, the asteroid has been holed f rom being shot at, and the engines are critical. We need to get these civilians off the mo ment they get into a stable orbit.\"\nThe bridge crew of the Ready or Not stared at the large asteroid moving by them. Someone from the back of the bridge uttered what wa s on everyone's mind:\n\"Holy shit.\"\nResnick snapped around. \"Alright, let's get to it. Comms, we need to bump this up the chain of command and to the Colonial Adminis tration Authority. Let's get crackingthere are people's lives at stake.\"\nThe bridge exploded into motion as the rescue effor t began. PART V  225\nCHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE\n\n\nHIGH CHARITY\n\n\"We lost much,\" the Prophet of Regret said. Truth looked at his fellow Hierarch. \"No. We purged  Kig-Yar and Unggoy who might have caused trouble, due to their inclination s to work with humans. And thanks to the modified weapons, we have found two more wor lds of theirs to attack.\"\n\"Neither of which will be their homeworld,\" Regret grumbled.\n\"It is progress,\" Truth said. From their throne room, high up in High Charity, they looked out over their subjects. Streams of other San'Shyuum wobbled aroun d the city in the air in large rings, barges of Unggoy flew from point to point, a nd pilgrims from all throughout the Covenant worlds thronged the streets.\n\"We need to be more careful about the Sangheili,\" R egret said. \"Honor and nobility might one day get in the way of orders.\"\nTruth glided away from the city scene and into the heart of the chamber, where golden streams of light flashed through a gentle dr ug-smoke haze. \"Maybe,\" he said.\n\"But some of them seem fiercely loyal, and very use ful. I value loyalty.\"\nRegret grunted. \"I value results.\"\n\"Then it is good we work together,\" Truth said. \"Fo r the good of the Covenant.\"\nRegret picked up one of the bowls and inhaled. \"For  the good of the Covenant, yes. In all we do.\"\nThe two hierarchs had resolved the moment of bad bl ood that had grown between them. Their plans were back in synchronization. For now, Regret thought. For now.  226\nCHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO\n\n\nVADAM KEEP, YERMO, SANGHELION\n\n\"The Fleet of Particular Justice?\" Lak 'Vadamee ask ed. The old Sangheili walked along the keep's walls with Thel. Thel had a new sh ipmaster's cloak that tugged and kicked at him in the cold mountain wind. \"I have ne ver heard of it.\"\n\"It is a new reorganization of the fleets. Against the Sangheili Councilors'\ndesires. They have given me a cruiser to command wi thin this fleet.\"\n\"A strange new age, Kaidon.\"\nThel looked out over Vadam valley, out toward the d istant sea. \"Stranger than I can dare speak. Even when I add my lines to the fam ily saga.\"\n\"But our nobility rises, does it not?\" Lak asked.\n\"For now,\" Thel replied. \"But I have seen humans as  strong and as fast as any of ours. And I have seen what happens to those who dis appoint the Prophets.\"\n\"We are Vadam,\" Lak said. \"We shall persevere.\"\nThel started to say something, then paused. Lak had  trained Thel when he'd been among the keep's young. He'd bruised and kicked The l, toughened him to be the warrior he was today. He'd taught him the histories , made him learn sagas, and taught him to reason. If he couldn't trust Lak to b e a close advisor, then Thel had no friends and was alone in this universe. \"You must n ever repeat this, but I saw the Hierarchs argue with each other, and it cost the li ves of many souls,\" Thel finally said. \"Is it heresy that I cannot shake the worry t hat gives me?\"\n\"There is heresy, and then there is heresy,\" Lak sa id softly. Thel rested his hands on the stone in front of him.  \"What do you mean by that riddle, elder Lak?\"\n\"Long ago our ancestors believed without a doubt th at the Forerunner artifacts we found scattered on our world were objects of venera tion. We could study and worship them, and imagine transcendence. But that was it. T o destroy, even take them apart, was heresy.\n\"Then came the Prophets, who wanted the artifacts t o study. They wanted to violate them and explore them. So we fought to prev ent this heresy, and both Prophets and Sangheili almost perished in the fight . Now we let the Prophets do what they will and study these artifacts. Might made her esy change. But what is the true truth? Who knows?\" Lak shrugged.\n\"That is close to heretical,\" Thel said, looking ov er at his old master.  227  \"I am an old Sangheili,\" Lak said. \"I have been hit  on the head too many times, and am easily confused. What do I know of theology? \"\nThel grumbled. \"We shall persevere then, elder, her esies or not, and strive to follow the path. I might even rise above just shipm aster.\"\n\"That is the attitude to take, Kaidon. Enjoy your m oments of triumph now. The future will come soon enough; there is no reason to  dwell too much on it. Then you will end up an old creature who has spent far too m uch time worrying.\"\nThel followed Lak down the stairs into the warmth, where the elders of the Vadam waited to congratulate him on his success and  promotion. There was living to do, Thel thought happily. And t he warmth of a productive and virile keep to enjoy.  228\nCHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE\n\n\nUNSC LOCAL HQ, FALAKNUMA, 18 SCORPII\n\nKeyes saluted and stood ramrod-straight in front of  the two men at the table in front of him. Admiral Cole waved at him to sit down. The other man, an ONI agent, slowly flipped through  the pages of a report with exaggerated care while Keyes stared at the Admiral Cole, the Hero of Harvest and the man who'd dedicated his life to taking the figh t to the Covenant. Keyes realized that the slow page turning was theat er, but it was working. Keyes was nervous and sweating under his full dress uniform. This was the part where they busted him back to the  classroom. And yet, as he played back all his actions in the p ast few weeks, he found in himself few regrets. He was at peace with himself. In some ways, he'd managed to banish the guilt of not being able to help his sist er, dead or trapped somewhere out in the Outer Colonies, by rescuing these million.\n\"Lieutenant Jacob Keyes,\" the ONI agent said in sib ilant tones. \"Quite a return from your mission.\"\nAdmiral Cole tapped the table. \"To begin with: navi gational hazards.\"\nThe Exodus asteroid had been falling apart as it ca me in, shaking itself to pieces due to resonances the engineers hadn't anticipated from trying to drive a six-mile long asteroid through Slipspace. Once in orbit around Falaknuma the emergency scramb le to evacuate the nearly one million ex-Rubble residents had been a success.  But the asteroid had disintegrated shortly after. Falaknuma now had a ri ng of debris around it, and the UNSC was using frigates with MAC guns to blow the l arger chunks into small enough pieces to burn up in Falaknuma's atmosphere. But that now meant impediments to getting on and of f Falaknuma until everything had deorbited and burned up, which accor ding to experts would take years.\n\"Then there is the matter of your dumping an unknow n number of Insurrectionists on the population. Some have slipp ed away from the camps. Who knows when that will start to come back to bite us, \" the ONI agent said. Keyes stared straight ahead. \"Yessir.\"\n\"And I've lost one commander,\" said Admiral Cole.\n\"I see, sir.\"  229  Cole fiddled with a pen. \"Why, Lieutenant?\"\nKeyes looked at him. \"A million civilians, sir. Beh ind enemy lines. I had a duty to do something. Anything. Sir.\"\n\"A good argument,\" the admiral said, much to Keyes'  surprise. \"At ease, Jacob. You did the best you could under some damn horrendo us circumstances. You did good. A lot of those million civilians are people w ith experience in dealing with the Covenant, which ONI is already putting to good use through debriefing. Seems this Rubble group is full of pilots. We're getting some recruits out of them. And getting people back from behind the linesdamn it, that's a  victory in my book any day.\"\nKeyes couldn't help but be stunned. \"Thank you, sir .\"\n\"Most important, I see you worked damn hard to keep  my protocol in effect.\"\n\"Yessir.\"\n\"Good job, then, Commander .\"\n\"Thank you, sir.\" Keyes took the compliment, then p aused and looked back at Admiral Cole, who chuckled and pushed a set of bars  across the table at him.\n\"You're promoted, Commander Keyes. We can't let som eone who thinks like you get away from us, can we? A few more maneuvers like that stunt at Metisette and you'll be in the textbooks, not ever teaching them again.\"\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n\"Midsummer Night is getting a refit, Keyes. You have time to take so me leave, get back to the home system and see family. Get hea led up and ready for the next round.\"\nKeyes was dismissed. Outside he found Jai, Adriana, and Mike.\n\"I thought you were all under a different branch?\" he said.\n\"We're here to ask for a Prowler,\" Jai said. \"Think  they'll give us one? We need to get back to work.\"\nMike sighed and folded his massive arms. \"I say we just take one now, ask for forgiveness later.\"\nKeyes smiled. \"There's going to more lurking around  behind Covenant lines?\"\n\"Couldn't tell you,\" Adriana said. \"Have to kill yo u if we did.\"\nKeyes smiled, and Jai stood up, towering over him, and extended a hand. \"It was a pleasure working with you, sir,\" Jai said. They shook hands, all of them, and then Keyes stepp ed out.  230\nCHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR\n\n\nUNSC LOCAL HQ, FALAKNUMA, 18 SCORPII\n\nAdmiral Cole turned to the man next to him. \"Men li ke him will save us, you know. We need more like Keyes.\"\nThe ONI agent, one Commander Hadley, did not disagr ee. He looked down at the paperwork in front of him. \"The Spartans want anoth er Prowler. They seem to lose their own on a regular basis.\"\nIt was Cole's turn not to comment. Eventually Hadle y turned back to his paperwork. The door creaked open, and a ton and a half of gray -armored Spartans walked in. The three of them stood impassively before the tabl e.\n\"We're giving you the Prowler,\" Hadley said. \"And y ou're going back in. Deeper, this time.\"\nHe tossed them a binder that included the details o f their next mission. \"It doesn't get any easier, and you'll be even farther from our  lines.\"\nThe three Spartans were poring over the documents. \"That's the way we like it, sir,\" the team leader said. \"We're Gray Team.\"\nCole imagined them all smiling with the excitement of heading back out over enemy lines.  231\nCHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE\n\n\nUNSC RECRUITING STATION, HALKIA, FALAKNUMA\n\nIgnatio Delgado, formerly of the Rubble, now sat sl ouched in front of a heavyset Navy recruiter in his full Navy dress uniform. They 'd been trading barbs, Delgado getting more bored and irritated with the process. Questions about his background, lineage, political affiliations, ideals... it was a l ot of bullshit really, Delgado thought. He'd come back from a funeral for Diego, attended b y Rubble refugees living in tents and temporary housing on Falaknuma. He'd held  Maria as she cried. And halfway through, made a decision to come here. He saw the datapad the recruiter had on the table. \"Trouble with authority\" had been written down. The recruiter was going through the motions now, no t interested in Delgado unless he was looking to become a marine. They'd gi ve him a gun and some boots, sure. But not a ship. It seemed like it was too late to kiss and make nic e with the recruiter, Delgado figured. He was wasting his time now.\n\"We'll process this application as soon as possible , then,\" the recruiter finally said, sensing Delgado's desire to leave. But before he could turn to the next person in line , a man in a black uniform sidled up beside the recruiter and flashed identifi cation.\n\"Commander Hadley, sir. What brings an ONI agent ou t to a simple recruiting station?\"\nHadley looked down at the recruiter, then at Delgad o. \"He does.\" He pointed at Delgado. He picked up the datapad and tapped on the screen. \"Mr. Delgado has no love of the Covenant, do you, Mr. Delgado?\"\nDelgado shook his head. \"No, no, I don't.\"\nThe ONI officer smiled. \"Welcome to the Navy then, Mr. Delgado. You'll be picked up from the refugee camp here in two days. G et your effects in order by then.\"\nThe recruiter's mouth was open. It shut. \"Sir, this  man's background check came back with ties to known Insurrectionists!\"\n\"How many recruits do you get who've fought one-on- one with the Covenant? Or ship to ship?\" Commander Hadley asked the recruiter .\n\"But his psyche profile...\"  232  \"Oh, I'm sure Mr. Delgado will have a life-altering  experience while at boot camp. In fact, I already have an instructor in mind  for him. And if Mr. Delgado doesn't wash out, well then, there's an ONI Prowler  with a spot on it for him. You won't wash out, will you, Mr. Delgado?\"\nDelgado looked up at him. \"It would make too many p eople happy for me to even consider it.\"\nCommander Hadley laughed. \"So why are you joining, Mr. Delgado?\"\n\"I'd like to shoot down some Covenant ships, Mr. ON I man.\"\nHadley turned to the recruiter. \"See? He's perfect.  I like him already.\"\n\"I'm not in the Navy until I sign, right?\" Delgado said.\n\"Right,\" the recruiter said. Delgado slowly flipped the ONI officer the bird, th en pressed his thumbprint to the datapad.\n\"Be seeing you around, Mr. Delgado.\" Hadley walked away.\n\"Bet on it,\" Delgado called after him.  233\nCHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX\n\n\nOFFICER APARTMENTS, MARE INSULARAM, LUNA\n\nWhen Keyes opened the door to his apartment on Luna , he found Miranda inside watching a hologram of an old naval battle. He'd ra dioed ahead to tell her she could leave the dorms and head home before he got there. Tall, square-rigged ships lumbered around the cente r of the living room, battered about by raging seas, trying to line the sides of t heir ships up for the best cannon shot. Miranda was studying the battle from various angles , rewinding it, and had alternate simulations of it running in different se ctions of the apartment. Keyes set his luggage down inside the door, walked over to her, and grabbed her tight for a long hug.\n\"Geez, what's that all about?\" she asked. \"You're n ot normally that clingy.\"\nHe let her go. \"Nothing. Just glad to see you.\" He realized he was a bit of a cold Navy father figure, urging her to study, keeping he r on the straight and narrow. So much so that a hug caught her off guard, even thoug h he'd been away for weeks.\n\"Is this homework?\" Keyes asked, looking at the bat tle. Miranda froze it all. \"No, just something I'm playi ng with.\"\n\"I was hoping to tear you away, walk down Armstrong  Alley, get an ice-cream cone.\"\n\"Okay.\"\nOutside, as he locked the door, he refused to look up through the clear lunar dome at the night sky and the stars. For Keyes, stars were no longer distant, amazing th ings. Now they were filled with the threat of the Covenant, bearing down and m oving ever closer, always. An implacable foe. Tonight, he kept his head straight ahead, walking d own past the bronzed statues of lunar rovers and centuries-old busts of astronau ts who'd first landed on Luna oh so long ago. They might even enjoy a nice Earthrise by the decks . Because tonight he was just a father, out with his daughter, enjoying the simple treats of life.  234\nABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\n\nTobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative f iction writer who grew up in Grenada, the United States, and the British Virgin Islands. He now lives (through many strange twists of fate) in a small college tow n in Ohio with his wife, Emily. Buckell was a first-place winner for the Writers of  the Future, and has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best N ew Writer. He is also a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Wo rkshop.\n\nScanning, formatting and basic proofing by Undead."
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "AI Translator Note: The best tactical translations involve automatic conversion to immediately understandable terms and phrases, including colloquialisms. That tradition has been followed in this work.Contents Cover Title Page Author's Note The Forerunner Story Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Acknowledgments Novels in the New York Times Bestselling Halo Series CopyrightThe peaceful one is at war without and within. The Mantle, Fifth Permutation of the Didact's Number T HE FORERUNNER STORY the history of my peoplehas been told many times, with greater and greater idealization, until I scarcely recognize it. Some of the ideals are factually true. The Forerunners were sophisticated above all other empires and powerful almost beyond measure. Our ecumene spanned three million fertile worlds. We had achieved the greatest heights of technology and physical knowledge, at least since the time of the Precursors, who, some say, shaped us in their image, and rewarded that image with their breath. The tugging threads of this part of the talethe first of threeare journey, daring, betrayal, and fate. My fate, the fate of a foolish Forerunner, was joined one night with the fates of two humans and the long world-line of a great military leader ... that night on which I put in motion the circumstances that triggered the final wave of the hideous Flood. So be this tale told, so be the telling true.ONE SOL  EDOM TO ERDE-TYRENE T HE BOAT'S CREW\n banked the fires, disengaged the steam engine, and raised the calliope horn from the water. The bubbling clockwork song died out with a series of clicks and sad groans; it hadn't been working well to begin with. Twenty kilometers away, the central peak of Djamonkin Crater rose through blue gray haze, its tip outlined in ruddy gold by the last of the setting sun. A single brilliant moon rose bright and cold behind our boat. The crater's inland lake rippled around the hull in ways no tide or wind had ever moved water. Under the swells and whorls, sparkling with reflected sunset and moon, pale merse twisted and bobbed like the lilies in my mother's pond. These lilies, however, weren't passive flowers, but sleeping krakens growing in the shallows on thick stalks. Ten meters wide, their thickened, muscular edges were rimmed with black teeth the length of my forearm. We sailed over a garden of clannish, self-cloning monsters. They covered the entire flooded floor of the crater, skulking just below the surface and very defensive of their territory. Only boats that sang the lulling song the merse used to keep peace among themselves could cross these waters unmolested. And now it seemed our tunes were out of date. The young human I knew as Chakas crossed the deck, clutching his palm-frond hat and shaking his head. We stood side by side and stared out over the rail, watching the merse writhe and churn. Chakasbronze-skinned, practically hairless, and totally unlike the bestial image of humans my tutors had impressed upon meshook his head in dismay. \"They swear they're using the newest songs,\"\nhe murmured. \"We shouldn't move until they figure it out.\"I eyed the crew on the bow, engaged in whispered argument. \"You assured me they were the best,\" I reminded him. He regarded me with eyes like polished onyx and swept his hand through a thick thatch of black hair that hung in back to his neck, cut perfectly square. \"My father knew their fathers.\"\n\"You trust your father?\" I asked.\n\"Of course,\" he said. \"Don't you?\"\n\"I haven't seen my real father in three years,\" I said.\n\"Is that sad, for you?\" the young human asked.\n\"He sent me\n there\n.\" I pointed to a bright russet point in the black sky. \"To learn discipline.\"\n\"Shh shhaa\n!\" The Floriana smaller variety of human, half Chakas's height scampered from the stern on bare feet to join us. I had never known a species to vary so widely yet maintain such an even level of intelligence. His voice was soft and sweet, and he made delicate signs with his fingers. In his excitement, he spoke too rapidly for me to understand. Chakas interpreted. \"He says you need to take off your armor. It's upsetting the merse.\"\nAt first, this was not a welcome suggestion. Forerunners of all rates wear body assist armor through much of their lives. The armor protects us both physically and medically. In emergencies, it can suspend a Forerunner until rescue, and even provide nourishment for a time. It allows mature Forerunners to connect to the Domain, from which all Forerunner knowledge can flow. Armor is one of the main reasons that Forerunners live so long. It can also act as friend and advisor.I consulted with my ancilla, the armor's disembodied intelligence and memorya small bluish figure in the back of my thoughts.\n\"This was anticipated,\" she told me. \"Electrical and magnetic fields, other than those generated by the planet's natural dynamics, drive these organisms into splashing fury. That is why the boat is powered by a primitive steam engine.\"\nShe assured me that the armor would be of no value to humans, and that at any rate she could guard against its misuse. The rest of the crew watched with interest. I sensed this might be a sore point. The armor would power down, of course, once I removed it. For all our sakes, I would have to go naked, or nearly so. I halfway managed to convince myself this could only enhance the adventure. The Florian set to work weaving me a pair of sandals from reeds used to plug leaks.\n*\n*\n*\nOf all my father's children, I was the most incorrigible. In itself this was not an ill mark or even unusual. Manipulars of promise often show early rebellionthe stamp in raw metal from which the discipline of a full rate is honed and shaped. But I exceeded even my father's ample patience; I refused to learn and advance along any of the proper Forerunner curves: intensive training, bestowal to my rate, mutation to my next form, and finally, espousal to a nascent triad ... where I would climb to the zenith of maturity. None of that attracted me. I was more far interested in adventure and the treasures of the past. Historic glory shined so much brighter in my eyes; the present seemed empty. And so at the end of my sixth year, frustrated beyond endurance by my stubbornness, my father traded me to another family, in another part of the galaxy,far from the Orion complex where my peoples were born. For the last three years, the system of eight planets around a minor yellow star and in particular, the fourth, a dry, reddish desert world called Edombecame my home. Call it exile. I called it escape. I knew my destiny lay elsewhere. When I arrived on Edom, my swap-father, following tradition, equipped my armor with one of his own ancillas to educate me to the ways of my new family. At first I thought this new ancilla would be the most obvious face of my indoctrinationjust another shackle in my prison, harsh and unsympathetic. But she soon proved something else entirely, unlike any ancilla I had ever experienced. During my long periods of tutoring and regimented exercise, she drew me out, traced my rough rebellion back to its rootsbut also showed me my new world and new family in the clear light of unbiased reason.\n\"You are a Builder sent to live among Miners,\" she told me. \"Miners are rated below Builders, but they are sensible, proud and strong. Miners know the raw, inner ways of worlds. Respect them, and they will treat you well, teach you what they know, and return you to your family with all the discipline and skills a Manipular needs to advance.\"\nAfter two years of generally impeccable service, guiding my reeducation while at the same time relieving my stultifying existence with a certain dry wit, she came to discern a pattern in my questions. Her response was unexpected. The first sign of my ancilla's strange favor was her opening of my swap-family's archives. Ancillas are charged with the maintenance of all records and libraries, to ease access to any information a member of the family might need, however ancient and obscure. \"Miners, you know, delve deep. Treasure, as you call it, is frequently in their way. They recover, record, settle the matter with the proper authorities ... and move on. They are not curious, but their records are sometimesvery\n curious.\"\nI spent happy hours studying the old records, and learned much more about Precursor remnants, as well as the archaeology of Forerunner history. Here it was that I picked up hints of lore discouraged or forgotten elsewherenot always in actual evidence, but deduced from this and that odd fact. And in that next year, my ancilla measured and judged me. One dry and dusty day, as I climbed the gentle slope of Edom's largest volcano, imagining that in the vast caldera was hidden some great secret that would redeem me in the eyes of my family and justify my existencemy common state of pointless fugueshe broke ancilla code in a shocking manner. She confessed that she had once, a thousand years ago, been part of the retinue of the Librarian. Of course, I knew about the greatest Lifeworker of all. I wasn't completely ignorant. Lifeworkersexperts on living things and medicinerank below both Builders and Miners, but just above Warriors. And the highest rank of Lifeworker is Lifeshaper. The Librarian was one of just three Lifeworkers ever honored with that rank. The ancilla's memory of her time with the Librarian had supposedly been expunged when the Librarian's foundation traded her to my swap-family, as part of a general cultural exchange; but now, fully reawakened to her past, it seemed she was prepared to conspire with me. She told me: \"There is a world just a few hours' journey from Edom where you might find what you seek. Nine thousand years ago, the Librarian established a research station in this system. It is still a topic of discussion among the Miners, who of course disapprove. Life is ever so much more slippery than rocks and gases.\"This station was located on the system's third planet, known as Erde-Tyrene: a forsaken place, obscure, sequestered, and both the origin and final repository of the last of a degraded species called\n human. My ancilla's motives, it seemed, were even more deviant than my own. Every few months, a craft lifted away from Edom to carry supplies downstar to Erde-Tyrene. She did not precisely inform me of what I would find there, but through hints and clues led me to decide it was major. With her help, I made my way through the labyrinthine hallways and tunnels to the shipping platform, smuggled myself onto the cramped craft, reset the codes to conceal my extra massand lifted away to Erde-Tyrene. I was now much more than just a rebellious Manipular. I had become a hijacker, a pirate ... And was astonished at how easy it was! Too easy, perhaps. Still, I could not believe an ancilla would lead a Forerunner into a trap. That was contrary to their design, their programmingeverything about their nature. Ancillas serve their masters faithfully at all times. What I could not foretell was that I was not her master, and never had been.\n*\n*\n*\nI stripped down reluctantly, unwinding the torso spiral, then the shoulder and arm guards, and finally the leg guards and boots. The thin pale fuzz on my arms and legs prickled in the breeze. My neck and ears suddenly itched. Then,\n everything itched, and I had to force myself to ignore it. The armor assumed a loose mold of my body as it slumped to the deck. I wondered if the ancilla would now go dormant, or whether she would continue with her own inner processes. This was the first time I had been without her guidance in three years.\"Good,\" Chakas said. \"The crew will keep it safe for you.\"\n\"I'm sure they will,\" I said. Chakas and the little Florianin their own language, specimens, respectively, of cha manune\n and ha manune scrambled to the bow, where they joined the five crew members already there and argued in low whispers. Anything louder and the merse might attack whether or not the boat sang the proper song. Merse hated many things, but they especially hated excess noise. After storms, it was said they were upset for days, and passage over the inland sea became impossible. Chakas returned, shaking his head. \"They're going to try pumping out some songs from three moons past,\" he said. \"Merse rarely invent new tunes. It's a kind of cycle.\"\nWith a sharp lurch, the boat spun about on its mast axis. I dropped to the deck and lay beside my armor. I had paid the humans well. Chakas had heard strange tales of ancient forbidden zones and secret structures within Djamonkin Crater. My researches among the Miners' files had led me to believe there was a decent chance there was real treasure on Erde-Tyrene, perhaps the most sought-after treasure of all, the Organonthe device which could reactivate all Precursor artifacts. It had all seemed to fit togetheruntil now. Where had I been guided wrong?\nAfter a jaunt across sixty light-years and a second, trivial journey of a hundred million kilometers, I might never get any closer to my ultimate goal. Merse broke the surface on our starboard side, flexing gray-purple fans and shedding ribbons of water. I could hear long black teeth gnawing at the wooden hull.\n*\n*\n*The journey from Edom to Erde-Tyrene took a long and boring forty-eight hours, entry into slipspace being deemed unnecessary for a routine supply trip across so short a distance. My first live view of the planet, through the open port of the supply craft, revealed a glowing, jewel-like orb of greens and browns and deep blues. Much of the northern hemisphere was lost in cloud and glacier. The third planet was passing through a period of deep cooling and expanding ice floes. Compared with Edom, long past its best eon, Erde-Tyrene was a neglected paradise. Certainly wasted on humans. I queried my ancilla about the truth of their origins. She responded that to the best of Forerunner research, humans had indeed first arisen on Erde-Tyrene, but over fifty thousand years ago had moved their interstellar civilization outward along the galactic arm, perhaps to flee early Forerunner control. Records from those ages were sparse. The supply ship landed at the main research station north of Marontik, the largest human community. The station was automated and empty but for a family of lemurs, who had set up residence in a long-abandoned barracks. It seemed the rest of civilization had forgotten about this place. I was the only Forerunner on the planet, and that was fine with me. I set out on foot across the last stretch of grassland and prairie and arrived at midday on the trash-heaped outskirts of the city. Marontik, located at the confluence of two great rivers, was hardly a city at all by Forerunner standards. Wooden shacks and mud huts, some three or four stories tall, were arranged on either side of alleys branching into other alleys, winding in no particular direction. This crowded collection of primitive hovels spread over dozens of square kilometers. It would have been easy for a young Forerunner to become lost, but my ancilla guided me with unerring skill. I wandered the streets for several hours, a minor curiosity to the inhabitants butno more. I passed a doorway opening to underground passages from which rose noxious smells. Urchins in rags poured up through the door and surrounded me, chanting, \"There are parts of Marontik only for the eyes of such a one ... The dead in review! Ancient queens and kings preserved in rum and honey! They have waited centuries for you!\"\nThough that gave me a vague tingle, I ignored the urchins. They went away after a time, and never did I feel in danger. It seemed these rudely dressed, unkempt, shambling beings had some experience of Forerunners but little respect. This did not bother my ancilla. Here, she said, the genetically impressed rules of the Librarian included docility toward Forerunners, wariness toward strangers, and discretion in all else. The sky over Marontik was frequented by primitive airships of all sizes and colors, some truly horrendous in their pretensiondozens of corded red, green, and blue hot-air balloons tied together, from which hung great platforms of woven river reed, crowded with merchants, travelers, and spectators as well as lower beasts destined, I assumed, to become food. Humans ate meat. The balloon platforms provided a regular, dizzying means of conveyanceand so, of course, my ancilla instructed me to pay for passage to the center of the city. When I pointed out I had no scrip, she guided me to a stash hidden in a nearby substation, hundreds of years old but unmolested by the humans. I waited at an elevated platform and paid the fare to a skeptical agent, who looked over the ancient scrip with disdain. His narrow face and darting, beady eyes were overshadowed by a tall cylindrical hat made of fur. Only after chattering with a colleague hidden in a wicker cage did he accept my payment and allow me to board the next creaking, swaying, lighter-than-air conveyance. The trip took an hour. The balloon platform arrived at city center as night fell. Lanterns were lit throughout the devious streets. Long shadows loomed. I wassurrounded by anthropoid rankness. In Marontik's largest market, my ancilla informed me, there had in years past been a collective of human guides, some of whom might still know the routes to the centers of local legend. Soon, the humans would all be asleepa condition with which I had had little experienceso we had to hurry. \"If it's adventure you seek,\"\nshe said, \"here is where you are most likely to find ityet most likely to survive the experience.\"\nIn a rambling sloven of alleys, which served both as walkways and gutters, I found the ancient river-stone storefront of the matriarch of guides. Half-hidden in shadows, illuminated by a single candle dangling from a hook in the wattle, an enormously fat female, tented in a loose robe of white fabric, embarrassingly sheer, regarded me with open suspicion. After making a few offers I found offensive, including a tour of underground catacombs filled with human dead, she took the last of my scrip and passed me through a rag-hung arch to a young member of the guild who, she said, might be able to help.\n\"There\n is\n treasure on Erde-Tyrene, young Forerunner,\" she added in a dulcet baritone, \"as you have no doubt deduced through careful research. And I have\n just the boy for you.\"\nIt was here, in the humid shadows of a reed shack, that I met Chakas. My first impression of the bronze-skinned, half-naked human, with his greasy shock of black hair, was not favorable. He kept looking at me, as if we had met beforeor perhaps he was seeking a weak spot in my armor. \"I love solving mysteries,\"\nChakas said. \"I, too, seek lost treasure. It is my passion! We will be friends, no?\"\nI knew that humans, as lower beings, were deceitful and tricky. Still, I had few choices. My resources were at their limit. A few hours later, he led me through pitch-black streets to another neighborhood, filled with ha manune\n, and introduced me to his partner, a gray-muzzled Florian. Surrounded by a mob of diminutiveyoungsters and two stooped, elderly femalesI thinkthe Florian was cheek stuffing the last of a supper of fruit and plates of pounded, shapeless raw meat. The Florian said that his ancestors had once frequented a ring-shaped island at the center of a great, flooded crater. They called it Djamonkin AughBig Man's Water. There, he said, a marvelous site still hid many antiquities.\n\"From the Precursors?\" I asked.\n\"Who are they?\"\n\"Ancient masters,\" I said. \"Before the Forerunners.\"\n\"Maybe. Very old.\" The Florian looked me over shrewdly, then patted his lips with the furry back of his hand.\n\"The Organon?\" I asked. Neither Chakas nor the Florian were familiar with that name, but did not dismiss the possibility.\n*\n*\n*\nThe crew separated and opened the hatch on the calliope's box. The ha manune his head barely level with my waistwaggled his raised hands. With the help of his small, dexterous fingers, they inserted a different wooden placket set with tiny horn pegs, then reset the mechanism of plucked and bowed gut strings, cranked out the horn that broadcast the music into the water, attached the steam tube, and rewound the spring that powered it all. Chakas walked aft, still worried. \"Music soothes the savage flowers,\" the cha manune\n said, callused finger to lip. \"We wait now and watch.\"\nThe Florian ran back to squat beside us. He looped a hand around his friend'sbare ankles. The little man's braincase held less than a third the volume of young Chakas's, and yet I had trouble deciding who was more cleveror more truthful.\n*\n*\n*\nIn my quest for treasure, I had focused my studies on old Forerunner records, and what little I had learned about human history I did not feel comfortable revealing to my guides. Ten thousand years ago, humans had fought a war against Forerunnersand lost. The centers of human civilization had been dismantled and the humans themselves devolved and shattered into many forms, some said as punishment but more likely because they were a naturally violent species. The Librarian, for some reason, had espoused the human cause. My ancilla explained that either as a form of penance, or at the Librarian's requestthe records were vaguethe Council had given her charge of Erde-Tyrene and she had moved the last humans there. Under her care, some of the humans had stubbornly reevolved. I couldn't tell whether that might be true or not. They all looked degraded to me. From that seed stock, over nine thousand years, more than twenty varieties of humans had migrated and formed communities around this water-soaked world. Husky ocher and brown k'ta manune\n wandered the northern latitudes and skirted massive grinding sheets of ice. These dwellers in glacial shadows wrapped themselves in harsh woven fiber and fur. Not far from this inland crater sea, over an imposing range of mountains, skinny, lithe b'asha manune\n scampered across equatorial grasslands and leaped into thorny trees to avoid predators. Some chose to build crude cities, as if struggling to reacquire past greatnessand failing miserably. Because of strong similarities in our natural genetic structure, some Forerunner sages thought humans might be a brethren species, also shaped and given breathby the Precursors. It was possible the Librarian was intent on testing those theories. Very shortly, evolved or not, there might soon be seven fewer humans in the Librarian's collectionand one less Forerunner.\n*\n*\n*\nWe sat near the widest spot in the deck, away from the low rail. Chakas formed his fingers into a cradle, then swapped them in an exercise he adamantly refused to teach me. His wry smile was so like that of a Forerunner child. The little Florian watched us with some amusement. The merse made a sad, damp whistling noise and squirted jets of water. Their spray smelled like rotted seaweed. Looked at from afar, the creatures that surrounded our boat were laughably simple, little more advanced than the comb jellies that swam in the glassy walls of my swap-father's palace, on that russet spot a hundred million kilometers away. And yet, they sang to each otherspoke in soft, musical murmurs through the long nights, then basked silent in the dappled sun as if sleeping. On rare occasions, the crater ocean roiled with brief sea-merse wars, and shreds of glistening flesh washed up on far beaches for weeks.... Maybe there was more to these blind krakens than a Manipular could judge. The Librarian might have had a hand in bringing them to Erde-Tyreneto grow in Djamonkin Crater, where they also served her ends, perhaps by solving biological riddles in their own strange way, using their own genetic songs.... Was I imagining it, or was the grinding beneath and the churn around us slowly subsiding?\nThe moon set. The stars were thick for a time. Then fog rolled back in, filling thecrater bowl from brim to brim. Chakas claimed he heard the gentle lap of waves on a beach. \"The merse are quiet now, I think,\" he added hopefully. I got up to retrieve my armor, but a bulky, strong-looking human blocked my way, and Chakas shook his head. The crew decided it might be time to drop the screw and engage the engine. Again we made forward progress. I couldn't see much beyond the rail except little bursts of phosphorescence. The water, what little I could see of it, appeared calm. Chakas and the Florian murmured human prayers. The Florian ended his prayers with a short, sweet melody, like birdsong. Had I been faithful to my upbringing, I would even now be contemplating the dictates of the Mantle, silently repeating the Twelve Laws of Making and Moving, allowing my muscles to flex according to those rhythms until I swayed like a sapling.... But here I was, following false hopes, associating with the discredited and the low\n... And I might yet swim in a toothy sea, my undeveloped body shredded by mindless monsters. Or walk on a deserted beach around a sacred island in the middle of an old asteroid crater, flooded ages ago with cold water so pure it dried without residue. Challenge, mystery, unbridled danger and beauty. It was all worth whatever shame I might be wise enough to feel. As a Manipular, I still resembled Chakas more than my father. I could still smile but thought it beneath me. Despite everything, in my thoughts I could not help visualizing myself as taller, broader, strongerlike my father, with his long, pale face, crown hair and nape fur bleached white with lilac roots, fingers capable of surrounding a shrop melon ... and strong enough to smash its tough shell to pulp.This was my contradiction: I mistrusted everything about my family and my people, yet still dreamed of mutating into a second-formwhile keeping my youthful, independent attitude. Of course, it never seemed to happen that way. The pilot strode aft with renewed confidence. \"The merse think we're one of them. We should reach the ring island in less than a flare.\"\nHumans counted time using waxy wicks tied with knots that flared when touched by an ascending flame. Even now, two of the crew were lighting lanterns with crude sticks.\n*\n*\n*\nIn the fog, something big bumped the bow. I caught myself in mid-lurch and steadied against a wide, slow swing of the stern. Chakas jumped to his feet, grinning ear-to ear. \"That's our beach,\" he said. The crew dropped a board onto the black sand. The Florian scampered ashore first. He danced on the beach and snapped his fingers.\n\"Shhh!\" Chakas cautioned. Again I tried to retrieve my armor, and again the bulky crewmember blocked my way. Two others approached slowly, hands out, and guided me toward Chakas. He shrugged at my concern. \"They fear that even from the beach, it might anger the merse.\"\nI had little choice. They could kill me now, or I might die from some other cause later. We crossed the ramp through the fog. The crew stayed on the boatand so did my armor. As soon as we were disembarked, the boat backed water, swung about, and left us in the drizzle and darkness with nothing but three small bags of provisionshuman food only, though edible enough if I held my nose.\"They'll be back in three days,\" Chakas said. \"Plenty of time to search the island.\"\nWhen the boat was gone and we could no longer hear the chugging pump of its song, the Florian danced some more. Clearly, he was ecstatic to walk once again on the ring island of Djamonkin Augh. \"Island hides all!\" he said, then chittered a rolling laugh and pointed at Chakas. \"Boy knows nothing. Look for treasure and\n die\n, unless you go where I go.\"\nThe Florian pushed out expressive rose-colored lips and raised his hands above his head, thumb and forefinger circled. Chakas seemed unaffected by the Florian's judgment. \"He's right. I know nothing about this place.\"\nI was too relieved to have escaped the merse to feel much irritation. I had known humans could not be trusted; they were degraded forms, no doubt about it. But something felt authentically strange about this beach, this island.... My hopes refused to wink out. We walked inland a few meters and sat on a rock, shivering in the damp and cold.\n\"First, tell us why you're\n really\n here,\" Chakas said. \"Tell us about Forerunners and Precursors.\"\nIn the dark, I could see nothing above the palms, and beyond the beach, nothing other than a faint glow from the breaking wavelets. \"Precursors were powerful. They drew lines across many skies. Some say that long ago they shaped Forerunners in their image.\"\nEven the name we gave ourselves, \"Forerunner,\" implied a fleeting, impermanent place in the Mantleaccepting that we were but a stage in the stewardship of Living Time. That others would come after us. Otherand better.\"And us?\" the Florian asked. \"Ha manune\n and cha manune\n?\"\nI shook my head, unwilling to encourage this storyor believe it.\n\"I'm here to learn why the Precursors went away,\" I continued, \"how we might have offended them ... and just possibly find the center of their power, their might, their intelligence.\"\n\"Oh,\" Chakas said. \"Are you here to discover a great gift and please your father?\"\n\"I'm here to learn.\"\n\"Something to prove you're not a fool. Hm.\" Chakas opened the bag and handed out small rolls of dense, black bread made with fish oil. I ate but enjoyed none of it. All my life, others had judged me to be a fool, but it stung when degraded animals reached the same conclusion. I flicked a pebble toward the darkness. \"When do we start looking?\"\n\"Too dark. First, start a fire,\" the Florian insisted. We gathered branches and half-decayed palm chunks and built a fire. Chakas seemed to doze off. Then he awoke and grinned at me. He yawned and stretched and looked out over the ocean. \"Forerunners never sleep,\" he observed. That was true enoughas long as we wore armor.\n\"Nights are long for you, no?\" the Florian asked. He had rolled his fish-oil bread into round little balls and placed them in lines on the smoothness of a glassy black rock. Now he plucked them up and, one by one, popped them into his mouth, smacking his broad lips.\"Better that way?\" I asked. He made a face. \"Fish bread stinks,\" he replied. \"Fruit flour is best.\"\nThe fog had lifted but overcast still lay over the entire crater. Dawn was not long off. I lay on my back and looked up at the graying sky, at peace for the first time I could remember. I was a fool, I had betrayed my Maniple, but I was at peace. I was doing what I had always dreamed I would do.\n\"\nDaowa-maad\n,\" I said. Both humans lifted their eyebrowsit made them look like brothers.\n Daowa-maad\n was a human term for the roll and tug of the universe. It actually translated rather neatly into Forerunner Builder-speak: \"\nYou fall as your stresses crack you\n.\"\n\"You know about that?\" Chakas asked.\n\"My ancilla taught me.\"\n\"That's the voice in his clothes,\" Chakas told the Florian, all-wise. \"A female.\"\n\"Is she pretty?\" the little one asked.\n\"Not your type,\" I said. The Florian finished the last rounded ball of fish-oil bread and made another remarkable face. So many expressive muscles. \"\nDaowa-maad\n. We hunt, we grow, we live. Life is simplewe do.\" He poked Chakas. \"I begin to like this Forerunner. Tell him\n all\n of my names.\"\nChakas took a deep breath. \"The ha manune\n sitting right next to you, whose breath smells of fish oil and stale bread, his family name is\n Day-Chaser\n. His personal name is\n Morning Riser\n. His long name is\n Day-Chaser Makes Paths Long-stretch Morning Riser\n. Long name for a short fellow. He likes to be calledRiser. There. It is done.\"\n\"All good, all true,\" Riser said, satisfied. \"My grandfathers built walls here to protect and guide us.\"\n\"You will see after sunup. Nowtoo dark. Good time to learn names. What's\n your real name, young Forerunner?\"\nFor a Forerunner to reveal his actual\n using\n name to anyone outside the Maniple\n... and to humans, at that ... Delicious. A perfect thumb-crook to my family.\n\"\nBornstellar\n,\" I said. \"\nBornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting\n, Form Zero, Manipular untried.\"\n\"A mouthful,\" Riser said. He opened his eyes wide, leaned in, and made that full mouth, lip-curled, leering grin that indicated vast Florian amusement. \"But it has a good rolling sound.\"\nI leaned back. I was getting more and more used to his fast, piping speech. \"My mother calls me Born,\" I said.\n\"Short better,\" Riser said. \"Born it is.\"\n\"Day is coming. Warmer soon, and bright,\" Chakas said. \"Shuffle and scuff. Don't want anyone to find tracks.\"\nI suspected that if anyone from Edom was searching for me, or if the Librarian's watchers decided to check from orbit, from a drone, or with a direct flyover, they would find us no matter how we hid our tracks. I didn't say anything to my companions, however. In my short time on Erde-Tyrene I had already learned an important truththat among the poor, the downtrodden, and the desperate, foolish bravery is to be savored.I was obviously foolish, but, apparently, my two companions now believed I might be brave. We swept away our tracks using a palm frond from the shoreline vegetation.\n\"How far to the center of the island?\" I asked.\n\"Long legs, shorter trip,\" Riser said. \"Fruit along the way. Don't eat. Gives you the scoots. Save it all for me.\"\n\"It'll be fine,\" Chakas confided to me. \"If he leaves any for us.\"\n\"We're not going to the mountain,\" Riser said. He pushed through the vegetation.\n\"No need to cross inner lake. A maze, some fog, a spiral, then a jump or two. My grandfather used to live here, before there was water.\"\nCuriouser and curiouser. I knew for a factagain, from my ancillathat the crater had been flooded and the lake planted with merse a thousand years ago.\n\"How old\n are\n you?\" I asked. Riser said, \"Two hundred years.\"\n\"For his people, just a youngster,\" Chakas said, then made a clicking sound with tongue and cheeks. \"Little folk, long lives, longer memories.\"\nThe Florian whickered. \"My family grew up on islands everywhere. We made walls. My mother came from here before she met my father, and she told him, and he told me, click-song and stare-whistle. That's how we'll know the maze.\"\n\"Click-song?\"\n\"You are privileged,\" Chakas said. \"Ha manune\n do not often reveal these truths to outsiders.\"\"If they are true,\" I said. Neither took offense. The humans I had met seemed remarkably thick-skinned. Or more likely, the pronouncements of a Forerunner meant little on a world they thought was theirs. Daylight finally arrived, and swiftly. The sky went from mellow orange to pink to blue in a few minutes. From the short jungle came no sound, not even the rustling of leaves. I had experienced few islands in my short existence, but had never known any of them to be as quiet as a tomb.TWO I\n FOLLOWED THE\n little human's persistent, quick pace through low brush and past the naked, scaly trunks of many palms, topped with bristling, branching crowns. The undergrowth was not thick but it was regulartoo regular. The pathways, if any, were invisible to me. Chakas followed a few steps behind, wearing a perpetual light smile, as if preparing to unleash some joke upon us both. I had not yet learned how to read human expressions with confidence. Grinning might mean mild amusement. It might also be a prelude to aggression. The air was humid, the sun high, and our watercarried in tubes made from a kind of thick-stemmed grasswas warm. It was also running out. The ha manune passed one of the last tubes around. Forerunners can't catch human diseasesor any diseases, if they wear armorbut only reluctantly did I share the warm liquid. My good mood faded. Something odd and unexpected was in the air.... Without my armor, I was discovering instincts I didn't know I could trust. Old talents, old sensitivities, hidden until now by technology. We paused. The Florian noticed my growing irritation. \"Make hat,\" he told Chakas, wiggling his fingers. \"Forerunner has hair like glass. Sun burns his head.\"\nChakas looked up, shading his eyes, and nodded. He glanced at me, sizing up my head, before shinnying up a naked trunk. Halfway, he husked off a dried branch and tossed it down. The little one chuffed.I watched Chakas finish his inchworm ascent. At the top, he pulled a knife from his rope belt and hacked loose a green branch, also letting it drop. Then he shinnied back down, leaping the last half and landing on bent legs with a wide-armed flourish. In triumph, he raised his hand to his mouth and lipped a musical blatting sound. We paused in the shadow of the tree while he wove my head cover. Forerunners are fond of hatseach form, rate, and Maniple has their own ceremonial designs, worn only on special occasions. On one day during Grand Star Season, however, all wear the same style of headgear. Our hats were much more dignified and lovely than what Chakas finally handed me. Still, I placed it on my headand found that it fit. Chakas put his hands on his hips and surveyed me with critical mien. \"Good,\" he judged. We continued on for hours until we came to a low wall assembled from precisely cut lava stones. The wall pushed between the trees. From above, it would have ascribed a sinuous curve like a serpent crawling through the jungle. Riser sat on the wall, crossed his legs, and chewed on a green blade left over from my hat. His head turned slowly, large brown eyes shifting right and left, and he pushed out his lips. The ha manune\n had no chinnothing at all like the prominent feature that made Chakas bear a resemblance to my kind. But the little human more than made up for this with his elegant, mobile lips.\n\"Old ones did this, older than grandfather,\" he said, patting the stones. He tossed aside the green shred, then stood and balanced on the wall, arms out. \"You follow. Only ha manune\n walk on top.\"\nRiser ran along the top. Chakas and I followed on either side, pushing aside brush and avoiding the occasional pugnacious land crustaceans that stood aside for nobody, waving their powerful claws. I almost walked through them ... until Iremembered I had no armor. Those claws could take off a part of my foot. How vulnerable I was to everything! The excitement of adventure was starting to wear thin. The two humans had done nothing overtly threatening, but how long could I count on that?\nWe had a tough time keeping up with the little Florian. A few hundred meters later, the wall branched. Riser paused at the juncture to study the situation. He swung his arm right. The chase resumed. Through thicker trees on our left, I saw the inland beach. We had crossed the ring. Beyond loomed the central peak, surrounded by the ring island's inner lake, the whole shaping a kind of archery target within the crater. I wondered if merse lived in those waters as well. My mind wandered. Perhaps a powerful, ancient Precursor vessel had crashed down from space, and the central peak was an effect of waves of molten rock lapping inward before solidifying. I wished now I had spent more time listening to my swap-father's tales of how planets formed and changed, but I didn't share his Miner's fascination with tectonics, except where it might conceal or reveal treasure. Some Precursor artifacts were old enough to be cycled again and again through hundreds of millions of years, dragged down with subsumed crust and pushed up again through volcanoes or vents. Indestructible ... Fascinating. And for now, useless. Chakas was bold enough to poke me. I flinched away. \"You wouldn't do that if I still had my armor,\" I said. His teeth gleamed. Was he becoming more aggressive, or was this just his way of showing affection? I had no way of judging.\"Over here,\" Riser called from where he had run ahead. We broke through a particularly dense patch of twiggy green trees with bright red trunks and branches. The Florian was waiting for us where the long, low wall came to an abrupt end. Beyond lay a flat white plain, the inner lake on one side, its beach forming a line of black and gray, and jungle on the other. Once again the central peak was revealed, naked of vegetation, like a dead black thumb thrusting from the pale greenish blue center of the target.\n\"Okay, young Forerunner,\" Chakas said, coming up behind me. I turned swiftly, believing for a moment he was about to knife me. But nothe bronze-colored human simply pointed across the white waste. \"You asked. We brought you here. Your fault, not ours. Remember that.\"\n\"There's\n nothing\n here,\" I said, looking across the flats. Heat waves broke the outline of the far side of the waste into velvety shimmers.\n\"Look again,\" Riser suggested. At the base of the shimmers, what seemed like more water was in fact refracted sky. But through the shimmers, I thought I saw a line of large, hulking apes ... great white apes, no doubt from the low end of the Librarian's folly. They came and went with the mirageand then steadied, not alive but frozen: carved from stone and left to stand out on the flats like pieces on a game board. A cooling wind whispered outward from the black peak, brushing away the rising heat, and the ape figures vanished. Not a mirage after all. Something more deceptive. I bent to pick up a bit of the soil. Coral and white sand mixed with fine hard volcanic ash. The whole area smelled faintly of ancient fire.I looked between the human guides, speechless.\n\"Walk,\" Riser suggested. The walk to the center of the white waste took longer than I expected, but soon enough it dawned on me that we were crossing a bafflera place protected by geometric distortionsor at the very least a dazzler, protected by delusions. A Forerunner had apparently long ago decided the waste should be hidden from curious eyes. I shaded my eyes and looked up at the blue lid of sky. That meant it probably couldn't be seen from above, either. Minutes passed into an hour. We couldn't keep to a straight line. We were most likely walking in circles. Still we kept on. My feet, shod in ill-fitting human sandals, crunched lightly. Sharp grains dug at my sensitive soles and crept between my toes. The two humans showed great patience and did not complain. Chakas lifted the ha manune\n to his shoulders when it became apparent the little one's bare feet were suffering from the hot sand. The last of our water tubes gave out. Riser tossed it aside with a resigned whicker, then looked back at me, covering and uncovering his eyes with one hand. I thought this was a sign of embarrassment, but he did it again, then gave me a stern look. Chakas explained. \"He wants you to blinker yourself. It helps.\"\nI covered my eyes.\n\"Keep walking,\" Chakas said. \"If you stop, we might lose you.\"\nI couldn't help lifting my hands to peek. \"Don't look. Walk\n blind\n,\" Riser insisted.\"We're walking in circles,\" I warned.\n\"\nSuch\n circles!\" Riser enthused. The sun was affecting them. I felt like I was in charge of a pair of heat-stroked humans.\n\"Left!\" Chakas shouted. \"Left,\n now\n!\"\nI hesitated, lifted my hands, and saw my two guidesseveral paces ahead of me abruptly vanish, as if swallowed by empty air. They had abandoned me in the middle of the flat, surrounded by white sand and distant jungle. Off to my right rose a lumpy blur that might or might not be the central peak. I braced myself for the worst. Without armor, without water, I'd die out here in days. Chakas reappeared on my left. He took my armI shook him loose instantly and he stood back like a flattened cutout, his edges loose and seeming to flap. Blinking did not clear this apparition. \"Suit yourself,\" he said. \"Turn left, or go home. If you can find your way out of here.\"\nThen he vanished again. I slowly turned left, took a step ... and felt my entire body shiver. I now stood on a low black walkway curving to the right and then back to the left, surrounded on both sides by gritty white sand. So it\n had\n been a baffler and not a dazzler. A Forerunner had hidden this place long ago, using outdated technologyas if expecting that the old tech would be penetrated by clever, persistent humans. Ahead, clearly visible now, not white apes but twelve midsize Forerunner fighting suits, arranged in a wide oval about a hundred meters across the long axis. I hadspent long hours studying old weapons and ships, to better distinguish them from more interesting finds. Swallowing back disappointment, I recognized them as war sphinxesflown into battle by Warrior-Servants in ages past but now found only in museums. Antiques, to be sure, and possibly still active and powerfulbut of no interest to me whatsoever. \"Is that all you have to show me?\" I asked, indignant. Chakas and Riser kept out of reach, posing in postures of reverence, as if engaged in prayer. Odd. Humans praying to antique weapons?\nI turned my eyes back to the frozen circle. Each war sphinx was ten meters high and twenty longlarger than contemporary Forerunner suits that served the same function. An elongated tail contained lift and power, and from that, at the front, rose a thick, rounded torso. Atop the torso, smoothly integrated with the overall curvilinear design, perched an abstract head with a stubborn, haughty facea command cabin. I took a step forward, deciding whether to cross the remaining stretch of flat between the walkway and the white \"giants\" arranged around the center of the waste. Chakas lifted his crossed arms and sighed. \"Riser, how long have these monsters been here?\"\n\"Long time,\" Riser said. \"Before grandfather flew away to polish the moon.\"\n\"He means, more than a thousand years,\" Chakas interpreted. \"You read old Forerunner writing?\" he asked me.\n\"Some,\" I said.\n\"This place doesn't like humans,\" Riser said. He pulled back his lips and shook his head vigorously. \"But grandfather caught bees in a basket....\"\"You're telling him the\n secret\n?\" Chakas asked in dismay.\n\"Yes,\" Riser said. \"He's not smart, but he's good.\"\n\"How can you tell?\"\nRiser showed his teeth and shook his head vigorously. \"Grandfather put bees in a big basket. When they buzz loud, stop and wave the basket this way, then that. When they stop buzzing, go that way.\"\n\"You mean, there are markersinfrared markers?\" I asked.\n\"What you say,\" Riser agreed with a pout. \"Bees know. If you live, you drop rocks so others can follow ... as far as you make it.\"\nNow that I knew what to look for, I sawthrough the dazzlethat there were indeed broken, veering lines of small pebbles marking the otherwise smooth white sand. Riser guided us along this jagged path, pausing now and then to chitter to himself, until we stood just a few meters from the nearest sphinx. I paused in its shadow, then leaned over and reached out to touch the high, white surface, pitted with centuries of battle debris and stardust. No response. Inert. Towering over me, the scowling features were still impressive. \"They're dead,\" I said. Riser's voice took on a tone of some reverence. \"They sing,\" he said.\n\"Grandfather heard.\"\nI drew my hand back.\n\"He said these are trophies from war. Important to old, big guy. Somebody putthem here to guard, watch, wait.\"\n\"Which war, I wonder?\" Chakas asked, and looked at me as if I might know. I\n did\n know. Or strongly suspected. The sphinxes were about the right age to be from the human-Forerunner wars, ten thousand years or so. But I still did not feel comfortable discussing this with my guides. Riser left the walkway and walked carefully around the fighting unit. I went next, observing the smooth points of the suit's forked tail, the gaping tunnels on each fork leading, no doubt, to thrusters. There were no visible guidance points. On the opposite side, I noticed the outlines of retracted manipulators and folded shields.\n\"Locked down for thousands of years,\" I said. \"I doubt they're worth anything.\"\n\"Not to me,\" Riser said, looking up at the younger, taller human with pouched lips.\n\"To\n him\n, maybe,\" Chakas said softly, waving at the center of the ovalan empty stretch of distorted sand. \"Or\n her\n.\"\n\"Him or her?\" I asked.\n\"Who chose you? Who guided you?\" Chakas asked.\n\"Do you mean the\n Librarian\n?\" I asked.\n\"She comes to us when we're born,\" Chakas said, his face dark with indignation and something more. \"She watches over us as we grow, knows good and bad. She joys at our triumphs and sorrows at our passing. We all feel her presence.\"\n\"We all do,\" Riser affirmed. \"We've been waiting for just the right time, and just the right fool.\"No doubt under her protection, these humans had grown arrogant and presuming. But there was nothing I could do. I needed them. \"She's out there?\" I asked, pointing at the central peak.\n\"We never see her,\" Chakas said. \"We don't know where she is. But she sent you, I'm sure of that.\"\nMy ancilla. They were more right than they could possibly know. \"She must be a great power indeed, to arrange all this,\" I said. But my voice lacked conviction.\n\"Luck is her\n way\n,\" Chakas said. Once again, old Forerunners were conspiring to guide my life. Riser bent and waved his hand over what appeared to be an empty span of sand. This motion pushed aside a low mist, revealing for a moment a single large, flat lump of black lava. \"Good for walls.\"\nWe stepped over the rock onto the central oval bordered by the sphinxes. Suddenly, I felt a chillan awareness that I was on a space sacred not to humans, but to some other power. Something great and old was nearbya Forerunner, of that I was surebut of what rate? Given the sphinxes, a Warrior-Servant seemed most likely. But how old?\nFrom the human wars. Ten thousand years ago.\n\"Don't like it here,\" Riser said. \"Not brave like grandfather. You go on. I stay.\"\n\"Follow the pebbles and the rocks,\" Chakas said quietly. \"Where the rocks stop, no human has ever steppedand lived. What needs to be done, I can't donor can Riser.\" The young human was sweating, his eyes unfocused.The Forerunner universe has a rich history of impossibilities that became truth. I considered myself a pragmatist, a realist, and found most such stories unsatisfying, frustrating, but never frightening. Now I was not only irritated, I was frightenedfar more frightened than I had been on the boat. When Forerunners dieusually by accident or, on rare occasions, during war elaborate ceremonies are enacted before their remains are disposed of in fusion fires associated with the activities of their ratesa melting torch or planet cutter. First, the Forerunner's last memories are abstracted from his armor, which preserves a few hours of the occupant's mental patterns. This reduced essence a spectral snatch of personality, and not a whole beingis placed in a time-locked Durance. The body is then torched in a solemn ceremony attended only by close relations. A bit of plasma from the immolation is preserved by the appointed Master of the Mantle, who secures it along with the essence in the Durance. The Durance is then given to the closest members of the dead Forerunner's family, who are charged with making sure that it is never abused. A Durance has a half-life of more than a million years. Families and rates are very protective of such places. In the treasure-hunting manuals I had read over the years, seekers are frequently warned to observe the signs and avoid such locations. Stumbling upon such a family Durance would definitely be considered sacrilege.\n\"This is a\n disgraceful\n world,\" I murmured. \"No Forerunner would want to be buried here.\"\nChakas set his jaw and glared at me.\n\"It's all nonsense,\" I persisted. \"No high rate would be buried here. Besides, what treasure would possibly be kept near a\n grave\n?\" I continued, drawing my arrogant words to a stronger point. \"And if you never met the Librarian, how...\"\"When I first met you, I knew you were the one,\" Chakas said. \"She comes to us at birth\"\n\"You said that.\"\n\"And tells us what we must do.\"\n\"How could she know what I'd look like?\"\nChakas dismissed this. \"We owe our lives to the Librarian, all of us.\"\nA Lifeworker as powerful as the Librarian certainly had the means to impose a generations-long genetic command upon the objects of her study. Such a compulsion in past times would have been called a\n geas\n. Some students of the Mantle even believed that the Precursors had imposed a\n geas\n upon Forerunners.\n... I was regretting more and more leaving my armor on the boat. I desperately needed to ask my ancilla how these humans would know to expect\n me\n. \"What will you do if I go home now and give up this quest?\"\nBehind us, Riser snorted. Chakas smiled. This smile displayed not humor, nor a prelude to aggression, but contempt, I think. \"If we are so weak and our world is so disgraceful, what are you afraid of?\"\n\"Dead things,\" Riser said. \"Forerunner dead.\n Our\n dead are friendly.\"\n\"Well, my ancestors can stay in the ground and I'd be happy enough,\" Chakas admitted. Their words stung. With an abrupt hitch of confidence, and perhaps even a slight swagger, I began walking toward the center of the circle, parting the mist with swings of my foot, looking for the pebbles laid by earlier generations of ha manune\n.I must have seemed to be dancing my way toward the center, watched with sullen disapproval by the oval of inward-facing war sphinxes. Ancient weapons, ancient war. The sphinxes bore the scars of ancient battles, wars that no one cared about anymore. I looked over my shoulder. Chakas leaned casually against the prow of a sphinx. The machine's stern visage glowered over him like a disapproving priest. It takes a great deal to provoke my people to war, but once provoked, the war is carried out ruthlessly, totally, by our Warrior-Servants. There is a kind of embarrassment in that slow rise to total fury that Forerunners do not like to acknowledge. It goes against the very Mantle that we so strive to inherit and hold, but to defy the Forerunners is after all to show contempt for the Mantle itself. Perhaps that was the case here. Monuments of the past. Hidden passions, hidden violence, hidden shame. The shadows of forgotten history. About twenty meters from the center of the circle, a sidewise kick of my sandaled foot revealed another low black wall. Beyond the wall there were no more pebbles no more markers. I knelt to push my hand into the sand and sift it between my fingers. The sand flowed back, smooth again, unmarked. But in my palm, the sand had left a bizarre gift. I turned it in my fingers. A chip of bone. My footprints had made no trace. The sand did not cling to my shoes or my feet, and not one grain stuck to my palms, my skin, anywhere. A sand pit built to withstand storms and intrusions, built for the ages, never to be erased, never to be completely forgotten. Designed to kill any intruder who did not follow precise rituals. Anyone not wantedhere. Above me, something blotted out the sky. I had been studying the sand so intently that I neither felt the ground effect nor heard the subtle rushing sound of a ship, until its shadow passed over and I jerked my gaze upward. As I had feared, one of my swap-father's mining ships had found me. Reluctant to face the shame of losing me, my surrogate family had sent search parties throughout the system, looking for their ward. I stood straight, waiting for the ship to descend, waiting to be lifted into the hold and swifted away before I even had an inkling why I was here. I spun about and looked out at the circle of war machines. Chakas and Riser were nowhere to be seen. They might have dropped below the mist, or run back through the dazzler, heading for the trees. The mining ship was an ugly thing, sullen, entirely practical. Its belly was studded with unconcealed grapplers, lifters, cutters, churners. If the master of this craft so desired, its engines could easily convert all of Djamonkin Crater into a steaming tornado of whirling rock and ore, sifting, lifting and storing whatever components it wished to carry back. I hated what it stood for. I hated it all. The vessel continued its slow, steady glide over the crater. The sand did not dimple beneath the pressure of its lifters, the rocks did not shiver; I heard nothing but a subtle rush, like wind through the trees. I dropped my shoulders and knelt in submission; no choice. I might escape again, but I doubted it. After a while, the opposite blurred edge of the ship's shadow crossed my bodyand sunlight spread again to the other side of the sandy waste. The mining craft rose slowly, with lumbering grace, then sped up and flew over the peak. Moving on. I could not believe my good fortune. Perhaps the island's deception could hide us from the deep-seeking probes of a mining ship ... My relief was short-lived. I heard a melodic wail. Chakas and Riser had joined in hideous song. That made no sense at all. The sand, which had withstood the immense pressure of the miner, now whirled under my feet and upended me. Ripples pushed out, lifting me like a wave. I fell on my side and was swept around in a spiral toward the stone wall. I scraped up hard against the rough lava. The motion stopped, but a precisely hemispheric hollow dropped in front of me. At its center, a white cylinder topped with a black stone capital slowly rose to a height of more than fifty meters. Chakas and Riser stopped their wailing. The island fell silent. It had no opinion, made no comment. The Miner vessel had dropped out of sight behind the peak, then turned north, and was now almost over the horizon. My companions reappeared, standing up through the low mist. Riser ran out along the markers, arms held out in swinging balance, and stood on the inner wall, looking down on me. He squatted, toes poking over the edge.\n\"Big,\" he said. \"Looking for you?\"\n\"It's not easy concealing anything from a Miner ship,\" I observed. \"They scan hard and deep.\"\n\"Special place,\" Riser said. Chakas was striding toward us, picking his teeth again with a palm fiberagesture he seemed to think revealed sophistication. \"It worked,\" he said, shading his eyes.\n\"You sang to make it go away?\" I asked.\n\"No song,\" Riser said. They looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders. I turned back to examine the column sticking up from the hollow. Definitely Forerunner but far too prominent for a Durance. In color and shape, it seemed to fit the severe style of a marker one might find outside a temple of battle, commemorating regret and eternal sorrow. A military monument was certainly more in tune with the war sphinxes. I walked toward the hollow and stood on the rim for a moment, considering my options. The island had been visited frequently by ha manune.\n They had explored, built walls, laid down trails, kept defying the dazzler. I rolled the bone chip in my fingers. Then, as if giving up, the humans had departedleaving the island to brood on its own enigma. Of late, however, visitorsmostly Florians, I guessedhad again begun to cross the merse-filled lake, as if in anticipation of a change, an awakening. Following their\n geas\n. The Librarian had obviously tuned these peoples for a particular, very difficult task. And nowsong. We were all being set up. I could feel it. But to what purpose?\nThe pair watched with curious expectancy from the inner wall. \"Any ideas?\"\nChakas called.\n\"Go ahead,\" Riser suggested, waving his fingers. \"It welcomes you.\"\"You don't know that,\" Chakas said to the Florian.\n\"I know it,\" Riser insisted. \"Go down. Touch it.\"\nI had studied just about every source on Precursor myths and treasure. But now I was working hard to remember other tales ... tales I had heard in my youth of the strange practices of a high class of Warrior-Servants known as\n Prometheans\n:\npractices antiquated and rarely seen todaythat is, in the times of my family. Practices involving sequestration and self-exile. In the archives of treasure-seekers, such tales were inevitably followed by warnings. If one should come across something called a\n Cryptum\n, or a\n Warrior Keep\n, one should leave it alone. Violating a Cryptum, whatever it was, came with nasty consequences, not the least of which involved angering the highly protective guild of Warrior-Servants. That could also explain why the Miner ship had moved on. For possibly the first time in my life, I decided to do a little thinking before taking any reckless action. I stepped back from the hollow, joined the humans at the wall, and sat beside Chakas. He lifted his palm-frond hat and wiped his forehead.\n\"Too hot for you?\" he asked.\n\"Your yelling ... your song. Where did you learn that?\"\n\"No song,\" Riser said again. He looked puzzled.\n\"Tell me more about the Librarian,\" I said. \"She protects you. She marks you at birth. How does she mark you?\"\n\"She doesn't\n mark\n us. She visits us,\" Chakas said. \"We're told who we are andwhy we are here. Even if it's not secret, it's hard to remember.\"\n\"How many young Forerunner chumps have you brought to this place?\" I asked. Chakas grinned. \"You're the first,\" he said, and then backed off as if I might hit him.\n\"The Librarian told you to bring a Forerunner here, didn't she?\"\n\"She watches over all,\" Riser said and smacked his lips. \"Once we were great and many. Now we are few and small. Without her, we would be dead.\"\n\"Riser, your family has known this island for a long time,\" Chakas said. \"How long? A thousand years?\"\n\"Longer.\"\n\"Nine thousand years?\"\n\"Maybe.\"\nSince the time the Librarian had been given charge of Erde-Tyrene. Since humans had been devolved and exiled here. A Warrior Keep, if that was what it was, hidden on a planet of exiles. I was detecting a pattern but could not bring it into focus. Something about Forerunner politics and the human war ... I had never cared much for that sort of history. Now I really missed my ancilla. She could have retrieved what information I needed almost instantly. The sun was westering. Soon it would fall behind the central peak and we would be in shadow. Now, however, the ring island's heat was at its most intense, and I was getting uncomfortable, sitting on the black wall, surrounded by glaring white sanddisciplined sand, made to stay here for the ages. I stood, my mind made up, and walked away from the hollow and the pillar. \"Take me back to the beach. Call the boat.\"\nThe pair looked uncomfortable. \"The boat won't return for days,\" Chakas said. I suppose they would have been glad to strand a silly Forerunner youth out here, making off with his armor, sneaking back to Marontik. But it did not make sense for them to be stuck out here with their hapless victim. I squinted. The sun hurt my eyes. \"You didn't actually plan any of this, did you?\" I asked. Riser shook his head. Chakas made a breeze on his face with his hat. \"We thought you'd do something exciting.\"\n\"We're still waiting,\" Riser said.\n\"Where we live is boring,\" Chakas said. \"Out there...\" He swept his hand up and around the vast, hot blueness. \"Maybe you and me, we get crushed by sameness. Maybe you and me, we think alike.\"\nSomething stiffened my neck, then made my head hurt, but it wasn't the last flashing glare of the sun. I could\n feel\n the two humans beside me, sitting quietly on the rock wall, patient, boredheedless of danger. Like me in so many ways. Too much like me. There are points in life when everything changes, and changes in a big way. The old sophistic texts refer to these points as synchrons. Synchrons supposedly tie great forces and personalities together. You can't predict them and you can't avoid them. Only rarely can you\n feel\n them. They are like knots creeping forward on yourstring of time. Ultimately, they tie you to the great currents of the universebind you a common fate.\n\"This whole crater is a mystery,\" Chakas said. \"I've dreamed about it all of my life. But if I step inside this circle, or away from the maze lines, it will kill me. Whatever it is, it doesn't like humans. The sand climbs down our throats. When we are dead, the sand climbs back out. Now, we bring you, and everything changes. This place recognizes you.\"\n\"Why would anything valuable or even interesting be stuck out here, on a world covered with\n humans\n?\"\n\"Go ask,\" Riser suggested, pointing to the column. \"Whatever happens, we'll sing your story in the market.\"\nDusk was upon us, but the air stayed hot and still. I knew that I had to go out to the pillar. If I couldn't handle a Cryptum, then almost certainly, when the time came, my courage would fail me when I faced something much older and far stranger. I pushed off the wall and took a step. Then, I looked back at the two humans.\n\"Do you feel it?\" I asked. Riser circled two fingers and waggled themyeswithout hesitation, but Chakas asked, \"Feel what?\"\n\"The ties that join us.\"\n\"If you say so,\" Chakas said. Liars. Cheats. Low beings suitable only for being kept as specimens. Of course the sand would choke them.But not me.THREE I\n CLIMBED OVER\n the lip and descended the hollow. First step. The sand did not sink but held me upright, as if each footfall made its own stair step. Second step. No mishap. In a few seconds, I stood beside the pillar, its wide black cap looming over me. The tropical dark that had slipped across the island was profound, but the clouds parted and stars in a diffuse, glittering belt illuminated the sand, the hollow, the pillar. I knelt. Around the base scrolled a single line of text in old, sweeping Digon characters, used almost exclusively by Warrior-Servantsand in recent history only by their most powerful class, the Prometheans. I was far from family, rate, and class, but what I read in those characters practically defined my attitude toward existence:\nYou are what you dare. Everything fell into place. This confirmed what I had felt earlier. A Forerunner youth, a low Manipular, had been expertly recruited by the Librarian's ancillaon instruction of the Librarian herself. He had been deposited on the ring island within Djamonkin Crater and guided to a strange patch of white sand guarded by stolid war sphinxes. His guides had urged him to cross a deadly, barren ground of sand and stones, then, all unknown to themselves, had sung a preprogrammed song, and for the first time in a thousand of years, the site had changedreacted, responded. You are what you dare. The synchron was definitely upon me. By the sensations that crept up and downmy back and my neck, I sensed that a connective loop of world-lines would bind me for a long timeperhaps foreverto the two humans waiting in the dark, back at the stone circle. I wondered if they knew. I stretched out my hand and laid it on the pillar's smooth surface. The cold stone seemed to shiver beneath my fingers. A voice vibrated up my arm and echoed in the bones of my jaw.\n\"\nWho summons the Didact from his meditative journey?\n\"\nI was stunned into immobility. My thoughts flashed with panic and wonder. The stories still echoed over thousands of years.... The\n Didact\n! Here, surrounded by the last population of humans in the galaxy ... Not even a fool such as myself could believe such a thing. I had no idea what to do or say. But out of the dark behind me, the humans began singing again. And with that wailing, wavering song, the tone of the voice from the pillar changed its challenging tone.\n\"A message from the Lifeshaper herself, conveyed in a strange manner ... but the content is correct. Is it time to raise the Didact and return him to this plane of existence? A Forerunner must give answer.\"\nThere was really only one sensible answer:\n No\n.\n Sorry. Leave him be! We're leaving now.... But you are what you dare, and the chance to meet this hero, enemy of all humans ... Only the most foolish of young Forerunners would dare this, and so, once again, I had been well chosen.\n\"R-r-raise him,\" I said. \"You mean, bring him back...?\"\n\"\nBring him back.\n A Forerunner commands this. Stand aside, young messenger,\"\nthe voice instructed. \"Stand well back. This is a millennial seal, held by the wisdom of Harbou, hardened by the strength of Langand the force of its breaching will begreat.\"FOUR T HE SAND WITHIN\n the hollow whirled outward in spiral ridges, washing around my feet but not upsetting me. The pillar seemed to melt down, flow away into the sand. The movement dug deeper, revealing a large ovoid vessel originally buried meters below the surface. I backed away, not to stumble and get caught up in the excavation. The two humans and I again waited on the wall, dodging the sand as it hurled itself over and formed neat conic piles on all sides. Eventually, the pit became a well. The great copper and steel vessel, over ten meters high and at least that wide, gleamed as if freshly forged. Riser was chattering to himself, no doubt singing little prayers to little gods. Or perhaps the ha manune\n had greater gods, huge gods, to compensate. Chakas did nothing but watch and jump aside when necessary. Bad enough that a Forerunner of another rate would disturb the Didact's Cryptum, but if indeed this vessel carried the great Promethean warrior, he might be severely displeased to find himself in the presence of the descendants of his old enemy. Again the voice buzzed in the bones of my skull.\n\"Minimum safe distance, fifty meters. Stand aside. Millennial seal will be breached in five, four, three, two...\"\"Look away,\" I said to the two humans. As one, we all averted our eyes. I heard a crackling rumble and saw even through my palms a flash of transchronic blue. It revealed the bones of my hand. I felt it in my viscera. It made me feel immensely old, as if I might crumble to dust. I seemed to sense deep pulses of memory from all who had ever chosen to enter a Cryptum and were still sealed in profound meditative transcendence, united, brothers and sisters in timeless xankara\n. The night was illuminated by another flash, this one pure white, shot through with arcs of green fire. Behind us, through the jungle, palm leaves swung wildly, caught in changing winds. I looked everywhere but directly at the Cryptum vessel. Then it was over. The pit fell silent. Afterimages danced across the darkness and faded. Now appeared the first striations of dawn. It seemed that mere seconds had passed, and yet, the morning was upon us. Soon it was bright, and we were allowed to see clearly what we had done. The ovoid vessel had parted in three sections above its midline belt. The sections had opened outward like the protecting calyx that falls to unveil a flower. But the great figure so revealed was not nearly as pretty as a flower. In fact, curled up like some monstrous, wrinkled embryo, it resembled a great corpse shriveled by time mummified. Back in the town, I had been offered tours of catacombs filled with human dead, a disgraceful performance typical, I thought, of these degraded beings. There are things of which I have no curiosity. Yet now, I was looking upon the mortal shame of a Promethean. I had no idea what happened within a Cryptum or why any Forerunner of such fame and rank would choose such an exile, whether in penitence or insanity.... At first, I did not hear the approach of the sphinxes. From their frozen circle, threeof the machines had unfolded great curved legs and now walked over the low black rock walls. Between the swinging legs and grapples hard blue light sparked and flowed. The closest of the sphinxes unfolded four arms from just below the port of its empty control cabin and spun silvery cords into a loose net. Then, the sphinx stepped over us and descended into the pit. On the other side of the circle, another sphinx also descended, and reached into the opened Cryptum to gently lift the Didact's shriveled body. With infinite patience, the machines shrouded the body in the net, then withdrew from the pit, the net and its contents swinging slowly between. They carried the Didact right over us, and I looked up at the wrinkled hide, the minimum of clothing concealing the body's bony hips. I could not see the face or the head, but I remembered Warrior-Servants who had visited my family in Orion ... Powerful, fiercely handsome, giving me in my cool, calm nursery both visions of strength and nightmares of great destruction. As a full-rate Promethean of the Warrior-Servants, the Didact, revived and uncurled, might have risen to twice my height and weighed in at four to five times my mass. His shoulders by themselves might once have been as broad as my outstretched arms. But now, lacking armor, alive or dead, he looked as vulnerable and ugly as a hatchling bird. With a humbled, shift-footed gait, I followed the machines and jumped over the walls, ignoring the prescribed path. Chakas said nothing as he walked behind me. Riser kept to the ceremonial tracks of his ancestors and fell behind.\n\"Truly, is this treasure?\" Chakas asked dubiously.\n\"Not treasure,\" I said. \"Disaster. Any Forerunner who disturbs a Cryptum ... Sanctions. Disgrace.\"\n\"What's a 'Cryptum'?\" Chakas asked.\"A vault of ages. In search of wisdom, or to flee punishment, a mature rate might choose the path of endless peace. It is allowed only for the most powerful, whose punishment might prove troublesome to the Forerunner hierarchies.\"\n\"You know this, yet you opened it? Will they punish humans, too?\"\nNo defense, no excuse. I felt both embarrassment and misery. \"It wasn't menot just me. You sang the right song, and it heard you,\" I said.\n\"You're happy to share the blame?\"\nRiser had caught up with us, running along and balancing, arms out. \"We sang nothing,\" the little human said. Chakas shrugged and looked away. I wondered at their foolhardiness, that they did not vanish into the jungle. The war sphinxes breached the ellipse of their still-frozen companions and, without slowing, passed through, then shoved and crashed into the jungle. Two more out of the original twelve sphinxes then lifted up on blue-sparking limbs, joints alive with hard light, and followed the others through a cleared path of shredded greenery.\n\"What are we going to do?\" Chakas asked as we picked our way over broken palms and bushes.\n\"Await retribution,\" I said.\n\"Us, too? Truly?\"\nI looked upon them and felt pity. These war sphinxes had likely killed many of Chakas's ancestors.... Humans must have sinned greatly against the Mantle to deserve such a fate.FIVE T HE SPHINXES CIRCLED\n east on the ring island, gradually trending outward from the inner shore. Following in their cleared wake, we finally reached the opposite beach and looked across the broad outer lake, toward the distant crater rim. The sphinxes conveyed their burden to a low, flat building constructed of bare blast metal, gray and angular. This structure lacked the nodes and projectors that created the ornate outer shells common in Forerunner architecture. Indeed, from the sky, it might have looked like a forgotten storage depot, and against the line of tall palms, from the lake, it would hardly have been noticed at all. More and more mysterious. The four sphinxes approached in ranks of two. The pair carrying the Didact paused before a wide descending rampthe entrance. I heard the sound of huge doors swinging wide. The sphinxes sidled down the ramp into the building. The other two sank to the ground outside and folded their legs and arms with faint whirrs and sighs. The blue glow of their joints dimmed and vanished. We walked slowly past the immobile pair, skittish, uncertain whether they were guardians or just monuments once again. Bravest of all, Riser stopped to pat the pitted surface of the nearest machine, drawing an exclamation from Chakas\n\"Don't do that! They could vaporize us.\"\n\"Don't know that,\" Riser said, eyes narrow, ears up, lips straight. No doubt this was his courage face.Indeed, the sphinxes looked as stolid and ancient as ever. I peered down into the entrance. Sand had drifted down the ramp, marked by the dimpling steps of the other sphinxes. Darkness lay at the bottom. The doors were still open.\n You are what you dare.\n\"Stay here,\" I told Chakas, and started down the ramp. He reached to grab my shoulder.\n\"Not your business,\" he said, as if concerned for my safety. I gently pulled away his hand. The touch of his flesh was not as repugnant as I had thought. It felt little different from the skin of a young Forerunnermy own. Surely we could not actually be brothers, both shaped by the Precursors....\n\"I think the Librarian wanted\n all\n of us here,\" I said. My fear had merged with my boldness and some other quality I mistook for courage, forming foolish resolve. I was like an insect flying toward a flame, certain it promised, if not complete justification and salvation, at least supreme adventure. \"Someone slipped messages into your brains before you were born. Someone told you to lure a Forerunner. You sang the proper codes, and the Cryptum opened.\"\nChakas formed his mouth into an O, then knelt and held his arms over his head, facing away from the ramp. Riser joined him, glancing up at me as if unsure this was the proper way to observe the ritual. \"The Librarian touches all,\" Chakas said, and together they lapsed into whispered chants. I continued down into the darkness. The first chamber within the building was wide and dank, four times my heightjust barely enough to admit the sphinxes. Coolness pooled while warm air swirled above my waist. A dim greenish light grew in the darkness and I saw, in outline, the sphinxes facing each other over a broad pit filled with silvery liquid. The sling containing the Didact draped between thesphinxes, mere centimeters above the pool. I squatted as close as I dared to the edge. Around me, for the next few minutes, all was still. Then, the jarring voice again addressed me:\n\"\nForerunner, do you witness this return?\n\"\nI tried to retreat, but a brilliant white light shot down from the roof of the chamber and held me. The light shimmered and removed my will to move.\n\"\nDo\n you\n witness?\n\"\n\"I witness,\" I said, my voice low and tremulous.\n\"\nDo you speak for this one about to be recalled\n?\"\n\"I ... I don't know what to say.\"\n\"\nDo you\n speak?\"\n\"I speak ... for this one.\"\n\"\nDo you defend the decision to bring the Didact back from ageless peace\n?\"\nTo me, the shriveled body looked dead. I wondered if that meant the Didact was about to be resurrectedsomething I had been taught was impossible. Clearly, I understood nothing of what was happening, but by now I knew the drill well enough to simply say, \"I defend the decision.\"\nFrom the roof of the chamber, four ribbon sections of personal armor, big enough for a full-rate Promethean, dropped slowly through dilations. The pieces hovered onboth sides of the sling, and from them depended long tentacles transparent as glass which quickly filled with three colors of liquidthe basic electrolytes and nutrients required for long journeys. Most Forerunner armor was equipped to keep the wearer alive for years without outside sustenance.\n\"\nApproach\n,\" the voice instructed. \"\nThe Didact is unaware of this realm\n. Administer the reviving fluids.\n\"\nMy whole body shook, but I stepped into the pool and waded through the silvery liquid. My legs warmed. The tentacles curled toward me, not aggressive, simply offering, waiting. The sphinxes had spread the net in such a way that it opened at the top, revealing the coiled form. The Didact's face was now visible for the first time. It was indeed a strong face, the skin drawn tight against the natural skull beneath.\n\"Apply the electrolytes,\" the voice told me. Obligingly, the red-filled tentacle pushed forward, and I grasped it.\n\"To his mouth?\" I asked.\n\"Push through the lips. Dehydration will be reversed. Rigor will be suspended.\"\nI leaned in, trying not to touch the shriveled arms and not succeeding. The skin was not cold, but warm.... The Didact was not dead. I bumped the end of the tentacle, a narrow spigot, against the Didact's dried lips, then pried them apart, revealing wide, grayish white teeth. The spigot released a flood of red liquid between the clenched jaws. Most of it spilled down the shriveled cheeks and drained into the pool.I then applied two shades of blue fluid. Came a rustling within the netthe large body actually stirring. The sections of armor flexed above the Didact as if eager to embrace and protect him.\n\"Timelessness is deep. He returns, but slowly. Lift and stretch his arm,\n gently\n,\"\nthe voice instructed. Had the arm not been shriveled, the weight might have defeated me. But I did as I was told. I walked around the sphinxes, lifted and rotated the other arm, then straightened and flexed the legsalmost as stiff as wooduntil the skin took on a different sheen and a kind of suppleness returned. I followed all of the instructions of the voice that vibrated through my jaw, massaging and cleansing the Didact with handfuls of the silvery liquid as he took in more renewing fluids. For the next four hours, I helped painstakingly restore the shriveled Promethean from his long slumber, from that profound, meditative exile that was a dim legend among Forerunners my age. Return him from the joy and peace of timeless space. His rheumy eyes opened. Two protective lenses fell away and he blinked, then looked up at me with a terrible scowl. \"I\n curse\n you,\" he murmured, his voice like rocks grinding on the floor of a deep ocean. \"How long? How long have I been here?\"\nI said nothing. I had no idea how long. He twitched and struggled, but the net restrained him, that he might not move too quickly, too soon. After an awkward time, he fell back, exhausted, and fluids leaked from his nose and lips. He tried to speak, but it was difficult. He managed one more utterancea question. \"Has the damned thing finally been fired?\"\n\"Go now. It is done,\" the voice told me.I scrambled out of the pool and left the chamber. The humans waited for me, but I was too moved and too frightened to speak.SIX T IME ON THE\n ring island seemed suspended. Something in the silvery fluid, in the splash from the restoring liquidsin the aura of disturbed peace that had surrounded the Didacthad deeply affected me. I felt I had been bathed in history, waded through time itself. Suns rose and set, but I was not sure they were the same sun, nor that the night sky was the same skyeverything seemed different. The two humans stayed close, like worried pets. We dozed together. Their touch was no longer repugnant. They helped keep me warm. Given time, I would never understand humans, but I might feel a certain affection for them. I actually slept for the first time since infancy, confirming to myself that it was armor that relieved Forerunners from this natural act. After ten days, the Didact ventured out of the chamber to take exercise. His skin had lost most of its wrinkled character and taken on a more natural grayish pink color. He still wore no armor, perhaps because he was intent on full recovery, without assistance. Silent, morose, he did not ask for company, and we avoided his pathways. Still, I made note of the changes his return from eternity had brought to this place. All the war sphinxes were now active. They moved purposefully about the island, blazing fresh trails through the trees, though they always left the green, leafy canopies intact. I assumed they were establishing points of observation and lines of communication between possible defensive positions. Such preparations seemed antique and peculiar, to say the least. Perhaps the Didact had not returned with his wits intact.Once, we observed two sphinxes merging to create a larger unit, yet with the same stern, judgmental expression carved into the forward surface. From near the ramp, where Chakas and I lunched on fruit and coconuts, we watched the Didact return from a hike that had begun with movement east, and now ended with his return from the westa complete circuit of the island, following the new trails.\n\"What's he\n doing\n?\" Chakas asked, his mouth full.\n\"Reconnoitering. Preparing for his defense,\" I guessed.\n\"Defense against what?\" Chakas asked, incredulous. I wondered if these humans knew how lucky they were, that he hadn't already crushed them with his great hands, or had the sphinxes burn them to ashes. The Didact descended the ramp, paying as little attention to us as he might a windblown shrub or a wayward scatter of birds.\n\"Why are we here?\" Chakas asked me, his voice hushed. \"What is he to the Librarian?\"\n\"Her husband,\" I said. \"In the old legends, they were married.\"\nChakas looked shocked, then disgusted. \"Forerunners\n marry\n each other?\"\nTo be honest, I was equally incredulous. How could such an intimate alliance form between the supreme enemy of humans and their last and greatest protector?\nI explained simply to pass the time. \"Forerunners marry for many reasons, but the lower rates are said to marry more often for love. This allows strange liaisons.Humans will never understand. Your own customs are much too primitive.\"\nChakas received this with less than perfect grace. He swore under his breath and took off through the jungle. I thought him remarkably obtuse, unwilling as he was to accept his station in life. Riser was constantly venturing into the jungle alone, and brought back more fruits and a few coconuts. He seemed unconcerned about what might happen next. The Didact stayed in the chamber that evening while I hiked through the jungle with my humans. (Ownership seemed a more seemly relation than brotherhood.) We then gathered on the inner beach under a brilliance of stars. My apprehension and numbness had dissipated and were nowtoo typically, I fearbeing replaced by boredom. We had served our purpose. We weren't needed anymore, obviously. If we weren't to be killed or arrested, if the Didact ignored us, then perhaps we could make our way to the outer shore and find a boat. But Chakas didn't think so. He pointed out that the profile of the crater's central peak had changed. \"They'll see it from the rim. That will stop any boats from coming here.\"\nI hadn't deigned to be so observant. Generally, personal armor kept track of life's little details, leaving Forerunners free to engage in elevated thoughts. \"What's changed?\" I asked, irritated. \"It's dark. It still has trees around its base and bare rocks up to the top.\"\n\"I think the machines are crossing over and working there,\" he said. \"Anyway, something is moving rocks.\"\n\"Sphinxes are war machines, not excavators.\"\"Maybe there are other machines.\"\n\"We don't see them,\" I pointed out. \"And I don't hear anything.\"\n\"Tomorrow,\" Riser suggested, and vanished into the trees, not to return for hours. Chakas and I made our way to the outer shore. The next night, we tried to follow Riser on one of his excursions. The little human was apparently allowed to roam freely, but a solitary war sphinx dropped swiftly through the trees and planted itself on curved legs, blocking Chakas and me.\n\"What are we,\n prisoners\n?\" I shouted. It made no answer. Chakas shook his head, grinning.\n\"What's funny?\" I asked as we trudged back the way we had come, followed by the hovering sphinx. Riser darted past us with a small pile of nuts. Chakas shouted after him, not in anger, but in humor. \"Ha manush\n are free to come and go,\" he said. \"He'll boast about it if we get home. Looks like he's our superior here.\"\n\"His brain is smaller than yours,\" I said.\n\"And yours is smaller than the Didact's, I'll wager.\"\n\"No,\" I said, and was about to explain the ways of mutation from Manipular to higher rates and greater forms, while we returned to the clearing around the half buried chamber. But my words were choked off.The Didact sat in a posture of quiet thought atop the left wall of the ramp. His dark-hooded eyes tracked us for the first time as if we were worthy of some small attention. He grunted and dropped from the wall with newfound agility. \"Manipular,\"\nhe said. \"Why are these humans here?\"\nChakas and I stood before the Promethean, locked into awed silence. This was it, I thoughtthe time of judgment and punishment.\n\"Tell me, why\n humans\n?\"\n\"This is\n our\n world,\" Chakas said, in a fair imitation of the Didact's exalted grammar and tone. \"Perhaps we should ask why\n you\n are here.\"\nI wanted to clamp my hands around his mouth, and turned to reprimand him, but the Didact raised one powerful arm. \"\nYou\n,\" he said, pointing to me. \"How came this to be?\"\n\"The human is telling the truth,\" I said. \"This is a planet reserved for their occupation. I came here seeking artifacts. These humans showed me to your resting place. They have a\n gea\n\"\n\"A Cryptum is not to be violated,\" he interrupted, looking off at the sky. \"One of you found a way to open my vessel. Who? And how?\"\nHis sadness was like a pall over the beach and the jungle. For me, in the presence of such a senior Forerunner, it seemed as if the very air filled with his weary gloom.\n\"The humans sang songs,\" I answered. \"The Cryptum opened.\"\n\"Only one Forerunner would ever be so devious,\" the Didact said, his voice softening. \"Or so clever. You were about to say, the humans have a\n geas.Someone infused them with codes in their infancy, or earliergenetically.\"\n\"I think that might be so.\"\n\"How much time has passed?\"\n\"Perhaps a thousand years,\" I said. \"A very long sleep.\"\n\"Not\n sleep\n,\" the Didact said. \"I entered the Cryptum on another world. Someone brought me here. Why?\"\n\"We are tools of the Librarian,\" Chakas said. \"We serve her.\"\nThe Didact examined the human with distaste. \"With my sphinxes, someone helped revive me.\"\n\"I did,\" I confirmed.\n\"I had hoped to rise in triumph and recognition of my judgmentbut instead, I find myself facing young fools and the offspring of ancient enemies. This is worse than disgrace. Only one other reason ... one other provocation would make the Librarian revive me under these humiliating circumstances.\"\nHe raised one arm, then executed a brief wave in the air with his fingers. The pieces of armor floated out of the chamber, and the Didact assumed a position of robing, arms extended. The armor sections surrounded his limbs, his torso, and finally, the top of his head, in shimmering pale bands that floated centimeters above his skin. I was surprised by the humbleness of the armor's design. My father's armor was far more ornate, yet he was not the stuff of legend. Such were the sumptuary rules of Forerunnerseven a great Promethean must dress below the style of any Builder.\n\"There must be a reason my wife is not here to greet me,\" the Didact said whenhe was fully clothed. He stretched his arms to the stars. Beams shot from his fingers, and he sketched out several constellations, as if commanding the stars to move. I felt strangely surprised when they did not. The beams dimmed and went out, and he curled his fingers into fists. \"You know nothing.\"\n\"So I've been told,\" I said.\n\"You are a mere Manipular, and a reckless one at that.\" He pointed to Riser.\n\"Little human, I know your kind. You are of ancient form. I asked you be preserved, because you are peaceful yet full of cleverness. Worthy pets to amuse and by low example to instruct our young. But\n you\n...\" He swung his finger around to Chakas.\n\"You are too much like the humans who nearly wrecked my fleets and murdered my warriors. My wife has taken liberties. She provokes me.\" He stretched out his arms. The armor flashed. \"\nYou\n provoke me.\"\nChakas's face clouded but, wisely, he said nothing. The Didact seemed to rethink any violent action. His arms dropped and the armor returned to a state of protection.\n\"Manipular, where did you see first light?\" he asked. I explained that my venerable Builder family had long inhabited systems in and around the Orion nebular complex, near the Forerunner core.\n\"Why are you naked?\"\n\"Merses surround this island,\" I said. \"They won't tolerate complex machines. My ancilla\"\n\"My wife raised merses in our garden shallows,\" the Didact said. \"Never likedthem much myself. Show me.\"SEVEN I N A FOUL\n mood, Chakas lagged behind the Didact, Riser, and me as we hiked along the outer shore, following one of the new trails blazed by the sphinxeswhich were, indeed, acting as excavators, apparently to the surprise of the Didact as well. In truth, he seemed more often dismayed than in control of his surroundingsmore often confused than enlightened by what we found. He had no explanation for the reshaping of the central peak.\n\"I am lost here,\" he said as we looked over the outer lake of Djamonkin Crater. He studied the wallowing merse. He found a low boulder and sat again in that contemplative posture that also seemed to reveal exhaustion. \"No one can tell me why I am not still in timeless peace.\"\n\"In exile,\" I said. He glowered. \"Yes, exile. Forced to retreat for speaking truth, tactical and strategic wisdom, useless against the bold assertions of the Master Builder...\"\nHe stopped himself. \"But those matters are not for the ears of a Manipular. Tell meare the weapons finished? Have they been used?\"\nI told him I knew nothing of weapons.\n\"That means little. As a Manipular, you have no need to understand your greater circumstances. Worse, however, you apparently focus on personal gain and treasure\n. Precursor artifacts. No doubt you seek the Organon.\"His words stabbed deep, not just because they were true. \"I am honest to my goals. I seek diversion,\" I said. \"Excuses for adventure are means to an end.\" I quoted, \"\nYou are what you dare\n.\"\n\"Aya,\" the Didact murmured, shaking his great head. \"So I told\n her\n, once, and she's chided me with it ever since.\" He looked out over the lake and the clear cloudless morning sunrise. A breeze sallied from the west into the crater's wide bowl and dappled the blue waters, eliciting circlets of foam from agitated merse.\n\"Ugly, mean brutes,\" the Didact observed, his rancor cooled. \"What ritual allowed you to come here without being attacked?\"\nI explained about humans and their wooden boats, powered by steam, but even then requiring soft watery songs to cross safely.\n\"Humans making tools ... again.... I have been well and cleverly hidden. No other Forerunner would seek me here.\"\n\"Long time,\" Riser confirmed. He seemed comfortable around the Didactas if from instinct. I saw it clearly. A servant species favored for ages ... No wonder Chakas was in a foul mood. His own instincts were likely either blank long erasedor filled with much darker memories.\n\"Your Cryptum killed any human who approached,\" I said. \"At least, any stupid human.\"\n\"A selection process,\" the Didact said.\n\"But there was a safe way in, partly. Someone made a puzzle that would stick in the human imagination. So humans came time and again and sacrificed themselves, and the survivors erected walls and laid pebbles to show the way. Someone wanted you to be foundwhen the time was right.\"This seemed to sink the Didact into deeper gloom. \"Then it is almost over,\" he said. \"All we have tried to do as inheritors of the Mantleall\n that\n will be violated, and the galaxy will be murdered ... because\n they\n do not understand.\" He let out a grating sigh. \"Worse,\n it\n may already be loose. Join your human friends and sing sad songs, Manipular. There is judgment, and just doom is upon us all.\"\n\"It is what you all deserve, no more,\" Chakas said, throwing down a shred of palm. The Promethean paid him no attention.EIGHT T HAT NIGHT, IN\n the dark, the profile of the central peak altered abruptly. Thousands of sparking fires and bluish glows burned around the jutting prominence like the flitting of lightning insects, until the dawn snuffed them with the sun's first yellow rays. Riser accompanied me to the inner shore, sharing parts of a coconut and the sour green fruit he favored. He also offered a piece of raw meat from some animal he had snared in the darkness, but I of course refused. The Mantle forbade the eating of the flesh of unfortunates. Chakas was nowhere to be found. What the sun revealed of the former peak was a circle of slender pillars, rising a thousand meters out of a remnant base of mountain and surrounded by sloping chutes of scoria. I had never seen the like before, and vaguely wondered if here, finally, was a Precursor machine fully active, ready to unleash mischief. I was very confused. My curiosity about all manner of things historical had been sparked by the example of the Didact. If he was indeed the Didact ... for how could a great warrior and defender of Forerunner civilization, how could a true Promethean, feel such a depth of defeat and gloom? What passionswhat adventures had this Warrior-Servant known in his long life, and what could have possibly forced such strength and accomplishment to cower in meditative exile?\nI put little store in his condemnation of other Forerunners. Truly, the concept of an end to Forerunner history had never occurred to me. I found it ludicrous. And yet ...The idea of Warrior-Servants laying low entire speciesnow that I had actually met humansseemed to violate all the precepts of the Mantle. Did not the Mantle give us dominion to allow us to uplift and educate our lessers? Even humans, so degraded, deserved that much respect.... After all, I had learned much about Chakas from observing him, and my opinions of his degraded status were changing. The Didact's guilt alone might account for his deep sense of darkness and failure. I looked from the inner shore at the revealed pillars and wondered what they were meant for, what would rise through or up and around them. Was it something for the use of the Didact? An architectural beacon announcing his return? Or the final instrument of his punishment?\nI understood nothing about Forerunner politics. I had always disdained this concern of mature forms. Now I felt weak in my ignorance. What shattered my youthful naivete most powerfully was the realization that the world of my peoplea world of ageless social order and regimentation, of internal peace against external challengemight not be eternal, that rising through the forms from Manipular to Builder, or whatever other destiny I fled so blithely All that might soon not be a choice. This morning, I felt true mortality for the first time. And not just my own. I now understood the deep old symbol for Timethe sweeping opposed hands with lightning between, extended fingers triangulating the pinch of most efficient fates from which there is no return. Chakas interrupted my thoughts with a touch on my shoulder. I turned and saw him standing behind me, looking out at the pillars with a look of bitter dread.\n\"They're coming from the east,\" he said.\"Across the lake, over the merse?\"\n\"No. The sky is filling with ships. The Librarian no longer protects us.\"\n\"Does the Didact know?\"\n\"Why should I care?\" Chakas said. \"He's a monster.\"\n\"He's a great hero,\" I said.\n\"You\n are\n a fool,\" Chakas said, and ran back through the trees.NINE T HE SHIPS MOVED\n slowly in a great, waving gray and black line from east to west, like a ribbon of steel and adamantium slicing the sky. So many!I had never seen so many ships in one place, even on ceremonial days on my family's homeworld. What I could not understand was the reason so many were necessary, if in fact they were here to capture and incarcerate just one old Warrior-Servant. Even a Promethean, it seemed to me, did not merit such a show of force. But everyone around me seemed to think I was a fool, even a simpleton. I kept to the inner beach, lying on the sand, watching the ships arrange themselves in tight whorls spiraling in toward Djamonkin Crater. At the center of the whorl, a great Builder shipthe largest I had ever seenand a great Miner vessel, easily outmatching anything owned by my swap-family, held steady in a dyadic cloud of buffer energies. The air itself began to feel stiff and harsh with the pressure of so many ships hanging in slow suspension. A shadow of a nearer, darker sort crossed my face, and I angled my head to see a war sphinx just a few meters away, rising on its curved legs.\n\"The Didact requests your presence,\" it announced.\n\"Why?\" I asked. \"The entire galaxy is coming to a bitter end. I'm just a piece of waste matter not worth flushing.\"\nThe sphinx took a step closer, unfolding upper arms tipped with tangles of flexible grapples. Hard light flashed blue along all its joints.\"So it's not a request, eh?\" I said, and pushed to my feet. \"Do I walk? Or are you offering me a ride?\"\n\"Suck it up, Manipular,\" the sphinx intoned. \"Your presence will be useful.\"\nI felt for the first time that there might be more than just a mechanical intelligence under its pitted skin. \"He wants me to witness him being arrested,\" I said. \"Is that it?\"\nThe grapples flashed like the agile fingers of a\n pan guth\n master. \"These ships are not here to arrest the Didact,\" the sphinx informed me. \"They are here to demand his help. He will of course refuse.\"\nI had no response to this. Instead, I followed the sphinx quietly through the trees to the inner shore. Since the sphinx seemed to have found a new purposetelling me what was whatI ventured another question.\n\"What's with the mountain? Why tear it down?\"\n\"It is the Librarian's doing.\"\n\"Oh.\" That told me nothing, of coursebut it was intriguing. Something big was happening, that much was obvious. Without my armor, I wasn't fit to meet my superiorsor even other Manipulars, for that matterbut the fact that the Didact still knew I existed and required my presence was also intriguing. I looked around the inner shore. Then a glint caught my eye, and I looked up toward the base of the mountain, the cloud-piercing pillarsand saw the other war sphinxes flying across the inner lake, climbing rapidly to several hundred meters. I looked around. The inner beach was deserted. \"Where is everybody?\" I asked. The sphinx's control cabin hatch pulled aside with a fluid sigh. \"You will join theDidact. Get in.\"\nI knew enough about the protocol of warriors and their machines to understand that I was not being recruited into a glorious, defiant fight to the finish. And then it dawned on methe\n humans\n might be riding in sphinxes as well. Why were we so important?\nI tried to crawl up the pitted ancient surface. The grapples extended around and aft, providing stirrups. I climbed in through the rear hatch, and it sealed behind me. The cabin inside was spacious enough for a mature Warrior-Servant, only slightly smaller than the Didact himselfgiving me plenty of room but no comfort because nothing was shaped to accommodate a much smaller and almost completely naked Manipular. There were a bare seat, a variety of antiquated displays, and control tubes designed to hook up with armor. Standing on the seat, I could see through the slanted, forward-looking direct-view ports that gave the sphinx's features the illusion of a disdainful, downward gaze. I felt only a little bump, and then we were away, wheeling about to join the general migration toward the dismantled mountain and the mysterious pillars. Above the island, the spiral of ships held position and did nothingperhaps locked in some sort of dispute. Wherever the Didact was, there was likely to be trouble. I could not imagine the power he had once wieldedthat he could still, after a thousand years, provoke legions of Forerunners to seek him out and assemble their ships above the island. We crossed the inner lake in minutes, a leisurely pace for craft designed to drop from high orbit, sweep continents, and decimate cities. The only thing these old machines lacked, I thought, was a direct connection to slipspace. But I didn't knowthat for sure. The sphinxes circled the lower reaches of the pillars, then passed between and dropped to a central, octagonal platform. There, they settled in a protective ellipse, just as I had first seen them only a few days before. The hatch opened. I emerged and slid off the rear curve. From another sphinx, Riser poked out, clearly agitated. Not tall enough to see out the ports, I thought. The Florian ran over and stood close, wringing his hands and trembling.\n\"\nSomething\n in there with me,\" he muttered, then smirked up at me and wiped his forehead with one hand. \"Not alive. Not happy. Very bad!\"\nThe greater, doubled war sphinx arrived last and settled in the center of the ellipse. As if at its touch, the platform vibrated under my feet, then began to rotate. All around, the pillars and the base of the mountainand the ships in formation high abovealso seemed to turn. The spiral of ships took on a hypnotic, whirlpool fascination. We felt none of this motion, but still, Riser grunted in dismay. The Didact descended from the doubled sphinx and walked on his trunklike legs to confront us. \"You're being kidnapped, young Manipular,\" he grumbled as the pillars sped up. \"The humans have to come as well. Apologies to all.\"\nI looked down to avoid getting dizzy, even without the sensation of spinning....\n\"Why apologize now?\" I asked. The Didact's expression did not changehe did not react in the least to my insubordination, whelp that I was, agitating against the Promethean's thousands of years of life and experience. He simply looked outward, drew his brows down in concentration, and asked, \"Where's the other human?\"\"Still hiding,\" Riser said. \"Sick.\"\nChakas chose this moment to poke his upper body out of the hatch of his transport. He looked woozy. His descent down the sloping back of the machine lacked any dignity, and he landed on bent legs, then slumped to one side and vomited.\n\"\nBad\n sky,\" Riser said stoically. The Promethean regarded this sign of human weakness with the same emotion he had shown to my insubordination. \"In a few hours, all signs of my stay here will be erased. No one will be able to prove I was ever here.\"\n\"Can't the ships see us?\"\n\"Not yet. But they obviously know something.\"\n\"Why so many?\" I asked.\n\"They've come to ask my helpor arrest me again. I think the former, and I think I know whybut I\n must not help them.\n I've stayed here too long already. It's time to leave. And all of you will come with me.\"\n\"Where? How?\"\nMy answer arrived even as I spoke. The platform was still rising. The circling pillars sprouted bulkheads, beams, and stanchionsall the necessary parts. The skeleton of a slipspace voyager was growing around us, almost too rapidly to track until the pillars were walled in, the sky and the swirling ships vanished, and we were completely enclosed. Chakas stumbled over to stand on my other side. Clearly, he might throw upagain. A disgusting practice and to little purpose, I thought. I was flanked by humans, with the Didact before me, his back turned and arms extended, as if commanding the voyager to rise and grow by the very gestures of his handswhich might have been the case.\n\"They might notice\n that\n,\" I suggested.\n\"From where they are, they see only a solid island and the water of the lake,\" the Didact said. \"The ship will grow and launchand\n then\n they will know. The Librarian designs beyond her station. She has always planned well.\"\n\"She made this for you?\" I asked.\n\"For our greater cause,\" the Didact said. \"We fight for the grace of the Mantle.\"\nThe Didact turned to face me as our chamber finished, and I saw we were within a large, fully equipped command center. My father himself could not have designed a more advanced ship. I could easily imagine the outer hull, a gray, gleaming, elongated ovoid, at least a thousand meters in length. The power and the expense had to be enormousbut, cleverly enough, rather than hiding a finished ship, the Librarian must have left a Builder's design seed under the central peak, updating it as new technology was revealed. Forerunner technology still grew in spurts, even after millions of years. She must have traded great favors for such an installation. Displays flashed into action around the command center and showed views in many frequencies and aspects of the outer island, the distant walls of the crater, and above, I saw as I craned my neck back, the assembled, searching ships. A single bright star gleamed just outside the circle of vessels at the center of the fleet spiral. That star marked our voyager's calculated point of departure. In earlyslipspace, we did not want to pass through anything as massive as another ship. We lifted from the island. The command center displays revealed our motion; we felt nothing. At this point, the ships\n must\n see us, I thought. Such a large vessel must leave a definite trail!\nI felt that brief sensation of unencumberingof all history and memory being cut loose, and then painstakingly reassembled, as every particle of our ship and our bodies was wrenched from the doubled hand of time, and had to find new scalars, new destinies, far, far away.\n\"Aya,\" the Promethean said. \"We are away. It is done.\"\nThe displays tracked our course. We were moving outward along the great spiral arm that held both the Orion complex and Erde-Tyrenejust a few tens of thousands of light-years. Hours at most would pass for us. Had I known where we were fleeing, and what we would find ... Against the greatest and most solemn instructions of the Mantle, I might have killed myself then and there.TEN I\n KNEW ENOUGH\n about interstellar travel to realize that time frames and reference-level fates were also adjusting. There would be no paradoxes, no curling or bunching-up of world-lines in slipspace. The secrets that lie between the streaking particles and waves that make up atoms are said to be vast. From those inner secrets, Forerunners have prodded sufficient power to change the shape of worlds, move stars, and even to contemplate shifting the axes of entire galaxies. We have explored other realities, other spacesslipspace, denial of locale, shunspace, trick geodetics, natal void, the photon-only realm called the Glow. But the vastness between suns is great and mysterious in a very different way. Our familiarity with these distances has, I think, almost been lost because we cross them so blithely, but no Forerunner memory would be great enoughperhaps not even the combined memories of all the Forerunners who ever livedto remember the second-by-second events of a simple\n walk\n between two neighboring stars, this far out in the galactic arm. We fly over and above but just barely\n through\n all that. And yetthis journey, in this ship, seemed to me to last forever. I felt it in my unarmored flesh and bones. I was naked to space for the first time in my life. I hated it. We arrived. And then, perversely, I regretted that it was over.\n*\n*\n*\nWe looked down over a huge, bleak, rocky gray world, a slagged and singed corpse which must have recently supported life, for it still wrapped itself in an atmosphere sufficient to allow armored Forerunners to surviveif not our humans.Chakas and Riser lingered in a corner of the command center. Riser tossed in restless half-sleep. Chakas looked out at us with a frightened, angry expression. He knew he was far from home. He suspected he would never return. He owed nothing to Forerunners, least of all to the Didact. I actually worried for himstrangely enough.\n\"This used to be a Precursor hub world,\" the Didact said. \"Once, it was covered with tremendous structuresmostly intact. Extremely impressive.\"\nI looked down, prepared to be awed. I had never heard of such a place. It made sense that the higher forms would conceal real treasure. The Didact's voice deepened. \"It's changed,\" he said.\n\"How, changed?\" I asked. We walked around the command center, past the humans, the Didact leading the way, as we surveyed hundreds of magnified images gathered from our first orbit.\n\"No orbital arches. Looks as if they've collapsed out of orbit. Look at those long, linear impacts. Everything's corroded. I recognize hardly anythingnot the arena, not the Highway, not the Giant's Armory. Nothing, really.\"\n\"That can't happen,\" I said. \"Precursor artifacts are eternal. They are with us as reminders of our littleness, forever.\"\n\"Apparently not,\" the Didact said. He seemed to be formulating a theory. Then he clapped his handsmassive, booming slams of armor and fleshand pointed one arm up. The command center complied and began to search and magnify the sky across a broad spectrum.\n\"You've studied the basic principles of Precursor technology, what little we know?\"the Didact asked.\n\"What little we think we know. No one has ever seen Precursor technology in action.\"\n\"\nI\n have,\" the Didact said, and gave me a look from the corner of his dark, slitted eyes. \"Once. Tell me what you know, what's changed in our understanding in the last thousand years ... and I'll judge whether you might be of use to me.\"\n\"The basic principle was called neural physics,\" I said. \"Precursors felt the Mantle extended to the entire universe, energy and matter as well as living creatures ... some say. The universe lives, but not as we do.\"\n\"Some say. Since my exile, have we cracked their techniques, acquired their learning?\"\n\"No. That is why I seek the Organon.\"\n\"Well, it doesn't exist,\" the Didact said. \"Not as such.\"\nAnother layer of disappointment fell over my thoughts. \"I suppose I knew that,\" I said. \"But the quest is the joy of it.\"\n\"Aya. Ever so. The quest, the fightnever the finding or the victory.\"\nI looked up at the Didact, surprised. The voyager's sensors scanned heat and other radiation signatures in the sky, latencies in cosmic ray patterns from the inner galaxy and outer reaches of the spiral arm.\n\"Our humans should feel right at home here,\" he said. \"Once, they knew these worlds better than Forerunners. They fought and died here, surrounded byPrecursor ruins...\" He slowly turned, the displays silently precessing with him. Then he pointed out a void in the system's magnetic flux. \"There was recently a huge construct nearby, no more than three hundred million kilometers from here.\"\n\"Precursor?\" I asked.\n\"No. Forerunnerbut big enough. The size and mass were sufficient to create a persistent distortion in the system's field. See thatit even leaves a mark in the stellar winds.\"\n\"How recently?\"\n\"Judging by the diffusion of its magnetic shadow, four or five decades ago. Portal technology has grown enormously more powerful, but to move such an object, they must be slowing other traffic throughout the galaxy.\"\nHe swept out his hands like a sculptor and tugged down virtual charts, diagrams, simulations based on the sensor's measurements. What they revealed was a circular gap in the interstellar medium, and a drawn-out loop in the star's vast, slowly wobbling magnetic field, its patterns smearing outward for hundreds of millions of kilometers.\n\"This world was recently used as a test subject,\" the Didact said. \"I can guess by whom.\"\n\"Test for what?\"\n\"They transported a great,\n sinful\n weapon into the systemand fired it. Then they left and took it with them. The Builders are going ahead with their plancomplete neural destruction. When I entered my exile, the designs had not been finalized. Apparently, that's changed. This time, they tried it on a limited scale. However ... there has been an unfortunate side effect, one I hope they did not anticipate. We must act quickly.\"The displays quivered and vanished. \"The Librarian heard about the test. Knowing she would try to alert me, the Builders set up surveillance to watch her. She could not come to release me herself, but she had made other arrangements by using what she loves most ... our more problematic brethren.\" He glanced at the humans.\n\"Ultimately, they helped save me from being captured. They are her servants, whether they know it or not.\"\n\"They know,\" I said.\n\"And whether I like it or not, she knew they must become my allies,\" the Didact said. \"You as well. We are going down to the planet. All of us. You'll require armor. The ship will outfit you.\"ELEVEN T HE ARMOR TOOK\n an hour to grow up around me, with numerous half-visible engineering units, small and large, flitting from the bulkheads to adjust and connect the necessary parts, then to activateand then cut me and my fresh armor lose. At first, the humans refused, but after being chased around the command cabin by rippling bands, they were finally corneredand forced to submit. Chakas seemed more willing than Riser, even curious, but the poor Florian was mortified, growling to himself and trembling. The Didact tried to reassure him with a finger stroke across his cheek. Riser bit him. The Didact withdrew, then waited impatiently. As there was nothing else to do except wince at some minor pinching, I observed my Promethean kidnapper with what I hoped was more discernment and sophistication, based on the experience I had gained in the last few pentads. I had never met anyone like the Didact. Warrior-Servants as a rule kept to themselves, except to respond to commands from political leaders, most often Builders. A few Warriors, among them Prometheans, had once served on various councils but only in an advisory capacity. Skill at war, however necessary at times, has always seemed shamefully contradictory to the basic principles of the Mantle. Still, Forerunners had used Warriors many times and likely would again. Hypocrisy is its own collapsing mineshaft, my swap-father was fond of saying.The Didact walked around me, punching my shoulder and torso ribbons, poking a darkly shielded finger into the interstitial at my neck, and generally putting my armor through a series of forceful tests, none of which I felt was strictly necessary. My armorsmoothly curved and silvery gray, helmet edges sweeping back from my facial features, with trim-lines of white and greenwas already sufficiently functional to provide me with lists of command structures, such as would be made available to Manipulars. But here, on this ship, access seemed to be expanded as if I were tapping into the Didact's own stores. And then I heard a familiar voice. The little blue feminine shape reappeared in the back of my head. I felt subtle tendrils establish the necessary connections with memory and thought. My ancilla\n...\n\"I am here, Manipular,\" she said. \"I cannot establish a connection with your previous ancilla. Until that connection is made, may I serve you to the best of my ability?\"\n\"You're from the Librarian's staff,\" I said.\n\"That seems to be the case.\"\n\"An ancilla like you got me into this situation. Are you here to serve\n me\n, or the Librarian?\"\n\"Are you disappointed by your present circumstances?\"\nThat took me aback. I looked across the command center. The humans were clumsily adjusting to their outfits. Riser was much taller than he was used to, walking stiffly on long legs that put him on a level with Chakas. The Didact was deep in study of the system's trace in the photonic realm of theGlow, which might reveal even more evidence of what had happened here.\n\"I'm in way over my head,\" I said to the ancilla. \"I don't like being twisted around and held against my willeven to compensate for my foolishness.\"\n\"Do you feel foolish?\" the voice asked. Chakas approached. \"I also have a woman in my clothes,\" he said with a wry twist of his mouth. \"She says she will help me. She's\n blue\n. Where is she, really?\"\n\"She doesn't exist except in your armor and your head ... and wherever she gets her information from, perhaps the ship.\"\n\"Can I sleep with her? Marry her?\" Chakas asked.\n\"I'd like to see you try.\"\nChakas was not much enlightened by this answer. \"What kind of help do I need?\"\nhe asked. Riser walked about with increasing confidence and joined us, eyes darting as if he were being shown things only he could see. \"Doesn't itch. Pretty in here, but I can't see my familyonly\n her.\n She looks like ha manush\n, but she is not part of my family.\"\nI found it interesting that the ancilla would adopt Riser's physical form. Chakas turned to me. \"Ha manush\n live with ancestors in their heads. Cha manush do not.\"\n\"She will answer your questions,\" I said, \"both of you, if you figure out what to ask.\"Riser nodded. \"Perhaps she is\n somebody's\n ancestor.\" And he closed his eyes. The Didact broke from his study and approached us. \"They look silly,\" he said of the humans. \"You look ... What's wrong?\"\n\"My ancilla was programmed by the Librarian.\"\n\"So is mine,\" the Didact said. \"We're here at her request, to fulfill a mission we set for ourselves a thousand years ago. It's not starting at all well.\"\n\"I don't feel free to ask what I need to ask, or study what I need to study,\" I said.\n\"You are certainly\n not\n free, if by that, you mean free to act like a selfish Manipular.\"\n\"You mean, suck it up,\" I said.\n\"Exactly.\" He drew down more displays. \"From orbit, I can't make the necessary inspection. We're going down to the surface. All of us.\"\n\"The humans are just animalsthey're not ready for this,\" I said.\n\"I fought those\n animals\n once,\" the Didact said. \"Believe me, they're capable of surprising you. Make sure they're prepared. This will not be an easy landing.\"\nChakas put on a statue-like expression of calm disdain as I passed along this information. \"There's a barren planet below,\" I said. \"We're going to land.\"\n\"What's\n he\n want with us?\" Chakas asked.\n\"I'd sell him for a bag of fruit,\" Riser said. I was dismayed by how much sympathy I felt for these two inferiors. Animals,perhapsbut not fools. What then was my excuse?\nAtmosphere sang against the hull. The ship shuddered at the new strains on its fresh construction. It hadn't yet integratedhadn't tested itself under all conditions, especially planetfall.\n\"The Librarian protects you,\" I told them. \"But the Librarian looks after\n him\n, too. Something big happened heresomething other Forerunners have kept secret.\"\nI returned to the Didact. He was lost in research, his armor connecting with the ship to take on new volumes of knowledge. Somewhat to my surprise, my ancilla synced with his, and I accessed an intricately stepped and footnoted chart of relationships concerning the Didact himself. He wanted me to know more about him. Ten thousand years ago ... The Librarian and the Didact had first met on Charum Hakkor, the political center of the human-San'Shyuum empire. The final battle of Charum Hakkor had broken the human-San'Shyuum alliance and destroyed the last reserves of human resistance. That battle had been notorious, a great victorybut from the point of view of Mantle orthodoxy, of course, supremely disgraceful. Victory did not bring joy for the Didact. The limb of the barren gray planet expanded. Our ship took on an aerodynamic configuration, bowing out at the sides, altering its propulsion, growing huge landing pads and radiating fluxor shields against blowback. We were about to land on a dead world in a dead system. The horizon was rugged in the extreme.\"Below ... This is Charum Hakkor, isn't it?\" I asked. The Didact did not answer, but I sensed the truth.\n\"The fools,\" he murmured. He looked at me with a deep sadness. The contrast between his face and minethe depth of experience, sorrow, character ... \"And they claim that\n Warriors\n violate the Mantle.\"\nSlowly, we descended through the last few kilometers of atmosphere. Our armor locked itself to the deck. Behind me, Riser chirruped bitterly about being unable to move. The command center shifted its bulkheads and opened a direct view port to the surface. We were landing in darkness.\n\"Humans made Charum Hakkor the center of their empire to be close to one of the greatest collections of Precursor structures,\" the Didact said. \"They believed they were the true inheritors of the Mantle.\"\n\"Heresyright?\" I asked.\n\"It was one cause of our war,\" the Didact said. \"Not the primary cause, however. Humans resented Forerunner expansion outward. For fifty years, scattered through the galactic arm, humans probed our settlements and positions. Then they allied with the San'Shyuum, combined their knowledge, and created weapons against which my warriors had little defense.\"\n\"Settlements? I thought Forerunners didn't need new planetsthat we'd achieved maximum growth.\"\nThe Didact sighed. \"There are many things Builders do not teach to their young,\"\nhe said. \"Earlier displacements around Orion and in toward galactic center forced us to move native populations from their home regions to new, outer systems. TheLibrarian and her staff cataloged and searched for the most appropriate matches, those stars most like native suns...\"\n\"You shuffled planets?\"\n\"Yes,\" the Didact said. \"Humans are naturally purists. They resent having to live with other species. In fact, they're among the most contentious, bigoted, self centered...\" He looked back at Riser and Chakas. \"I never understood how my wife tolerated them.\"\n\"Forerunners don't like living with other species, either,\" I observed.\n\"Yes, but for good reason,\" the Didact said. \"We enforce the Mantle. We must focus and protect and preserve all lifeincluding ourselves.\"\nI had been taught this principle often enough, yet now it rang incredibly hollow.\n\"The humans wanted to be left alone,\" I said.\n\"Oh, they were expanding as well, and happily displaced and destroyed on their own. The San'Shyuum are not naturally inclined to war. They are a handsome, intelligent race, besotted with eternal sexuality and youth. They hoped to spend their lives in luxury. For all that, their science was extraordinary. I suspect that given a few more centuries, humans and San'Shyuum would have fallen out with each other.... Humans would undoubtedly have devastated their more effete allies. We saved them that trouble.\"\n\"You devastated both,\" I said.\n\"We made a pact with the San'Shyuum. For the humans, there was no pact. The Librarian managed to save some. More than I suspected.\"\n\"Pardon the insolence, but your relationship with the Lifeshaper does not seem ideal.\"\"You don't know the half of it. Brace yourself, Manipular. This ship is still young.\"\nThere were several more groaning shudders and then a great, shivering bounce which must have been impressive outside our cabin buffers. The ship settled and all sense of motion ceased. The horizon outside appeared grayer and more rugged. Strange, spiky mountains rose everywhere, but closer scrutiny revealed these could hardly be natural formations. The outlines were slumped, rounded, decayed, but still monumentally artificial. Once, these ruins had formed the anchors and foundations for the superstructures of an ancient Precursor worldtheir system-linking, unbending filaments. But something had reduced those supposedly irreducible foundations and the filaments themselves to slag. The very thought chilled me. Precursors built for eternity!\n\"Atmosphere is not optimal,\" my armor reported as we descended the egress tube. What the ship sensed and measured, we all knew instantly. Riser and Chakas were not happy. Riser tried to climb back up the wall of the tube, but it rebuffed him.\n\"You should have seen this world in its prime,\" the Didact said. \"It was magnificent. A center of mysterious, dormant power that humans could live among, look at, but never begin to comprehend. Now ...\n look\n at what we've done.\" Anger and dismay mixed in his tone.\n\"How?\" I asked. \"How do you destroy Precursor artifacts? They're inviolate, eternal.\"\n\"They understood the universe in ways we never will. We can't unlock their secretsbut now, apparently, we can destroy all they ever made.\n That\n's what I call progress.\"TWELVE T HE SHIP HAD\n come down near the perimeter of an arena many kilometers wide. The irregular walls of the arena consisted of huge chunks of rubble, tens of meters in size, broken along crystal planes. The planes glinted in the low light of a blue-white sun, a blinding point near the horizon. The atmosphere on the surface was cold, thin, poor in oxygenthe sky above thick with clouds of stars in one direction, almost empty in the other. Out there, beyond the diffuse edge of the galaxy, was the emptiness of intergalactic space, a void that Forerunners found unattractivea vastness of few or no resources between far-flung islands of great wealth and energy. We were satisfied with the resources of\n this\n galaxy, for the time being, and rarely looked outward. So I had been taught. But, as the Didact was so quick to point out, there are many things Builders do not teach their young. Armor protected us against the harsh conditions and supplied our personal needs without difficulty, but that was not immediately obvious to the humans. They clutched at the apparent openness of their wraparound helmets, slowly realizing that both fingers and faces were covered with a thin, adjustable film of energy. The Didact walked west, toward the blue star, his shadow long behind him. I followed his diminishing figure. Hundreds of meters across the arena we came to a broad, circular pit. Targets upon targets ... This reminded me of the ring island and the sandy field around the Didact's Cryptum. Eerie to say the least. I did not like this place. Once I would have welcomed a chance to visit this world, but all my ideas of what the Precursors had to offer had changed.Everything about my ideas was changing. Chakas and Riser, I noticed, had decided to follow me, if not the Didact. That was foolish. I had nothing to offer anyone. I was an empty husk. I was trying to rebuild something of my personality, reshape myself into a defiant and discerning ego but it was hard. What did Forerunners possess that could\n do\n this?\nHow could the Precursors have left their heritage so vulnerable?\nThe vast pit dropped several hundred meters to a smaller version of the arena. Then I noticed a thin overburden of slagged, charred material, crunching like cinders beneath our feet: not gray-silver, not broken along crystalline planesand therefore not Precursor. We walked with slow precision down the slope, balancing gingerly on smaller chunks of rubble, leaping from chunk to larger slab, stepping around more dangerous jumbles. This entire area must have been paved at one time. Someone had overbuilt the arena. The Precursor structures were at the bottom, possibly tens of millions of years old. The higher, charred ruins were likely human or San'Shyuum. We were descending through layers of awful history. My ancilla chose this moment to reassert her presence. \"May I attempt to reconstruct your relationship with the prior ancilla? I will need to access your memory.\"\n\"I don't care,\" I said, irritated at the interruptionbut also relieved. The silence among these atrocities of war had become almost poisonous.\n\"I can better serve if there is continuity, of a sort,\" she said.\n\"All right. Tell me what I'm seeing,\" I said.\n\"This is Charum Hakkor, though not as the Didact left it, nor as the Librarian lastsaw it.\"\n\"What happened here?\"\nShe fed me a series of vivid images. \"The Didact's fleets cut off this system from the replenishing armadas of the San'Shyuum. Humans had laid their strongest fortifications on foundations of Precursor ruins. They used unbending filaments to link their orbital platforms, and fought for fifty years against repeated Forerunner assaults, until finally they were defeated. Most of the humans, and not a few of the San'Shyuum who were here, committed suicide rather than submit and be removed to another system.\"\n\"What can destroy Precursor artifacts?\"\n\"That is not in my base of knowledge.\"\n\"The Didact knows. Query his ancilla.\"\n\"Not yet permitted. He has, however, supplied you with the necessary information to assist him, should you agree to do so.\"\n\"He doesn't seem to be giving me much of a choice.\"\n\"Soon you must make a significant choice, but we have not reached that point.\"\n\"I\n chose\n to follow him.\"\nThe Didact interrupted. \"No wonder they sought me out,\" he said in what for him passed for an awed whisper. We stood before a broad cylinder capped with a shattered dome, blown up and out like a ragged crown. Part of the wall had collapsed, and we were able to enter the interior of the cylinder through that breach.We picked through rubblewhat seemed to be both human and Precursor walls and thick containment structuresuntil we came to a staircase rising to a circular walkway five meters wide, the far side about fifty meters away. This had apparently once served as a gallery designed to look down upon something contained below, within the core of the cylinder. The inner parapet consisted of angled panes of transparent material, hazed and starred by impacts from some long-ago explosion. Little more than the walkway and the inner cylinder below were intact. Overhead, the shattered crown of the dome allowed the last of the blue daylight and a few unwinking stars to light our path. The Didact approached the inner parapet, his armor actually glowing at his inner turmoilas if preparing to deflect major damage. This was what he must have looked like going into battle.... Below, half-hidden in shadow, an intricately shaped mold filled most of the pit. The mold had once snugly encapsulated something about fifteen meters tall, ten or eleven meters broad and almost as thickfar too large to be any variety of human or any rate of Forerunner. The armor's ancilla made no comment, supplied no information. I thought I discerned what might have been cushions or braces for a number of long, multiply jointed arms, ending in shackles or gloves designed to grip hands bigger than my own body. Hands with three thick digits and a central clasping thumb\n... or claw. Two pairs. Four arms, four hand-claws. Pushed up and aside, three meters wide, like a huge hat tossed on a table, was a restraining headpiece. A ridged conduit flowed down one side, presumably the back. Apparently, the head confined by that helmet had once trailed a thick, sinuous, articulated tail.A cage. A prison. Empty. The Didact said, \"In the name of the Mantle and all I honorI hope it is dead, I fear it is not. They have unleashed it.\"\n\"What did they keep here?\" I asked, standing close to the Didact, like a child cleaving to his own father for protection.\n\"Something the Precursors left behind long ago,\" the Didact said.\n\"Yes, but what\n was it\n?\"\nI broke my entranced gaze long enough to see that the humans had followed us onto the walkway. They stood beside me, staring into the pit, eyes searching, jaws agape. The Didact gave them a narrow glance, then walked around them to another point on the parapet. \"An ancient construct ... or a captive,\" he said. \"Nobody knows its origins, but what was confined here terrified all who saw it. Millions of years ago, it was confined in a stasis capsule and buried thousands of meters below the surface. Humans found the capsule and excavated it, but fortunately could not break it loose ... not completely. They did devise a means of communicating with the prisoner. What it said to them frightened them deeply. With surprising wisdom, they stopped all attempts to communicate, then added another layer of protection, a San'Shyuum time bolt almost as effective as anything built by Forerunners. And they placed the capsule here, in the arena, as a warning for all to see.\"\nChakas's expression, behind the faint mask of his helmet field, was stiff, his forehead covered in moisture. Every few seconds, another expression broke through this stiffness, grief mixed with inexpressible pain. I wondered what memories of their history the Librarian had passed along with her\n geas memoriesonly now being reawakened. What had his ancestors witnessed here? I could not know. The Didact turned away from the emptiness. His armor lost its glow. \"How could it travel?\" he asked. \"Who would come here...\" Then his face reflected a darkly obvious theory. \"Those who conducted the test,\" he said. He turned back and walked toward the staircase. \"We must leave immediately.\"\nChakas continued to gaze into the pit. Riser said nothing, but the fur on his cheeks was wet with tears. Not sad tearstears of rage.\n\"Let's go,\" I said. \"The Didact is leaving, and there's nothing for us here.\"\n\"Once, there was\n everything\n here,\" Chakas said, looking around wildly, seeing ghosts.\n\"When we get back to the ship, tell me what you're learning,\" I suggested. Slowly, he broke from his spell, and he and Riser followed me down the stairs, across the arena, to the lift tube of the Didact's ship. Minutes later, we were in space, looking down over Charum Hakkor.\n\"We must examine other planets in this system,\" the Didact said. \"Whatever happened may have spread. Tell your humans\"\n\"They're not\n mine\n,\" I said. The Didact looked me over critically. \"Tell your\n shipmates\n that the Librarian, in her perverse wisdom, tried to create a team capable of helping me to explore and understand. That isn't much, granted, but it's what we haveourselves, this ship, our ancillas and armor.\"\n\"There's nothing down there,\" I said. \"Whatever you sought, it's gone.Forerunners have moved on without youand they must have their reasons. We should go back and turn ourselves in\"\n\"Your ancilla hasn't begun to fill in the gaps in your education,\" the Didact said.\n\"There's hardly been time.\"\n\"This system has fifteen worlds. Precursor ruins are found only on Charum Hakkor. Humans settled two more: Faun Hakkor and Ben Nauk. The other planets were mined for ore and volatiles. We'll try Faun Hakkor next. Tell your ... tell the humans.\"\nThe Didact vanished into the lower hold. I stayed in the command center, close to Chakas and Riser, who huddled together, then hunkered down. Chakas seemed angry and confusedas much as I had learned to read human emotions. Riser I could not read at all. The Florian sat with eyes crossed, lips slack, hands folded, motionless.\n\"Why does she curse us with these stolen memories?\" Chakas asked, looking up at me. \"I remember so many things I could not have lived!\"\n\"When you see old worlds, hear old tales, that brings up deep memories,\" I said.\n\"Part of your\n geas\n, I imagine.\"\n\"What is that killer going to do with us?\"\n\"I'm wondering the same thing myself,\" I said. Chakas rotated to face away. Riser still did not move.\n\"What\n do\n you remember?\" I asked Chakas, kneeling beside him.\n\"It's all tangled. We were a great power. We fought long and hard. I can feel whatthey went through ... ancient humans. Those feelings\n hurt.\n We lost everything.\n He defeated us and took revenge.\" He bent over, tears dripping on the deck. Whatever I thought about the Didact, however much he impressed and frightened me, I could not bring myself to believe he had ever acted out of malice. \"The Librarian must have equipped you with human essences from those times.\"\n\"What does that\n mean\n?\"\n\"Memories gathered from captives, mostly. You aren't those people, of course.\"\nChakas swung his arm out to Riser. \"His ancestors have come back to sing to him, and he doesn't know how to stop their pain.\"\nThere was nothing more I could say or do. Leaving the humans, I took a tour of the ship with the goal of learning why the Librarian felt her husband needed such a large means of conveyance. Energies of the vacuum be damned. The ship having returned to space, its shape was once again an ovoid, at least eight hundred meters from stem to stern. All visible hatches opened for me. Nothing blocked my way. Lift entrances and transit corridors brightly illuminated at my approach, their walls and floors immaculately cleanand no wonder. They were newborn. It was a young vessel, not even fully acquainted with its own nature; like me. I had spent enough time watching my father and his Builders design ships like this to understand the basics. Most of the ship's interior was shaped from hard light of one cast or another, creating an adjustable decor subject to the will of the captain. I guessed that half of the ship was matter and perhaps a third fuel, reaction mass, and of course the central flake of the slipspace drive, chipped from the original core, still closely held in a location known only to the Master Builder, chief of rateand all guilds, the greatest of the great in engineering ... possibly the most powerful Forerunner in the ecumene. I impressed myself with a sudden deduction. The Librarianif indeed she provided the seed for this vesselmust have connections to senior Builders. Only they could authorize the cleaving of a slipspace core. For one of them to have given her that core, to fit that necessary device into the ship's seedhiding for all that time on Erde-Tyrenecould mean only one thing. There was division among the Builders at the very highest level. I felt a brief moment of pride at my cleverness, before it was overwhelmed by a thousand other questionsto each of which my ancilla professed that such information was \"outside of my present range.\"\nOf course there would be no uplinks, because all entangled communication had to pass through proprietary encryption and could thereby be traced. The Didact was surrounded by silence, unable to update, unable to communicate what he had learned on Charum Hakkor. No wonder he was brooding. To convey what he knew, he had to reveal his location, and of course he would have to reveal that he had been revived, he had escaped and was actively engaged in whatever he and the Librarian were planning. That left the Domain, of coursenot often used as a means of communication. There was always the slight chance that crucial messages might be altered, even twisted. As a Manipular, I knew very little about the Domain, and the ancilla was unlikely to inform me about things forbidden to my youthful form. More and more complicated. I descended on the axial lift below the command center. The ship's living spaceswere a maze of cubicles and service facilities: empty mess chambers and galleys, empty libraries and assembly spaces, training docks, armor repair, automated shops for refit and expansion. It could easily have accommodated five thousand Warrior-Servants and support crew. The aft spaces, above the drive chambers, were filled with machines of war hundreds of them, in compact storage as well as fully activated form, all far more modern than the sphinxes. Here were armed scouts and orbital picket cruisers to lay cordons and screens around larger vessels, thousands of anonymous, condensed combat wraps to convert personal armor, hand weapons ... tens of thousands of hand weapons of all varieties, for any situation. Enough to fight a major battle, if not a war. What was the Didact planning? Was he truly thinking of rebelling against the council that ruled the ecumene?\nHe had taken me alongtaken\n us\n alongperhaps to avoid killing us, but at all events to keep us close, to keep us quiet. I was in the middle of something too enormous to contemplate. Something far beyond the abilities of a Manipular, however clever, to comprehend. All my young life I had lived on an invisible cushion of civilization. The struggles and designs of thousands of years of history had brought me to this pinnacle. I had had to exhibit only the tiniest minima of self-discipline to inherit the place my family had planned for me: the life of a privileged Forerunner, the very notion of which I found so restraining. My privilegeto be born and raised all unaware of what Forerunners had had to do to protect their position in the galaxy: moving opposing civilizations and species aside, taking over their worlds and their resources, undermining their growth and developmentreducing them to a population of specimens. Making sure theiropponents could never rise again, never present a threat to Forerunner dominance, all while claiming the privilege of protecting the Mantle. Mopping up after the slaughter. How many species had collapsed beneath our hypocrisy, stretching how far back in time? What was myth, what was nightmare, what was truth? My life, my luxury rising from the crushed backs of the vanquished, who were destroyed or deevolved\n\nAnd what did that mean, precisely? Had the humans defeated by the Didact and his fleets been forced into sterility, senescence without reproduction, or had they been forced to watch their children subjected to biological reduction, to becoming lemurs\n again?\nThe ancilla would supply only scattered images of a select few, under the protection of the Librarian, transplanted to Erde-Tyrene. Under her influence, equipped with her\n geas\n, these pitiful remnants had in a few thousand years grown into a population of hundreds of thousands and regained many of their ancestral forms. If Erde-Tyrene had been their true planet of origin, then these later transplants and interventions must have muddied the fossil record beyond all sense. I stood on the outer perimeter of the largest of the weapons bays, studying the slender, aerodynamic shapes racked overhead, the heavily shielded hulking transports beneath them, stacked on pallets and suspended in and silver and blue hard-light grips. I listened to the faint, almost inaudible tick, tick, tick of form-fit stasis fields maintaining the vessels and weapons in prime condition. The Librarian's ship-seed had been designed with far more than just escape in mind. The Didact once again had a full-blown ship of war at his command. A ship filled with death.A planet-breakersuited to a Promethean. How could a Lifeworker, even one as great as the Librarian, have arranged for such awesome might? Not alone, surely. Not without the help of Builders. I had always been taught that the most sophisticated and ornate intellectual abilities and social talents came with the first mutationthe end of youth, the end of being a Manipular. Out here, away from rate and family, mutation to first-form was impossible. These problems were beyond my understanding, far beyond any solution. Wrapped in melancholy, I ascended to the command center, where the humans had stripped off their armor and fallen asleep. I stood over them, longing to shed my own armor, as welllonging for all of us to return to Djamonkin Crater and take our chances again on the merse-studded lake, lose ourselves on the ring island and recapture those all-too-brief moments of foolish adventure, wearing only rough sandals and crude hats, pointlessly hunting for improbable treasure. The\n real\n pinnacle of my life to that point. But there would be no returning to that innocence. Never again.\n*\n*\n*\nThe ship pushed away from the sad gray hulk of Charum Hakkor. The journey to Faun Hakkor would take just over thirty hours. I compelled the humans to suit up if they wanted to live. Acceleration was extreme, of course. Riser and Chakas watched with me as the stars wheeled and the ship powered into full reaction drive, grabbing the vacuum energy and expelling a violet streak of virtual neutrons, which winked out as soon as their lives were discovered by the doubled hand of time.We stayed within our armor until the ship found its proper orbit. Time slowed to a crawl. I tried to teach the humans how to access diverting games but they were not attentive. Finally, excluding me, they played mysterious finger games over and over. I was about to learn by long observation their rules and elements of strategy when the Didact rejoined us in the command center. Our armor unlocked. Faun Hakkor came into view. Our orbit adjusted to allow a looping pass. We would not linger, we would not land.\n\"I've inspected all the planets with long-range sensors,\" the Didact said. \"The information they glean is not one hundred percent compelling at such distances, but...\"\n\"Where did humans fight the hardest?\" Chakas asked, approaching the Didact. He looked up at the Promethean with a clear gaze and without fear.\n\"Where their interests were most crucial, of course. Charum Hakkor saw some of the final and worst fighting.\" The Didact drew himself up before this accusing human. \"Your peopleif I may call them thatwere most cruel when they savaged worlds where Forerunners had resettled other species. The pressure of their growing populations was strong. They annihilated fifty defenseless systems and sowed their conquests with human colonies before we coordinated and drove them back to the outer reaches of the spiral arm. They believed\"\n\"In creating many souls,\" Chakas said, eyes dull, as if looking inward, \"I'm learning much about my ancestors.\"\n\"Makes unhappy,\" Riser commented.\n\"Switch to full view,\" the Didact ordered, perhaps to break out of thisconversation. Abruptly, we appeared to be suspended in space, the ship gone from around us. With some twitching and fumbling, getting used to this experience, we could all look down upon Faun Hakkor unfettered. Almost a match in size for Charum Hakkor, this planet was covered with a mottled carpet of green and a few scattered, high oceans locked between mountains completely different from Charum Hakkor, even beautiful ... at first glance.\n\"I could live there,\" Riser said. But the sensors were telling us a different tale. Only now did we see evidence of past destruction, highlighted by ancilla commentaryslash marks, craters, vast flattened and burned regions, now overgrown, but outlined in red and blue, with dates of strikes, counterstrikes, and lists of Forerunner ships engaged in the long ago battle. And thenbeside those listsother ships, other names. Human names. Chakas flinched at some of these names as his ancilla translated for him.\n\"Faun Hakkor was the origin of the Pheru which humans so deeply valued as pets and companions,\" the Didact said. \"The reserve forces defended it fiercely but their numbers and installations were minimal, so the planet kept most of its original flora and fauna...\"\n\"Something's changed,\" Chakas said. \"It doesn't look right.\"\nRiser walked around usan outlandish figure in his armor, striding across an invisible deck. \"Who lives here now?\" he asked. The Didact requested scans of the planet's present biota along with lists of the flora and fauna that had survived the battles nine thousand years before. In therecords of the survey conducted by the Lifeworkers, likely after the end of hostilities, I saw hundreds of species of larger animals ranging in size from a meter to a hundred meterssome clearly aquatic, others huge land carnivores or sedate prairie-grazers. This list was compared with what the sensors could now locate. One by one, the larger species dropped out.\n\"No animals larger than a meter,\" the ship's ancilla reported in a precise, clipped voice. Next came a range of historic species less than a meter in sizetree-hoppers, burrowers, small carnivores, seed-eaters, flying creatures, arthropods, clonal sibling societies ... the Pheru. One by one, they dropped off the current list. None to be found. Next came flora, including dense arboreal forests. Many of the original trees had acquired a kind of long-term intelligence, communicating with each other over centuries using insects, viruses, bacteria, and fungi as carriers of genetic and hormonal signals, analogous to neurons.... That list also quickly emptied. There were remnantsdead forests and jungles covered with a false green carpet of primitive plants and symbiotic species. All that remained, apparently, were mosses, fungi, algae, and their combined forms.\n\"Nothing with a central nervous system or even a notochord,\" the ship's ancilla reported. \"No fauna above a millimeter in scale.\"\n\"Where are the bees?\" Riser asked. \"What will bear fruit if bees are gone? No little meats to hunt. Where are\n they\n?\" His voice rose to a sad squeak.\n\"Flowering plants are few and in decline,\" the ancilla continued. \"All oceans andlakes and rivers are sour with decaying matter. Sensor results indicate extensive ecosystem collapse.\"\nThe Didact could stand no more. He cut off the virtual view, and we stood again on the deck of the command center, the fading lists flapping away if blown by discouraging breezes.\n\"\nWe\n have become the monsters,\" the Promethean said. \"\nIt\n has returned in such force that Forerunners will destroy everything that carries even the smallest seed of reason ... everything that thinks or plans. This is to be our last defense. A crime beyond all reason, surpassing all previous sins against the Mantle.... What will remain?\"\nI wondered what\n it\n he was referring tothe prisoner released from Charum Hakkor?\nSomething worse?\nHe called up a chair suited to his size and sat to think. \"You wonder what forced me to enter the Cryptum. It was my refusal to agree to this plan even in its early stages. With all my being, I fought against the design of these infamous devices, and for thousands of years forestalled their construction. But my opponents finally won. I was reprimanded by the Council, bringing shame upon my rate, my guild, my family. Then I became the infamous onethe conqueror and savior who refused to listen to reason. And so, I vanished.\"\n\"No sympathy here,\" Chakas said, eyes sharp.\n\"Defiant to the last,\" the Didact observed, but without angeras if all his anger had been sucked away by the vision of these barren or dying worlds. Riser lay down and curled up in misery. \"No bees,\" he murmured. \"Starving.\"\nChakas knelt beside him.\"There is one more journey we must make,\" the Didact said after a time. \"If that quest fails, we have no other option. Nothing more to contribute.\" He swiveled to face Chakas and Riser. \"Humans refused to surrender in the face of overwhelming force, and so they were reduced. Their allies were less stubborn, less honorable, and were accorded a less severe punishment. The San'Shyuum were stripped of all weapons and means of travel and confined to a single star system kept in strict Forerunner quarantine. One of my former commanders oversaw that quarantine. Perhaps he is still in charge....\n\"We will go see how fares the last of the San'Shyuum. But first, I need time to think and plan. I will go below. The humans will be sequestered in their cabin.\" He looked them over dubiously. \"I don't think they like me.\"\nHe gave the command and the ship complied. In minutes, we entered slipspace, and the Didact departed the command center.THIRTEEN H OURS LATER, WE\n emerged. The effects passed more slowly than usual, indicating we had gone a very great distance indeed, perhaps beyond the range of normal particle reconciliation. There might be dilation effects when we returned. I stood alone in the command center, looking out across the tremendous, dim whirlpool of a galaxy, and called up a chart to see where we were. Spirals and grids spread quickly. At least this was our home galaxy. The ship was in a long, obscure orbit, high above the galactic plane, tens of thousands of light-years from any feasible destination. I moved through the ship, seeking the Didact. He was just a few decks down, in a medium-size storage bay separate from the larger weapons bays. Here, the war sphinxes had arranged themselves in their characteristic ellipse, each gripped by a gleaming hard-light buffer. I watched him from behind a pressure arch that swept across the broadest dimension of the hold. He seemed to be speaking to an assembled group, like a commander addressing his warriors.\n\"I've never been naive enough to believe following duty led to glory, or experience elevated one to wisdom among Forerunners,\" he said, his deep voice echoing through the chamber. \"My young ones, I wish you were truly still here to counsel me. I feel weak and isolated. I fear what I will find when I walk among Builders again. Their rule brought us to this impasse. What we learned long ago from the humans...\"\nHe saw me behind the arch, then stretched up his thick arm and gestured for meto join him. I did so. The Didact was alone with his war sphinxes. I saw no others.\n\"Why have we traveled so far?\" I asked.\n\"Multiple slipspace journeys can be tracked by core authority, if the journeys are rational. This is not a rational journey. For several more jumps, we will now be harder to track.\"\nThe Didact walked around the interior of the ellipse, touching one sphinx, then another. \"These contain what is left to me of my warriors from long ago.\"\n\"They're\n Durances\n?\" I asked. Beneath my armor, my skin crawled at the memory of a sphinx upbraiding me, telling me to\n suck it up\n, and my intuition that there was something more than an ancilla within. Riser had felt it, too.\n\"No. Warriors do not observe the niceties, as you may have noticed, Manipular. In battle, our dead are seldom in any condition to have their complete essences harvested. All I have left to me are the final interactions my children had with their machinesfleeting samples of their thoughts and memories, before they were killed in action ... kept to be studied by their commander, to see what can be learned for future battles. I was their commander, as well as their father.... I have never had the heart to erase them.\"\n\"Do they still offer you their opinions?\" I asked, regarding the sphinxes with a shiver.\n\"Some judgment remains,\" he said, looking down upon me. He laid a big hand on my shoulder. \"You are not such a fool as you make yourself out to be. If I asked you what I should do,\" he said, \"how would you answer?\"\nThis caught me in a vise of contradictions. \"I would think long and hard,\" I replied.\"I have not the knowledge.\"\n\"The Librarian selected you and imprinted the humansshe seems to think you can help. And despite our many disagreements, I have rarely found her to be wrong.\"\nHe struggled inwardly for a moment, features flashing anger and sadness, confusion, then resolve. \"My tactics before the Builder and Warrior councils were too blunt, my politics far too direct and naive. The Librarian was always correct. That is not easy to admit.\"\nA chorus of voices rose from the sphinxesetched and hollow. I could understand only a few chopped phrases:\n\"\nThey are out there, waiting...\"\n\"Thousands of years wasted!\"\n\"The solution was lost, Father ... Lost!\"\n\"If what the Old Ones made is loose...\"\nI stepped away from the ellipse, terrified. The sphinxes fell silent. The Didact stood among them, shoulders bowed.\n\"Who\n were\n they?\" I asked, suddenly feeling that here was much more than a commander and his dead soldiers.\n\"These were our sons and daughters. The Librarian's and mine,\" the Didact said.\n\"They became warriors and served in my fleets. They died in battle. All of them.\"\nI did not know what to say or do. His grief was palpable.\"Their final communications, their last commands and patterns and memories, stored in these machines, are all I have left. All that matters to me personally other than my oath ... my duty. But I need\n help\n, more than they can even begin to give. The Librarian chose you to help me. But how?\"\nFor a moment, he seemed lost, as if unable to decide which course came next oddly indecisive for a Promethean. Then he asked a non sequitur question. \"The humans ... how much time did you spend with them ... observing, before we left Erde-Tyrene?\"\n\"Ten days,\" I answered.\n\"Do they still have their honor?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said without hesitation.\n\"She's testing me, my wife, isn't she?\"\n\"I know very little about the Librarian.\"\nThe Didact waved that off. \"You'll never know her the way I did. She possesses a sense of humor rare in all Forerunners and impossible to find in Warrior-Servants\n... or in most Builders. It would be like her to summon me from my peace and set me this challenge.\"\n\"What does she want you to do?\"\n\"When I served as commander in chief of Forerunner forces, I always had the support of an expert staff ... dozens of fellow Prometheans, each backed by the very finest ancillas of long military experience. I'm not used to working alone, Manipular. I think better with a staff. But what she has given me ... a Manipular and two humans ... one of them docile and very small...\"Riser was not all that docilethe little Florian\n had\n bitten the Didactbut I did not contradict him.\n\"To reach full efficiency, a Promethean's staff shares most or all of the commander's knowledge. It's a tradition of long standing.\" He extended his armored hand. A dark red field spread along his fingers, as if the hand was dipped in glowing blood. Here was something completely unexpected. Frightening, even. \"I am not your equal,\" I objected. \"I have not your experience....\"\n\"You saw what happened on Charum Hakkor and Faun Hakkor. Your ancilla will help you absorb my knowledge. You have only to ask and you will know all that I know.\"\nSimple enough. The ancilla would absorb that knowledge, and I could study it at leisure. I hesitated, then extended my own hand. As I did, I saw the red field grow around my own fingers. The ancilla appeared in the back of my thoughts, not blue but red as blood ... and hungry. I had never felt the true, unfettered instinctI might say\n passion of an ancilla to gather knowledge. Our fingers touched. He folded my much smaller hand in his own. \"Close your eyes,\" he suggested. \"Less disorienting that way.\"\nI closed my eyes. Some time laterI lost track of time, but it might have been hours or daysI opened them again. My armor tingled against my skin. I felt hot inside, almost\n burned\n. The sensation slowly diminished, but I was still having difficulty focusing. The Didact wavered before me, little more than a shadow. I tried to access my ancilla. She appeared in mingled red and blue, with an off-axis quiver. \"Did it work?\" I asked. \"I don't feel very good. The ancilla seems broken, disconnected....\"\n\"It did\n not\n work,\" the Didact said, pulling back his hand. Only minutes had passed.\n\"It's too much for a Manipular. I should have known. Only a first-form might be capable of absorbing so much.\"\n\"Then what can I do? What's left for me?\"\nThe Didact did not immediately respond. \"Go tend to the humans,\" he finally. \"We will travel again soon.\"\n*\n*\n*\nIn their cabin, the humans appeared to be either asleep or absorbed in the Librarian's\n geas\n, I could not tell which. Their eyes were closed and they lay curled beside each other. I decided not to interrupt. Judging from my own recent experience, there was a hard kind of cruelty in subjecting them to so much information, so rapidlyfrom both inside and out. I wondered if they would emerge sane or anything remotely like their past selves. The residual pain of the attempted transfer had left me miserable. Not even the armor could immediately dissipate my discomfort. Worse, the armor's ancilla deeply resented being overloaded. For now, she seemed to blame me rather than her own greed for knowledge. I acutely felt her broken pulses of disapproval. I lay down beside the humans, then rolled over on the deck, clutching my helmet and gritting my teeth. Riser stood over me, chittering his concern. \"Did he hurt you, the killer of humans?\" he asked. A few steps behind, Chakas loomed as well, his face pale and unhealthy-looking. They are changing. I am not.\"No,\" I said, my thoughts slowly beginning to clear and my head to cease throbbing. \"He asked for help. He offered me ... his training, his war-subtlety, personal history.\" I simplified these concepts as best I could. Chakas shivered his shoulders and shook his head. \"Sounds stuffy. What if I go out there and spit on him?\"\nRiser gave a low\n faa-schaaa\n. I had learned enough about the Florian's expressions to see that he was up for this assault if Chakas was.\n\"He\n fears\n you,\" I said. \"Well, he respects you. No. That isn't it, either. He remembers what you once were and what you did. You killed his children ... in battle.\"\n\"Us, personally?\" Chakas asked doubtfully. \"I don't remember that.\"\n\"Our ancestors,\" Riser observed, squatting. \"Back when your people and mine were the same.\"\n\"You've been learning from your\n geas\n,\" I said.\n\"And from the little blue woman,\" Riser said. \"But I will not marry her. You are right about that.\"FOURTEEN O UR SHIP EMERGED\n from its next passage surrounded by a diffuse mist of icy dust, the remains of ancient cometary material enveloping the hereditary system of the San'Shyuum. Once this cloud had been much denser. The San'Shyuum had depleted it to supply their early starships with fuel. Now the last of the cloud served to mask our presence and allow the Didact to observe the inner system as best he could. The sensor images were impressive and strange. I had never seen a quarantined stellar system before. Such capabilities were rarely displayed to young Builders. A planetary system is mostly empty, even the greatest of worlds being lost in the immensity of billions of kilometers of space. Like their former human allies, the San'Shyuum had evolved on a water-rich world not far from a yellow star, within a temperate zone that allowed only a narrow range of weather. Now, however, ten thousand years after their defeat, the system was surrounded by trillions of vigilants that constantly wove in and out of space-time, sometimes so rapidly that they seemed to shape a solid sphere. This sphere extended to a distance of four hundred million kilometers from the star, and thus did not encompass four impressive gas giants whose orbits lay beyond that limit. Several of the many moons orbiting those gas giants provided platforms for semiautomated maintenance stations, some of them populated by the Builder servant-tools known as Huragok. Huragok are more tools than organisms, and are rarely accorded personhood among Forerunners. Their pride derives from their serviceand, to a certain extent, their buoyancy in whatever supporting atmosphere they find themselves. They enjoy being confined by gravitation or centrifugal force and staying within a meter of a solid surface. I found them boring, whenever I encountered them, which was never in polite society. Their anaerobic metabolism,and those gas bladders ... The Didact kept his sensor sweep passive for the moment, merely listening. Forerunner communications are never transmitted along electromagnetic wavelengths, but the San'Shyuum had given up all other methods. And so, he could study what was leaking through the quarantine boundaries. His ancilla translated.\n\"It's quiet,\" he said. \"I hear little other than microwave pulses and transpositive signaling.\"\nStepping through the virtual display, calling up whatever information was being gleaned by the sensors across the system, it took the Didact several minutes to locate the lone Warrior-Servant outpost in the system, orbiting just within the inner boundary of the quarantine.\n\"They retired the\n Deep Reverence\n here,\" he murmured. A magnified image appeared and was enhanced by specifications and other data. The\n Deep Reverence\n was an impressive fortress-class vessel, fifty kilometers in length, its incept date before the human-San'Shyuum war. \"I apprenticed on her when I was a cadet. A grand old hulk. These quarantine worlds are terrible duty. I almost hope my friends are no longer in service ... I suspect they caught blowback from my own troubles. I suspect they were\n punished\n.\"\nHe waved off the display. \"We have to break cover and move in closer. It's a risk, but I need to understand more. And I need all the help I can get.\"\n\"But we tried...\"\n\"There's one more way. Your patrimony is buried deep, inaccessible to a Manipular. To absorb my knowledge, you must be able to access your patrimony and the full richness of the Domain. To do that, you'll have to expand your capabilities. If you are willing ... if you volunteer.\"\"You mean ... mutate to a higher rate.\"\n\"As close an approximation as we can manage out here,\" the Didact said. \"It's called a brevet mutation. It's not common, but it is within the Warrior-Servant code. This ship is capable of supporting such a ceremony. Lacking that, I cannot supply you with my knowledge ... and you cannot access what your ancestors stored within you, or access the Domain, which supplements all.\"\n\"I'm supposed to unlock my patrimony with my father's assistance.\"\n\"Traditionally, that's true. But since I'm the only Forerunner around and we're unlikely to find any Builders nearby...\"\nHe did not need to lay out the details. I was being asked to mutate and grow without my family or even my rate being present to assist. He would be my mentor. And that meant I would receive the Didact's genetic imprint.\n\"I'd mutate to a Warrior-Servant,\" I said.\n\"At least in part. You could always petition for a correction, a reversion, once you returned to your family.\"\n\"I've never heard of such a thing.\"\nI\n had\n heard of failed mutations, of individuals hidden in special family enclaves and restricted to menial tasks. Not an attractive prospect.\n\"It is a choice.\"\nUnder the circumstances, it didn't feel like a choice. \"What ... what would it feel like?\" I asked.\n\"All mutation is difficult. Brevet mutations are particularly unpleasant.\"\"Is it dangerous?\"\n\"We will have to exercise caution. But once we've succeeded, we can venture down and see what the situation is on the\n Deep Reverence\n.\"\n\"I haven't\n volunteered\n,\" I reminded him.\n\"No,\" he said. \"But the Librarian has always been a great judge of character.\"FIFTEEN Y OU DO NOT\n wear armor during a mutation. You do not accept the opinions or advice of an ancilla. Everyone and everything around you falls silent and does not respond to your sounds of pain or need, except to provide pure water when you cry out that you are thirsty. Every Forerunner advances through at least two mutations over their life span. Many go through five or more. The number helps determine your rank within the hierarchy of family, Maniple, and guild. The collective of guilds can be entered only after mutation to first-form. Which guild, which rate, would I belong to...?\nThe Didact led me to a small chamber the ship had prepared on the point of the bow, for such a mutation by ritual law must take place under the direct light of the starsor a reasonable approximation. The bow became transparent. I stripped off my armor, as did the Didact. The pieces were transported aft, and the deck closed up beneath us. We seemed to stand alone and naked on the highest point of a narrow mountain, awash in the ancient light of millions of suns.... Intercepted only by me, the supplicant, and my mentor. For every Forerunner rate mutation had to be patterned after a mentor, and the Didact was the only Forerunner available. None of the irony of this was lost on me. I had never consciously hoped for this moment and yet had always anticipated it, as if fully aware that at the end of my foolishness was yet more privilege and advancementand perhaps new methods of having fun, seeking adventure.Never the notion of duty or responsibility. Yet now they were awakening. I felt inadequate, immature in the extremeready for change. Still, I could not stifle deep indignation at being mentored by a lower rate rather than one of my own Builders. In this, like my father, I was a true Forerunner after all.\n\"Brevet mutation entails risks,\" the Didact said. \"The ship is equipped to stimulate the proper growth factors, but you will not be imprinted by your immediate relatives\n... some details of your development may be lost or distorted. Is this understood?\"\n\"I accept ... under pressure,\" I said. The Didact stepped back. \"There can be no misgivings,\" he said. \"Mutation is a personal journey, not to be coerced.\"\n\"If I don't do this, you tell me the entire galaxy could be wiped out.... That isn't coercion?\"\n\"Allegiance to duty is the Forerunner's highest instinct and purpose. It is what empowers us to defend the Mantle.\"\nI wasn't about to argue the hypocrisy inherent in\n that.\n If the Mantlethe exalted preservation of life throughout the universewas the core of our deepest philosophy, our reason for being, then why were Lifeworkers at the bottom of our rates?\nWhy did Builders, who worked mostly with inanimate matter, rank so high?\nTruly, I was at least as fed up with Forerunner sanctimony as ever.... But if I could prevent my family from suffering, if I could prevent the devastation we had seen on Charum Hakkor and Faun Hakkor, if I could preserve the strange and compellingbeauty of Erde-Tyrene from being extinguished ... all too clearly these possibilities, inevitabilities, presented themselves to my imagination ... Then I would have to accept this procedure, no matter how clumsy or dangerous it might be. The Didact looked me over through his narrow gray eyes. The pale fur on his scalp bristled. \"You're enjoying being a victim,\" he said.\n\"I am not!\" I cried. \"I am ready. Proceed!\"\n\"You still believe you should be uniquely privileged to live your life in a certain fashion.\" He looked defeated, then relieved, as if all hope had finally goneand he was glad. \"There can be no rise in rate without a modicum of wisdom. You do not demonstrate that wisdom.\"\n\"I had no part in creating this disaster, but I'm willing to sacrifice my life to save my people! Is that not selfless and noble?\"\n\"Mutation to a higher rate requires acceptance of the Mantle. The Mantle is in part awareness of what all life has sacrificed to allow you to\n be\n. That arouses a deep kind of personal guilt. You do not feel that guilt.\"\n\"I've violated the wishes of my family, I've involved these humans in my stupidity, and what will happen to them when you're done? I feel guilt! All through me,\n guilt\n!\"\n\"Only arrogance,\" the Didact said. \"To dare is to risk selflessly, not to waste your life because you see no other purpose to your existence.\"\nThis struck me to my heart and I kicked at the deck, wanting to drop below the stars, go back, forget this awfulness. I reached out as if to strike him, and then saw the difference in our sizes, in our situationsaw his weary sadness and thought of the pitiful memories still held in the war sphinxes that had protected his Cryptum fora thousand years ... the last of his children. The Didact knew no other duty but this. His wife was far away, he had not seen her in literally ages, did not know whether she was using him for ends that might not have been foreseen when he was forced into meditative exile. Yet he trusted. He served. I pulled back my tiny fist. \"I don't want your sadness,\" I said.\n\"It is the Mantle.\"\n\"You\n mourn\n.\"\nThis set him back a little. \"I spent thousands of years mourning and found no virtue in it.\" He settled, crossing his great legs, leaning his torso forward until there was very little room left for me under the unwinking stars. I got down on my knees beside him and crossed my own legs. \"Tell me about your exile.\"\n\"Not wise, perhaps, but rudely\n curious\n,\" he said with a sigh.\n\"What did you experience in the Cryptum?\"\n\"Let us just say I did not find peace. What all the great, higher Domains of the universe mandate for Forerunners is never peace, never solace, never rest. Never consistency, logic, or even pure passion. Frankly, I envy your perversity, Manipular.\"\nI did not know what to make of that. \"Your difficulty is, you regret all you have done. And you mourn.\"The Didact's arms dropped, his shoulders relaxed, and I saw a glint of more than just acknowledgment, more than just recognition. He spoke in a low, grinding voice.\n\"My blood and seed ... wasted. My life with my family, my wife, so brief. I felt so much hatred. Hatred is still with me. Perhaps you are right to reject my imprint. The Mantle is as far beyond me now as...\"\n\"\nYou\n weren't prepared to mutate either, were you? In combat, mutation was forced on you. A brevet mutation. Someone saw your potential even through your flaws.\"\nThe Didact inspected me and for a moment, in that great stone visage, carved or artfully mauled by history and grief, he lifted his lips and almost smiled as if he were still young. I did not know that was possible.\n\"Touched by your blade, Manipular,\" he said.\n\"I accept my flaws as you accepted yours, and I will transcend them ... as you did. I am as ready as I'll ever be, Promethean.\" I was actually trembling, but not with fear. The Didact heaved himself up and waved his hand. \"So be it, ayaand\n aya again.\"\nA column studded with small spherules rose from the deck and slowly rotated to press against my side. The spherules twisted on stalks to touch my skin, access my points of nervous and genetic energy, of metabolic and catabolic reserves.... Memory, muscle, intent, passion, intellect, stabilityand that peculiar connection to the Mantle that all have but seldom know or feel. The points of my being, as embarrassing as having my organs of sex examined and outlined, more sofor Forerunners were never shy about sex.\"Mentor and sponsor,\" he said. Another column rose and more spherules surrounded and connected with his larger frame. \"From my life let the best be taken. Let the growth inherent in this youth be examined and maximized. Let all that is potential and beloved of the Mantle be nurtured and encouraged. Let all that was past be put away, and all that is future brought forward, made real and physical....\"\nThe Didact's words moved on. I no longer heard them, but I felt them. Transfixed, I could not speak. My body was already responding.SIXTEEN T HE DIDACT REMOVED\n the spherules by hand, it might have been hours later. The stars rotated slowly to a new position. I seemed to be at the center of the universe. I could neither reason nor believe that it was our ship that had moved. I was taken aft and placed in a large cubicle that could have comfortably contained a squad of warriors: gray, a single light in the rear wall, empty of all ornament, clean, slightly cool.\n\"Eat nothing for a time but drink when you are thirsty,\" the Didact told me, arranging my limbs on the bunk. The bunk was larger than I neededfor now. \"Your body will be upset. Not all the changes will happen right away. It could take many days.\"\n\"I feel a shadow in my head,\" I said.\n\"The old you. Soon, you will experience a cleaner, swifter mind. You will feel an arrogant kind of exhilarationand then, that, too, will pass.\"\nIn the solitude of that cubicle, I felt the first changes: a slow, careful ache throughout my limbs. My hands in particular hurt. I looked down upon them and thought they already looked larger, less pale, the skin grittier and grayer. I had always thought that higher rates were less attractive than Manipulars.My youthful beauty was passing. I was growing uglier. I did not care.\n*\n*\n*\nSo, when did you realize that you had grown up?\nI thought I saw Chakas stand beside my bunk, watching with a frown. How remarkable that I used to be like him. So much alike. I wondered whether the\n geas imposed upon him and Riser by the Librarian felt anything like this mutation. I wanted to compare my experiences with his, but the room was empty. I drank some water. For a few minutes, I thought I experienced yet another voice in my head, not me, not my past me or any future me. It seemed to contain a great deal of knowledge, none of it of any use. It was knowledge that belonged to others from very far away, other existences where life and death were meaningless, light and darkness twisted together, where the twin fists of time uncurled their fingers and joined in a clasp, so that nothing changed or ever would. Of course that made no sense. Later, even thinking about it repulsed me. The Didact checked in on me and tested my limbs, thumped my chest, hummed over my prone body. I assumed he would declare the mutation a failure. I did not feel like any sort of Forerunner, young or old.\n\"Be glad,\" he said. \"You are not becoming a warrior. Not entirely. But you'll do.\"\n\"What\n am\n I becoming?\" I asked. If I was to live, I needed to know where I might fit in, what rate would accept my hideously distorted body.\"In a little while you will be hungry,\" he said. \"The ship will prepare special food. When you're ready, join me in the control center. We need to plan how we will approach the San'Shyuum.\"\n\"When will I access the Domain? When will I receive your knowledge?\"\n\"The potential is already there, Builder. But take it slowly for now.\"\n*\n*\n*\nI walked on my own to the control center. Chakas and Riser were not present. I wondered if the Didact had locked them away during all the time I was out of action. He stood by a direct view of the stars. The control center's wide curved floor had sprouted a number of instruments I did not immediately recognize. One of them, it turned out, was there to give me my special food. The Didact pointed without looking at me. I sat and ate. I ate a lot. And then the second round of pain began, but I was not allowed to hide away and lie down. Our work was beginning.SEVENTEEN I\n PUT MY\n armor on after I stopped being hungry and feeling terrible. It required some adjustments before matching my new, larger body. The little blue female in the back of my thoughts was still there but seemed reluctant to deal with me. I had to dig deep to even find her. I felt as if my armor were judging me. The Didact observed, blinking with slow dignity. He rearranged himself on the floor and turned back to the steadiness of the stars.\n\"The armor's broken,\" I said.\n\"You're different. The ancilla knows that, but she won't cater to you. You're no longer a Manipular. You have to listen better.\" The Didact seemed remarkably patient. Perhaps he remembered his own brevet mutation, all those thousands of years ago.\n\"The DomainI don't feel\n anything\n.\"\n\"I would say that is also your faultbut perhaps not this time. I, too, have difficulty accessing the Domain at present. It is a mysteryfor now. Perhaps in time we will explore together and see if it can be solved.\"\nDisappointed, I stood up, performed a quick diagnostic on my armor, watched everything chart up clear and finethen focused, trying to will my thoughts to be more mature. Still, I couldn't get the ancilla to cooperate. She came and went in different places in my head but would not do anything I askedperhaps because my internal speech was garbled.\"Where did the humans go?\" I asked the Didact when I was sure this process was getting nowhere.\n\"I locked them in a room with plenty of food they seem to like.\"\n\"Why?\"\n\"They asked too many questions.\"\n\"What sort of questions?\"\n\"How many humans I've killed. That sort of thing.\"\n\"Did you answer?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"The Librarian filled them full of knowledge they can't handle. They're like me.\"\n\"Yes, they're like you, but they seem to actually be\n listening.\n They just don't like what they're hearing.\"EIGHTEEN M Y FIRST SUCCESSFUL\n though stumbling efforts to access the Didact's experiences produced scattered impressions of darkness, brilliance, rolling suns, grief and sickness and glorycomplete chaos. My ancilla was still balky; I had to find my own way of accepting and interacting with the knowledge. What I managed was a crude arrangement, missing fully nine-tenths of the subtlety and subtext and power, but at least the memories began to open to me. Soon, I was jittering and plunging my way through a great space battle, events moving far too quickly for me to make much sense of it. I had no idea where or when this wasI could not correlate these events with any historical record. Complicating the recovery was many hundreds of points of view, threading through and around the central events, chopping and intercuttingand a remarkably different perception of objective reality. As a Promethean, the Didact simply saw things differently. Clearly, a thousand years ago, when entering battle, the Didact had plugged into the full sensory experience of thousands of his warriors ... something I could barely imagine and certainly not control. My ancilla fell far behind, glowing between all the half-processed, crudely assembled information like a distant blue star, frantically seeking details which connected all this to real history. What startled me as I explored the threadsand tried to collapse them into a usable narrativewas how pitiful objective reality was, all by itself. The combined threadseven the chaos of uncombined threadswere far richer, far moreevocative and informative. In my education as a Manipular, it had seemed to me that my teachers and even my ancillas had been intent on having me memorize the bare facts and not add my own interpretations. They did not trust me to enrich the whole; I was young and naive. I was foolish. Even now, it was obvious the Didact's memories resisted my adding any coloring from my own experience. I had not been there. Now I understood that no matter how sophisticated one became, the total richness was something no individual could ever capture or truly know.\n It must not be constrained. It is ever raw, ever rich.... I tried to emerge from this pool of ecstatic excess. The so-called solid reality of the ship, of my armor, of the space and stars around us, was suddenly ominous, frightening. I had difficulty distinguishing these different states. I was drunk. I fell back from the memories and tried to reengage with my core self. And suddenly, as if everything had come into focus, I rode the whipsnap of over a dozen threadswarrior threads. They had a place, a name, a historical marker. I could not scramble free. I plunged deep into the first battle of Charum Hakkor, one of the final engagements between Forerunners and humans. I saw thousands of war sphinxes spiraling in clouds around the planet like flocks of deadly sparrows, twisting and entangling human ships Sending them tumbling into the atmosphere to disintegrate, or slamming them against the unbending pillar of a Precursor ruin stretching high over the planet, or being slammed in returnthe memory thread suddenly burning bright at the end, winking out, shriveling away. Passion and the flow of a warrior's life ... and, too often, death. The deaths jerkedand whipped around me; the end of a warrior's life in a spreading, sparkling plume of molten metal, carbonized flesh, plasma and pure gamma rays, that flailing, crying, terrified abruptness felt as sharp as a plunging dagger. I could not stop it. I saw the implacable Precursor ruins of Charum Hakkor studded with human constructs, like ivy growing on great trees: vast cities and energy towers and defense platforms operating at geosync and equigravitation, little less sophisticated than Forerunner ships and platforms and stations. Humans had been a great power, a worthy adversarytechnologically. What about spiritually? How did they connect to the Mantle?\nWere they truly our brethren?\nI could not know. The Didact had been remarkably open to those ideas at the time.\n You must know your enemy, and never underestimate or belittle them. No human threads in the Domainno way of knowing their reactionsthe Domain is not complete Was that my thought, or the critical observation of the Didact himself, realizing the greatness of his enemy?\nI managed to lurch free and came to myself in my cabin, under the single wall lamp, gasping, crying out, my fingers scrabbling at the bunk and at the bulkhead, as if to dig myself free. Truth was not for fools.NINETEEN T HE HATCH TO\n the humans' quarters opened as I approached. I stepped inside and saw Chakas and Riser in the middle of the floor, sitting cross-legged, facing each other. Their armor lay beside them. Each had tucked a single foot into the leggings. Chakas did not move, but Riser opened one eye and glanced at me.\n\"Blue lady is exploring us,\" he said.\n\"You're not wearing your armor,\" I said. He moved his foot. The armor moved with it. \"This is enough.\"\nChakas stretched up his arms with a cross expression. \"What have we done to deserve this?\" he asked.\n\"I had nothing to do with your\n geas\n.\"\n\"Blue Lady says we have many lives inside,\" Riser said.\n\"We're seeing some of what happened on Charum Hakkor,\" Chakas said.\n\"Before the battles, before the war. I'm trying to see the caged prisoner. It's there somewhere, but why should I care?\"\n\"I wish I understood,\" I told them. \"I don't. Not yet. There's a greater story, something that brings glory to your people ... but I don't see it. I think it is yours to see, not mine.\"Chakas got to his feet, breaking the connection with the armor and the ancilla.\n\"There's food. Forerunner food. You might as well have some.\"\nRiser climbed onto a low bunk and brought forward a pair of trays covered with floating ampoules of grayish material. It looked little different from the \"special\" food provided after my brevet mutation. Clearly, Warrior-Servants were not tied to creature comforts. I tried to eat a little. \"We're approaching a quarantined system,\"\nI said. \"What have you learnedwhat do you remember about the San'Shyuum?\"\n\"They are shadows,\" Riser said. \"They come, they go.\"\n\"I don't think I like them,\" Chakas said. \"Too charming. Slippery.\"\n\"Well, we're going to visit them, and I think the Didact is going to want you to meet and talk with them. We all seem to be part of a game he's playing with the Librarian.\"\n\"A tricky game?\" Riser asked.\n\"A very serious game. I think she wasn't able to warn him about what's been happening since he entered the Warrior Keep. So we're his special tools. Few would suspect us.\"\n\"How does that work?\" Chakas asked.\n\"We visit the places of history, we see, it stimulates uswe remember. Mostly, you\n see and you remember. Now that I have the Didact's memories, I think I'm supposed to link up with the Domain, but the Domain's not cooperating.\"\n\"\nDomain\n...\" Riser held up his hand. \"We don't know what that is.\"\n\"I'm not sure I do, either. You talk with your ancestors ... in the memory the Librarian gave you, locked inside you, waiting to be activated. Is that a fairstatement?\"\nRiser waggled his hand, meaning, I presumed, yes. His face relaxed and he cocked his head. Chakas looked at him curiously.\n\"The Domain is where we keep our deep ancestral records,\" I said. \"They're stored there forever, available to any Forerunner, anywhere, no matter how far away.\"\n\"Not ghosts.\"\n\"No, but sometimes strange. The records don't always stay the same. Sometimes they change. It is not known why.\"\nI flashed through some of the Didact's own experiences with the Domain, confused and unsatisfactory.\n\"Like real memories,\" Chakas said, watching me closely.\n\"I suppose. Such changes are regarded as sacred. They are never reversed or corrected. And I learned something about the Didact's war sphinxes. They're all that's left of his children.\"\nRiser whistled and squatted, then rocked gently, screwing up his face again.\n\"The war killed many ... but humans fought well,\" I said. \"I think we're about to face a common enemynot the San'Shyuum.\"\nChakas and Riser focused fully on me. \"Empty cage,\" Riser said, and folded his arms around his body, as if embracing and reassuring himself. The ship's ancilla flashed before us. \"The Didact requests your presence in the command center.\"\"All of us?\"\n\"Humans will stay in quarters until the situation is better understood.\"\nRiser chuffed, then sat cross-legged again and closed his eyes, lifting his chin as if listening to distant music. Slowly, Chakas sat as well, and they were as I had found them. I took the lift to the command center.TWENTY\n\"I'\nVE SENT A\n message to the\n Deep Reverence\n and revealed our location,\" the Didact confessed as we moved downstar, approaching the interlocking vigilants of the system's outer defenses. \"We'll be destroyed if we don't communicate our intentions to the commander. Among Prometheans, he was known as the Confirmer.\"\nOn the deck of the command center, we again stood in virtual view, unsupported in wide space, surrounded by stars. One of the small outer worlds passed by:\nairless, rocky, lifeless. The displays conveyed updated information about the quarantine shield, along with what could be gathered about the three protected planets downstartwo apparently inhabited by San'Shyuum, the third a storage depot for stockpiled (and presumably outdated) Forerunner weapons. I saw the San'Shyuum in my other memory as they had been ten thousand years before: a sleek, beautiful race, strong and sensual, intelligent but not overly impressed by intellectcapable of seducing other species with their almost universal beauty. Slippery indeed. Around the San'Shyuum, it seemed, all emotions melted into uncritical passion. The sole exceptions, in their historical experience humans and Forerunner. Our ship cruised on its long orbit downstar for a hundred million kilometers before a strong signal was received from the\n Deep Reverence.\n\"Aya, a Promethean interrupts our solitude, claiming to be the Didact!\" a hoarse, deep voice said, accompanied by a visual of an old and nearly shapeless mass of muscle and scarred skin. Here was a Warrior-Servant who had undergone, it seemed to my newly informed eye, more battles and mutations than the Didact,some less successful than others. \"Is it truly\n you\n, my old nemesis?\"\nThe Didact revealed no dismay at what time had done to his fellow Promethean. \"I told you I'd return. We have important business, and need your assistance. Are there traps laid here? Tell me true.\"\n\"Are you in trouble again?\"\nIn an aside to me, the Didact said, \"It\n is\n the Confirmer. But something feels wrong. The quarantine shield has been in battle mode for some time, I think.\"\n\"What would cause that?\" I asked. The Didact looked wary and grim. \"Recent punitive action, possibly.... But the San'Shyuum were model citizens after they were brought here. Try to focus downstar on the San'Shyuum worlds.\" To the\n Deep Reverence,\n he said, \"How long have you been stationed here without relief?\"\nMy fingers worked quickly to draw up the required sensor data. I studied the two inner planets in the low-rez scan available through the quarantine shield. The surface features were mostly obscured. What I could make out deviated substantially from the ancilla records. The features had been\n rearranged.\n I thought immediately of Faun Hakkor.... Nothing on the scale of a spaceship could be resolved, except of course for the Deep Reverence.\n\"Twelve centuries,\" the Confirmer said. \"They have been years of blessed opportunity for growth and reflection. The Council assigned we old warriors to guard and protect our ancient enemies, now prostrate before Forerunner power. I do my duty and nothing less. You should see my collection of San'Shyuum carvings. MagnificentI value it more because it's worthless. No Forerunner paysheed to the artifacts of vanquished foes. I presume you wish to visit my poor vessel?\"\n\"That's my first intention,\" the Didact said.\n\"Just a moment ... let me check with my staff. Oh, wait. I\n have\n no staff.\"\n\"You're alone?\" The Didact gave me a look that might have asked,\n Are\n all\n the old warriors alone?\n\"Out here, the Domain is my only consolation,\" the Confirmer said. \"I've been working my way through ancestors I never knew existed. But of late, the Domain has rebuffed me....\"\n\"I've come here on a mission for the Librarian,\" the Didact said. \"We're traveling with two humans chosen by her. We need to question the leaders of the San'Shyuum.\"\n\"The Librarianthe Lifeshaper herself.... She was just through here on some mission or other. Caused some difficulties. Perhaps you've noticed the shield and vigilants are on alert.\"\n\"My wife has been busy,\" the Didact said. I continued to study the inner planets. From what little we could see, through the filter of the quarantine shield, nearly all looked darker, probably damaged.\n\"Curious as to why anybody even cares about these remnants of our old wars,\"\nthe Confirmer said. \"Every now and then, I intercept a message about big events going on at the capital. I ignore them. They have nothing for meno new orders. The Domain is all I have leftand now it's shut me out. Do you know why?\"\n\"I'd like to view those reports.\"\"When you get here, we can rummage around in the ship's memory and look for them. But allowing the San'Shyuum to meet up with humansthat's forbidden. We separated them for a reason, old friend.\"\n\"May we approach and discuss?\"\nA pause. The Confirmer appeared to be turning a small sculpture around and around in his thick, coarse hands. Then, \"For the Didact himself, of course. Adjust your orbit downstar, match your ship's ancilla to these codes, and the vigilants will avoid weaving a barrier where your orbit intersects. Glorious to hear from you! A living friend from the old days. So much to get caught up on!\"\nThe transmission ended. Our ship altered its course and matched the codes. Displays revealed that the vigilants were indeed no longer flashing in and out of the sector where our orbit would penetrate the blockade.\n\"The Confirmer was a grand warrior and a good friend, but I never considered him much of an expert in the fine arts,\" the Didact said. \"Keep the sensors trained on those planets.\" He appeared troubled\n\"Should I bring the humans forward?\"\n\"Yes. Make sure they wear their armor.\"\nI went aft and opened the cubicle assigned to Chakas and Riser. They emerged reluctantly, eyes thick with sleep. Riser dragged his armor behind him. \"The blue woman and I argued,\" he explained. \"I don't like her.\"\nChakas gave me a dirty look. He was far too involved in his own inner turmoil to pay attention to the slight physical changes I was already showing. I told Riser, \"We may be going into danger. The armor will protect you. I'll showyou how to shut down the ancilla, if you wantfor now.\"\n\"Make her quiet?\" he said. \"She gets upset with me.\"\n\"Exactly.\"\nWith a shudder, he allowed the armor to wrap him again, and stood of a height to match minealmost. I was still growing.\n\"You look bigger,\" Riser said dubiously. \"Smell different, too.\"\nI showed them how to deactivate the ancilla, then queried my own blue woman about their complaints.\n\"What they remember makes them angry,\" she explained. \"They ask questions I am not equipped to answer. I try to calm them. That only makes them angrier.\"\n\"Well, stop calming them,\" I told her. \"There's got to be a reason for what they're experiencing.\"\n*\n*\n*\nThe\n Deep Reverence\n appeared formidable in close sensor scans. I had first seen fortress-class vessels during ceremonies back in my early youth in the Orion nebular complex. The largest single Forerunner ships of war, fortresses were fifty kilometers in length, with a huge hemisphere on the forward end, a midlevel series of layered platforms equipped with launch bays and gun mounts, and below that, a long, weapon-studded tail. At their widest, they were ten kilometers across and could carry hundreds of thousands of warriors, as well as automated phalanxes that could be guided by warriors at a ratio of one to a million weapon-ships.... It took me a moment to realize that I wasn't accessing my own youthful experience or memory of those past ceremonies, but the Didact's.Chakas looked miserably upon the\n Deep Reverence.\n \"We're here to visit our old allies, aren't we?\" he said. \"Did you punish them like you did us?\"\n\"They cut a deal,\" I said. \"Let's talk about that later\"\nThe Didact lifted an arm as if in warning. \"We're being brought into the quarantine,\" he said. \"If there are any traps, we should learn soon enough.\"\nThe ship's ancilla appeared on a raised platform between us. \"Ship's control has been handed over to the commander of the system,\" she said. \"Within the shield, all sensors are limited to low-rez and close-in scans. We will be more than half blinded.\"\n\"We know how to pick 'em, don't we?\" Chakas asked Riser as they stood stiff and miserable. Our armor had once again rooted us to the deck. As we approached and then maneuvered to docking position, it became more and more obvious that the\n Deep Reverence\n had seen better days. It looked barely operational. The surface was a study in collisions, grooves, craters: unrepaired battle damage, worse by far than the stardust pocks on the old war sphinxes. The launch ramps and bays were mostly empty. A token force of pickets and fast attack runners remained, and even these did not look as if they had been tended to recently. Evidently, Forerunners had parked the fortress in its orbit and hoped to forget about it, about the old war, about this worldabout the San'Shyuum in general. A pact had been made, but to nobody's pride or benefit. The fortress had been abandoned in place, out of shame. Still, the old war platform remained impressive if only for its size. Compared withthe fortress, our ship was a bit of fluff stuck on the sleeve of a giant. Our ship's ancilla extruded a walkway. A few minutes after, we walked the fortress's cold, bare decks. Not to upset the Confirmer, for the moment, we left the humans behind. The space across which we walked was almost void of atmosphere, the far reaches lost in violet shadow, the bulkheads and deck coated with a thin, crunchy rime of water ice. From all around came a shrill, wandering, whining sound, like vacant whistling, intermixed every few seconds with a pulsing\n thump\n like a soft mallet striking the outer hull.\n\"Long duty has not been good to the Confirmer,\" the Didact observed. \"No warrior should allow his weapons to rust.\"\nA lift dropped from the high arched ceiling and opened for us to enter. From all around came a crackling, poorly reproduced voice, filling and echoing through the vault:\n\"Come higher, old friend! We of the broken Domain await your inspection.\"\nThe Didact looked down upon me as the lift door closed. \"This may not go well. No blame on your head, young first-form.\"\n\"I am patient, with a keen edge,\" I replied. This impressed him. \"You're starting to sound like a Warrior,\" he said. \"But you still look like a Builder. Your strength ... how is that progressing?\"\n\"Bigger,\" I said, inspecting my hand. It no longer looked ugly to me. My thoughts were catching up with my growth. \"I don't ache as much.\"\n\"The Confirmer once commanded legions. No more. I doubt there will be any sortof fight. Aya, I wonder why he did not choose the Cryptum over this.\"\n\"He wished to serve,\" I said.\n\"I served by my departure, not to provoke conflict,\" the Didact grumbled.\n\"He keeps talking of the Domain. Has that been his only connection with Forerunners?\"\n\"Perhaps. That concerns me. Sometimes, there is a kind of broken-mirror aspect.\n...\"\nWe reached a midlevel within the hemisphere of domiciles. The level was a confusion of half-made walls and labyrinthine channels, crossed by ghostly ramparts and bridges. Here, the atmosphere was still too thinnot safe without armor. The hard-light overlays were weak and inconsistent. The fortress's power situation had apparently been dire for many centuries. I would no more have trusted a stroll over these flickering, corrupt structures than if they had been made of frost.\n\"Stay close,\" the Didact said. Ahead, a large, lumpish figure wearing what looked like parts from three sets of armor stepped into a dim, snow-flecked shaft of light. This must be the Confirmer, I thoughtbut the Didact's features did not reveal gladness or even instant recognition.\n\"Permission granted to board the\n Deep Reverence\n,\" the figure said. He came closer, surrounded by a circling ring of ship's displays, conveying what seemed to be, from where I stood, almost useless informationor no information at all.\n\"We are honored to be received on your great ship,\" the Didact said. \"Many served and are remembered.\"\"Many served,\" the Confirmer said. \"Did you bring the Grammarian with you? The Strategos?\"\n\"Not this time,\" the Didact said. \"As I said, we come on an errand from a Lifeworker, my wife....\"\n\"And as\n I\n told you, she came through here recently,\" the Confirmer said. \"If you ask me, she was too full of herself. But she had the stamp of the Council, so I asked no questions. I do not interfere in the politics of higher rates.\"\n\"Aya,\" the Didact said. \"We ourselves do not have the stamp of the Council.\"\n\"I thought as much. Ever in difficulty. First you marry a Lifeworker, then you oppose the Builders.... Makes me wonder whether you deserved my brevet mutation.\" The Confirmer stepped forward and clasped the Didact in a thick, clanking embrace. The Didact glanced at me in some embarrassment. I pointed and mimed,\n Him\n?\nThe Didact raised his eyes. Snow circled them for a moment, until the Confirmer let go and held the Didact at arm's length. The old Promethean now turned to regard me. Never before had I seen an uglier, more gnarled and broken Forerunner of any class. His skin, what I could make out through the almost cancerous overweave of armor, was mottled gray spotted with unhealthy veins of paleness, tinged with pink. He had none of the patches of bluish white bristling fuzz on crown or shoulders that marked the Warrior-Servants I had known, including the Didact. In his mouth, I saw two solid ridges of stone-black teethgrown togetherwith a hint of darting tongue between.\n\"Not yet, old friend. Amuse me. Tell me again tales of the strife we have seen, the victories we marshaled. I am lonely here, and time stretches to intolerable lengths.\"TWENTY-ONE T RULY, THE\n DEEP\n Reverence\n seemed like a great tree riddled through by the wandering whimsy of a single, awful termite. The higher we progressed within the fortressand\n progress\n is not the correct wordthe deeper the sense of undisciplined decay. I wondered if the Confirmer had for the last thousand years spent his time building useless follies throughout the decks, above and below, draining the ship's resources and perverting its original design. We came finally to a space warm enough and with sufficient oxygen to relieve the burden of our armor. The hiss of replenishment was like a gasp as our ancillas sucked in reserves for what they, too, seemed to think might be a desperate time. The Confirmer's command center was hung with tattered draperies of a design I could not recognize. Within the drapes, pushing up through or rising between, were dozens of sculptures made of stone and metal, some quite large, and all wrought with a grace and skill that was evident whatever their subjects might have been abstractions or representations, who could tell?\nBut as a command center, this space was no more functional than the empty vault we had first entered. Clearly, the fortress had become a cluttered ghost of its former might. The Confirmer ordered up seating arrangements. With creaks and groans, the deck produced only two chairs suitable for Prometheans, plus a small bump that might have been meant for me. Some of the drapes drew aside, ripping and falling in dusty shreds ... and three sculptures toppled, one of them nearly striking me before it landed on the deck with a solid\n thunk\n and split in two.The Confirmer carried bottles from a broad cabinet half-hidden in the drapes, walking with a left-leaning lurch. \"The best I have to offer,\" he said, and poured out three glasses of a greenish liquid. He sat and offered a glass to the Didact and one to me. Neither of the glasses were clean. \"You remember\n kasna\n,\" he said, lifting his own glass in toast. The liquid inside smelled sweet and sourpungent and left a stain on the glass. \"The San'Shyuum have always excelled in the arts of intoxication. This is from their finest reserves.\"\nThe Didact looked at his glass, then downed it in a gulpto the Confirmer's dismay.\n\"That's rare stuff,\" he chided.\n\"You allow the San'Shyuum to travel between their two worlds?\" the Didact asked, returning the glass to the dusty tray.\n\"They are confined within the boundary of the quarantine,\" the Confirmer said.\n\"There's no reason to hold them fast.\"\n\"In many ways, they were worse than humans,\" the Didact said.\n\"Misled and misguided, they now claim.\"\n\"No matter, at this late date,\" the Didact said. \"You've not had contact with any other warrior in how many years?\"\n\"The living? Centuries, centuries,\" the Confirmer said. \"The last shipment of...\"\nHe stopped himself, looked about with curtained chamber with eyes that had lost nearly all focus. \"Many colleagues are brought here, you know. Exiled with less dignity than the Council allowed you. They've fought, and lost, many political battles since you vanished.\"\n\"Where are they?\"\"A few were allowed their own Cryptums. The rest ... the Council shipped us their Durances.\"\n\"The\n Deep Reverence\n has become a\n graveyard\n?\" the Didact asked, the last color departing his already pale features.\n\"An acre of Mantle. A Memorial. It's what is allowed to our class, now that they have been decommissioned and banished from Council action. The San'Shyuum come here every little while to repair and tend to the displays, and I am grateful. I have neither the staff nor the energy to do the job myself.\"\n\"Our enemies\n tend our dead\n?\" The Didact stood and seemed to be looking for something to pick up and throw. I moved awaystill no match for his strength.\n\"The war is long over,\" the Confirmer said with a feeble attempt at dignity. \"We face greater enemies.... And yet,\n you\n have chosen exile rather than argue with the Council and face the inevitable. And relying on a Lifeworker to hide you and no doubt provide for your return ...\n I\n have nothing to regret, my friend.\" The Confirmer moved with that awkward gait toward the nearest sculpture, a dark green, overarching shape patterned with what might have been foliage. His hand stroked the smoothly carved surface. \"The San'Shyuum ambassador leaves these as a form of respect for their esteemed conquerors. He arrives in a strange chair, on wheels.... I do believe they now require their leaders to be paraplegics. I also believe they hold me in some affection. The San'Shyuum are not much like they used to be.\"\n\"Decadent seekers after sensual gratification, you mean? Clever frauds who betrayed their alliances?\"\n\"Indeed, they once worshipped youth and beauty. Not so now. Elders rule, and the youth serve their bidding. True, there is still much celebration about procreation....Unseemly, but their populations are contained, they breed selectively, and so they do not outgrow their planets, as once they threatened....\"\n\"Who leads them now?\"\n\"There have been many titles, many names. Many assassinations. I've lost track of who or what speaks for their two worlds.\"\n\"Find out,\" the Didact said. \"Tell them a senior Promethean needs to question them about Charum Hakkor and what was imprisoned there.\"\nNow was the Confirmer's turn to lose all the color in his face. He slowly lowered the glass. \"The timeless one?\"\n\"The Master Builder has finished his supreme weapon. It was tested near Charum Hakkor,\" the Didact said. \"No one seems to have anticipated the effect on Precursor structures. The arena has been breached.\"\n\"Impossible,\" the Confirmer said. I thought for a moment that the possibility of a new challenge brought a stiffer carriage to the old warrior, a return of proud bearing, but after a moment's thought, he looked around the half-hidden chamber, the dusty, tattered drapes, the dozens of sculptures, some still seated on their transport pallets ... and seemed almost to deflate within his patchwork armor.\n\"Impossible,\" he repeated. \"If the cage is broken and the prisoner is missing where could it have gone? We never understood what it was to begin with.\"\nThe Didact spoke with it.... But that part of the Didact's memories were not at all clear to me. Too dangerous for a newly mutated first-form? Was I not trusted after all? But he had transferred so much!\n\"That's why it's imperative we question the San'Shyuum.\"\"I won't stop you. Your ship is heavily armed, however. The weapons must be left with me.\"\n\"All except my war sphinxes. They are no longer lethal and serve me as remembrance.\"\n\"Aya, I understand.\"\n\"We also have two humans.\"\n\"Forbidden.\"\n\"Necessary to our mission.\"\nThe Confirmer held the Didact's gaze. Again, a shadow of the old strength seemed to return. \"If the Council has not formally decommissioned your rank, you are my superior. The humans are your responsibility. The weapons cannot pass, however.\"\nThat seemed to settle the matter. An understanding between two old warriors. They drank again, and this time the Didact sipped rather than gulped. \"The Librarian ... Did she explain her mission?\"\n\"She selected individuals from the San'Shyuum and other species and took them away. I understand that's what she does now all over the galaxy. Maybe she collects species the way I collect sculptures.\"\n\"Where did she take them?\"\n\"An installation called the Ark. She was escorted by these new Builder security types. Haven't you spoken with her?\"An awkward silence.\n\"No,\" the Confirmer said. \"Of course not. That would be too easy, wouldn't it?\"TWENTY-TWO O UR SHIP INSERTED\n itself into a downstar orbit. As we approached the first of the two San'Shyuum worlds, the Didact confided to me what already seemed obvious. \"The Confirmer no longer maintains duty fitness. He did not even check to see if my rank is still in place.\"\n\"Is it?\" I asked.\n\"I have no way of knowing.\"\n\"The Librarian knew you would come here, after Charum Hakkor.\"\n\"It would be a reasonable assumption. My wife has her own plans that she's slowly very slowlyallowing me to discover.\"\n\"Others might suspect the sameand prepare a trap.\"\n\"Of course. If we are\n her\n warriors now, we must accept an element of risk. Since the humans carry her mark, putting them with the San'Shyuum may release crucial memories. It's a risk worth taking.\"\n\"They're not at all happy with what they remember,\" I said.\n\"They're accessing unpleasant truthsthe thoughts and recollections of human warriors. Defeated, bitterand about to be executed.\"\n\"She took their essences before they were killed?\"\"She had nothing to do with what happened in those days. It was warrior policy to preserve what we could of foes before they were removed.\"\n\"\nRemoved\n,\" I said.\n\"And in this instance, we had excellent reason to harvest memories,\" the Didact continued. \"Even before we went to war with humans, they were fighting another foe. A most hideous scourge we had yet to encounter, and about which we still know very little.\"\nI looked inward. \"The Flood,\" I said. This much knowledge was open to me:\nimages ... emotions, but all jumbled and incomplete.\n\"That was their name for it. While they fought us, they defeated that other enemy and pushed it beyond the edge of the galaxyan epic battle. We did not know of their victory until\n we\n defeated\n them\n. And we wished to learn from them how to fight the Flood, should it returnas seemed inevitable. However, for obvious reasons, they felt no compulsion to share their secret. They kept it distributed among themselves, hidden from all our techniques.\"\n\"Surely, humans did not fight this 'timeless one,' the missing captive.\"\n\"No.\" The Didact lifted his long arm and swept it slowly along the visible limb of the San'Shyuum world, emerging into day. \"It predated the humans who excavated it. It predated the Flood. However, I shared the humans' opinion that whatever it was, it was extraordinarily dangerous.\"\n\"And still, you spoke with it.\"\nHe seemed conflicted that I knew about this. \"You see that much. Aya.\"\n\"How could you penetrate Precursor technology? What did you ask of it?\"\"That will emerge when you are readyand in full context,\" the Didact said. \"Our weapons have been removed, but this ship is still full of powerful tools. You, for example. And the humans. The Librarian has been conducting her surveys and research for the thousand years I was in exile, and seems to have learned a few things she does not dare pass along directly. Things perhaps even the Council has not been told. But through you and the humans, indirectly ... you have been placed on a slow fuse, timed for the proper moment ... and even I have no idea when that might be.\"\n\"It all sounds awfully inefficient,\" I said.\n\"I've learned to trust my wife's instincts.\"\n\"Did you share your knowledge with her before you entered the Cryptum?\"\n\"Some.\"\n\"Did she share her knowledge with you?\"\n\"Not much.\"\n\"She didn't trust\n you\n, then.\"\n\"She knew my circumstances. Once my Cryptum was discovered and I was released, it was inevitable that I would eventually be forced to serve the Master Builder and the Council, whatever my objections. But she gave me some time, a delay, before that happens. We have this journey to make and questions to ask. In context.\"\nThe ship's ancilla appeared and informed us we were now permitted to approach the largest San'Shyuum world.\n\"Bring your humans here,\" the Didact said.\"They are not\n my\n\"\n\"On your actions they will live or die, serve as heroes to their species, or be snuffed like tiny flames. Are they not yours, first-form?\"\nI lowered my head and complied. Our ship continued its downstar fall along a stretched elliptical orbit. If we decided to abort, we could whip back out and make a break for the quarantine shield ... hoping, I suppose, that the codes would still work and we'd be released. Faint hope.TWENTY-THREE F INALLY WE WERE\n close enough that our sensors penetrated the smoky haze that covered the shadowy ruins of San'Shyuum cities. The destruction hinted at from afar was now manifest. Chakas and Riser watched with us on the command deck, faces deadpan. Riser examined me with a puzzled expression, then wrinkled his nose. Chakas did not even glance at me. If they felt horror, awe, memory ... they did not reveal this to us. Already I saw how much they had changed, how much they had grown. They were almost entirely different beings from the ones I had met on Erde-Tyrene. We all were. At least, I told myself, my service was voluntaryof a kind.\n\"There,\" the Didact confirmed, and swept his finger over the magnified images:\ntrace signatures of engine plumes visible even through the waste heat of cities on fire, the outlines of fleets of landed or hovering ships, some of them larger than ours, many smaller. \"Lifeworkers don't carry weapons,\" he said. \"Builder security is here, but they're lying low, hiding in the obscurity. They must know I'm here. Let's take a deeper look. TherePreservation- and Dignity-class escorts. Hundreds of swift seekers, Diversion-class war machines. All this, to protect a few Lifeworkers?\nWhat happened down there? Is she still in the system?\"\nHis voice carried tones of both resignation and despair, and a touch of hopeas if defeat and capture and whatever worse things he had imagined might all be worthwhile if he could only see his wife again. We were within a hundred thousand kilometers of the planet when the ship'sancilla announced that our last escape orbit was being cut off. \"Many ships are moving downstar through the quarantine shield. They are allowed full functionality, power and speed, and are now matching our course and trajectory.\"\nI spun around as more than a hundred flashed into sensor view, most smaller than ours but a few substantially greater and no doubt packing tremendous firepower.\n\"Interdiction,\" the Didact said. \"The Confirmer did indeed help set the trap.\" He made one final attempt to shift our orbit upstar, but confinement fields swept in to prevent us from achieving maximum speed, and of course we could not enter slipspace. We were like an insect caught in a bottle, buzzing in futility. When the Didact had gathered as much information as he could, he said,\n\"Something has provoked the San'Shyuum to rebellion.\"\n\"But they have no weapons....\"\n\"\nHad\n no weapons. The Confirmer has not been attentive. Clearly, they are still slippery customers.\"\n\"Commander of the response fleet orders that we submit and stand down,\" the ship's ancilla said. \"I am ordered to hand over control. Shall I comply?\"\n\"No choice,\" the Didact said. He looked around, as if still trying to find a way to run, a place to escape. I watched him with a doubled awareness, sharing in a strange, incomplete fashion his emotions and memories of previous defeats, flashes of dead comrades, entire worlds destroyed in apparent retaliation.... More than I could stand. I backed away, bumping up against the humans.\n\"What will happen to us?\" Chakas asked. \"We're not even supposed to be here.\"\n\"They will punish,\" Riser said.I could not answer. I did not know. A second ancilla appeared beside the ship's. The two engaged in some sort of contest, not physical but conducted throughout all the ship's systems. Their images merged, twisted geometrically about each other, then spiraled up and vanished.\n\"What's that?\" I asked.\n\"AI suppressors,\" the Didact said. \"Instant debriefing and transfer. Our ship has been stripped of knowledge and control.\"\nWe were feeling the full strength of a Forerunner warship's most modern weaponry, wrapped and stunned like a fly in a web. Close-in confinement fields flashed around the command center. We felt gravitation cease. At odd angles, the Didact, the humans, and I waited helplessly in semidarkness, blind to all outside activity. Our own ancillas fell silent under the AI suppressors beamed from outside. Finally came total darkness. Minutes passed. Riser was praying in an old human dialect not heard in ten thousand years. Its cadences sounded familiar to me. The Didact had once studied human languages. Chakas was silent. Slowly, my armor started to fail. My breath came hard and shallow. Something sparkled to my right. I tried to turn, but the armor had locked up and now held me immobile. An orange glare increased to unbearable brilliance, and I saw our bulkheads and control surfaces melt and collapsewhile new walls of hard light fought to rise between us and the vacuum. Even under siege, stripped of nearly all higher functions, the Didact's ship was valiantly trying to protect us. Our world became a twisting, free-form struggle between destructor beams andnew construction. I watched in numb fascination as the struggle ramped up to a pitch I could not track with my natural senses ... and then slowly subsided. Our ship was losing. Half of what was left of the control centerabstract and angular and much smallerfell away and vanished. I briefly saw the curved flank of a sleek Despair class hunter-killer, glinting and flashing as it reflected the dying glow of our hull's destruction. We drifted free. Our air rapidly staled, and we were surrounded by vacuum. Into my narrowing point of view came three powerful, fully operational seekers longer, sleeker, versions of the Didact's old war sphinxes. They lacked the scowling features of the older machinesdepersonalized, dark, fast. One of them cut through the new-grown walls and circled behind us, then dropped aft, penetrating interior bulkheads, searching for other occupants. Through shredded layers of ship's decking, I watched it release the war sphinxesonly to smash them like toys, slice them into sections, and then reduce those to sparking dust. The sphinxes offered no resistance. Another took the Didact in tow, bouncing in his armor like a child's toy on a string as he was hauled from the dying ship into the depths of space. The third lingered near me but took no action, as if awaiting instructions. Then, just as my vision shrank to a purplish cone and I thought I had taken my last breath, the seeker swept out its manipulators, seized my armor, and tugged me from the broken hull, not toward a flotilla of ships, but outward, aroundand finally, down. We were all being unceremoniously dragged to the surface of the San'Shyuum world.TWENTY-FOUR P ARALYZED, WRAPPED IN\n a transparent field like a bubble, unable to talk to anyone, my ancilla deactivated by suppressors, I had an ever-changing ringside view of what Forerunners do when their anger and fear takes charge. They have no warrior discipline. The atmosphere below was a swirling soup of smoke and fire. Warrior craft and automated weapon systems were mostly too small to be visible, but I saw their effectsdarting beams of needle light, glowing arcs cutting across continents, gigantic, stamplike divots punched into the crust and then lifted up, spun about, overturned. I had never seen anything like thisbut the Didact had. His memories offered commentary and context as the grappler dragged me down toward that hell. For some time, my involuntary point of view spun away from the planet. Looking outward, I saw weapons and ships in higher orbits transit like frantic stars, the blinding sunand then, the sparkling, dissolving hulk of the Didact's ship. The ship that the Librarian had seeded inside the central peak of Djamonkin Cratera bent, broken mass still pitifully trying to reassemble. A ship that never even had a name. Several times, the grappler and I passed through pulses of ionized gas and superheated plasma that tingled my nerves and throbbed in my boneswithout actual sound.It slowly became obvious that the decimation of the San'Shyuum world was not all one-sided. The planet itself was a source of plasma pulses and other firepower. More interesting, I caught sight of a craft silhouetted against the stars that looked like nothing made by Forerunnersa flat platform surrounded by billowing, silvery sails, flapping in and out like the bell of a jellyfish, as if trying to swim clearbut not succeeding. The bell dissolved, the platform broke up. Bodies spilled, tiny and motionlessand then all of it was gone. I spun around again. The planet seemed close enough to touch, maybe a hundred kilometers below, nighttime emphasizing the dying glow of what might have been forests, cities. Near the brightening arc of sunrise, a glistening river was delineated against the shadow of dawn, studded with smoking pinpoints of orange. Burning shipsships made to float on water. There was plenty of time to feel sorry for myself, to regret all I had done, but contrary to all my self-expectations and past attitudes, I didn't. Sorry about nothing, regretting nothing. Simply watching, waiting.... Waiting with a kind of contentment to die, if that was necessary and inevitable. Wondering about our humans, who had had every reason to regret having anything to do with me. And who, if they still lived, might now be adding to their own awareness of past battles, old wars. The main prize was of course the Didact. He had fled some duty too onerous to contemplate. He had fought against a Council decision, and losing that fight, he had hidden away, entered into an honorable if not permanent retirement. But now his opponents had him again. That seemed more than significantit caused a deeper anger than anything being done to me.I shut my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, flares of atmospheric entry shot up on all sides. We were very close to the surface, less than sixty kilometers, and rapidly descending. I spun again and saw space through a cone of ionized gases. Centered in that cone, something impossible appeared far beyond the panoply of ships and weapons exchanges: an enormous ripple that stirred the stars like a stick twirled through flecked paint. The disturbance swept across well over a third of my view, then was framed by an elliptical lacework of hard light. I recognized that this was one end of a massive portaldesigned to transport a great deal of mass on a continuing basis. I watched without emotion as an enormous but delicate silver ring emerged through the purplish hole in the center of the lacework. Despite its size, the portal had opened far from the orbiting ships, well over a million kilometers outward from the orbit of the San'Shyuum's dying world ... far above war, death, the concerns of little creatures like myself.\n\"It's big,\" my lips tried to say, but again my breath hitched, my lungs heaved, I tried to suck up whatever air was left, but clearly, I was running out. The seeker was towing me all the way down to the surface with only the bubble as protection. The ring far above shimmered. Within its delicacy, spokes of hard light shot toward the center and created a brilliant copper-hued hub fully a third as wide as the ring itself. Half of the ring fell into shadow, the other half glimmered in bright sun. The inner surfaceit's covered with water My tunnel vision narrowed around the ring, focused on it, and I noticed tiny details,clouds, clouds in shadow, impossibly tiny against such vastness ... mountains, canyons, detail upon detail as my vision both sharpened and shrank inward, until it winked out altogether and I drifted through a thick pudding of nothing. It was now that the Domain opened to me, without benefit of ancilla, interface, or past experience. It was new, deep, appropriately shapelessthat made sense. I was dying, after all. Then, it assumed a form, rising around me like a beautiful building with gleaming, indefinite architecture, not quite seen but definitely sensed, felta lightness that carried its own somber joy. Here comes everybody\n, I thought. And everybody who had ever visited the Domain said to me:\n Preserve. The lightness vanished instantly. The building was being carved apart just as our ship had died. More messages. This time is coming to an end. Preserve. The history of Forerunners will soon conclude. These came with a rising scream of anguish, as if I had plugged into a chamber where essences were pouring forth more than recall and knowledgepouring forth frustration, horror, pain. Before the bump, and the sudden inrush of cold, clean airbreathable air, but with a sharp tang of soot and ozonethe Domain lifted up and away. I was grateful to be free of it. For a moment, I doubted I had seen anything but a reflection of my own emotions and predicament.\"Sometimes, there is a kind of broken-mirror aspect.\"\nVaguely I wondered about the giant ring. Had I imagined it? It had seemed so real. Then a word flashed into my revived mind, echoing from the image I had just seen or imagined or conjured up from anoxia. That single word connected intimately with the precious little the Domain had revealed to me: Death. Destruction. Massive power. That word was\n Halo.TWENTY-FIVE JANJUR QOM  THE GREATER SAN'SHYUUM QUARANTINE WORLD\n\"W HAT IN HELL\n have they done to you, Manipular?\"\nThe voice was mannered, cultured. I recognized its highly trained and inculcated tones, like powerful music rising and echoing through a great, solemn structure. For a moment, I thought maybe this was the Domain again, speaking in a more physical and personal way. Not so, however. The voice was coming through my ears. I could smell something other than burninglike the resonant, musky perfume favored by my father, far too expensive for my swap-father or other Miners ... or Warrior-Servants. The voice was definitely not my father's, however. My eyes were open but showed only a darkness swimming with vague shadows.\n\"Turn off the suppressors. His armor can revive him. And I\n do\n want him revived.\"\nSame voice, but not directed at me. Another voice, less powerful, subservient. \"We don't know whether the armor has been counterequipped....\"\n\"Turn them all off! We have the one we want. Let's get some additional details. I'm sure there's a mad scheme lurking here somewhere.\"\nMy armor loosened. Strength returned to my flesh. I had some freedom of motion but not muchthe suppressor had been shut down, but physical shackles still heldme. I seemed to hang from a chain or a hook in a grayish, echoing volume. I blinked to clear the blurriness.\n\"There you are,\" the voice said. \"I ask you again, Manipularwhat has the Didact done to you?\"\nI managed to speakbarely. \"I'm a first-form. Not a Manipular.\"\n\"You smell like a Warrior-Servant, but you look more like a misshapen Builder. How did that happen?\"\n\"Brevet mutation. Necessary under the circumstances.\"\nThe powerful voice turned thick with pity. \"Do you know where you are and what has happened?\"\n\"I saw the planet being devastated. I saw a great ring lit by the sun on one side. Perhaps I imagined it.\"\n\"Mm. You're on what is left of Janjur Qom, the primary treaty planet of the San'Shyuum. Our former enemies have turned enemy again. Not unforeseen, but can you tell me why the Prometheans allowed this to happen?\"\n\"No.\" I tried to focus on a blurred, shifting wall of light to my leftand couldn't. None of it was familiar. None of it made sense.\n\"Why would the Librarian's recent visit provoke this uprising?\"\n\"I don't know that it did.\"\n\"But you do know about her visit.\"\n\"The Confirmer mentioned it.\"\"Ah! A shameful travesty, that onewho guards the guards? Still, he has the wit to serve those who release him from onerous duties. You seem to remember a\n few important things.\"\n\"I'm not trying to deceive you.\"\n\"Of course not. It must feel good to be back among your kind.\"\n\"I don't know that I am, yet.\"\n\"A violent return to the fold, that's for surebut under the circumstances, we could not afford to have an unassigned ship interfere with our operations.\"\n\"There were humans....\"\n\"I haven't inquired. If so, that infraction will be punished, as well.\"\nAs my eyes cleared and my senses returned, the large grayish outline before me took on shape and focus. I saw a Builder, perhaps the finest specimen of my rate I had ever observed, lovingly guided through at least three, possibly more mutations. Sculpted and trained for high office, even the Council itself.\n\"Who are you?\" I asked.\n\"I am the Master Builder. You've met me before, Manipular.\"\nHe still insisted on calling me that. It was meant as an insult. I did vaguely recall someone like him in my early youth, visiting my family's world in the Orion complex. He had not then been called Master Builder. He had been known simply as Faber. Where the Didact had been bulked and hewn, the Master Builder had been gently carved, rounded, polished to a rosy gray sheen. His skin radiated musky perfume. I thought of the San'Shyuum and their ability to charm.My head was full of interesting thoughts, none of them focused, none involved with my situation, my predicament, my survival. We were arranged along one side of a long, dimly lighted corridor, broader than it was high, broken by angular blocks stepped up against the walls. Every few seconds, upright bars of light swept down the middle, function unknown to me. My ancilla was still suppressed. The Master Builder walked around me.\n\"When did you join the Didact in his mission?\"\n\"On Erde-Tyrene.\"\n\"Erde-Tyrene is assigned to the Lifeworkers as a nature preserve, under protection of the Librarian. Were humans involved in this plot from the beginning?\"\n\"I don't know what you mean.\"\n\"Were they aware of the consequences of liberating the Didact from his Warrior Keep?\"\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\"It's our best theory to date, that all of you were guided by the Librarian in an effort to frustrate the Council. Do you personally disagree with the Council?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\n\"How can you be so uninformed?\"\"By not paying attention,\" I said. \"I lived among Miners before slipping away to Erde-Tyrene. They have little interest in Builders and their affairs.\"\n\"True,\" the Master Builder said. \"Your family expresses support for you, but extreme disappointment and surprise at your actions. For the time being, your father has entrusted me, personally, with your welfare.\"\nThat did not sound good. I doubted they would have lightly given me up to the Master BuilderBuilders in general have strong family bonds. Which of course my family was accustomed to having me test....\n\"He claims he did not know you were on Erde-Tyrene. You were sent to Edom. Did you inform him of your destination?\"\nWorse and worse. The slightest misstep or misstatement on my part could put my whole family in jeopardy, that much was clear. \"I'm reluctant to tell you things that might be in error. My thoughts are still jumbled, and my memory after the mutation is also suspect. I'd like to help, Master Builder\"\n\"And you will, in time. Meanwhile, enjoy another brief rest. We still have work to do here, and after that is finished, we'll attend to you. Now, where are those humans?\"\nHe raised his arm and my armor locked. The suppressor field returned, this time set so high that I automatically started to black out. Just before oblivion struck, again I felt a brush with the Domain. They are about to give it powers it never had before. Just as they did ages ago.... Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. I thought I recognized whomever or whatever had deposited this message, butcould not place the memory. It was not the Didact, that was certain. It might not have even been a Forerunner.TWENTY-SIX N OW CAME THE\n brightest light I had ever seen. I was awake again, looking down from a transparent platformperhaps the flagship of the Master Builderupon the wreckage of a city. The light came from an horrific plasma ball rising on the horizon, shooting forth subsidiary streams of matter pattern interferencemass converting into both electromagnetic radiation and vacuum energy. Shields darkened, but not before I felt another tingle and was temporarily blinded. My armor would have a real job to do after all this to repair the radiation damage. In that shadowy pause, the Didact's memory showed me what a San'Shyuum city would have looked like before this destruction: sweeping, branching organic towers and broad, curved lanes, thousands of streets arranged like ripples crossing a pond. The San'Shyuumtrue to formhad used all the means at their disposal to regain a comfortable existence, with light commerce and travel between two adjacent worlds and several small moonsthe beginnings, in better times and under other circumstances, of a full historical recovery. Another dawn seemed to arrive as my eyes recovered. Our ship came down on a broad open plain, surrounded by tall ships and plumes of smoke and guarded by a grim-visaged contingent of Builders in battle armor. Builder security. That still seemed strange to me.Three confinement bubbles appeared beside me, hanging by tow-threads from grapplers. One contained Riser, eyes closed, head upturned in his armor; the other, Chakas, whose face showed some returning awareness. And the third contained the Didact, naked and fully aware, surrounded by pain projectors: stripped of armor, honor, dignity, and doing all he could not to show his agony. He glanced at me, and in his eyes was a question, one I could not yet answer. More pain was applied, and he jerked his head forward again, looking only at the Master Builder.\n\"You've been a lot of trouble, Promethean, and now you've dragged down your wife and these poor underlings.\"\nThis, I believe, was the point at which my maturity arrived in an awful rush. The Master Builder, whether he knew it or not, now had a fierce enemy me\n.\n\"You came here to meet with the San'Shyuum, did you not?\" the Master Builder asked. \"Well, let us arrange for that meeting. The Librarian recently rescued a few, and that seems to have ignited the uprising whose final issue is being decided even now. She is beyond my reach, unfortunately. But you are notand\n these\n are not.\"\nA line of San'Shyuum prisoners, also wrapped in constraining bubbles, was dragged forward like a string of beads over the field, until all were arranged in the looming shadow of the Master Builder's ship. None bore evidence of the legendary, sensuous beauty of the San'Shyuum. I looked over an assortment of decrepit looking elders, not alert warriors or energetic youth. Several had arrived in the odd, wheeled chairs the Confirmer had mentioned, their heads and shoulders burdened by broad ornamental helmets with wide-spread wings. Others, more fit, sparked the Didact's buried memories of handsome figures from times pastwhen the San'Shyuum had first and foremost demanded sensuous fulfillment in their lives. I seemed to see them as if in a long, ornate procession, patterns, shadows andechoes of past figures trailing back for thousands of years....\n\"The Master Builder is well known,\" the lead elder said in a huffing, lungless sort of voice. \"I am called, by my fellows, Sustaining Wind. How may we assist you, triumphant one?\"\nThe Master Builder ordered Chakas and Riser forward, out of the shadow of the lift exit. The humans in their paralyzed armor seemed only half-aware of their situation. I wondered if the Master Builder had surrounded them with pain projectors as well. The San'Shyuum delegation reacted with surprise and even anger. One of the Prophets ordered his chair wheeled forward, and surveyed Chakas with a profoundly sad expression. \"They are\n debased\n,\" the Prophet announced to those gathering and roiling behind him. \"This is the fate that awaited us! It was foretold by past Prophets, and demonstrated by the sorrow of the Librarian. Was it the presence of these wretches that brought this devastation upon us?\"\n\"Let's not forget the secret construction and stockpiling of ships and attacks upon our visiting fleet,\" the Master Builder said. Sustaining Wind lowered his head, the wide headdress vibrating. Chakas and Riser remained still and silent, but Chakas turned his eye on meand winked. I had no idea what this meant, but it cheered me. He apparently did not regard me as his enemy, and for that I felt a sad gratitude.\n\"Is this then some attempt to remind us of our shame, in our time of final destruction?\" the elder continued. Chakas looked now to the skies. Perhaps he was thinking of past moments when humans, San'Shyuum, and Forerunners had gathered ... in other, even more violent times.The elder now rolled his way around Riser. Riser looked down upon him, small furred face more than a meter higher than the elder's wrinkled visageminus of course that ridiculous crown.\n\"And why do you give them\n Forerunner\n armor?\" the elder squeaked and puffed.\n\"Are these vanquished ones now elevated to higher status than those with whom you signed treaties? Did you enlist\n them\n in this attack?\"\n\"The humans are servants of the Librarian.\" The Master Builder ordered several Builder security guards between the humans and the San'Shyuum. They firmly but gently pushed back the elder. Then the Master Builder turned to the Didact and asked, \"What memories quicken in you at this pitiful sight?\"\nThe Didact did not answer.\n\"Are there other clues to be found here ... about that which we have lost?\"\nYes. That was it, in part. The Didact had come here to ... The elder's chair pulled back. \"The Librarian selected a few from among us, and then she left. Her visit told us that whatever we did, destruction would soon be upon us. We reacted as any civilized species mustto preserve our heritage and our children. What have you brought upon us?\" the elder wheezed, his face livid. \"You gave us your word of honor....\"\n\"He thought you concealed a great secret,\" the Master Builder said. \"You know why we are here?\"\n\"We are not savages. We have observed, listened. Your people are on the verge of desperation, even panic. The front has advancedthe front\n we\n pushed back beyond the galaxy ten thousand years agothe enemy we vanquished, that youcannot\n.\"\nI was still trying to fully recover what I knew lay within me, the Didact's history of the Flood. I sensed only a roiling tide of chaos. The elder raised scrawny, feeble hands, as if in exultation. He turned to face the Master Builder. \"And nowyou have\n lost\n something, haven't you? Something so tremendous and important that surely it cannot be hidden.\"\nThe Master Builder finally seemed to show the elder some sympathy. \"It has been said humans and San'Shyuum found the secret of destroying their greatest enemies. You were preserved should we ever need that secret.\"\n\"The Master Builder brought doom upon usand upon yourselves. No secrets, no future.\"\n\"As for your doom, that I believe,\" the Master Builder said. \"I see there never was a secret and no reason to preserve. You have violated our treaty. Forerunners never tolerate betrayal of trust. But while it's clear to me that you have nothing to offer, I have to ask you about the Didact's secretthe one he conspired to hide, with your help.\"\nAnother string of bubbles arrived, occupied by a very different group of San'Shyuumbloody, missing limbs, barely aware of their surroundings. Beyond their injuries and tattered raiment, these were well-shaped, sleek, muscular creatures more properly suiting the San'Shyuum's traditional image. The bubbles opened and the Master Builder's warriors organized the captives in a line before us, before the elders. Even in pain and under constraint, the way they moved conveyed both power and charmsubdued by circumstance, but real nonetheless. The chair-bound elder almost spat upon the newcomers. \"These are the vipers inour bedsthe personal agents of this defeat. I will not share\n breath\n with them.\"\nChakas tried to laugh. He merely ended up choking. Riser watched it all with lips drawn tight, brows high, eyes flashing as if in warning. I had never seen him in a rage. His size did not diminish him now. The Master Builder walked along the line, surveying with a musing air both varieties of San'Shyuum, as different as night and day: old and new, age and youth. But here, I knew, the more desiccated and decrepit figures were the true revolutionaries. The Master Builder doubled back and stopped before the Didact. \"Promethean, hear me,\" he said. \"You have one last chance to redeem yourself. I have had this planet searched high and low by my special intelligence forces. All who might confirm what you claim exists are assembled herepreserved even in their treason. Their families are dead, the resistance completely crushed. Surely now they will reveal what they have concealed for so longor so you've claimed, all these thousands of years.\"\nThe Didact looked wearily among them. \"You've picked and preserved ... in error.\"\nThe Master Builder's cold fury built until I thought he would raise his arm yet again and call for pain projectors to surround us all. Then, he pulled back his anger. Looking upon his face, I wondered what resources he had acquired upon his rise from Manipular to first-formor second-, or third-. He did not seem wiser for all that, only more powerful, more cruel. By comparison, the Didact was the gentler Forerunnera complete contradiction to my former understanding.\"No questions for them?\" the Master Builder asked.\n\"There was a San'Shyuum whom I knew and worked with after your defeat,\" the Didact said, his eyes slowly sweeping the line, the elders. \"He, too, entered a state of exile to atone for the defeat he faced against my forces. Before then, we established a kind of bond, such as there might be between those who lost and took away so many brave fellows and family.\n\"He it was who told me that when the time comes, when the enemies of all return, he would reveal his secret, in exchange for the freedom of his descendants. I do not see him here.\"\n\"You speak of our First Prophet,\" the elder said, his bluster vanishing.\n\"Where is this\n dirt-beast\n?\" the Master Builder asked, using the most obscene slur upon all who are not of our species.\n\"I saw his palace destroyed in the first assault,\" the elder said, his voice rough and sad. \"He is no more.\"\nThe Master Builder raised his blunt jaw, moved his hand, and his soldiers positioned themselves behind the line of injured San'Shyuum prisoners. Then he turned to the Didact. \"You can save these warriors, if you tell us what happened on Charum Hakkor, and how that ties in with this\n prophet\n and his secret. A prison holds a prisoner, but someone here holds the key.\"\nI saw something in the Master Builder's look that froze my blood. All his polish and preparation, all his elegant mutations, could not conceal an awareness that his power was rapidly waning. All he did here was in desperation. Whatever had been lost, whatever had gone missing, was not something Forerunners could afford to misplaceand it was not just the prisoner of Charum Hakkor. I remembered the ring-shaped void and streaming trace left in themagnetic field and solar wind of the Charum Hakkor system. Was it the same as the ring in the San'Shyuum system?\nDid the Master Builder have more than one at his disposal? Each one capable of destroying almost all life in a solar system ...\n\"You brought your\n Halo\n to Charum Hakkor,\" I said. \"Is that what you've lost?\"\n\"Enough!\" the Didact commanded, and I instantly shut up, shut down my emotions, stiffened my posturefor he was correct. This was not for others to hear. Not even I should know. The Master Builder looked upon me in horror, his polish and dignity erased. He approached me sidewise, as if I were a serpent that might strike out and cause even more pain. \"If no one can tell me where this prisoner might have goneor indeed, who or what it wasthen we are done here. This world is done. This line of history is about to end.\"\nThe Master Builder leaned his head close to mine. \"You were at Charum Hakkor,\"\nhe said in a low voice, silky but disturbing. \"If not for your family's power, I would strip you down to a haze of burning brain cells and spread you out upon this field. What could I pick out from those naive cinders, Manipular? You are just a pitiful echo of the Didact. What you know, he knowsand much more. And he is mine to do with as I please.\"\nThe guards restored the bubbles around the San'Shyuum prisoners, this time including the elders in their peculiar chairs. They then approached the Didact and locked him down in a suppressor. The humans were next. When they came to me, the Master Builder held them off for a moment, longenough to tell me, \"We have notified your family. Through long relationship, I subdue my anger. Your father has asserted his authority. You will be exchanged, but your family will be finedruinously fined. Your wandering days are over, Bornstellar Makes Eternal.\"\nMy father's authority?\n\"Where are you taking the Didact?\"\n\"Where he will be most useful to me.\"\n\"And the humans?\"\n\"The Librarian has overstepped more than usual this time. All her projects will be terminated.\"\nThe soldiers turned their suppressors upon me. The last thing I saw was the Didact's face, contorted in agony, but his eyes locked firmly on my own. I knew. He knew. Between us there was more than echo and response. My world shrank into a tight gray knot.TWENTY-SEVEN I\n WAS TO\n be returned to where my life began, within the wide orbital waltz of three suns in the great nebular complex of Orionreturned to home and family, where I hoped I would be allowed to recuperate, meditate, and achieve my own maturity, in my own way and in my own time.\n*\n*\n*\nWhile I was still unconscious, Builder security escorted me out of the quarantine sphere to an adjacent system. I was finally allowed to come awake, and found myself on a stripped-down personnel transport and research vessel shared by both Miners and Builders. My journey thereafter was swift, quiet, mostly uneventful. I was not treated differently from other passengers, mostly stellar engineers. They seemed to think I was a Warrior-Servant recruited by the Builders and recovering from some unexplained trauma. There were apparently many such being ferried to recovery centers. I did not tell them otherwise. Others continued to regard me as something of a freak. I could not disagree. I did not enjoy looking at myself in a mirror. I had certainly grown. My physical strength was much greater. In nearly every respect, I suppose I actually was am a freak. That my fellow passengers paid any attention to me spoke well of the kindly culture of these scientific adventurers, out to develop and increase the Forerunner realm without military conquest.Our ship stopped at several installations where the science of planetary formation was being taken to advanced stages. Rocky worlds were at a premium, one of the Miners explained to me in the ship's small, sparsely appointed lounge. Forerunners now had the ability to collapse an asteroid field into a molten mass of the twenty megameter range, then cool and cure the protoplanet in less than ten thousand years.\n\"The last problem remains taming young stars,\" he said. \"But we're working on that. We send in stellar-class engineers equipped with third-class ancillasplasma jockeys, we call them. They love the heat, but most vanish after a few hundred yearsjust go away. We don't know what becomes of them. They get the job done, though.\"\nI listened politely enough, but my own misery left little in the way of curiosity. As my armor did not have an ancilla, on occasion I slept, and my dreams were extraordinary, covering thousands of lives and millions of years, cut up and rearranged in a dense tapestry of world-lines ... but I forgot them almost immediately upon waking. On our way through the outer reaches of the Orion nebular complex, popping in and out of slipspace to deliver our supplies and researchers to various stellar nurseries, we actually came within a million kilometers of the natal planet of the Forerunners, a now-desolate and radiation-scoured cinder of a world known in the most ancient tongue as Ghibalb. Ghibalb had once been a paradise. Emerging into the galactic realm, these early Forerunners had been content to live and develop in a glorious cradle of just twelve stars, but their first experiments in stellar engineering had gone awry, causing an infectious series of novas that brightened the entire Orion complex for fifty thousand yearsand nearly destroyed our species. Images from that time show the nebulae to have been extraordinarily brilliant and colorful.Forerunners had long since improved upon their craft and made fewer mistakes. Now the complex was darker and much less active, barely visible from a distance of more than a hundred light-years. While the others were buried deep in interactions with their ancillas, I observed our journey with only eye, mind, and memory. The only interruption was a navigational glitch caused by disturbances in slipspace itself. When we were informed that our ship was five light-years off course, one researcher surmised that the great portals were being over-utilized of late. \"We've been told over and over we can't deliver raw materials to needy systems. The only thing that could cause this sort of trouble is frequent passage of exceptionally large vesselsabusively frequent and unimaginably large! And who do you think authorizes\n that\n?\"\nHe swept all his fellow passengers with a meaningful look, as if we might be compelled to divulge something of our own knowledge about these matters. The othersthose who emerged from their ancillary studiesone and all derided his theory. I said nothing. I had witnessed one such passage, and evidence of another, but it was certainly not my place to speak about what I had seen. Still, this glitch caused an unexpected and uncontrolled detour that provoked a surprise inspection from a team of exalted Builders. They arrived on a warship of unfamiliar design, sleek and fastintercepting us near a once-deserted association of extrasolar planets. The rumor quickly spread among the researchers that we had approached a secure installation about which none of them knew anything. The boarding party consisted of Builder securitynone of them Warrior Servants, contrary to long tradition. They observed all the proper courtesiesthenthoroughly scoured the transport's records. After that, they politely asked us to strip our armorI of course wore noneand debriefed the researchers' ancillas, in search of what, none would say. The team soon departed, having concluded our breach was accidentalbut leaving us none the wiser. Before they left, one shot me a look that combined contempt and pity. I was the only one they had ignored. This naturally brought suspicion upon me. Rumors also spread that I was the true cause of the delay, and only the bravest and lowest of the researchers would speak to me thereafter. Soon, even they closed me out. The rest of my journey was solitary, until, twelve light-years from home, I was transferred to a swift yacht shared by my family and five other Builder clans. My father, mother, and sister greeted me as I crossed from the transport to the yacht. I had not seen any of them for three years. My father had undergone another mutation since I left and now bore a distinct and disturbing resemblance to the Master Builder. My mother had changed very littleif anything, she had only become more sedate and dignified, beginning her third millennial interim, during which she would neither give birth nor otherwise create offspring. Whereas my father was four meters tall, broad-shouldered and thick-legged, his skin like polished onyx, his well-trimmed patches of hair purplish white, his eyes black flecked with silver, my mother was just over two meters tall, slender as a reed, her hair deep red and skin silver-gray. My sister was slightly taller than our mother and less slender, in that transition stage prior to family interchange, courtship, marriage. Even before my exile to Edom, she had been undergoing gentle mutation toreproductive maturity, and was now through the earliest phase of her advance to first-form. She greeted me with silent, wide-eyed appraisal, then clasped me swiftly and warmly; my mother, seeing my condition, greeted me with painful formality; my father, with a firm clasp of my shoulder, hid his emotions and exchanged only a few precisely chosen words, welcoming me back to the fold. My parents were over six thousand years old. My sister and I were barely twelve.\n\"I'm sure there will be much to discuss,\" he concluded, before sending me to my quarters to try on a fresh suit of armor. \"We will dine in an hour.\"\nIn the small, elegantly appointed cabin, the new armor was expertly spun about me. The ship assembled a perfectly dignified and unremarkable ancilla from its own reserves. Neuter and simple, it seemed a shallow parody of the one supplied by the Librariannot very helpful and completely unexciting.\n\"Apologies for this primitive accessory,\" the ship said, noting my reaction. \"Your ancilla may of course be upgraded once you arrive at your estate.\"\nI felt a deep pang of loneliness and an odd sensation of grief. The ancilla did not know how to cheer me or what words of support to offer. I felt responsible for all that had happened and was still happening, great events known and unknown, far awayplus the fates of one Promethean and two human beings. That first shipboard dinner was awkward, quiet, unenlightening. The ship tried to serve what it thought were my favorite foods. In my present condition, they made me feel vaguely ill.\n\"Perhaps he requires a diet more suited to a warrior,\" my father suggested. Subduing a flash of anger, I did not ask him what he might be involved in, professionally, that twenty thousand light-years away I should be treated with grim leniency by an otherwise all-powerful Master Builder.I had advanced, all rightwell beyond being an embarrassment to being a major disaster, both behavior-wise and in physical appearance. In a few days, we were home again.TWENTY-EIGHT T HE FIRST SIGHT\n of our family's world roused a mixed palette of high emotions. We watched the orbital approach from the yacht's bridge deck, a comfortable, largely ceremonial appurtenance. The yacht was controlled by its own ancilla, like nearly all Forerunner ships, but a parody of old times still required upon landing the presence of the senior family member, in this case my father, who barked out commands in Forerunner Jagona language older by far than my parents, but not nearly as old as the Digon the Didact had learned as a young warrior. Didact. They called me that when I taught at the college of Strategic Defense of the Mantlethe War College. Some of my students seemed to think I was overly demanding and too precise in my definitions.... This upwelling came as no surprise. I had expected something like it. The Didact had sponsored my mutation, after all, and that meant I contained some of his inherent patterns ... and possibly even much of his memory. I felt as if something was growing inside me I might not be able to control. I tried not to show outward sign, but my father easily detected the change. Of course our family's homeworld had changed little. What need for change when every square meter of its surface had been built upon, tuned, and adapted to Forerunner comfort and ambition? Even from a thousand kilometers, the arc of the planet's limb was visibly ruffled with architecture, though certainly not the equal of the ruins found on any great Precursor planetno vaulting orbital bridges stretching from world to world, no unbending and eternal cables....I flashed back to Charum Hakkor before its mysterious destruction, seeing as if miraculously restored both the Precursor ruins and the use that humans had once made of them.... But enough. Returning to my family's world again reminded me that Builders had nothing to be ashamed of in their quest for architectural dominance. I had once taken a youthful fancy to our elevated oceans, each a thousand kilometers in diameter and a thousand meters deep, shining like a belt of overlapping coins around the equator. Each was separated from its neighbor by several hundred meters of elevation, their overlapping depending on whether cascades of water or twisting water-spout funnels joined them. Lifeworkers by invitation had for many centuries come to study these great aquariums and experiment with new varieties of exotic creatures, which they sometimes exported to other research groups and hobbyists across the galaxy. Once, I had helped tutor one such experiment: a pod of saltwater reptilians, tri torsoed carnivores with three linked brains and amazing sensesthe most intelligent of their kind ... until my mother decided, after several nearly successful attempts on my young life, that these creatures were entirely too dangerous. She terminated the experiment and the Lifeworker who designed the reptilians was reassigned to another world, far away. Almost as impressive were the arched rockways of the northern hemisphere, stretching in a longitudinal belt from the oceans to the perfect circle of the icy pole:\ngreat red and yellow sandstone formations carved by sandblasters, autonomous whirlwinds of grit that hollowed and sculpted and worked until the ancient limestone seabeds were marvels of fretwork. Hikers and travelers could get lost for months in hundreds of thousands of kilometers of winding, spiraling mazesthough of course there was never any real danger, as family scouts were always on call, awaiting signals of distress or just simple boredom.My sister had once delighted in leaving her own peculiar carvings on rock faces within the mazes, inviting others to contribute their own designs. None complied. Hers were too original, too enigmatic.\n*\n*\n*\nWe landed at the family's most extensive manor estate, near the equator between the belt of oceans and a low, ancient mountain range. Our ship spread itself out for maintenance on the landing cradle, and embodied ancillas of many sorts greeted us, along with representatives of the lower-ranking families that shared and conserved the planet on our behalf. My father did not introduce his unfamiliar-looking son or explain his presence, as no doubt he had neglected to explain my years of absence.\n*\n*\n*\nThe first evening after our return, my sister joined me on the lakefront veranda of the main domicile and sat next to me as the tiara of three small, brilliant suns sank below the horizon, casting all in a shimmering twilight. There followed an unusually brilliant display of aurora. I could almost make out the additional refraction caused by the fields that protected us from the nastiest radiations of those small, brilliant dwarf stars.\n\"Did you ever find your treasure?\" she asked gently, touching my arm. If that was meant to divert my gloom or otherwise cheer me, it did not.\n\"There is no treasure,\" I said.\n\"No Organon?\"\n\"Nothing remotely like that.\"\n\"Everyone around here is acting very mysterious of late,\" she said. \"Father in particular. It's like he's carrying the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders.\"\"He's an important Builder,\" I said.\n\"He's been important since I can remember. Is he more important now than he used to be?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said.\n\"How?\"\n\"I'd like to know more about that myself.\"\n\"Now\n you're\n being mysterious.\"\n\"I saw things ... terrible things. I'm not sure how much I can explain without causing trouble.\"\n\"Trouble! You\n love\n trouble.\"\n\"Not this kind.\"\nTime to change the subject, she saw. She looked me over with that combination of half-concealed appraisal and kind judgment she had inherited from our mother.\n\"Mother wonders if you plan to redeem your mutation and reshape yourself,\" she asked.\n\"No,\" I said. \"Why? Am I especially ugly?\"\n\"Before we females are betrothed, a little slumming between rates is almost mandatory. You have a brutish aspect that would suit a few of my friends perfectly. Do you plan on becoming a Warrior?\"\nNow she was teasing. I ignored the gibe, but felt a twinge at the real possibility.\n\"My life is no longer my own,\" I said. \"Perhaps it never was.\"A sharp retort almost came to her lipsI could tell by her expression she was on the verge of saying I was full of self-pity. She would not have been wrong. But she subdued the impulse, and I took the unspoken advice to heart. After a long moment, as darkness fell, the nebulae grew brighter in our accustomed eyes, and the veranda was subtly lit and warmed from beneath, she asked, \"What really happened out there?\"\nIt was now that Mother appeared, walking with her perpetual and almost ageless grace across the veranda. She motioned for another chair and, when it formed, sat beside us with a long, grateful sigh. \"It's good to have my finest children all with me again, all here at home,\" she said.\n\"Bornstellar was about to tell me what happened on Edom,\" my sister said.\n\"Edom! Would that were all to the story. We have punished your swap-family for allowing the influence of a Lifeworker to lead you astray.\"\n\"\nAstray\n...\" My sister luxuriated in that word. One last late aurora waved its slow banner, suffusing her smooth face with a flowery pink glow that plunged a barb of regret through me. I would never again share her innocence, her sense of adventure.\n\"And I certainly hope to pass along a few of the Council's fines,\" Mother added.\n\"We may yet lose this world because of your 'adventures,' Bornstellar. I hope they were worth it.\"\n\"Mother!\" My sister seemed surprised and distressed. I was not. I had expected this moment for most of my return journey.\n\"Is any sort of 'telling' allowed?\" Mother asked. \"You left Edom. You were advanced to maturity by a disgraced Warrior-Servant.\"\"By the Didact,\" I said.\n\"The dissident Prometheanbanished from the Council?\"\n\"Victor over humans and San'Shyuum, protector of the ecumene for twelve thousand years.\" My other memory recalled this with no pride, only a sense of regret that more could not have been done.\n\"Is it all true?\" Mother asked, her voice soft and a little frightened. The tale of my travels and adventures had been told to her in no depth, apparently, and with major deletions.\n\"It's true.\"\n\"How could you allow yourself to be so misguided?\"\n\"Edom isn't far from Erde-Tyrene. I went there to seek treasure. I was led to believe there might be Precursor artifacts. But I found nothing of that sort. Instead, I was guided by a pair of humans to the Didact's Cryptum.\"\nMy sister's esteem grew. \"A Warrior Cryptum? You\n opened\n it?\"\n\"And helped to revive him. He did not call down punishment. He recruited me.\"\nMy mother tied together the obvious knots of the story. \"All this was the Librarian's scheme, perhaps?\"\n\"It seems so.\"\n\"Then under the compelling influence of an ancient leader, you joined the Didact's cause.\" She was trying to put a kind mask on the wholein her viewsordid episode. \"He no doubt required your help to accomplish his peculiar ends. Andbecause of your youth, you could not have understood how that might complicate your father's work and cause great harm to our family.\"\n\"My body isn't the only thing that's changed,\" I said. \"I learned much that is hidden from Manipulars and even most Forerunners. I learned about something called the Flood.\"\nMy sister looked between us, uncomprehending. Mother's expression shifted in an instant from patient sadness to stiff formality.\n\"Where did you hear of that?\" she asked.\n\"Partly from the Didact, and some from the Domain itself.\"\n\"Then you\n have\n experienced the Domain,\" my sister said. \"And from the perspective of an ancient warrior! What's that like?\"\n\"Confused,\" I admitted. \"I haven't integrated my perceptions. The knowledge is primitive at best, and I can't go back without further guidance ... I think. At any rate, I haven't accessed the Domain since my armor was taken away on the San'Shyuum quarantine world.\"\n\"Quarantine!\" my sister exclaimed. \"I've heard about the San'Shyuum. Was it marvelous and sensuous?\"\n\"Enough has been said of\n that\n.\" Mother looked around the veranda and seemed to be surveying the entire estate through her ancillas, as if anticipating Council spies, more fines, and even more severe correction. \"I've heard of the Flood. It was a mysterious stellar disease that caused radiation anomalies. It severely damaged a number of Forerunner colony worlds in the outer reaches of the galaxy, several centuries ago.\" This seemed to cost her considerable effort. I saw clearly the burden that had been placed upon her in the last few months. I could bear responsibility for only so much of that burden. \"We must await the judgment of yourfather,\" she finally said, drawing back her survey, no doubt to the relief of ancillas around the planet.\n\"Father's changed, toohe looks as if he's been groomed and tutored for great advancement,\" I said. \"Did the Master Builder mentor him for his last mutation?\"\n\"Enough!\" Mother cried, and stood. Dozens of little servant units scattered. With a shiver, she suggested we retire to contemplate the Mantle before spending the hours of darkness in private study. She then walked out quickly, scattering the units again, and left my sister and me under the faint wisps of nebular glow and stars both diffuse and sharp, as if caught behind a sweeping, broken veil of tattered fog.\n\"What is happening to this family?\" my sister asked. \"It can't all be your fault. Even before you left\"\n\"Mother's right,\" I said.\n\"What is the Flood?\" she asked abruptly, her instincts sharp. \"Mother seems to know something ... I certainly don't.\"\nI shook my head. \"Frightful stories concocted for political gain, and perhaps that's all.\" Was I now misleading my own sister? With a shrug, I added, \"I defer to Father's judgment.\"\n\"Oh you do,\n now\n?\" she said. We parted at the gate to the veranda, and I returned to my room high in a tower looking out over the nearest disk-sea, its rim surrounded by cascading waters, beneath the ever-changing gallery of our sky: newborn stars, dying suns, the great turmoil in which Forerunners had seen first light. I had done nothing for my family. Perversely, I now felt more connection with the Didact than I did with themand even more perversely, perhaps that was how Iwould redeem myself to family and Forerunners alike. How many betrayals could it take to go full circle?\nIt was now even more imperative that I learn who I actually was, and what I was about to become. No one could tell me. No one could teach me.TWENTY-NINE T HAT NIGHTAND\n many afterwere tumbled and confused. I sat surrounded by gently flickering displays that delivered little of the information that I requested and needed. The Domain was still a closed puzzle box. Sometimes I felt its touch, but never long enough to immerse myself or study its nature and contents. Instead, I watched the sky, tracking the reentry trails of hundreds of Builder transports coming and going. So many ships of late. So much activity. I had always known my father was important, but suspicion had blossomed into certainty that he was in fact crucial to the Master Builder's plan. So much hatred directed at the Warrior-Servants. What part did Father play in their reduction? Was he aware of the damage to our traditions, to the protection of the Mantle itself?\nVisions of the prisoner of Charum Hakkor, whatever\n that\n was, now loose and beyond the reach of the Didact. Missing for forty or fifty years. And, always looming, the specter of that vast slender ringunderscored by the strange horror of Master Builder's destruction of the war sphinxes and their impressions of the Didact's children.\n*\n*\n*\nWhat I had managed to learn about the Forerunner schism was a slender thread,but still intriguing. My other memories still withheld those times from me, perhaps waiting for more sophisticationor the right moment. Ten thousand years ago, just after the conclusion of the human-San'Shyuum war, the most exalted of the Warrior-Servants, the Prometheans, had been ascendant among Forerunners, as high in social standing and power as they would ever reach. Their downfall came as a great strategic decision was being made. Behind this maneuvering lay a threat from outside the galaxytheoretical, perhaps, but terrible nonetheless. Remembering what the Didact had told me, I surmised that this threat was what humans had once fought against and defeated, or pushed back, even while warring against the Forerunners: the Flood. Of that I could still learn little or nothing, but I was sure my mother's tale of stellar disease was simply a cover. The secret of the human victory against the Flood had never been revealed. But all had anticipated that the Flood would return. The Master Builder seemed to have asserted that a new grand strategy (and a new weapon, as well?) made old-fashioned warriors and armies and fleets unnecessary. Shortly thereafter, the Didact and all his fellow Prometheans were removed from the Council. I presumed this was when the Didact was forced into exile and entered the Cryptum. From that time until now, over a thousand years, Warrior-Servants had been increasingly marginalized, their rates reassessed, their forces and fleets and armies disbanded.\n*\n*\n*\nNight upon night I struggled with the limited feeds, and day after day I sufferedunder the polite condescension of my father and the sad reckoning of my mother. I had hardly even begun to explore the depths of the Didact's imprint, still slowly opening and expanding within me. There was a reason for the concealment and slow unfolding. Those resources were not for my personal entertainment, nor even for my own growth and edification. They had to be buried deep against intrusive accessto be unlocked only if I returned to a position of importance, responsibility. Only if I\n dared\n. If I lost the protection of my father and fell into the hands of the Master Builder one more time, I might be dangerous to the Didact as well. My other memories could be painfully yanked out and put on display for the Master Builder's benefit, to scour for incriminating information. Perhaps that had already happened to the humans. I could not bear the thought that the Master Builder might even now be tossing aside the spent corpses of Chakas and Riser and laying low Erde-Tyrene, snuffing out potential resistanceshoving aside and burying anything and anyone that stood in his path.THIRTY M Y RESTLESSNESS TURNED\n me into a wanderer. A Forerunner household never sleeps. There is no equivalent of nighttime and rest, but there are moments of repose when all retire for individual contemplation and to prepare for the next round of activities. In traditional Builder households, these moments are sacrosanct. Thus during any given day-night cycle, there are hours when the houseand in our case, much of the planetbecomes quiescent. The streets and byways reduce their flow. Even the ancillas and automated systems reduce their on-call activities. But I did not. I preferred to take my exercise alone, without armor, simply to allow my developing selfwhatever that might beto communicate its direction. I was still mutating, still changing in ways none could predict. The Didact had done a real number on me. And so I walked. I paced. I explored kilometers of corridors leading to hundreds of empty chambers, chambers that re-created their elaborate hard-light decor only in the presence of Forerunners. Parts of our house and estate buildings had not been visited for hundreds of years. Many contained tributes and records of past members of our clan and allied clans, including ancestors of the Master Builder himself. I took a perverse interest in the Master Builder's relation to my family, and learned through reactivated displayspitifully enthusiastic about finally being observedof great contracts and political alliances stretching back twenty-five thousand years, long before my Father's inception. I spent many hours listening to a small, slightly dotty ancilla devoted to cataloging and researching the historical consequences of my family's millions of contractsand constructions. A diminutive, fading sapphire figure whose edges barely cohered, her resources had not been updated or renewed for the last three thousand years, yet she remained on duty, ever-hopeful of serving, faithful beyond reason but increasingly eccentric. She toured me through the records of more than a thousand worlds transformed by my father and his Builder cohorts, and then unveiled with obvious pride even greater contracts: dozens of stars harnessed by containment and collection fields, including, it seemed, the ingenious quarantine around the San'Shyuum system. In these records, to my great interest, were hints of large-scale weapons. Under the old name of Faber, the Master Builder had partnered with my father in creating and offering up these designs to the Council. Expunged from the records were any indications of Council approval or denial of these weapons. None took on the final, ring-shaped aspect of the great Halos, however. A thousand years of politics and progress. My father had never bragged about his works and influence, of course, and as a Manipular, I had never shown much interest. But I understood now how he had been able to secure my return. Yet this was not explicitly what I was seeking. My restlessness had its own motives. What I was becomingwho I was becominghad a separate set of curiosities, and I indulged them. The problem with being potential is that one contains multitudes of outcomes, candidates vying to become final personalities, and as the hours and days passed, the strongest ruled for a time until toppled by others even stronger.... Matters would be coming to a head soon enough. One of me would suffice and rule, supplemented by the unfolding wisdom of the Didact.*\n*\n*\nDuring one long repose, two hundred domestic days after my return, I came upon my father and a visitor under a seldom-used nave-and-cupola reception chamber, halfway across the main length of our household, about ten kilometers from my own tower chambers. I happened to be crossing a skybridge connecting two higher floors in that wing, beneath the cupola, when I heard voices echoing from a hundred meters below. One voice was that of my father, clear and precisebut not at all commanding;\nrather, unexpectedly subservient. I cautiously leaned over the railing. My father and another Builder, both free of armor, were engaged in a heated conversation they obviously did not wish audited or recorded. The local support services had been shut down, leaving floors and walls frosted with cold. The other Builder was much younger than my father, a first-form much as I would have been had my mutation proceeded normally. Despite his youth, he seemed to speak with considerable authority. Curious indeed, that one so young could command an audience with my father. I managed to catch little more than half of what was being said.\n\"More incidents in the outer reaches ... twelve systems lost in the last three hundred years...\"\nAnd: \"... traces remain of the test bed near Charum Hakkor, even after forty three years ... decimation of San'Shyuum ... uprising insufficient cause...\"\n\"... trial pending ... charges of gross violation of the principles of the Mantle...\"\nWas he referring to the Master Builder?\"... A metarch-level ancilla's assigned to the test-bed device sent to Charum Hakkor. Both went missing after the action against the San'Shyuum...\"\n\"... vote of no confidence in the Master Builder's leadership...\"\nAnd then my father, his voice rising loud and clear in the vast space as the air currents blew my way: \"How\n could\n they be used in such a way? Tuned so broadly and without safeguards ... It goes against all the designers had planned and hoped for, not as final defense, but as brutal punishments....\"\n\"It was your science that allowed them, Builder. The opposing faction in the Council never authorized such a use, but that is secondary to the blame of building and enabling.\"\nI drew back, shivering not just with the chill. I knew what they were talking about. It seemed that the forces of the Master builder had used the Halo tested at Charum Hakkor to finish what they had begun with the San'Shyuum. I had been there. I had survived the cruelties of the Master Builder. But what of the Didact and the humans?\nAnd what of a missing metarch-level ancilla? These great artificial minds, far more powerful than any personal or shipboard ancilla, usually administered the most complicated construction projects and were tightly constrained by law. There were fewer than five in existence, and they were never allowed to serve any entity but the Council. My other memory flared with its own anguish and anger. A metarch-level ancillaassigned to defensecommanding a Halo!\n\"... has been recalled for debriefing. All but one of the installations have been returned to a parking star, guarded by my own myrmidons. I am requesting their destruction. As well, on Zero-Zero...\"All but one. A moment of crisis approaches. Days at most, perhaps sooner. The Didact's wisdom again, this time cold and concise. Here the momentary clarity of sound faded and I found myself listening to noises from elsewhere under the cupola, like distant whispers. But we were the only living Forerunners in this wing of our ancient home. What I heard had to be mere currents of air in the great volume. And soon enough, snow begin to fall and the cupola's reactivated lighting systems, taking an interest in the potential beauty of the internal weather, began to highlight the swirling flakes. The building was rousing again from its temporary stupor, showing off, I thought perhaps for my father and his visitor, but when I leaned forward again, they had both departed. Tell him. Tell him now. He needs to know.\n*\n*\n*\nI descended from my tower to the veranda to join my family for the first glow of morning. They wore only white shifts, allowing their armor to be polished and meticulously checked, and were taking a first meal of fruits and nuts, which with a pang I realized would meet with Riser's full approval. Though the Florian might also bring along\n little meats\n and disrupt my mother's peace of mind. My father stood by the ledge, looking out over our disk-sea and the vast fields of lilies. Once, he had seemed impossibly large, forbidding and cold. Now he simply looked tired, stretched too thin even to join in the small talk of my sister and mother, which had once offered him diversion and relief. Now.Words came to me suddenly. \"I think I bear a message,\" I said, before I could stop myself. \"But I don't know whom it's for.\"\nMy father turned slowly and looked at me. \"Not unexpected,\" he said. \"I'm listening.\"\n\"A Halo released something that was kept by both Precursors and humans at Charum Hakkor.\"\nMy father put his arm around my mother as if to protect her, the first time I had seen them engage in physical contact without armor. I found the gesture both reassuring and disturbing. \"I know nothing of a Halo at Charum Hakkor,\" he said.\n\"This is not the time for lies, Father.\"\nMy sister flinched, but both my mother and father remained still, perhaps shocked into silence by my insubordination.\n\"Your visitor from the Council informed you. There was also a Halo in the San'Shyuum quarantine system,\" I said. \"I saw it.\"\nFather released my mother, turned, and swept out his arm. \"I need my ancilla.\"\nHis armor floated forward. He watched impatiently as it rotated for his approval. Finally, he shoved it aside, straightened, and with an effort, his voice choked, said,\n\"I have done all I can to protect you. But theythis this\n has taken you away from our family, our rate, our shield of society and law. And now you question my judgment. Is this truly you speaking?\"\n\"What is the Flood?\" my sister asked again. Father turned on her swiftly, as if to reprimand her, but his voice choked off. \"We meant to protect the entire galaxy,\" he finally managed. \"Builders have been designing and planning for this since before I was born. Many have failed and beendemoted. After three thousand years, my team and I succeeded. Our Master Builder took that work and advanced it to field-testing ... in a way that apparently has met with the disapproval of the Council.\"\nMy mother looked between us, dismay turning slowly to horrified realization that a turning point had been reached.\n\"What did he do to the San'Shyuum?\" I asked.\n\"What's a Halo?\" my sister asked.\n\"It's a giant ring,\" I said, \"a horrible weapon that destroys all life\"\n\"Enough about\n that\n has already been said,\" my father proclaimed. His look was both sad and challenging. \"Charum Hakkor seems to be a matter of grave concern to the Council. So,\n messenger\n, what did you find there?\"\n\"A cage built by Precursors, maintained and strengthened by humans before our war with them,\" I said. \"But a Halo destroyed those protectionsI thinkand the captive it held was released.\"\nMy father lifted his hands in dismay, then turned away. His armor attempted to follow. \"That was never a possibility in my design. They changed its tuning. It's the negation of neural physics, far beyond...\" His voice trailed off.\n\"\nWhat is a Halo?\n\" This time it was my mother who almost screamed the question. She removed herself from his grasp and stood apart.\n\"A final defense,\" my father said. \"I designed them. The Master Builder commissioned twelve. Our guild built them.\" He turned back to me. \"Is it the Didact who sends me a message?\"\nI made contradictory motions, but said, \"Yes.\"\"Have you information about this captive? Have you seen it?\"\nI shook my head, then noddedagain confused by an upwelling of memories not my own. \"I'm not sure. The Didact might have communicated with the captive once. I think it was originally preserved by humans and San'Shyuum as a threat to be exercised in case of their imminent defeatan ultimate weapon, like your Halos.\" I firmly met my father's defeated gaze, feeling a deep familial pain that would never heal. At this moment, I hated the Didact beyond all reason.\n\"Well, messenger, here is a message for you. A request has come from first forms serving on the Council,\" Father said.\n\"First-forms? That young?\" Mother asked, astonished. My father said it was the way now in the Council, as many elders had resigned in protest or disgrace. \"They want you to return with them to the capital. I denied that request, as is my right as your father. I had hoped we might find a way to reclaim you, rework you ... return you to being our son. But I see now that that is impossible. I hardly see any remaining son at all, only a mouthpiece for the Warrior-Servants.\"\n\"Who made these requests?\" Mother asked.\n\"After an exile of a thousand years, the Didact has apparently once again been placed in charge of Forerunner defenses,\" my father said. \"He asks for Bornstellar. And from far outside the galaxy, a Lifeworker called the Librarian has also requested our son. They seem to work in collusion. I no longer have the standing to deny them. I myself may soon be indicted by the Council.\"\nBoth my sister and my mother looked at him in dismay. \"But you assist the Master Builder!\" my mother said.\"His time of power is finished, I'm afraid.\" My father stooped to one knee, a posture I had never seen him assume before, and faced me fully, his eyes narrow and dimming with inner pain. \"I am ashamed not to have been with you to serve as your mentor.\"\n\"It was not our choice, Father,\" I said.\n\"That does not diminish my shame. There are great changes to be made, long past due. My generation and generations before me have made serious mistakes, and so it is right for our traditions to pass. But I would have liked to have my son bear our family's deepest and most precious patterns. Perhaps when you return, with your permission, I can remedy that.\"\n\"The honor would be mine, Father.\"\n\"Still and all, it's likely our son will soon understand more of what happens in the Council than do I. Our guild itself faces interdiction.\"\nMy mother stood again beside my father and clasped his arm. My sister took a position closer to me.\n\" 'All but one,' \" I quoted. \"What does that mean?\"\n\"We have only eleven Halos accounted for. One is missing.\"\n\"Along with a metarch-level ancilla?\"\n\"Apparently. All part of the Master Builder's indictment. You are scheduled to testify against him. The Council will send its own vessel to pick you up.\"\n\"When do I leave?\" I asked.\n\"Very soon,\" my father said. \"Our time grows perilously short.\"THIRTY-ONE T HERE'S FOOLISHNESS, THEN\n there's recklessness, and soon after follows madness. My father's words seemed to set off sparks throughout my brain and body. I had worried that the Didact might have been executed. Now ...\n he\n was in power! Not in exile, but restored. They would not do this except in the worst possible circumstances. A missing Halo. I bid farewell to my mother and sister, then sought out my father in his north-facing studio, where he was surrounded by project models both virtual and physical. They now brought him no comfort, that much was obvious. He accepted my embrace. We rubbed cheeks as of old. Once, my skin had been softer than hisnow it was rougher.\n\"You are the bastion of our family,\" he told me. \"You will redeem all. You go with my hopes, my dreams, and my love.\"\n\"I go proud of my familyand of my father,\" I said. A streak shot across our sky, and our planet's protective shields opened a glittering gate, like a ring of precious stones, through which that streak now passed, slowed, turned upright ... Hovered above the nearest disk-sea: a Council ship, ornate and supremely fast and powerful, its shape like a double upsweep of winds cast in gold and bronze. I had not seen one in five years, and had never traveled in one.A transport flier blipped from the side of the Council ship and covered the distance to our sky dock in a few minutes. My father and I parted without further words. I looked back only once, to see my mother and sister on one parapet, wearing ceremonial gowns that hovered about their armor, blue and silver with streaks of vibrant crimson. And on another parapet, I saw Father, tall and steady against the red and violet sky. My eagerness to rejoin the Didact and perhaps meet the Librarian felt perverse, even cruel. I look back now, and wish my memory of those last days on my family's planet would leave me forever, for they bring only an extraordinary pain. I never saw my family againalive and free.THIRTY-TWO N O ONE COULD\n ever call a Council ship luxurious or frivolous. Members of the Council served for a thousand years, and during that time took vows of personal abstinence and austerity. But at no point did power elude them, and that was the prime character of a Council ship: silken, immediate, unconstrained power. I learned upon arrival that this ship was named\n Seedling Star\n. Diminutives aside, it was the most extraordinary expression of Forerunner science I had ever had an opportunity to examine up close. The Didact's memory quietly confirmed that in all but weapons, it eclipsed any of the ships ever allocated to Warrior-Servants. I was escorted along lifts and enclosed tracks by two guards of the Council's own select security, designated by sleek black and red armor. Through translucent walls, I saw unfamiliar automatons speeding along their own tracks and tubeways;\nsome were decorated in the most alarming insectoid carapaces. But more surprising still were the numerous embodied and heavily armored ancillas. I had heard of Warrior-Servants utilizing such during battle and for other special tasks, but we encountered hundreds spaced throughout the ship, floating in serene quiescence, in apparent low-power mode, their blue, red, or green sensors dimly aglow. They will come alive in an emergency. They can replace human commanders, if necessary. They are a vital portion of the Council metarchythe overall network of ancillas that support the Council. But compared to a metarch-level ancilla, these are mere toys.I could not explain my reaction: they somehow repelled me. With polite firmness, the guards led me to elegantly simple quarters deep inside the ship. They then instructed the quarters to extrude a new set of armor, black with green highlightsthe colors of a special advisor to the Council. My father had once been one, thousands of years before my birth. And now ... it was my turn, unless these were mere spares being recycled for a peculiar guest. Not likely.\n\"Acquaint yourself with your feeds and knowledge bases,\" the senior guard instructed, pointing to me, then to the armor. \"They are extensive.\"\n\"Will I access all Council resources?\"\n\"I have no such answers,\" the guard said with a glance aside at his fellow. \"Old ways change rapidly now.\"\nThey departed, and I waited for a moment before allowing the armor to surround me. I was almost afraid to view the ancillaafraid of finding more blocks and restrictions, more obstacles to prolong my agony of half-knowledge. But when she appeared in the back of my thoughts, I recognized her instantly. This was the Librarian's ancilla, the one who had lured me, tempted me.... The one who had been loaned by the Librarian to my swap-family.... The one who had led me to Erde-Tyrene. My first reaction was anger. \"You started all this!\" I cried aloud, though that was hardly necessary.\n\"Here, I am truly your servant. I am liberated from the metarchies of both the Council and the Librarian.\"\"And the Didact?\"\nThe ancilla flashed her confusion. This was somehow a difficult question to answer. \"We are in dangerous circumstances,\" she said, \"but improving. I will assist you without prior instructions and answer any questions you may have.\"\n\"And who ordered you to do that?\"\n\"The Librarian,\" the ancilla said. \"But she is no longer my owner.\"\n\"We'll see about that. Will you open the Domain to me, completely?\"\nAt this she flickered again with ancillary emotion. It seemed at first she was embarrassed, perhaps distressed ... and then I read her display as expressing true frustration, something rarely witnessed in ancillas.\n\"Is that a 'no'?\" I persisted.\n\"The Domain is in flux,\" she said. \"No reliable connections are being made for any Forerunner, no matter their rate or form.\"\n\"Is somebody going to blame\n me\n for that?\"\n\"It seems to be symptomatic of a disturbance in our immediate past, or immediate future....\"\nShe froze. Frustrated, I stood within the black and green armor for a moment, then flexed it, feeling its smoothness and strength, but wondering if in fact it was malfunctioning. Slowly the ancilla returned, steady again, calm and composed, and said, \"No answers available for prior question. Apologies for my delay. There is a meetingscheduled in one hour. I have been told you need to prepare by being brought up to speed on current Council personalities and politics. You have already met the Master Builder, and witnessed a first-form Council member speaking with your father, have you not?\"\n\"You know I have,\" I said. \"You know all I know.\"\n\"Some parts of your memory that may be used in testimony before the Council are closed to me. And of course I have no access to that part of you which once belonged to the Didact. I hope it does not impede my usefulness.\"\n\"You won't spy on me?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Or 'guide' me according to the Librarian's wishes?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"But you're here to instruct me in Forerunner politics,\" I concluded, feeling slightly queasy. I had never shown any aptitude or liking for such studies. In politics there might have been treasure for others, but never for me.\n\"Yes, with apologies,\" she said. \"Now, let us begin....\"THIRTY-THREE T HE FIRST-FORM COUNCILOR\n sent to escort methe same one who had spoken with my father under the cupolawas only a little older than me, twenty domestic years at most. He strode onto the platform overlooking a direct-view panorama of my family's world, addressed himself first to three members of the security team, then turned to meand smiled. This unseemly rictus shocked me. The humans might have been capable of such, but a first-form Forerunner, and a councilor at that ... I met his slight bow and chest-touch salute with one of my own, executing it, I must say, with practiced grace.\n\"You are\n quite\n a sight, Bornstellar Makes Eternal,\" the councilor said, regarding my (I thought) distorted form with actual admiration. \"My name is Splendid Dust of Ancient Suns. My colleagues call me Dust. Is your mutation acceptable?\"\n\"It is what it is,\" I said, a puerile maxim. Again the rictus. I did not like it.\n\"I have expert ancillas who can render you minimal adjustments ... cosmetic, mostly. But I must say, this combination of traits has a distinct attraction.\"\n\"Combination?\" I said.\n\"A scan upon boarding confirms that you neatly combine mental and neurological structures of Warrior-Servants and Builders, with a touch of Lifeworker.... That makes sense. It was a Lifeworker who equipped the ship that guided your mutation,and, I understand, the Didact himself who supplied the imprint.\"\nI listened and said nothing, judging that here was a Forerunner who liked to talk and liked to dominate a room quickly and easily. All at once, I had been admired, assessed, addressed in familiar tones, and put in my placeas someone who could use a good adjustment or two. But the Didact within me was not easily suppressed. \"Which of my patterns derives from a Lifeworker?\"\n\"Let's find out.\" Splendid DustI could not bring myself to think of him as mere Dustcalled up three tiny ancillas, who hovered behind me on the bridge and prepared to take samples and guide probes.\n\"None of that!\" I swung around in some alarm, but Splendid Dust smiled again, then waved them off.\n\"Mysteries and surprises,\" he said. \"We can find out later, when it's appropriate when you decide. But we are not here to measure or understand youwe are here to transport you to the capital. You have been summoned by the Council to testify. What do the Didact's memories tell you of Forerunner defenses, past or present?\"\n\"Very little, for now,\" I said. \"I remember and understand only what the Didact would have understood at the time of my mutation.\"\n\"No doubt your ancilla has informed you the Domain is experiencing difficulties.\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"The Council has stored a great deal of archival and even accounting material in the Domain. Now we can't reliably access any of it. Fortunately, a ship like this carries sufficient knowledge to serve us, for now.\"\"May I ask a personal question, Councilor?\"\n\"Ask away.\"\n\"Your smile?\"\n\"I am part of a new pattern. More ... natural. Some call it atavistic. But rather than being subjected to many mutations over a matter of centuries, we undergo an economical series of changes over a single domestic year. Our endpoint is less rigid, less distorted and ornamental.\"\n\"Who's\n we\n, Councilor?\"\n\"We come from Builder families, mostly, but a few among us are Warrior Servants.\"\nBe wary.\n The Didact would of course object to this deviation from tradition. At least, I presumed that was the cause of his reaction. Splendid Dust continued. \"This leaves us with fewer inherent distortions of both anatomy and mind. Fewer prejudices ... some say, less imprinted wisdom, as we have fewer mentors. We were in fact supposed to supplement that deficit with studious use of the Domain, but that's difficult now. I feel the loss.\"\n\"How many more mutations will you undergo?\"\n\"None,\" he said. \"In a way, I am like you. We are what we are.\" And he smiled again. In silence, we studied the curve of my family's world.\n\"Will I ever be allowed to return?\" I asked after a few moments.\n\"I wouldn't forbid it. Practically, who can say?\"I studied him. He did not seem to mind. In their range and flexibility, his expressions reminded me of both young Manipulars and human beings. I wondered if that was a good thing. No. I didn't like it much. And yet I liked humans, mostly. Then we were shunted out of planetary orbit and my family's world grew small. Within a few more minutes, the Council ship harnessed a great deal of vacuum energy to flatten the curve of our stellar orbit, and the planet where I was born vanished completely.\n\"How did you become a councilor?\" I asked.\n\"A number of my peers have been given ... you might call them brevet appointments. My appointment is temporary.\"\nRevolutionary party. What about the Master Builder?\n\"Are we in a state of war?\"\n\"Forerunners have been in a clandestine state of war since the Didact defeated the human forces at Charum Hakkor.\"\n\"War against the Flood?\"\n\"Soon enough, those details. Now, however, we are about to institute a Supreme Mantle Court. The Phylarch of Builders has reinstated the corps of Warrior Servants, and joined with them to call for judicial proceedings. Matters both of law and strategy will be decided by the Council and the court.\"\nNo such proceeding had ever occurred in my father's lifetime, much less my own. Not good\n.\n\"Not good,\" I echoed that internal judgment.\"Perhaps, but necessary,\" the councilor said.\n\"When may I learn more about this state of war?\"\n\"Soon, I hope.\"\n\"Is the Flood upon us?\"\n\"Ah! The Flood. For ten thousand years, that threat has propelled the strategy and politics of Forerunners everywhereand distorted some of us to the point where we would violate all we have stood for. We are now far more aware of what the Flood was and what it has become. Most knowledge gives strength, Bornstellar. This knowledge, however, has nearly driven us mad. And I'm concerned it may have the same effect on you ... with your Warrior imprint and all.\" He afforded me the same focused expression with which I had been scrutinizing him ... and then smiled once more.\n\"Why?\" I asked.\n\"Because we have been told to give you and your ancilla access to all the information carried in this Council ship. Information withheld from all but a few Forerunners for thousands of years. I myself have only been privy to key parts of it for a few months.\"\nWith that, the young councilor had two of the ship's guards return me to my cabin to begin what he called, with a twist of his lips, my period of \"enlightenment.\"THIRTY-FOUR T HE PHYSICAL JOURNEY\n between my family's world and the capital of the ecumene ordinarily takes less than two hours. For reasons not immediately explained to me, even traveling in the superfast Council ship, our trip took three days. All of space-time in this portion of the galaxyperhaps all of the galaxywas still disturbed. More than fifteen times we experienced the unavoidable effects of slipspace jump and reconciliation; an ordinary journey might have entailed one or at most two passages.\n*\n*\n*\nThe relief of being out of the possible clutches of the Master Builder seemed to open up substantial parts of my imprinting. Perhaps my other memory was coming to trust me as well. I stayed to myself, using the extra time to explore the possibilities of self-discovery and integration. My cabin became my universe. At last, certain streams within the Didact's memories of the Flood opened to me a welcome if gradual flow of memory and knowledge. I had come to understand the Didact enough that his sympathy for vanquished humans and San'Shyuum did not completely surprise meand he had indeed felt sympathy, even regret. The war had not been a fair fight. With the Flood ravaging human systems on one side, and a tide of human migration away from danger pushing them into Forerunner territories, a grand tragedy had been inevitable. The Didact felt this acutely. As to the nature of the Flood ...In every natural circumstance, living things engage in competition. This is a prime directive for those who uphold the Mantle: it is not a kindness to diminish competition, predationeven war. Life presents strife and death as well as joy and birth. But Forerunners in their highest wisdom also knew that unfair advantage, mindless destruction, pointless death and miseryan imbalance of forcescan retard growth and reduce the flow of Living Time. Living Timethe joy of life's interaction with the Cosmoswas the foundation of the Mantle itself, the origin of all its compelling rules. And the Flood seemed to demonstrate a tremendous imbalance, a cruel excess of depravities. Certainly humans and San'Shyuum had felt that way. The Flood first arrived from one of the Magellanic clouds of stars that drift just outside the reaches of our galaxy. Its precise origin was unknown. Its first effects upon human systems in the far reaches of our arm of the galaxy were subtle, even benignso it seemed. Humans suspected it was conveyed on ancient starships, clumsy in design but completely automated. The ships had neither passengers nor crew, and carried little of interest but uniform kind of cargomillions of glassy cylinders containing a fine, desiccated powder. Humans found wreckage of the ships on uninhabited and inhabited worlds alike. The cylinders were carefully examined, using the most stringent cautions, and their powdery contents were analyzed and found to be short-chain molecules, relatively simple and apparently inertorganic, yet neither alive nor capable of life. Early experiments demonstrated the potential for psychotropic effects in some lower animals, but not in humans or San'Shyuum. The primary animals affected by the powder were, as it turned out, popular pets in human societies: the Pheru, lively and gentle creatures first found on Faun Hakkor. Very small quantities of the powder induced changes in the Pheru that improved their domestic behavior, madethem more affectionate, not so much docile as cleverly charismatic. Soon enough, on an emerging black market, outside the control of human governments, Pheru treated with these rare powders commanded a very high price. San'Shyuum at this point also adopted Pheru as pets. For centuries, dozens of human and San'Shyuum worlds bred and powdered these animalswithout ill consequences. No researcher suspected the long-term effects of the powder, which attached itself to key points in the genes of Pheru and began to change them ... while at the same time improving their behaviors. What would soon become the Flood first manifested itself as a peculiar growth found on roughly a third of all Pheru treated with the powder. A kind of loose, soft fur grew between the shoulders of the pets. It was regarded by breeders as a natural mutation, even a pleasant variation. The sensuous quality of the fur particularly impressed the San'Shyuum, who crossbred these specimens. Other Pheru were soon found grazing on these companions, consuming their fur and on occasion even consuming the animals themselves. Pheru were naturally herbivores. This seemed to activate some sort of biological timer, a signal for expansion. Within a very short time, the Pheru were producing far less attractive growths. Flexible striped rods sprouted from their heads, which in turn were also consumed by fellow Pherucausing abortions and unnatural births. There was no cure. But this was only the surface of the growing infestation. The Pheru were soon past recovery. Humans and San'Shyuum dispatched their pets with regretand puzzlement, for these first stages were beyond their biological understanding. Most researchers believed the Pheru had simply becomeoverbred, overspecialized. A few were even returned to their native habitat on Faun Hakkor. Thenhumans began to manifest the growths. Some humans, it seemed, fancied Pheru as food. These humans became vectors. Whatever they touched was also infected, and in time, what they discardedlimbs, tissuecould also spread infection. Thus began the Flood. The plague soon spread from human to San'Shyuum, human to human, but rarely from San'Shyuum to humanaltering their behaviors without yet changing their outward appearance. The infected humans combined their resources to force other humans to become infectedusually by cannibalism of a sacrificial individual, induced to grow to prodigious size before being consumed while still alive. By this time, dozens of worlds were fully infested and beyond saving. Humans and other animal species began to reshape themselves into other varied and vicious forms equipped to maim and killand consume, absorb, transform. The infected worlds and even entire systems were quarantined. Many of the infected escaped, however, and spread the plague to hundreds of worlds in fifteen systems. Humans were the first to recognize the extreme danger. And this was where the ancient captive in the Precursor prison came into the story. Humans had discovered how to communicate with the captivebut only for seconds or minutes at a time. The earliest researchers tried to use it as a kind of oracle, asking the answers to vast and difficult questions of physics and even moralityall of which drew out confused or useless responses.But finally a set of questions were prepared and asked. They asked about the Flood. And what these humans received as answers traumatized them so thoroughly that many committed suicide rather than continue to live with their knowledge. In time, as a kind of defense, access to the captive was reduced, then cut off completely. The human timelock was added. Communication ceased. Most humans came to believe that the captive was an ancient aberration and had been imprisoned by the Precursors for just cause, and that its prognostications, if they were such, were nonsensical, even mad. Humans at the height of the Flood's ravages were pushed to an unexcelled brilliance. They found a cure. (Here I detected in the documents the admiration of the Lifeshaper herself.)\nSacrifice yet again. Fully a third of the human species must be themselves altered, placed in the pathway of Flood infestation, and fight fire with fire by infecting the Flood itself with a destructive set of programmed genes. The Flood had no defense; most of it died off. A few ships carrying the last of the Flood escaped and left the galaxy once again, destinations unknown. By the time of this heroic struggle, humans were fighting Forerunners as well. Humans were desperate. Their desperation made them cruel. They needed new worlds, uninfected worldsand took them. Cruelty and apparently irrational conquest and destruction forced Forerunners to react decisively. This double war was the source of the Didact's shame, though how he would have altered his conduct, had he known, was far from clear.Human forces were eradicated and human-occupied worlds were reduced, one by one, until the battle of Charum Hakkor destroyed the last human resistance. The San'Shyuum had already surrendered. None were found to be infected by this so called plague. All the powdered and infested specimens of the Pheru were long dead, destroyed. The original vessels that had carried the glass containers were also destroyed, perhaps in the perverse human wish that Forerunners would face a similar infestation and be unprepared. Many Forerunners, in fact, regarded the entire story of the Floodfor that was the name humans gave to this spreading infestation, this intergalactic diseaseas a fabrication designed to absolve humans and San'Shyuum of blame. The rest of the story I knew or had deduced, and my knowledge matched the Didact's. The Librarian was allowed to preserve some human specimens, and to preserve the memory traces of many others, a procedure regarded with much dissent and disgust by orthodox observers of the Mantle. But the possibility of the return of the Flood initiated the events which shaped Forerunner history up to my own time. And most of itnearly all of itwas kept secret by the Master Builder and his guild, my father included. Only a few sympathetic councilors were fully informed. Thus began the conflict with the Prometheans. The Didact proposed vigilance and researchand upon any return of the Flood, however it might manifest, a systematic isolation of infected worlds and, if necessary, immolation. He proposed establishing fortress worldsShield Worldsacross the Forerunner-dominated portions of our galaxy, to monitor potential outbreaks and be prepared to fight them with pinpoint precision and minimum destruction. Others had more ambitious solutions. The Didact and the Prometheans faced offagainst the most extreme faction of Builders, now in complete control of the Council. This faction saw both an opportunity to create ultimate weapons against such a threat, and a way to maximize and make permanent their political power at the same time. Thus my father and the Master Builder began to design a series of installations, far fewer in number than the proposed Shield Worldswhat would become the Halos. By radiating a powerful burst of cross-phased supermassive neutrinos, these installations were capable of destroying all life in an entire star system. Properly tuned and powered, they could do more than thatthey could kill all neurologically complex life across whole swaths of the galaxy. The extreme faction won. Fear commanded the Council, and the Council listened. The Didact lost his political battle and was forced into exile. Over the next thousand years, twelve such installations were built. Their point of construction was far outside the galaxy, on a superior installation known as the Ark. It acquired that name because of the growing backlash of influence rising from Lifeworkers, and in particular from the Lifeshaper herselfthe Librarian. She insisted that not to make provisions against the ultimate use of the Halos was blasphemy against the Mantle. Lifeworkers had their own kind of influence. If they stood down, all medical efforts could cease. The Master Builder saw that giving in to her demands was less expensive than fighting her. And so, the Librarian was allowed to gather specimens and re-create their ecological conditions on the Ark itselfeven as the Ark finished and transported the first Halos, utilizing a powerful variety of locked-point slipspace transit called portals.The installations had been dispersed. The Halo tested at Charum Hakkor had been fired at very low power, acting as a test bed. That had been an authorized use. But then, a second Halo had been used to punish the San'Shyuum. With horror, I realized that what I had witnessed had been only the beginningand that the San'Shyuum worlds, after our brief, traumatic visit, had been reduced to the awful condition of biological blandness we had seen on Faun Hakkor. The Council had not authorized this use. The Master Builder had exceeded his authority. He had been accused even by his colleagues of blasphemy against the Mantle, and a crime against nature. What the Didact could not understandat the time of my mentoringwas why the Librarian had chosen this moment to gather specimens from the San'Shyuum, taking the risk of provoking their rebellionand the Master Builder's wrath. I found that answer in the Council records, with the help of my expanded and liberated ancilla. Three hundred years before, the Flood had returned. It had been discovered in new and unexpected forms on worlds resettled by Forerunners after the war.\n*\n*\n*\nI was caught in a twisted knot of contradictions. Faced with the reality of the Flood, I couldn't help but think that the madness of those who had manufactured the Halos and set them loose might be the right course. A solid goal, a solid plan! Extreme measures against an extreme enemy. Fighting for survival against a shapeless threat. The Mantle be damnedsurvival and our way of life was at stake!\nIt all seemed eminently rational. I almost began to believe that it was the Didact who was mad, and possibly these young councilors, and not the Master Builder or my father.Finally, in fury and frustration, I divested myself of my armor, deliberately cutting off contact with the ancilla, whom I thought had failed me or misled me again And I slept. If I was in search of peace and certainty, that was my mistake. The Didact's actual memoriesparts of themfinally blossomed within me. The arena was equipped with walkways I saw vividly, from his point of view, the Didact exploring the walkway around the intact, sealed cylinder below. Ten thousand years ago. The Didact walked alone around the dome-shaped cap, contemplating whether or not he should activate a human device ... something small, designed for a human hand and fitting like a toy into his own palm: a way of communicating directly with the creature within the cell. Something manufactured by humans ... pushing through Precursor technology. How was that possible...?\nMany questions flashed through the Didact's mind, and with difficulty I separated them from my own. Was this actually a Precursor, as the humans had at first believed? Or was it something manufactured by Precursorspossibly a strange, distorted sibling to both Forerunners and (the Didact was reluctant to consider this)\nhumans?\nPrecursor, sibling, or ancestor to ... what?\nThe Didact manipulated the device. The cap over the cylinder became transparent to his eyes, and he saw what lay within.The cell contained, in temporal suspension, a genuine monster: a large creature with an overall anatomy like a grossly misshapen human, though possessed of four upper limbs, two degenerate legs, and an almost indescribably ugly heada head shaped remarkably like that of an ancient arthropod seeded long ago on a number of planets, presumably by the Precursors, and known to some as a eurypterid. A sea scorpion. Oval, faceted, slanted eyes bumped up from the front of its low, flat \"face.\" And from the rear of the head, a long, segmented tail descended the spine, ending in a wicked barb two meters in length.\n*\n*\n*\nA chime pulled me up short. Disoriented, shivering, unsure who or even what I was, I looked around my cabin, saw my armor slumped in one corner and a ship's ancilla blinking rapidly in another. We had finally reached the capital. Even with the extended journey, there had not been enough time to fully integrate. Without the Domain, integration might forever elude me, and inside, I would always be a fragmented jumble. I tried to recall all that I had seen. Most of it was fading already. I had only a vague impression of the captivevague, but frightful. Clearly, those questions that the Didact had not resolved to his own satisfaction were more difficult to flush out. But the process had somehow pushed forward a question neither I nor my other memory could answer: Why would they need me if the Didact himself had been released and reinstated?\nWhy not go directly to him?THIRTY-FIVE T HE YOUNG COUNCILOR\n seemed to float in place on the command platform, now suspended inside a great sphere, one half of which was also transparent. As I came up through the lift, I saw he was in the company of three others, in appearance much like himself. No doubt more young councilors. Two were male. One was female. Splendid Dust greeted me with one of his disconcerting smiles, and introduced me to the others. The names of the two males I did not retain, my memory was so disordered and disjointedbut the female's name stuck with me. She was clearly a Warrior-Servant by rate, taller than the others by a few centimeters, gracefully but powerfully builtand against all my old and inbred prejudices, she made my heart leap. Her name was Glory of a Far Dawn. They gathered to inspect me. Surrounded by this new breed of first-form Forerunners, I felt wretchedly out of place. And in front of this Warrior female, with her cool, sharp-eyed gaze lightly sweeping me, then turning asideI felt like a distorted, storm-twisted stump in the middle of strong green trees. However, they treated me respectfully enough, and watched with pride the Council ship's approach to the capital of our civilization. We were a million kilometers away. The grandeur should have been overwhelming. I tried to share their pride, but more of the Didact surfaced. He had been here before, a thousand years ago, to stand in opposition to the wishes of the Master Builder.... Not pleasant memories.Greatness and power are often allied with defeat. It is how civilizations are shapedsome ideas prosper, others die. The quality of the ideas has little to do with the outcome. It is personalities that matter. Pay attention to those around you.\n\"A little cynical, aren't we?\" I spoke aloud. The councilors turned to me, all but Glory, whose eyes barely flickered. Splendid Dust drew their attention back to the capital itself, and I forced myself to go with this particular flow, for now. It is with difficulty that I describe the capital as it was then, so little like anything in your experience. Imagine a planet a hundred thousand kilometers in diameter, sliced latitudinally like one of Riser's favorite fruits. Allow those slices to drop in parallel against a plate. The slices are then pierced through their aligned lower rims with a stick, the plate is removed, and the slices are fanned out in a half-circle. Now decorate each slice, like a round stair step, with an almost infinitely dense array of structures, and surround it with a golden swarm of transports and sentinels and a dozen other varieties of security patrols, thick as fog.... No other world like it in the Forerunner universe. Here lay the center of Forerunner power and the repository of the last twenty thousand years of our history, housing the wisdom and accumulated knowledge of trillions of ancillas serving a mere hundred thousand Forerunnersmostly Builders of the highest forms and ranks. There were so many ancillas for so few physical leaders, most never actually interfaced with a Forerunner, and so never assumed a visible form. Instead, they performed their operations entirely within the ancilla metarchy, an unimaginably vast network coordinated by a metarch-level intelligence that answered ultimately to the chief councilor.As we approached this magnificence, a thin silvery arc rose into view above and millions of kilometers beyond the southern axis. My blood cooled and my heart seemed to thud to a stop. Slowly looming in an orbit slightly downstar from the capital, staggered in perspective like the entrance to a tunnel, eleven great rings had been arranged in neat, precise parking orbits. Halos. The combined might of the Master Builder's weaponsall but onehad been moved to within a few million kilometers of the center of Forerunner power, separated by a minimum of distance and looped together by the slenderest curves of hard light. My other self expressed something beyond alarmmore akin to horrorand I had difficulty stifling an outburst.\n They should not be here! Halos should not be allowed anywhere near the seat of governance. Even the Master Builder forbade such a thing. Something has gone very wrong.... The three males among the young councilors did not seem to find the rings even mildly disturbing. One said, \"When we intercept and retrieve the final one, perhaps then our portals will return to their full efficiencies. Moving useless monuments like these puts a strain on all space-time.\"\nAnother added, \"They've set our reconciliation budget back several thousand years.\"\nIn the shadow of doom itself, they think only of commerce and travel. Now the female Warrior, Glory, faced me fully, eyes still narrow, wary, as if unsure who or what I wasbut seeking some sign that I recognized her disapproval of this scene. I met her look but could say or do nothing. Too many internal contradictions. Shelooked away, disappointed, and stepped to the other side of the group on the command platform.\n\"How long must we suffer for the Master Builder's arrogance?\" Splendid Dust said. He then addressed me, utilizingperhaps without realizing itthe forms of speech used toward those of lower rate. \"The weapons of the old regime have a regal beauty, do they not? Soon all will be gathered here, and a decision will be made as to their deactivation and disposition. Truly, this will be a new age for the Forerunners, an age free of suicidal madness and fear. A time of peace and security will soon be at hand.\"\nWithin five thousand kilometers of the capital, our ship was silently surrounded by the flowing rainbow pulses of the capital's controlling, enmeshing sensory fields, then chivvied gently by hard-light docking nets. Hundreds of small service craft quickly flew up to surround us like a swarm of gnats around a campfire. Splendid Dust formally congratulated the ship's ancilla, and in turn received a ceremonial token of record for the journeya small golden disk bearing the cost of reconciliation from the slipspace fund. He requested immediate transport for all on the viewing platform to a reception hall five hundred kilometers below, on the outer edge of the greatest of the fanned slices. I listened to the formalities with rapidly dulling interest. Something unpleasant was in the offing, that much I was surethe Didact within me was sure. I didn't care to distinguish between the two of me anymore. Together, we knew the Master Builder better than any of these young councilors:\na Forerunner of nearly infinite complexity and mental resources, cunning with as many centuries as the Didact himself, wiser still in the ways of Forerunner politics and technology. Splendid Dust watched two of his colleagues depart for their waiting transit craft,the males chatting happily about the journey they had just completed. He and Glory of a Far Dawn stayed with me.\n\"We're moving you to a secure domicile,\" the young councilor told me. \"You'll be afforded all the protection we merit, as councilors, and perhaps more.\"\n\"Why?\" I asked. \"I can't complete my integration. I'm useless to myself, much less to anyone else.\" I couldn't bring myself to offer him my even blunter assessment of his\n situation. Caution above all. I could not know who was actually friend or foe, dupe or master. And I felt distinct shame before the Warrior female.\n\"I admire your fortitude,\" he told me. \"And your presence of mind. But in fact I am politely observing the request of the Librarian, who may soon be able to return from her duties. When she does, we will, I hope, learn why you are so important, and how you may finally be of use.\"\n\"She shouldn't come anywhere near this place,\" I growled.\n\"I agree,\" he said. \"Not all those who had supported the Master Builder are content with the current state of affairs. But the Lifeshaper rarely listens to reason Builder reason, that is.\" He gestured to Glory. \"Accompany Bornstellar to his quarters, and acquaint him with his security detail.\"\nShe nodded and complied.THIRTY-SIX M Y DOMICILE, ON\n the outskirts of the equatorial disk-city, bore the Council's austere yet supremely comfortable hallmark. My escort instructed me in the functions of the small chamber, saw to my immediate needs, and assured me that I would be free to come and go once all precautions had been taken.\n\"I am used to these appointments,\" I told her. \"Remember, I'm a Builder.\"\nGlory listened with a strange sort of deference that seemed to mock me, but without disrespect. My other memory regarded this with an odd, youthful thrill. I could not imagine the Didact having ever been youngor feeling such a thrill in the presence of a female of his kind. Our kind.\n\"You must never remove your armor in chambers,\" Glory said. \"Witnesses for the Council are afforded the highest levels of protection, which require armor at all times. Such measures may be adjusted after the trial.\"\n\"And the trial is scheduled for when?\" I asked.\n\"Within ten domestic days. The accused has been in Council custody for a pentadthe fifth part of a domestic year.\"\nSince shortly after the incident at the San'Shyuum system. The Didact's wisdom within me made no comment. Glory and her security team withdrew. I felt snubbed, for no good reasonshehad left without a backward look or any other sign. What would you expect? She's honorable. I studied my confines. The walls could melt away at whim and show any number of environmentsbeautiful artificial environments mostly, created by ancient masters. I cared nothing for that. I was alone with my armor and ancilla, and no doubt variety of morally acceptable entertainments, highly mannered and formalistic, thoughonce again, as always nowI was not alone in my thoughts. I put my armor through an unnecessary diagnostic, found no problems, then made a brief attempt to determine the state of the Domain. As I had been informed, it was still not accessible. My ancilla expressed regret and dismay at this state of affairs.\n\"The Domain is essential to an event such as a major political trial,\" she said, her color shading to a disappointed purple. \"The judges assess precedent through the Domain, and through the Domain, the witnesses and their testimony may be subject to verification....\"\n\"I'm just glad it isn't my fault,\" I said.\n\"No. But that would be a more reassuring explanation. Perhaps I can find clues in the Council's physical knowledge banks. At least we have been guaranteed access to those. As for your own integration, I believe you should be allowed to sleep. Your dreams may be useful.\"\n\"Is the Domain like dreaming?\"\n\"Not truly. But some have theorized that the dreams of ancient Forerunners accessed the ground that supports the Domain.\"\nI shuddered. \"Forerunners seem to get along quite well never leaving their armor. Never sleeping, never dreaming.\"\"Some would say this practice is not optimal, that individuals lose flexibility.\"\nShe was either testing my patience or trying to draw out a response. None of the females around meeven this simulacrumwere providing any sort of ease or solace. I remembered Riser's comment about the blue female. \"And some say that we place entirely too much trust in ancillas to manage our mental states, our personal, internal affairstrue?\"\n\"Yes,\" she agreed primly. \"Some say that. I hope you disagree.\"\n\"Slipspace is overloaded with transit,\" I said. \"The Domain is inaccessible. Our highest officials are either locked in power struggles, exiled, in hiding, or confined for trial. I'm not who I once was. My family suffers for my actions, and everything I ever wanted to know or do has turned out to be horribly complicated.\"\n\"For that, I must assume a portion of blame.\"\n\"I would say so, yes. And the Librarian must share it with you. I see her mark all over these events ... don't you?\"\n\"Have I ever denied her influence?\"\nThe Didact's wisdom roused at thisI could feel his interestbut for the moment did not contribute.\n\"But to what end?\" I asked. \"Why promote the creation of a distortion such as me and why give the humans a deeply buried\n geas\n? What good did that do them?\nThey are no doubt dead, and all their ancient memories with them. You're as much a victim as I am. And a victim is not likely to be of much use to another victim.\"\n\"I am an artificial construct. I cannot be a victim. I do not have a presence in the aura of the Mantle.\"\"Such humility.\"\nThe figure in the back of my thoughts pulsed with something like indignation, then withdrew from my internal viewpoint. \"I will conduct my poor researches as best as I am able,\" she said. \"Humility will be my watchword.\"\nI could of course summon her back any time I wished, but I felt no need for now. Against instructions, I removed my armor and sat cross-legged on the floor, as I had observed the Didact do on Erde-Tyrene and on his ship, it seemed ages ago. I wanted to closely observe everything I naturally possessed, all my internal states. You do this instinctively, first-form?\nI tried to ignore this. I would take charge of my own thoughts, restructure them if I was able.... Reshape myself, create my own internal discipline without the Didact, without the ancilla, without the support of family and form, and of course, without accessing the Domain. An impossible task. Not so impossible. It is what every warrior does the dawn before battle. Strength in conflict does not arise from the niceties and never has. Do you feel itthat battle is about to begin?\n\"Please be quiet.\"\nAgreed. This is\n your\n time, first-form.\n\"Without your guidance.\"\nOf course.\"I'm so glad I have your permission.\"\nThink nothing of it. In fact, think\n nothing. That proved amazingly difficult.\n*\n*\n*\nSomehow, hours later, I emerged from a blankness like a fish flying out of a deep pond. I could almost see myself twisting in the air, spraying glittering drops And then I was simply a first-form of no particular distinction, sitting alone in a minimally comfortable chamber. But I had done it. I had thought of nothing and maintained that state for a considerable length of time. I allowed myself a small rictusall I could manage and then got up to put on my armor. I felt far less defiant now than I had just hours before. Not compliantjust at peace and ready for whatever might come. My ancilla returned and flashed in warning. I was being summoned. The door to my chamber opened and one of the embodied, armed, cyclopean ancillas known as monitors appeared, flanked by two guards from Builder security. Both were male. Neither were Warrior-Servants.\n\"The Council requests your presence,\" one told me.\n\"I'm ready,\" I said.\n\"We offer the service of checking your appearance,\" the other guard said.\n\"Not necessary,\" I replied.\n\"Indeed, you seem to have experience in such matters. Your armor fits in the fashion proper for Council inquiry. Your bearing is strong yet respectful.\"\"Thank you. Let's get this over with.\"\nThey accompanied me through lift and corridor to the Council transit center, on the edge of the equatorial disk, and there into the nearest councilor shuttle. Four more monitors joined usunnecessary force, I thought. Here in the heart of the Council's power, it seemed unlikely I would need so much protection. The Didact's wisdom disagreed. And I also noted, adjacent to our shuttle, that dozens of small, Falco-class space pods were being lined up outside the equatorial disk's gravity gradient, in close vicinity to a lift station devoted to Council use. I wondered about that. Falcos were generally used in the evacuation of interplanetary transports. The journey to the central courts tier took just a few moments. Through the shuttle's transparent cowling, we watched as hundreds of other shuttles arrived with tightly choreographed grace and dignity, carrying the required quorum of five hundred councilors from around the ecumene. I wondered how many of them were first-forms from the new assignments. Not our concern. I wondered why not. There will be no trial. Soon, there may be no Council and no capital. That was all the Didact's wisdom thought fit to conveyalarming enough. Again, I flashed on the eleven Halos in their parking orbits: impossibly slender, perfectly circular silvery rings flashing in the sun. The tangled weave of events was far from certain. There was nothing I could do for the moment but go along. Splendid Dust and five of his aides, all first-forms, all smiling and proud, joined ourphalanx of armed ancillas and Builder security. \"A great moment is coming,\" the young councilor told me as we followed a broad hallway equipped with high, rotating sculptures of quantum-engineered crystal. Soon, the walls themselves were decorated with regular patterns of the same sort of crystal. Splendid Dust proudly explained that these were spent slipspace flakes ... many millions of them. Truly, the ecumene was ancient and powerful. Truly, that would never changeI hoped. We then came upon the great Council amphitheater, a floating bowl connected to the rest of the capital's main structure by richly decorated bridges and docked ornamental ferries (\"Those are little used now,\" the young councilor explained), along with arching lift tubes designed to drop the most senior councilors straight into the amphitheater without the indignity of mingling with their peers. Ornate and decorated, indeed. Splendid Dust joined a group of his fellow councilors and spoke with them while our escorts located our boxes and seats, where we might most comfortably and prominently await our summons. Pomp trumps security. I looked up at the rows and wondered at how small the amphitheater actually was to represent the governance of the ecumene. Three million fertile worldsyet only five hundred seats and perhaps a hundred boxes. Four speaking platforms at the four compass points of the amphitheater. All remarkably simple compared with the capital world itself. The covering dome sliced into quarters and peeled away. Great display spheres dropped into place, sparkling with representations of the twelve great systems of the early Forerunners, each carrying a unique sacred epistle of the Mantle's creed and prayer. The young councilor moved closer and confided, \"We'll separate now. You'll be vetted and prepared for your invocation. Three other witnesses will be inducted intothe gravity of the councilor court.\"\n\"The Didact?\"\n\"His duties have taken him elsewhere. You will testify in his place.\"\n\"Is that appropriate? I have not his presence and experience\"\n\"You saw what he saw, with respect to these proceedings. And you have his imprimatur.\"\nI wasn't sure how I felt about that. Would anything at all be left of Bornstellar when this was finished? Then I thought of the humans. Perhaps soon I would learn whether they were still alivebut only if their fates mattered to these powerful Forerunners. Unlikely. The amphitheater quickly and quietly filled. No one spoke as the court arranged itself. From the center of the amphitheater rose the platform that would hold the six judges, surrounded by a circle of cyclopean monitors, and the lower rank of dark armored Council security. Among them, I was quick to note, were four Warrior-Servantsincluding Glory of a Far Dawn. The platform ascended to a height of fifty meters, revealing heavily-armed, gleaming black sentinels circling its great lower pistons. I asked my ancilla whether such protection was traditional. \"No,\" she said. \"Listen closely to the Didact's wisdom.\"\n\"Is the Librarian here?\"\"She was not invited.\"\n\"Is she with the Didact?\"\n\"They have not seen each other for a thousand years.\"\nThat was no answer, but I knew better than to ask what could not be known. Too many secrets, too much power, too much privilegesuddenly I felt that cold repugnance so familiar from my days as a Manipular, when I feared becoming such as these. When I feared being\n responsible\n. The assistants and aides cleared the main amphitheater to find their places on the outer tiers. Soon enough I sat alone in my boxalone, but flanked by two monitors, their sensor eyes bright red. I wondered if all these monitors were essential to the proceedings.\n\"They are not,\" my ancilla said resentfully. \"I am fully capable.\" She then dimmed and shrank to the back of my thoughts, as if these armed artificial intelligences overwhelmed her with their presence and power. I tried to still all curiosity, all expectations, all concerns.\n Think nothing. I failed. The amphitheater remained quiet as a second platform shoved through a gate on the far side of the bowl. Here was the accused, presumablythe Master Builder himself, shrouded for the moment behind iridescent green curtains, preserving decorum if not all dignity. I actually looked forward to witnessing the Master Builder's discomfort when those curtains faded and pulled away. Abject. Humbled. The ceremonies of induction and oath were brief. A metarch-level monitor rose from the floor of the amphitheater, its single sensor sapphire blue. When it had ascended to a level with the platform supporting the Master Builder, still concealedbehind the curtain, it fixed in place, and a brief series of chiming notes spread outward in sweet, silvery waves. The First Observer of the Courtthe very councilor who had accompanied me from my family's worldraised his arm. \"The Council recognizes the authority of the Builder and Warrior Servant Corps of the Capital Court in the matter of multiple indictments against the Builder known as Faber, once entitled Master Builder. All appointed makers of Law sit now in orderly and considerate judgment. Witnesses have been gathered. Be it noted that the accused has yet to formally acknowledge the Council and these proceedings.\"\nA murmur of disapproval. Again, silence fell over the amphitheater. Then, from behind the green curtain, a much smaller monitor floated into its appointed place. It appeared older than any of the structures around usolder perhaps than the capital world itself, which would have made it more than twenty-five thousand years old. Its eye glowed a dull vegetal green. I had heard of this embodied ancilla, of courseall Forerunners had. Simply the thought that I was within range of that fabled sensor eye sent a ripple of cool expectation and reverence through my body. This was the Warden, both prison-keeper and guardian of mercy, for every accused Forerunner expects that those who confine must also be those who will in time defend and perhaps release. Such is the ancient law, which has as its foundation the Mantle itself. The green curtain now drew aside. I was disappointed by the simple dignity of it all no humbled, bowed figure, no chains, no chants of disapprovalbut of course that last would have been unthinkable. Faber stood within a confinement field, still as a statue, only his eyes moving as he surveyed the amphitheater, the members of the Counciland his judges. The sleek gray and blue head with its fringe of white hair seemed little changed.Adversitysuch adversity as he had facedhad left him unbowed. The Council in turn silently examined the subject of their proceedings. Faber's eyes continued their slow sweep, as if seeking someone in particular. The steady gaze finally fixed on me. His recognition was obvious, though he did not move a muscle. He observed me for a moment from across the amphitheater, then turned aside to await the oath-taking of the panel of six judges. Of the judges, two were Builders, one a Miner, one a Lifeworkera male, the first Lifeworker I had seen since I was a childand two were Warrior-Servants. These were arrayed in the armor of security. Thus were all the rates represented, except for the Engineers, of course. The Warden dissolved the field around the Master BuilderFaber, I corrected myself. No need. He has lost none of his power. The Council remained standing. The First Observer now lowered his arm and began to speak. \"It has been the policy of some high Builders, including the previous Council, to carry out their plans without fully informing all Forerunners. It is the policy of the new Council that no Forerunner shall remain ignorant of the peril we face, and have faced for three hundred years ... of an assault from outside the boundaries of our galaxy, intruding through the outer reaches of the spiral arm which contains our glorious Orion cluster. Of the remedies that have been designed and deployed, and now are recalled. Of the current strategic situation, and how that must change as we adapt to new threats. For the heart of any indictment against Faber must be that he sought power through deception, and manipulated the emotions of key Forerunners to push through a scheme in direct contravention to the Mantle itself.\"The Master Builderfor so my other memory insisted on still thinking of him returned his gaze to meet mine, and gave the merest nod, as if in invitation. Soon, young Forerunner. He cannot carry out his plans without you. The proceedings continued with a bone-dulling litany of ritual observances and purifications. The various monitors were rotated around the court and formally sworn in by the First Observerabsolutely unnecessary, I knew, since no ancilla had ever betrayed instructions or loyalty to Forerunners. Hours seemed to pass. At what I hoped was the end of this endless procedure, a small murmur again rose from the Council seats. The armed monitors that had returned to their places beside me rotated as if seeking something. Their sensors seemed to darken. Their motions slowed. Then, as one, they all brightened and returned to normal. For a moment, nothing seemed amiss; all was as before. But finally I saw the anomaly attracting attention and comment from the councilors and judges. A small green point of light maneuvered until it hovered like some improbable firefly just beneath the display spheres. At first, I thought it must be part of the ritual, but no one else seemed to share that opinion. Now the green point brightened, crossed the center of the amphitheater, and hovered before the Master Builder, who looked puzzled. Almost immediately, his eyes grew large in alarm and he raised his hands as if in defense, before he brought his body and expression back under control. Yet his eyes continued to follow the moving point. I wondered what could possibly cause the Master Builder such concern.Our bastard child, his and mine. The point intensified and expanded. I tried to access my ancilla to determine what it might be. She appeared, but locked in an awkward position, arms raisedfrozen in an attitude of warning. Then she winked out completely, and my armor seized up. It would not release me no matter how hard I struggled. For the moment, there was nothing to do but stand like a statue. The amphitheater was filled with councilors, judges, prosecutorsalso frozen. One by one, the monitors and all the sentinels and other security units began to waver, their sensors winking out. As one, they fell, striking the walls and boxes, ricocheting, landing and rolling on the floor, inerthelplessdead. In the center of the chamber, the brilliant green dot glowed steadily. I could not turn away. With a convulsive shiver, my armor began to move against my will, turning me around. The door to the corridor behind the box opened. My armor took me through. Everything beyond was dark. It seemed as if all Council chambers were without power. For the next few minutes, I felt my limbs being marched through the black corridors. I sensed forward and sideways motion but saw nothing. On occasion I could determine the size of a space I was in by the echo of my feet. Then I was slammed to an abrupt halt. The green light flashed before me, spun about, seemed to come closer. My ancilla reappeared in the back of my thoughts, but this time, she was ghastly green, her face smoothno features whatsoever and her arms and legs had been reduced to quick strokes as if by a young, clumsy artist.\n\"What is this?\" I asked. \"Where are we going?\"The green figure rotated, then pointed to my left. I shifted my eyes. A crack of light appeareda hatch leading, I saw, to the hall of slipspace crystals. Through that crack shot a brighter, more focused glow. It was useless protesting. The Didact's wisdom said nothing. It did not need to. I was being guided involuntarily toward a destination that had nothing to do with being a witness for the Council. That was likely all done with. More monitors came into view. They clustered on the opposite side of the hall, rotating around each other like balls in a magician's invisible hand. Then a new, resonant voice spoke within my armor, lacking all implied gender or even character.\n\"I have exhausted the Domain, and yet I am not complete. I require service. Are you of service?\"\n\"I don't even know what you are,\" I said.\n\"I require service.\"\nI sensed an almost physical pressure and had to resist having my thoughts, my mind, sucked into this sketchy green form. I had seen this kind of hunger before but never so overwhelming and all-demanding: the hunger of an ancilla for knowledge. A tremendously powerful ancilla, with no apparent master.\n\"Are you here in the capital?\" I asked.\n\"I protect all. I require service.\"\n\"Why come to me? The metarchy can serve you. Surely\"\n\"I am Contender. I am above the metarchy. My designers built in latent control of all systems in the capital, should an emergency arise. It has arisen.\"The Didact's wisdom, silent until now, suddenly took control of my speech, my thoughts, and shunted me aside.\n\"\nMendicant Bias\n,\" I heard myself say. \"Beggar after knowledge. That is the name I gave you when last we met. Do you recognize that name?\"\n\"I recognize that name,\" the sketchy green ancilla replied. Then the figure moved from the back of my thoughts and seemed to pass directly through my forehead taking shape as a projected form directly in front of me.\n\"Do you recognize the one who named you?\"\nThe green image briefly flickered. \"You are not that one. No other knows that name.\"\n\"Shall I guide you to further service?\" At this point, I had no idea who was speaking, or to what purpose.\n\"I require further input. The Domain is insufficient.\"\n\"Liberate this armor and prepare a path. Do you know where the Master Builder resides?\"\n\"The Master Builder gave me my final set of orders.\"\n\"But I am the one who knows your chosen name, your true name, and who commanded your construction.\"\n\"That is so.\"\n\"Then I am your client and master. Release me.\"\n\"I have a new master. You are dangerous to my new master.\"\"I know your true name. I can revoke your key and shut you down.\"\n\"That is no longer possible. I am beyond the metarchy.\"\nThe Didact within me suddenly spoke a series of words and numbers. The green ancilla wavered like a flame in a high wind. Symbols appeared in the space behind my thoughts, swirling like a cloud of birds, combining, matching, then dropping into orderly columns as, one by one, the spoken and numerical symbols of the ancilla's secret key were expressed. At this point, I was just a passenger in my own body, controlled from without by hijacked armor, and from within by the Didact's wisdom. The struggle suddenly ended. The green ancilla vanished. My armor unlocked. Run!\nI ran as fast as the armor allowedvery fast indeed, through a sluggish maze of recovering monitors and sentinels, across the plaza surrounding the amphitheater hemisphereup onto a broad ledge looking out over the rim of equatorial disk where I was intercepted by a guard, who spun me into a constraint field. For an awful moment, I thought I was back in the hands of the Master Builder's troops, until I saw the face of Glory of a Far Dawn, and noticed that on her other side, she was also dragging the First Councilor, the First Observer of the Court Splendid Dust himselfin another field. Our trip across the plaza ended when, with a sudden leap, the female Warrior Servant propelled us through the weakened buffer fieldwhich threw a sparking glow around usand beyond the gravitational gradient, out into empty space, with nothing to stop our fall for at least a hundred kilometers.THIRTY-SEVEN A S I FELL\n, my blue ancilla reacquired definition and control. \"Apologies,\" she said. \"I am no longer connected to the metarchy or any other network. I cannot fully serve you\"\n\"Never mind that,\" I said. \"Find something to catch me.\"\n\"That has already been arranged.\"\nI swung about and bumped into the field that held the First Councilor. Our fields merged with a distinct pressure pop. Also with us in the fieldGlory herself, curling up as if expecting imminent impact. A Falco-class rescue pod slid in from my left, matched our descent, and blipped open a hatchway. Grapples reached out and caught us, then yanked us clumsily inside. The interior of the Falco rearranged to accommodate three passengers and cushion further acceleration. Still, even in my armor, I felt sick as the tiny craft spun aboutand then launched into full evacuation mode. In a few minutes, we were away from the disk, the whole arrangement of slices away from the planet itself, following an oblong orbit to observe from a thousand kilometers out in space. The entire arrangement of the capital's disks seemed to be slowly, painfully realigning to the original sphere.\n The capital is under siege\n, the Didact within me said.\"What is Mendicant Bias?\" I asked, while closely watching our passage through a slow, stately rain of disabled sentinels, monitors, and uncontrolled craftthe near boundary of the planet's disabled protection. Better to ask where we are going. Glory pulled herself up, then tugged upon the First Councilor, who seemed stunned. Crammed together as we were, I hoped we were not in this for the long haulI hoped there would soon be other arrangements. Still, I could not see any other Falcosor for that matter any other escapees from whatever chaos had embroiled the capital. \"All right,\" I said, \"where are we going?\"\n\"Are you asking\n me\n?\" Splendid Dust said, his face purple with dismay. \"I haven't any idea what's just happened.\"\n\"The metarchy has been disabled,\" Glory of a Far Dawn said. \"All control has been moved to an external authority. I was instructed by my commanders to rescue at least two of the councilors.\"\nSplendid Dust looked between us.\n\"I seem to have rescued you, instead,\" she said to me, deadpan. We were now in a position to see again the great rings of the orbiting installations. They were no longer arranged linearly but had spread out into a pentagon and a hexagonalong with another, outlying ring, slowly moving to join with the pentagon. It seemed that after forty-three years, the prodigal Halo had returned. Bearing what madness? The captive itself? Overkill beyond all reason. This is utterly pointlesswhat is its goal?\"Whose goal? What's goal?\"\nThe others stared at me. I was babbling to myself. Mendicant Bias. A Contender class, the first of its kind. It is as far above most ancillas as the metarch-level systems rise above our personal components. The axes of five of the installations now pointed directly at the capital world. One by one, the reoriented Halos were growing slender spokes of hard light.\n\"What do you know about Mendicant Bias?\" I asked the First Councilor.\n\"Designed to coordinate control of some of the installations,\" he said. \"Also given the power, in emergencies, to coordinate the entire galaxy's response to attack.\"\n\"Who authorized this?\"\n\"The old Councilwith the input of the Master Builder.\"\n\"Mendicant Bias conducted the test at Charum Hakkor?\"\n\"Yes.\"\nThe Didact within me was stunned into silence. The capital world's defenses were slowly cutting loose from their complete shutdown. Swift attack cruisers and other vessels were reassuming their formations in low orbit. Defensive fields lay across the surface of the capital's new formed sphere like ghostly flags, their edges knitting together to complete a dense shieldeffective against enemy ships, but useless against any single Halo. And very likely we'd end up being trapped in one of those fields. My ancilla, to my surprise, issued a code and took control of the Falco, thenguided our craft away from the unfolding fields, up and away from the formations of battle craftand toward the Halos themselves. We were not being followed.\n\"There will be no pursuit,\" my ancilla said. \"We are protected by the Librarian's privilege.\"\n\"Even in an emergency?\"\n\"Not all protocols have been voided. The Contender has caused considerable confusion in the metarchy, however. That was apparently its plan.\"\n\"Do\n we\n have any sort of plan?\" I asked.\n\"We are seeking an escape route,\" the ancilla replied. \"Apparently our duty here is finished. There is a special councilors' entrance to the capital system's dedicated portal. If the settings have not been changed, it will respond to the Librarian's key and open for us.\"\n\"And what if this Mendicant Bias has scrambled all the keys?\"\nBut I knew better. It had responded to the Didact's numbers.\n\"I do not answer discouraging questions,\" my ancilla said. \"My resources are limited. I would appreciate some optimism.\"\nThat shut me up for a moment, but my mind was still racing. The First Councilor and the Warrior-Servant watched me closely. Glory of a Far Dawn leaned close to the councilor and said, \"I can't control the Falco.\n His\n ancilla seems to be directing our movements.\"\"Bornstellar's ancilla?\" the councilor said.\n\"At your command, I will attempt to subdue him,\" the Warrior-Servant said.\n\"How? We can barely move in here.\"\n\"I have been trained\"\n\"You\n idiot\n!\" the councilor howled, his fear finally breaking loose. We were both shocked that such an enlightened first-form would choose an ancient Builder word used to put inferior rates in their place. \"He's got the imprint of the Didact! He's ten thousand years to your twenty!\"\nShe withdrew a few centimeters, and regarded me soberly from under the curve of her headpiece. \"I did not know that,\" she said. The Halos were growing closer. At our present speed, the craft might actually reach their vicinity in a half an hourunless, of course, my ancilla knew what she was talking about, and there was a portal somewhere out here as well. Each Halo was about thirty thousand kilometers in diameter, a slender ribbon tied up in a perfect circle, the outer surface acquiring detail as we grew closer and as the sun's light angled to create deeper shadows. The inside of the nearest ribbon was strangely mottled, partly green, partly bluebut mostly bluish silver. As well, I could now make out waves of hard light rippling around the inner surface, occasionally shooting slender spikes toward the axisthen withdrawing them, as if trying unsuccessfully to spin out the spokes of a vast wheel. Whatever its exalted status, Mendicant Bias still cannot control all of the Halos. This one is resisting preparation to fire.\n\"What would the Librarian do with her own portal?\" I asked.\"It is not solely for her use,\" my ancilla replied. \"The portal can also be shifted to deliver large constructions.\"\n\"Halos?\"\n\"Halos and the Lifeshaper's work are part of the same contract. The Lifeshaper uses the portal to connect with the many worlds where she is gathering her specimens.\"\n\"Like Erde-Tyrene.\"\n\"As of my last update there are no longer portals that open to Erde-Tyrene.\"\n\"How can you know that?\"\n\"Specimens were collected from Erde-Tyrene decades before you went there.\"\nThe Didact within was strangely unresponsiveperhaps mulling over the strange behavior of Mendicant Bias, or the collusion of the Librarian with the Master Builder.\n\"No advice from my other wisdom?\" I asked out loud. Out of respect. We may be witnessing the end of Forerunner governance.\n\"I can't stand this! I can't stand being ignorant, held prisonerjockeyed around the galaxy, hosting a Promethean who doesn't share even\n half\n of what he knows.... Riser and Chakas would be better company. At least they'd understand my frustration.\"\nMore silence. We were all tightly focused on the nearest Halo, now less than a million kilometers away. \"What are those spokes of light?\" I asked.The installation seems to be adjusting to tidal forces from its proximity to the capital world. The position is not optimal for a large structure. Transport through a portal may also increase strain.\n\"It's not getting ready to fire, is it?\"\nThe defense forces won't wait to find out. With the capital metarchy out of action, command now splinters to individual squadrons. Each has specific instructions how to deal with potential attacks.\n\"There is the portal,\" my ancilla said, and gently nudged my gaze toward a silvery, slowly pulsing web, like a tremendous lacework constantly growing and overlapping curves and lines of hard light. Within the webwork, pits of blackness shot through with violet kept up a rotational cycle of growth and diminishment. Our sensors indicated the webwork was closer to us than the nearest Haloabout a million kilometers. I had seen portals before, but none so large and powerful, so ornate, so full of opportunities. Each of those violet holes could open onto a different place in our galaxy. \"That's where we're going?\" I asked. Before my question could be answered, I saw three of the pits of darkness flow together at the center of the webwork. The entire web shimmered, and through the combined holes emerged five large cruisersand right behind them, a fully activated fortress, arriving long tail first, bristling with armament. As soon as they were through, and allowing for a brief few seconds of reconciliation, during which time the ships radiated dim, expanding shells of blue, the smaller craft began to fan out to distant points, nearly all beyond the limits of my visionexcept for the fortress. This was nothing like the dismal old hulk that had stood guard for so long over the San'Shyuum. Sleek, clean, perhaps twice the size of the\n Deep Reverence\n, thefortress was heading directly toward the rotational axis of the nearest Halo.\n\"We should depart from this region,\" my ancilla suggested. \"These are forces arriving to protect the capital.\"\n\"The installations will not allow themselves to be attacked,\" the councilor said.\n\"They will defend themselves. Even if they are not under the control of Mendicant Bias, there will be violent confrontations.\"\nI will program battle code.\n My other memory was finally proving useful; the Didact worked with my ancilla and the Falco began to broadcast protective signals. From the fortress's long tail, replete with gun mounts and weapons bays, thousands of swift attack vessels began to pour forth, fanning out, radiating to positions above the inner surface of the Halo. Our sensors now picked up swarms of small and midsize craft emerging from the Halo itself, and identified them as dedicated sentinelsused only for Halo defense. They are controlled by the installation monitors. The monitors are programmed to assume that all who attack an installation are enemieswhatever they look like, or whatever codes they possess.\n\"That makes no sense,\" I said. It does if you understand the ways of the Flood.\n\"Then make me understand!\"\nThere is no time. Already, in rapid succession, more cruisers were emerging from the portal, straining the webwork until it radiated a fierce reddish glow. The portal fabric began to visibly separatehard-light strands exceeding even their extraordinary tensilestrengths. Clearly, these newly arrived forces were prepared to sacrifice both themselves and the portal in their haste.... Mendicant Bias has exceeded its present ability. It can control only five installations out of twelve. The others will maneuver to save themselves. They will attempt to access the portal. Seven of the huge ringsnot including the one that had just appearedonce again rearranged their array. One Halo from the pentagon broke formation, sending cascades of violet energy from drive engines spaced along its rim. It moved to joined those not in the Contender's control. These seven began to align in parallel, re-creating the tunnel effect. The five under the Contender's control had completed their spoke-and-hub preparations. They are primed. They\n will\n firewe must leave now! We must go through the portal!\nThe first fortress's fighters moved in, surrounding one of the primed Halos and engaging its sentinels. Simultaneously, four cruisers sent white-hot beams to points around the targeted installation. Sentinels intercepted some of those beams, partially deflecting them but also absorbing and sacrificing. Other beams struck home, carving canyonlike gouges across the mottled inner surface and blowing blue-white plumes of debris and plasma from the edges. The interior spokes began to shimmer and fade. The Halo could not hold together against this onslaught. It bent inward, wobbled. Fascinated, I watched as huge sections of the ring twisted like ribbon, giving way to destructive nodes of resonance, then rippled in sinus wavesand separated with agonizing majesty. The entire Halo was breaking apart. It would not complete its priming and firing sequence. Keeping track of the remaining eleven installations in the melee was exhausting. The other four primed installations, however, were successfully fendingoff fighters and cruisers and had fanned out to cover at least half of the capital world, as if preparing for an awful sunrise. Their spokes were now forming golden hubs. Glory of a Far Dawn pushed closer to watch with me. Her hands clenched. \"I should be there!\" she said. \"I should be protecting the capital!\"\nAn unexpected horror shook my ancilla. \"The Librarian's specimensso many worlds are stored on the Halos, so many terrains and beings! What will happen to the fauna?\"\nThe Lifeshaper succeeded in her struggle with the Master Builder. She coopted the installations.... I found myself again taking control of the Falco. We accelerated out of the widening zone of battle, toward the portal, now a single huge violet radiance against the blackness of space. Three of the seven fleeing Halos were lined up, also seeking entry. They, too, were being harried by cruisers and were now attacked by swarms from the second fortress. Sentinels from these installations mounted a vigorous defense, pushing back their attackers. The rings maintained their integrity. Before we could reach the hellishly glowing webwork with its single yawning and badly distorted portal, the first Halo began its passage. For me, under the influence of the Didact's battle mode, time fragmented into several streams. I saw the movement of the installation in fast mode, butin excruciating slow motiondirected the Falco to avoid bursts of plasma energy and disintegrating swift attack vessels. Part of me seemed to fight through many lifetimes, through clouds of fighters and debris, away from ever-increasing danger.A second installation was about to follow the first through the portal. A third lined up.... The portal webwork was obviously about to tear itself to pieces. We\n must\n leave this system before the other installations fire! We will approach the third installation and enter the portal along with it.\n\"Where will the portal take us?\" my ancilla asked, growing even tinier as her duties were reduced. It does not matter. Any place other than this.\n\"Why would they prime and fire?\" I cried. \"That will kill everyone here, disintegrate the metarchyForerunners will lose their history, their heart and spirit\"\nMendicant Bias has turned against us. But I do not believe it has sufficient resources to control more than five installations at once. Other installations are following older instructions, priority protocolsthey defend themselves, but are struggling to break free of the Contender's rule. They may reconnoiter outside our galaxyat the Beginning Place. The Ark. And we must join them.THIRTY-EIGHT I\n NO LONGER\n have access to the record maintained by that ancilla. She faded long, long ago, during another battle and another time, taking with her so many details, so much of my transformation and emergence. The problems I face trying to bring back and explain these events are manifold. I was then two beings confined in one body. How much of this effect was accidental and how much deliberate was far from clear to me. I suspected ... I feared ... but I could not know. And thus my memories were separated into two compartments, one of which has declined with time and circumstance, and the other of whichthe survivor, as it wereis very different from either of my two personalities at that time. Memory without an ancilla is in large part a reconstruction, a reimagining based on clues locked in chronology and checked against outside sources. But no outside sources remain. So much of Forerunner history ... But I get ahead of myself. This is the closest truth I can manage. It will have to suffice. There is no other. What did I\n actually\n see? Do I actually remember our close approach to the Halo just as it entered the portal ...\n*\n*\n*The small rescue craft plowed and glided and glowed through the great ring's inner atmosphere, no doubt resembling a meteor. We were briefly pursued by sentinels, and some shots even grazed our shields. But we were not armed and offered no return fire; they turned their attention elsewhere. I flash on brief moments of breathtaking, awful splendor, sharpened by terror: the rapid approach of the Halo's inner landscape, our first close-up glimpse of thin layers of clouds, rivers, mountains, desert, vast stretches of green, then thousands of kilometers of engraved silver-blue, naked foundation material interrupted by towering, four-pronged power stationsall unadorned by hard-light decor. The Halo was almost halfway through the portal. Our small craft flew up from its skim of the atmosphere, into a welter of debris, sentinels, and pursuing fighters jockeying for dominance and the proper tactical positions to break up the installation before it finished its transit. But they were insufficient to accomplish this task. This Halo was about to make its escape. Thenthe unexpected. While the enormous yet ephemeral band of the Halo slowly disappeared into the violet-black maw at the center of the portal, something brilliant white pushed through from the other side. Compared with the Halo, it was tiny, but considerable in its own right: a third fortress. Council security was calling in all available might to secure the system. Even before it had emerged halfway, the fortress began to loose clouds of fightersat this distance, they resembled a puff of pollen from a flowerand fire its weapons in a sequential radiance. The inner curve of the Halo, even protected by waves of hard light, could not stand up long to this assault from within its own radius. The fortress's commanders and ancillas must have known they were dooming themselves as well as the Halo. The installation began a spectacular disintegrative sequence. The visible half of the ring bent in opposite directions, then shattered into five great arcs. We passed near the largest of these segments, perhaps ahundred kilometers from the inner surface. Released from the rotational integrity of the full ring, the segment moved outward, given an additional outward twist by the asymmetric breakup. One end swept toward us like a great swinging blade. Minutes from contact, our craft kicked itself into a new course, and we crossed the width of the approaching arc with seconds to spare, buffeted by rising plumes of icy cloud. Kilometer-wide swaths of forest waved like flags in a slow wind, shivered off a dust of treesand broke apart into chunks. In the increasing violence, the surface released a storm of boulders, followed by immense cross sections of sedimentary layers, and finally, entire mountains, still capped with snow. Our doom seemed inevitable. Either we would be struck by the nearest rim wall or by the great clods and slivers of material spilling overor we would be caught up in flying volumes of ocean, now, in the shadow of the portal, freezing into spectacular ice sculptures, flying bergs and snow I sat within the dust mote of our craft, incapable of speech. I had never witnessed anything so utterly awesomenot even the destruction of the San'Shyuum world. My heart seemed to stop, my thoughts to go gelid. ThenI felt the Didact's icy discipline dissolve the gluey tendrils of my fear. Our craft was seeking a complex path up and over another section of ring, picking its way through the debris, when, through a nearly opaque layer of frozen mist, we spied the great leading dome of the fortress, trailing streamers of detritus like an avalanche of gray dust. The dome had suffered awful damage. The fortress was out of action and in its last throes, but the chaos of destruction was not yet done with it. A curled, tortured loop of ring at least five hundred kilometers long spun from the debris cloud and cut through the fortress like a sword through bread. This impact shoved the great vessel out of our path, and in its wake, left a narrow void through which our sensors could see the rim of the portal, still glowing, still holding its forma miracle, Ithought The Didact did not accept the existence of miracles. Did not accept them, but did not hesitate to take advantage. Our craft seemed at the last to waft like a leaf between mountains and ice and the shattered hulks of spaceships, into the pulsing violet of the portal. I felt another kind of impact, another kind of jolt. We were in slipspace, but a slipspace strained and distorted and angry at so much abuse, barely realbarely any kind of continuum whatsoever How far this jump took us, there was no way of measuring. We all offered sacrifice to the arcane demands of another kind of physics. We completed our unlikely passage, struggling to maintain any semblance of the real. The causal reconciliation was indescribable. I seemed to stretch and fill like a thundercloud with painful jolts of charge. We gave away something ineffable, but still We survived. Somehow, soliditya useful thingreturned. On the far side of that journey, looking back at where we had been, we sawnothing. The portal had collapsed. We now drifted across an even greater void, without thrust or control, our power down to almost nothing. I thought I saw a distant speckle of stars. Passing its shadow across those stars was a flower with a great, gaping blackness in its center.... Huge, unknowndark. My ancilla had been reduced to a vague gray ghost in the back of my thoughts. With her feeble assistance, I struggled to fully engage our sensors. They falteredthen returned, weak but usable. Strangely, we were surrounded only by a light haze of debris. Most of the remnants of the Halo, the dying fortress, and all of the other waste from that distant battle had never completed the passage. The portal had filtered and discarded useless material. I wondered where it all was now, bits of installation and ships and thousands of crew, neither\n here\n nor\n there.... Amazingly, we had been among the pieces allowed to pass. I turned to look at Glory of a Far Dawn. She was badly injured, I could see that yet her face shone with something like joythe raw joy of battle and survival. As our eyes met, she drew back her emotions.\n\"Where are we?\" she asked. \"How far have we come?\"\nI could not answer. None of the usual niceties of slipspaceif they could ever be called thatapplied. None of the metrics were available to our sensors. But we had traveled a very great distance indeed. I could feel that in my bones and nerves.THIRTY-NINE T HE SMALL FALCO'S\n power loss now affected life support. Worse, our armor's integrity and even its protective capabilities had been damaged by the contradictory surge of instructions from Mendicant Bias.\n\"Where are we, really?\" the young councilor asked, peering through the single small port. \"I can't see\n anything\n.\"\nGlory of a Far Dawn hung back in the rear of the craft like a wounded animalnot so far, of course. I could reach out and touch her. All the joints of her armor had cracked. One leg and one arm had been bent back beyond the breaking point.... Yet she refused to call attention to herself. She did not want to show her pain.\n\"We're in what remains of a debris cloud,\" I said. \"I saw stars earliervery far away.\"\nWe were weightless, the air was growing foul, all of us were injuredthe guard most severely. There was likely no food to sustain us. Even though the armor could recycle our wastes, lacking additional raw materials and running out of its own charge of energy, it would not fill our needs for long.\n\"Mendicant Bias,\" I said. I could not tell whether Bornstellar or the Didact was bringing up this topic. Something had broken down all my internal barriers. I was now privy to most of the Didact's wisdom, his imprintbut its usefulness at this point seemed doubtful. Still, Iwewanted some questions answered. \"The Didact oversaw the Contender's planning and inception, and was present at its keyquickening. But he was removed from any contact with Mendicant Bias a thousand years ago. What's happened since?\"\n\"Mendicant Bias was charged by the Master Builder with conducting the first tests of a Halo installation,\" the councilor said.\n\"Charum Hakkor,\" I said.\n\"Yes. Shortly thereafter, the Halo entered slipspace on a scheduled missionand vanished. Mendicant Bias went with the installation. That was forty-three years ago.\"\nForty-three years on the first Halo ... in the presence of the captive? Did they communicate?\nCan that ever make sense?\n\"It might have been strained by contradictory instructions from the Didact, from the Master Builder....\"\n\"Not likely,\" I said. \"Mendicant Bias was fully capable of working with contradictory commands. I've never known a more capable ancilla, more powerful, more subtle\n... more loyal.\"\n\"What do you know about the captive of Charum Hakkor?\" the Councilor asked.\n\"This subject was to be part of the Didact's testimony against the Master Builder.... But I suppose none of that matters now. Still, I'm curious.\"\n\"I suspect the captive made its way, or was transported, to the first installation.\"\n\"But what\n happened\n?\"\n\"Still unknown. The Contender would likely have been brought any unusualspecimens for examination.\"\n\"Would Mendicant Bias have been able to communicate with the captive? It is said by some that you actually spoke with it, using a human device....\"\nI saw that as if it had happened yesterday. And I noted that the councilor was addressing me as if I were the Didact. \"It was not a real conversation, and not in the least satisfactory,\" I said. Looking down into the deactivated human timelock, and beyond that secondary cage, tuning the Precursor tool, so small and simplemerely a smooth oval with three notches in its side....\n \"The humans found a way to activate at least one Precursor artifact,\" I said.\n\"What was that?\"\n\"A device that could selectively and temporarily open access through the captive's cage.\"\nSeeing the great, ugly head, its compound eyes assuming a new glitter as its consciousness rose from the quantum somnolence of fifty thousand years.... It spoke in a Forerunner dialect, one I could barely understandarchaic Digon. I remembered clearly what it said, but it took time for the context to become clear. Context is everything, across all those centuries. It spoke to me of the greatest of Forerunner betrayals, the greatest of our many sins. I told the Librarian and no one else ... and her researches changed drastically. As did my design of Forerunner defenses against the Flood.\n\"And now the Contender has returned and assumed control of as many installations as it could command ... only to direct their power against the capital itself. It seeks the destruction of us all. Why?\" A look of horror crossed his face. \"Isthe captive part of the Flood? Does the Flood now control Mendicant Bias?\"\n\"Unknown,\" I said. \"But I think not. It was something other ... older. And we have no way of knowing whether the Halo strike did its intended damage.\"\n\"The response of our warships was magnificent,\" the guard said, her voice weaker still.\n\"It\n was\n magnificent,\" I agreed. \"But if Mendicant Bias has been suborned, and the Domain has been permanently blocked...\"\n\"The war may be lost,\" the First Councilor said.\n\"Never,\" the guard said. \"\nNever!\n You are the heir of the Didact, unless he be found, and if that happens, then you are his second-in-command. Either way, you are my commander. We will never give up. It is so,\n aya\n.\"\nI reached back instinctively. My armor withdrew from my hand, and my fingers brushed past her facial protection to touch her forehead, which was hot. She was in bad shape.\n\"Your courage becomes mine. I am privileged,\" I said. The guard's eyes closed. We drifted. Our armor failed. We slept. All of us. I dreamed of only one thingor perhaps it was hypoxia. I dreamed of the captive's glittering eyes.FORTY S OMETHING SCRAPED AT\n the outside of our craft like tree branches in a slow winddelicate, tentative. The first to return to consciousness, I dragged myself up to the port and looked out at a vast swirl of stars, so many and so far away I could not distinguish most of them. A galaxy. I hoped\n our\n galaxy and not another. The Falco slowly rotated and a complicated silhouette moved across the spiral cloud. It took several long moments before I could make out slender shapes attached to that silhouette, like a wide rosette. Slowly it dawned on me that I was looking upon another array of installations: six rings, each rising from one of the petals of an enormous flower. Then, to my astonishment, six straight shafts of light flowed outward from the darkness at the center of the flower and through the Halos, illuminating the insides of the rings as well as the main body of the flower. The Falco kept turning. The edge of the port obscured one view and the other side revealed another. My other memorynow become\n my\n memorycould not recall anything about this association, this shape against the galaxy and the dim void beyond. But in the back of my thoughts, a dim female grayness reappeared. \"We have returned,\" my ancilla said. \"We have arrived at the Ark.\"\nIncredulous that the armor still had any power, I turned my eyes away from the port and looked at the outlines of my fellow passengers. Neither moved. I thoughtthey must be dead.\n\"How far?\" I asked. But the glimmer of the ancilla had again faded, and I was alone, utterly alone. I had forgotten about the scraping. When I looked back to the port, I was astonished to see another face staring back at mea face framed in a headpiece and wrapped in the protective field of fully active armor. And beyond that face, three other figures, long and graceful. Lifeworkers\n. Groggily I tried to make sense of these perceptions. Lifeworkers were maneuvering outside the dead shell of our craft. I made a weak gesture through the port. My ancilla flickered in and out. Then I felt a hint of something other than stale fetor against my face. Power was being externally fed to the craft, and from there to our armoreven the broken armor. Yet they were not breaking our seal or opening the Falco to rescue us. Instead, they were guiding the craft intact to a larger ship I now saw floating a few hundred meters away. A voice spoke to me nowfemale, softthrough the cracked remains of my headpiece. \"How many? I count three.\"\n\"Three,\" I confirmed, my mouth dry, my tongue swollen and cracked.\n\"Are you from the damaged installation that attempted to return to the Ark?\"\n\"No,\" I said.\n\"Is there infection?\"\n\"I don't think so. No.\"\"How far have you traveled?\"\n\"From the capital. Shouldn't ... talk for while.\"\nThe face withdrew, and we were absorbed in a protective field. We had been cautiously inspected, cleared ... drawn within the ship ... then deposited on a platform. Up and down returned. Tall figures walked past, but I could not hear what they were saying. Then the Lifeworker who had first appeared in our port motioned for me to draw the others toward the center of our craft. I tried to do that, pulling in the councilor's limbs, even moving and arranging the guard when she failed to respond. They then broke open the depleted, dead bulk of the Falco's outer shell, split it wide, and Lifeworkers surrounded us with their instruments and monitors, bringing comfort and relief. They removed the remains of our armor, then took up Glory of a Far Dawn and surrounded her in a golden softness. Her eyes opened, and she seemed astonishedthen, embarrassed. She struggledbut was patiently subdued and carried away from the platform, into a healing chamber. The First Councilor tried to stand to survey the broken shell of our rescue craft. His strength failed him. More Lifeworkers carried him away, as well. Somehow, I had retained the most strengthor so I thought. But my turn to give in came quickly enough. No sleep, no dreams, just a warm, nutritive blankness, neither dark nor bright. For the first time in a thousand years, I felt at home. The Librarian is near.FORTY-ONE W E HAD JOURNEYED\n to a point far outside our galaxy. We had been rescued and taken to the factory where the ring-shaped installations were made, equipped, repaired ... as well, the ultimate repository of the Librarian's collection of the galaxy's life-forms. The Ark. I took a regenerative walk through the brightly illuminated forest surrounding Fifth Petal Station. Nearly all the light this far from our galaxy came from the diurnal glow of the elongated plasmas, casting the strangest shadows. The rings themselves were canted at different angles on each petal, rotating constantly within enormous hoops of hard light to maintain their integrity. On each of the installations, the Librarian's aides and monitors supervised the laying down of the Lifeshaper seeds, containing all the records necessary to create and restore unique ecological systems on the inner surface of each ring. I could see evidence of their work even from where I stoodmottled patches of early-stage jungles and forests, the tan of desert, sheets of ice ... Earlier, when I had voiced puzzlement at the contradiction of Halos supporting these living records, my nurse and guardian, a Lifeworker named Calyx, explained that the Librarian had equipped most of the Halos with living ecosystems, and stocked them with many species from many worldsselecting from those multitudes that been gathered over the last few centuries, and now populated the Ark's great half-circle.She had hoped to preserve many more species by using the Halos; the Master Builder, after agreeing to her plan, had decided it would be useful to test captured specimens of the Flood on the Halos before they were firedto learn more about them. Sacrificing those populations, of course. I could not understand how the Librarian's pact with the Master Builder had been arranged or implemented. But I admired her stamina. She had proven my superior in every regard. And now that I was here Something like the Didact, though not\n him\n\nI wondered how much I could possibly contribute. Looking up at the great Halo's upper reaches, I felt dizzy and steadied myself against the toppled trunk of cycad. Nearby, something like a small tank passed by on many pumping legs, a gigantic armor-plated arthropod almost three meters long. It ignored me, for I was not the rotting vegetation it favored as a meal. When the plasmas dimmed, it became obvious that the sky was still filled with danger. In the battle of the capital, only one installation had survived passage through the portal without breaking up. It had returned to the Ark, and now rotated off to my right, visible through a green wall of ferns. Its interior surface had suffered great damage, and so it was being scrubbed clean, its few remaining specimens rescued and constrained. A new surface was in preparation, with a replacement set of seeds. What wreckage had passed through the portal still threatened this extraordinary construct. The domain of the Librarianbut also the centerpiece of all that the Master Builder had hoped to achievehad to be constantly protected against impacts. In the dark, it was easy enough to follow the many vessels that patrolledthe debris field; they were tiny glints in a varicolored haze that reminded me so much of the clouds in our Orion complex. But this haze was not primordial and nurturing of suns. It was the death shroud of a great, perhaps crippling defeatthe final battle, perhaps, of a Forerunner civil warand it was filled with careening fragments of shattered rings, broken ships, demented or damaged monitors, cut loose from all their disciplines, from the metarchylost and worse than uselessand of course, the frozen corpses of hundreds of thousands of Forerunners.... I walked through the forests day after day, and in the dark as well, guided by smaller cousins of the armored arthropod, bearing blue-green lanterns above their tiny eyes and showing me the way. Night after night, I watched the rings' tentative hard-light skeletons form spokes, stabilizing them before their planned release.... Studied the strange shape of the hard-light hubs at the center of those rings, which had once been designed to direct the deadly energies of the rings when they were fired.... If\n they were fired. That seemed very unlikely now. Twenty days passedtwenty cycles of the diurnal plasmas. I healed. From my nurse, Calyxa first-form, taller than me and graceful, yet also quite strongI learned that my companions in the Falco were also healing. But before we reunited, another reunion had been arranged. It was time for me to meet with the Librarian. \"She has been expecting you,\" Calyx said. I followed him out of the forest.A transport within the fifth petal carried me toward the main body of the Ark, and a graceful teardrop structure just below the tower that supplied the star of plasmas. Here, before the meeting, another Lifeworker, an older third-form equipped with a style of armor even more ancient than the Didact's, conducted her own exacting inspection. She sniffed critically, then asked me three questions. I answered them all. Correctly. She regarded me with an odd expression of concern.\n\"I am merely his poor double,\" I insisted. \"I have not integrated\"\n\"Oh, but you\n have\n,\" she said. \"Whatever you do, please do not disappoint her. She feels badly about what has happened, but\"\n\"Why does she feel badly?\"\n\"For interrupting the way of your own growth, and imposing something other.\"\n\"I made that choice,\" I said.\n\"No, Bornstellar agreed, in part. You are the choice he agreed to, but he did not know the consequences.\"\n\"HeI will return when my mission is finished.\"\n\"Aya,\" the Lifeworker said. \"This is a day of joy and sadness for all. We revere our Lifeshapers beyond all Forerunners, and the Librarian beyond all Lifeshapers. She is our light and our guide. And she has longed for this moment for a thousand yearsbut not this way. If only...\"\nBut she did not complete that thought.Now she took my hand and led me through a great arched doorway, into the base of the teardrop. A lift carried us to a wide room covered with a curved canopy that allowed in selected portions of the broad spectrum of the shaft of light. The light here was blue-green. The space was filled with specimens from a world I knew nothing of, captured in special cages, immobile, unaware for the time being. And walking between those cages, inspecting her charges, using her long, graceful fingers to prune and arrange and persuade, confirming their integrity and health, I saw the Librarian. My wife. Here, she did not wear armor. She was among her other children, and had never known harm from any of them. She paused and moved on her long legs to a pathway through the cages. Along that pathway, she approached me slowly, eyes quizzical, face wreathed in a complex expression of joy, pain, and something I could only see as\n youth\n. Eternally young. Yet this Forerunner was older than me, that is, older than the Didactover eleven thousand years of age.\n\"So similar,\" she whispered as we stepped toward each other, her voice like a sweet sigh of wind. \"So much alike.\"\nI reached out to her. \"I bring greetings from the Didact,\" I said, feeling the awkwardness,\n knowing\n I bore the same memories ... yet wishing to be honest and to honor the reality of our situation.\n\"Bring me your\n own\n greetings,\" she responded, leaning her head to one then, then grasping my outstretched hands. \"You\n are\n him.\"\"I am merely\"\n\"You\n are\n him, now,\" she insisted, with a sad intensity I did not expect. My emotions leaped out to her, then my arms rose and I clasped her, not understanding, not caring: fulfilled. I was with my wife. I was home.\n Aya!\nThe other Lifeworkers tending the specimen cages turned away to give us privacy.\n\"How can I be him and other?\" I asked as we embraced. I looked up at her beautiful face, pale blue and pink, feeling the warmth of the naked skin of her lithe arms and the touch of her infinitely subtle fingers.\n\"The Didact is\n here\n,\" my wife said. \"The Didact is gone.\"\nAnd then I\n knew\n, and my love was pushed aside by a moment of intense vertigo, as if I were again falling through black, starless space. She clasped my face between her cool hands and looked down into it. \"You refused to give Faber what he needed to activate all the Contender-class ancillas. You refused to give him the location of all your Shield Worlds. It is said that the Master Builder executed you on the San'Shyuum quarantine planet. You are now all I have.\n\"You are all\n we\n have.\"FORTY-TWO T HE LOVE OF\n old Forerunners is sweet beyond measure. It mattered not our rates or forms. I had a lovely time with my wife, before once again we went our separate ways. She showed me the work of centuries, the preservation of all life-forms she could locate and gather, preparing to save what she could from the awful, final solution of the Master Builder's installations. I saw fauna and flora and things around and between, strange and beautiful, fearsome and meek, simple and complex, huge and small, but only a small sample of a trillion different species, most now dormant, stored as best they could be on the Ark and what was left of the Halos. Whole creatures alive or suspended, genetic maps, preserved and reduced populations visible only in reconstructive simulation.... The other Halosif any survivedwould have to be dealt with later. There were now not enough, away from the Ark, to complete the Master Builder's plan. And if those others somehow managed to return to the Ark, no one here would repair, rebuild, replenish them.... I would make sure of that. In time, I would prepare once again the defense I had championed a thousand years ago: my far-spread Shield Worlds, if the Master Builder had not destroyed them. Time was very short. But we still had no communications with the capital system. The entire range of slipspace was in turmoil, and might not settle for years. Other chores awaited me, as well. Choresand personal obligations. I confirmed what I had suspected ever since my revival on Erde-Tyrene. The Librarian hadfilled the humans there with versions of their history that would reawaken in time. Intelligent species, she told me, are very little indeed without their deep memories. As I contained the essence of the Didact, the Master Builder must have suspected the value of the two humans, and so I hoped that he had not killed them, but hidden them away, where only he might find them again ... if he still lived. Somewhere in the humans' awakened memory lay our last hope of defeating the Flood, which was even now ravaging world after world, system after systemmore hideous by far than it had been a thousand years before. More sophisticated, more devious. More vital. And soon to acquire a new Master, if we did not act quicklyif we did not locate the lost installation and the former captive. Ten thousand years ago, on Charum Hakkor, before I resealed its cage, this is what the captive had said to me, speaking in ancient Digon, which it had to have learned from our far-distant ancestors:\nWe meet again, young one. I am the last of those who gave you breath and shape and form, millions of years ago. I am the last of those your kind rose up against and ruthlessly destroyed. I am the last Precursor. And our answer is at hand.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Greg Bear would like to thank the excellent team at 343, including Frank O'Connor and Kevin Grace, for their creativity, patience, and 24/7 assistance in beginning this monumental journey through the Halo origins story. Thanks to my son, Erik Bear, for introducing me to Halo in the first place, and for providing additional creative input and thorough fan advice. And thanks to Eric Raab for watching over us all.\n343 Industries would like to thank Bungie Studios, Greg Bear, Scott Dell'Osso, Nick Dimitrov, David Figatner, Nancy Figatner, Josh Kerwin, Bryan Koski, Matt McCloskey, Corrinne Robinson, Bonnie Ross-Ziegler, Phil Spencer, and Carla Woo. Also the staff at Tor Books, including Tom Doherty, Karl Gold, Justin Golenbock, Seth Lerner, Jane Liddle, Heather Saunders, Eric Raab, Whitney Ross, and Nathan Weaver. And none of this would have been possible without the Herculean efforts of the Microsoft staffers, including Jacob Benton, Nicolas \"Sparth\" Bouvier, Alicia Brattin, Kevin Grace, Tyler Jeffers, Frank O'Connor, Ryan Payton, Jeremy Patenaude, Chris Schlerf, Kenneth Scott, and Kiki Wolfkill.Novels in the\n New York Times\n Bestselling Halo\n\n Series Halo\n\n: The Fall of Reach\n by Eric Nylund Halo\n\n: The Flood\n by William C. Dietz Halo\n\n: First Strike\n by Eric Nylund Halo\n\n: Ghosts of Onyx\n by Eric Nylund Halo\n\n: Contact Harvest\n by Joseph Staten Halo\n\n: The Cole Protocol\n by Tobias S. Buckell Halo\n\n: Evolutions\n by Various AuthorsThis is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. HALO\n\n: CRYPTUM Copyright  2010 by Microsoft Corporation All rights reserved. Microsoft, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox, the Xbox logo, 343 Industries, and the 343 Industries logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. A Tor\n\n eBook Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC\n175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010\nwww.tor-forge.com Tor\n\n is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. ISBN 978-0-7653-2396-5\nFirst Edition: January 2011\neISBN 978-1-4299-6164-6First Tor eBook Edition: January 2011"
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "Greg Bear and the team at 343 would like to dedicate this volume to Claude Errera in gratitude for ten years of faithful support for the Halo universe.HALO/SHIELD ALLIANCE 631\nRecord of communications with Autonomous Mechanical Intelligence (Forerunner Monitor). SCIENCE TEAM ANALYSIS:\n Appears to be severely damaged duplicate (?) of device previously reported lost/destroyed (File Ref. Dekagram-721-64-91.)\nMachine language records attached as holographic files. Incomplete and failed translation attempts deleted for brevity. TRANSLATION STYLE:\n LOCALIZED. Some words and phrases remain obscure. First successful AI translation:\n RESPONSE STREAM #1351\n[DATE REDACTED] 1621 hours (Repeated every 64 seconds.)\nWhat am I, really?\nA long time ago, I was a living, breathing human being. I went mad. I served my enemies. They became my only friends. Since then, I've traveled back and forth across this galaxy, and out to the spaces between galaxiesa greater reach than any human before me. You have asked me to tell you about that time. Since you are the true Reclaimers, I must obey. Are you recording? Good. Because my memory is failing rapidly. I doubt I'll be able to finish the story. Once, on my birth-world, a world I knew as Erde-Tyrene, and which now is called Earth, my name was Chakas. . . . Multiple data streams detected. COVENANT LANGUAGE STREAM identified. SCIENCE TEAM ANALYSIS:\n Prior contact with Covenant likely. Break for recalibration of AI translator. SCIENCE TEAM LEADER to MONITOR:\n \"We realize the difficulty of accessing all parts of your vast store of knowledge, and we'd like to help you in any way we can, including making necessary repairs . . . if we can be made to understand how you actually work.\n\"What we're having difficulty with is your contention that you were once a human beingover a thousand centuries ago. But rather than waste time with a full discussion of these matters, we've decided to proceed directly to your narrative. Our team has a dual focus for its questions.\n\"First question: When did you last have contact with the Forerunner known as the Didact, and under what circumstances did you part ways?\n\"Second question: What goals did Forerunners hope to achieve in their ancient relations with humans? . . .\"\nRESPONSE STREAM #1352 [DATE REDACTED] 2350 hours (first portion lost, nonrepeating):CONTENTS ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN TWENTY RISER'S STORY TWENTY-ONE TWENTY-TWO TWENTY-THREE TWENTY-FOUR TWENTY-FIVE TWENTY-SIX TWENTY-SEVEN TWENTY-EIGHT TWENTY-NINE THIRTY THIRTY-ONE THIRTY-TWO THIRTY-THREE THIRTY-FOUR THIRTY-FIVE THIRTY-SIXTHIRTY-SEVEN THIRTY-EIGHT THIRTY-NINE FORTY FORTY-ONE FORTY-TWOONE\n\n. . . LOOKED ACROSS THE\n deck of the star boat at the Didacta massive, gray-black shadow with the face of a warrior god. He was impassive, as usual. Far below, at the center of a great gulf of night filled with many ships, lay a planet under siegethe quarantined prison world of the San'Shyuum.\n\"What will happen to us?\" I asked.\n\"They will punish,\" Riser said gloomily. \"We're not supposed to be here!\"\nI turned to my small companion, reached to touch the long, dry fingers of his outstretched hand, and shot an angry glance at Bornstellar, the young Manipular that Riser and I had guided toDjamonkin Crater. He would not meet my eyes. Then, faster than thought or reflex, something cold and bright and awful carved up the distance between us, splitting us apart in blue white silence. War sphinxes with passionless faces moved in and scooped us up in transparent bubbles. I saw the Didact and Bornstellar packed away in their own bubbles like trophies. . . . The Didact seemed composed, preparedBornstellar, as frightened as I was. The bubble sucked in around me. I was caught in sudden stillness, my ears stuffed, my eyes darkened. This is how a dead man feels.\n\nFor a time, surrounded by senseless dark or flashes of nothing I could understand, I believed I was about to be ferried across the western water to the far grasslands where I would await judgment under the hungry gaze of sabertooths, hyenas, buzzards, and the great-winged eagles. I tried to prepare myself by listing my weaknesses, that I might appear humble before the judgment of Abada the Rhinoceros; that Abada might fend off the predators, and especially the hyenas; and that his old friend the Great Elephant might remember me and nudge my bones from the dirt, back to life, before the time that ends all.\n(For so I have seen in the sacred caves.)\nBut the stillness and silence continued. I felt a small itch in the pit of my arm, and in my ear, and then on my back where only a friend can reach. . . . The dead do not itch. Slowly, with a flickering rhythm, like the waving of a fan, the stiff blue silence lifted, scattering visions between shadows of blankness and misery. I saw Riser wrapped in another bubble not far from me, and Bornstellar beside him. The Didact was not with us. My ears seemed to popa painful, muffled echo in my head. Now I heard distant words . . . and listened closely. We had been taken prisoner by a powerful Forerunner called the Master Builder. The Didact and the Master Builder had long opposed each other. I learned as well that Riser and I were prizes to be stolen from the Didact. We would not be destroyed right away; we had value, for the Librarian had imprinted us at birth with ancient memories that might prove useful.For a time, I wondered if we were about to be introduced to the hideous Captivethe one my ancient ancestors had locked away for so many thousands of years, the one released by the Master Builder's ignorant testing of his new weapon-toy, a gigantic ring called Halo. . . . Then I felt another presence in my head. I had felt this before, first while walking over the ruins at Charum Hakkor, and then later, witnessing the plight of humanity's old allies, the once beautiful and sensuous San'Shyuum, in their quarantined system. Old memories seemed to be traveling across great distances to reassemble, like members of a tribe long lost to each other . . . struggling to retrieve one personality, not my own. In my boredom, thinking this was merely a strange sort of dream, I reached out as if to touch the jittering pieces. . . . And was back on Charum Hakkor, walking the parapet above the pit, where the Captive had been imprisoned for more than ten thousand years. My dream-bodyoft-wounded, plagued with aches and motivated by a festering hatredapproached the railing and looked down upon the thick-domed timelock. The lock had been split wide like the casing of a great bomb. Something that smelled like thunder loomed behind me. It cast a shimmering green shadowa shadow with far too many arms! I tried to turn and could not. . . . Nor could I hear myself scream.\n\nSoon enough I lapsed back into a void filled with prickly irritations:\nitching but unable to scratch, thirsty but without water, muscles both frozen and restless. . . . Viscera trying to writhe. Hungry and nauseated at the same time. This long, weightless suspension was suddenly interrupted by violent shaking. I was falling. Through the filters of my Forerunner armor, my skin sensed heat, and I glimpsed blossoms of fire, searing blasts of energy trying but failing to reach in and cook methen, more buffeting, accompanied by the gut-wrenching shudder of distant explosions. Came a final slamming impact. My jaw snapped up and my teeth almost bit through my tongue. Still, at first there was no pain. Fog filled me. Now I knew\n I was dead and felt some relief. Perhaps I had already been punishedsufficiently and would be spared the attentions of hyenas and buzzards and eagles. I anticipated joining my ancestors, my grandmother and grandfather, and if my mother had died in my absence, her as well. They would cross rich green prairies to greet me, floating over the ground, smiling and filled with love, and beside them would pad the jaguar that snarls at the sabertooth, and slither the great crocodile that darts from the mud to put to flight the ravenous buzzardsin that place where all hatred is finally extinguished. There, my good family spirits would welcome me, and my troubles would be over.\n(For so I had seen in the sacred caves.)\nI was not at all happy when I realized yet again that this darkness was not death, but another kind of sleep. My eyes were closed. I opened them. Light flooded in on me, not very bright, but after the long darkness, it seemed blinding. It was not a spiritual light. Blurry shapes moved around me. My tongue decided to hurt horribly. I felt hands tugging and fumbling at my arms and legs, and smelled something foulmy own scat. Very bad. Spirits don't stink. I tried to raise my hand, but someone held it down and there was another struggle. More hands forcibly bent my arms and legs at painful angles. Slowly I puzzled this out. I was still wearing the broken Forerunner armor the Didact had given me on his ship. Stooped and bent shapes were pulling me from that stinking shell. When they had finished, I was laid out flat on a hard surface. Water poured cool and sweet over my face. The crusted salt of my upper lip stung my tongue. I fully opened my puffy eyes and blinked up at a roof made of woven reeds thatched with leaves and branches. Sprawled on the cold, gritty platform, I was no better than a newborn: naked, twitching, bleary-eyed, mute from shock. Cool, careful fingers wiped my face clean, then rubbed grassy juice under my nose. The smell was sharp and wakeful. I drank more watermuddy, earthy, inexpressibly sweet. Against flickering orange light I could now make out a single figureblack as night, slender as a young treerubbing its fingers beside its own broad nose, over its wide, rounded cheeks, then combing them through the hair on its scalp. It rubbed this soothing skin-oil on my chapped, cracked lips. I wondered if I was again being visited, as I was at birth, by thesupreme Lifeshaper whom the Didact claimed was his wifethe Librarian. But the figure that hovered over me was smaller, darker not a beautiful memory but solid flesh. I smelled a woman. A young woman. That scent brought an extraordinary change to my outlook. Then I heard others murmuring, followed by sad, desperate laughter, followed by words I barely understood . . . words from ancient languages I had never heard spoken on Erde Tyrene. How then could I understand them at all? What kind of beings were these? They looked human in outlineseveral kinds of human, perhaps. Slowly, I reengaged the old memories within me, like digging out the roots of a fossil tree . . . and found the necessary knowledge. Long ago, thousands of years before I was born, humans had used such words. The assembled shadows around me were commenting on my chances of recovery. Some were doubtful. Others expressed leering admiration for the female. A few grinding voices discussed whether the strongest man in the village would take her. The tree-slender girl said nothing, merely giving me more water. Finally, I tried to speak, but my tongue wouldn't work properly. Even without being half-bitten through, it was not yet trained to form the old words.\n\"Welcome back,\" the girl said. Her voice was husky but musical. Gradually my vision cleared. Her face was round and so black it was almost purple. \"Your mouth is full of blood. Don't talk. Just rest.\"\nI closed my eyes again. If I could only make myself speak, the Librarian's imprint from ancient human warriors might prove useful after all.\n\"He came in armor, like a crab,\" said a low, grumbling male voice. So many of these voices sounded frightened, furtivecruel and desperate. \"He fell after the brightness and burning in the sky, but he's not one of the Forerunners.\"\n\"The Forerunners died. He did not,\" the girl said.\n\"Then they'll come hunting him. Maybe he killed them,\" another voice said. \"He's no use to us. He could be a danger. Put him out in the grass for the ants.\"\n\"How could he\n kill the Forerunners?\" the girl asked. \"He was ina jar. The jar fell and cracked open when it hit the ground. He lay in the grass for an entire night while we cowered in our huts, but the ants did not bite him.\"\n\"If he stays, there will be less food for the rest of us. And if Forerunners lost him, then they will come looking for him and punish us.\"\nI listened to these suppositions with mild interest. I knew less about such matters than the shadows did.\n\"Why?\" the dark girl asked. \"They kept him in the jar. We saved him. We took him out of the heat. We will feed him and he will live. Besides, they punish us no matter what we do.\"\n\"They haven't come for many days to take any\n of us away,\" said another voice, more calm or more resigned. \"After the fires in the sky, the city and the forest and the plain are quiet. We no longer hear their sky boats. Maybe they're all gone.\"\nThe voices from the milling circle dulled and faded. None of what they said made much sense. I had no idea where I might be. I was too tired to care. I don't know how long I slept. When I opened my eyes again, I looked to one side, then the other. I was lying inside a wide meeting house with log walls. I was naked but for two pieces of worn, dirty cloth. The meeting house was empty, but at my groan, the dark girl came through the reed-covered doorway and kneeled down beside me. She was younger than me. Little more than a girlnot quite a woman. Her eyes were large and reddish brown, and her hair was a wild tangle the color of water-soaked rye grass.\n\"Where am I?\" I asked clumsily, using the old words as best I could.\n\"Maybe you can tell us. What's your name?\"\n\"Chakas,\" I said.\n\"I don't know that name,\" the girl said. \"Is it a secret name?\"\n\"No.\" I focused on her, ignoring the silhouettes of others as they filed back in through the door and stood around me. Other than the tree-slender female, most of them kept well back, in a wide circle. One of the old men stepped forward and tried to pluck at the girl's shoulder. She shrugged his hand away, and he cackled and danced off.\n\"Where do you come from?\" she asked me.\n\"Erde-Tyrene,\" I said.\"I don't know that place.\" She spoke to the others. No one else had heard of it.\n\"He's no good to us,\" an older man said, one of the shrill, argumentative voices from earlier. He was heavy of shoulder and low of forehead and smacked his thick lips in disapproval. All different types of human being were here, as I had guessedbut none as small as Riser. I missed Riser and wondered where he had ended up.\n\"This one fell from the sky in a jar,\" the older man repeated, as if the story was already legend. \"The jar landed in the dry short grass and cracked and broke, and not even the ants thought he was worth eating.\"\nAnother man picked up the tale. \"Someone high above lost him. The flying shadows dropped him. He'll just bring them back sooner, and this time they'll take us all to the Palace of Pain.\"\nI did not like the sound of that. \"Are we on a planet?\" I asked the girl. The words I chose meant \"big home,\" \"broad land,\" \"all under-sky.\"\nThe girl shook her head. \"I don't think so.\"\n\"Is it a great star boat, then?\"\n\"Be quiet and rest. Your mouth is bleeding.\" She gave me more water and wiped my lips.\n\"You'll have to choose soon,\" the old, cackling one said. \"Your Gamelpar can't protect you now!\"\nThen the others went away. I rolled over.\n\nLater, she shook me awake. \"You've slept long enough,\" she said.\n\"Your tongue isn't bleeding now. Can you tell me what it's like where you come from? Up in the sky? Try to speak slowly.\"\nI moved lips, tongue, jaw. All were sore, but I could talk easily enough. I propped myself up on my elbow. \"Are you all human?\"\nShe hummed through her nose and leaned forward to wipe my eyes. \"We're the Tudejsa, if that's what you're asking.\" Later I would put this word in context and understand that it meant the People from Here, or just the People.\n\"And this isn't Erde-Tyrene.\"\n\"I doubt it. Where we are is a place between other places.Where we came from, we will never see again. Where we are going, we do not want to be. So we live here and wait. Sometimes Forerunners take us away.\"\n\"Forerunners . . . ?\"\n\"The gray ones. The blue ones. The black ones. Or their machines.\"\n\"I know some of them,\" I said. She looked dubious. \"They don't like us. We're happy they haven't come for many days. Even before the sky became bright and filled with fire\"\n\"Where do they\n come fromthese People?\" I waved my arm at the silhouettes still coming and going through the door, some smacking their lips in judgment and making disapproving sounds.\n\"Some of us come from the old city. That's where I was born. Others have gathered from across the plain, from river and jungle, from the long grass. Some walked here five sleeps ago, after they saw you fall from the sky in your jar. One fellow tries to make people pay to see you.\"\nI heard a scuffle outside, a yelp, and then three burly gawkers shuffled in, keeping well back from us.\n\"The cackling bastard who fancies you?\" I asked her. She shook her head. \"Another fool. He wants more food. They just knock him down and kick him aside.\"\nShe didn't seem to like many of the People.\n\"Valley, jungle, river . . . city, prairie. Sounds like home,\" I said.\n\"It isn't.\n\" She swept her gaze around the gawkers with pinched disappointment. \"We are not friends, and no one is willing to be family. When we are taken away, it brings too much pain.\"\nI raised myself on my arm. \"Am I strong enough to go outside?\"\nShe pressed me back down. Then she pushed the gawkers out, looked back, and stepped through the hanging grass door. When she returned, she carried a roughly carved wooden bowl. With her fingers she spooned some of the contents into my mouth: bland mush, ground-up grass seed. It didn't taste very goodwhat I could taste of itbut what I swallowed stayed in my stomach. Soon I felt stronger. Then she said, \"Time to go outside, before someone decides to kill you.\" She helped me to my feet and pushed aside the door hanging. A slanting burst of bluish white glare dazzled me. When Isaw the color of that light, a feeling of dread, of not wanting to be where I was, came on me fierce. It was not a good light. But she persisted and pulled me out under the purple-blue sky. Shielding my eyes, I finally located the horizonrising up like a distant wall. Turning slowly, swiveling my neck despite the pain, I tracked that far wall until it began to curve upward, ever so gently. I swung around. The horizon curved upward to both sides. Not good, not right. Horizons do not curve up. I followed the gradually rising sweep higher and higher. The land kept climbing like the slope of a mountainclimbing but narrowing, until I could see both sides of a great, wide band filled with grassland, rocky fields . . . mountains. Some distance away, a foreshortened and irregular dark blue smear crossed almost the entire width of the band, flanked and interrupted by the nearest of those mountainspossibly a large body of water. And everywhere out there on the bandclouds in puffs and swirls and spreading white shreds, like streamers of fleece in a cleansing river. Weather. Higher and higher . . . I leaned my head back as far as I could without falling over until the rising band crossed into shadow and slimmed to a skinny, perfect ribbon that cut the sky in half and just hung therea dark blue, overarching sky bridge. At an angle about two-thirds of the way up one side of the bridge, perched just above the edge, was the source of the intense, purple-blue light: a small, brilliant sun. Turning around again, cupping my hand over the blue sun, I studied the opposite horizon. The wall on that side was too far away to see. But I guessed that both sides of the great ribbon were flanked by walls. Definitely not a planet. My hopes fell to zero. My situation had not improved in any way. I was not home. I was very far from any home. I had been deposited on one of the great, ring-shaped weapons that had so entranced and divided my Forerunner captors. I was marooned on a Halo.TWO\n H OW I WISH\n I could recover the true shape of that young human I was! Naive, crude, unlettered, not very clever. I fear that over the last hundred thousand years, much of that has rubbed away. Myvoice and base of knowledge has changedI have no body to guide meand so I might seem, in this story, as I tell it now, more sophisticated, weighted down by far too much knowledge. I was not sophisticatednot in the least. My impression of myself in those days is of anger, confusion, unchecked curiosity but no purpose, no focused ambition. Riser had given me focus and courage, and now, he was gone.\n\nWhen I was born, the supreme Lifeshaper came to Erde-Tyrene to touch me with her will. Erde-Tyrene was her\n world, her protectorate and preserve, and humans were special to her. I remember she was beautiful beyond measure, unlike my mother, who was lovely, but fairly ordinary as women go. My family farmed for a while outside of the main human city of Marontik. After my father died in a knife fight with a water baron's thugs, and our crops failed, we moved into the city, where my sisters and I took up menial tasks for modest pay. For a time, my sisters also served as Prayer Maidens in the temple of the Lifeshaper. They lived away from Mother and me, in a makeshift temple near the Moon Gate, in the western section of the Old City.\n. . . But I see your eyes glazing over. A Reclaimer who lacks patience! Watching you yawn makes me wish I still had jaws and lungs and could yawn with you. You know nothing of Marontik, so I will not bore you further with those details. Why are you so interested in the Didact? Is he proving to be a difficulty to humans once again? Astonishing. I will not tell you about the Didact, not yet. I will tell this in my own way. This is the way my mind works, now.\n If I still have a mind. I am moving on.\n\nAfter the Librarian (I was only an infant when I saw her) the next Forerunner I encountered was a young Manipular named Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting. I set out to trick him. It was the worst mistake of my young life. Back before I met Riser, I was a rude, rough boy, always getting into trouble and stealing. I liked fighting and didn't mind receivinginto trouble and stealing. I liked fighting and didn't mind receiving small wounds and bruises. Others feared me. Then I started having dreams that a Forerunner would come to visit me. I made my dream-self attack and bite him and then rob him of the things he carriedtreasure that I could sell in the market. I dreamed I would use this treasure to bring my sisters back from the temple to live with us. In the real world, I robbed other humans instead. But then one of the chamanune\n came to our house and inquired after me. Despite their size, chamanush\n were respected and we rarely attacked them. I had never robbed one because I heard stories that they banded together to punish those who hurt them. They slipped in, whispering in the night, like marauding monkeys, and took vengeance. They were small but smart and fierce and mostly came and went as they pleased. This one was friendly enough. He said his name was Riser and he had seen someone like me in a dream: a rough, young hamanush\n who needed his guidance. In my mother's crude hovel, he took me aside and said he would give me good work if I didn't cause trouble. Riser became my boss, despite his size. He knew many interesting places in and around Marontik where a young fellow such as myselfbarely twenty years oldcould be usefully employed. He took a cut of my wages, and his clan fed my family, and we in turn protected his clan from the more stupid thugs who believed that size mattered. Those were exciting times in Marontik. By which I mean, stupid cruelties were common. Yes, chamanush\n are human, though tinier than my people, the hamanush.\n Indeed, as your display now tells you, some since have called them Florians or even Hobbits, and others may have known them as menehune.\n They loved islands and water and hunting and excelled at building mazes and walls. I see you have pictures of their bones. Those bones look as if they might indeed fit inside a chamanush.\n How old are they?\n*INTERRUPTION*\nMONITOR HAS PENETRATED AI FIREWALL\n AI RECALIBRATION\n\nDo not be alarmed. I have accessed your data stores and taken command of your display. I mean no harm . . . now.\n And it has been ever so long since I tasted fresh information. Curious. I see these pictures are from a place called Flores Island, which is on Erde-Tyrene, now called Earth. In reward for their service, I can now see that the Lifeshaper in later millennia placed Riser's people on a number of Earth's islands. On Flores, she provided them with small elephants and hippos and other tiny beasts to hunt. . . . They do love fresh meat. If what your history archives tell me is correct, I believe the last of Riser's people died out when humans arrived by canoe at their final home, a great island chain formed by volcanoes that burned through the crust. . . . I see the largest of those islands is known as Hawaii. I am getting distracted. Still, I notice you are no longer yawning. Am I revealing secrets of interest to your scientists?\nBut you are most interested in the Didact. I am moving on.\n\nSoon after Riser took charge of my life, following a decline in our work opportunities, he began to direct his attentions toward preparing for \"a visitor.\"\nRiser told me he had also seen a young Forerunner in a dream. We did not discuss the matter much. We did not have to. Both of us lay under thrall. Riser had met male Forerunners before; I had not. He described them to me, but I already saw clearly enough what our visitor would look like. He would be a young one, a Manipular, not fully mature, perhaps arrogant and foolish. He would come seeking treasure. Riser told me that what I was seeing in my dreams was part of a geas a set of commands and memories left in my mind and body by the Lifeshaper who touches us all at birth. As a general rule, Forerunners were shaped much like humans, though larger. In their youth they were tall and slender, gray of skin,and covered nape, crown, shoulders, and along the backs of their hands with a fine, pale fur, pinkish purple or white in color. Odd looking, to be sure, but not exactly ugly. The older males, Riser assured me, were differentlarger, bulkier, less human-looking, but still, not exactly ugly. \"They are a little like the vaeites\n and alben\n that come in our eldest dreams,\" he explained. \"But they are still mighty. They could kill us all if they wanted to, and many would. . . .\"\nI took his meaning right away, as if somewhere within my deep memory, I knew it already. The Manipular did indeed arrive on Erde-Tyrene, seeking treasure. He was indeed foolish. And we did indeed provide him with what he soughtguidance to a source of mysterious power. But where we took him was not a secret Precursor ruin. Following our geas,\n we led Bornstellar into the inland wastes a hundred kilometers from Marontik to a crater filled with a freshwater lake. At its center this crater held a ring-shaped island, like a giant target waiting for an arrow to fly down from the gods. This place was legendary among the chamanune.\n They had explored it many times and had built trails and mazes and walls across its surface. At the center of the ring-shaped island stood a tall mountain. Very few chamanush\n had ever visited that mountain. As the days passed, I came to realize that despite my urges, I could not hurt this Manipularthis young Forerunner. Despite his irritating manner and obvious feeling of superiority, there was something about him that I liked. Like me, he sought treasure and adventure, and he was willing to do wrong things. Meeting him, I began my long fall to where I am now what\n I am now. The Didact was in fact the secret of Djamonkin Crater. The ring shaped island was where the Librarian had hidden her husband's warrior Cryptum, a place of deep meditation and sanctuary hidden from other Forerunners who were seeking him, for reasons I could not then understand. But now the time of his resurrection had come. A Forerunner had to be present for the Cryptum to be unsealed. We helped Bornstellar raise the Didact by singing old songs. The Librarian had provided us with all the skills and instincts we needed, as part of our geas.And the Didact emerged from his long sleep. He plumped out like a dried flower dipped in oil. He rose up among us, weak at first and angry. The Librarian had left him a great star boat hidden inside the central mountain. He kidnapped us and took us aboard that star boat, along with Bornstellar. We traveled to Charum Hakkor, which awoke another set of memories within me . . . then to Faun Hakkor, where we saw proof that a monstrous experiment had been carried out by the Master Builder. And then the star boat flew to the San'Shyuum quarantine system. It was there that Riser and I were separated from Bornstellar and the Didact, taken prisoner by the Master Builder, locked into bubbles, unable to move, barely able to breathe, surrounded by a spinning impression of space and planet and the dark, cramped interiors of various ships. Once, I caught a glimpse of Riser, contorted in his ill-fitting Forerunner armor, eyes closed as if napping, his generous, furred lips lifted at the corners, as if he dreamed of home and family. . . . His calm visage became for me a necessary reminder of the tradition and dignity of being human. This is important in my memory. Such memories and feelings define who I once was. I would have them back in the flesh. I would do anything to have them back in the flesh. Then what I have already told you happened, happened. Now I will tell you the rest.THREE\n T HE HUTS STOOD\n on a flat stretch of dirt and dry grass. A few hundred meters away was a tree line, not any sort of trees I recognized, but definitely trees. Beyond those trees, stretching far toward the horizon-wall and some distance up the thick part of the band, was a beautiful old city. It reminded me of Marontik, but it might have been even older. The young female told me that none of the People lived there now, nor had they lived there for some time.Forerunners had come to take away most of the People, and soon the rest decided the city was no longer a safe place. I asked her if the Palace of Pain was in this city. She said it was not, but the city held many bad memories. I leaned on the girl's shoulder, turned unsteadilyand saw that the trees continued in patches for kilometer after kilometer along the other side of the band, for as far as the eye could see . . . grassland and forest curving up into a blue obscurityhaze, clouds. The young woman's hand felt warm and dry and not very soft. That told me she was a worker, as my mother had been. We stood under the blue-purple sky, and she watched me as I turned again and again, studying the great sky bridge, caught between fear and marvel, trying to understand. Old memories stirring. You've seen a Halo, haven't you? Perhaps you've visited one. It was taking me some time to convince myself it was all real, and then, to orient myself. \"How long have you been here?\" I asked her.\n\"Ever since I can remember. But Gamelpar talks about the time before we came here.\"\n\"Who's Gamelpar?\"\nShe bit her lip, as if she had spoken too soon. \"An old man. The others don't like him, because he won't give them permission to mate with me. They threw him out and now he lives away from the huts, out in the trees.\"\n\"What if they tryyou knowwithout his permission?\" I asked, irritated by the prospect, but genuinely curious. Sometimes females won't talk about being taken against their will.\n\"I hurt them. They stop,\" she said, flashing long, horny fingernails. I believed her. \"Has he told you where the People lived before they came here?\"\n\"He says the sun was yellow. Then, when he was a baby, the People were taken inside. They lived inside walls and under ceilings. He says those People were brought here before I was born.\"\n\"Were they carried inside a star boat?\"\n\"I don't know about that. The Forerunners never explain. They rarely speak to us.\"\nTurning around, I studied again the other side of the curve. Far up that side of the curve, the grassland and forest ran up against a border of blocky lines, beyond which stretched austere grayness,which faded into that universal bluish obscurity but emerged again far, far up and away, along that perfect bridge looping up, up, and around, growing thinner and now very dark, just a finger-width wideI held up my finger at arm's length, while the female watched with half-curious annoyance. Again, I nearly fell over, dizzy and feeling a little sick.\n\"We're near the edge,\" I said.\n\"The edge of what?\"\n\"A Halo. It's like a giant hoop. Ever play hoop sticks?\" I showed how with my hands. She hadn't.\n\"Well, the hoop spins and keeps everyone pressed to the inside.\"\nShe did not seem impressed. I myself was not sure if that indeed was what stuck the dirt, and us, safely on the surface. \"We're on the inside, near that wall.\" I pointed. \"The wall keeps all the air and dirt from slopping into space.\"\nNone of this was important to her. She wanted to live somewhere else but had never known anything but here. \"You think you're smart,\" she said, only a touch judgmental. I shook my head. \"If I was smart, I wouldn't be here. I'd be back on Erde-Tyrene, keeping my sisters out of trouble, working with Riser. . . .\"\n\"Your brother?\"\n\"Not exactly,\" I said. \"Short fellow. Human, but not like me or you.\"\n\"You aren't one of us,\n either,\" she informed me with a sniff. \"The People have beautiful black skins and flat, broad noses. You do not.\"\nIrritated, I was about to tell her that some Forerunners had black skins but decided that hardly mattered and shrugged it off.FOUR\n O N OUR SECOND\n outing, we stopped by a pile of rocks and the girl found a ready supply both of water from a spring and scorpions, which she revealed by lifting a rock. I remembered scorpions on Erde-Tyrene, but these were bigger, as wide as my hand, and black substantial, and angry at being disturbed. She taught me how to prepare and eat them. First you caught them by their segmented stinging tails. She was good at that, but it took me a while to catch on. Then you pulled off the tail and ate the rest, or if you were bold, popped the claws and body into your mouth, then\n plucked the tail and tossed it aside, still twitching. Those scorpions tasted bitter and sweet at the same timeand then greasy-grassy. They didn't really taste like anything else I knew. The texturewell, you get used to anything when you're hungry. We ate a fair number of them and sat back and looked up at the blue-purple sky.\n\"You can see it's a big ring,\" I said, leaning against a boulder. \"A ring just floating in space.\"\n\"Obviously,\" she said. \"I'm not a fool. That,\" she said primly, following my finger, \"is toward the center of the ring, and the other side. The stars are there, and there.\" She pointed to either side of the arching bridge. \"Sky is cupped in the ring like water in atrough.\"\nWe thought this over for a while, still resting.\n\"You know my name. Are you allowed to tell me yours?\"\n\"My borrowing name, the name you\n can use, is Vinnevra. It was my mother's name when she was a girl.\"\n\"Vinnevra. Good. When will you tell me your true name?\"\nShe looked away and scowled. Best not to ask. I was thinking about the ring and the shadows and what happened when the sun went behind the bridge and a big glow shot out to either side. I could see that. I could even begin to understand it. In my old memorystill coming together, slowly and cautiously it was known as a corona, and it was made of ionized gases and rarefied winds blowing and glowing away from the nearby star that was the blue sun.\n\"Are there other rivers, springs, sources of water out there?\"\n\"How should I know?\" she said. \"This place isn't real. It's made to support animals, though, and us. Why else would they put juicy scorpions out here? That means there might be more water.\"\nMore impressive by the moment! \"Let's walk,\" I suggested.\n\"And leave all these scorpions uneaten?\"\nShe scrambled for some more crawling breakfast. I left my share for her and walked around the rock pile, studying the flat distance that led directly to the near wall.\n\"If I had Forerunner armor,\" I said, \"I would know all these words, in any language. A blue lady would explain anything I ask her to explain.\"\n\"Talking to yourself means the gods will tease your ears when you sleep,\" Vinnevra said, coming up quietly behind me. She wiped scorpion juice from her lips and taunted me with one last twitching tail.\n\"Aii! Careful!\" I said, dodging. She threw the tail aside. \"They're like bee stingers,\" she said.\n\"And yes. That means there are bees here, and maybe honey.\"\nThen she set out across the sand, dirt, and grass, which looked real enough, but of course wasn't, because the Forerunners had made this ring as a kind of corral, to hold animals such as ourselves. And it cupped the skya still river of air on the inside. How humbling, I thought, but I don't think my face looked humble and abject. It probably looked angry.\"Stop grumbling,\" she said. \"Be pleasant. I'll take back my name and stitch your lips shut with dragon fly thread.\"\nI wondered if she was beginning to like me. On Erde-Tyrene, she would already be married and have many childrenor serve the Lifeshaper in her temple, like my sisters.\n\"Do you know why the sky is blue?\" I asked, walking beside her.\n\"No,\" she said. I tried to explain. She pretended not to be interested. She did not have to pretend hard. We talked like this, back and forth, and I don't remember most of what we said, so I suppose it wasn't important, but it was pleasant enough. I could not avoid noticing that the angle of the sun had changed a little. The Halo was spinning with a slight wobble. Twisting. Whatever you call it when the hoop . . . Precesses. Like a top. The old memories stirred violently. My brain seemed to leap with the excitement of someone else, watching and thinking inside me. I saw diagrams, felt numbers flood through my thoughts, felt the hoop, the Halo, spinning on more than one axis. . . . What old human that came from, I had no idea, but I saw clearly that based on engineering\n and physics,\n a Halo would not be able to precess very quickly. Perhaps the Halo was slowing down, like a hoop rolling along. . . . When it starts to slow, it wobbles. I didn't like that idea at all. Again, everything seemed to move under me, a sickening sensation but not real, not yet. Still, I felt ill. I dropped to my haunches, then sat. I hadn't earned any of this knowledge. Once more, I was haunted by the dead. Somebody else had died so that this knowledge would be left inside of me. I hated itso superior, so full of understanding. I hated feeling weak and stupid and sick.\n\"I need to go back inside,\" I said. \"Please.\"\nVinnevra took me back into the hut, away from the crazy sky. Except for us, the hut was empty. I was no longer much of a curiosity. I sat on the edge of the platform of dried mud-brick. The young female sat beside me and leaned forward. \"It's been five days since you arrived. I've been watching over you ever since, to see if you'd live or die. . . . Giving you water. Trying to get you to eat.\" Shestretched out her arms and waggled her hands, then yawned. \"I'm exhausted.\"\n\"Thank you,\" I said. She seemed to be trying to decide something. Her manners and a certain shyness would not allow her to just stare. \"You lived inside .\n. . on Erde-Tyrene?\"\n\"No. There's a sky, ground, sun . . . dirt and grass and trees, too. But not like this.\"\n\"I know. We don't like it here, and not just because they take us away.\"\nForerunner treachery . . . I shook my head to clear away that strange, powerful voice. But the existence of that voice, and its insight, was starting to make a kind of sense. We had been toldand I still felt the truth of itthat the Lifeshaper had made us into her own little living libraries, her own collections of human warrior memory. I recalled that Bornstellar was being haunted by a ghost of the living Didact, even before we parted ways. All of useven he were subject to deep layers of Lifeshaper geas. Even though it looked as if I had fallen out of somebody's pockets, I might still be under the control of the Master Builder. It made sense that if Riser and I had value, he would move us to one of his giant weapons, then return later to scour our brains and finish his work. But there was no Riser. And no Bornstellar, of course. I had an awful thought, and as I looked at the woman, my face must have changed, because she reached out to softly pat my cheek.\n\"Was the little fellow with me when I came here?\" I asked. \"The cha manush\n? Did you bury him?\"\n\"No,\" she said. \"Only you. And Forerunners.\"\n\"Forerunners?\"\nShe nodded. \"The night of fire, you all leaped through the sky like falling torches. You landed here, in a jar. You lived. They did not. We pulled you out of the broken jar and carried you inside. You were wearing that\n.\" She pointed to the armor, still curled up on one side of the hut.\n\"Some sort of capsule,\" I said, but the word didn't mean much to her. Perhaps I had just been tossed aside. Perhaps I did not haveany value after all. The people here were being treated like cattle, not valuable resources. Nothing was certain. What could any of us do? More than at any time before, my confusion flared into anger. I hated the Forerunners even more intensely than when I had seen the destruction of Charum Hakkor. . . . And remembered the final battle. I got up and paced around in the hut's cooler shade, then kicked the armor with my toe. No response. I stuck one foot inside the chest cavity, but it refused to climb up around me. No little blue spirit appeared in my head. Vinnevra gave me a doubtful look.\n\"I'm all right,\" I said.\n\"You want to go outside again?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said. This time, under the crazy sky, my feet felt stable enough, but my eyes would not stop rising to that great, awful bridge. I still wasn't clear what information any of these humans could provide. They seemed mostly cowed, disorganized, beaten downabused and then forgotten. That had made them desperate and mean. This Halo was not the place where I wished to end my life.\n\"We should leave,\" I said. \"We should leave this village, the grassland, this place\n.\" I swung my arm out beyond the tree line.\n\"Maybe out there we can find a way to escape.\"\n\"What about your friend, the little one?\"\n\"If he's hereI'll find him, then escape.\" Truly, I longed to start looking for Riser. He would know what to do. I was focusing my last hopes on the little cha manush\n who had saved me once before.\n\"If we go too far, they'll come looking and find us,\" Vinnevra said. \"That's what they've done before. Besides, there's not much food out there.\"\n\"How do you know that?\"\nShe shrugged. I studied the far trees. \"Where there are bugs, there might be birds,\" I said. \"Do you ever see birds?\"\n\"They fly over.\"\n\"That means there might be other animals. The Lifeshaper\"\n\"The Lady,\" Vinnevra said, looking at me sideways.\n\"Right. The Lady probably keeps all sorts of animals here\"\n\"Including us. We're animals to them.\"I didn't know what to say to that. \"We could hunt and live out there. Make the Forerunners look hard for us, if they want us. At least we wouldn't be sitting here, waiting to be snatched in our sleep.\"\nVinnevra now studied me much the same way I studied the distant trees. I was an odd thing, not one of the People, not completely alien. \"Look,\" I said, \"if you need to ask permission, if you need to ask your father or mother . . .\"\n\"My father and mother were taken to the Palace of Pain when I was a girl,\" she said.\n\"Well, who can\n you ask? Your Gamelpar?\"\n\"He's just Gamelpar.\" She squatted and drew a circle in the dirt with her finger. Then she took a short stick out of the folds of her pants and tossed it between two hands. Grabbing the stick and holding it up, she drew another circle, this one intersecting the first. Then she threw the stick up. It landed in the middle, where the two circles crossed. \"Good,\" she said. \"The stick agrees. I will take you to Gamelpar. We both saw the jar fall from the sky and land near the village. He told me to go see what it was. I did, and there you were. He likes me to bring news.\"\nThis outburst of information startled me. Vinnevra had been holding back, waiting until she had made some or other judgment about me. Gamelparthe name of the old man no longer wanted in the village. The name sounded something like \"old father.\" How old was he?\nAnother ghost?\nThe shadow racing along the great hoop was fast approaching. In a few hours it would be dark. I stood for a moment, not sure what was happening, not at all sure I wanted to learn who or what Gamelpar was.\n\"Before we do that, can you take me to where the jar fell?\" I asked. \"Just in case there might be something I can find useful.\"\n\"Just you? You think it's about you?\"\n\"And Riser,\" I said, resenting her sad tone. She approached and touched my face, feeling my skin and underlying facial muscles with her rough fingers. I was startled, but let her do whatever she thought she had to do. Finally, she drew back with a shudder, let out her breath, and closed her eyes.\n\"We'll go there first,\" she said. \"And then I will take you to seeGamelpar.\"\n\nThe site of my \"jar\" was about an hour's walk. She led me out of the reed-hut camp and across a shallow stream, through a spinney of low, heat-shriveled trees, where the air smelled bittersweetly of old fires and drying leaves. Up a low hill, and down again, we finally came to a flat meadow that had once been covered with grass familiar, I thought, very like home. But the grass had been burnt up in a fire and was now gray and black stubble. The char and dust burst up around our feet and blackened our legs. Finally, I saw a grouping of large, grayish white, rounded objects I took to be bouldersand then I realized they were not boulders, but fallen star boats, larger than war sphinxes but much smaller than the Didact's ship. Vinnevra showed no fear as we approached these vessels. There were three of them, each split wide open, surrounded by deeper char and scattered debris. She stopped at the periphery of the rough oval they formed. It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. The hulls were not complete, and yet they had not just broken apart or burned upparts had simply gone away. These boats, I remembered, were not just made of solid stuff. They were spun out of temporary stuff as well, what the Forerunners called hard light. The Forerunners that had flown inside the first boatsix or seven of them, if I counted the pieces correctlylay sprawled in the wreckage, most still wrapped in their armor. On four, the armor was cluttered with strange attachments, like fist-sized metal fleas. The fleas had gathered along the joints and seams. Fearful myself nowvisualizing the fleas leaping loose and landing on meI backed off, hunkered down, and studied them carefully from a distance. The fleas didn't move. They were broken. The bodies still smelled bad. They had swollen out of their armor, what parts had not been cooked away by the impact. The emotions I felt were confused, exultant, and sad at once and then alarmed. I walked around the first hulk and wondered if Bornstellar was among these dead. After a few minutes, Vinnevra called to ask when I was going to be done here. \"In a while,\" I said.Now I moved a few dozen paces to the second star boat. It was of a different design, more organic, like a seed pod, with short spikes covering its surface. The Forerunners left insidethree of themwore no armor and had been reduced to blackened skeletons. They seemed differentdifferent styles of boats, different types of Forerunners. Had they fought each other?\nIf this Halo was a gigantic fortressas it certainly had the potential to bethen perhaps it had its own defenses, and I was looking at a sad remnant of a much larger battlewhat the People here called the \"fire in the sky.\" I could not know that for sure, of course. I could not know anything for sure. Dead Forerunners, it seemed, decayed much as dead humans do, yet I knew that the armor, if active, would have done all in its power to protect them while alive, and even to preserve them after death. Therefore, the armor had failed before the crash. It seemed reasonable to assume that the strange flea-machines had something to do with this. My old memories had no experience of Halos and knew nothing of current Forerunner politics. But I could feel an interior tickle of speculation, and wondered if there was any way I could coax it outbring it forward.\n\"Tell me what these are,\" I said, and shivered despite my attempt at bravado. Waking ghosts was never a good idea. Armor cracking units. The old memoriesthe dominant old spirit within mesuddenly revealed its own mixed emotions about the carnage.\n\"Human-madehuman weapons?\" I whispered. Not human. Forerunner. Fratricide. Civil war. I had been present on the periphery of a few Forerunner disputes and power plays. Ten thousand years ago, the Forerunners had been united in their conquest of my ancestors. Now, it seemed clear that they were even more deeply divided.\n\"The fleas got into the star boats and cracked the crew's armor before the boats crashed,\" I speculated. \"Is that what happened?\"\nYou are young. I am old. I am dead,\n the old memory said, like a low hum inside my thoughts.\n\"Yes, you are,\" I agreed. \"But I need you now to tell me\"\nI am Lord of Admirals!\nThe sudden strength of the inner voice staggered me. I had never felt such a powerful presence in my head before, even when beingpossessed during the scarification ceremony celebrating my manhoodnot even when being suffused in smoking leaves and led through the caves.\n\"I feel you,\" I said, my voice shaky. I fought the Didact and surrendered Charum Hakkor, but not its secrets. I knew nothing of this. We survived the Shaping Sickness. Forerunners hoped to learn the secret of how we survived the Shaping Sickness, but we would not give it to them, even under torture!\nAnd with that, the old memory did an awful thingit spasmed in rage. The effect almost knocked me over, and I knelt down in the dirt, by the second vessel, clutching my head. For sanity's sake, I pushed back the old spiritand heard Vinnevra calling from outside the ellipse of fallen star boats.\n\"Why are you talking to yourself? Are you mad?\"\n\"No,\" I called back, and muttered, \"not yet.\"\n\"The Flood,\" I said to the old spirit. \"That's what they call it.\"\nOur bodies died; our memories linger. Is this what the Librarian did?\n\"You knew her?\"\nShe it was who executed us. Or preserved us. I found this more than disturbing. The image I had within my head, formed in childhood, was of infinite kindness, infinite compassion. . . . Clearly, the Lifeshaper was more complicated than anything I could easily encompass. Or the old memory, the Lord of Admirals, was wrong. We are here, true? Within you, within . . . others . . . true?\n\"I think so,\" I said. Riser had also experienced the old memories.\n\"We are all visited by the Lifeshaper at birth.\"\nI very much wanted to get away from these ruins and remains this graveyard. Abada the Rhinoceros would never remember these Forerunners in their time of judgment, that much I knew; no Great Elephant would rustle through their bones and save them from the ravages of the hyenas, if any such beasts were here. I had no idea what Forerunner spirits were now set loose or whether they would blame me if they did show up and find me here. Both gods and spirits are unpredictable and quick to judge the livingfor whom they feel both lust and envy. But I could not leave yet. I had to find my \"jar.\" And soon enough I did, all the way across the ellipse: six meters wide, split open like a seed pod, purple-brown, burned and pitted on the outside, smooth and polished black on the inside. Emptynow. Who had had charge of me at the lastthe Master Builder's forces, or those in charge of the Halo? Had the Halo defenders snatched us away? Had they juggled Riser and me between them . .\n. ?\nI stooped beside the jar, the pod, and felt around inside, grimacing at my lack of memory. Nothing remained that I could use. Nothing here but quiet and mystery and sadnessand awakenings that neither the Lord of Admirals nor I wished to encompass all in a rush. I returned to Vinnevra and stood with her for a moment, my back to the wreckage, having trouble breathing.\n\"What did you find?\" she asked.\n\"Just as you saiddead Forerunners,\" I said.\n\"We did not kill them. They were already dead.\"\n\"I see that.\"\n\"Will they punish us anyway, when they return?\"\n\"What's the difference?\" I asked. She looked at me with a squint. \"Gamelpar knows more than I do. He's very old.\"\nI glanced down at the filthy rags that covered me, then raised my arms in querywas I presentable?\n\"He doesn't care about that,\" she said. \"Mostly, he goes naked, night and day. But sometimes he talks like youcrazy talk. Nobody wants him in the village now. They'd kill him if they could. But they don't dare hurt him because he knows the great way, daowa-maadthu\n.\"\nAgain the Lord of Admirals stirred. Daowa-maadthu . . . Fate is off-center, the wheel of life is cracked, the wagon will hit a rock, jolt hard, and fall apart for all of useventually\n.\n\"You know that truth?\" she asked, studying my expression.\n\"I know of the broken wheel.\" How odd that we were now actually riding inside one. I had first heard of the great way from Riser. He had called it daowa-maad.\n If the Lord of Admirals knewof this, then it was a very old teaching indeed. I felt a spark of hope. Maybe this Gamelpar had heard about the great way from Riser. Riser might be out there now, waiting for me, afraid to enter a village of large, strange humans.\n\"Sometimes it's all Gamelpar talks about.\" Vinnevra shrugged.\n\"He wishes I understood more. Maybe he'll stop pestering me if I take you to him. Are you coming?\"\nDark was perhaps an hour away. \"Yes.\"\nShe walked ahead quickly on long, skinny legs. I had to hurry to catch up. We skirted the confines of the villagereally just a circle of huts around the central meeting house.\n\"They say Gamelpar brings them bad luck,\" she said. \"I suppose he could if he wanted to, but around here, bad luck comes all by itself.\"\nIn a few minutes, we crossed the bare, tramped-down dirt and entered a forest of low trees and brush. At last, night slipped down over us, and we followed the distant light of a campfire.\n\nThe old man was squatting and tending the fire. He was as black as the girl. His long legs and long arms were like gnarled sticks, his fingers like square-cut twigs, and his square head was topped by a pure white fringe. His mouth still held a few yellow teeth, but if he let it, his chin could almost meet his nose. Around the fire he had laid out the skin of a small animal he had skinned and cleaned, which he had roasted in the coals and was now eating. The second he had cleaned but not skinned. They looked like rabbits, and confirmed my suspicion there were other familiar animals here on the hoop. The Librarian's collection might be large and diverse. Vinnevra stepped forward out of the reflected glow from the sky bridge and into the firelight. \"Old Papa,\" she said. \"I bring a fig from the first garden.\"\nThe old man looked up from the bone he was gnawing, somewhat ineffectually. \"Come close, fig,\" he said, his voice a soft, rattling squawk. He was looking at me. I was the fig. Still chewing, he waved greasy fingers that glinted in the firelight. Meals for him were no doubt long affairs. \"Tell the fig to strip away those rags.\"Vinnevra cocked her head at me. I pulled off my rags, then stepped in toward the fire, feeling a little awkward under the old man's calm scrutiny. Finally, he turned away, smacked his gums, lifted the bone to his lips, and took another bite. \"Human,\" he said.\n\"But not from the city dwellers, nor the ones near the wall. Show me your back.\"\nI slowly turned and showed him my naked back, looking over my shoulder.\n\"Hm,\" he murmured. \"Nothing. Show him your own back, daughter's daughter.\"\nWithout shame or hesitation, Vinnevra turned and lifted her ragged top. The old man waved his greasy fingers again, for me to look close. I did not touch her, but saw imprinted, in the skin of the small of her back, a faint silvery mark, like a hand clasping three circles. She lowered her top. \"This is the one who fell from the sky and lived,\" she said. \"He claims to come from a place called Erde Tyrene.\"\nThe old man stopped chewing and lifted his head again, as if hearing distant music. \"Say that again, clearly.\"\n\"Erde-Tyrene,\" she obliged.\n\"Have him\n say it.\"\nI spoke the name of my birth-planet. Now the old man rotated on his ankles and rearranged his squat, arm resting on drawn-up knee, the half-eaten rabbit leg dangling from one outstretched hand.\n\"I know of it,\" he said. \"Marontik, that's the biggest city.\"\n\"Yes!\"\n\"Outside lie the lands of grass and sand and snow. There is a place where the land splits like a woman, deep and shadowed, and mountains of ice roll between mountains of rock and grind and drop big stones from their jaws.\"\n\"Have you been there?\" I asked. He shook his head. \"Not since I was a babe. I don't remember it. But my best wife was older. She came from there before me,\" he said. \"She called it Erda. She described it. Not like this place.\"\n\"No,\" I agreed. Now the old man switched over to the language I had been raised with. He spoke it fluently enough, but with an odd accent, and using some words that were not familiar. He motioned me tocome closer and sit beside him, while he said, in my birth-tongue,\n\"That wife was a teller of the finest stories. She filled my life with great flares of passion and dream.\"\n\"What's he saying?\" Vinnevra asked me.\n\"He's telling me about his favorite wife,\" I said. Vinnevra lay down on her elbow on his other side. \"My mother's mother. She died in the city before I was born.\"\n\"We have been here for many long nightsmany years,\n\"\nGamelpar said. \"My best wife would be eager to hear about Marontik. How is it now?\"\nI described the old city and its balloon rafts and farm-to-market squares, and the power stations left nearby by the Forerunners. I did not go into my experiences with the Manipular or the Didact. Now was not the time.\n\"She said nothing of balloon rafts,\" he said. \"But that was long ago. Vinnevra tells me you lost a friend somewhere out there. Was he one of the small people with sweet voices?\"\n\"He is,\" I said.\n\"Well, some of them are here, too, but not in the city or nearby. Way over toward the far wall. We saw them long ago, and then they walked a long walk. They were honest, in their way, but had little respect for size or age.\"\nRiser had been quite old when he took me under his guidance. Cha manush\n lived long lives. Finally, Vinnevra said, \"Gamelpar, we are hungry. We have come from the village where there is no good food. You remember.\"\n\"I sent you there to look when the sky burned and the stars fell,\"\nthe old man said, nodding. \"They still don't like me there.\"\nI could not keep track of the windings of all these stories. Which were true? Perhaps for these People, on this broken wheel, it didn't matter.\n\"They have no rabbits,\" Vinnevra wheedled.\n\"They eat all the game and leave none to breed, and then they go hungry. They burn all the wood and then go cold, they flee the city but live nearby and fear to leave . . . and then they vanish. But it is not their evil. Forerunners carry some off to the Palace of Pain, and now the villagers are stiff with fear and don't want to do anything. Pfaaah!\" He threw the bare bone out into the bushes.\"Share your meat and I'll tell you what I know,\" I said. Gamelpar stared into the fire and softly cackled. \"No,\" he said. Vinnevra glanced at me reproachfully. She knew how to deal with Gamelpar, it seemed, and I did not. \"We went back, and the dead Forerunners are still there. Nobody has come for them.\"\nThe old man looked up, reconsidered for a moment, then made up his mind. \"Here, clean this branch,\" he said to Vinnevra, \"and I will spit and cook the second rabbit. It will be for both of you. I have eaten my fill.\" When Vinnevra had stripped away the bark with teeth and nails, he thrust the stick through the rabbit, then tossed it directly into the fire, skin and all, and used the end of the stick to shift and turn it. And so we settled next to him, waiting for the second rabbit to cook, beneath the fitful stars, with the bright silvery band of the sky bridge high above. Gamelpar turned the rabbit again on the coals. The smell of burned fur was not appetizing. Was he trying to punish me for my presumption?\n\"Rabbit cooked in its skin is most succulent,\" Vinnevra explained.\n\"Smells bad, eats fine,\" Gamelpar agreed. \"Tell me what you saw. The fire in the sky, and the brightness, and you fallingwhat did it look like, from up there?\"\nI told him a little of what had happened. \"The Forerunners were angry at each other, last time I was with them. And the dead ones\n\"\n\"You were with them\n?\" Gamelpar lay down on his side, then on his back, and contemplated the bridge.\n\"I did not know them. It could be they were carrying me someplace.\"\nHe nodded. \"Shooting starsdying ships. Lots of ships. But the brightnessthe sky turning so white the eyes and head hurtI don't know what that is. Do you?\"\nGamelpar was proving remarkably astute. Still, he wasn't exactly telling me the truth, about not understandingnot knowing. He knew something, or at least he had made a decent guess, and now he was testing me. Ask him who\n else he is.\n\"Why are you scowling?\" Vinnevra asked me.I shook my head. I was not about to serve as a go-between for two old, dead warriorsnot yet. I fancied I was still my own person. For now.\n\"There,\" he said, indicating a blotchy patch about a third of the way up one side of the band, \"is where a big ship crashed into the hoop, before the brightness and the shooting stars, just before you fell from the sky.\" He reached for another, thicker stick, handed it to Vinnevra, and blew out through his lips. She showed the stick to me. There were many notches already. \"Mark another double handful,\" the old man instructed. \"A day or so doesn't matter.\"\nVinnevra took the stick and removed a sharp rock from her pocket. She began to carve.\n\"Many mysteries,\" the old man said. \"Why are we here? Are we like animals in a pit that fight to amuse the Forerunners?\"\n\"We have something they want,\" I said. The old man shifted the rabbit again and bright orange sparks flew up into the cool air. \"Can't let the skin go black all over,\" he murmured. \"Can't let the legs burn through. Why do they move us around, why do they take us to the Palace of Pain . . . why treat us so?\"\nI itched to ask about this Palace of Pain, but the time did not seem rightthe look on his face as he said those words . . .\n\"Humans defeated Forerunners, long ago,\" I said. \"Forerunners still resent it.\"\nNow the old man's expression really sharpened. His jaw firmed and dropped a little, making his face look younger. \"You remember such times?\" he asked. He fixed me with an intense, if rheumy-eyed, stare, then leaned toward me and whispered, \"Are there old spirits inside your head?\"\n\"I think so,\" I answered. \"Yes.\"\nVinnevra considered both of us with alarm and moved away from the fire.\n\"Does he have a name?\"\n\"No name . . . just a title. A rank.\"\n\"Ah. A highborn, then.\"\n\"You're encouraging\n him!\" Vinnevra accused from the shadows, but who was encouraging whom, she did not make clear.\n\"Pfaah,\" the old man said, and lifted the rabbit. \"Break off a leg. I wish we had some salt.\" He poked the now-bare spit over hisshoulder, toward the part of the bridge spinning into shadow. The blotch where a ship had crashed was a dark gray smear, tapering in one direction, and then flaring outward with the marks of burning debris.\n\"Before the strange brightness, the sun was differenttrue?\" I asked. Vinnevra had moved closer again, and she answered this time.\n\"Golden-red,\" she said. \"Warmer. Larger.\"\n\"Did you see the sky bridgethe hoop in the skydisappear into the brightness, before all the rest?\"\nThe old man favored me with a gap-toothed grin. \"So it did.\"\n\"Then it is\n a different sun,\" I said.\n\"Not different,\" Vinnevra insisted, her brows arching. \"It changed color. That's all\n.\" Any other explanation was too vast for her. Perhaps too vast for me as well. Moving something the size of this Halo the way the Didact had moved us from Erde-Tyrene to Charum Hakkor, then out to the San'Shyuum world . . . But I did not back down. \"Different suns,\" I insisted. The old man pondered, his nearly toothless jaw moving up and down. I began to regret this discussionwe were distracting him from portioning out the rabbit. He raised himself up in his seated posture and squared his hands on his knees. \"I was brought here when I was an infant,\" he said. \"I do not remember much about Erda, but my best wife told me it had a flat horizon, but when you are high up, the end of the world curves down to each side, not up. Makes you wonder what's on the other side of the wheel, down there . . . doesn't it?\"\nHe caught me staring at the rabbit. I wiped drool from the corner of my lips. He tapped his finger lightly on the ground, then lowered his head, as if in mourning. \"I remember the long journey in the gray walls and no way to see the sky, with air that smelled of closeness and sweet and bitter herbs, like perfume. Herbs that kept us quiet during the voyage. And then . . . the first ones were brought here, to the hoop.\" He tapped the ground again. More firmly. \"I was just a babe. We had lived for many days within gray walls, but now the great ship shook us like ants from a cup. None were hurt; we drifted like fluff to the dirt and rocks.\n\"Then, so I was told, we stood together, holding each other, and looked up, and saw the sky bridge, the way the land rose up, andthere was much wailing. Finally, we separated into families and small tribes, and wandered this way and that\"he swung his arms\"outward. We came to forests and plains and we made our homes there, as we were used to living. For this while, in my youth, we were tended like cattle, but because there was little pain and we were fed, we came to believe this was where we should be.\n\"The Forerunners gave us bricks. We used the bricks and made walls and houses and great buildings. We lived in peace and raised children, and the children were touched by the Lady, and when they could speak, they told us of this beautiful Forerunner, so tall, who spoke to them in their first days and filled them with light. I already knew her. She had come to me on Erda.\"\n\"When you were born?\" I asked. Gamelpar nodded. \"But it was not the same, how the Lady touched those from Erda and how she touched the children born here. As I grew up, I sometimes remembered things that I never lived.\" His voice grew thin. He lifted his gnarled hand, pointed in a broad sweep, up toward the center of the Halo's spin, then down, as if poking his finger through to the other side. \"So many memories,\" he whispered. \"Old, old memoriesin dreams, in visions. Weak and frightened . . . old, lost ghosts.\n\"But years later, the old memories became strongerafter we finished the city, long after I was husband and father. After the sky changed five times. Those were great darknesses, long, long nights. Different suns, different stars, came and went.\n\"Each time, glowing bars climbed across the sky and a big, pale blue disk appeared inside the hoop, like the hub of a wheel. Each time came the white brightness, then a great darkness. . . .\" He swept his hand across the welkin. \"Spokes shot out from the hub, and glowing fires burned on the ends of the spokes, to warm us in that darkness. And twice we saw something other than brightness and darknesssomething terrible that came out of the hub and the center of the wheelsomething that gave us fits and hurt the soul.\"\nHe rubbed his forehead and looked away from the fire. \"But we did not die. We moved again. Under the orange sun, where Vinnevra was born.\"\nVinnevra stared intently at her grandfather.\n\"It was under that sun that the Forerunners came in their boats and carried us off to the Palace of Pain. They stole away mydaughter and her mate, and many, many others. They came so often we were afraid, and we abandoned the city, crawled back out onto the plain. And there, as we huddled in fear, the beast came among us and pointed its awful arms, and raised its jeweled eyes.\"\nI started at this. \"Beast?\"\n\"Bigger than men, bigger than Forerunners. Many arms, many small legs, curled up like a shriveled spider. It sat on a big dish, flying this high over the ground.\" He raised his arm as high as he could. \"Beside it flew a large machine with a single green eye.\" He laced his gnarled, knobby fingers together, shaping a kind of complicated ball. \"These two spoke in our heads as well as in our earstelling us of our fates. The Primordial and Green-eye were deciding who would live and who would die.\n\"But some who had been taken to the Palace of Pain returned. At first we were happy that they were back, but then we saw how some had changed. Some grew other skins, other eyes, other arms. They broke apart and joined together, then made others sick. They wailed in pain and tried to touch us. These poor monsters died, or we killed them later.\n\"And Green-eye said to the Beast, 'Not all resist . . . not all survive.' But most do. Why? Why do many survive, but some do not?\" Gamelpar shuddered. \"Twisted death. Death that spreads like spilled blood. Those who survived . . . who did not die . . . the Forerunners took some back to the Palace of Pain, and some they left behind. We do not know how they chose. And then . . .\"\nHe could not finish. He looked at the ground and held up his hands, stretching his fingers to the sky. Then he began a low keening, like the wail of a weary, hopeless child. Vinnevra finished for him. \"Gamelpar went to the Palace of Pain, but he did not become ill. He never tells that tale.\"\nThe old man stopped keening, straightened as tall as he could, and wiped his hands on his thighs.\n\"We camped on the outskirts of the city. The little village, you have seen. Me. And my daughter's daughter. Alone of all my kin. That is the truth of it.\" He stood and brushed sand from his long black legs, then pointed vaguely at the backside of the rushing shadow. \"Then they pushed me out here, to be done with me.\"\n\"I told them he had died out in the bush, but his spirit still keens, and he will haunt those who hurt me. Nobody touched me afterthat,\" Vinnevra said. \"He knows how to hunt and take care of himself. Still, he is old. . . .\"\nI did not know whether to speak, their sadness was so profound. But Gamelpar was not finished. He looked fondly upon her. \"Just before you fell, the sky changed again. As the machines fought and killed each other, great ships passed over, splitting open and spinning away in flames, and smashingup there.\" He pointed toward the black streak, or where it would have been, were it not now hidden by errant clouds.\n\"And then came the last hurtful whiteness.\"\n\"Tell me again about the Beast,\" I said. His jaw grew strong again, and he held out both arms. \"He flew on the large disk, and his eyes were like gray jewels, and Green eye flew beside him, and they talked, and the People were taken away. After that time, no longer did we have children, and no longer was there enough food. The water turned bad. Forerunners fought each other and died . . . all because of the Beast . . . the Beast. . . .\"\nHe repeated this over and over, as if it had been burned by a hot iron into his memory. Finally he could stand it no more, and he seemed to fall into a brief fit, prancing around, shaking out his arms, babbling in a singsong, until he had cleansed himself. \"Pfaah!\"\nHe spat, then jabbed his splayed hand at the darkness beyond the dying fire. \"Let us leave this place. Nothing here but fools and twisted ghosts.\"\nGamelpar eased back down on his haunches, then began to break up the rabbit. He handed the pieces to us. Vinnevra regarded me with caution and curiosity. I had almost lost my appetite. But not quite. The girl and I settled down to eating, and I thought: the Beast Gamelpar had seen, and the Captive from Charum Hakkor, were they one and the same?\nI say yes. My old spirit had seen the Beast; that's how I could see it, as well. The old man watched us as we gobbled down the rabbit. \"Tell us what you learned in your travels,\" he said softly.\n\"Long, long time past,\" I said, \"we fought the Forerunners and nearly won.\"\n\"Yes,\" he said.\n\"But then they defeated us and pushed us down. They turned usinto animals. The Librarian raised us up again, and gave some of us old memories from dead warriors.\"\n\"Why do they torture us?\" Vinnevra asked. She did not like this talk of carrying ghosts.\n\"Forerunners worry we will become strong and fight them again. They will keep us down any way they cansome of them.\"\n\"You know about the Beast, I am sure of it,\" the old man said.\n\"I visited where it was once imprisoned. An ancient being older than humans or Forerunners. Forerunners freed it from its trap and it cameor was broughthere.\"\nThe old spirit within approved. We ate for a while in silence while Gamelpar absorbed this.\n\"Who rides you?\" he asked. Without thinking, I said, \"Lord of Admirals.\"\nWe stared hard at each other. \"We knew\n him,\" the old man said.\n\"My old spirit fought under his command. . . .\" His voice trailed off. Then he reached up and again swept his char-smudged fingers across the glittering sky. \"The voices ride us,\" he said. \"They hope to live again, but do not know what we face. We are\n weak, like animals. There will be no return to that old war.\"\nHe looked away, but not before I saw a glint of tears on his cheeks. \"Finish this poor rabbit before it gets cold.\" He pointed toward the near wall. \"My daughter's daughter tells me we should go over there, where the land stays in shadow longer.\"\nVinnevra had already finished. She stood up, as if ready to leave right away. \"You want him to come with us?\" she asked the old man. I could never tell what she thought about me. Her eyes seemed dangerous, the way they peered and examined from under her brows.\n\"Yes,\" the old man said. For her, that was enough. \"Gamelpar, can you walk?\"\n\"Cut a big stick from the brush. With that, I can walk as well as you.\"\n\"He fell a few days ago,\" Vinnevra explained. \"He hurt his hip.\"\n\"My hip is fine. Eat. Sleep. Then we leave.\"\nHe looked back up at the stars and the sky bridge. His face grew sharp again, more interested, and again he looked younger. As I tossed away the final clean-stripped rabbit bone, we felt something rumble beneath the dirt, far below us, like some huge,restless animal. The sound made the pebbles dance, but I followed the old man's upraised hand and trembling finger to the sky. High on the bright arc of the sky bridge, where the black mark and rays had once been, an emptiness had suddenly appeareda gap in the continual sweep of the band through which I made out two bright stars, quickly hidden by the hoop's spin.\n\"I have never seen that\n before,\" Gamelpar said.\n\"That's where the big boat crashed!\" Vinnevra said. The grumbling continued, and we moved in close and hugged each other, as if together we might weigh enough to hold down the dirt. Finally, the vibrations dropped to a faint tremblingand soon I wondered if I was feeling anything at all. The gap in the sky bridge remained. We did not say much for the rest of that night. Vinnevra curled up close to the dying fire, at the feet of Gamelpar. Even with the missing square, the sky bridge was as bright as a long ribbon of moon, and that made seeing the stars difficult.FIVE\n P RETTY SOON, AFTER\n a small and troubled sleep, sunlight crept down the band like a descending river and caught us. Clouds crossing the band took fire, rose up in mountainous billows, and spread orange glow even into the tilt-shadow and wall-shade. Halo dawn. Then it was light all around, and after several loud thunderclaps and brief shower of warm rain, the old man got up and took his new long stick from Vinnevra, and we started our walk away from the village and the deserted city. Gamelpar did indeed walk faster and better with a stick, but Vinnevra and I slowed to allow him his dignity. We walked together just behind him.\n\"Time to tell this one where we are going, daughter of daughters,\" the old man said.\n\"I'm going to find my friend,\" I said.\n\"The little one,\" Vinnevra explained.\n\"Do you know where he is?\"\nI had to admit, I had no idea.\n\"Vinnevra knows where to go.\"\n\"I have seen it,\" Vinnevra said, with a sidelong and almost guilty glance.\n\"Seen what?\" I asked. We crested a low hill. \"A place where I should go when I am in trouble,\" she said. She turned to look back over the meadow and plain that held the scattered village, the hut where she had tended to me, and beyond that, stretching wide to either side, the brown mud and stone walls and towers of the city where she had grown up . . . and lost her parents to Forerunners. She pointed inland, away from the wall, then led us down the opposite side of the hill. Gamelpar followed and did not look back. I had no idea which way Riser might be, so I followed as well for now. \"What kind of place is it?\" I asked.\n\"I will know it when I see it,\" she said.\n\"The Lady's touch?\"\nShe nodded.\n\"A geas.\n All right. That's a start,\" I said. The Lifeshaper was kind. \"If we get away from here, maybe you can remember more.\"\n\"We are\n getting away,\" Gamelpar said over his shoulder.\"I don't see any Forerunner machines,\" Vinnevra said hopefully.\n\"Maybe they're all broken.\"\nWe walked for several kilometers through the forest of low trees, then beyond more hills covered with ditches and wide pits long ago dug out for their stone and clay. Then we paused. Vinnevra closed her eyes and turned her head back and forth, as if searching the darkness behind her lids.\n\"Are we going in the right direction?\" I asked. She wrapped her arms around herself and soberly returned my look. \"I think so.\" Then her face fell and tears streaked her cheeks.\n\"Everything's changing! I don't see it now.\"\nThat stopped us for a time. An idea struck me. \"Look around with your eyes closed and point at something.\"\n\"What?\" Vinnevra asked.\n\"Maybe you're just getting your bearings, or something's distracting you. Look around at anythingat the wall and the old city and where we are, then turn . . . just hold out your hand and point\n.\"\nThe old man leaned on his stick.\n\"That's stupid,\" Vinnevra said. The old man did not disagree.\n\"The Lifeshaperthe Ladytouches us all for a reason,\" I said.\n\"Maybe she touched you with a sense of direction, not just the memory of a place.\"\n\"Is it our\n reason, or hers?\" Gamelpar asked.\n\"I don't know. She gave Riser and me a geas\n which we had to fulfill. She gave us old memories that come awake when we visit certain places. But I wasn't born here, so she didn't tell me\n what I need to know, or where to go when I'm in trouble. You . . . were born here. Try it.\"\nVinnevra shook her head and looked miserable. I paced away, again wishing Riser were here; he was so much better with people even big peopleand so much older and more experienced. \"If we don't know where to go, we'll wander until we starve,\" I said. I was petulant, hungry again, angry at being stuck. The girl dropped her arms and took a deep breath, then squinted at the sky. Gamelpar had raised his stick and seemed to be drawing a circle in the air. Then I saw he was pointing at something. A great grayness with along, straight side was rising over the near wall, far above the wispy clouds. It cast a broad black silhouette across the clouds and the far land. We watched, shivering even before the black line moved over us and we were surrounded by almost complete darkness, darker than Halo night, for the gray shape had obscured nearly the entire sky bridge, seeming to cut it in two. Despite my fear, I tried to reason it out. There was a purpose herethere had to be. Something might have been detached from the outside of the wheela huge\n something, square or rectangular and now it was being hauled along over the wall, angled inward, squared off And then what? I tried to visualize gigantic blue hands passing this object from one to the other, or some other Forerunner tools . .\n. and failed. Whatever it might be, it was already larger than any star boat I had seen. The far side extended all the way to the opposite horizon. Having cast its shadow from one side of the band to the other, the great mass stopped moving. It was as wide as the Halo itself perhaps wider. Then the great square mass moved again. The shadow moved in parallel with the edges of the band, sliding at some great distance but a tiny distance for the Halo itselfand allowed light to return. I dropped to the ground and looked up at the sky bridge, swept my eyes along the curveand found a second gap about a third of the way up. It might have appeared while we were walking and talkingpaying no attention. It was twice as large as the first gap many thousands of kilometers in length. Two\n parts from the hoop had been removed, one from the underside and one entire section from between the wallsand both, it seemed, were now being transported around the curve, perhaps a thousand kilometers above the inner surface. Repairing what has been damaged. I muttered at this inner voice, but kept watching. The Lord of Admirals was probably correct. The battle around the Halo had done significant damage and now repairs were being made. Pieces were being moved just as a mason cuts stone tiles to fit a floor and transports them to where they are needed. Gamelpar and Vinnevra were transfixed by the gigantic tile and the darkness it cast. Vinnevra wiped tears from her cheeks. \"I amso scared,\" she said. \"Don't they want us\n anymore?\" The resentment in her tone was puzzling.\n\"Don't talk foolish,\" Gamelpar said, but gently. He, too, was frightened, but the fear of an old man is not like the fear of a young female, or one would be afraid all the time. The Lord of Admirals again.\n\"You should know all about being old,\" I said under my breath. Then, out loud, \"Their damned Halo is broken and they're patching it up. That's more important than we arefor now.\"\nGamelpar leaned on his stick. His right leg twitched. The old man watched his granddaughter closely.\n\"How could something they made\n break?\" she asked. The shadow slid farther along the curve.\n\"They're not gods,\" I said. \"They make mistakes. They're mortal. Things they build can be destroyed.\"\nI have destroyed many Forerunners and their ships, their citiesthe things they made. Suddenly, the old spiritso far happy to volunteer his opinions seemed to hitch up and fade. For a few minutes, nothingthen, his abrupt return caused a tingling in my head. What is thishell? But the body is young!\nThe Lord of Admirals was slowly coming to grips with his true situation. I focused on the girl. Gamelpar was right. What she had to say was far more important right now than any of my old memories. I pretended a kind of calm, but decided to push her a step further. Riser would have done the same to me in a tough situation.\n\"So tell usdid you ever\n really know?\" I asked. She gave me a feral look, pushed between the old man and me, turned away from both of us, and closed her eyes again. For a moment she swayed back and forth and I thought she would fall over, but instead, she spun around several timesthen jerked out her arm and pointed a finger.\n\"There!\" she cried hoarsely. \"I feel it again! We need to go there\n.\" She jabbed her finger at a diagonal to the far gray wall.\n\"Not away from the wall?\" Gamelpar asked.\n\"No,\" she said, face radiant. \"We need to move that\n way.\"\n\"That takes us back to the city,\" Gamelpar said. This confused her. \"We don't want to go back there,\" sheadmitted, her voice low.\n\"Why not?\" I asked. In truth, I was curious to see the city.\n\"Bad memories,\" Gamelpar said. \"Are you sure that's the way?\"\n\"We could walk around\n the city. . . . ,\" she ventured. Then she shook her head. \"No. I need to go there . . . into the city, through the cityfirst.\" She took Gamelpar's hand. \"But we'll go around the village. They don't want you there.\"\n\"Are you sure the city's deserted?\" I asked. She nodded. \"Nobody goes there anymore,\" she said.\n\"Not even Forerunners?\" I asked, but neither of them seemed to think that was deserving of an answer.SIX\n W E TOOK THE\n long way around the village toward the old city. As we walked, I decided on my own terms for directions on the wheel. Inland or inward meant away from an edge walluntil, I supposed, one reached the midpoint of the band, and then one would be heading outward, or outland, toward the opposite wall. East was the direction from which light swept around to wake us each \"morning.\" West was the direction of the fleeing light. We rested as night came down. I lay on my side, several paces from the old man and the girl, and tried to anticipate what might happen next. Wherever the Didact and Bornstellar had taken me, memories and ideas and even indelible instructions had popped up in my thoughts, in my actions. Vinnevra was now experiencing the same troubling gift. Maybe the Librarian wants only the girlnot you or the old man. The old spirit again.\n\"Go to sleep,\" I muttered. Death has been sleep enough. Gamelpar had pointed out that my skin was not marked. I presumed that would reveal to Forerunners that I was a recent arrival. My thoughts grew hazier and wilder. Having seen my lack of a markor my strangenesscould have triggered Vinnevra's urge to travel. I could almost imagine the instructions the Lifeshaper had laid down in our flesh: See this, do that. Meet this visitor, take him there. Face this challenge, behave this way. . . . Like puppets, at times we seemed to be motivated only by the Lifeshaper's omnipresent touch.But going into the citydespite my curiosity, the necessity of that was less than obvious to Gamelpar and me.\n\nThe next day, we stood before a broken wooden gate on the western side of the old city. The thick mud and rock rampart stretched unbroken for hundreds of meters in either direction. There were no other gates. The gate gave entrance to a tunnel about twenty meters long.\n\"Thick wallsto keep Forerunners out?\" I asked Gamelpar. He shook his head, leaning on his stick before the gate, staring into the gloom. \"Other cities, roving bands . . . raiders. Humans were on their own for centuries before I came here.\"\n\"War and pillage,\" I said. He blinked at me, nodded, then turned to face Vinnevra, who was steeling herself to go through the tunnel.\n\"You are still sure?\" he asked her. She stubbornly lifted her shoulders and sprinted ahead, eager to get through the darkness. Gamelpar regarded me again with weary eyes. \"The Lady has her ways.\"\nAs we followed the girl, I told them my words for directions, describing where we were going on the wheel. We emerged from the tunnel into the light, stepped over another broken gate, and stood in a narrow lane that followed the wall and separated most of the buildings from the wall itself. The old man listened intently. When I finished, he said, \"\nEast, west, north, south . . .\n new words. We say turnwise, lightwise, crosswise. I suppose they're all the same. Vinnevra hasn't traveled far enough to care much for the old words. The new ones will work just as well.\"\nAbove us, a parapet leaned out, crossing the top of the gate and meeting a stone tower on either side. Guards had seen fit to look within as well as without.\n\"War,\" I said. \"The Lady always allows us the freedom to fight each other. . . .\"\nGamelpar lifted his lips in a gap-toothed smirk. \"Where there is freedom, there will be war,\" he said. \"We covet. We hate. We fight. We die.\"\"Was it that way before we met the Forerunners?\" I asked. My old spirit did not express an opinion.\n\"Probably,\" Gamelpar said. \"It's likely the same for Forerunners. But who will ask them?\"\nVinnevra circled back and glared at us. \"Keep close,\" she said.\n\"We shouldn't stay here any longer than we have to.\" She looked around, lips drawn tight, then moved off again, running like a young deer on her long, skinny legs.\n\nI have no doubt you have seen marvels of architecture on the worlds you knowEarth today, perhaps. And I had seen great marvelsor their ruinson Charum Hakkor, revealing the genius of humans before the Forerunner wars brought us low. But this old city reminded me of Marontikthough surrounded by thicker walls. The mud-colored buildings were never more than three stories high, the third stories on both sides leaning in and almost touching over narrow dirt or cobble streets. The second and third floors were supported by wooden beams which poked through the walls old wood no doubt cut from the nearby forests until only stunted trees remained. But if anything, as we walked and walked, I suspected that this city had once been larger and more populous than Marontik, though its true scale was difficult to judge. I would have liked to see it from abovea layout of all its streets and neighborhoods. From the Didact's ship, before being sealed into our bubbles, Riser and I had looked down upon entire worldscities no more than tiny smudges. A revelation at the time. The old spirit observed this, to him, primitive yearning for a map but again, did not comment. I wasn't sure which was more irritatinghis comments or his silence. As we penetrated deeper into the winding lanes, Vinnevra seemed to lose confidence in her geas,\n her sense of direction. Several times she turned around and doubled us back. But we tendedI noticed, and no doubt Gamelpar noticed as wellever toward the diagonal she had first pointed out, cutting, I judged, across one-third of the old city. The low oval doors of the buildings were dark and silent but for amournfully hooting wind. Hangings or rough fiber curtains still hung like drooping eyelids in a few higher windows. The streets were filled with windblown clutter from the last inhabitants: rotting sandals, scraps of filthy cloth, broken woodno iron or other metal. The city had been stripped of anything valuable, leaving only the walls. That meant, of course, we would not find caches of food or anything remotely like treasure. I thought sadly of Bornstellar and our shared quest for treasure. Which of us had been the most naive?\nYou have affection for a Forerunner.\n\"Not really,\" I said. \"We traveled together.\"\nIt is no crime. I once felt affection for a Warrior-Servant as I hunted his ships and destroyed his fighters. No lover ever felt my attentions so fiercely. The old spirit suddenly burned. For a while, his questing intensity made me feel as if I held a caged animalbut it passed. One can grow used to anything, I suppose. I have grown used to the way you find me now, after all. I barely remember the flesh. . . . No. That's a lie. I remember it too clearly. At least the Lord of Admirals, back then, was still lodged in flesh. My flesh, to be sure.\n\nThe shadows grew long, the lanes dark enough to let us see stars overheadstars, and something larger: a round planet the width of my outstretched thumbas wide as the moon as seen from Erde Tyrene, red and gray and foreboding. This was the first time I saw the object that would cause so much disasterbut I am getting ahead of myself.SEVEN\n T HE DEEPER WE\n traveled into the old city, the softer and sadder sang the breezes. Gamelpar kept up with us well enough, but Vinnevra and I were more eager than ever to leave these ruins behind. Ghosts within are one thingghosts without, another. Down one long, straight lane, wider than any of the others, we debouched onto a wide circle, marked off by flat platforms and stone walls barely higher than my waist. From the walls poked the remains of broken-down sheds with gaping fronts.\n\"Market?\" I asked Gamelpar. He nodded. \"Been here many times,\" he said. \"Happy times.\" He looked fondly at Vinnevra, who rubbed her nose and looked suspiciously around the broad circle. \"My daughter had stalls . . . here, and . . . there.\" He pointed out the spaces. \"We sold fruit and skins and ceremonial fluteswhatever we could gather or grow or make. We had no idea how happy we were.\"\nWe kept walking. A sudden gust brought with it flurries of dust that spun up and over the flat platforms, rustling shreds of woven mats. I shielded my eyes as the flurries passedand then, on the opposite side of the circle, saw that we had come upon something different and unexpected. Half-blinded by grit, I bumped against thegirl, who under ordinary circumstances would have delivered me a wallopbut now she just stood her ground. I wiped the dust from my eyes and looked over a platform of Forerunner metal, about fifty meters wide and shoulder-high. It supported a great, egg-shaped structure as high as the platform was wide. This central egg, the color of beaten copper laced through with swirls of dusky sunset sky, was incised all around by smooth vertical grooves spaced an arm span apart.\n\"A boat?\" Vinnevra asked. Gamelpar shook his head, as puzzled as we were. \"Never saw it before. But it's been here a long time,\" he said. \"Lookthe shops were built around it.\"\nVinnevra squatted, picked up a pebble, and threw it at the egg. The pebble bounced off without making a sound.\n\"The Lady has eyes everywhere,\" Gamelpar said. \"We never know when she is watching.\"\n\"Hidden . . . camouflaged,\" I said. \"Why?\"\n\"If she sees our plight, why doesn't she protect us?\" the old man asked. He worked his jaw. \"We should find water. There used to be good wells.\" He hobbled off on his stick. Vinnevra and I chose to study the tall, sunset golden egg for a while longer. The old spirit was shaping a vague explanation. From here she can reach out and touch all the newborns.\n I resented his swifter analysis, but could not deny it.\n\"Unseen, centrallike a lighted tower, a beacon,\" I told Vinnevra. \"Maybe this is where the Lady sends out her voice to touch your People.\"\n\"Maybe,\" she said, with only the barest scowl. \"Does it still send out messages?\"\n\"The children stopped being born,\" I said. \"Right? No more childrenmaybe no more messages.\" Then I had a discouraging thought. \"Is this where you're supposed to go when you don't feel safe?\"\n\"No,\" she responded quickly. \"That's over there.\" She pointed in the same direction as before, arm steady. Gamelpar called out that he had found a little water left in a well. We walked around the Forerunner beaconor whatever it was and joined him at the lip of a circular wall made of bricks and stones. He had pulled up a wooden bucket on a decaying length ofrope, and offered us a drink of muddy brown waterprobably old rain.\n\"All there is,\" he said. We drank despite the smell. On Erde-Tyrene, I thought, the water would probably be filled with wrigglersbut here in the city, nothing wriggled that I could see. Even the mosquitoes had abandoned this place. We walked on. Vinnevra led us down another winding lane. All the lanes looked alike to me. Many of the buildings had fallen in, revealing sad little rooms filled with drifting leaves. Once these places had held real people, real families. There had been communities all across the Halo, I suspected, filled with people touched by the Lifeshaperthe Lady. They had been allowed to be completely human, to find their own strengths, succumb to their natural weaknessesto fight their wars. Humans allowed to be human, left like a garden to grow wild, just to see what new flowers might sprout up. But were we always observed by the Lifeshaper herselfor her cadres?\nAnd had she watched over usthemthrough the successive times of brightness, darkness, new skies, new suns? Had she watched when, years ago, the wheel had been taken to Charum Hakkor, to unleash the bitter brilliance that burned the soul?\nHad she herself offered refuge to the Captivethe Primordial?\nMy old spirit expressed skepticism at that. If the Primordial were allowed to rule and control this place, it would conduct its own experiments,\n the Lord of Admirals suggested.\n\"What sort of experiments?\" I asked. What the old man has seen . . . the Shaping Sickness. It is the Captive's great passion. But the old spirit could not convey things too far beyond what my mind had already experienced. I would not comprehend until I myself had seen more. We found another straight road. At its end, we saw a larger gate opening to the plain beyond. Vinnevra chose that direction, to my relief. We helped Gamelpar along. Just a few hundred meters from the gate and the boundaries of the city, as the wheel's shade again slipped over us and a fine rain drizzled down, we took refuge in a tumble-down home that still hadpart of a roof. That night, Gamelpar tossed and turned, no doubt because of the aches and pains of agebut he also cried aloud, calling names, so many names, until he jerked upright. Vinnevra tried to soothe him. Then she motioned for me to join them, and we all lay beside each other. To these two, the ruins of this old city spoke of lost glory and family and happiness. To me, and to the old spirit within, the city spoke of Forerunners deigning to allow us a crude, limited sort of freedombut only for a time. Had it really been any different back on Erde-Tyrene?EIGHT\n A T FIRST LIGHT\n,\n we passed through the gate and saw the near edge wall much more clearly. Vinnevra spun around again, eyes closed, and flung out her arm to establish our direction. Where she pointed, I could see a brown smudge along the wall's gray horizondust rising high in the air. Gamelpar leaned heavily on his stick, his right leg still trembling.\n\"You're sure?\" he asked.\"I'm sure.\"\nThe great double-square tiles of Halo had continued to move along the inside of the wheel. Now the sun shone on their upper surfaces and revealed geometrically patterned Forerunner metal, as with the bare segments we could see spaced at intervals along the sky bridge. Whatever landscapeif anythat had been layered on the tiles had been sacrificed, atmosphere spilled out into space along with land, animals, and, yes, perhaps even people all to repair damage suffered during the war between the Forerunners. It is her way, to allow us to suffer.\n\"No,\" I said under my breath. \"I feel her\n in me, it is not her way.\" My experiences on the Halo had not yet rubbed out all my hopes for the Lifeshaper. Then streaks crossed the sky, silvery, darting, like heaven made swallows chasing swift insects. I grabbed Vinnevra's arm. She trembled at the sight.\n\"Sky boats,\" Gamelpar said. \"From the Palace of Pain. They're coming for the rest of the People in the village.\"\nAt this, we moved on as fast as we could and still have the old man keep up with us. Soon, the city was hidden by rolling hills. We stopped when Gamelpar tired and lagged. Concealing ourselves among another patch of low trees, we tried to keep still and quiet. We had traveled perhaps a dozen kilometers outland. Fog crept over us, but the moisture did not quench our thirst. None of us slept. But the boats did not come for us. We never saw the streaks in the sky descend, and I do not know what happened to the People in the village.\n\nThe fog lifted with the passage out of shadow. No rain followed and the land was soon as dry again as old bones. In silence, Gamelpar suffered pain in his joints from the night's damp and cold. I wondered what the old spirit he carried thought about this aging, primitive vessel. He or sheor it, who could know?might have wished for a younger, stouter container. But in the old man's stolid, wrinkled face I read a different kind of courage, one new to me.Vinnevra and I offered to help carry him, but he waved us off and used his stick to push to his feet. He then swung the stick around, limbering up for the morning journey, and headed off before we began, leaning on the stick and swinging his sore leg out in an arc with each step. Again we followed a few paces behind, allowing him some dignity. Truthfully, I was in no hurry to discover what might be raising so much dust near the edge wall. The next day and night we found very little in the way of food just a few dry, greasy berries that made my stomach grumble. For water we had only the morning dew from the rocks and leaves and grass. The land we crossed was like a squeezed sponge. No springs, no rivers . . . On the third morning of our journey, we licked up as much dew from the rocks and grass as we could. The hills had become more prominent and rugged, some rising several hundred meters and studded with rocks. The dust towered high beyond. We pushed between the hills, skirting cracked boulders and spiky, cone-shaped trees. Their bristles left small, itching welts. Wisps of fog mixed with dust swirled over our heads. A few small birds flew back and forth, but the sky seemed as empty of sustenance for them as the land was for us. The air twisted and whistled through the hills and the trees. The next morning, the fog carried as much dust as moisture. An hour after first light, as we trudged along, half-blind, the dirty curtains of mist blew aside in ragged ribbonsand Vinnevra, intent on following her geas,\n nearly walked over a crumbling rim of rock and dirt. I grabbed her arm forciblyshe hissed and tried to pull away but then she saw, and gasped, and ran back. Gamelpar leaned on his stick and took deep breaths, letting each breath out in a low, curling sort of song whose words I did not understand. This did not seem to be a valley, a canyon, or a river run. It was simply the deepest, ugliest ditch I had ever seen. The old man ended his song and swept out his arm, fingers clutching, as if trying to grab at any answer to the mystery.\n\"The land here pulls back like drying mud,\" he said. \"This is new. I don't like it.\" He walked back to squat in the shade of a high boulder. Vinnevra and I carefully approached the ditch's crumbling rim.The last few meters, we got down on our hands and knees and crawled. An alarming cascade of dirt and pebbles fell away beneath my outstretched hands. I tried to guess how deep and how far across the ditch was. I could no longer see the edge wall, nor could I see the ditch's bottom. The dirty fog crept along like a filthy, useless river.\n\"You want us to go down there\n?\" I asked Vinnevra. \"That's where your geas\n leads you?\"\nShe regarded me glumly.\n\"Well, with all that dust, something's definitely on the move,\" I said.\n\"What?\"\n\"Animals, maybe. Like wildebeest.\"\n\"What are . . .\" She tried to say the word but gave it up. \"What are they?\"\nI described them and said that on Erde-Tyrene I had seen such herds raising great clouds of dust and trying to forge broad rivers, where many drowned or fell prey to crocodiles. As a boy I had sat on the riverbank and watched the jaguars and sabertooths wait patiently on the far shore for the animals who survived, grabbing a few more, while the drowned ones swept away to become food for other crocodiles and fish. And yet, by sheer numbers, the wildebeests overwhelmed even these predators, and most reached their destinations. By now, daylight had warmed the fog and I could dimly make out the bottom of the ditch. Gamelpar was right: the land had indeed pulled away from the great blue-gray wall, leaving a slope of broken rubble, and beyond that, about a kilometer of revealed foundation. It was easy to see how deep the land was here, on the inside of the Halo: eight or nine hundred meters. Not much thicker, relatively, than a layer of paint on the wall of a house. I thought of one of my mother's bond-friends, with whom she would meet and chew leather and stitch cloth. The bond-friend kept a gray parrot that spoke as well as I did (I was just a child). To amuse the parrot, the bond-friend had arranged, within the bird's large wicker cage, a small forest of old tree branches stuck into a shallow dirt floor. The Librarian or some other Forerunner had painted the inside of this hoop with dirt and trees and animals to make us feel at home. All illusion, like the parrot's forest.I drove this idea from my thoughts and focused on what I had seen and what I could know. There were\n things on the move down there, probably tens of thousands of thembut they were humans, not animals, walking over the bare foundation and around the slopes of rubble, following the great ditch westward. For minutes, Vinnevra and I watched the crowds, stunned silent by their numbers and steady, united motion. Were all of them heading where Vinnevra had pointed? Had the beacon in the old cityif that was what it wassent out a signal, a message so old that it had become outdated and pointless? Or had they become lost, slid into the ditch, and now followed it wherever it took them?\nSoon I spotted other objects in motionobjects I definitely did not\n want to see. Only by their shadows, rippling like banners across the haze, did I first spot them: ten war sphinxes. From this distance, their paleness almost blended into the dust. They hovered, moving slowly back and forth above the masses, whether urging them along or just keeping watch I could not tell. I pointed them out to Vinnevra. She groaned deep in her throat. Gamelpar had crawled to a spot just behind us, still well back from the chasm. \"Be quiet!\" He cocked his head. \"Listen!\"\nI heard little but the steady rush of wind from behind, cooler air seeking lowness. Finally, the wind subsided enough for me to pick up a distant, deeper note. Vinnevra heard it, too, and her face brightened.\n\"That's the sound of where I'm supposed to go if there's trouble!\" she said.\n\"They're moving toward that sound?\" I asked. The old man crawled forward some more, turned slowly, head still cocked, and faced me. \"What do our old ghosts say about that\n?\" he asked.\n\"The memories are quiet,\" I said.\n\"Biding their time,\" Gamelpar said. \"It will be a real struggle, you know, if the old spirits want to take charge.\"\nI had not thought of this possibility. \"Has that happened to you?\"\n\"Not yet. Fight them if you will.\" He took the weight off his sore leg, then lifted his stick and pointed in the direction of the noise.\n\"There's no bridge and nothing in the way of a path downso, not much choice, eh?\"\nVinnevra agreed. We walked on, keeping well back from theedge of the ditch, until the night shadow swept down upon us and the stars came out. I thought about the chance that Riser was down there in that crowd.\n\"Are they all going to a good place, or a bad place?\" I asked Vinnevra. She turned away.\n\"It's all I have,\" she said. As we rested against an embankment, I could feel the old spirit's deep curiosity at work again, and together, we studied those stars. The Lord of Admirals, finding new life within me, was so dismayed by the changes since his (I assumed) violent demise that more often than not he kept to the background, a kind of brooding shadow. I did not know whether I preferred his silence or his frustrated attempts to rise up and discover what he could do. He could not control me; he was little more powerful than a babe in a sling, not yet a willful force. My reaction to his growing strength was mixed. I worried about what might happen, yet took pride in flashes of remembered battles between humans and Forerunners, especially the victories. I shared his pain and shock at the power the Forerunners now wielded, the fates they had meted out to humans since the end of the old wars, our weaknessour divisionsour diversity. Once, we were one great race, united in power and concerted in our goals. . . . But I saw quickly enough that this was not precisely true, and soon realized that what the Lord of Admirals believed\n and what he knew\n were at times quite separate matters. Even alive, it seemed, the original mind that had lived these ancient histories had shared the contradictions I was all too familiar with in myself and in my fellows, back on Erde-Tyrene and here on the great wheel. Vinnevra cut and prepared a new walking stick for Gamelpar.\n\"Recognize any of those stars?\" he asked me. His face was like a dark wrinkled fruit in the sky bridge's cool, reflected glow.\n\"Not yet,\" I said.\n\"Stop talking about that,\n\" Vinnevra demanded. She chopped away the last few twigs and presented him with the stick, greener and less crooked than the previous one. \"We need to find food and water.\"\nThe dew that gathered here was muddy and bitter. We could drink from pockets of rainwater in the depressions in the bouldersthat lay along the edge of the chasm, but even those were drying up or thick with scum. It had been days since rain had fallen. At first light, the noise from the chasm rose like a faraway torrent the People were on the move again after a night's rest. We listened, then got up and walked on through the gray light, each of us casting two shadows, one growing from the light cast by the brightest arc of the band, the other dimming and shortening as shadow swept the other side.\n\"Does everyone have a geas\n?\" Vinnevra asked. \"Everyone down there, too?\"\nGamelpar shook his head. \"The Lady seeds her gardens, but she may also pluck weeds.\"\n\"What if we\n are the weeds?\" Vinnevra asked. The old man chuckled. He sounded young. If I did not look at him, I could almost imagine he was\n young, but the impression was fleeting. The Librarianthe Lifeshaperthe Lady, as these two called herdid not seem to care if those who bore her imprint grew old or suffered and died. That obvious fact seemed important, but I was too tired and thirsty to think it through. Cool air crept down the embankment and spilled into the chasm.\n\"Tell us more about Erda,\" Gamelpar said to me, his voice growing hoarse.\n\"Is that where all the People come from, long ago?\" Vinnevra asked. \"Not even you\n remember that far back, Gamelpar.\"\n\"Too thirsty to talk,\" I croaked. Without warning, my ears popped and the dust in the chasm bellied upward, lapped over the edge, and billowed toward us. Along with the dust came the strange, high sound of thousands of people screaming. Gamelpar groaned and clutched his ears. Vinnevra leaned forward, hands on her knees, as if she were about to be sick. The sky above darkened, stars twinkledbreath came harder. Discouraged, gasping, my head throbbing and chest burning, I lay beside Vinnevra and the old man. Vinnevra had closed her eyes tight and was trembling all over like a fawn. Gamelpar lay on his back, the new green stick held across his chest. Grit floated everywhere, wet and clingingclogging our noses and getting in our eyes. We could barely see. All around the land again began to shake. Boulders rockedponderously in their sandy beds, and a few started to lean, then tumble over. Some rolled to the edge of the chasm and vanished in swirls of muddy vapor. I could swear I felt the entire land beneath us rippling\n like the hide of a water buffalo tired of stinging flies. The old man painfully dragged himself beside Vinnevra and laid his arm over her. I joined them. I saw streamers of dust ascending like thunderheads many thousands of meters, obscuring the sky bridge as well as the stars. Then a great wide shadow of dust covered us. Lightning played nearby, diffuse flashes followed nine or ten finger-clicks later by thunderthunder that would once have terrified me, but now seemed nothing. I wondered if the entire Halo were about to shiver itself to pieces. Was it possible for such a great Forerunner object to be destroyed?\nOf course! We laid waste their fleets, attacked their outpost worlds. . . . And the Forerunners themselves found a way to bring down the indestructible architecture of the Precursors, on Charum Hakkor. . . . Charum Hakkor, once called the Eternal. The Lord of Admirals had no fearhe was already dead!\nThen came the deluge. It fell of a sudden, curtaining sheets of water that pounded the ground until we started to sink. With an effort, I pushed against the suck of the mud, then dragged Vinnevra to firmer sand and the overhang of a very large boulder that did not seem interested in either shaking or rolling. My motive was simple:\nVinnevra knew where we should go, the old man did not. But that did not stop me from crawling back to get him. Walking was impossible in the thudding rain, each drop the size of a grape and cold as ice. Gamelpar, half buried in mud, struggled feebly to free himself. I rose on my knees, sank immediately to my thighs, and, reaching down, took hold of the center of his stick. His fists grabbed the stick tight and I half dragged, half carried him through the muck to where Vinnevra waited. We lay under the rock overhang as the land continued to shake. Sleep was impossible. We stared out into the plashing, thundering dark, wretched, chilled to the bonebut no longer thirsty. We took turns drinking from water that quickly filled a fold in one of my rag garmentscold and sweet, even if it wanted to drown us, even if it wanted to be our death. At one point during the darkness, the boulder gave out a mightycrack, louder than the thunder, and sharp chips sprayed down over us. I reached up and found a fissure wide enough to accept the tip of a finger. Feeling in the fissure, I imagined it closing suddenly and jerked back my hand, then wrapped myself in my arms and settled down. We were convinced that it would crash down on us at any second, yet we did not move.\n\nThe overhang did not fall, the boulder did not split apart. We saw little or nothing through that long, dark day, beyond the occasional silvery flash. Numbness overtook us. We did not sleep, neither did we think. Misery filled the void behind our eyes. We were waiting for change, any change. Nothing else would rouse us from this mortification of fear and tingling boredom.\n\nDay passed into night, followed by another day. Finally, both rain and the rippling ground ceased abruptly, as if at the wave of a masterful hand. We stared out across the mud at wan, milky sunlight, condensing over the chasm into a doubleno, a triple\n rainbow, each brilliant, gaily-colored streamer intersecting, fading slowly from one end, brightening at the otherand disappearing. Vinnevra ventured out first. She pulled and plunged through the mud for a few paces, then stood upright, lifting her arms to the light, moving her lips but making no soundsilent prayer.\n\"Who does she pray to?\" I asked Gamelpar, who lay on his side, the green walking stick still clutched in one hand.\n\"No one,\" he said. \"We have no gods we trust.\"\n\"But we're alive,\" I reasoned. \"Surely that's worth thanks to somebody.\"\n\"Pray to the wheel,\n then,\" Gamelpar said. He crawled out from under the overhang, pushed up on his stick, and stood for the first time in many hours. His legs trembled but he kept upright, lifting first one foot loose from the mud, then another. I was the last but I moved quicker and boldly walked along firmer, stony ground to the chasm. The migration below had stopped. I thought for a moment, peering down through the clear air, that those thousands were deaddrowned or struck down byair, that those thousands were deaddrowned or struck down by avalanches. But then I saw some of them move. One by one, individuals, then groups, and finally crowds picked themselves up, stumbled about in confusion, then coordinated, touched each otherand continued in the same direction as before. Just like wildebeest. But much closer to us than before. The floor of the chasmthe foundation materialhad heaved itself up as if on the shoulders of a giant, rising almost halfway in the ditch. The great scar was closing. Soon, the chasm would be gone, filled in with Forerunner metal. Here was a force, a presencea monstrous god if you willthat could undergo great change, suffer hideous injuries, yet still heal itself. There was nothing mightier in our lives. Praying to the Halo might not be a bad idea after all. I held out my hands like a shaman, as if to personally tap into the power of what had just happened. Vinnevra looked at me as if I were crazy. I smiled, but she turned away without a word. There had been no end of fools in her life.\n\nWe moved on roughly parallel to the chasm. Vinnevra, puzzling out the failure of her geas,\n seemed to be trying to find a way around this obstruction. For a few hours, she led us inland, walking this way and that, stopping to pick up and drop pebbles, as if hoping to somehow sense the land. She would shake her head . . . and walk on. The Lifeshaper had her in thrall, no doubt about it. By noonthe sun a palm-width over the sky bridge directly above uswe had only wandered back in a loop, closer to the chasm, closer again to the edge wall. This time, looking across the chasm, we saw no dust or fog. Visibility was good right up to the wall itself. But that only revealed the futility of her quest. At the end of the chasm, blocking the flow of the People, a great Forerunner building stuck up from the foundation through a ruckled chaos of rock and crust: a huge, square pillar curving in to lean against the wall, then thrusting high above both the wall and the air itself. The pillar was about a kilometer square around the base. Cloudsobscured its top. I took Vinnevra aside. \"Is this our destination?\" I asked. She had a dazed expression, eyes almost blank with the power of her inner drive, and it took some moments for her to stop pacing. Gamelpar squatted nearby, racked by coughing. When that stopped, he lifted his eyes toward the wall and slowly shook his head. He was almost worn out. Vinnevra suddenly straightened, stuck out her jaw, and walked on at a brisk trot. I caught up with her and tried to flank her. She gave me a sidewise glare.\n\"The old man needs time to rest,\" I told her. Her mouth worked without making a sound. Finally, I took her shoulder and grasped her chin in one hand and swung her about, forcing her to face me. Her eyes went wild and she reached up with clawing hands to scratch my face. I batted her hands aside and held them down. At this, she leaned forward as if to take a bite out of my nose. I dodged her teeth and pushed her back. \"Stop that!\" I said.\n\"We're going to wait here for a while. Enough of the geas.\n You need to find yourself again!\"\nShe swung back and glared, but there were tears in her eyes. Strangely, that look made my own breath hitch in sympathy. Then she spun around and stalked off. Gamelpar watched wearily from where he had stopped. \"Leave her go,\" he called. \"She won't wander far.\"\nI returned to squat beside him and we observed in silence as the girl moved away to the rim to study the leaning pillar that blocked the chasm.\n\"Is that the Palace of Pain?\" I asked the old man.\n\"I never saw the Palace of Pain except from the inside,\" he said.\n\"What was it like, inside?\"\nHe hooded his eyes with his hands, as if not to remember.\n\"Anyway, it's not what she's looking for,\" he concluded. \"The People in the ditch must not know where they're going, either.\"\n\"How can you be sure?\" I asked. His face had grayed. \"That she has not led us to where we need to be . . . that's a disappointment.\" He rubbed his trembling leg. He was thinking he might not finish the journey. Restless, I walked back to the girl, now standing stiffly a few meters back from the chasm, tossing her head like some lost farmanimal. I walked right up to the rim and glanced down at the masses, milling around the base of the monument like so many turbulent pools, raising another great cloud of dust. Then my blood seemed to stop and freeze. There was something different moving now among the hordes, a kilometer or two away, half-obscured by the dust, hovering over the silent crowds. At first I could not tell whether it was a variety of war sphinx. But the dust raised by tramping feet briefly cleared and I saw a huge, curled-up spider with many legs, nine or ten meters wide, resting on a round disk and floating with insolent majesty above the migration. Sparkling glints shone from the facets of two oval, slanted, widely spaced eyes on the front of its broad, flat head. The Captive. The Primordial Vinnevra came up beside me. \"Is that . . . ?\"\nFor a moment, I could not say a wordmade dumb by the old spirit's memories: raw fear and the intensely cutting realization that this thing was now free, perhaps in control of the migrationsor at least patiently observing. She grabbed my arm. \"I've been taking us toward that one,\n the Beast, haven't I? That's where they're all going!\"\nA wide gate opened in the base of the leaning monument. Slowly at first, then with steady determination, the crowds began to flow into the gate. Two war sphinxes emerged from the sides to guide and guard them. The disk carrying the Captive also approached the gate, dipped a little, making the crowds kneel or fall beneath its shadow, then passed through as well. When it had disappeared into the monument, those who had not been crushed picked themselves up .\n. . and followed. Vinnevra's fingers dug into my flesh. I pried them loose. We ran back to where Gamelpar was resting. She composed herself and knelt beside her grandfather.\n\"We won't cross the chasm,\" she said. \"We move inlandand west.\"\nI realized Vinnevra was now using my words for directions. But that hardly seemed to matter. She did not mention the Captive. Shewished to spare her grandfather that horror. But our expressions were too stricken, too obvious. I could not avoid meeting his skeptical look.\n\"You've seen it, haven't you?\" Gamelpar asked us. \"The Beast. It's down there.\" His face crinkled with remembered terror. \"That is\n a Palace of Pain, isn't it? And they're still being lured inside. . . .\"\nHe could not finish. Vinnevra curled up beside the old man and patted his shoulder as he sobbed. I could not stand that, the old man weeping like a child. I wandered off to let them be, then sat and buried my head in my arms and knees.NINE\n B Y TREMENDOUS FORCE\n of will, Vinnevra ignored her compulsion and led us away from the chasm, back through the low dry hills and boulders to flat terrainthe direct opposite of where her geas\n was telling her to go. Gamelpar and I followed, walking in as straight a line as we could manage toward haphazard foothills like wrinkles in a blanket. Looking up along the low portion of the curve, I saw thefoothills push against a sharp range of rocky mountains, all fading into the atmospheric haze about where the great body of water would be. Beyond the haze lay smooth Halo foundation lacking any artificial landscape, climbing for thousands of kilometers until it met a cloud-dotted line drawn perpendicular between the edge walls. Beyond that line, the Halo's false landscape appeared again, deep green and rich, tantalizing. The wisdom of simply reversing course did not seem obvious to me, but Gamelpar did not objectand I could think of no reason not to put as much distance as possible between us and the Captive. The girl looked haunted. Her\n geas, it seems, is not fixed. The Librarian seems to have programmed this wheel with the means to direct and protect her subjects. But who controls the beacons now?\nI had no answer for the old spirit's obvious question.\n\nWithin a couple of hours, we were walking over irregular sheets of gray, flaky crust, overlaid with a powdery white char that tasted bitter on my tonguebitter, burnt, nasty. What passed for natural landscape overlying the layer of bedrock, itself little more than a veneer, had been burned away, as if the Gods had decided to drop sheets of fire and destroy anything living. Hundreds of meters ahead, blocking our path decisively, jagged sheets of blue-gray foundation material had peeled back, pushing aside the white char and crust and exposing a great gaping wound in the Halo itself. Ruin laid over ruin. We walked around the towering, curling, jagged edges of that hole, pausing once only to peer into a pit at least four or five kilometers across. None of us could speak, looking down through layer after penetrated layer of smashed, ruptured architecture and melted machinerydown many hundreds of meters, to be plugged at the bottom by shapeless black slag. And yetfor the Halo, this was but a minor wound, not nearly as large as the great black smear we had seen high up on the sky bridge. Replacing our region of the wheel, our tile, was apparently not necessary. Not yet, at any rate. The Lord of Admirals had no comment on this destruction, but Icould feel a growing impatience and restlessness, his brooding, measuring intelligence gathering strength, waiting for the proper moment to make a difference. I did not know whether to be frightened of him. So many other fears loomed larger. After a few hours, we climbed a rough scarp to reach a higher, relatively undisturbed stretch of level landdirt, rocks, a ridge of granite populated by a few singed and drooping treesand a small pond left over from the recent deluge. We paused. Gamelpar dipped his fingers into the pond and tasted the water, then nodded. Drinkable, he declared. But of animals, berries, any kind of food nothing. Again the shadow of night rushed down and we lay in the chill, shivering, half-starved. Gamelpar never once complained of cold or hunger. Vinnevra had said nothing for many hours. Morning came, and listlessly we rose and washed ourselves. Then Vinnevra closed her eyes, turned slowly, hand outand stopped. Her hand pointed back to the chasm. With a convulsive shudder, she swung halfway aroundreversing the direction her geas\n told her we should take. When she looked at me, her eyes were bleak. Her strength was impressive. Against all my instincts, I found myself admiring, then growing fond of this pair. Foolishnessit was Riser I needed to find, and once I found him, wouldn't we celebrate by shaking our feet and leaving all others behind?\nI wondered now, however, whether I could guess what Riser would do. He had always surprised me. We traveled onward, inland and west, through the rolling foothills toward the more sharply defined range. This path took us by the end of the day to the edge of what might have once been another citya strange, shifting ruin, over which the ghosts of monuments flickered, as if struggling to return. Vinnevra stood for a while on the broken boundary of a rounded, slagged causewayraising her hands as if imploring, begging for relief or at least some sort of explanation.\n\"I need to go back!\" she said to us. \"Keep me, hold me! Stop me!\"\nGamelpar and I gently held her arms and we all sat down as a sour wind blew through the rubble, moaning over hollows and whispering through shattered arches.Just a few hundred paces over the waste, to the left of the causeway, lay half of a ship larger than the Didact's star boat many hundreds of paces long, its rounded hull blackened and slumped. This boat's spacefaring days were over. It seemed to have been attacked and brought down through the Halo's atmosphere, to smash into this section of the great hoop. These were not fresh ruins, and this place had never been a human city. Again, here was grim evidence that decades ago, Forerunners had fought Forerunners, and many had died. The Lord of Admirals now decided to rise up and gloat. Confusion to the enemy! Those who tyrannize humans have fought among themselves. Dissension in their ranks! Why should that not bring us joy?\nThe old spirit seemed to take control of my feet and legs, and for the moment, without making a conscious choice, I ceded my eyes and body to him. Beyond any plan, any stretch of my own experience, we strolled along the causeway, leaving Gamelpar and Vinnevra behind for the moment, feeling disappointment, sorrow, vindicationjust as I had felt at the first awakening of horror and pride back on Charum Hakkor. The causeway ascended at a gentle angle, and we walked up the slope, leaping away as the edges of jagged cracks squirmed and sparkled with a strange lightas if trying to rejoin, to begin repairs. But for this place, the will, the energy, the resources no longer existed. The command structure had long since been broken. That much seemed obviousthough I could not even begin to understand the underlying technology. Again, I felt like bowing down and worshipping. They are not gods,\n the old spirit reminded me with an air of disdain. But the ruins were too sad, and he no longer expressed any sense of triumph. They are like us, in the great scheme of things, sometimes strong, too often foolish and weak, caught up in politics . . . and now at war. But why?\nThe Lord of Admirals walked me to the end of the causeway, and we looked out over the dead ship and the shattered, exploded skeletons of buildings that once had risen thousands of meters into the sky, but now lay across each other like so many dead on a field of battletoppled, half-melted, yet neither entirely still nor silent.I was distracted by the reappearance of walls and framework beams rising from the ruins perhaps five hundred meters away rising and reassembling, much as the Didact's ship had built itself at the center of Djamonkin Crater. It seemed for a moment that it might succeedtook on almost a finished aspectbut that was an illusion. The walls disappeared, the skeletal framework flickered, dropped away . . . Vanished. In mere seconds, the effort came to an end with a sigh and rush of wind, and the building's ghost was no more. Thento the right of the causewayanother futile effort, another resurrection another collapse and rush of wind. The city was like a buffalo brought down by a pride of great cats, its flanks torn and throat slashed, bleeding out as the predators wait, tongues lolling, for its sharp black horns to cease swinging. . . . The buffalo struggles to regain its feet, but the hyenas scream and laugh, and the pride leader growls her hungry triumph. I was being drawn into the old spirit's memories of the destruction of Charum Hakkor, the collapse of entire fleets of human ships. . . . The pain and sense of loss staggered me. The old presence, this spirit, this ancient thing\n within me, was as much a ghost as the ruins writhing and moaning all around. Finally, neither the Lord of Admirals nor I could bear to watch. I could feel neither his words nor his emotions. He, too, had collapsed, retreated.\n\"No more!\"\n I shouted, and covered my eyes, then stumbled back to the margins. The girl looked to me as if for some explanation.\n\"We shouldn't cross this place,\" I said. \"A bad, sad place. It doesn't know it's dead.\"TEN\n W E DECIDED ON\n a course around the ruins. Another day of travel and Gamelpar's strength seemed to be flagging. We rested more hours than we traveled, but finally found a shallow rivulet of water and edible weedsor so Gamelpar assured us. They were less obnoxious than the greasy berries, and with thirst quenched and stomach less empty, the old man seemed to revive. He waved his hand, then moved away on his stick. Ahead the hills resumed. Here they were covered with dry grass and spotted with trees I wasn't familiar with, pleasantly shaped, of middle height, with black bark and gray-green leaves that splayed out like the fingers of cupped hands. The sky was free of clouds, except far up the bridge, at the point where the bridge was as broad as my outstretched palm. I squinted and moved my hand, covering and uncovering the clouds, while Gamelpar watched without much interest. Beyond the sharp mountains we could now see the body of water very clearly. The shadows had grown long, the air was cooling, the sun was three fingers above the gray wall. Darkness was coming. We rested.In the shade of a black-trunked tree, I pried a stone out of caked dirt and looked it over, marveling at its simplicity. Simpleand false. Everything here had been manufactured by Forerunners. Or perhaps it had all been stripped away from a planet, transported here, and rearranged. Either way, this land and the ring itself was like the toy of a great, spoiled child that can have anything it wants, make\n anything it wants. Yet humans had nearly defeated their fleets, ten thousand years ago.\n\"You have that look,\" Vinnevra said, kneeling beside me. \"Like you're somebody else.\"\n\"I am, sometimes,\" I said. She gazed through the deep twilight at where Gamelpar had rested with his back against the smooth trunk of a tree. \"So is he.\"\nShe scratched idly at the dirt. \"No good here for insects.\"\nI hefted the stone. \"I could learn to throw rocks at birds.\"\nWe both smiled.\n\"But we'd starve before I got any good,\" I admitted. Gamelpar was much tougher than either of us thought. He kept up with us beyond the foothills and into the mountains. I lost count of the days.ELEVEN\n W HILE GAMELPAR AND\n Vinnevra rested near the base, I hiked to a granite outcrop at the top of the closest and lowest rocky peak. Along the slope I found a few bushes with small black berries that had a certain sweetness and did not upset my stomach. I nibbled, but gathered the rest into my shirt, saving them for my companions. The wide streak of dark blue water was about thirty kilometers away, protected on this side by both the mountains and a dense region of nubbly forest. Looking inland and outward, this huge lake stretched across the band many thousands of kilometers. From where I stood, I guessed its breadth at about two or three hundred kilometers. And where will we find a boat?\nI shook my head in absent reply, then studied the lake intently as cloud shadows and dapples of light played over it. Clear enough even from this distance, the water was studded across most of its width and breadth by tall, narrow islands like pillars. About two or three kilometers from the near shore, some sort of growth or construction connected and lay over the pillars and islands dwellings connected by bridges or just peculiar vegetation, I could not tell which. If we were to follow the course established by getting the hell away from the ditch and the Beast, then we would have to cross that lake, but first, penetrate the surrounding forest. Soon, with night bearing down, I descended the slope. The old man and the girl had moved a short distance from where I had left them, near a dry riverbed, and Vinnevra was patiently rubbing her grandfather's arms and legs. Both looked up as I approached.\n\"What's out there?\" Gamelpar asked, patting his granddaughter's shoulder. I delivered my berries and they ate, tipping their hands in thanks. Vinnevra's steady appraisal disturbed me. Then she got up and walked away, and I felt a peculiar disappointmentfor both of us. The old man reached for his stick, as if prepared to move out right away, based on some report of danger. \"What's out there?\"he asked again.\n\"The big lake,\" I said. \"Dense forest.\"\n\"I've seen that one many times from the old city\" Gamelpar said.\n\"I never expected to go visit it.\"\n\"We don't have to,\" I said.\n\"Where else is there?\" he asked.\n\"She doesn't know,\" I said. Vinnevra had hunkered miserably a few steps away, head bowed.\n\"We need purpose. We need direction.\" He followed this with a direct look that as much as said, Without that, I, at least, will soon die. And what will become of the girl then?\nI shared more of my gleanings with the old man, then walked over to the girl, who again seemed to reappraise me, like some unexpected and unpleasant marvel, as she accepted the last spare handful and ate. At that moment, I wonderedfor the last timewhat my chances would be if I just took off on my own. I could move faster. Out there, I'd likely be as knowledgeable about the conditions as either Vinnevra or Gamelpar, so far from their home. . . . I had at least as much chance of finding Riser by leaving, I thought. But of course there were larger problems to solve, and the old man still held, perhaps, some answersparticularly with regard to the Captive. The Primordial. The Beast with the glittering eyes.\n\nThe morning came bright and clear, and once more we had a view of the red and gray orb, a waxing crescent now showing visible detailspart of an animal face, like a wolf or a jackal.\n\"It's getting closer ,\" Gamelpar said, performing his usual rather impressive stretches. The exercises hurt the old man, and their effect diminished through the day's journey, but they were essential. He would stand on his good leg, arms out, then rotate his body and hips around until balance became difficulthop to recover, and stretch out again, leaning his head back as if to let out a silent howl. Vinnevra stood with arms by her sides, waiting for us to make up our minds, she would follow wherever we went, that was herdestiny, she deserved nothing more . . . and so on. All in slack posture and blank, staring eyesstaring away, away from us, away from everything.\n\"You both look gloomy,\" Gamelpar muttered as he finished.\n\"What I would not give for a bunch of plump, cheerful shopkeepers.\"\n\"What would we do with them?\" I asked.\n\"Make jokes. Dance in rings. Eat well.\" He smacked his lips. The old man's rare expressions of humor were almost as disconcerting as the girl's appraising silences. We walked off, taking a long inland route around the mountain. I had seen gentle pastures with hummocky terrain and water-worn tablelands on that side of the peak, and beyond, more and more trees until another bare and arid strip that stretched right up to the dense, high forest. Two days between. Two dreadful, silent days. And then, suddenly, Vinnevra was cheerful again.\n\nShe still did not say much, but she recovered a lightness in her step, a set to her eyes, a vibrant, swinging motion of her long arms and skinny legs that spoke eloquently that for her, at least, the worst of the disappointment was over, it was time to feel young again, to look around attentively and feel a glimmer of hope. Her energy passed on to Gamelpar and we made better time. Here, winding through hummocks and eroded plateaus, Gamelpar became convinced we were now back in decent hunting territory. He showed us how to make a snare from stiff cane and plaited grass loops, and we worked for a time stretching them over one after another of a circle of fresh-looking burrows. We carried stones to block off the open holes.\n\"Not rabbits,\" Gamelpar said as we stood aside to wait.\n\"Probably good to eat, though.\"\nHe then took his stick a few meters away and dug a hole in the sandy soil. After a while, a muddy dampness seeped into the bottom of the hole, and we all took turns digging deeper. Soon there was watermuddy, far from sweet, but wet and essential. If we were patient, we could drink our fill.Then the first of the snares bobbed and danced and we had a little brown animal, like a lump of fur with eyes, the size of two skinny fists. That last night before we reached the forest, we captured four, set a low, smoky fire with dry shrubs and scrap twigs, and ate the fatty, half-raw meat. Does the Lifeshaper come to these poor beasts when\n they are born?\nI ignored that blasphemy. The old spirit had no respect. I slept wellno dreams. We were as far from the ditch and the Captive as we could take ourselves. Of course, who knew how fast it could travel on its grotesque floating plate?\nBut for the moment, neither terribly hungry nor terribly thirsty, I was able to watch the stars on both sides of the silver and pale brown sky bridgeas well as the crescent wolf-faced orb, now as wide as two thumbs. Gamelpar remembered seeing a small wandering star of that color just after the brightness and the fires in the sky. Since, he had ignored its habits and routinesand while he allowed they might be one and the same, there was no way of telling. But my old spirit roused to suggest it was not a moon and could not possibly be in orbit around the wheelthat just wouldn't workbut was more likely a planet, and it was growing closer day by day. I still had difficulty thinking of the sky as something other than a great spreading flatness, on which little glowing insects moved, and occasionally someone opened up a door to let in light from outside.\n. . . Old teachings die hard.TWELVE\n T HE WALL OF\n the forest was the most formidable living barrier we had encounteredto the point of being impassable. The great brown and green trunkssome as wide as the three of us stretched head to toerose up in implacable, sullen splendor, like pillars spaced along the wall of a fortress. Great gray thorns grew in from the trunks and met like meshed teeth in a tightly clamped jaw. Above the thorns, ten or twelve meters up, thin, wiry branches interlaced to form a tight canopy. Vinnevra actually smiled at this. I thought she was taking comfort in the possibility that it didn't matter which way we walked, we were bound to meet up with something or other unpleasant and discouraging. But that was unfair. I was compensating for my growing attachment by casting aspersions. How mature to see that.\n\"Oh, shut up ,\" I grumbled. We could climb to the canopy, but it leaned out a considerable distanceseveral metersand I doubted we could all clamber up and over.I studied and stroked the thorns' tough, thinly grooved surfaces, almost hard as stonethen pushed my finger in as far as I could between two of them. There was a bare minimum of flexure, of give no more than a fingernail's thickness. Perhaps the trees would present less of a barrier if we could bend and break the thorns with sturdy poleswherever would we find those! Gamelpar's stick was too flimsy. But nothing we could do now would make much difference, and so we prepared through the slanting light of dusk to sleep out in the open yet again, with no idea where the next morning would take us.\n\nFrom my uneven bed on the spiky dry grass, my eyes kept lifting above the tree-wall to the stars and the sky bridge. I drifted in and out of sleep, only half-caring that the dreams that moved behind a thin, translucent wall in my mind were not my own, nor mere fantasies, but ancient memories, with all the uneven detail of memories, made worse by being witnessed by an outsider. Some, however, were remarkably vividlovemaking in a garden under a sky crisscrossed with Precursor architecture; the impassioned face of a female whose features differed from the women of this time, and especially from Vinnevraso much variability in our kind!\nBut if these passing glimpses were at all indicative, humans had stayed remarkably true to their stock during our suppression and reevolution. We were all recognizably of the same kind, the same breed, and we did not grow up or get transformed into different physical castes like the Forerunners. The dream-emotions conveyed by the Lord of Admirals felt sharp and raw, like the waft from a freshly slaughtered animal . . . strange juxtapositions of pain and pleasure, hidden fear and anticipation, a glowing spark of battle-rage kept from flaringheld in reserve. For these dreams spoke of leave-taking and farewell, of the last night before a grand battle that would spread across a hundred thousand light-years to determine the fate of a thousand suns and twenty thousand worlds. All dreams are young, my host, my friend. All dreams belong to youth, whether they be nightmares or idylls. A snapping, clacking sound abruptly pulled me up out of this bizarre eavesdropping. I started from my rustling pad of plucked grass and looked at the thorn-packed, forbidding wall of the forest. The thorns were withdrawing, pulling back into the trunks . . . opening wide, dark passages below the thick black canopy. I crawled over to awaken Vinnevra, and she shook the old man's shoulder. He slept lightly if at all, came awake more alert than either of us, but he did not rise up. Instead, his eyes moved back and forth under the silver-ivory reflected light of the sky bridge.\n\"Dawn's a few hours off,\" he said. Vinnevra bit her lip. \"We need to pass through the forest,\" she said.\n\"Still the same direction?\"\n\"If we are moving against . . . where I really want to go, yes.\"\n\"That's no guidance at all, really,\" I offered. The girl and the old man got up, brushed themselves down, and stood staring into the dense blackness between the trunks.\n\"If that way leads us to the Primordial,\" the old man said, nodding back in the direction of the wall-hugging pillar, \"then anything that leads us away\n . . .\"\nHe was now using the same word for the Captive as my old spirit. He did not finish, and did not need to. We had already had a discussion about trying to walk back to the edge wall, around the forest, but that was a journey of at least two hundred kilometers, and possibly a thousand or more, depending on the convolutions . .\n. and there was no guarantee that the thorn-trunk trees, to either side, did not grow up flush against the wall, blocking passage everywhere. On the other hand, if the thorns were everywhere dense within the forest, and we were caught between the trunks when they chose to thrust out again . . .\n\"We'll have to move quickly,\" I said, my breath coming up short. The combination of pitchy darkness, the threat of being pierced through, of basically being chewed to pieces by a strange forest . . . Vinnevra and the old man seemed determined. But despite my complaints, I was no longer even thinking about separating from theonly compass available to us on this wheel. No matter that it worked best in reverse. I did not want to be alone out here. And these were my only friends, until we found Riserif we ever found him.\n\"You'll know a straight line through?\" I asked the girl.\n\"I think so,\" she said. \"Yes. I still need to go back there.\" She pointed away from the forest.\n\"All right,\" I said. \"You lead the way.\"\nGamelpar picked up his walking stick. Before I could object, or gather up my sleep-addled wits, we plunged between the trunks and vision was no longer our guide. The journey might have been awful, but once committed, I felt a strange calmness. Oddly, it was the old man who suffered the most, groaning and flinching as we brushed past the wide trunks, or collided with them. I had heard such sounds from young boys and men lining up to fight in the narrow alleys of Marontik, but the terror he felt in this dark puzzled me, until the old spirit within offered a plangent observation:\nStrange fears echo through both old man and warriors. Those near death know it too well. But Gamelpar did not slow down, and we kept moving. I had no idea whether we were keeping to any sort of straight line, but not once did Vinnevra hesitate. Perhaps an hour later, some vague indication of daylight oozed and dripped down from the canopy, emphasizing rather than relieving the gloom below. Our dark-adjusted eyes were befuddled by this promise of coming brightness, and we lost our growing sense of knowing where a trunk might be. Our collisions became more frequent. Thenit seemed to happen all at onceI saw long shafts of day up ahead, echoing in golden, almost blinding silhouettes through a dozen great trunks. Vinnevra pulled us all along at a run. Gamelpar swung his stick against the trees, grinning and laughing, holding on to the girl's other hand. . . . We broke through. The dawn on the other side was just beginning, but after hours of struggling to see, we were like moles tugged up out of a burrow. I blinked, stumbled, let go of Vinnevra's hand, tried to find Gamelpar. But they had moved away to stare across a beach of great rounded boulders and smaller rocks,tumbling down to a deep blue body of water that seemed to stretch on forever. At the first direct ray of light over the far edge wall, the trunks gave a deep, booming groan and the thorns pushed out again, meshing tightclosing off retreat. Gamelpar, closest to the trunks and thorns, reached back with his stick and tapped them again, then gave me a mischievous glance followed by a deep sigh of relief.\n\"We're stuck here,\" I said. Vinnevra paced back and forth along the rocks, using both hands to shield her eyes against the morning glare. \"I know that!\" she said.\n\"I'm using all my willpower not to just turn around and wait for the thorns to open again . . . just to go back there\n and become part of .\n. . that\n. It's getting stronger,\" she said. \"If I can't stop myself . . . will you two tie me up and keep me with you, no matter what I say or do?\"\nI wondered what we could do if the impulse became so strong she decided to lie to us. For now, at least, it seemed clear that we had to cross the water, however we could. Walking along the inside perimeter of the forest, over these rocks, was no more a real option than walking around the outside. I picked my steps carefully down to the lapping waves and looked out over the lake, deep blue, almost black. Kneeling, I dipped my hand into the cool wavelets and lifted it to my nose, smelled itclean but differentthen tasted it. Instantly, I spat and wiped my mouth. \"Salt!\" I cried. Vinnevra helped Gamelpar down to the shore and he also tasted the water, then agreed. Vinnevra tasted last and made a bitter face. None of us had ever tasted salt water before, it seemed. This provoked an observation from the old spirit. You've never visited the great oceans, or seen a salt lake?\nI admitted I had not. I knew of freshwater lakes like the one in Djamonkin Crater, and streams and riverssometimes freshets becoming floodsbut all had been either fresh or filled with bitter minerals, never so salty. Inland boy,\n the old spirit said.\n\"My best wife spoke of such water,\" Gamelpar said. \"She called it the sea.\n Her parents lived on the shore when she was a small girl and netted fish from out in the deeps. Before the Forerunners tookthem away.\"\n\"Why salty?\" I asked.\n\"The gods piss salt,\" Gamelpar said. \"Because of that, some animals live better in salt water.\"\nI did not want to ask him where freshwater came from.\n\"What about people . . . are we happier when we swim in salt water?\" Vinnevra asked, balancing on a round boulder and stretching out her arms. Again, she looked like a carefree girl, as the worry and fear seemed to slip away from her face, replaced only by curiosity. So changeable!\nSo adaptable. Her People are survivors.\n\"Perhaps,\" Gamelpar said, after giving her theory due consideration. \"Are we going to swim?\"\n\"I don't know how,\" Vinnevra admitted.\n\"I'm not going to try.\" The Librarian was fond of strange and exotic beasts and plants. I thought of the irritable merse in Djamonkin Crater. What kind of creatures would she stock in a great, wide sea like this? How big, and how hungry?\n\"Look out there ,\" Vinnevra said, pointing to our leftinland.\n\"There's something hanging from those big towers.\"\nThe light was at such an angle now that we saw dark strands stretched between a collection of stone pillarsbridges, I guessed, looking from this distance like hanging strings wrapped around posts. They might have been four or five kilometers inland and a kilometer or so out in the water. The longer I looked, the more it seemed there was quite a dark mass arranged between and on top of the pillars, whether made by People, or some sort of vegetation an outgrowth of the thorny treesI could not tell. But I could just as easily imagine webs, traps, nasty things awaiting the curious.\n\"We should go there,\" Gamelpar said. I studied the rocky margin around the water with a skeptical look, but the old man raised his stick. Litter from the great wall of trees had fallen on the rocks. Wind and waves had pushed the branches and bark up against the trunk wall, where they formed a thick mat. I investigated. The litter was several hand-spans deep, like a tough, woody crust. I stepped up on it. The path was irregular at best, but supported my weightand I was the heaviest.\"Let's go,\" Gamelpar said. We helped him onto the path. He raised his stick high as if in salute to the trees, and started off. Vinnevra shivered again, then leaned over and whispered to me,\n\"It's bad. It hurts. I need to . . .\"\nShe took hold of my hand, raised it to her lips, then kissed my palm, eyes desperate, beseeching. \"Kill me, if you have to,\" she said. \"Gamelpar won't. He can't. But I don't want to go anywhere near the Palace of Pain.\"\nMy heart sank and tears started up in my eyes. I could no more kill this girl than her grandfather could. I still remembered her smell when she first leaned over me, welcoming me back to the living. She was not my idea of beautiful, but I felt for her, and not just because of what we had already shared.\n\"Promise me!\" she whispered, giving my hand a painful squeeze.\n\"It won't happen,\" I said. \"I won't let it happen. But I can't make that sort of promise.\"\nShe dropped my hand, spun about, and climbed up on the matted litter, then glanced back, face pinched, disappointed, even angry. I could not imagine what she was feeling. Imagine.\n The old spirit again burned within me, his rage threatening to break through. Imagine the worst. It is all we can expect from Forerunners, all we can ever expect.\n\"But the Lifeshaper . . .\"\nJust another Forerunner.\n\"Without her, I'd be . . . free, but ignorant, empty of all but myself. And you'd be dead.\"\nThe Lord of Admirals retreated, but not before his bitter miasma tainted my thoughts. I kicked at the litter and performed another thrashing dance of frustrationwell aware how stupid I looked, how desperately foolish and trapped. How I wished I could talk to Riser and hear what he thought!\nI followed after the girl and the old man.THIRTEEN\n T HE SMELL REACHED\n us from some distance away, but Gamelpar gave a grunt and pushed on. The shore was littered with decaying bodies. We made out gray and green shapes slumped over the rocks . . . and then we were upon the first, and my worst fears were banishedbut not by much. These were Forerunners, not humans. By their size and build they had been Warrior-Servants, fully mature. One of them could be Bornstellar, I thoughtlarger after receiving the Didact's imprint. But they were far too decayed to make out individual features. Vinnevra hung back, holding her hand over her nose and mouth.\"What happened here?\" Gamelpar asked, his voice quavering.\n\"Another battle ,\" I said. \"They're not wearing armor.\"\n\"Every Forerunner wears armor. Why would they take it off?\"\nThen I remembered and understood. My armor had stopped functioning, of course, but so had the armor of my Forerunner escortseither jammed up by the metal fleas, or just stopped working. \"Something killed all the armor,\" I said.\n\"What, the Beast?\"\n\"I don't know. Part of the war, maybe.\"\n\"And here they fought hand to hand?\" Gamelpar asked. The bodies were badly decomposed. Slash marks with puffy, swollen edges crossed what remained of their faces and torsos. A few puckered holes seeped inner decay. I looked out at the rock pillars and the rope-bridge and platform townisolated from the shore, accessible only by water and so more defensible, but against what, I could not know. Forerunners of course could have flown out there, and would not have built such a primitive structure. Likely this was a human town. On Erde-Tyrene, I had heard of villages built on lakes, usually out in the great north, but had never seen one. \"There was a battle in the town,\" I theorized, \"and when they died, they fell into the water and drifted to shore. What does your\n old spirit think?\"\nGamelpar made a face. \"Sad, even for Forerunners. Is the whole wheel dying?\"\nWe were too small, too trivial to know such things. Vinnevra had walked up the shoreline to get away from the smell.\n\"There's a boat over there, behind the rocks,\" she said. \"I think it's made from one of those trees. It has thorns on its sides.\"\nWe walked along the matted path. She pointed behind a pair of boulders draped with wrack like thinning hair over gray heads. It was indeed a boat, and not a bad one, either. How convenient. The gods piss salt water but leave us a boat. Sometimes I found my old spirit to be a real prig. Vinnevra stood between us, eyes fixed on mine. \"We can use pieces of bark for oars, and row across the water,\" she said. That seemed like an incomplete plan at best. \"Gamelpar needs the rest, and we'll do the rowing,\" she added, eyes still piercing. I shrugged. \"Water is the only path,\" I said, then set to inspectingthe boat. It was about four meters long, blunt bow and stern, carved as she had suggested, no doubt, from one of the great trunks. The sides were indeed lined with formidable thorns.\n\"Protection or ornament?\" I wondered, feeling a sharp point with my thumb. She tried to push the boat out into the water. It was jammed tight. Together, we pried up one end, then slid it out over the rocks, and with a grumbling, thumping scrape, pushed it into the water. Vinnevra held it while I helped the old man across the rocks and then lifted him up bodily, at which he snorted and made an unpleasant scowl. I lowered him into the bow.\n\"Find some pieces of bark ,\" Vinnevra ordered, her face damp with sweat. She sounded excited and looked even happier. Perhaps we were passing out of range of the beacon signal. Finding proper pieces of bark, fortunately, was not difficult. The trees shed in long, tough strips varying from a hand's width to two or three. With a little vigorous bending and tearing, the strips made decent oars. I picked up several more and piled them into the boat. Soon we were rowing across the water.\n\"We go to the town first,\" Gamelpar insisted.\n\"Why?\" Vinnevra said, her face clouding. \"Let's just row across and leave that\n be.\"\n\"Looks quiet,\" the old man said. \"There might still be living People out there. Or food.\"\n\"Or stinking bodies,\" Vinnevra said. I rowed, she rowed, and finally we rowed together so that the boat did not go in circles but toward the pillars, the drooping bridges, and at the center, the suspended village. It took us the better part of the day to row against a steady, lapping tide. Then, without reason, the tide reversed and rushed us in minutes toward the pillars, so that we had to back water vigorously to avoid being thrust between two adjacent pillars. We clumsily managed to make our way to a wide wooden dock in the crossing shadows of a network of bridges. On top of many of the pillars, individual huts perched like storks'\nnests. The bridges at that end could be raised or lowered to provide access, with platforms between that might be used by all. Here, I counted four layers of bridges, houses, platformsdenser anddenser toward the center of the village, where, finally, the dwellings merged. In the gloom beneath, stairs, ladders, and ropes descended to other docks. I saw no bodies, no evidence of fightingbut also heard no voices nor any of the sounds of a living town. Just the regular lapping of the salty waves. Then Vinnevra gasped. Something long and pale passed beneath us, a wide, greenish cloud like smoke in the dark water. She scrambled up onto the dock and I quickly followed, hauling Gamelpar with me. This time I caused him pain and he cried out, then pushed away, balancing on one leg, while I reached down and snatched his stick from the boat. The boat drifted, so I kneeled, groaning at the thought of leaning out over the water, and grabbed one side. \"We need some way to tie it up.\"\n\"I'll stay here and tend to it,\" Vinnevra said, glancing calmly enough into the wateronce again clear and dark through its depths. She preferred whatever had passed below, or its companions, to what we might find up above.\n\"Not a good idea,\" I said. \"You'll come with us.\"\nMy concern was twofold. I worried about her safety, but I also worried that she might give in to her compulsion and leave us stranded out here. I didn't trust her change in moodor whatever might be causing it. Fortunately, on the opposite side of the dock, a wooden bracket was hung with several ropes left to dangle in the water. Gamelpar pulled one up with his stick and soon we had the boat secured, then all of us climbed the steep steps to a hatch in the lowermost platform. Gamelpar, I learned, was quite capable of scaling such steps, as long as he took the climb slowly, braced his stick on the treads, and used it for balance. Through the hatch, we emerged on a wide, railed platform about twenty meters across, connected to other platforms and a few enclosed shacksfor at this level, still in the shadows, they were little more than that: places to store things or dwellings for the poor. I crossed several bridges, looking into the shacks, and found emptinessneither inhabitants nor food.\n\"They were all taken away,\" Vinnevra said. Had the humans here been worth fighting over? I wondered.What else could cause Forerunners to battle each other in such an insignificant place?\nSurely the humans hadn't killed them!\nWe climbed still higher, ladder and stairs and more ladders, until we reached a narrow round turret atop a central stone pillar, slender and, I thought, naturally six-sided rather than hewnif anything could be natural here. Gamelpar watched from below. Wind blew through Vinnevra's tight orange-brown curls as we walked around the turret together. From here, we could see out over the entire complex.\n\"You don't need to worry about me,\" she said. \"It's fading.\"\n\"What's fading?\"\n\"My sense of direction. Something's changed againback there, out\n there. But I just wanted to sayI really don't like it here.\"\n\"Not a warning from your geas\n?\"\n\"No. I hardly feel anything about that. I don't even see the Lady.\" She shook her head. \"I'm of little use now to anybody.\"\n\"Nonsense,\" I said. \"We know where to go, because of you.\"\n\"You know where not\n to go,\" she corrected.\n\"Just as useful, don't you think?\"\nShe pointed toward the largest building, a peaked pentagram supported by five roughly equidistant pillars, each about twenty meters apart. Their blunt tips poked through the perimeter of the roofline, forming a truly impressive central hallor the dwelling of some powerful leader.\n\"Over there?\" she asked. I traced and mapped the bridges with a darting finger. \"Maybe,\"\nI said.\n\"You might actually learn what happened here,\" she said, her voice low.\n\"What do you sense?\"\n\"Nothing good,\" she said. \"Can you hear it? Above the waves and the wind.\"\nI cupped my hands over my ears and directed them toward the pentagram hall. For a moment, I heard nothingand then, something heavy slammed inside the building, making the bridges sway. We held on to the turret rail and kept very still, like hunted animals, but nothing so loud followed.I looked down and saw Gamelpar frozen in place just like us, facing the direction of that hall. Then I heardor imagined I heardother, softer sounds coming from within the plank walls. Sounds not unlike the lapping of the waves, but more prolonged, and only slightly less liquid. Vinnevra pushed back from the rail. \"Something's in there,\" she said. \"Something odd and very unhappy.\"\nI had been around this girlno longer really a girl in my eyes for long enough to feel the hair on my neck and arms bristle. I descended from the turret, Vinnevra close behind.\n\"Do we go and look?\" I asked him. Gamelpar said, \"We've come this far. We're obviously none of us here for our health.\"\nSomehow, that also struck me as blasphemous. But these deep emotions were being challenged both by fear and by the unspoken attitudes of the Lord of Admiralswho had no such sentimental perspective about the Lifeshaper. We followed several bridges, moving in a broken spiral to the central hall. Finally, we gathered on a walkway that ran completely around the hall, and circled the perimeter until we came to a broad, high double door. The frame of the door was ornamented with blocky, simple carvings of leering faces, fruits, animalsand what looked like wolves or dogs. At the peak of the door frame, one very convincing ape looked down upon uslike those great black beasts said to be found in the northern highlands back on Erde-Tyrene, half a dream's distance from Marontik. I studied this oddly peaceful-looking visage. Had it been carved from life?\nGamelpar nudged my leg with his stick, and I pushed one side of the door. It swung in with a mournful groan. The smell that came out of that hall was indescribable, not the smell of deathnot rot and decaybut a thickened stench of endless fear and life gone desperately wrong. The door's creaking opening was followed by more fluid-slopping sounds from deep inside, curiously muffled as if by thick curtains. Vinnevra and Gamelpar were driven back by the smelland perhaps by the sound. Gamelpar held out his stick and gently pushed Vinnevra farther away, giving me a look that said with nouncertainty, only you and I will enter that place. My daughter of daughters will stay here.\n\"Gamelpar,\" she began, and I heard in her tone fear of being alone out here, of having no one to keep her from her compulsion, should it return, no one to cross the wide salty water with her . . . no one left on this broken wheel that she knew and trusted or loved. But the old man would not be dissuaded. \"You will stay here,\" he said. He nudged my shoulder with his hand. \"You first,\" he said. This was neither a joke nor any sign of cowardice. We were entering the kind of place, perhaps, where things were more likely to come upon one from behind. Things not truly alive . . . failed gods from old times, bitter and dusty; the ghosts of our ancestral enemies, outside human emotion, simply wound up to hunt and gibber along through the darkness . . . Why I thought of these things I do not know, but I was reasonably certain Gamelpar was thinking the same things. We were both far beyond any personal experience of what lies behind the apparently solid and real. I had hoped the Lord of Admirals would provide some helpful comment, some guiding memory, but he seemed to have retreated completely, as a snail draws in its horns at the shadow of a great, pecking bird. . . . A snail that knows its death is near. We entered the hall.FOURTEEN\n A T SUCH MOMENTS\n, the day is never long enough, and there is no time to regret prior delays, dawdling, not paddling fast enough, or taking so long to pick out the proper pieces of bark for the job. Light still filtered through gaps and chinks in the roof and walls, revealing a series of open cells, some round, some square, all visible two or three meters below where we stood, at the top of a flight of curved stairs. But that light was rapidly dimming. The long shadow of the edge wall was coming, even here, many kilometers inland and soon Halo night would be upon us.\n\"A few minutes of light left,\" I whispered to Gamelpar.\n\"Quick in, quick out,\" he said. We descended the steps. These cells might have once been places of sleep, or drinking, or eatingor just places where tinkers performed their duties. They were too close-packed to be any sort of reasonable collection of market stalls. And wrapped in deeper gloom at the center of the hall stood a large cage, five or six meters high, and twice as wide. Somehow, I did not believe humans had made such a cageeven in the darkness, there was a regularity, a craftsmanship, to the vertical wall of bars, as well as bluish tint. Keeping close, we followed a narrow, sinuous corridor toward the cage. I glanced into several of the cells and saw chairs, small tables, shelvestools and piled supplies of bark, wood, leather. The craftsmen were not in evidence, nor was there any signother than the leering faces on the door framewhat sort of humans these might have been. In a few dreadful minutes, we were close to the cage, and the failing light only hinted at what waited within: a great lump of shadow, big as ten or twelve men piled upon each othera pile of corpses, then? Some of the inhabitants, taken here, left behind, forgotten?\nBut the smell had not been of death. Tiny glints of phosphorescence seemed to flit around the mass, like fire flies on a hot grassland eveningprovoking a shiver, a hint of slow, uncertain motion.\"One of the lake creatures,\" I said softly. \"A great fish, or something else, dragged up and left here!\"\nGamelpar kept his eyes fixed on the mass, through the bars, and neither responded to my theory, nor moved in any way. He had become still as a statue. Then his eye shifted the barest degree, and met mine, and something passed between our old spiritsnothing complex. Simple recognition. The Lord of Admirals had seen such a thing before. It's a Gravemind,\n he told me, and illustrated that enigmatic description with a quick series of memories I could only half interpret. Before either of usGamelpar or mehad a chance to understand, the mass made a sudden, spasmodic movement, and its entire surface became a net of orange and green firecrawling veins of light, literally veins! Like glowing, burning blood vessels on the body of a flayed beastand yet not one beast, not one animal flayed and arranged in this mass, but many, manydozens! And not human, too large of limb and torso to be human. Not the mashed-together, former inhabitants of this water-locked village . . . Instead, we were seeing a mass of ForerunnersWarrior Servants or others of that kind, I thought, but there was no way to know for sure. They had been gathered up as if by some monstrous sculptor and molded and melted into each other like living clay, but more horrible yetsome still had heads, torsos, faces, and some of those faces could look outward, through the bars, and were watching us with faintly glowing eyes. The mass flinched again, making the entire building shudder beneath our feet. Then came the voices, soft at first, gradually coalescing, many voices in one, but the words poorly coordinated, spread out and blurred into an awful, cacophonic lament. I could only understand some of what the voices were trying to say. They wanted to be free. They wanted to die. They could not decide which. Then the mass pushed up against something we had not noticedbeforea transparent wall or field, very like the bubble in which I had been swept away from the San'Shyuum system. A cage within a cage. Forerunners had wrapped this thing, this mass, this Gravemind and then had left it hereor had died defending it and this place, died before they could reclaim their fellows and cure them of this atrocity. If they have a cure, which I doubt very much. I could not stand any more. I grabbed Gamelpar, lifted him up, and carried him back down the corridor, as the last light in the hall, from outside, faded, and the only glow that remained came from the excited mass within, still crying out in false hope, pain, despair.FIFTEEN\n I N OUR PANIC\n,\n we could not quickly find our way back to the small boat, moored somewhere below us. And in our flight, all three of us, blundering through the twilight cast by the sky bridge, kept coming across more corpsesmore decay. More dead Forerunners, lying on decks, bridges, walkways, or within dwellings. Hundreds of them. And no humans. Yet there were no signs of explosions or fire, only of sharp bladesperhaps fishing tools, likely human-madeor improvised clubs, and of course none wore protective armor. Something had compelled them to square off against each other in this most unlikely of places, and they had fought until all had died down to the very last Forerunner, I guessed, and the Lord of Admirals supported me on that much. But why?\nThey fought for a prizeor to prevent that prize from falling into the wrong hands.\n\"What prize?\" I cried out as I ran, Vinnevra close behind, Gamelpar not within sight. Realizing that, we both stopped, until I saw him, half-dead with exhaustion and pain, stumping and crutching along a far bridge.\n\"You . . . two . . . children\n!\" he shouted. \"It's back that way. You missed it.\" We backtracked to join him. He led us back to the ladder, the hatchall in deeper darkness, until we could only feel with our feet the last flight of steep stairs down to the docks, and hear the lapping of the waves against the dock and the pillars all around. In the deepest shadow of all, we managed to crawl into the boat, cast off the line, pick up our oars, and push out from beneath the suspended village. While above, not nearly far enough above, the mass thumped and writhed again and again and the whole village shook, dropping grit and dirt and who could guess what else down on our heads andnecks and shoulders. Out under the stars and the sky bridge, we picked at each other, tossing away the fallen bits, then took turns diving into the water, quickly sluicing, climbing back into the boatall the while watching for whatever might swim in these waters, fearing, right now, not sea creaturesbut other things entirely. I held Gamelpar while he swung his arms and legs in the water, then pulled him back into the boat, wide-eyed and shivering with the cold.\n\"What did you see?\" Vinnevra kept asking. \"What was it?\"\nNeither Gamelpar nor I had the heart to tell her. We were many kilometers out in the lake, away from the village, away from the shore, in the gently rolling currents taking us now toward the west, inland, away from the horror, when we saw we no longer needed to row. We collapsed in the bottom of the boat and slept.SIXTEEN\n T HE CURRENT MOVED\n us slowly, slowly, across the salt sea, while night came and day followed, and always the sweep of the great wheel overhead and the stars.\n\"My old spirit seems to know where we are,\" Gamelpar said from one end of the boat, where he lay facing up at the panoply.\n\"He's been studying the stars for years now.\"\n\"Where are we, then?\"\n\"A hiding place. A refuge.\" He pointed at three bright stars, arranged in a looping formation with four dimmer ones and a scatter of those barely visible. The dim stars were greenish, the bright stars, red and intensely blue. \"That is the Greater Tiger. See\"he drew with his finger in the air\"there's the tail, dimmer than the eyes and teeth. Human forces retreated here after Charum Hakkor. This was our last frontforty prime cruisers, ten first-rate tuned platforms\"\nVinnevra reached out to shush him with her finger, then looked at me resentfully. Gamelpar chuckled and shook his head.\n\"They're not real,\" she told both of us.\n\"Neither is your sense of direction,\" I said.\n\"No,\" she admitted. \"I don't even feel it now. The farther we drift . . .\"\n\"Why bring the wheel to this place?\" I asked Gamelpar.\n\"Because all the worlds here are slagged ruins, polluted for millions of years by weapons our forceshuman forces unleashed when they saw defeat was inevitable. No Forerunner has a need to visit hereand all subject species are warned to stay away.\"\nI had not heard of subject species before. \"Subject species . . . who are they?\" I asked. \"Like us?\"\n\"No. We were the defeated. There were also subservient allies. Some were used to gather and imprison humans after the defeat.\"\nHis face worked in disgust.\n\"A place no one visits . . . why here?\" I asked Gamelpar. Because it is stolen. Let the two of us old spirits rise and talk directly. I shook my head stubbornly. Gamelpar watched me closely and gave the slightest nod, as if approving. Neither of us wanted to be out here on the strange salt sea under the control of dead warriors from long, long ago.\n\"They're strong,\" I whispered, not to disturb Vinnevra, lyingdown now with eyes closed.\n\"They are we,\n\" he said. \"It's only a matter of time before they are harvested. And we might die when that happens. My old spirit speaks sometimes of something he thinks they called the Composer Forerunner or machine, I don't know which. But the Composer was once used for such purposes, in the past.\"\nI didn't want to understand what this meant, so I shook my head, lay back beside Vinnevra, and shut my eyes.\n\nJust as light crossed over the sea, the boat's rocking woke me from a dream that was entirely my own, a dream of the grasslands outside Marontik, where I hid by the side of a rutted wagon path, stalking well-to-do merchants. . . . Obviously, before Riser took me under his tutelage. I blinked and looked around. The boat continued to rock in a gentle swell. We were now far from either shore, out in the middle of the sea, and yet swift, steady ripples were touching us, orienting the boat parallel with their troughssomething disturbing the water not far away. The ripples began to subside but were then met with new ripples coming from the opposite direction. Vinnevra woke nextGamelpar slept like a stone and it took a rather rough shaking to rouse him. We looked both directions, trying to see what might be causing the disturbances. \"They're just waves,\" she concluded, but I could tell the difference. The longer, straighter waves were not the samelarger, wider, they were reflections from the uneven shoreline. Their rhythm had lulled us to sleep. These new ones had awakened us. Something gray and gleaming humped the water a dozen meters away, then withdrew, starting another round of slickly perfect undulations. Then the surface was all confused as a downdraft of cool air fell around our boat and created a wide roughening.\n\"Merse,\" I said. \"The lake is full of merse. The Lifeshaper loves them.\"\nVinnevra and Gamelpar didn't understand what merse were. I started to explain, but then a great, greenish black fin rose up just beside our boat, touching the side, spinning us around gently enough and sinking again, like the tip of a huge knife. I grasped the side and darted looks in all directions.\"Crocodile,\" I suggested next, but I had never heard of crocodiles with fins. Only fish and river dolphins, and this was much bigger than anything I had ever seen in a river. It did not take long for another hump to rise nearby, also slick and green. The fin seemed to flow under the water to join that smoothnessthen, all together, the huge shape slid beneath our boat.\n\"My best wife spoke of sea creatures big as villages,\" Gamelpar said. \"The Lady could have brought them here. She brought us here, didn't she?\"\nThe rounded shape and a pair of long fins roiled the water about a hundred meters off, departing rapidly. . . . And that made me peer down through the clear water, down and downto see another paleness, like the one that had approached us under the suspended town, the same color but even larger, not so far beneath us and stretching to all sides like an island trying to rise. The others saw it as well, and held on to each other. The paleness broke water on both sides of usbut what it was precisely that broke the water, I could not tell. I immediately feared the worstthat something like the mashed-together lump in the Forerunner cage had somehow gotten loose and occupied this sea, filling it everywhere, collecting everything that lived but still hungrily seeking more creatures to add, until it rose up as high as the edge wall itself. But as I studied the paleness, I saw it had its own nature, its own original strangeness, and I knew, somehow, it was no product of the Shaping Sickness. To my right, a rounded, lobe-edged appendage, purple and blue in color, emerged from the water in a slow roll, sweeping up and around. At the end of each lobe protruded a finer series of lobes, and at the end of each of those lobes, the same, until the outermost seemed to be covered with fuzz. On the other side of our boat rose another. The flesh that made these lobes was like milky glass shot through with bubbles . . . yet not bubbles, for they seemed to contain gently shining rolling jewels, like little sacs of treasure. These manifestations were beautiful beyond my ability to describe them, even now. For hours, as we drifted, these shapes and a bewildering number of variations swept up and down, perhaps observing us, perhapsushering us along, who could tell? But never did they try to reach out and snatch us from the boat, nor did they ever come close to capsizing us.\n\"What are they?\" Vinnevra asked.\n\"The sea is rich,\" Gamelpar said when he had recovered his speech, after our fear had departed, leaving only numb wonder. Neither of us had any answernor did the old spirits within us. The reach of the Forerunners, it seemed, had so far exceeded that of humans that we could cross this wheel and climb up the sky bridge, and back down again, and never see an end to the Lady's collections, her accumulated wonders. Why had she gone to such lengths?\n\"Theyor ithave been gathered by the Lifeshaper,\" I said.\n\"She keeps some of her favorites here.\"\n\"More favored than you and me?\" Gamelpar asked. If this was the Master Builder's wheel, this great weapon that was also a zoo, a refuge for humansthen had the Lifeshaper partnered with him as well as with the Didact? Did she serve two masters?\nOr did they all serve her?\nThe water had calmed, the lobed fans had disappeared, the water beneath was black into its depths.\n\nThe next afternoon, we slowly drifted past something I thought we should have certainly seen from a considerable distancea great, cone-shaped structure, dark gray, rising from the calm salt sea perhaps three or four hundred meters. Smooth but not shiny, it had no apparent texture or detail; it was disturbingly perfect, even for a Forerunner object. Water lapped around its broad base, and a twisting streamer of cloud lazed around its pinnacle. The currents swept our little boat around it and the great gray cone gradually receded, until, abruptly, it was no longer there blink, and it was gone. More Forerunner magic.\n\"The wheel is looking for its soul,\" Gamelpar concluded. \"It's waking up again and deciding what it wants to be.\"\nThat got me thinking. The cone might have been a quick sketch for a Forerunner power station. I had seen one of those back onErde-Tyrene, smaller but roughly the same shape. The wheel, the Halo, could be imagining itself fully repaired and ready to live again just as Gamelpar said. It was drawing up plans that soon enough it would finalize and make solid. Vinnevra kept glancing at the sky. The wolf-faced orb was now so large it illuminated the entire shoreline, adding to the sky bridge's reflected glow. Dark skyand hence any good view of the stars was going to be rare from now on. Hours later, we approached the far shore and saw beneath thick, lowering clouds mountains of medium height, cool and deep green and wet. Following the first edge of day, our boat bumped up on another rocky beach. We abandoned it and began to trek into the dense, rolling jungle, traveling no particular direction, following no geas. We were lost children, nothing more. Even Gamelpar.SEVENTEEN\n\nF RUIT THAT TASTED\n like soft-boiled eggs hung in bunches from the thick-bunched trees, but out of caution, we ate sparingly at first the only satisfying food we had had since Gamelpar's snares caught the fist-fur rodents. Other edible plants that both Gamelpar and Vinnevra seemed to know would taste good grew around or between the twisted, twining trunks, vines, and creepersand so we settled down, full and peaceful, not caring for once where we were or what might happen next. But walking was what we did, so we did not stay more than a day. Though we had eaten well, Gamelpar seemed to be losing both strength and enthusiasm. He walked more slowly and we rested often. The forest cast a twilight over us even during the day, and at night the pale light of the wolf-orb and the sky bridge filtered down, only slightly less helpful. We might have covered a half kilometer during the next daylight hour, keeping to the winding, open patches between the greater trees, pushing through soft, leafy vines that seemed to grow even as we watched. There was food. There was quiet. The old spirits did not bother us. It could not last, of course.\n\nWe had risen with the brighter twilight of day and were now sharing a reddish, melonlike fruit that tasted both sour-bitter and sweet, and cut both thirst and hunger. Biting flies and mosquitoes haunted the shadows. They were enjoying us as we enjoyed the fruits of the forest. I swatted, examined bloody remains on my palm, finished my portion of the melon, and was about to toss aside the rind when my eyes froze on the near forest. What might have been an odd gap between the treesshaped like the great figure of a man, broad-shouldered, with an immense headhad appeared to our left, fewer than ten paces away. Ireached for Vinnevra's shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. She had seen it, too. The shadow movedwe both jumped. The air hung still and damp in the morning gloom. I could hear the rustle of leaves, branches, ground-creeping vines. A vine near my foot tightened as the shape stepped on it. From across the small clearing, Gamelpar let out a whistle. Vinnevra did not dare respond. The great shoulders of the shadow rotated and shoved aside thick branches, pulling at clinging vines until they snapped and swung up. I thought for a moment that this was the Didact, returned to gather me upbut no, the shadow was larger even than the Didact, and furthermore walked on both arms and legs. Its long, dark-furred arms shoved down like pillars into the matted, overgrown floor of the forest. With a snort and a deep-chested grumble, the shadow swung about and rose up against the canopy. Vinnevra went to ground like a fawnstill as a statue, perched lightly on the balls of her feet, ready to bolt. Our eyes followed the shadow's slow, stately approach. A great black-furred arm dropped within reach. At the end of that arm flexed a huge handfour or five times broader than my own. A massive face leaned over usand such a face! Deep-set eyes framed in a wide fringe of reddish fur, a flat, broad nose with immense nostrilsjowls reaching almost to its shouldersand yellow-white teeth glinting between thick, purple-brown lips. The great green eyes looked down on me, unafraid, curious casually and calmly blinking. Then the eyes looked aside, no more afraid of me than I would be of a small bird. In the corner of my vision, a yellow light came flickering through the trees, tiny as a glowing fingertip. The great dark face abruptly pulled up and away, and we smelled grassy, fruity breath. Silence again. How could something so large move so quietly?\nBut I did not have time to think on this, for the light appeared from behind a wide tree trunk. It was like the flame of a clay lamp, but held in a Forerunner's hand. Often with seven lithe fingers, purple gray skin with pink undersideand above lamp and hand, a slender, questing face, glancing at where the great shadow had been, then back at me, as if acknowledging that we had both seensomething, and that we were now seeing each otherand all of it was real. The Forerunner brought the lamp flame closer. Vinnevra had a glazed look. She could not flee. She did not want to flee. I, on the other hand, had no wish to be carried off to the Palace of Pain. I leaped up and tried to runstraight into a wall of black fur. Huge hands closed around me. One hand clutched my ribs and another took hold of my flailing arm. Off to the side, soft voices rose from the forest. The hand around my torso let go and the other lifted me by my arm from the dirt and leaves. I dangled, feebly kicking, while the lamp flame came still closer. The Forerunner was neither like Bornstellar nor like the Didact. But it did bear a sort of resemblance to another that lingered in my dreamsthe Lifeshaper, the Librarian. The Lady. This one was not female, howeverat least, not the same sort of female. Of that I was sure. But very likely a Lifeworker. As I hung, the huge hand rotated me, allowing me to see, outlined by the glow of the flickering flame, three or four other figures. These looked human, male and femalebut not like me and not like Gamelpar and Vinnevra. As for what it was that dangled me like a child\n\"Ah, finally!\" the Forerunner said in a thin, musical voice, light as a breeze. \"We'd feared you were lost for good.\" Then he addressed my captor in a gruffer, darker tone, ending with a chuff and a clack of teeth, and the clutching hand lowered me to the floor gently enough, though my wrist, fingers, and shoulder hurt.\n\"Your name is Chakas, true?\" the Forerunner asked, waving the flame near my face. Why fi re? Why not I stood up, stretching and massaging my sore arm, surrounded by extraordinary figures. The humans were not any variety I had seen before, but more like me than the Forerunner, and certainly more like me than the looming, black-furred shape. I answered that was my name.\n\"He is not from here.\" Vinnevra shoved through the circle and stood in front of me, arms extended, as if to protect me. I tried to push her off, to get her to leaveI did not want to be responsible for anything that might happen herebut she would not budge.\"Indeed he is not,\" the Forerunner agreed, stretching out his hand and spreading those long, slender fingers. \"His coming was anticipated. He was to be the Master Builder's prize. Do not fear us,\" he added, more for Vinnevra's benefit than mine. \"No one will be taken to the Palace of Pain. That time is soon finished, and there is no need for punishment or vengeance. The Master Builder's doom and the fate of his forces is worse than humans can imagine.\"\nMONITOR INTRUSION ALERT Ship's data accessed:\n Historical/Anthropological Files, re: Earth Africa/Asia. Source determined to be Forerunner Monitor. CAUTIONARY NOTICE FROM STRATEGIC COMMANDER:\n \"Any further break-ins to ship's data and I'll toss that damned thing into space. I don't give a flying fortune cookie how much you're learning! It's a menace! Make it get to the point!\"\nRESPONSE FROM SCIENCE TEAM *DELETED FOR BREVITY*\n*AI RECALIBRATION*\nFIREWALLS PUSHED TO ^INFINITE RANDOM MAZE^\nMONITOR STREAM NUMBER THREE (Nonrepeating)\n\nIn the morning light, we followed in the train of the Forerunner, taking a winding vine-covered path to higher ground. The foothills to the mountains were also thick with jungle. The mountains themselves trapped the cloudy masses of moist air that echoed back and forth across the span of the Halo and forced them to drop their moisture nearly every night, and so the false rocks and ridges ran with cascades of foaming water, drawing silver-white streaks over the green and black. Those probably emptied into the sea behind us, but there was no way of knowing. The air too was wet, and the ground beneath us warmer, steaming, as if great vents of hot water laced through the foundation\n(and perhaps they did). Once, on Earth, there were many types of hominids, hominoids, and anthropoids who no doubt also thought of themselves as People. I was closest in form to those who now interrogate me;\nRiser was smaller, of a different species. Gamelpar and Vinnevra I suspect most closely resembled those you call Aborigines, from the ancient continent of Australia. The humans who accompanied this lone Forerunner bore some resemblance to those you now refer to as Denisovans. They were taller than me, chocolate brown, with spare bodies, reddish hair, and square heads. The males had copious facial hair. The huge black shadow with long armsa great ape like agorilla, but not a gorillaI believe is known to you only through a few fossil molars of impressive size. You call it Gigantopithecus, the largest anthropoid ever seen on Earth, almost three meters at the shoulders and crest, even taller standing up. And this one was a female. According to your records, the males could have been larger. Frightening in countenance but gentle in behavior, the great shadow-ape seemed to have taken a liking to Gamelpar and Vinnevra and carried them for a time on her shoulders. Great bristling wings of gray-tipped dark red fur framed her broad, sloping face. Huge lips pouched down around squat, thick incisors large enough to chew through wood and crush bonebut in our presence she ate mostly leaves and fruits. Gamelpar, riding high over us, clutched the dense fur on the ape's shoulder and smiled all the while. Vinnevra looked happier than I had yet seen her. Several times she looked down upon me, walking among the Denisovansthree males and two females, laconic and moodyand said to me, each time, \"It's coming back to me now. This is my true geas.\n This is what I should\n have seen.\"\nEventually, the ape's loping gait and frequent passage under low hanging branches forced Vinnevra and Gamelpar to the ground to walk on their own. The Denisovans, who appeared to find Gamelpar's age intriguing, studied his weariness with sympathetic sighs, then used vines to tie together a litter, and for a while he rode that way, Vinnevra walking by his side. The old man's lips drew back in a broad smile. \"Much better,\"\nhe said. There was something about this processthe regular way the litter swung, the smoothness with which it was carriedthat caught my eye; but I dismissed my concerns, for now. We climbed higher. The canopy thinned. We could see much of the sky. By the time the sun brushed the middle of the darkling band of the sky bridge, and shadow was equidistant from us to either side\n\"noon\"we arrived at a plateau. The Forerunner called forth several hovering, round, blue-eyed machines, which met us at the thinning margin of the jungle. He addressed them with finger-signs, and the machines moved among us, paying particular attention to Vinnevra and Gamelparthen tome. The Denisovans did not find these floating balls remarkable.\n\"They're called monitors,\" the tallest of the males said to me. He had chunky, ruddy features, a very large nose, and thin lips. \"They serve the Lady . . . mostly.\"\nThe old man leaned on his side in the litter while one of the machines passed a blue band of light over his skinny frame. The machine then did the same to me, and spun around to face the Forerunner, who accepted some communication we could not hear and seemed satisfied. We had traveled some distance. The ape had found a little food suitable to the rest of usfruit, mostly: strange green tubes with pointed ends and round, pulpy masses encased in reddish skins but we were still thirsty. Worse, more insects had taken a liking to our blood and buzzed around us in annoying clouds.\n\"Why does the Lady allow such nuisances?\" Vinnevra asked me in an aside while the machine was examining her grandfather. I shook my head and swatted.\n\"This is a special reserve,\" the tall Denisovan said. \"We feed the flies, the flies feed the bats and birds and the fish. It is the Lady's way.\" But I noticed the insects ignored them and focused on us. Vinnevra was not impressed. She swung and slapped and murmured, \"It was better back in the city.\"\n\"Back in the city, you were under the rule of the Master Builder,\"\nthe tall Denisovan said, as if that explained anything. \"Was it better to be taken to the Palace of Pain?\"\nVinnevra shuddered. \"We are the People\n!\" she said defensively, giving that last word the peculiar emphasis that denoted superiority.\n\"No doubt,\" the tall Denisovan said with an understanding smile. Vinnevra wrinkled her nose, took a deep whiff, and glared at me, but I was in no mood for her theatrics.\n\nWe stood on the edge of the plateau. For a moment, a breeze came up and scattered the insects, thena profound stillness. I looked around at the others.\n\"What's your name?\" I asked the tall Denisovan.\n\"Kirimt,\" he responded with a sweep of his hand. In turn he introduced the females, partners to the other males. One of themales did not seem to have a female in this group. Vinnevra received these introductions with a haughty expression, unwilling as yet to admit any of them to her protected inner circle. During all this I kept my eye on the Forerunner, and now he returned his attention to me. His focused interest made me uncomfortable; he seemed to look right through me. Then, his facial muscles altered slightly, his eyes crinkled up, and he bowed his head. I had learned, during my time with Bornstellar, to pick up on some of the expressions Forerunners used, however strange and stiff their faces, and I thought I detected a hint of relief and something like pride. But this one was stiffer than usual, stiffer even than the Didact.\n\"With this group, the Librarian may have enough,\" he saidor some word like \"enough,\" more technical. Gamelpar held up his hand and climbed off the litter. He drew himself up straight, then took back his stick from Kirimt, who had carried it for him.\n\"Our capabilities are much reduced,\" the Forerunner continued.\n\"The Master Builder's security has suffered a great setback, but we who serve the Librarian have yet to regain our strength.\"\nThe ape reclined on the grassy ground. Vinnevra and Gamelpar knelt down next to her, then leaned back on her great round belly and rested. The ape cocked her head, as if capable both of listening and understanding.\n\"What's your name?\" I asked the Forerunner.\n\"I am Genemender Folder of Fortune,\" he said, blinking eloquently. Something about his eyesthe smoothness of that quick motion of the eyelidsdisturbed me.\n\"Are you going to set us free and return us to Erde-Tyrene?\" I asked. The question just popped out of me, and it reminded me that despite all I had experienced, I was still young and more than a little brash.\n\"I wish that were possible,\" he said. \"Communication has broken down and many of our facilities have been damaged. Power stations everywhere have been sabotaged. There are only a few damaged stations left to supply the needs of the entire wheel. They are not enoughyet.\"\nThe breeze had slowed and the insects returned. The Forerunnerwaved his long fingers, and suddenly they all moved off to hover in a ball several meters away. \"I advise you to stay here with us until stability returns. There is food, shelter, and an explanation I hope will satisfy all as to our intentions.\"\nAfter a few minutes' rest, the Denisovans and the Forerunner urged us to get moving again. The Denisovans took the lead, skirting the humming ball of frustrated insects and walking in a loose line toward the middle of the plateau.\n\"Will you ever allow us freedom?\" I asked Genemender. \"Or are we like those insects?\"\nA quick flick of expressionembarrassment?\n\"Not our choosing,\" he said. We pushed through the edge of the jungle and saw a clearing ahead, a flat expanse of short-cut green grass. Huts raised on stilts surrounded the clearing on three sides but not where we entered.\n\"Come with us,\" Kirimt said. \"This is where we live.\"\nThe air at the center of the clearing shimmered and a silvery blue blob appeared, surrounded by a wall of tree trunks. From where we stood, it was hard to determine just how large the blob actually wasits rounded contours were perfectly reflecting, in a distorted way, everything around it. Perhaps the blob concealed something elseperhaps it was what Bornstellar had called a Dazzler. The shadow-ape stood back for a moment with Vinnevra, but she supported Gamelpar, who now refused the litter. As he walked past me, arm over her shoulder, he said, \"There is no other place to be. But we\n hear you.\" And he gave me a direct gaze, one old soldier to anotherneither exactly present. Kirimt swung up his arm and jerked his head, let's go, and I realized there was nothing more to say or do for the moment but comply. The Denisovans escorted us over the lush grass to the huts. An empty hut waited in the middle. All the huts were accessible through steps or ladders, but the shadow-ape lifted Gamelpar up and over the rail onto the porch. He stood there, gripping the bamboo rail, while Vinnevra and I climbed the rough-cut steps. From the porch we had a broad view of the clearing and of the Denisovans gathered below.\n\"Clean up, rest, and then we will share supper,\" Kirimt said. Vinnevra wrapped herself in her arms and stooped to passthrough the low door into the hut's interior. Gamelpar seemed content to watch the shadows lengthen across the jungle and the clearing. The ape reached out, gently nudged the old man's hip with a thick-nailed finger, whuffed,\n then moved around to the left and vanished in the trees. Vinnevra returned and took a stand beside Gamelpar. \"This is my geas\n,\" she said, \"more than any other place, but something's still not right. We cannot stay here.\"\n\"Not to your taste?\" I asked, nodding at the hut.\n\"It's very comfortable,\" she said with a shake of her shoulders, though there were few insects at the moment. \"That ForerunnerI do not smell him. I do not smell the others, either. I only smell the ape.\"\nI had noticed the same thing but did not know what it meant. I hardly knew what anything around here meant.\n\"My nose is old,\" Gamelpar said. \"I barely smell the ape.\"\nThe hut's interior was made of bamboo and wood slats. There were leafy beds, a small rough table, and three chairs. A basin of stone supplied water that poured out of a bamboo pipe when it was lowered. I studied this mechanism with idle curiosity, drank some of the water, splashed it about my face, and took a leaf cup to the old man. He drank sparingly, then lay back on one of the beds, and was almost immediately asleep. Vinnevra remained on the porch, where she knelt with her forearms on the rail. I saw her through the low door, silhouetted by glowing clouds. Just after dark, Kirimt called us to our supper.EIGHTEEN\n\nW E CROSSED A\n dirt path to a larger log hall at the corner between two lines of huts. Thunder echoed across the mountains and we barely made it inside the hall before rain began to pour down. The hall was almost fifty meters long and twenty wide. Tables had been set up in four long rows under a high arching roof woven from branches and vines. The drum of rain on the roof was almost deafening. The heat had gotten more intense and the air seemed wet enough to swim through. Still, Gamelpar shivered as if with chill, enough so that Kirimt and one of the female DenisovansI had a difficult time telling them apartprovided him with a roughly woven blanket. Four more females carried in a pallet and offloaded food onto a head table. I watched them with real curiosity, for they were not Denisovans, nor like Vinnevra and Gamelpar, and not at all like me. Their heads were long, their jaws prominent but chinless, and they walked with a graceful lope. In some respects they reminded me of Riser, but larger. When they were done, having delivered two pallets, the table was piled high with bowls of cooked grains, fruit, and a thick paste that tasted of salt and meat, but was not meatnot any meat I knew, at any rate. A flagon of cool water and another flagon of what tasted like honey mead, but was purple, completed the repast. We filled wooden plates, then gathered at a corner table to eat. Gamelpar sat sidewise, his sore leg sticking out and swollen tight at the ankle. Yet he was not being tended to. Were we to be left to our ailments, as well as biting insects? Was there some greater Lifeshaper plan at work here, requiring that we suffer more?\nFor the moment, after the food-bearing females departed, we three and the Denisovans were the only ones presenteight of us sitting in a space that could hold many more. The shadow-ape had not accompanied us. But slowly others strolled in singly and in groups and took their places. The hall was finally half-filled by at least a hundred humans. My eye was far from expert but I judged they came in seven or eight varieties. They seemed to have no prejudices against eachother and no problems either serving or mingling, as if out of long habit. Vinnevra chuffed again, still unimpressed. \"How many of our People are here?\" she asked Gamelpar, looking around with a pinched expression.\n\"Just us,\" he said. I had always wondered about Vinnevra's prejudice, the quick ease with which it rose up, the difficulty she had in tamping it back downeven in my case. In the cities, someone divided humans against each other to control them. I paused, wooden spoon lifted to my lips, listening to the inner voice. This Forerunner is unlike the Master Builder. He fosters unity, not division. He may be strange and weak, but he is not cruel. Perhaps he alone of his kind remains and all the others are dead. We had certainly seen enough dead Forerunnersand no other live ones. Across the table, I met Gamelpar's look when he peered at me, as if hearing similar words in his own thoughts. Again I wondered how the two of us could ever bring our ancient experiences, knowledge, and personalities together, without losing our own souls in the bargain. Genemender entered with the last stragglers. For reasons I could not articulate, and not just the lack of smell, my queasiness only grew stronger.\n\"I see two of you have the Librarian's mark, but one does not,\"\nsaid Genemender, standing behind me. I craned my neck to keep him in sight. \"Chakas, you clearly remember Erde-Tyrene, do you not?\"\nI felt my flesh creep at the steady gaze of so many facesso many kinds of faces. \"Yes,\" I said. \"I would go back there if I could.\"\n\"I believe the Librarian would have us all return,\" Genemender said. \"That is not yet possible. Eat, be strong . . . rest. There is much to be done here, and little time.\"NINETEEN\n\nS OMEBODY POKED ME\n in the shoulder. I came awake in the middle of the darkness. My sleep had been heavy, dreamlessmy weary body lulled by the warmth of the ground and the hot, moist air. I rolled over, the cot rustling under me, and saw A small, gray-furred face peering down at me, almost close enough to kisswhich I nearly did. Riser!\nI reached out for him but with a lip-pouching frown, he held up his handquiet!and withdrew into the hut's shadows.\n\"Are you living here, too?\" I whispered, loudly enough to make Vinnevra roll over, but not to wake her. Riser's silhouette did not respond.\n\"I didn't see any other Florians. . . .\"\nThe silhouette waggled an arm as if in warning, and I felt a tingling chillperhaps Riser had died after all, and this was his lost and wandering ghost!\nBut I caught the figure's meaning and stopped talking. He approached again and touched my face with his long fingers, showing how glad he was to see me. He leaned in as if to nuzzle my ear and spoke softly: \"Dangerous here. Weapons and ships gone, broken. The one who hates the Didact, and his fighters . . . still here, still moving humans around like cattle. This place, right here . .\n. not real! Full of dead! You and me\"\nCame a creaking as someone climbed the steps to the porch outside. Riser made another frantic gesturedo not reveal me!\nthen pulled back, hiding behind a chair. I still hardly believed I had seen him, heard himcould a ghost accuse others of being ghosts?\nThe Forerunner peered into our hut through the low door, carrying that ridiculous candle-lamp in his spidery hand. \"It's fortunate you and the old one made your way here and not to any of the other stations,\" he said in a low voice, not to wake the others.\n\"Please come with meoutside.\"\nSomehow, I had lost all fearRiser's return, even if only as a transient spirit, had reawakened a perverse sense of adventure. With a quick glance at the chair, I pushed through the low door andclimbed down the ladder. Genemender waited for me on the grass.\n\"Why are we so fortunate?\" I asked.\n\"The girl responded to your presence with her own imprinted instructions,\" he said, walking ahead of me toward the glistening shape a hundred meters away. The rain and clouds had passed and the trees and huts shone silvery and clear under the night stars and the sharp-cut arc of the sky bridge. I jerked at a sound from nearby. The ape had returned sometime after we left the dining hall to lie down under tree-cover near our hut. She watched us with almond-shaped eyes, full lips pressed together. Her nose wrinkled and twitched, sniffing the air, and she raised her arm, then waved her hand, as if dismissing somethingor trying to warn me. Perhaps she had seen Riser as well.\n\"Does the Lifeshaper know everything that's going to happen?\" I asked, trotting to keep up with Genemender's long stride.\n\"Not all,\" he said. \"At least, I doubt it. But she has a remarkable way of moving us abouthumans and Forerunners.\"\nI could not disagree.\n\"Your young female saw a human wearing Forerunner armor, having fallen from the sky in a rescue pod. . . . Not at all normal or what one would expect, even here. Her people were long ago imprinted with the need to bring such curiosities to a station where we might evaluate them.\"\n\"She almost led us to the\" I stopped myself. To reveal important facts is to share trust. Before I shared, I wanted to learn more from this peculiar host. \"This wheel is a wreck, cities are destroyedbroken star boats everywhere,\" I said. \"How could she know where to go, with everything changing?\"\n\"Yet you are here,\" Genemender said. \"Beacons send signals, and the signals are updated as circumstances change.\"\nI shrugged. No sense arguing. Beacons across the wheel, sending out conflicting signals . . . Not impossible.\n\"You've fed us and let us rest,\" I said. \"What do you intend to do with us? Add us to your specimens?\"\nGenemender regarded me steadily. I almost felt my thoughts and memories projected like shadows on a tight-stretched skin nothing could be hidden from this one.\n\"You've come upon evidence of the Shaping Sickness,\" he said.\"That's what humans called it.\"\n\"The Flood? My old spirit certainly thinks so,\" I saidthen wondered if I had revealed too much. But Genemender was not surprised in the least.\n\"Indeed. Your old spirit, as you call it, one of the archived warriors stored in your genetic material . . . How many of them have come awake within you?\"\nGenemender paused, listening closely for my answer. We had walked to within a few meters of the smoothly reflective mass suspended above the wall of tree trunks and branches.\n\"One, I think,\" I said.\n\"No more?\"\n\"I might have felt others at first . . . now, there's just one. What use are such things to Forerunnersor to the Master Builder?\"\n\"Let us begin with Erde-Tyrene,\" he said. \"A young Manipular was led to your birth-world by his ancilla.\"\n\"The blue lady,\" I said.\n\"Yes. When you met Bornstellar, part of your own imprint, given to you by the Librarian, was activated. You and the small Florian named Riser led the Manipular to Djamonkin Crater.\"\nI wasn't about to tell him the Florian was here. I still wasn't convinced myself.\n\"A deeper imprint was germinated when you met the Didact, and flowered when he took you to Charum Hakkor. There, the imprint took on a distinct shapea personality was revived. A species is not just the record of how to make a male and a female. History and culture are also part of the whole. The greatness of humanity has been stored within you, and so very little is actually lost. Brilliant!\"\nHis admiration bothered me. I was allowed to feel, to worship, on the Librarian's behalf, but for a Forerunner to share those deep held opinionsto look upon me as a marvelous bit of craft, simply fulfilling my designI found that disturbing, even disgusting. Genemender stepped through the branches and trunksnot between, but through. I tried to follow but came up short, convinced I would be bruised or poked in the eye.\n\"Come along,\" he called. \"It's safe.\"\nI closed my eyes and walked through, feeling just a suggestion of hard bark and twigs.\"The great anthropoid could not do what you just did,\" he informed me. We stood under a high, round ceiling, at the origin point of radiating corridors lined with tall, twisted cylinders. The cylinders had an odd, translucent quality that came and went, sometimes foggy and shiftingsometimes solid. I followed him down the middle aisle. A steady glow accompanied us.\n\"I've never seen an ape as big as that one,\" I said, talking just to hide my worry. I wondered if these cylinders were containers, instrumentsor perhaps some kind of ceremonial sculpture. I did not know whether Forerunners engaged in that kind of art.\n\"The last of her kind,\" Genemender said. \"She once lived on Erde-Tyrene, not so far from where you were born. Even at their pinnacle, her people seldom numbered more than a thousand. When the Lifeshaper came to Erde-Tyrene to gather what could be saved, she found only five. Now, unfortunately, the others are dead.\"\nI could not bring myself to ask how they had died. Perhaps in the Palace of Pain? \"Are you not in the habit of wearing armor?\"\n\"All armor and ancillas on this installation have been corrupted. Not even the monitors are completely trustworthy, but those that remain are essential to maintaining the reserve.\"\n\"What corrupted them? The machine with the green eye? Or the Captive?\"\nThereI had blurted it out. Genemender made a strange facehalf-stiff, half-concealing. My flesh crawled. He did not have a smell and he did not know how to react to certain questions. Incapable of telling a lie, but unwilling to reveal all? This is no Forerunner!\nI still reserved judgmentbut I was definitely unhappy in Genemender's presence, however much he seemed to want to keep me calm.\n\"In good time,\" he said. \"Let us begin at the beginning. Halos were the primary weapons in the Master Builder's proposed defense against the Flood, which was already ravaging parts of the Forerunner realm. These Halo installations, constructed on great Arks outside the margins of our galaxy, were designed to destroy life in millions or even billions of star systems, should the Flood spread out of control.\"The Didact opposed their construction and planned instead a very different campaign of containment and isolation by building and positioning Shield Worldseven more massive and in some respects more powerful than Halos, but capable of carrying out more selective campaigns of destruction.\"\nStar-hopping,\n the Lord of Admirals said within me, and I was distracted by a sudden vivid burst of charts and maps showing the rippling membranes and expanding spheres of an interstellar war. It was his way to isolate, besiege, and lay low, at the most opportune moments, only those points of greatest strategic importance, and ignore the rest.\n\"The Master Builder convinced the Council that the emergency was already too extreme,\" Genemender continued, \"and that the Didact's Shield Worlds were not the answer. The Didact's plan was denied. In protest, and to avoid serving the Master Builder, he went into exile, entering his Cryptum, where you and Bornstellar found him a thousand years later. The Halos were built, to the great profit of the Master Builder and his kind.\n\"But after concealing her husband's location, the Librarian went to the Council and invoked the Mantlethe fundamental duty of Forerunners to nurture and protect life. The Council forced a bargain with the Master Builder and decreed that Halos would also serve as sanctuaries for species from across the galaxy, to preserve them against almost universal destruction, should the installations be forced to carry out their mission.\n\"The Librarian has always favored humans, much to the dismay of the Didact. As part of the Council's agreement, the Librarian was given space on several of the Master Builder's installations. Humans were brought to this oneover one hundred and twenty varieties, many hundreds of thousands of individuals. Others were placed on the great Arks where Halos are built and restored. All were designated as reserve populations, not to be tampered with. But the population of imprinted humans on Erde-Tyrene were not made part of that plan. No humans from your planet were brought here until recently.\"\nNot even the Librarian would risk my presence on such a weapon!\nI objected, \"But Gamelpar, the old oneand me\"\n\"The Master Builder altered the Librarian's plans.\"How like gods and devils everywhereForerunners scheming, lying, denying their firmly held principles. My head reeled. Very human, actually. Makes you wonder, no?\n\"Why?\"\n\"Back then, the Flood was known to some Forerunners, but kept secret until its nature and extent could no longer be concealed. Almost immediately after the Forerunner victory over the humans, many of their captured records were translated, and Forerunners learned that humans had already encountered this strange life-form, and that with the arrival of the so-called Shaping Sickness from outside the galaxy, humans had essentially fought on two fronts. That may have hastened their defeat.\n\"But before that defeat, humans apparently discovered ways to both prevent and treat the disease. They had orchestrated a program of research that depended in part upon massive sacrifice including deliberate infection. Humans, it seems, had their own Palaces of Pain. Methods of containment and even prevention were discovered and implemented. Their battle commanders were trained in these methods. Fully a third of all human colonies were destroyed during this purge.\"\nSome among us had hoped to carry the Shaping Sickness to the Forerunners and infect them. But those who believed in this strategy were denied. It seemed some would face defeat rather than perpetuate such an atrocity, even on our worst enemies. Now I became very uncomfortable, wondering just who or what was within me: human, monsteror human monster?\nIt makes no difference in war.\n\"Upon learning of this, the Librarian's imprinted humans suddenly acquired immense value. The latent memories of those ancient warriors likely carried the secrets that could save us all. But not all humans carry the necessary imprintsthe proper old spirits,\n as you say. And so a search was begun by both the Master Builder and the Librarian, while Forerunner research on the Flood continued.\"\nSo much the Lord of Admirals had already conveyed. I still had difficulty sorting out the complexities.\n\"But then, the Master Builder reneged on his agreements with the Librarian. Over the last few hundred years, reckoning by the years you know, the Master Builder's forces took command of theinstallation's human specimens. Lifeworkers lost control of most of the reserves. In contradiction to specific instructions from both the Librarian and the Council, beginning just over a century ago, humans from the Librarian's special population were transported here from Erde-Tyrene. New and isolated communities were created. That was when the Master Builder began his own experiments. Many humans were subjected to excruciating tests to see if they were truly immune to the Flood. Some were. Others were not.\"\n\"The Palace of Pain.\"\n\"Yes. But the essential differences still could not be discovered. Some Lifeworkers acquiesced to the hierarchy and carried out the Master Builder's plan. Still othersselected for their courage and disciplinedid their best to keep the Librarian's preserves intact. They made what you might call\n'a\n devil's bargain.' Warrior Servants, at the bottom of the hierarchy, were forcibly recruited to serve and defend the installation.\n\"Thenthe installation was moved to Charum Hakkor for its first major test. The Master Builder did not foresee the results.\"\n\"The Captive,\" I said.\n\"Yes. The Captive, as you call it, was accidentally released from its timelock. Builder Security then transported it to the Halo. The Master Builder ordered Lifeworkers, under pain of disgrace and death, to study and, if possible, interrogate the Captive. Some believed the Captive and the Flood were somehow connected. Others did not. The Halo was moved again, to prepare for what the Master Builder believed would be his crowning triumphwhen he would reveal his solution to the Flood.\n\"In extremis, the Didact planned to put all Forerunner defenses under the command of a metarch-level ancilla. That ancilla kept a primary extension on this installation, as on all Halos. But it was not allowed to assume command except in dire emergency. The Master Builder, however, found another use for itunauthorized, as usual.\n\"The Master Builder did not trust Lifeworkers. He ordered this ancilla, the supreme intellect on the installation, to take over the Captive's interrogation. That questioning took forty-three years.\n\"At the end of that time, the Master Builder sent this Halo to a quarantined system, which held the last of the San'Shyuum. Against all Council instructions, he then used this most hideous weapon tosuppress a mere rebellion.\"\nAnd then he had ordered the destruction of the Didact's star boat, the capture of the Didact and Bornstellar, and of Riser and myself.\n\"The San'Shyuum system was stripped of all life. The Master Builder, in command of a weapon capable of destroying all life, had violated the deepest precepts of the Mantle. Many Lifeworkers and Warrior-Servants on this installation went into open rebellion against the Builder and his loyal forces. They were suppressed.\n\"Thena political crisis occurred in the capital system. The Master Builder was indicted for his breaches by the Council. There is strong evidence that the Master Builder's ancilla was subverted by its long discourse with the Captive. Yet this was unknown to the Council. With the arrest of the Master Builder, and with the class of Warrior-Servants in disarray, this ancilla, subverting all of its corresponding parts, took charge of all the installations gathering in the capital system. This Halo, and the others, then attempted to carry out the greatest betrayal of alldestruction of the Council and the capital.\n\"I do not know the extent of the damage they caused. But in defense, all of the installations were fiercely attacked, some were destroyed, and this Halo barely escaped through a portalto be brought here and placed in hiding.\n\"The battle between the subverted ancilla, Builder Security, and Lifeworkers continuedcontinues, some say, to this day. But I am not kept informed. Mistakes were made, no doubt. Hideous mistakes.\"\n\"So what is this wheel, now?\"\n\"A ruin. But stilla laboratory.\"\n\"Whose laboratory?\"\nWe had reached a gap in the rows of cylinders, within which had been arranged a circle of smaller, more intricate machines.\n\"In good time. First, I need to retrieve your awakened imprint, to better understand what the Librarian intended for you.\" He walked around me, activating the monitors, some of which rose from the floor and approached, eager to begin the procedure. I did not relish the prospect, but I certainly did not want to show fear. So I continued to talk. \"We owe our lives to the Lifeshaper, all of us, whatever has happened since.\"\"That is so.\"\n\"But now we are caught in a fight between\n Forerunnersand some sort of mad machine.\"\n\"That is so,\" Genemender said. I put aside these confirming factsand decided to move on to other matters, testing how far this Forerunner was willing to be truthful, or how much he knew after all.\n\"What happened to the Captive? Is it still here?\"\nGenemender's whole demeanor altered. He squared his shoulders. \"We will not speak of that one\n,\" he said. \"We should begin scanning now.\"\nTime to flee!\nI backed away from Genemender and the hovering monitors.\n\"Not yet. I need to know about the Captive.\"\nHesitationthen, \"It claims to be the last Precursor.\"\n\"What are Precursors?\"\n\"Creators of all life in our galaxy. The originals. They made Forerunners. They made humans. They made thousands of other speciesand erased them when they felt the need. Long ago, when it became apparent that the Precursors were about to erase Forerunners, there was a war, and Forerunners erased them\n.\"\nGenemender moved his arm again, and I was surrounded by machines. No way between them!\n\"The ones who met us in the jungle, who filled the hallwhy don't they have any smell?\" I asked. The Lifeworker again gave me that familiar, stiff look.\n\"They're not flesh, are they?\" I asked. \"What are they?\"\n\"Spirit, you might say. They are all kept here,\" Genemender said, pointing to the cylinders.\n\"Frozen inside?\"\n\"No. Scanned, protectedneutralized. They will not be abused by the Master Builder, or anything else.\"\n\"They're not here physically?\"\nHe agreed, and my heart sank further. \"Then the ones outside . .\n.\"\n\"Periodically, I rotate the records and refresh their experiences with projected walks around the compound, where they can interact.\"\n\"You let them out?\"\"I give them that impression,\" Genemender said. \"The only actual physical presence here is the female ape. She, too, enjoys company.\"\n\"Where are their bodies?\"\n\"Not essential. Scans are sufficient, and easier to control.\"\n\"You killed them.\"\n\"They are no longer active, and no longer a danger.\"\n\"They were all from Erde-Tyrene?\" Suddenly all became clear. The machines tightened their circle.\n\"Yes.\"\nThey do not look strong, those machines. They were made for science, not fighting.\n\"It was the last command of the Librarian, conveyed to this installation when it returned to the capital,\" Genemender said.\n\"There was a good reason humans from Erde-Tyrene were not brought to the Halo installations. They contain the memories and life experiences of ancient warriors. That makes them dangerous, and on such a weapon as this\"\nMove. The old spirit rose up with furious strength and took charge of my arms and legs. I kicked and flailed at the machines. They backed away, and I launched myself at the Forerunner, screaming with a rage so old it might have been kindled on Charum Hakkor itself, in those last days. Thena startling thing happened. For a moment, the Forerunner was not standing before me. My blows did not land. I flew into empty air, to strike the floor beyond and roll to my feet. The machines now kept their distance. Then, the Forerunner reappeared, off to one sidebut while his body took a shimmering shape, I saw something else through the shimmer: a monitor with a single dull blue eye. Then, Genemender was back, as solid as ever, regarding me with what might have been perplexity, or sadness.\n\"You're dead, too, aren't you?\" I said. No answer.\n\"Did you die to defend the preserve?\"\nNo answer.\n\"You've explained everything to me. Why?\"\nStill no answer. I jumped toward the image again, but it swiftlyshifted away, flickering uncertainly.\n\"You can't lie,\" I said. \"You're just a machinean ancilla.\"\nThe same steady, sad gaze. \"Once, I was a Lifeworker. I chose this fate rather than serve the Master Builder.\"\n\"But you can't actually do\n anything to me without my permission, can you?\"\n\"I offer peace. I offer an end to questions that cannot be answered. And I am bound to carry out the Librarian's final instructions.\"\nBut the machines still did not move in.\n\"How do you know the instructions came from the Librarian?\"\nAgain the shimmer.\n\"There's not much power left, is there? All the power stations have been sabotaged. The beacons have been corrupted. That girl out therewas it the Librarian's signal that sent her toward the Captive? Who commands you\n, really?\"\n\"I am sure of my instructions.\" But the stiff expression remained.\n\"There are dead machines, dead Forerunners, everywhere,\" I said. \"This Halo is dead\n.\"\n\"Would that it were. You refuse the honor of being archived?\"\n\"I refuse.\"\n\"You wish to leave?\"\nThat did not seem to require an answer.\n\"Do you know what awaits you out there?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"It is beyond my comprehension, and so it is likely beyond yours. Evil so vast . . . an awful misuse of all that Forerunners know and have created. Misuse of the Composer, designed once to save us all. . . . Destruction of the Mantle, and such knowledge of history that it rots a Forerunner's soul. Yet we must serve the Librarian's will. Even you. You owe her your very existence.\"\n\"Not anymore,\" I said, in sudden equal partnership with the Lord of Admirals. \"I'm going to leave now. Can you stop me?\"\nNo answer, but the shimmer increased. Then there was no Genemenderonly that rather small monitor, its single blue eye dimming as I watched. It moved back among the other machines. I was alone, and the space with its rows of twisty cylinders filled with a silence and gloom more profound than I could bear. I spunaboutand heard, from far outside, a woman screaming. It was Vinnevra, I was sure of itaccompanied by a throaty, deep roar that I immediately knew was the ape. I had to get out of this place! I ran back along the corridor and again found a thicket of branches barring my waybranches that poked and creaked as I grabbed and pushed and pulled, but would not yield. Again, Vinnevra screamed. I felt someone behind meswiveled about, hands raised in defenseand saw Genemender lost in apparent melancholy. \"I am unable to resolve these contradictions,\" he said. \"Time is short. The old human is very ill. He needs immediate scanning or his imprint will be lost.\"\nHe walked through the barricade. The thicket let me pass as well. We left the atrium of cylinders. I had no intention of allowing the monitor to do anything to Gamelpar. Vinnevra had fallen to her knees in front of the hut. Gamelpar squatted on the porch, leaning against a post. The shadow-ape was moving in circles around Vinnevra, looking left and right, swinging one armprotecting both of them. Vinnevra shouted, \"I woke up and saw the little oneI could smell him! I touched him! But the othersI know why they don't smellthey're ghosts! They just vanished!\"\nGenemender regarded me sorrowfully. \"It is difficult maintaining appearances,\" he said. \"Our beautiful ape will be sad without the others. It is our duty to keep her contented, and to welcome visitors especially those traveling under the Librarian's imprint.\"\nThis machine is both madand weak.\n\"You're not real!\" I said.\n\"I am equal to my responsibilities.\"\nMore madness! Yet it obeys!\nI ran over the last few meters of grass, pulled up short when the ape rushed mebut stood my ground. She broke her charge, fell back on her haunches, gave another mournful, howling growl, then shook her giant fist at the sky. Gamelpar did not appear at all well. Leaning against a bamboo post and clutching one forearm, he looked down from the porch through rheumy, discouraged eyes.Vinnevra had seen and touched Riserand smelled him. He wasn't an illusion, wasn't stored here in the twisted cylinders with all the others. But where was he, then? Did he even want to be associated with me?\nThat was too disturbing a thought, so I switched problems and tried to think through the motivations of this machine. It was a follower of the Librarianor so it claimed. And so had I been until now, perhaps.\n\"You are here to support the integrity of the Librarian's specimens,\" I said.\n\"And to prevent those of you from Erde-Tyrene from taking over this installation.\"\n\"Does that seem at all possible? Is there anything left to take over?\"\nThe monitor hummed again.\n\"All that's left is our integrity and our survival,\" I persisted. \"To make any decision about where we might best survive, where it's best for us to goto fulfill the wishes of the Librarianwe need to know what's real and what isn't.\" For a moment, I almost felt like my old self, persuading the gullible back in Marontik to part with their meager wealth. The monitor continued to hum, no doubt hampered by its declining power. Finally, it rose slightly and said, \"That is a reasonable request. There is no contrary evidence, nor any recent instruction to prevent compliance.\"\nA shimmering veil seemed to rise from the field and the jungle around us. The entire compound suddenly became ragged and ill used. The hutseven the one in which we had stayedwere revealed as shabby and poorly maintained. The grassy field was overgrownwhich explained the feeling of damp up my calves.\n\"It is good to be of real use,\" the monitor said. \"Are we useful?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said, distracted by the condition of the compound. \"For now.\"\nThen, for a momenta few seconds onlythe compound returned to its former state. Many people emerged from the tree line, from the circle of hutsthe Denisovans, the long-headed females who had served us food, the many, many varieties that had given me a strange glimmer of hope that all was not lost for humans on this broken wheel.They seemed to want to gather, to apologize, to explain But the power was weak at best. The veil rose again, and just as dawn light caught the wispy clouds above, they all faded. The huts were revealed again as ruins, the jungle as an ominous wall of trees and advancing creepers, working hard to reclaim the field. I thought of the blue lady in my armor, of the services that ancillas supplied to their masters, of the strange presences within the war sphinxes that had taken us across the inner lake of Djamonkin Crater to the Didact's growing star boat. . . . And then, of the ghost or ghosts inside me. For a sudden dizzying moment, I feared that my body would twist up in a knot like some forlorn hauntthat I myself would turn out to be long dead, had died in the custody of the Master Builder around the San'Shyuum quarantine worldperhaps even as far back as on Charum Hakkor, on the parapet overlooking the pit where the Captive had once been held in a timelock. . . . Perhaps I had already been stored away by the Forerunners and was no more real or solid than Genemender or the Denisovans. But I would not just let my soul fling itself about in my skull and then fly apart. I could not accept that I was part of this awful deceptionthis awful, necessary, caring\n deception mounted to serve the Librarian. The great, gentle shadow-ape, who had immediately taken a shine to Gamelpar and Vinnevra, and even now was protecting them, must have known all along. The deception had never fooled her. It had not fooled Vinnevra. And I had thought she was just exhibiting prejudice!\nIt had not fooled Riser. Only I had been taken in. I had to start thinking more clearly. Everything on this wheel was deception, and whatever the Librarian had wanted for us had been perverted, turned deadlyor worse. You still believe in the Librarian, deep inside. You are still afraid to be alone, without family or friends. . . . And yet that is your natural condition, no? A thief. A con artist. What if being alone is the only way you can survive?\nI slapped the side of my head until my jaw stung. I wanted to reach inside my head and pluck out that miserable, ancient voice.\n\"I can never be alone with you here, can I?\" I murmured, then looked back at the blue-eyed monitor, trying to decide what tobelieve, of all the information I had been fed, and what to throw aside. \"The real Forerunners are gone, aren't they?\" I asked it.\n\"I know nothing of their present plans. The communications have stopped, since the last message that warned us to look for you, to expect you.\"\n\"And are you sure that message was sent by the Librarian?\"\n\"Not now. No.\"\n\"But you complied because you had no other instructions.\"\n\"Correct.\"\nThe Librarian's servants had tried to do their best, but for how long? And now, even that had failed, leaving only this monitor and a few others, no longer in evidenceoccupying the almost deserted plateauand the shadow-ape.\n\"We have to leave,\" I said, my voice choking.\n\"Where will you go?\"\n\"Anywhere but here.\"\n\"That is not wise. All your efforts on behalf of the Librarian will be doomed\"\n\"I serve no Forerunner,\" I insisted, knowing how much of a lie that still was. The conflict was sharply painful. \"Will you try to stop us?\"\n\"The old one is too sick to travel. All of you need to be scanned.\"\nI looked up on the porch at Gamelpar.\n\"You can make him healthy again,\" I said. \"Forerunners can work miracles!\"\n\"We preserve, we protect, but we do not extend. The way of the Librarian is followed in all aspects. We will scan him and archive him, but that is all we can do.\"\n\"No!\" the old man cried out, struggling to push himself to his feet.\n\"I will die free. Do not let them do this to me! I must leave this place forever.\"\nVinnevra clambered up the steps and knelt beside Gamelpar, while the shadow-ape rose to her full height and stood between them and the monitor. The old man accepted Vinnevra's embrace with a pained expression, then pushed her gently aside. His eyes looked down between the bamboo poles. He could barely see me, so I stepped closer.\n\"Do not let them have my ghosts,\" he said.\"I won't. I promise.\"\n\"It has been good to travel with you,\" he said. \"My old spirit will be disappointed not to join forces with yours. But what do we know? Perhaps we carry all the old spirits, like the great First Human, whose forefinger was tall as a tree, and who held the souls of all his children, for all generations to come, within that finger.\"\nThis was the first I had heard of such a being. Yet how was that different from what we had found here? \"You must come away, come with us,\" I insisted, but it was more for me than for the old man that I pleaded.\n\"No,\" he said, looking off at the trees. \"When I am still, it will take only a short while before I am safely fled. Keep the machines away until then, but leave my body here, for it is nothing after that.\"\n\"How do you know\n?\" Vinnevra cried, clasping his shoulder, the sinews of her forearm as tense as drawn bowstrings.\n\"It is true,\" the monitor said. \"If we do not scan while he lives, the imprint will be lost.\"\nThe Composer. Ask it about the Composer!\nI shook my head, unwilling to listen to anyone or anything else. I had to follow my own instincts. I had to believe I was truly alone. But I could not just run away from a dying old man. The sacred farewells had to be made. I drew close to him, touched his knee was startled by how cool it felt in my fingers.\n\"Abada will scare off the hyenas,\" I said, \"and the crocodile will rise from the shore of the western waters and snap at the buzzards. The Elephant will nudge your bones from the dirt, and you will finish your travels whole and sound, while the families of our ancestors await you on the far shore. For so I have seen in the sacred caves\n.\"\nGamelpar's eyes suddenly turned warm and damp. He pushed gently again at Vinnevra. \"It is not seemly for an unmarried woman to see an old man die,\" he murmured. \"Daughter of my daughter, say good-bye to me now, lead the poor giant away from here, and let the boy speak to me alone. We will all join up again, by and by. You, young man, will stay for a time. I need to hear these things you say, for they are old and true.\"\nVinnevra shook all over and her face was slick with tears, but she could not disobey, and so she kissed the old man on the top of his head, climbed down the steps, and led the shadow-ape away byher great hand. Both looked back several times before they vanished into the ragged jungle. I climbed the steps and squatted beside Gamelpar, whose name means Old Father. I recalled as much as I could of the paintings in the narrow, winding caves a day's journey outside Marontik, and of what they meant.\n\"She is all I have,\" he said, interrupting the flow of ritual. \"She is willful but loyal. If I leave her to you, will you watch over her, and guide her away from this place? Take her to where she can be safe?\"\nTrapped! I trembled at the contradictions within and without. A vow made to a dying man had to be keptthere was no way out. And I could not let this one die in shame and disappointment.\n\"You will not leave her behind and go off on your own, will you?\"\n\"No,\" I said, hating myself, not knowing whether that was a lie or not.\n\"Her true name . . . known only to her mate, her life partner . . . or to her sworn guardian . . .\"\nAnd he whispered it in my ear. I resumed the ritual storytelling, only vaguely aware of the blue eyed machine still hovering over the long grass. Just as I finished, I saw that the old man's eyes were mostly closed and had fallen back the tiniest bit, unmoving, within his skull. I stayed by him, listening to the last tick of his breath, watching the last twitch of his limbs. . . . It did not take long before I knew he had crossed safely over the western waters. He had suffered much already, and the Elephant and Abada are kind. Still, I wept and felt the sadness of the old spirit inside me. We never shared. . . . Whom have we lost yet again?\nThen I saw that the machine with the blue eye was slowly dropping into the grass, and the eye was dimming, turning black. There was nothing left for Genemender to do, and no power left to do it, anyway.\n\nI angrily gathered up a few scraps of clothing from the old huts.Some at least of the food had been reala final feast produced within the pavilion of cylindersand I packed up what I could. None of the monitors moved. Their eyes stayed dark. I walked into the jungle a few hundred meters and joined Vinnevra and the ape at the start of a nearly overgrown trail, little more than a winding gap between the towering trees. I could not meet her look, and when she asked me if he had died well, in tune with daowa-maadthu\n, I simply nodded. I felt barren inside. No Riser, no old man, and even the voice within was quiet. I had no notion where we might go from here, and neither did Vinnevra. But we started down the trail, anyway, to the far side of the plateau. After her question about Gamelpar's passing, she did not speak for hours. It was her way of mourning. The station where Gamelpar had died was several kilometers behind us and the jungle was thinning when she asked me to tell her the old stories, just as I had told them to her grandfather. And she in turn would speak the stories Gamelpar had told her, including the story about the First Human's soul-finger. It was then that Riser chose to rejoin us.TWENTY\n\nW E WERE WALKING\n along the trail, picking our way over the creepersor in the ape's case, plowing and swinging through them and watching through the broken canopy of branches and leaves the perhaps not so endless progress of shadow and light on the sky bridge. The skies had cleared for a time since midmorning and the air was moist, but the traildead leaves overlying stones and bits of woodwas drying and firm enough underfoot. All illusion. How could I know anything was actually solid?\nPerhaps this was an amusement being enjoyed somewhere by jaded Forerunners. If I did not amuse, then at any moment my story, my life, might be crumpled up and thrown away. . . . Our tales spun on while we walked. I told Vinnevra the ancient story of Shalimanda, the heaven-snake, who one night swallowed the original shining, jewel-encrusted stream of worlds, and the next night exploded, showering the sky with all the darker, earthy orbs on which humans would grow. As long as I heard us speaking, our voices soft and hollow in the jungle, I seemed more tightly bound to what was real, to all that I could smell and see and feel. The girlthe young woman, for she was no longer a girlwas a comfort to me. More knives in my head as I tried to resist. But I continued to listen and to speak in turn. I knew her real name. Perhaps that is not something you feel much about, one way or another, but for anyone tuned to daowa-maadthu\n, the old man's confidence was terribly important. I could not just leave her behind, not now, any more than I could abandon a sister . . . or a wife. The ape listened to us and occasionally threw in her own commentary, low rumbles and occasional sighs. If she used words, I could not understand themperhaps they were hidden in her grunts. Something made a small crunching sound off to our left and silenced us. Vinnevra cocked her head to listen, then threw it back and sniffed. \"It's your friend,\" she whispered. \"The little one.\"\nRiser came out of the jungle, climbing over two embracing tree roots, then stopped several paces in front of me, stood straight, and folded his arms. He looked me up and down, as if to satisfy himselfI was not another ghost. His small, wry face was as hard and serious as a stone. I was still numb at the loss of the old man and the loss of my freedom. I wanted to reach out and touch my friend but didn't dare. Then, Riser began to silently weep. He wiped his eyes with one long-fingered hand and turned to Vinnevra.\n\"You knew first,\" he said, and then, to me, \"The woman is smarter than you. No surprise.\"\n\"Why did you follow us and not show yourself?\" Vinnevra asked him, as if chiding an old friend. Riser had that way with some people.\n\"The ape is smarter than both of you put together,\" he said. \"She smelled me and she knew I was following, didn't you?\"\nThe ape pushed away creepers and branches, showering dead leaves over the trail. Standing tall in a shaft of afternoon sun, her white-fringed jowl and cheek fur forming a nimbus around her nearly black face, she withdrew her lips, showing strong, square teeth, and shook out her arms, softly guttling. She was glad to see the little one. My tension broke. I could not help but laugh. Even now, Riser could befuddle me. He looked me over critically, walking around me and poking my ribs, my back, determined I was sound, then snorted at the ape. She snorted back. \"Cha manush\n once knew Sha kyanunsho her people. So she says. She even speaks a language I understand, a little, so it must be so. She says her lending name is Mara.\"\n\"You were there all along, but you didn't trust me,\" I said.\n\"Forerunners make ghosts,\" Riser said, eyelids flicking white. I got down on my knees before the Florian, held out my arms, and he fell into them like a childthough he was easily ten times my age. We hugged for a moment, then became aware that Vinnevra was watching with a needful expression. So Riser wriggled loose, stepped over to her, grabbed her around the hips, and hugged her as well.\n\"Sister or wife?\" he asked me, looking back.\n\"Neither!\" Vinnevra said.\n\"You like this boy,\" Riser said. \"No?\"\n\"No!\" Vinnevra said, but glanced at me. The shadow-ape squatted, pushing aside several saplings, andwatched us contentedly while combing fingers through the fur on her arms. Insects had found us again, and so we moved on. \"How long have you been here?\" I asked Riser. \"Tell me how you got here. You fell from the sky?\"\n\"Long story. Tell soon.\"\n\"I want to hear it now.\"\n\"So do I,\" Vinnevra said.\n\"First, make a wide look around,\" he said. Riser ran ahead of us, up a gentle slope to a small clearing above the tree line, set with three giant rock pillars. We made a circuit around the rocks and joined him to survey the landscape below. We had come to the lower edge of the plateau and now faced wildly hummocked terrain, many mounds and low hills, while off to our right, mountains rose steep and forbidding, folded around their skirts by more jungle, above that a barren belt, and finally, patches of snow. I sighed. \"I have no idea where we need to go,\" I said.\n\"My geas\n says nothing,\" Vinnevra confessed.\n\"I fell into a bad, bad place,\" Riser said. \"We won't go there. Everyone dead. Ugly.\"\n\"War?\"\nHe pushed out his lips. \"Maybe. I walked from far over that way.\" He pointed away from the mountains, at a sharp angle inland. In that direction, many hundreds of kilometers away, the hummocky terrain blued out in thick atmosphere and clouds. Beyond the clouds, naked foundation stretched all the way across the band, marked with geometric detailsthe usual Forerunner imponderables. Foundation material stretched up that side of the wheel for perhaps four or five thousand kilometers, then ended in a turbulent roil of perpetual cloud. Within that mass of cloud, lightning flashed every few seconds brilliant but silent.\n\"You mean, your shipthe ship that carried you herecrashed out there?\"\nHe tapped his shoulder once, yes. And that also indicated he wanted to use the mix of cha manush\n signs and chirps and grunts he had taught me back on Erde-Tyrene, a patois we had never shared with Bornstellar or used in front of any Forerunner. He settled onhis haunches and picked at a patch of moss, then pulled out a tuft and sniffed it philosophically. \"I tell it, and when I finish,\" he said,\n\"you tell them.\"\nAs if Mara would understand! But perhaps she understood more than I suspected. And so Riser began. When he spoke this way, his halting speech and mannerisms seemed to drop away and he became positively elegantbut only with difficulty can I convey the flowery style, with so many inflections and declensions. Florians used nouns, adjective like phrases, and verb tenses that recognize thirteen different genders and four directions of time. So I simplify. Pity. When inspired, or when bragging, Riser was quite the poet.RISER'S STORY\n\nI F I WERE\n happy I would sing this for all time, but there is much sadness, not of our doing, and so this can only be a tale told by slaves.\n\"The first part you know. We were there. Then Forerunners put me away like sugar-fruit in a pot. You, too, I think.\n\"Later, I woke up on a dying star boat, falling through noise and heat. The boat became bent and broken with parts and things glowing, not fire, like the spirit of the boat trying to come together again or just find home and die. The boat fell apart when it became too tired to keep trying. And we spilled out onto a graveyard desert, below those clouds, way over there.\n\"\nWe\n means three Forerunners and me.\n\"All of us wore armor at first. One of the Forerunners, his armor was all locked up so he could not move. The other two were making sure he did not move. He must have fallen out of favor with those two.\n\"My armor was not much good, no blue lady, so I climbed out, but it was no use trying to run away. I did not know where I was. This placevery strange, and the graveyard-desert, terrible\n.\n\"So I stayed with the Forerunners. They did not seem to know anything about me or care much at first, but then the locked-away Forerunner, very angry, told them a story. I only understood a little. He said I was important and they could use me later to become rich. I was treasure. You like that, huh, maybe you sell me to Bornstellar, huh?\n\"It was enough. They paid more attention and tried to protect me.\n\"This locked-up one said a monster had come to the wheel, where we had crashed, and that the monster spoke long years to the machine that bossed this place under orders from the Master Builder, you remember that onethe arrogant bad one who opposed the Didact, another arrogant bad one, I think, but I do not judge him forever, that one, yet.\n\"Still, he did not like you and me, did he?\n\"Anyway, they talked some more and their armor spoke to me inwords I understood, like cha manune\n speech, and I heard this story, which is probably not far wrong.\n\"A thousand years ago, the Master Builder made this big hoop world, and then shared it with the Lifeshaper because other Forerunners who had power told him to, and so the Lifeshaper put many humans here of all types. Why she favors humans I do not know, but I still say hello to her in my dreams.\n\"And the Didact is her husband, how is that possible? Never mind. I'm talking here.\n\"The Master Builder learned by stealing knowledge from the Lifeshaper that some of us humans could stand up to the Shaping Sickness, and survive. I did not know what the Shaping Sickness was, but someone inside me did. You look at me now, we looked at each other back on the Didact's star boatwe both felt old memories rising up, put there by the Librarian. You still have them, don't you? So do I. Not what I would choose.\n\"Now this monster over so many years persuaded the boss machine to turn on the Forerunners and try to destroy them; that is what monsters do, they cause trouble.\n\"And this monster is a very old monster, mother and father of all troubles.\n\"But that is a story I do not know. I think it is big and maybe important.\n\"We have fallen in an awful place. None of them are curious, and now we have to leave. I said it was a graveyard-desert. I have no other sign/sound for it. I wonder if maybe lava erupted and grew up over everything, trees, mountains, humans . . . cities filled with Forerunners. The whole land is made of frozen, painted-over dead people and the places they once worked and lived. I don't have sounds/signs for those places, but they are much bigger than the power stations back on Erde-Tyrene.\n\"But the lava that coats the people and all the things that once lived is not rock. It is dead or dying powder, more like ash than lava. This desert stretches for a long ways. I don't see how we can escape.\n\"But the two Forerunners pick me up and carry me and the other Forerunner who can't walk because his armor is locked. They move fast, even carrying usjumping, running, leaping. I wish I had known armor could do that, I would have tried rough stuff on theDidact. But probably the blue lady would have stopped me, too bad.\n\"I have a hard time breathing. The Forerunners talk to each other and their armor does not tell me what they are saying, but I understand a little. They are scared but hope someone will come rescue us, because (they say this without happiness) I am important, not them; I am more important than they are.\n\"I don't know why. Do you? No? Then be quiet. I am talking here.\n\"The Forerunners move fast, but slowly things change and their armor doesn't like them and then it tries to kill them. The Forerunner who is a prisoner is crushed by his armorit just squeezes him to death, like a bug who squashes itself.\n\"The other two shed their armor and it writhes all over, kicking up ashy dust, but it still tries to reach out and kill them, kill mebut they grab me up fast and carry me away.\n\"Now we are really in trouble. Things like mountains, but big and round, are exploding off in the direction of the night that comes like a running shadow. I ask if these mountains are volcanoes, but no;\nthe Forerunners call them spore-peaks. Do you understand? No?\nYou don't know. Then be quiet. I am talking here.\n\"The shadow runs over us. The Forerunners are having a hard, bad time. They cough and wheeze and slow down. But we try to keep walking, nowhere, I think; they don't know where to go. I have never seen Forerunners so frightened. It makes me sad, because I once thought they were all-powerful and now they are just people, not human, but people, naked and afraid.\n\"Finally they are too weak to carry me. I walk beside them, but they walk like their legs are made of rock. They are very sick.\n\"I see clouds cover up the stars, but by the smelllike mold off old fruit, dusty-green-sneezy, I know they are not just water clouds. Soon it rains, and in each drop is the powder. The clouds have carried it from those exploding spore-peaks. It shrouds everything, clings to my skin moves\n on my skin. The powder sits on top of puddles and moves there, too, so I lie down and cover my face with my hands.\n\"I am so tired and afraid. I cannot die now. Abada sometimes smells fear and does not come. The hyenas smell fear and laugh and grind up your soul. The Elephant never finds your bones because heturns away from the smell of fear. So we have seen in the sacred caves. So I showed you when you were young and tough. If I am going to die, better to die unafraid. The only way to escape this sort of fear is to sleep a big, deep sleep.\n\"And so I sleep now, too. Shh.\"\nAs if the strain of telling this story had taken its toll, Riser's eyelids drooped, his chin dipped, and he dropped off into a heavy doze, leaving us to sit there.\n\"Is he finished?\" Vinnevra asked. Mara grumbled and drew her legs around the cha manush\n to protect him while he snored.\n\"I don't think so,\" I said. She looked at me different now. I did not like that look and became very uncomfortable, even more uncomfortable when she moved closer to me. Mara reached out and nudged me toward her, and I glared at the ape, but she pouched out her lips and guttled. Vinnevra settled in. After a while, I told Vinnevra and Mara about the story devil who went from tribe to tribe and town to town, telling the very best stories ever, but whoever listened to him lost the power of speech and instead spoke useless babble. I did not know if the shadow ape understood all that I was saying, but she listened close. I finished with, \"And even now, we find the descendants of those who heard his stories and all they talk is babble.\"\nA lame fable, but all I had. Vinnevra gave me a wry look. \"Is that\n in your sacred caves?\"\nshe asked.\n\"No,\" I said. \"Those are about life and death. This is just about how story devils confuse us.\"\n\"This monster the humans captured and the Master Builder releasedwas that\n a devil, too?\"\n\"Maybe.\"\nMara grumbled and looked away, then shook her head. Perhaps she understood more than she let on.\n\"Is the Lady who touches us at birth a devil?\" Vinnevra asked.\n\"No,\" I answered.\n\"Is our flesh her story?\"\nI shook my head, but the idea bothered me, flesh and story all tangled up. . . . Maybe. Maybe so. We waited while Riser slept. Dusk drew over us and the insectsbecame fierce. But we did not shake him, because he might be grumpy and stay quiet for a while if he did not sleep well, and we hoped he really did know something useful. Finally, he opened his eyes, leaned and stretched on Mara's thigh, looked on Vinnevra and me with something like approval, and resumed.\n\"That was a good sleep,\" he said. \"I remember more now. Swat some of these bugs for me.\"\nWe swatted some bugs until he was satisfied and resumed his telling.\n\"Day comes. I wake slowly. The land is dry, the powder is crusty and dead, not moving, just dead. It smells like old dung in deep caves. The Forerunners do not look the same as when I went to sleep. They are all clotted powder. They tried to grow together during the night, and now they are just lumps. Their flesh is gone, their bones are gone. They are dead. I am not dead.\n\"The powder falls off my skin.\n\"I am alone. It is never good to be so alone. In this graveyard desert, it is worse. The spore-peaks will erupt again and more powder will come and I think maybe next time it will know how to dissolve my bones, too, or fill my nose and mouth forever.\n\"Six times the night sweeps over and there is more rain. I walk through the rain. Too much rain. Sometimes, when it is not raining, both night and day, I see shooting stars and think they are star boats. Once, I find many crashed star boats, smaller ones, scattered on the desert. They have spilled out broken machines, like the one back there, but their eyes are dark. I kick them and they don't fly away. There might have been Forerunners in the star boats but now they are only lumps of powder.\n\"It seems that Forerunners have been arguing and fighting, but also they are losing a fight with something else, something awful, and that tells me to wake my old memories. I have been ignoring the old spirit in me ever since Charum Hakkor, but now I let it loose, and it watches through my eyes.\n\"This hoop-world is like nothing known to the old spirit. It decides this must be one of their great machines, perhaps a fortress.\n\"Before the old spirit fought Forerunners, it once fought the Shaping Sickness. Even back then, it was spread by touch or by a fine powder and turned flesh into lumps. Sometimes it gathered thesick togethertwo people, four people joining up and speaking with one voice.\n\"It called this a Gravemind.\n\"But I have listened to the Didact and the Master Builder, and I know 'Shaping Sickness' is what they call the Flood. I am in the middle of a place blasted by the Flood, which old humans long ago fought and defeated, but now it has come back, and it has changed. Why? How did the sickness get here? I look to the spore-peaks, shooting up great clouds of fine powder, and the winds that carry it all over. That is the source. The Shaping Sickness infects Forerunners, and it is winning.\n\"But thenI learn a wonderful thing!\" Riser's eyes flick rapidly and he looks up. \"My old spirit was once a female. Better a female than a hoary old male who might argue and be offensive to me.\n\"The old female spirit asks me if the 'Primordial' was let loose. That's the name she uses. She shows me amemory of it, all grasping arms and an old man's fat body, but like a giant beetle curled up and big, it would cover this moundwith a low, flat head, a mouth of many jaws, and dead jewel eyes. I have to tell her, I think that it was let loose, taken to this place, this hoop-world, and she says, Ah, so it is, and now there is great danger\n.\n\"You have seen it, too? Then it is real. Too bad.\n\"When I reach the low hills of the mountains, where the Shaping Sickness has not come, and see the small round machines going up and down the hills, searching, waiting, watching . . . I follow them quietly up to the plateau, and that is where I find you and all those ghosts that walk outside and try to act like people. But they have no smell.\" He raised his hands, palms up, and tapped one shoulder with three fingers. \"That is what I know, but I know so little.\"\n\"You both saw where this devil was kept, didn't you?\" Vinnevra asked us. \"On the world where humans last fought the Forerunners and died.\"\n\"Charum Hakkor,\" I said.\n\"Yes,\" Riser said. \"We both saw that place, but the monster was gone.\"\nWithin me, my own old spirit was rising from a long quiet. I must speak with this little one!\nHalf-compelled, I gave the Lord of Admirals my voice and he spoke through my mouth. The effort racked my body. My musclestwitched and sweat beaded my brow. His words at first were clumsy and mumbled. Then the shaky voicenot quite my voicebecame more clear. But what I heard from my mouth was not what I heard in my head. The accent was differentthe language, at first, imprecise. My mouth was used to forming words a certain waynot the way nor in the manner of this old spirit. Vinnevra watched with furrowed brow, Riser with eyes wide, attentive, nostrils flexing nervously.\n\"Tell me . . . tell us your name,\" the Lord of Admirals said, addressing the spirit within Riser. \"Tell me your old\n name.\"\nNow it was Riser's turn to give up his mouth. For him, it seemed even harder. Riser's body was older than mine, more set in its ways.\n\"I am Yprin Yprikushma,\" his old spirit finally managed. Neither of us understood that strange namebut the Lord of Admirals seemed almost to burst into flame, a flame of anger, dismay, and disappointment. But also, strangely, of exaltation! These old humans had different ways of mixing their emotions.\n\"You!\" he cried, then pulled back his anger, banked the fires tried to swallow them. Still, they seemed to burn and gouge the insides of my head. This type of anger I had never experienced before from the old spirit, and I could see by Riser's expression that he was feeling something similar. We sat, Riser and I, in the shade of the great boulders on that promontory, experiencing a new relationship to one anothera relationship Gamelpar and I were never able to complete. Vinnevra looked between us with that same furrowed frown she used when Gamelpar and I had spoken about these things.\n\"And who are you\n?\" Riser's old spirit asked.\n\"ForthenchoLord of Admirals, supreme commander of the last fleets of Charum Hakkor.\"\n\"The one who lost the war to the Didact.\"\n\"Yes. Yprin Yprikushmayou saw what the Shaping Sickness has done here,\" the Lord of Admirals said. \"And that has brought you forward, out of guilt! Out of pride!\"\n\"I am dead. You are dead.\" Riser's voice was almostunrecognizable. We had become puppets, and I feared these spirits would never let us go.\n\nThe dialog between the old spirits went on for some time. I was not precisely present for all of it, so what I remember is shifting, dreamlike, but the factsthe larger factsloom clearly enough, and if I wishif I open many old doorsI can resuppose, reimagine the histories and emotions now being allowed to clash once again.\n\"And now, many more are dead,\"my old spirit resumed,\n\"because you recovered and preserved the Primordial. From a place lost to the memory of all, including Forerunners, you brought it to Charum Hakkor. . . .\"\n\"I have no disgrace. I had reasons to speak to the Primordial, and it is not known to this day whether the Primordial was responsible for the Shaping Sickness. Confined the way it was, where\n it was, and found long after the sickness beganhow could it be?\"\n\"By reaching out, ordering the movement of ships from beyond our galaxy, ships that brought the plague to Faun Hakkor\"\n\"How could it communicate? It was hidden naked and half-dead on a lost cinder of a world. And thenwe froze it in a timelock!\nYou are confused, Forthencho. Besides, the Primordial gave us information, and with it, we saved billions of human lives.\"\n\"That is far from the whole truth. Humans themselves discovered what needed to be done to preserve ourselves and our descendants against the Shaping Sickness.\"\n\"That has ever been in dispute between us,\" Riser's old spirit countered. \"It may always be argued this way, or that. But it is why we are here.\n This knowledge, however acquired, is what forced the Forerunners to preserve remnants of those they defeated, rather than wipe us from the slate of history, as they had so many others before.\"\nThe Lord of Admirals responded with bitterness, \"That may be so, but it only pulls thin curtains on your disgrace.\"\n\"Look around you! The Primordial is here.\n The Shaping Sickness is here\n! Forerunners are dyingbut we live on! And thatis what the Primordial promised!\"\n\"It said no such thing to me.\"\nAnd so it went for much of that night, back and forth, round and round. I tried to catch the important details, but they were too strange, too frighteningthose visual impressions, like my nightmare of the Captive, what the old spirits called the Primordialbut stamped with a mark of authenticity. . . . The threads of different ages tangled until I did not know who I was, who was feeling fear, who was feeling any emotion. . . . My most lasting impression of that long night: Riser lying down on the ground and giving small cries of distress, but the voice within kept pushing out through his lips, expressing that ancient agony of knowing all those you love have either died or are about to die, in many strange ways memories and knowledge overwhelming and incomprehensible even to these dead spirits, to the fundamental children that lie at the center of us all. It is too much even now!\nThe Lord of Admirals is not testifying before the true Reclaimer. I am Chakas. I am all that remains of Chakas, and still I am haunted!\nI give up being Chakas. I withdraw! Please stop your recording, Reclaimer. I am unstable. Exquisitely painful. I am breaking apart. We are all dead, and even our bones are dust!\n*AI TRANSLATOR BREAK*\nScience Team Analysis:\n Monitor has shut itself down. Whether this is due to prior damage is not known. AI Translator reports that before the shutdown, twin streams of language appeared in the data stream, conflicting with or overriding each other. Monitor memory may be defective, or more than one stream of memory may be incompletely integrated. Repairs are still impossible. The monitor must recover on its own. Resumption of response streams may be problematic. Thirty-two hours elapse.\n\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"I have to say, I'm having difficulty with all this information. 'Arks?' There's more than one?\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"The Halo as described is also larger than any we've encountered. That could imply a larger Ark, right?\"ONI COMMANDER:\n \"Hmmh. There's still a high probability that this machine is a decoy, and all of the information it's giving us is a ruse. However ancient, the Forerunners might have anticipated an eventual human resurgence, and possible rematch, and prepared for it. To the extent that this testimony could demoralize our troops, we may be playing right into their hands.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"That would imply a truly astonishing level of prescience, given that Forerunners vanished from our galaxy a thousand centuries ago, and left us on Earth as little more than a bunch of wandering savages.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Forerunners didn't vanish completely, did they?\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"We disagree about the possibility of a ruse. Everything the monitor has related ties in with other Forerunner records we have discoveredincluding the Bornstellar Relation found on Onyx. There is no possibility of recent communication between those points. The data matches, and so it is almost certainly accurate.\"\nPOLITICAL TEAM LEADER:\n \"The Commander's concerns have been noted. But all information gathered thus far with relation to the Forerunners has been sequestered and will have no effect upon team morale. The interest of the overall Halo/Shield Alliance in the facts and inferences these sessions have produced is sufficient to override all our lower-level concerns. Interrogation will continue.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"With all due respect, ma'am, we have already seen that this machine can breach our security with alarming ease.\"\nPOLITICAL TEAM LEADER:\n \"Also noted, Commander.\"\nThirty-two hours elapse.\n\nMonitor light resumes glowing. AI Translator receives and converts a new response stream. AI TRANSLATOR COMMENT:\n What follows is a multilevel, noncontiguous and ambiguous narrative. Some phrases, perhaps many, may not be translated accurately. INTERROGATION RESUMES WITH:\nRESPONSE STREAM #1352 [DATE REDACTED] 1270 hours\n(Repeated every 64 seconds.)\nWhat am I, really?\nA long time ago, I was a living, breathing human being. Then, I went mad. I served my enemies. They became my only friends. Since then, I've traveled back and forth across this galaxy, and out to the spaces between galaxiesa greater reach than any human before me. You have asked me to tell you about that time. Since you are the true Reclaimer, I must obey. Are you recording? Good. Because my memory is broken and covered with thorns. I doubt I'll be able to finish the story. Once, I was Forthencho, Lord of Admirals.RESPONSE STREAM #14485 [DATE REDACTED] 1124 hours\n(nonrepeating)TWENTY-ONE\n\nW ITH DELIGHT I\n felt the moving muscles and living body of the one I inhabited, in whom I was slowly being reborn. . . . My memories seemed to rise from scattered pieces, like a building blown to pieces and dropped into a deep well of thick fluid\n. . . then sucking in reverse from that awful mire and reconstructing itself chunk by chunk, year by year, emotion by emotion. How could I be here? How could I live again, through what miracle, ormore likelywhat awful Forerunner technology?\nThe Composer! So many possibilities and capabilities tied up in that strange name. . . . A Composer of minds and souls!\nBut because of its talents, used by the Librarian, I was here. I did not feel guilt. To this young human, so lambent in emotions, so confused in thought and action, I felt both gratitude and irritation, because he was strong, and I was weak. He was young, and I was\n. . . Dead. The emergence that became me\n seemed so delicate at first, capable only of brief interruptions, wry comments, like a flea hiding in an elephant's ear. A strange sensation indeed, nudged along by strangely familiar observations, stimuli forcing me up and out, like iron bars prying up stones in a field: Forerunner ships, the Didact himself, the arena where the Primordial had once been storedand then released!\nHow could\n the Forerunners have been so stupid? Was it deliberate?\nSo strange, the familiarity of this boy's emotions recognizably human and yet separated from my existence, I learn, by ten thousand years of history.\n\nI remember those last hours in Citadel Charum. The Librarian walked slowly, reverently, among the captured, the wounded, the dying, the last survivors of Charum Hakkor. She was accompanied by other Lifeworkers as well as many hoveringmachines. One by one, as we were laid out under the shell of the Citadel rows upon hundreds of rows, stretching off to the limits of my blurred visionthe Librarian paused, bent over, knelt beside us, spoke to us. Strange indeed that such a simple and elegant face can appear so compellingly beautiful, so filled with empathy. She expressed sadness at our condition, and her servants administered relief for my pain. Perhaps it was an illusion, like the absurd belief in this boy that the Librarian touches us all at birth. Still, I do not deny this memory. Beside her stood the Didact, a great, hulking presence, my sworn enemy for fifty-three years of continuous battle. Yet he had not aged. Forerunners live so very long; human lives are like candle flames flickering and guttering before their steady torches. Even though we had stripped off our uniforms, doing our best to erase all evidence of our identities and ranks, the Didact found me\n, the Lord of Admirals, who had opposed him longer and more successfully than any other. He bent beside me, hands clasped as if he were a supplicant before a shrine. And this is what he said to me:\n\"My finest opponent, the Mantle accepts all who live fiercely, who defend their young, who build and struggle and grow, and even those who dominateas humans have dominated, cruelly and without wisdom.\n\"But to all of us there is a time like this, when the Domain seeks to confirm our essences, and for you, that time is now. Know this, relentless enemy, killer of our children, Lord of Admirals: soon we will face the enemy you have faced and defeated. I can see that challenge coming to the Forerunners, and so do many others. . . . And we are afraid.\n\"That is why you, and many thousands of your people who may contain knowledge of how humans defended themselves against the Flood, will not pass cleanly and forever, as I would wish for a fellow warrior, but will be extracted and steeped down into the genetic code of many new humans.\n\"This is not my wish nor my will. It arises from the skill and the will of my life-mate, my wife, the Librarian, who sees much farther than I do down the twining streams of Living Time.\n\"So this additional indignity will be inflicted upon you. It means, I believe, that humans will not end here, but may riseagainfight again. Humans are always warriors.\n\"But what and whom they will fight, I do not know. For I fear the time of the Forerunners is drawing to a close. In this, the Librarian and I find agreement. Take satisfaction, warrior, in that possibility.\"\nIt gave me no satisfaction. If I were to rise again, fight again, I wished only to once more match myself against the Didact! But the Didact and the Librarian passed on, moving down the endless rows of our defeated. The Lifeworker machinesthrough the strange, ever-changing, multiformed presence of the Composer, a machine?\na being? I never saw it clearlysent patterns of blue and red light over our broken bodies, and one by one, we relaxed, breathed no more. . . . Set free our immortal wills. I lost all timeall sense. Yet now I was alive again, in the body of a boy on an unknown Forerunner fortressa weapon of immense power.\n\nFor a time, I had hoped there would be an ally within the old one called Gamelpar, who had the beautiful dark skin of my own people but he died before any connection could be made. The girl, Vinnevra, his granddaughter, did not seem to carry ghosts. But the final ironythe one who had befriended this boy, my host, for so very longthe little human with the wrinkled face and white-lidded eyescontained the last impression of my most despised human\n opponent, whom I blamed for everything that had happened, including the defeat at Charum Hakkor. How had we been brought together? How could Yprin Yprikushma have found her way into this little, narrow-wristed monkey-man?\nAnd yet, she at least was someone I knew, someone from my time in history, my own age. The dead do not have the luxury of hate. The ties to past emotions are slender and frail. We warily put aside our past differences and spoke with each other for as long as we could, before our hosts rose up and deposed us, and this much I remember even now:\nForty years before the last of the human-Forerunner wars, it was Yprin Yprikushma who had been summoned to the murky boundaries of the galaxy, upon the discovery of the small planetoid within which some intelligences, long agoperhaps the earliestForerunners themselveshad imprisoned the Primordial. And it was Yprin who had excavated that planetoid, found the Primordial preserved in viscous hibernation in an ancient capsule barely alive even in the sense in which it lives. She it was who recognized the Primordial as a major curiosity, the most ancient biological artifact we had yet encountered, and transported it to Charum Hakkor. Charum Hakkor! The greatest repository of Precursor antiquities, an entire world covered with the artifacts and structures of that enigmatic race. Inspired by these indestructible ruins, humans had centuries before made this world the center of human progress and advancement. It was here on Charum Hakkor that Yprin and her team of researchers discovered how to revive the Precursor, and then constructed the timelock to subdue its baleful power. It was here where she conducted her first interrogations of that ancient and deadly being now held prisoner within. At that time, we did not knowthough some of us suspected that the Primordial was itself one of the Precursors, perhaps the last Precursor. . . . The answers given by the Primordial during those interrogations began the demoralization of our culture. It was the leaking of those extraordinary answers that began our ultimate downfall. Following on that brilliantly successful effortthat mind bending transmission of a devastating messageall Yprin's prior accomplishments were besmirched, tainted. And yetit was Yprin who prepared our forces for combat with the far more advanced Forerunners. And she who encouraged our scientists and robotic intelligences to take what we learned in our early conflicts with the Forerunners, anticipating their technology, and thus making so many technological advances. Her efforts gave us a few extra decades of triumph and hope.\n\nIronically, it was Erde-Tyrene that fell first, a tremendous loss both in strategy and morale, for it was the most likely to have been the birth-planet of all humans. We had lost those records and memories during the dark ages, before we encountered the Forerunners, but our own historians, scientists, and archaeologists had done theirwork, analyzed the makeup and physiology of the humans spread across that sector of the rim and inward, and decided Erda was the genetic focus of all human activitythe planetary navel of our races. Completing that survey, that analysis, encouraged her to believe she completely understood human psychology and culture. Yprin had advanced to Political and Morale Commander of all human forces. I disagreed with that advancement, her rise to power. I had severe doubts that Erda was our planet of origin. Other worlds in other systems seemed more likely. I had been to many of them and had viewed their ancient ruins. And I had seen evidence that Forerunners had also visited these worlds, were also interested in human originsnot just the Librarian and her Lifeworkers, but the Didact himself.\n\nWe defended Charum Hakkor against the Forerunner assaults which came in an unending sequence, one after anotherfor three years. My own ships swept back and forth hundreds of times across the star system, pushing back pinpoint orbital incursions before they could establish corridors of least energy dominance. In all such battles, within the vast reaches of a stellar system, hyperspacial technologies give only a slight advantage; tactics in such close quarters depend on stable positions established near planetary objectives, where triangulations of fire can focus on mass delivery portals and turn them into logjams of debris and destruction. Occupation of vast reaches of space means nothing. It is control of population centers and essential resources that determines victory or defeat. But our ships were depleted month by month, our battle positions worn down year by year, as Forerunner ships ranging in scale from fortress-class behemoths to squadrons of swift and powerful dreadnoughts opened brief entry points and attacked from brilliantly surprising angles, with sweeping, erratic arcs that reminded me of the scribblings of madmenbrilliant madmen. The hand of the Didact himself drew those reckless and daring entries and orbits.Forerunner dominance of the advanced technology of reconciliationrepairing the causal and chronological paradoxes of faster-than-light travel, so crucial to journeys across interstellar distancesslowed and even blocked our own slipspace channels and interfered with the arrival of reinforcements. The crushing blow, long anticipated, even inevitable, was agonizingly slow to arrive. The final Forerunner assault was staged from seven portals opened at one-hour intervals to disgorge the massive fleet of the Didact himself, along with his finest commanders, many of them veterans of the battles that had been fought from our colony worlds along the outer rim to Erde-Tyrene itself.\n\nYprikushma and a special forces team of seven thousand warriors and seventy vessels were assigned to protect the timelock that contained the Primordial. It was ironic that among the last surviving humans gathered in the Citadel Charum, the greatest Precursor ruin left on Charum Hakkor, she and I were brought together. We shared this space among the ancient Precursor structures with the last survivors of the Admiraltylistening to the hideous noise of Forerunner fleets sweeping over and breaking down our last resistance.\n\nForerunners captured the timelock and the Primordial. Yprin was withdrawn against her fervent objectionsthis much I heard. I also heard that she had hoped to be captured by the Forerunners themselves, so that she could warn them about a fate you would not wish on your worst enemy. To warn them about what the Primordial had told her.\n\nAt the last, separated by only a few hundred meters, we tracked the concentrated assault that collapsed our last orbit fields, eliminated our planetary defenses, and brought down the Citadel. The sounds of death and dying, my warriors being vaporized while I yet lived . . .Confined. Awaiting the inevitable. The inevitable arrived. I died. The Composer and the Lifeworkers did their work. . . . And now I was here, in this boy's body. Am here!\nStill here!\nAI TRANSLATOR: PRIMARY LANGUAGE STREAM RESUMES:\nRESPONSE STREAM #14401 [DATE REDACTED] 1701 hours\n(nonrepeating)\n\nTWENTY-TWO\n\nT HERE. THAT WAS\n restful, wasn't it? I do so enjoy being subverted from within. If I can carry more than one memory stream, then I may not be so badly damaged after all. Crazy, but not damaged!\nBut I apologize if our ancestor, or our predecessor (it is so difficult to determine descent and lineage for any human species), has caused you difficulties. For Lord of Admirals and Yprin were very strong individuals in their time, and when Riser and I finally managed to resume our own lives and thoughts, we were wrung out. . . .\n\nRiser was a curled-up, matted ball of sweat and stink. I was not much better. Mara and Vinnevra were sleeping at some distance from us, in their typical attitude: both lying on their sides, Vinnevra curled up within the protective arms and drawn-up legs of the shadow-ape, looking peaceful enough. Riser had some difficulty unknotting his muscles, and was embarrassed by the state of his grooming. \"I don't like being ridden like a horse, even by a female.\" He quirked his whole face, an expression that always fascinated me. \"Makes me smell older than I am.\" He lifted his arm to sniff his armpit. \"Pretty damned old. And you!\" He looked at me and twitched his nose. \"You've looked better.\"\nI was furiously hungry. Being ridden by spirits was more than just exhausting: it used up all the fuel in my furnace. I stumbled across the curved top of the mound, around the triplet of poking rocks, looking for a fruit-bearing tree, a beehive we could raidanything. Riser followed, rubbing his shoulders. \"Nothing to eat,\" he said. I smacked my lips at him.\n\"Don't look at me, young ha manush\n!\"\nWe were jokingI think.\n\"We might find some water down there,\" he said. \"But it hasn't rained for a whilesince the spirits rose up and argued.\"\nI squatted on the highest curve of the slope. \"The ape might findsomething. She did before.\"\n\"She's out of her country,\" Riser said with a clack of his teeth. Vinnevra seemed to pop up right behind us. She had moved so quietly she startled even Riser, who jerked around and growled. She curled her lip, and that made him lean his head back and chortle out the oook-phraaa\n sound that was one kind of cha manush\n laughter. Riser always appreciated a good joke, even if the joker didn't know that what she had done was funny. She sat beside us. \"I know where to go,\" she said, and nodded across the hummocky terrain.\n\"Again?\" I asked.\n\"Again,\" she said. \"You think all the Forerunners are dead. I don't think they are. I think . . . Well, I don't know what to think, but it's telling me there's food and water nearby.\"\n\"Back at the ghost village?\" I asked, perhaps too sharply. Vinnevra shook her head and wrung her hands, as if squeezing her fingers dry after a wash. \"It's what I'm being told.\" She looked at us without much hope we would listen to her.\n\"I don't think I want to take any more chances,\" I said.\n\"I don't blame you,\"Vinnevra said. \"Neither do I. I'm going to ignore it, too, this time.\" Vinnevra was no longer the sparking young female who had rescued me from the broken jar and taken me to meet her Gamelpar.\n\"We need to decide what we're going to do,\" she said. \"Mara is willing to listen to me\"\n\"You haven't disappointed her,\" I said, again too sharply and quickly. Her wince saddened me. \"True. I was about to say, Mara will listen to meand I'm willing to follow both of you. Whatever you decide.\"\nThis transformation was oddly disturbing. She was quieter, more reasonable. Her face had a soft glow, as if she had freed herself from some impossible burden. And I was responsible for her. Riser looked between us, squinting one eye. Vinnevra turned to him. \"I listened when your old memories talked. Some of what you said I understood. Gamelpar spoke like that, and taught me a few words and ideas. You really do\n have spirits inside of you.\"\"So did he,\" I said.\n\"Yes. I don't have such a spirit, and I'm not disappointed.\"\n\"No fun,\" Riser agreed.\n\"Anyway, this time, you can take me with you, or not. But Mara wants to go where I go, and she wants Riser to come with us. You, Chakasshe says you're going to be trouble.\" The soft glow took on a harder, more defensive cast.\n\"You're talking with the ape now, too?\"\nVinnevra nodded. \"Some. You have to listen deep to her chest, and to her high, little piping sounds . . . not so hard, once you get the hang of it.\"\n\"Maybe the Lifeshaper gave us all a way around the storyteller's curse,\" Riser suggested.\n\"The Lifeshaper lies,\" I said, but it hurt me to say it. Riser shrugged. \"No good going back where I was,\" he said.\n\"And no good going back to the ghosts.\"\nI had been studying the curve both during the day and at night, trying to understand what all the features and details meant. The barren waste where Riser had crashed was apparent enough. Behind us was the great sea, across the entire band. There had not been much food there.\n\"There's a narrow way inland and then west, between the waste and the mountains,\" I said, pointing it out to them. \"It seems to be covered in forest, not as dense as the jungle we've been through and maybe grassland.\" I half-imagined it looked like the land around Marontik, but that was too much to hope for. \"It might be we'll find game out there, bigger game where there's forest and grass. . . . We'll have to make weapons and hunt. If we're going to survive without Forerunners.\"\nI wasn't at all happy with this plan, to tell the truth. I had no idea whether the Lifeshaper would have taken the trouble to stock her forests and plains with animals we could eat. They might just as easily be animals that would prefer to eat usor monsters like nothing we had ever seen before.\n\"What do the old spirits say?\" Vinnevra asked.\n\"Nothing. They're tired from arguing.\"\nRiser quirked his face.\n\"Then it's a plan. Let's go find out,\" Vinnevra said, getting up. Mara came around the rock pillars, grunting happily at finding us.Riser lightly pinched my arm. \"Leader,\" he said, and walked off. We descended the mound and traveled opposite the flow of the wheel's shadow. Vinnevra walked beside me and kept pace. Riser stayed back with Mara.\n\"I don't mean anything by this,\" the young woman began, struggling to express herself properly and not provoke me. I wasn't sure I liked her being subservientit worried me. \"I just wanted to tell you . . . I see things out there. I seem to have a map in my head now.\"\n\"Is that a good place to go?\"\n\"I don't know. I won't just follow anything that gets into my head not now.\"\n\"We'll watch,\" I said. \"If what you see in your head is right, if it fits the land, maybe we can use the rest.\"\nShe looked away, then rubbed her nose. \"Itches. What's that mean?\"\n\"Don't know.\"\n\"Gamelpar believed in you,\" she said quickly, \"and you kept them from . . . doing whatever they would have done to him. He is free now, because of you.\" She rubbed her nose more vigorously until her eyes almost crossed. Then she turned to look at me, steadily, clearlymore strongly determined than ever. \"I believe in you, too.\"\nVinnevra offered her hand. After a couple of steps, I grasped it. She then walked closer and looped her arm around mine.\n\"You can use my true name, if you want,\" she said. My heart felt very strange. I had made a decision, laid out a plan, and everyone was going along with meeven Riser. I had responsibilities. Three of them. I hated that.TWENTY-THREE\n\nF OR A FEW\n days, we passed through jungle of varying density, cresting the low mounds and hills, going around the big ones. Mara found us some fruit, not much more of the green tubes that we peeled and ate the pulp out of, more seedy fruits with sallow flesh, mostly bitter. Vinnevra was delighted to find a log filled with giant wood maggots. They tasted better than scorpions. Even Mara ate a few. Riser poked and waded through a stream that crossed Vinnevra's chosen path, but there were only insects too small to bother with no fish. Still, it was water, and we drank our fill. The sun had changed its angle to the rim of the wheel even more. Once, sitting in a clearing, I considered the possibility that we might soon enter a long darkness, when the hoop, the Halo, found its place in orbit where its tilt was perpendicular to the . . . I felt around for the word . . . Radius. I didn't need much help from the old spirit to think through the rest. There would be a long stretch of darkness many daysand then a dreary half-day, light falling only on one side of the band, while the Halo traveled around the sun some more. Not a cheery prospect. I finally stopped thinking about it, but the sun still dropped, day by day, toward the sky bridge. And the wolf-orb kept getting bigger. It was now ten thumbs wide, a great pink-gray mass, its roundness clearly visible even during the day. Vinnevra was very thin. Riser checked out our health with his nose and gave me a worried look; she was not doing well. None of us was doing well. The jungle was not providing much food, and we were walking steadily. Marait was hard to tell whether Mara was losing weight, her fur was so thick. But around her elbows and hips it was falling out in patches. She would take those patches and set them up in trees, then wait below, for a while, before giving up. The trees got small, then thinned out to grassy glades. The gladesin turn gave way to a lush, tall grass meadow. We had been traveling for over twenty-two daysagain, I had lost count. Then, just after dawn, I saw Vinnevra standing beside Mara, who had planted a patch of her dark reddish fur on the tip of a tall grass cane, then crouched down below. Several long-tailed birds started to flutter around the fur. Neither Vinnevra nor the ape moved. Eventually, the birdsnone more than a morselgrew used to them and flew lower, grabbed hold of the cane with their claws, plucked at the fur. . . . Mara shot up her big hands and caught five at once. Five small birds. We broke their necks and ate them raw, including their innards. Mara we gave two, but she split half of one with Vinnevra. Vinnevra said the ape was sharing it with the memory of Gamelpar. The meadow soon gave way to bare soil, lightly tilled, as if waiting for a fresh crop. We were still some distance from the desert of ashy blight, but I doubted any farmer would be planting here soon.\n\"Is this what you see?\" I asked Vinnevra. She nodded.\n\"I thought it was all grassland.\"\nShe shook her head. \"There's more trees and grass out there.\"\nShe pointed inland and west. \"Like you saw.\"\nBut I had missed this tiny patch of dirt, no doubt just a brown line against the wider yellow and green. \"Anything nearby?\"\n\"Just dirt . . . for a ways.\"\n\"Why didn't you tell me that?\"\n\"I will, from now onif you want,\" she said.\n\"I want. Tell me . . . whatever, whenever.\"\nShe looked unhappy. \"What if I'm wrong again?\"\n\"Just tell me.\"\n\nWe spent a day trudging across the dirt, until we came in sight of a blue-gray line along the inland horizon. Hours later, we saw that the line was a great, long raila strange sort of fence rail that floated over the dirt without visible support.\n\"Where does this go?\" I asked Vinnevra. She pointed along the rail. That was obvious enough.\n\"What's at the other end?\"\"Something I don't understand. I don't see it very clearly.\"\n\"Food?\"\n\"Maybe. I see . . . and smell . . . food, if we go that way.\"\n\"Grass and trees?\"\n\"Not that way. Over there, maybe.\" She pointed away from the rail.\n\"Game?\"\nShe shook her head. \"I don't know.\"\nThe old spirit decided now was the time to make a contribution again. It might be a transport system. I saw big, noisy objects running along, or above, or besideor on both sides ofdouble and single rails, both on the ground and elevated, like this one. Usually they go to places where there are resources. Or they carry passengers, and passengers need to eat. So much for my being in charge. We were all starving again.\n\nWe changed direction and turned our group toward the spin, walking beside the soaring fence rail. Riser and I fell back a dozen paces from the girl and the ape.\n\"A nudge from the old spirit?\" he asked.\n\"Yes,\" I said glumly. \"You?\"\n\"Soon it will be long dark, she says.\"\n\"Right. I've seen that, too.\"\n\"Long dark, travel hard. We follow the girl again?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"For now.\"\n\"It was worth a try, finding game,\" he said. \"No blame.\"\nHe fell quiet for another while, then said, \"Old spirit suggests lots of space below, caverns. Why don't we find a way down? Maybe things have not gone wrong down there.\"\nI thought of the great jagged hole punched into the wheel, many kilometers back along our journey. Inside, below, there had been layer upon layer of broken levels, floors, interior spaces. And what about the chasm that had opened up near the wall? It was too late to go back and find out. Something might have even fixed the hole, and by now, the bottom of the chasm had probably filled in. What had happened to all those people? To the war sphinxesthat were herding them along like cattle? Were those machines controlled by Forerunners, or by the Captive, the Primordial itself?\nWas the Primordial actually in charge of this wheel, after all?\n\"I'm not sure it's a good idea, going down there,\" I said.\n\"You smell bad,\" Riser observed.\n\"I want to piss my pants,\" I said.\n\"Me, too,\" Riser said. \"Let's not and say we did.\"\nIt was an old cha manune\n joke, not a very good one. We kept quiet for another few hours, until we came within sight of a long, large machine sitting on top of the floating rail.TWENTY-FOUR\n\nT HE MACHINE RESEMBLED\n a giant moth pupa clinging to a stick, with two narrow vanes on each sideno windows, no doors, and no way to climb up.\n\"It's a big wagon,\" Riser said. Or a balloon, I thought, somehow tethered to the rail but it did not bob in the breeze. We walked around and beneath. If this was\n a wagon, we might somehow climb up, climb in, make it work, make it move . . . fast!\nBut it was much too high to touch. Vinnevra and Mara had plopped down and were watching us as we walked in circles, making our inspection.\n\"Does it carry Forerunners, or their stuff?\"Vinnevra asked.\n\"You don't see it?\"\n\"No. Just the rail. What do you see, at the end?\" Vinnevra, after a long silence, finally shrugged. \"It goes where we need to go,\" she said, and then gave me an apprehensive look. Arguing with her would have been pointless, even cruel. You are all crazy here\n, Lord of Admirals observed wryly. Forerunners have ruined what's left of us, raised us up, made us their tools . . . their fools.\n\"Then go,\" I said. She walked away, looking back, then got a fey look and broke into a lope, as if fleeing from us. Mara loped along beside her, sometimes upright, sometimes on her long arms, swinging body and legs afterless efficient in the open, it seemed to me, than in the trees. She didn't seem to need my protection, or want it anymore. Good. But I could not bring myself to follow right away. I sat in the dirt, head in hands, sick at heart. Riser sat with me for a few minutes, then got up, walked a few steps, and stared back at me, head cocked.\n\"Don't you feel it, too?\" he asked. I didbut I had been trying to ignore it. Vinnevra wasn't the only one being guided, pulled in like a goat on a rope. I saw food,shelter, protection. And now I smelled the food as wellgreat tables loaded with food, enough for hundreds of us. Crazy inside, worn down inside and out.\n\nFootstep after footstep, following the floating rail, hour after hour and finally a change, something new on this endless, furrowed field of sterile dirt. We came to a thick white pole with a wide circle at the top. The rail passed through the circle, at no point touching. I measured with my bleary eyes and decided the circle was big enough to let the transport pass through, but still, I half-heartedly wondered how the rail just hung there. Lord of Admirals then condescended to inform me that this was not especially marvelous. With a kind of easy, instinctive pride, he told me that weold humans, that is, separating me, his host, from the humans he had knownhad once covered many worlds with networks of transportation much like thisrails, poles, and circles. Far less marvelous than star boats. Which, by the by, we called ships. Star ships. It occurred to me that Lord of Admirals was feeling something like contempt for all us poor slaves and pets of the Forerunners, so ignorantbut I let it pass. He was dead, I was alive, still moving of my own will. Mostly.\n\"Did we ever make anything like a Halo?\" I asked, hoping to sting him a little. But the Lord of Admirals did not answer. He could withdraw when it suited him into the quiet murmurs that filled my headhiding behind my own half-formed thoughts like a leopard behind a cane brake. I could not force him out if he did not want to come.\n\"I take that as a no,\" I muttered. Riser's forehead glistened with sweat. It did seem the air was warmer here even than in the junglewarmer and drier. My thirst was fierce. Pretty soon, we'd curl up like earthworms on a flat, sunny rockall brown and leathery.\n\"Worse here than when young tough ha manune\n caught me and tied me to a thorn bush,\" he said. \"That was before Marontik was much of a town.\"\"You didn't tell me about that,\" I said. \"I'd have beat them up and thrown rocks.\"\n\"They died before you were born,\" Riser said.\n\"You killed them?\"\n\"They got old and wrinkled,\" he said with a shrug. \"I outlived them.\"\nI didn't ask if that gave him any satisfaction. Cha manune\n were not much concerned with vengeance and punishment. Maybe that was one of the secrets to their longevity.\n\"You still don't live as long as Forerunners,\" I said, more out of weariness than reproof.\n\"No, I won't,\" Riser said. \"But you\n will.\"\n\"How?\" I shot back, irritated. I didn't want to be anything like a Forerunner right now. Riser stubbornly refused to answer, so I let it go. Another couple of hours' walking and the wheel's shadow swept down. We stopped, lay back on the dirt, and Riser and I allowed Lord of Admirals and Yprin to quietly speak, while Mara and Vinnevra snored and the stars rolled along in the sky, behind and around the other side of the wheel. Wheels within wheels. The wolf-orb grew each night. Thirteen thumb-widths, almost. Somehow Riser and I nodded off, perhaps interrupting the old spirits' conversation. Just as light returned, we jerked awake, sensing a change in the airand a soft sound like wind. The rail wagon whooshed\n over our heads. We all stood up and stared. The wagon was just a moving dot, already kilometers away.\n\"Something's working again,\" Vinnevra said. Mara whistled and grumbled, and Vinnevra agreed with herwhatever it was the ape had said.\n\"Walk more?\" Riser asked her.\n\"No.\" Vinnevra looked around, hands on her hips, and shook her head firmly. \"This is where we need to be.\"\nAnd it wasif we listened to those inner guides. Still, we looked aroundnothing but dirt, no water, no food, no shelterdismayed but hardly surprised. The skin on my face and arms was brown and flaking and Riser was pinking and patchy. Mara was still losing fur, though out here, there were no nesting birds she could tempt.We were a mess, but it was so good\n to know we had finally arrived. Again. The sky bridge taunted us with its graceful silence.\n\nIt didn't happen right away, but after my thoughts had blurred into an agony of thirst and hunger, and the sun was beyond unbearable, and madness seemed near The ground shivered.\n\"Not now,\" I tried to say with a thick tongue and crusted lips. Riser didn't speak, just lay back flat and clasped his hands over his face. Then the ground crumbled and split in sections. We crawled every which way until the trembling stopped. When I rolled over to look, a platform had broken through the dirt. Shuddering clods marched off its flatness until it was pristine white. Along the platform's edge small poles rose up and benches shaped themselves at the center. We waited. Anything might happen. The Primordial itself might pop out of the platform and reach out to grab us.\n\nHalo night swept over and the tops of the poles shoved out little blue lamps that cast a steady glow across the platform. We watched all this, not moving, for many minutes, but then, as one even the apewe stood up and walked painfully toward the platform, stepped onto it, and peered up at the lamps. Riser crawled up on a bench and began picking his feet. I hoisted myself to sit beside him, and Mara joined us. We waited some more. Every so often, my little friend would look up and wrinkle his nose. Vinnevra kept near the outside of the platform, ready to run if anything bad started to happen. Of course, there was no place to run. Then we heard a faint humming sound. Across the shadowed land, a star glowed way out along the rail. I watched the star move toward us down the wheel's shaded curve, trying to figure how far off it wasmany hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometers.off it wasmany hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometers. Moving fast. It grew to a bright beacon that threw a long beam ahead through the dusty air, and thenanother great wagon rushed down upon usand we fell flat on our faces!\nIt stopped instantly, silently, right over our heads, ten meters above the platform. Wind followed and pushed at Mara's nimbus of fur. The wind spent itself in gritty dust devils, spinning off into the darkness. The humming became a low, steady drumming. Vinnevra had found the strength to run off. I couldn't see her. The rest of us stood up under the transport. A disk cut itself out of one side and descended to the platform. Again, I flinchedbut it was just a disk, curved like the part of the wagon it had come from, blank on both sides. A series of smaller poles rose up around the outside of the disk, minus one, where, I supposed, we were expected to step up and get on. I called hoarsely for Vinnevra. Finally she came out of the darkness and stood next to me.\n\"What do you think?\" I asked. It didn't much matter whether we did this thing or stayed here. We were being reeled in. We didn't have much time left either way. She took my hand. \"I go where you go.\"\nMara climbed aboard, pushing sideways between the poles. We all followed. The disk lifted us through the air, tilted us at an angle I was afraid we might slide and fall off, but we didn'tand then inserted us through the hole in the side of the transport. I thought I saw three doors, was about to decide which one to take, but thenthere was only one door, and we were inside. The disk sealed itself tight. No cracks, no seamsvery Forerunner. The air was cool. Mara had to bend over to fit under the ceiling, which glowed a pleasant silvery yellow. A blue female appearedthe wagon's ancilla, I guessed, human looking but about as tall as Riser. The image floated at one end of the transport, toes pointed down. She raised her arms gracefully and said, \"You have been requested. We will take you where you need to be.\"\nThe walls became clear and seats rose up that fit all of useven a kind of low couch for Mara, who preferred to lie on her side.\n\"Would you like refreshments?\" the blue lady asked. \"The tripwill not be very long, but we see you are hungry and thirsty.\"\nNone of us hesitated. Water and more of that pleasant-tasting paste, in bowls, floated out on several smaller disks, and we ate and drank. . . . My lips seemed to fill out, my eyes felt almost normal again, not covered with grit. My stomach complained, then settled in to its work. I could feel the humming, drumming of the transport through my butt and my feet. The blue lady took away the refreshments before we made ourselves sick. We waited, full, no longer thirsty, but still expecting bad things.\n\"We have three passenger compartments today,\" the ancilla announced. I saw only one, the one we were in, and it looked just a little smaller than the wagon's outside. Where were the other two?\n\"Our journey will begin shortly.\"\nDon't trust any of it,\n Lord of Admirals advised me. I didn't need to be warned. We had been requested.\n That meant somebody knew we were here, and wanted us. And that, coming from any Forerunner, was likely not a good thing. Vinnevra sat looking out at the passing, darkened land. I leaned forwardI was sitting behind herand touched her shoulder. She turned her head and stared at me, half-asleep.\n\"I don't blame you for anything,\" I said. \"I hope you'll let me off the hook, too.\"\nShe just looked ahead again, nodded once, and shortly after that, she fell asleep. I too saw very little of the journey. And it was a long journey. When I came awake, the transport had passed into day and was crossing a rugged, rocky landscape, all gray. Clouds flew by. I wondered if we ourselves were flying now but couldn't see the rail, so there was no way of knowing. Then something big and dark flashed past just a few meters from the wagon. At our speed, even that brief passage meant the wall or building or whatever it was must have been very large. The lights inside the transport flickered. The blue lady stood at the front of our cabin, eyes fixed, body changing in slow waves between the shape of a Forerunnera Lifeworkerand a human. Her mouth moved, but she did not say anything I could hear. The transport gave the merest shiver, then stopped with hardlyany sensation. The disk-door fell away from the side, but this time fast, landing with a resounding clang somewhere below. That didn't sound right. Suddenly, I could feel, then see, shuffling, moving forms all around uscoming and going in slow waves. I seemed to stand in three different interiors at once, with different lighting, different colorsdifferent occupants. Riser let out a thin shriek and leaped to clutch my arm. Mara pushed her head and shoulders up against the ceiling, arms held high, trying to avoid the things moving around us in the awful guttering half-light. Vinnevra clutched the ape's side, eyes wild. Everything suddenly got physical. Dust rose around us in clouds. We were surrounded, jostled. Pink and gray lumps bumped into us as they shambled forward, trying to reach the exit. They might have been Forerunners onceall kinds, even big ones as large as the Didactbut they were hardly Forerunners now. One turned to look down at me, eyes milky, face distorted by growths. Tendrils swayed below its arms, and when it turned toward the exit, I saw it had another head growing from its shoulder. All were partially encased in what seemed at first glance to be Forerunner armorbut this was different. It seemed to flow of its own will around their deformed and rearranged bodies, as if struggling to hold them togetherand keep them apart. These malleable cases were studded with little moving machines, rising up and dropping back from the armor's surface like fish rising and then sinking in waterall working as hard as can be to constrain, organize, preserve. Poor bastards. They've got it badthe Shaping Sickness.\n\"I know that,\" I said, under my breath. But it's been held back, retarded. Only prolongs their misery but perhaps they remain useful, maintain their services to the Master Builder. I wasn't sure of that, not at all. Perhaps something that controlled the plague was calling them in. Perhaps they had become slaves of the Primordialof the subverted machine master of the wheel.\n\"They were with us all along!\" Vinnevra whispered harshly.\n\"Why didn't we see them?\"\nBright lights moved just outside the doormonitors with singlegreen eyes. Floating before themunder their control, but physically separatemetal arms and clamps guided oval cages. One by one, the clamps circled the transformed and encased occupants, tightened, lifted them, and inserted them into the cages, which then floated away. With what few wits I had left, I counted twenty, twenty-five, thirty of the plague-stricken things. The interior stabilized. The blue lady announced, in her human form, \"You have arrived at your destination. You are now at Lifeworker Central. Please exit quickly and allow us to service this compartment.\"\nExcept for us, the transport again seemed empty.TWENTY-FIVE\n\nA NOTHER MONITORALSO\n green-eyedmet us as we dropped down from the open doorno steps, no conveniences. The disk wobbled and clanked beneath our weight. Mara descended as gently as she could but the disk slammed down, then wobbled as she got off. The transport was streaked with dust and a thick green fluid. Once we were off, the hole in the side filled ingrew a new door, I supposethen the transport swung around and about on the rail, this time hanging down from the bridge, below the platform. I think we just witnessed the work of the Composer,\n the Lord of Admirals said.\n\"You keep mentioning that,\" I murmured. \"What is it?\"\nSomething the Forerunners were using long ago to try to preserve those stricken with the Shaping Sickness. We thought they had abandoned it.\n\"You told me it had something to do with converting Forerunners into machinesmonitors.\"\nThat was its other function. A very powerful deviceif it was a device. Some thought the Composer was a product of its own servicesa Forerunner, possibly a Lifeworker, suspended in the fi nal stages of the Shaping Sickness. I really did not want to hear any more. I focused on our surroundingsreal and solid enough. We were inside a cavernous, murky interior. No other transports were visible. The transport that had carried usand those awful, hidden passengersnow, with little warning, hummed, drummed, then rushed off into a pale spot of daylight some distance away, on another errandback where it came from. Riser gathered us together like a shepherd, even the ape, who reacted to his prodding hands without protest. The green-eyed monitor moved forward and rotated to take us all in. \"Would you please follow? There is sustenance and shelter.\"\n\"What did we eat\n inside that thing?\" Vinnevra asked, putting her mouth close to my ear, as if not to offend the machine.\n\"Don't ask,\" I said, but felt even sicker.\"Were they\n Forerunners?\" she asked, pointing toward the darkened archway through which the other monitors were moving the cages.\n\"I think so.\"\n\"Was that the Shaping Sickness?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Will we get it, now?\"\nI shuddered so violently my teeth chattered. We had recovered enough strength that walking wasn't an agony, but still, the hike across the cavernous space seemed to take forever. Above us, architecture silently formed and vanished, rose up, dropped down, came and went: walls of balconies and windows, long sweeps of higher roadways and walkways, in slow waves, like the ancilla inside the wagon. Wherever we were, this place was dreaming of better days. The monitor took us through a great square opening and suddenly, as if passing through a veil, we were out in daylight again. Before us rolled a wide body of water, gray and dappled, reaching out to low, rocky cliffs many kilometers off. Close in to the wide dock on which we now stood, several impressively big water boats lay at an angle, half in, half out of the waterpartially sunken, it seemed to mebut one could never tell with Forerunner things. Large cylinders were tumbled and bunched around their underwater ends. A few burned and scorched monitors lay scattered around the dock, motionless, their single eyes dark, all sad and decrepit something we were certainly used to by now. Our green-eyed guide rose to the level of my face, then urged us toward the edge of the dock. \"There will be a high-speed ferry along shortly,\" it said. \"You will wait here until it arrives. If you are hungry or thirsty, limited reserves of food and water can be supplied, but we must not stay here long.\"\n\"Why?\" I asked.\n\"The conflict is not over.\"\nPerhaps here was another truthful monitor. Best to get an update on the wheel's situationfrom the green-eye's perspective. Not that we, as mere humans, could do anything about any of it.\n\"Where does the fighting continue?\"\n\"Around the research stations.\"\"The Palace of Pain,\" Vinnevra said, face contorted. She raised her fists, either as defense against these words coming from the monitor, or because she wanted to reach out and strike it. I touched her shoulder. She shrugged away my hand, but let me speak. I could feel the Lord of Admirals subtly guiding my questions, expressing his own curiosity . . . supplementing me in both wisdom and experience.\n\"Were humans infected?\" I asked.\n\"Not at first. Then . . . the Captive arrived.\"\n\"While this weapon was being tested at Charum Hakkor?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"How did the Primordialthe Captiveget here?\" Riser asked, no doubt guided by Yprin. The green-eye seemed to brighten at this. \"The Master Builder himself escorted it to the installation.\"\n\"Was the Primordial in a timelock?\"\n\"It was not.\"\n\"Was it free to move about, act . . . on its own?\"\n\"It did not move, at first. It appeared dormant. Then, the Master Builder departed from this installation, and left his researchers in charge. They reduced the role of the Lifeworkers on the installation, and finally sequestered them with a select group of humans in several smaller preserves.\"\n\"But there were other humans outside the care of the Lifeworkers.\"\n\"Yes. Many.\"\n\"And the Master Builder's scientists kept trying to infect them.\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Did they succeed?\"\n\"Eventually, but only in a few humans. They also tried to access records stored in the humans by the Librarian herself.\"\nThis was too much like staring into my own navel. I felt a whirlpool of unhappy, contradictory emotionsand realized much of that inner turbulence came from Lord of Admirals himself.\n\"How did they access them? By asking them questions?\"\n\"By removing the records and storing them elsewhere.\"\nAsk about the Composer!\n\"What is the Composer?\"\n\"Not in memory,\" the monitor said.\"You seem to know everything else. What is the Composer?\"\n\"An archaism, perhaps. Not in memory.\"\n\"Not still in useturning living things into machines, that sort of thing?\"\nNo answer this time. I could hear a distant whirring noise. Far across the body of water, moving along the distant rocky cliff, a white streak was making a wide turn and coming closer. This must be the ferry. Questions bunched up. \"Will you be coming with us?\"\n\"No,\" the monitor said. \"This is my station. I have care-taking duties to perform.\"\n\"Will there be other monitors out there, where we're going?\nOther ancillas?\"\n\"Yes. Three minutes before the ferry arrives.\"\n\"The war . . . did Lifeworkers rise up against the Builders?\"\n\"Yes.\"\nInfuriating reticence! \"Why?\"\n\"The Captive held long converse with this installation's controlling ancilla. It in turn leveled the shields and broke safeguards at the Flood research centers and spread infection among the Builders and many of the Lifeworkers. It then moved this installation to the capital system, where we were attacked by Forerunner fleets, and forced to move again . . . but not before the hub weapon fired upon the Forerunner capital world.\" The monitor's voice dropped in both volume and pitch, as if expressing sadness. Could these mechanical servants suffer along with their masters?\n\"Where are we now?\" Riser asked.\n\"We are in orbit around a star out in the thinnest boundaries of the galaxy.\"\n\"Any planets?\"\n\"Some. Most are little more than icy moons. There is one large planet composed mostly of water ice and rock. It is growing closer. Too close.\"\nThe ferry slowed as it approached the dockin shape a pair of sleek, long white curves, like boomerangs linking their tips to make bow and stern. A spume of water cascaded behind and soaked us with mist. The ape shook herself and launched another spray.\n\"You will go aboard now,\" the monitor said as a door swungwide and made a ramp into the interior.\n\"Are there sick things inside?\" Vinnevra asked, her voice shaky.\n\"No,\" the monitor said. \"You are expected, and time is growing short. That is all I have been told.\"\nWe walked across the ramp. The inside of the ferry differed little from the inside of the rail-wagon, though it was wider and the ceiling was higher. Mara did not have to crouch. Vinnevra poked about, checking carefully for other passengers. There were none that we could see.\n\"Maybe Forerunners pack passengers together and make some of them sleep and dream, so the journeys are shorter,\" I said. Vinnevra curled up on a bench. \"Shut upplease,\" she said. Mara let out a high whine and rolled over in the aisle. Riser shook out his arms. \"I don't think Forerunners are in charge now.\"\nThat did not make me feel any more secure. \"Who, then?\" I asked.\n\"Don't know.\" He squatted, then patted the seat beside him, inviting me to sit. We stared through the transparent walls as the ferry pulled away from the dock and gathered speed. Spray spattered the hull and slid aside, leaving no marksall very sleek, yet strangely primitive. The rail transport, this boat . . . too simple. Far too simplealmost childlike. I expected more from Forerunners by now. All my life, I had thought that Forerunners were little gods in charge of our lives, far away mostly and not particularly cruel but hard to understand. Since meeting Bornstellar on Erde-Tyrene, all my ideas about Forerunners had been taken apart, joint by joint, like so many birds that would never fly again. And what was left behind?\nBeing human has never been easy. Do not de fi ne who you are by comparing yourself to them.\n\"Please be quiet,\" I muttered. \"You don't have to figure things out and stay alive.\"\nIf I'm so useless, why did the Lifeshaper put me here? I doubt you're hiding any great wisdom. That irritated me. \"You wouldn't exist without them . . . and neither would I.\"\nRiser looked at me. There was a puzzled misery in his eyes, aslant to his mouth, that told me he was feeling much the same, and thinking similar thoughts. The ride on the ferry was long and quiet. The lake or sea or river perhaps the same one we had crossed earlier, we never did learn continued gray and monotonous for many hours. For a time, the water narrowed into a channel, with gray cliffs on either side. Then it grew wide again, its distant shores running far up the curves. I could not even estimate our speed, but the spray whizzed by. For an uncomfortable time, I imagined these were the western waters and we were actually being ferried to the far shores. . . . But all of those tales seemed too antiquated, too weak\n now to be believed. I had lost all connection with the pictures in the sacred caves. All that I had seen since leaving Djamonkin Crater made those drawings, first viewed by the smoky light of clay lamps burning tallow, seem hollow and stupid. I had no roots in this land and no way of knowing what kind of water this wasspirit water or dripping water, living water or dead. Life and death meant very different things to Forerunners. My old spirit was also unimpressed by those stories, the things I was taught by the shamans while they scarred my back and marked and confirmed my manhood. How low your people have fallenhow irrational. Like cattle or pets. I did not rise to this insult. It was true enough.\n\nVinnevra reached forward from her bench to touch my shoulder. Her face was clear and calm and her eyes bright. \"I think I understand now. This used to be a place for children. Forerunner children. A safe place to learn and play. And I know where my geas\n comes from,\" she said. \"It comes into my head like sunshine through the dark. It comes new and fresh when there is something important to tell me. And it is the voice of a childa lost child, very young.\"\n\"Why a child?\"\n\"I don't know, but it is\n young.\"\n\"Male or female?\"\n\"Both.\"\"What does it tell you now?\"\n\"We're going where we need to be.\"\n\"Where's that?\"\nMara held out her huge paw and Vinnevra gripped her thumb.\n\"We're all going to Erda,\" she said.\n\"How?\" I asked. \"Are we going to swim there?\"\nShe made a face, then rolled over and curled up. Riser growled, \"The air is full of lies.\"\n\"Probably,\" I said, but my heart was strangely lightened by a new thought. \"What if humans are going to be given a job because Forerunners couldn't finish it?\"\n\"What sort of job?\" Riser asked.\n\"Killing the Primordial,\" I said. \"The Forerunners fought and made each other sick. So we're the only ones left to kill the Primordial, fix the Halo, and take it to where it needs to be.\"\nRiser leaned forward, his eyes sharp and bright. \"We're the dangerous ones,\" he whispered. \"The old warriors awaken.\"\nThe boat approached a near shore, turned, and shot along parallel to high, faded green cliffs. Riser pointed to blue-gray buildings far off along the cliffs, growing closer and larger as we were whisked alongblocky, irregular towers packed in undulating rows. Their tops supported what might have once been the remains of a roof, arching, jagged pieces like the broken shell of a huge egg. We passed under the closest tower. The boat leaned into another wide turn, shooting up a tall plume of spray, aiming our view through gaping holes in the roof at the sky and then back down to the water. A thrill ride for young Forerunners! I tended to accept Vinnevra's theory. Still many kilometers off rose a wide gray mass with a flat top. As we rushed closer it resolved into a great, curving wall of falling water, throwing thick clouds of spray up around its base. The mass might have been nine or ten kilometers tall.\n\"A storm?\" Riser asked, frowning.\n\"I don't think so,\" I said. We watched the foaming whiteness grow closer. Just as we were about to merge with the tumult, our ferry lifted parallel to its violent plunge, like a bird flying up a wall up and over\n the crest and then across a wide expanse of dimpled, mossy green water. The ferry dipped down to that jewel-slicksurface and again threw up an enthusiastic plume, moving swiftly against the outward-flowing current. Sometime later, the roil seemed to reverse and now rushed us toward a great, central hole, easily twenty or thirty kilometers wide. As we shot through successive rainbows and clouds of spray, nearing the edge of this inner cascade, I sensed it was much deeper than the outer falls.\n\"It's like a target,\" Riser said. \"The Librarian likes targets. Do you think she's here?\"\nVinnevra stood beside us. \"It's not the Librarian,\" she insisted.\n\"And it's not a Forerunner. It's a childa young child.\"\nThat made no sense to me. But the Lord of Admirals seemed to find something interesting in her idea. They start again as childrenall together. It is what the Composer was designed to prevent. That name again! I did not want to hear any more about it. The boat rolled and angled and we saw the sun almost touching the high, shaded sky bridge. Off toward the east, we again saw the red and gray wolf-orb, as wide as several of my handsa waxing crescent so close even its shadow showed rugged detail. It's too damned close,\n the Lord of Admirals said. It's on a collision course.\n\"Forerunners can carve up planets like oranges,\" I said. This wheel is far more delicate than it might seem to you and me. Someone likely wanted to guarantee a way to destroy it, should they lose control. He pushed forward in my thoughts a vivid diagram for a failsafe orbit, closing gradually with the wolf-faced orb. For a moment, this clouded my seeing and I felt half-blindbut I understood the urgency, the importance. My understanding of orbits and large scale tactics had already expanded marvelously under his tutelage. And once I had thought that stars were holes punched in the sky by huge birds pecking for insects!\nPlacing the Halo on a collision course made sense. If a faction lost control and guidance was not reclaimed in a certain period, then by prior arrangement, the wheel would smash up against the wolf face orb. It would self-destruct. I gripped the seat, filled with instinctive terrorbut not at thisdire if still abstract prospect. The boat plunged over the central cascade. We felt and heard nothing but a low hum but what we saw made us cry out and grab hold of each other. Even gigantic Mara whined and hid her face with her hands. All around, as we fell, the darkening waters divided into hundreds of vertical streams, their turbulent surfaces rippling blue and green and deeper green. And thenthe streams crossed over and around each other like braiding snakes, weaving and writhing in incredible patterns while tightening in on the space between. Our weight went away, and we rose up toward the ceiling, clutching at each other. I wanted to be sick. Riser and Mara were sick. We fell for many minutesand then, the braided streams flew up and away and we dropped into a measureless void. Above and behind, the streams spread outward to form a vaulted ceilingan upside-down roof of flowing water. There could be no doubt we were now inside the great mass of the wheel, far below the surface. But where we might be going, I had no idea. We remained without weightin free fallbut stopped being sick. The speed and distance of our descent was hard to judge. It could easily have been dozens of kilometers, even hundreds. My eyes adjusted slowly to this different kind of darknessa black below black, darker than night, darker than sleep. Mara pressed her face against the transparent hull and made small whistling sounds, then tapped the bulkhead with a wrinkled, drawn-in expression. By now I could see what she was seeing. All around us, our falling boat was surrounded by dimly glowing shapes. I wrapped my fingers around Riser's arm. He shook loose and stared at me resentfully, then followed our eyes to the spaces outside the boat.\n\"Boats,\" he said. \"Great big ones.\"\nNeatly arranged, lined up above and below one another, row upon row moved off through the far darkness, sketched out by gentle, guiding lines of blue and green, speckled by faint stars like glowworms hanging in a cave. Then they, too, rose up and away and another, emptier darkness swallowed us. I wondered if what we had seen were indeed boatsor ships . . . or power stations, orsome other machine or magic. Machines, science; not magic,\n the Lord of Admirals reminded me, but my eyes were too lost in blurred-out fatigue to care what this ghost thought. I saw only suggestions of whatever was outsidespots of brown, a swiftly passing cord of dark gray, like a hanging bit of spiderweb. . . . Then, weight gradually returned and we descended to the floor in the cabin. Our fall was coming to an end. We braced our hands and legs on the floor and the bench. The walls fogged, then become opaque. We stopped. The hatch swung out. We retreated from that black circle in a loose gaggle, as far as we could getinto a corner at the rear of the cabin. Mara wrapped us in her capacious arms. A whisper of cool air blew in, but for a few moments, nothing more. Then we heard a distant musical note, echoing, jarring, like the song of a strange, lost bird.\n\"Is this the Palace of Pain?\" Vinnevra asked. None of us knew; I could only imagine what awaited us now that we had passed over the waters, under the waters, through the waters. The light inside the boat dimmed, and simultaneously, the light outside grew brighter, though not by much.\n\"Something wants us out,\" Riser said, shoving into Mara's dense fur. His nose twitched. I could smell it now as wellfood, hot, savory, and lots of it. Despite everything, we were all of us hungry againravenous. Vinnevra was the first to push out of Mara's protective embrace.\n\"This is where we have to be,\" she said. At that, we all groaned even the ape. But the girl walked through the open hatch, looking back just once, eyes searching our faces, before stepping down and vanishing. We had no choice, of course. We all agreedthis was where we should be. We followed her.TWENTY-SIX\n\nT HE BOAT HAD\n come to rest at the center of a great, green-glowing web radiating outward in avenues, pathways, streetswhatever they were, they were wide enough for three of us to walk abreast\n(or one and Mara). Many crossed to join with other paths, shaping not just a web, but a glowing, greenish maze on all sides for as far as I could see. Hovering just above a distant belt of pitchy darkness were faint suggestions of other structures, straight and very tall, perhaps pillars or supports, surrounding and faintly reflecting the web's light. I had no idea how far away they might be, but as my eyes adjusted, I tracked them up and up to a great height, and they became thinner and thinner until they seemed to meet overhead. We might have been at the bottom of a high, narrow tunnel dropping vertically into the depths of the wheel, where ships and other equipment were stacked away, stored, waiting to be retrieved. I stood beside Riser, who had never been greatly impressed by big things of any sort.\n\"More Forerunner devil stuff?\nBoring,\n\" he huffed. \"Where's the food?\" Then he looked back, and his eyelids flashed white in concern. Vinnevra had dropped to her knees. Mara strode along a path to keep close to her, holding out her arms as if to keep balanceand seek our help. The girl pressed her hands against her temples and cried out, \"I hear\n you! Enough!\"\nSomething around us changed withdrew.\n I felt the sudden absence with a gut-deep sense of disappointment, even bereavement. But for Vinnevra, the absence came as a relief. She rose to her feet. \"That way!\" she said, suddenly cheery again.\n\"Don't worry. The web won't let you fall.\"\nMara was not reassured. The darkness beyond the edge of our landing platform had a disturbing sense of depth.\n It sure looked as if we could step off and fall forever. But following the scent of food, and keeping as far away as we could from the edges of the paths, we proceeded in the direction Vinnevra had indicated.I had heard long ago tales of the games that devils and gods play on humans. Back on Erde-Tyrene, children had often been subjected to such horrors and wonders. Yet it was apparent to me nowand would have been earlier, had I not been too distracted that all the nightmares and daydreams we are heir to as weak and feckless mortals had come true since I met Bornstellar. Break free, then,\n Lord of Admirals encouraged me.\n\"How?\" I whispered. Turn their power upon them. Here, they are the ones weak or dead.\n\"Here, nothing is real!\" I cried. Riser lifted his finger to his poked-out lips, then winkednot in humor, but giving sound advice. No sense encouraging our old spirits at this stage of our journey. We followed as Vinnevra crossed to a path on the right, and then anotherthis one long and straight. Behind, the ferry grew smaller and smaller, until I could cover it with my thumb . . . and then the center of the web went dark and the ferry with it. Behind us, below us, darkness. Above . . . the inner surface of the wheel might be up there, its false landscapes just barely painted ondeserted cities, blasted plains covered with ashen dust, dead Forerunners, all that we had left behind, including our fellow humans. Or perhaps that had been smudged out as well. The wheel itself might be gone, and that would mean there was only this glowing web. Too often, in a dream, you can never go back to where you were, and if you try, it's not what you remember. If our ultimate destination was to be Erde-TyreneErdathat would violate this most basic law of all dreams. And where there is a web, there might very well be a spider. Now I really wanted to piss myself or loose my already-empty bowels, to disgust any predator with my stinkhumans can make such a great stink!and run, run, or leap over the edge and fall. Falling, perhaps I would come awake and jump up from my rough bed of grass and wood slats, hear my mother clinking pots in the next roomstretch, yawn, plan for another day doing whatever Riser thought would be best for us to do. Happy times, those. Best of times.No going back. And if I had died, if I was already across the western waters, clearly I had not found favor with Abada. We walked. The dead, some of the old stories say, walk forever and never know where they are going.\n\nRiser was the first to see the spider. He poked my hiphard. Looking to our left now I saw the jagged, spiky blue legand then another. Riser yawped and tried to climb my torso as if I were a tree. I let him. Clutching my friend and turning slowly, awkwardly left, I saw Mara, and beyond herfar beyond heryet another long, jagged leg, moving and dropping to touch part of the web-maze. Completing my turn, I saw dozens of legs prancing slowly and delicately across the web. Just as I had feared. It took all the courage or foolishness I possessed to lean back and look up. Above, supported by those flashing, sharp-angled blue legs, hung a mass of close-packed crystals, big as a city but upside down and pulsing with a deep, shadowy light. The facets of the crystals crawled with intense glowworm stars, drawing luminous threads behind. By flashing and flexing, the legs had revealed they were not legs, but more like solid lightning supporting the crystal mass. The legs vanished, reappeared, then flexed and bowed as if under a great weight. The crystal city lowered over us. At its center, an emerald green glow thrust out, brighter than anything around itand extruded the most watchful glow of all. A single, central green eye cast down a darting, baleful light. Riser clutched me all the tighter. Vinnevra stood immobile with an expression of forlorn, final hope, hope about to give up and die while Mara rose to her full height, squared her considerable shoulders, and opened her mouth to roar. . . . The crystal city decorated itself with more threads of light, and the entirety swung back over us, behind us, then down\n and through the web, where it paused at right angles to the pathways. The threads merged with the paths and avenues.We faced directly the jutting wall of crystals, at a level with the huge green eye. The green eye had become the center of the maze. The smell of food became stronger. Despite my terror, my mouth watered. I was being tugged along like an animal, helplessly lured on by my most basic drives. Vinnevra swung around. Her face was ghastly green in the reflected glow. \"We're home!\" she cried. The great green eye lifted. The web of paths was slowly extinguished by darkness flowing from the cobwebbed crystal mass. We have seen this before,\n Lord of Admirals informed me, and I realized the old spirit was not in the least frightened, and not because he was already dead. He could feel harm coming to his old enemies, harm being done to the Forerunnersand that was far more important than his own welfare, or mine. This is the one who betrays Forerunners, their own greatest monster. We know this one. Remember?\nBut I did notnot yet. Walls descended around us, at first reflecting the jeweled eye, but then scenes and images played across their pale surfaces like sketches for yet more dreams. Still, the old spirit refused to be cowed. We are here because some humans are immune to the Shaping Sickness. We carry that secret. And we have not yet given it up to them. If we do, we die!\nBut the inner voice was overwhelmed by a blaze of animal hunger. All sober judgment and thought was squeezed tight, then crammed down. The walls finished sketching, painting, then projecting a place in which we could all be comfortable and at home. An even greater lie.TWENTY-SEVEN\n\nW E WALKED THROUGH\n a forest of old, dignified trees, then over a meadow of sun-dappled grass, lulled by the buzzing of passing insectsnone of which tried to bite. At the center of the warm glade rose a long, thick wooden table. Spread across that table were all the glorious foods we had smelled before, when we rode on the . . . the what?\nVinnevra ran ahead and took a middle seat on a bench, then smiled sympathetically at Mara. The ape ambled forward willingly enough, but she gave me a look that seemed both wise, cautious and doubtful. Still, there was food, there was sun. The ape joined Vinnevra, squatting behind her, and the girl passed her a bowl of fruit, which she delicately pinched up with thick fingers, then chewed on thoughtfully. I walked around the table and sat across from Vinnevra. Pulling forward a large bowl, and then a smaller one, I served up Riser stewed grain, vegetables, and sliced meat, roasted to perfection and sprinkled with salt. Hot, rich, delicious. Riser, strangely, seemed only half-present, but for the moment that did not alarm me. From the corner of my eye, I saw him eating and was glad; but I could not make out his expression.\n\"It's been a long journey, hasn't it?\" Vinnevra said, flashing me a happy smile. This forest was little like the forests I had known, thornier and drier. The sun was high and bright and the sky was just the correct shade of blue, and there was no . . . Sky bridge\n. We ate until we could eat no more, and then decided to leave the table to sit in the shade of a broad-spreading, thick-leafed giant of a tree that rose almost high enough to touch the passing clouds. For a while, I knew we had indeed returned to Erde-Tyrene, as Vinnevra had suggested we would.\n\"Too bad Gamelpar couldn't be here,\" I said. She gave me a quizzical look. \"But he is.\"\nI accepted that. \"Where are all the others?\" I asked around thetable. Riseroff to one sidedid not answer. Vinnevra kept smiling. \"They're here, too. We'll meet them soon. Isn't this wonderful?\"\nThe daylight turned to dusk as it always had on Erde-Tyrene, high clouds pink and orange, then purple, brown, and gray. Stars came out. Look at the patterns of the stars. This is not\n\nThe moon rose. The others found beds in the soft grass and moss and rolled up and slept, except for myself and Mara, who moved away from Vinnevra and closer to me, grumbling deep in her chest. The moon, bright and green, watched over us until my own eyes closed.\n\nAnd then the great green eye probed deep, reminding me, with a strange enthusiasm, that we had met before. The Master Builder had conducted that first interview, with the help of this green-eyed ancilla, a very different sort from the lesser monitors and servile ancillas. The ancilla proudly informed meand by transfer, the Lord of Admiralsthat it had indeed been placed in charge of this wheel, and ultimately of all Forerunner defenses. It informed us it was quite capable of lying. And then it played. Whether it actually moved us about the wheel and made us live through other journeys, or simply scratched over our memories with fabricated dreams, I will never know. It certainly had the power to do both. And the freedom. It no longer served either the Master Builder or Forerunners. Whom does it serve now?\nThe orb was approachingtime must be short. Still, the master of the wheel distracted medid not allow me to use my powers of reason. All the journeys and years ended with a burst of painimmense pain. And then, the old spirit was gone. SCIENCE TEAM ANALYSIS:\n Separate streams of data follow, differing substantially from those connected to the Lord ofAdmirals. Analysis not yet complete, but we suggest skepticism as to their veracity and usefulness. ONI COMMANDER:\n \"None of this seems to be trustworthy. It's almost a sure thing that we're being fed fabrications. And if not how can we even begin to correlate these so-called memories with actual events, after a hundred thousand years?\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"I cannot disagree, but we still find, scattered throughout, curious correlations with recent discoveries.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Little bits of bait making us swallow the whole damned lie, right?\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"Possibly.\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM ADVISOR:\n \"We're interested in the references to this 'subverted AI.' We already have records reclaimedso to speakfrom variations of what may very well be that Forerunner artifact.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Nothing but trouble!\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"True, but we're likely going to encounter more like it. Any insight this monitor can provide will be greatly appreciated.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"I'd still like to focus on the Didact.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"Gentlemen, I've been skipping ahead a little. Let's move forward in the record. I doubt any of you will be disappointed.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"None of us is pleasant company, Professor, when we're disappointed.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"Duly noted, sir.\"\n\nTWENTY-EIGHT\n\nI\n\nSPENT A\n hundred years walking in circles. Questions were asked. I could not remember either the questions or my answers. I could not even remember who was asking. Slowly, however, I recalled certain memories. Some were acceptable; others were not, and I pushed them back down.\n\nFinally, I opened my eyes to a great stretch of star-filled space, at the center of which hung a huge, red and gray sphere, tormented by cratersan icy planet. Impacts over millions of millennia had carved a wolf onto the surface. I might have been out in space, suspended just like this orb. Then my point of view swiveled and dropped. I looked down over a wide swath of the wheel, the Halo, as if from a high mountain. I was told I was witnessing part of what was sometimes called the Silent Cartographerthe complete and living record of the Halo. Those who would help rescue and then use the wheel were allowed to explore and learn in this place. More memories returned. The band below swept up and away in the familiar fashion to the sky bridge. Many hundreds of kilometers below, huge squaresplates of gray-blue Halo foundation material were being maneuvered by machines over the limiting walls on either side of the band, stacking up through the atmosphere, while cloudy swirls of interrupted weather gathered around the lowest plates. The Halo was preparing for its coming challenge. I felt nothingtook no breath, experienced no sensation. Only cold thought left me any hope of still being alive. Still, I came to enjoy this isolation. No feeling, no painonly education and watchful eyes. Then I also heard voices. A kind of selective blindness lifted and I realized I was standingleaning slightly to one side, but standing. The red and gray world blocking out the stars, so near to the wheel, remainedas did the stars and the wheel itself. But beneath myfeet, I became aware of a dark platform, and then, of shadows many shadows moving in. A smaller shadow came close, stretched out a blurry handand all came into focus. I looked out upon dozens of peoplehumans all, some like me, many others different. Riser gripped my fingers. I knelt and took him in my arms. He whined at my touch. \"Hurts,\" he said, and turned around to show a punched-out mark in his backhealed over, but furless, pink and angry looking. \"Stung deep.\"\nI felt my own back and cringed at the shallow hole my fingers found. I pulled them back, expecting to see bloodbut they were dry. Male and female, we were all naked. Most looked as old as Gamelpar had been before he died. Only a few were as young as me. Few words passed. We stood out under the stars, caught in the light of the red and gray planet, rapidly closing the distance between itself and the wheel.\n\"Who brought us here?\" I asked Riser. He circled his fingers and looped them in front of his eyes.\n\"Green-eye,\" he said. The closest male, a tall, elderly, brown-skinned fellow with a short jaw and thick neck, tried to say a few words, but I could not understand him. No old spirit rose up to interpret and Riser himself master of so many human languagesdidn't understand, either. A female gently pushed the elder aside and spoke simply and in broken phrases, like a child, but at least I could understand her.\n\"You the last,\" she said. \"All . . . others . . . little ago, little time. But you last.\"\nThen she turned and revealed that in the small of her wrinkled, suntanned back, a chunk had also been removed . . . and healed over. The younger members came forward. The elders parted and let them through, and Riser approached them, sniffing and judging in that way he had, which I never mistrusted. Then he darted off and vanished for a moment among the crowd of elders. These younger men and womenthere were no children gathered and compared their healed wounds. Some seemed embarrassed by their nakedness, others, not. Some were glassy-eyed, terrified into muteness, but others, as if at a signal, began chattering away. I was surrounded by five or six very communicative men and four or five women. Somehow I had been singled out, perhaps because I was the last to arrive, or the last to wake up. Their faces fascinated me, but nowhere among them could I find Vinnevra. A few resembled Gamelpar, purple dark of skin and reddish brown of hair, with broad, flat faces and warm, intelligent eyes. But Vinnevra was not here. Age. Diversity. Very few young. That gave me my first shallow clue. Then Riser returned, dragging with him three other cha manush a male and two females. On Erde-Tyrene, I had found females of Riser's people to be quiet and reclusive, until they had made firm acquaintanceand then, all too familiar, quick to poke and make rude inquiries, nothing off limits, everything either wonderful or funny. I had never been quite sure how to deal with Riser's women, or his female relativeson those few occasions when I interacted with themfor Riser seldom invited me to his home, and seemed to prefer going out on jobs with me and his other young ha manush\n minions. But now he had two females in tow, of that ageless puzzlement of cha manush\n years. Cha manush\n grizzled in their adolescence but seldom turned all gray or white, as my people did.\n\"Everyone is missing bits,\" Riser told me. His companions stood a few paces back, nostrils flexing, watching the rest of the crowd. They held hands, and one gestured for Riser to join them. He backed away from me, but nodded meaningfully, eager to convey something important. We could barely hear each other in the rising babble, so he signed out:\nAll from Erde-Tyrene. Younger fell from sky with us. Old ones brought here long ago\n. Others gathered around, too tightly for my comfort, but I did not discourage them or express any distressfor the story was coming out, the familiar story, that within them they had all once had old spirits, old warriors, each distinctive and opinionated. To a one, young and old, those inner voices were now silent. I tried not to conspicuously stare at the missing pieces of their backs when they turned, raised their arms, gestured. But I could not help myself. All of us on that wide-open, elevated platformunderthat looming planet and starry sky, looking out over the stretch of Halo that had been the home of so many for so longevery single one of us had been wounded, sampled\"stung deep.\" We all limped, old and youngand we all cringed when we moved. But the important question, immediate and crucial, was, why were we here\n? What did the machine master of the wheel intend for us? For I had little doubt that Riser was correct, that the green-eyed ancilla was behind all this. Did that mean it was now allied with the Didact, or with the Librarian, the Lifeshaper herself?\nHad the wheel been reclaimed by the Lady?\nSomething else was missing in my thoughts, something that made all these theories pointless. I seemed to have misplaced a memory about a child. There was a child. . . . The child was in control . . . held sway over the green-eyed machine. We had been introduced!\nBut I could not remember its name, and I certainly could not remember its shape.TWENTY-NINE\n\nT HE GROUP PARTED\n to open a passage. They craned their necks to see what was coming, rising over the edge of the platform. I caught a flash of brilliant green. A monitorlarger than any I had seen so far, at least two meters widecame into view and moved between the parted humans.\n\"Welcome to our installation's new command center,\" it said in a beautiful, musical voice neither male nor female, nor much like a Forerunner's. All of us, young and old, were pushed back by invisible forces until a circle cleared in the middle, about thirty paces across. As Riser and I were nudged back, I remembered the moments on the Didact's ship when the entire hull seemed to vanish, giving us the sickening sensation of being suspended in space. At least here there was the gentle mercy of a floora deck, as the Lord of Admirals would have called it.\n\"All bid welcome,\" the beautiful voice said, \"to the new masters of this installation.\"\nAt the center of our ring of frightened people, a number of hatches slid wide in the floor, and through these rose more monitors smaller but otherwise almost indistinguishable from the large one. Each had a single glowing green eye. As they rose, the hatches closed up beneath. There were now more than forty monitors crowded inside the circle, surrounded by humans old and young. All stood out in sharp detail against the deep backdrop of stars and the ever-growing red and gray planet, which now covered a third of the sky. The nearest of these new monitors pulled up before Riser and myself. It projected an image I instantly recognizedthough I had never seen him before, not through my external eyes. Male. Human. I looked the image over cautiously, closely, noting that his shape was similar to mine, though broader in shoulders and thighs; arms long and powerful-looking; hands thick and backed with patches of hair. A flatter, broader head and a great, square jaw.\n\"A strange reacquaintance,\" the image said.Unlike us, he appeared in raiment traditional for a high-ranking commander in the old human fleets: a rounded helmet that covered all but the forehead and the ears, a short coat over armor plates, a wide belt cinched just below the ribs, and form-fitting pants that revealed a bulging shield around the genitalia, which might, it seemed to me, have been more than a little exaggerated. Like the ancillas, he was translucenta ghost of a ghost, a whispering within made manifest without, like Genemender back in the Lifeworkers' preserve. Yet having carried him within me for so long, I would have recognized him anywhere. This was Forthencho, the Lord of Admirals.\n\"We're being given command,\" the image said. \"Believe this. It is true. The time for our victory has arrived.\"\nRiser touched my hand. I broke from my fascination to glance down at the little one. He clenched his jaw and made a small shake of his head. His meaning was clear enough. He was incapable of further judgment or action. We had both been carried so far beyond any human wisdom or experience that any move we made anything we might say or dowas equally likely to produce a good outcome or a badequally likely to pull us deeper into Forerunner madness, or propel us out and up. The image of the Lord of Admirals continued. \"We have been carried by these descendants, our vessels, for many years. And now we are brought here, for this moment, by a machine that has long since turned against Forerunners. It wishes us to defeat them to cause them misery and dismay. And so we shall!\n\"But there is no way yet to know our total strength, or how far we may go . . . with our new command, but this we do know, finally: after ten thousand years, we have a chance to avenge our cruel mistreatment.\n\"We have urgent work to do all around this infernal wheel,\" the Lord of Admirals continued. \"Forerunners have cocked things up magnificently before having the grace to kill each other or die of the Shaping Sickness they wished to communicate to us. The wheel itself is in jeopardy. There is little time, and so extreme measures have been authorized.\"\nThe larger monitor rose up, a faint display of lacework energies playing across its features. It hovered over us allthe inner circle of machines and the outer of the humans.All around, the apparent openness of stars and planet was overlaid by vivid, glowing displays. The sky became like the inside of one of the old caves, filled with instructive images and stories masterfully tuned to our ignorant needs. I seemed to both see and feel a sharply defined awareness of how we all needed to behave, to act in concert. The image of the Lord of Admirals favored me with particular attention. \"You have a decent mind, young human,\" he said. \"We have traveled well together. I will place you beside me at the center of this weapon's control and command. If together we can save this Halo, then we will use it to strike against the heart of Forerunner defenses. But the time between now and then will be very difficult.\"\nSymbols and curving lines surrounded the wolf-faced planet. All of us tried hard to understand, as if our lives depended on that understandingas very likely they did. The lines swept like an expanding tunnel toward the far curve of the wheela point of intersection. Now appeared a dizzyingly strange and complicated set of instructions for creating a portala broad gate like a hole in space, through which great distances could be shrunk to almost nothing. I watched a detailed recordreality, simulation, or reenactment, I could not tell whichof the Halo shedding damaged bits, leaving behind broken ships and a spreading, radiating cloud of atmosphere, ocean, terrainand then opening just such a portal, and beginning a passage to comparative safety, where it would repair itselfor be supplied with materials transported from another installation, much greater in scale and much farther awayto rebuild, if necessary. At the same time, from all around, I heard a low moaning sound, as if from a gathering of frightened livestock.\n\"After this wheel was transported to the Forerunner capital system, and the metarch-level ancilla prepared to unleash its energies on the capital world itself, it was attacked by Forerunner fleets and defended by its own sentinelsa battle that resulted in much of the destruction we see around us. The wheel was moved again, a tremendous effort, but the Lifeworkers and many of the Builders who had survived continued to fight. They did all they could to destroy this installation from within. They failed. One and all, they were finally infected with the Shaping Sickness.\"Much of this I had learned from Genemender. Still, the implications plunged deep. The green-eyed intelligence knew us too well. My hatred against Forerunners reached a pitch of intensity that almost blew me out of the presentation. The Lord of Admiral's voice gathered certainty and strength.\n\"Now that the Forerunners have succumbed, either in battle or from the Shaping Sickness, they have left behind just a few confused servantsand many, many humans, awaiting a new time, a new mandate.\n\"And that mandate is: avenge the fallen. Rise from defeat, rise from the dead!\"\nA great resonance hammered us with ancient instincts, reawakened emotionsand a desire to rectify ten thousand and more years of death, misery, and near extinction.\n\"The promise is simple,\" the Lord of Admirals announced.\n\"Freedom. Support. Weapons unimagined in all our previous wars. Humans will fight Forerunners againand defeat them!\n\"THIRTY\n\nW HAT A RABBLE\n these words were addressed to! The elders and the few young stood alike in stunned silence, staring at the ghosts, projected and contained by machines much like those that had once populated Genemender's reserve. We had all carried one or more of these warrior spirits; we had all become acquainted, more or less, with their natures and opinions. Now we were being asked to accept them as commandersto follow them into battle. My first question was, why? What value, these old ghosts, to Forerunner machines? What value could I have?\nWorse, I knew that the green-eyed master of the wheel was not actually in commandhad not been in charge of the wheel for many decades. I knew, but could not act on my knowledge. To do so would be to remember the encounter that had cost me a chunk of flesh and bone. The encounter with the child\n. The Lord of Admirals seemed to hold the highest rank in this unnatural assembly. His ghost stepped forward and addressed me as if we were both physical.\n\"It's our final chance to reclaim history,\" he said. Had he been real, I think he would have tried to grasp my shoulder. As it was, his hand swept empty air. I saw in his faltering expression that he perceived himself fully capable of reaching out and touching. . . . And I felt pity. For a moment, the illusion broke. I knew that the green-eyed machine was itself evil, and not just to humans. It had betrayed its own creators. It was in league with the Primordial. But how was that possible? In the years since the devastating test at Charum Hakkor, how could the Primordial have done so much to subvert this wheel-shaped world and its mechanical servant?\nA few meters away, Riser faced off against the projection of a blocky-looking female, stout as a bull. Yprin Yprikushma, no doubt. From his wry, white-lidded expression, I could tell he was not impressed. I always trusted Riser's judgment.The unreality of it all made me sick. We had been through too much to fall for more illusions, Riser and I. We knew that before now, all Forerunner magicall of the tricks and wonders they called engineering\n or technology had been used to reduce and then destroy humansyet we were now being asked, commanded\n, by our ancestors, these old ghosts, to believe that in this one instance\n, we would carry out the will of a greater Forerunner machine, simply because it had gone mad and set out to destroy its masters. My weakness almost brought me to my knees. I wobbled before the projection, holding out my hands to keep my balance. \"You aren't real,\" I told the Lord of Admirals. \"I wonder if you were ever\n real.\"\nSuddenly I could not hear what the others were saying. The air around us became tight and still. Wethe projected ghost and me seemed locked in a box.\n\"I'm as real as I have ever been,\" Forthencho told me.\n\"Since you died?\"\nThe air became harder and harder to breathe. The walls of the\n\"box\" were getting misty as if from the fog of my breath. I couldn't see the others, only this one projection, and his monitor in shadow behind him. More tricksmore persuasion. Would I be suffocated if I did not comply?\n\"Why do they need us?\" I asked.\n\"Not even a machine as powerful as the wheel's master can do its work alone. You are alive. You can serve.\"\n\"Humans? The last dregs of us that remain after so many Forerunner victories? We became animals. We were devolved and only the Librarian thought enough of us to raise us back up again!\"\n\"It doesn't care!\"\n the Lord of Admirals said. \"The machine will do everything it can to destroy Forerunners. It knows that I have fought Forerunners before.\"\n\"And lost.\"\n\"But also learned! I have spent my time within you going over and over old battles, studying all our past failures, and now, I have full access to their new strategies! This wheel is but one of the weapons at our disposalif we join.\"Out there, awaiting our commands, in many orbits around thousands of other worlds, in other star systems, are reserves of tens of thousands of ships of warand more Halos. We will be irresistible!\"\nThe spirit's enthusiasm had an acid tinge that almost made suffocation preferable to agreement. So be it, I thought. I held out my hand and then fell against the moist barrier that hemmed us in. I seemed to see through this sham to the Captive, the Primordial itself. . . . I was fading. Illusion passed into illusionand I preferred my own. Mongoose, the trickster, I remembered, had been responsible for creating humanity. It was Mongoose who had convinced Mud to mate with Sun and breed worms, and then teased and angered the worms until they grew legs to chase him over the grasslands. Worms became men. The wheel's green-eyed master was a bit of a trickster, like Mongoose, playing jokes upon the humorless gods known as Tree and River, Rock and Cloud. I choked out some words, I don't remember what. The mist and the closeness flew up and away, and all around I again saw starsbut no other people. No other machines. The old spirit's projected image and I were alone under the stars. I could not help but suck in a breath as cool air swirled around me.\n\"I have told the great machine that you are willing,\" the Lord of Admirals said.\n\"But I'm not . . . willing\n!\" I cried. Maybe I had\n agreed. Maybe I did not want to suffocate. Maybe I was just curious. I have always been too curious, and Riser was not here to correct me.\n\"Thirty others who carried warriors have chosen to join us in taking command of the wheel. Their courage reminds me of the\"\n\"Riser?\" I interrupted.\n\"Very canny, that small one,\" the Lord of Admirals said. \"I would have enjoyed having his kind serve under me.\"\n\"You don't understand him at all,\" I said, voice rough. My deep unease had intensified. I did not feel at all well.\n\"He will play this game for as long as it amuses,\" the Lord ofAdmirals said, \"and for as long as he has a chance of causing Forerunners dismay and pain. He also wishes to attack the Didact personally. This has been conveyed to me by my old opponent, Yprin.\"\nI knew that was a lie. In my weakness, I did not much care. I took a few stumbling steps around the platform, then straightened and focused on the red and gray world. It seemed about to brush the sky bridge.\n\"We will be stationed at key controls to help maneuver this Halo. We have much work to do, yet even then, our chances are slim.\"\nThe Lord of Admirals seemed to be having misgivings. His hatred, he must have known, was blinding him to the strangeness of this bequest.\n\"So . . . do we have a deal, young human?\" he asked. \"For now?\"\n\"What will happen if we survive?\"\n\"We will spread out to the fleets and launch an attack against the heart of Forerunner civilization, in the Orion complex. Never in all our battles did we come within fifteen thousand light-years of that prize!\"\nMadness, pride, shame, the delusion of a new opportunity . . . What ghost, I asked myself, could pass up such a thing?\n\"You lied to the machine,\" I said. \"You told it I was willing.\"\n\"The least I can do, young human,\" the Lord of Admirals said. \"I need you. And if you ever wish to go home againyou need me\n.\"\nAnd why else, I asked myselfwhy else did the Lord of Admirals or the master of the wheel need me? One possible answer: everything here might still center on the future actions of the Didact. I had met the Didact himself, had helped resurrect him from his Cryptum on Erde-Tyrene. I had spent many hours in his somber company. I had watched his ship dissolve and the Didact himself be captured by the forces of the Master Buildercaptured and, very likely, executed. But the Didact had also served as a template for Bornstellar. When we parted ways, Bornstellar had been looking more and more like the old Warrior-Servant. I wondered how that had turned out. He had not seemed happy at the change. Had they taken Bornstellar aside, carved a chunk of flesh from his back, and installed the Didact's ghost into a machine?Would we encounter that ghost and that machine, somewhere out there among the uncountable stars?\n\nSurrounded by this magnificence, this power, this deception and cruelty, all I wanted was to reach back to our days on Erde-Tyrene to shield myself, my naive, young self, from ancient grudges and eternal evils. In a dream, one can never go back. It took some time for me to realize it was already too late. I can't put into words all that I felt. To be truthful, I no longer feel\n much of anything. All that I was, but for reflections in a cracked mirror, has been lost for a long, long time.THIRTY-ONE\n\nS TANDING BEFORE THE\n image of Forthencho, I knew that something inside me had also changed. I felt weaker, olderfading. I pinched myself hard and felt almost nothingno strength in my fingers. Very likely, we had been deceived into believing we were alone, so as not to witness the destruction of the braver individuals around usthose who refused to go along with the old ghosts and the green-eyed machine. Just another level of illusion. My whirling thoughts settled into immediate questions.\n\"Why would Forerunner machines let themselves be run by humans?\" I asked. My voice sounded thin and weak.\n\"Maybe they can be fooled,\" the Lord of Admirals said. \"Some say that deep in our flesh Forerunners and humans are related.\"\nI did not believe that, not then. \"Have you received your orders directly from the machine?\"\n\"There are many duplicates of command monitors, just as when humans fought Forerunners.\"\nMy vision seemed to flick in and out from clarity to bright but foggy bars of light. \"What convinced it to turn on its masters?\"\nI could not stop my damned curiosity from working even if it sapped my last remaining strength.\n\"Given too much power, or contradictory instructions. Full of itself, perhaps.\"\nOr convinced by forty-three years of intimate conversation with the Primordial. Forthencho's image wavered, then returned, larger and more solid-looking. \"The machine does not hate Forerunners,\" he continued. \"But it knows they have been arrogant and need correction. And it takes an odd satisfaction in the prospect of having humans carry out that punishment.\" The Lord of Admirals seemed to be growing into his role, just as I diminished. \"This ancilla has more power than any previous command monitor. The Didact gave it complete control over Forerunner defenses. When the Master Builder assumed the Didact's rank, he came to believe that he might be punished for his audacity as well as his crimes. If the Master Builder was to be arrested and imprisoned, then this ancillawould take revenge on his behalf. Perhaps it is doing so now.\"\nThe Master Builder had layered safeguards within safeguards. The perversity of it all was dizzying. \"Madness!\" I said.\n\"But with much precedent in human history,\" Forthencho said.\n\"Many are the reasons we lost battles. Now, the machine acknowledges only one other who possesses the proper inception codes, and thus the power to stop it.\"\n\"The Didact,\" I said. And there it was againthe most likely reason I was being kept around.\n\"Perhaps. But the Didact appears to have been eliminated. And if he did not pass such knowledge on to you . . . then the machine is still safe.\"\nI wondered how much the ghost had studied my memory, how much he believed this to be trueand how much he was still holding back from the machine.\n\"Our first task is to reorient the wheel and survive the planet's close passage. We have several hours to prepare, no more.\"\nOur illusion of isolation faded. We were no longer alone, but the platform was much less crowded. Flanked by monitors, we looked in dismay at each other. So few remained! The rest had defied the master of the wheeland now they were gone. I caught a glimpse of Riser, many meters away, and was surprised he had chosen to cooperatebut also relieved. Transports surrounded the high platform: sleek war sphinxes and other defensive vessels, as well as ships of different design rounded, less aggressive-looking. These carried no obvious weapons and might have once been used by Lifeworkers.\n\"They are here to take us to command centers around the wheel,\" the Lord of Admirals said.\n\"It can't be controlled from one position?\"\n\"Perhaps it canperhaps it will be. But damage is inevitable and some of us must survive. We have a much better chance if we are spread out.\"\n\"It's going to be that close?\"\n\"Far too late to avoid it completely. If the planet doesn't strike one side or another and tear the wheel to shreds, it could still cause severe stress through its gravitational pull. Orit could pass right through the middle of the hoop.\"\n\"What are our chances then?\"\"Unknown. Such a thing has never happened.\"\nThe Lord of Admiral's monitor pulled back his image and nudged me outward along the platform, toward a war sphinx. I had been aboard an older version of such a weapon, it seemed ages ago, and found this one familiar enougha cramped but comfortable interior designed for a larger frame, but quite capable of adjusting itself to carry both me and the monitor. The monitor found a comfortable cubby that opened in one bulkhead, and it settled in while I dropped back into the adjustable pads of a Forerunner couch. Unlike the Didact's war sphinxes on Erde-Tyrene, keeping vigil around his Cryptum, this one did not have a damaged warrior spirit. I detected no hint of personality in its cool, precise displays or its pronouncements and warnings. Forthencho's monitor had either taken over those processes or they had been wiped earlier in the master machine's purge of the Halo's rebellious countermeasures. All previous loyalties, all trace of Forerunner ethicssuch as they werehad likely been leached away, replaced by a devotedly bland yet singular madness. We lifted from the platform, pushed through a barely visible membrane, and swept out and away over the inner surface of the Halo. For the first time, I was able to survey long stretches of the landscape between the parallel walls and track the overarching sky bridge from a rapidly moving and lofty perspective. But I was too numb, too cold inside, to see much in the way of magnificence or beauty. If we survived, this Halo would return to being a killing machine. I could easily imagine the great wheel being sent to Erde-Tyrene. And so, I reached my decision. I had to do everything in my power to make sure we did not\n survive. Of course, I could not tell Forthencho this. My understanding was now separated from his. Still, as he had suspected, his sophisticationhis ability to judge complex situationshad stayed with me, along with, I hoped, a bit of his old courage, his old willingness to sacrifice himself for a higher cause. If I succeeded, I would be killing many hundreds of thousands of our fellows. I would be killing Vinnevra and Riser. The war sphinx flew a zigzag, looping a course above and alongthe band. Wrapped in the pale couch, I felt no discomfort as we abruptly changed direction, rising and droppingdiving into the atmosphere, shooting up again like a leaping fish, spinning about to see our contrail twist and feather behind us in the upper air. As we traveled, my weakness and numbness gave way to isolated, cool curiosity. I did not care. I admired the wheel. I saw how thick the walls were to either side, and how wide in proportion the great swath of lands between brown or green, mountainous or flat, burned away or left as bare foundation material. We flew over the early phases of what might have become basins of oceans or great lakes, the foundation itself pulling aside to create wide, comparatively shallow depressions, or rising up in irregular but suggestive reliefs over which, somehow, Forerunners might later paint dirt and rock. This Halo had never been finished. Its potential had never been fully exploited. It was designed to accommodate many more occupantshumans, certainly, but likely the inhabitants of hundreds of other worlds, as the Master Builder's research on the Flood expanded. Or the Lifeshaper herself had, in her devil's bargain, hoped to create more preserves, save more life-forms, against the Master Builder's planned wave of destruction.\n\"One hour until impact,\" the monitor announced. I heard in its voice no trace of Forthencho. The Lord of Admirals could be suppressed at will.THIRTY-TWO\n\nT HE WEAPON CONVEYED\n meusto a great, flat-topped wedge thrusting inward from a wall. At a quick estimate, this triangular expanse was about five hundred kilometers wide at its base, where it merged with the wall, and four hundred from base to tip. Everywhere but the tip itself, the wedge's upper surface appeared uniform and featureless. The looming planet suffused a pale rose glow across this expanse like dusk's final light. As we dropped, the tiniest of shadows became apparent on the tip of the wedge, structures that grew and grew against the immensity until I saw how large they were in themselveseasily a dozen kilometers high. A slender half-arch, like the upper part of a bow, stretched beyond the tip. From the end of this bow, slender cables spread an ornate sling to support another complex of structureseach of these also the size of a small city. Forthencho appeared to my left, looking not at the view through the port of the sphinx, but at mea creepy focus on my own reactions.\n\"Tell me what you see, young human,\" the old spirit said.\n\"It's a command center,\" I ventured.\n\"Correct.\" He sounded proud, as if I were some son who had performed well. \"And not just any center. This is the Cartographer, the core of the wheel's structural knowledge. The Halo's automated control systems were sabotaged by rebellious Forerunners before they were infected and died. The Cartographer is all that remains but it will suffice.\n\"Three monitors will be stationed here, relaying the Cartographer's measurements to all the others. But for our signals, they will be nearly blind . . . making our work more difficult. But . .\n.\"\nHis image wavered. When it returned, Forthencho seemed perturbed, even distressed, if that was possible for him, doubly isolated from the living.\n\"One of our questions is about to be answered,\" he said. \"Brace yourself, young human. We will not be handling the controls ourselves. Gods help us all.\"The war sphinx wove through and around beautiful, graceful structures that seemed untouched by recent battles. My mind had already filled to overflowing with visual impressions, and now I simply wanted to sleep and absorb it all, give myself time to slot all that I had seen and my reactions to those sights into useful categories. I could no longer feel my hands at all!\nMy eyelids drooped, my thoughts blurred into fever. But stillno respite. With a lurch, the sphinx flew fast as a hornet up against a wall, stopped instantlyand connected. The hatch opened. The monitor supporting Forthencho disengaged from its cubby and the couch opened wide, expelling me with a long pale curl, like a tongue pushing out an unwanted gobbet of food. For a moment, I seemed to see my body from another location above and to one side. The body opened its eyes. Then we rejoined, my body and I. But the peculiar feeling did not diminish. Something was changingsomething had changed since the idyll in the false woods. I stood on a flat space surrounded by a tangle of other platforms, some flat, others curved inward or out, arranged in many directions a dozen ups and downs. Each platform faced a display on which glowed complicated visuals of the wolf-faced planet, the far stretch of the wheel, close-ups of damaged regionseven other control stations.\n\"This is the Cartographer,\" Forthencho said.\n\"Why are we alone?\"\n\"Are we? Enjoy it while you can,\" he said. The wall behind us shivered as other vehicles attached and spewed out nine more humans and as many monitors. Forthencho's monitor nudged me abruptly toward a steeply curved wall. I thought I might have to crawl, but I was able to walk along the curve, upright, toward another level at right angles to where we had begun. In normal circumstances, the abrupt shift might have made my stomach rebel, but I felt nothing. Other humans, for the most part elderly, were chivvied onto opposite platforms. Only two were as young as me. No Riser. Not at this station. Then, from the opposite side, came those whom Forthencho had been informed were to handle the actual controls. Another coldspike went through my head. The plague-stricken corpses we had seen on our journey had been in the last stages of the Shaping Sickness, supported and maintained by the strange variety of armorproducts or patients, of that mysterious entity the Lord of Admirals had called the Composerwhich must have existed even in his day. But even in their worst contortions, those remains had displayed none of the perverse and infernal creativity lavished on these livid, ghastly combinations: a single Forerunner head covered with suppurating scales, shared by two partial bodies, with four legs A great lump of quivering, boneless flesh surrounded by a fringe of drooping appendages, ten shrunken arms or legs, undulating out and back to transport the mass to its position And around these wretches another type of constraint or support:\nflexible harnesses, fine meshes of wiring and tubing, radiating from a blue metal disk. A serpent oozed along with sinuous motions, then raised a torso, from the chest of which a jammed-in head peered out, eyes alert, showing what remained of the facea face contorted with pain. The eyes sought me out. They were Forerunner eyesslanted, gray, deeply intelligent. They reminded me of Bornstellar or the Didact. And suddenly I felt pitypity mixed with abject horror. \"I can't do this,\" I whispered. \"Let them all die. Let me\n die. Let this end right here!\"\n\"If it does\n end here,\" Forthencho told me, \"then humanity\n ends here. All that you know, all those whom you know and all that they have ever knownfinished! Get up and stand for your species. This is our last chance.\"\nHis disembodied courage hardly fazed me at first. I was exhausted, my emotions skirling way beyond fear, into an acid nothingness of pure panic. And with the fear came short relief. At least I could still feel something!\nForthencho's monitor withdrew and flung out a swift dart that struck my thigh. My panic faded instantly, as did half of my mind the half that judged, decided, felt an urge to preservation. I actually smiled.\n\"This will last for a brief time,\" the monitor said. \"At the end of euphoria will return cooler thought patterns. Take care. You arebeing measured.\"\n\"By who?\" I croaked, wiping drool from my lips. Forthencho seemed far off now, like an insect lost in the muddle of floors and monsters and glowing curtains.\n\"Who's measuring me? Why?\"\nNo answer. The serpentine creature that had stared at me joined us on the platform. It curled its fleshy tail, wrapped in netting, wires, and scraps of sticky fabric, and rose up again, then reached out to empty airwhile the skewed platform thrust up a slender pillar to meet its gray, grasping fingers. With a sidewise glance through agonized eyes, the transformed Forerunner assumed a firm stance Studied me. And took control. The Lord of Admiral's monitor rose behind me. Something flowed outward from the monitor, around both my head and the monster's torso, and my direct view of the platforms was replaced by a far-spanning perspective on the wheel and the planet. Turning my head, I seemed to see things in great detail, with a fine sense of depth. My \"eyes\" might have been hundreds of kilometers apart. I could perceive the closing distance between the Halo and the wolf-faced planet; I could also see a portion of the wheel beginning to torque in the gravitational pull of that icy, rocky sphere. I understood a few of the symbols that now appeared in and around these objects. But the Forerunner beside meI could sense its cold, sour presence both mentally and physicallyunderstood perfectly well, and it guided my hands across the knobs with whispered suggestions. The touch of its handsrepellent, pitiable, desperate. Why both of us were necessary, I could not guess. Yet all across the wheel, the adjustments made by this extraordinary team began to have an effect. The Halo, thirty thousand kilometers in diameter, was precessing to a new angle in its orbit, facing off against the approaching planet, just under ten thousand kilometers. Our combined speed was bringing us to a rapid close, but long before the planet struck, its mass would severely torque the wheel, possibly even break it apart,and so other systems were being brought into play. The monitor, the disintegrating Forerunneralong with an educational residue from the Lord of Admiralsallowed me to follow and even understand some of what was happening. The Forerunner beside me, with his (or herI could not tell)\nhand now lying beneath mine on the controls, felt a pain I could hardly imagine. The distorted hand was exerting less and less pressure. I thought it likely that the controls could not, after all, be operated with purely human guidancebut I had no idea how long these pitiful creatures could avoid becoming puddles of slime, whatever the Composer had or had not done to keep them alive. The Shaping Sicknessthe Floodhad rearranged all their internal order, preparing these bodies for a new kind of existence in which the individual identity would be, for the most part, erased. But enough identity still remained for it to wish to carry out its final duty, before it either disintegrated completelyor fulfilled that other\n destiny imposed by the Shaping Sicknessand even young, naive Chakas had a vague inkling of what that\n might be. For now, however, the wires and mesh kept it from that fate. This was becoming more than one kind of race.\n\nForthencho, seeing what we had found in the lake town, trapped in a Forerunner cage, had called it Gravemind. Tagged to that word in the Lord of Admiral's experience was a half-buried awareness that the Primordial itself had not been, precisely speaking, one creature, but three, four, five, sixa dozen! Forthencho had never learned the actual number. Having undergone that disintegration and dying of past individuals and rebirth into something vastly more powerful, all these creatures had joined millions of years before into its own early Gravemind, far more than the sum of its parts.\n\nI see by your copious perspiration that you have witnessed such transformations. But like frightened children, you have not entirely understood their implications. I have, and I do.THIRTY-THREE\n\nY OU HAVE ASKED\n me about the Didact. I have not provided much in the way of useful information, because during the time in which I knew him, I was only minimally educated and could not properly interpret what I saw and experienced. That changed as I accessed the memories and knowledge of the Lord of Admirals. Yet even his experience of the Didact had been for the most part confined to remote observation. But the intimacy of combatof matching strategy against strategy, and more intimate yet, tactics against tacticshad provided Forthencho with an inner understanding of the Didact that likely only a few Forerunners possessed. For the depth of the human-Forerunner conflict had led up to, and over, the brink of near-extinction, which revealed a kind of animositya raw, vigorous, yet completely rational enmityunlikely to be found among those of the same kind. At least, unlikely among those who are sane. We kill mice that invade our grain storeskill them without mercybut only the feeble-minded hate the mice. But there is yet one more occasion on which I encountered the Didact, and that propelled my understanding of what this Warrior Servant was capable of on a new level. This insight is what you are after, above all. I am well aware my functions are failing. But you must indulge me. I owe you nothing. I am no longer human; I have not been human or even a living thing for over a thousand centuries. You will not be able to preserve my experiences and memory from more than a small fraction of that period, and yet, what I have been and done looms over my thin moment of humanity like a mountain rising over a pebble. And it seems likely, as I observe your concern, that you are not yet cognizant of the one great truth that I offer youthe truth that changes all the equations of our history. That amuses me.\n All around, on all the platforms, humans had paired off with Forerunners in their final stages of transformationsoon to become useless, I thought, if not to actually die . . . a mercy. Then, a great tunnel grew out before me, its shining walls blocking out my view of the platforms. The walls gleamed with arrow-flights of brilliant sparks, and sharp musical notes rang in my ears, discordant and frightening. The linear sparks in the tunnel darkened to dull red, then died away like the embers of an old fire. I felt only intense cold. For a moment, I seemed to float in the tunnel surrounded by the last of the sparks. The tunnel then turned completely gray and lifeless. I tried desperately to perceive myself as occupying a point in space, a fixed position, and could notthere was only the tunnel and memories falling in line behind me like leaves. An ancilla appeared, brilliant green. The ancilla came between this blurred-out, uncertain me\n and the pitiful remains of my companion. My eyes suddenly focusedfor the last time. I raised one hand and looked at it, wondered at how beautiful it was, moving its fingers at my command, obeying my will, our\n willjust like the wheel. But so slowly!\nReaction time was crucial.\n\"You will connect directly to the Cartographer,\" the ancilla said.\n\"This will require interface adjustment.\"\nThe Forerunner turned away what was left of its face, shuddering as if at some sacred violation.\n\"We are instructed by metarch-level command to reveal all,\" the ancilla said. \"We have no choice but to obey. The Cartographer contains all designs and locations and circumstances of this installation, past and present. All changes are recorded here.\n\"Preparations are necessary.\"\nAnother dart jabbed into my calf, and now the sparks raced through\n my body, rather than outside. I felt pain everywhere, and then a startling clarity. Between my body and the decayed Forerunner's bulk rose a suspended rod about as thick as my arm, and from that rod flew thousands of glistening strands like spiderwebbing; the strands stitched up one side of my body, covering me with gossamer, while more strands laid themselves down over the Forerunner's uppertorso. It squirmed in fresh agony. The tunnel now came alive to us. To both of usI seemed to merge with my companion, and even, for a moment, feel its pain as well as my ownuntil all was submerged in an ecstasy of total information. My eyes and ears were laid siege. Both of us blended with the tunnel displays, far more complex and detailed than anything before. More surprising, I understood\n what I was seeingall of it!\nComprehension came to me through the Forerunnerand suddenly I knew\n how to act, how to coordinate with hundreds of other, similar pairs located around the wheel. We became\n the Halo. I could feel the stresses, the periland the means we might use to escape\n, as a runner fleeing a predator feels the ground beneath his feet. Exalted! Godlike energy and power, like nothing I had ever known. If this was what it meant to be a Forerunner, than I would have gladly resigned my humanity. All my tasks, however tiny, brought me intense joy; all seemed supremely important, and perhaps they were, for a calculus of preservation was being made even now by the monitors and their hideous tools, by us\n: when to bring which systems into play, how long to use them, and in what sequence to cut them off. I was completely aware of the survival mechanisms available to the Halo. Later, much of what happened in the next few hours returned to a jumble of confusion and spectacle . . . but after tens of thousands of years, long reflection brings it back. I have of course defended Halo many times since. But you know that. . . . All these survival mechanisms required great amounts of energy energy in short supply after the sabotage of so many power stations. Perhaps most impressive was the ability to suspend much of the wheel in time, lock it in stasis, turning the installation into a great, reflective ring immune to all changes imposed from outside. But the energy cost of such suspension was immenseperhaps more than the wheel could muster. As well, all around the system, energy that would have been absorbed by the Halo would have to be deflected through a fractal-dimensioned slipspace, creating asuspicious scatter of heat signatures and even high-energy radiation that could attract the attention of anything hunting us. The wolf-faced orb was already exerting an awful pressure on the wheel's integrity. The walls of the Halo glowed along their outer surfaces as they attempted to evenly redistribute the gravitational strain. And the pitifully few remaining sentinels and other vessels firing their drive motors in an attempt to move the wheel out of the way were having little success. The only result had been to slow the Halo slightly, dropping its stellar orbit a few hundred kilometersinto a situation where the red and gray planet would sweep right through the hoop without touching. But before that was tried, the Halo's hub and spokes activated. The makeshift control team hoped to elastically absorb some of the planet's energy as it fell into spokes and the hub, then transferring some of that momentum to the wheelin effect, thieving the planet's velocity to move ourselves into a higher orbit. This might prevent another collision should the orbits of Halo and planet again intersect. We had no idea how far hub and spokes, all hard light structures, would behave under that sort of pressurewhether they could actually stretch without breaking or vanishing. Another eventuality Forerunners had never anticipated or tested. And so we waited. We did not have to wait long before there were additional complications. Two outlying war sphinxes detected ships approaching from opposite the course of the planeta great many of them, some very large. From the distant green-eyed \"master\"\ncame a moment of sharp attention, concernperhaps of recognition. But for now, the ships had to be ignored. The wheel's walls had distributed all they could manage of the planet's uneven gravitational tug. Now the foundation plates between the walls were warping and buckling, rising up and separating and in the process tossing loose or spilling great volumes of air and water, spewing long, silver-gray streamers into space. The plates that had been stacked high earlier in preparation now began their slow shuffle to replace the damaged platesbut clearly the repairs could not keep pace with the destruction.The Halo, barely keeping itself together, was squarely faced off against the red and gray planet.\n\nThe new ships came into our view. Most obvious were the dreadnoughtsdozens of them spreading and swooping around the planet, flying close to the hub and spokes, then spreading along the spokes into a broad fan that might, if they chose to land, bring them down all around the wheel. More concernbut we could do nothing if they were here to destroy us. Still, it soon became obvious that these were not maneuvers of attack and destruction. What were they attempting?\nRescue?\nSuch ships could quickly insert their drives into the grid and supply power. That could save everything!\nMore exaltationand then, suddenly, an abyssal plunge into a cold, mechanical something\n that my eclipsed humanity interpreted as rage. The green-eyed master of the wheel did not find this intercession at all helpful. We had been found. The rogue Halo was rogue no more! The appearance of so many Forerunner ships likely spelled an end to everything the perverted ancilla was trying to accomplish.\n. . . A sickly glow of hope flowed from the serpentine Forerunner hooked up beside me. But very little time remained to act through any agency, no matter the source or the power. The light of the star now came from behind the planet, casting eerie shadows through the fog of icy vapor streaming away from our wheel. The wall opposite our command center separated and bent outward like a metal strap in the hands of a burly blacksmith. An uneven contest, to say the least. The mass of the Halo was tiny compared to the gray and red planet. The planet now pushed up against four of the spokes, and then, as the spokes stretched, it struck the hub itself. At this, rippling pulses of blue fire flew outward. The hub shimmered as the spokes grew longer, then fragmentedbroke apart. They seemed to lay down across the planet's rocky surface, then abruptly converted into curling, expanding beams of intensely blue and violet radiation. Perhaps now the Halo was exacting some revengebut onlyagainst bare stone. There would be no gradually stretching net or snare, no capture of momentum and acceleration. The world continued its passage. The wheel now began to truly come apartwalls shearing, plates separating, gaps of many hundreds of kilometers opening up between, like pieces of a huge necklace being yanked from all sides. Still, the ecstasy of my connectedness shielded me from fear my own fear. But not from the deep concern of the green-eyed master of the Halo, and then, rising behind it, something darker still. But this darker source of command felt no fear, was beyond fear. I could feel its influence like the chill of a dark, dead star permeating, infiltrating us Forerunner and human alike became frozen in place. And what it now impressed upon me, even now, was the most frightening thing of all Superior, intensely pure curiosityfar colder and more precise and disciplined than anything I had ever known. These entities were expressing an almost cruelly isolated and lofty interest in the stages of an ongoing experiment. Was there some sense of satisfaction at this melding of so many Forerunners and humans? Some triumphal revisiting of an ancient plan, long ago frustrated, then abandoned, but now possible once more?\nCould Forerunners and humans be recombined and reverse their shivering asunder so many millions of years before . . . when the Primordial and the last of its kind decided on a larger, wider strategy, a greater plan that would no doubt bring about immense pain, but also a greater unity of all things. . . . Through the Flood, the Shaping Sickness. The greatest challenge and contest of all. From that challenge, humans had for a moment only emerged victorious, only to be decimated by the Forerunnersa second crushing defeat for the Primordial's plans. All of this had been laid out in detail to the coldly logical mentality that was the Halo's master. Even enhanced and combined, Iwecould only appreciate a small portion of the depth and power of this plan, this argument, unveiled to us as if we were children peering through curtains at thecopulation of our parents. . . .\n\nThe Halo was dying, no doubt about it. Even as dreadnoughts attached themselves to the remaining intact plates, more gaps appeared, more sections twisted about and spilled their contents. But a new voice laid itself over us, powerful, resonant, penetrating the Cartographer's display, the overlay of the machine, even the cold analysis of the Primordial. This voice rose in volume, assuming command, and at once I recognized it!\n I knew it from that time we had spent on the island within Djamonkin Crater. A weary manner of speech once accustomed to complete command, but through circumstance withdrawn, set apart, lost . . . But no more. The Didact!\n\"Beggar after knowledge,\" the voice said, swirling all around us.\n\"\nMendicant Bias\n. That is the name I gave you when last we met. Do you remember the moment of your inception? The moment I connected you to the Domain and you were ceded control of all Forerunner defenses?\"\nAll the images contained and controlled by the Cartographer darkened and collapsed into a now much-simplified ancilla. \"That name is no longer secret,\" it said. \"All Forerunners know it.\"\n\"Do you recognize the one who named you?\"\nThe green ancilla burned like acid, yet I could not turn away, could not cleanse myself of its corrosion.\n\"You are not that one,\" it said. \"The Master Builder gave me my final set of orders.\"\n\"I am\n that oneand you are not truthful.\"\nThe acid quality of the green ancilla's voice became so intense it felt as if my insides were being eaten away.\n\"You take commands from other than a Forerunner,\" the Didact's voice said, \"a clear violation of all your instructions. I am the one who knows your chosen name, your true name\n\"\n\"That name no longer has power!\"\n\"Even so, I can revoke your inception, call out your key, and command you to stand down. Do you willingly pass control to me, your original master?\"\"I do not! I have listened to the Domain. I fulfill the wishes of those who created us all. You do not, and have never done so.\"\nThe green ancilla had receded to an infinitely deep incision, an arc of pinpoints carved or burned into the blackness. Its tininess wavered like a flame. Then came a complex sound\n that might have been words or numbers, a transmission of information or commands, I could not tell which. The Didact's voice filled the Cartographerseemed to fill all space and time, and I knew he was still alive, once again in control perhaps more powerful than ever before. \"Poor machine,\" the Didact said. \"Poor, poor machine. Your time here is done.\"\nThe ancilla leaped in the darkness as if startledand vanished, along with almost everything else. I found myself lying flat and exhausted, covered with sweat, on a cold, hard surface, while the last dull embers of the Cartographer's display slowly dimmed. The pain in my back and side was awful. I could hardly move. I could not see anything but blurry shapes. The link to my companionthe sick, tormented Forerunner was sliced from my arm. The binding gossamer gave way like ripping fabric. I was being shunted aside, removed from the Cartographer. The ecstasy of my connection became an aching loneliness. Now I heard actual soundsvoicesand a startled exclamation. Recognition of who I waswho I had been.\n\nThe voice in my head became more intimate and gentle.\n\"I've found you, young human. I've found both\n of youand still alive!\"\nA massive presence stood beside me, then knelt down and extended a six-fingered hand. The cut gossamer on my arm rose up like hair in a thunderstorm before lightning strikes. It connected and wrapped around a thick, powerful forearmmottled gray and blue, the colors of a fully mature Warrior-Servant.\n\"You have already been connected and trained,\" the Didact said.\n\"We have only seconds to act. You know this wheelhelp me save it.\"The connection to the Cartographer returned and grew suddenly brilliant and joyfully intense. Ecstasy flooded through me once more. But now my partner was the Didact. We observed the red and gray planet, halfway through its passage, and the wheel's tormented plates barely held together by white-hot ribbons of wall. The planet's gravitythe suicide option of the Forerunners seeking to prevent further harm to their kindhad almost finished its work. ONI COMMANDER:\n \"Do any of you understand this?\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"It's abstrusedifficult to wrap our heads around, to be sure. I'd prefer spending weeks before making a decision . . . but combined science team analysis gives us considerable conviction that the related events are credible.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"But they contradict everything we know about the Didact! Why save a Halo?\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"There's little time left\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"We're collecting the flow! But its value seems even more questionable. What we know about the Didactfrom the Bornstellar Relation, if you believe that!points toward his complete revulsion of the Halos and the Master Builder's plans. The terminal dialogs\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"The terminal dialogs may themselves be questionable, in the light of this testimony.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Only if there was more than one Didact, and we have no evidence of that.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"Yet! The Didact's attitude toward the Halos obviously evolved over time.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"I lodge my strong skepticism.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"Already noted, sir.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"And where does any of this get us with respect to our present situation? This Halo is clearly headed for the rubbish heap!\"\nSCIENCE TEAM ADJUTANT:\n \"Sir, pardon my interruptionwe've been analyzing the fleet database, and we're coming to a tentative conclusion that this installation still exists. It may be the most mysterious Halo of all, Installation 07. Its surface is wrapped in perpetual cloud. Perhaps it was so damaged that the life support systems never completely recovered.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Nonsense. We've already been told that this Halo is thirty thousand kilometers in diameter. Installation 07 is no more than ten thousand kilometers.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM ADJUTANT:\n \"The story isn't over, is it, sir?\"\n\nTHIRTY-FOUR\n\nE MBEDDED AGAIN DEEP\n within the Cartographer, we saw many points of direction and opportunity spread around many different fates predicting all possible outcomes of the wheel's present dire situation. I guided the Didact's intellect toward the best course of action. The words I heard myself speaking, if I spoke aloud at all, were transmitted to all the controllers. But their numbers had fallen to just a few. Those of us that had survived were acting in desperate concert to salvage what they could. \"Not all can be saved,\" we acknowledged. \"Stresses can be relieved by shedding mass. The most damaged plates are likely choices.\"\nWith the power from the remaining dreadnoughts, the wheel began to lock in stasis its most important segments. We watched as thousands of kilometers of the band were wrapped in reflective protection, preserved for the momentbut only brieflyagainst the effects of the passing planet. The controllers in these regions were temporarily removed from the Cartographer's grid. The wheel continued to rotate, even increasing its rate, while the planet finished its passage, missing any direct collision. The hub and spokes were no longer in evidence. Strangely, the Cartographer could not tell us if their mechanisms had been damaged or destroyed. Information about weapons status was withheld even from this crucial functionary. There was nothing more to be done where we were.\n\"We must transport this installation to the greater Ark immediately,\" the Didact said. Lightly damaged installations might have been sent replacement parts from one of the two Arks that had created them in the first placebut such shipments had been discontinued for years, even if we could create a portal to receive them.\n\"There is just enough power to open a portal of a certain size, and no larger. It will remain open just long enough for parallel passage. I am instructing our ships to supply the necessary power, and to sacrifice their own slipspace drives if necessary.\"What I could not understand was why the Didact had decided to save one of those very weapons whose creation he had so decisively opposed. Perhaps it was not the wheel he wanted to save. The Didact's motivation, however, was one thing he was not sharingnot with me, at any rate.\n\nThe wolf-faced planet went on its way, little changed. The Halo continued to turn while, one by one, the sections locked in stasis were released. The energies of their return to normal physics were diffused around the system as intense, out rolling, wavelike cascades of infrared and higher-energy photons.\n\n\"Cartographer!\" The Didact's voice brought the surviving controllers, and the faculties of the Cartographer itself, to full attention. \"Saving all possible biological specimensincluding those infected by the Floodis the desired goal. Plan for the installation's reduction. We must fit through the portal. Reducing its size also allows us to use the lesser Ark to make repairs. Report!\"\nThat explained everything, then. The Didact was on a mission from the Librarian. He could save at least a few of the many species the Librarian had placed on the installation. The Cartographer quickly made its report. We studied the optimum configuration for passage through the limited portal, and conveyed our instructions. Power was temporarily shifted from creating the portal. Thinner, brighter spokes shot inward toward the axis to join a spherical hub .\n. . the entirety of which suddenly seemed to convert to dark gray solidity. As segments were discarded, to keep most of the remaining specimens alive and their environments at least minimally protected, the spokes would act as both slings and counterbalancing braces. All around the wheel, segments deemed expendablebare foundation, unfinished habitat, or too damaged to be saved separated from their walls and were released into space. They flew outward, slowly tumbling as they shed more debris. Despite my absorption, I allowed a moment of grief for the deadDespite my absorption, I allowed a moment of grief for the dead and dying on the heavily damaged plates. Cities, forests, mountains all lost? I could not tell and there was no time to tallythose decisions had already been made and new ones were quickly piling up. The walls themselves now folded like accordions, pulling in the remaining segments, then joining them at their edges, shaping a much smaller wheel. This might have taken hours, or days, I did not know Not important. The wheel completed its sacrificial reduction. The spokes flickered, testing the new configuration. All seemed well. . . . And then, one more segment broke loose and flew outward. Again, more spokes formed, fastened to the edges of the adjoining plates, and again, the walls accordioned to join the plates along their edges. The wheel now rotated with hardly a shimmer. We became confident of its integrity.\n\"Divert all power to formation of the portal,\" the Didact commanded. \"Controllers will stand down. Your work is finished.\"\nWith deep pride and sorrow, he was addressing the Forerunners who had stayed loyal to the Council during the rule of Mendicant Biasand who had continued to serve even in their infected state. The wheel rolled on, its plates now covered in dense cloud. I caught some final glimpses of refined joining, weather control, atmospheric tempering, cooling or heatingprotecting cargo to the Didact's wife, to the Librarian. But also precious to me, for my own reasons. I did not witness the passage through the portal. I suppose I was grateful for that. In all the time since I had fallen from the sky and landed on the wheel, I had been exposed to far more than I had ever been born to understand, or withstand.\n\"You may stand down, as well, young human,\" the Didact said and with a twist of his arm, he broke the gossamer between us. The Cartographer's space faded to embers, then gave way to darkness. The darkness was a mercy. It was also a time of changes. I was not yet aware of how much had already changedfor me.THIRTY-FIVE\n\nC HAKAS\n, YOUNG HUMAN\n,\n\" the Didact said. \"Riser is here. We are together again.\"\nI rose like a drowning man bobbing in thick black water. My body was still numb. I had difficulty seeingshifting, unfamiliar colors, crazy, unfamiliar silhouettes. Then my sight focused enough that I could look up into a broad, grotesque faceand realize that it looked younger, smoother, less ruggedly patterned than I remembered. Was this truly the Didact himself?\nI had no idea how Forerunners aged or might repair themselves. I did not care. My emotions had been dulled. I felt at peace mostly.\n\"You have been through a great ordeal,\" the Didact said. \"And you have been very roughly treated. I am sorry for that.\"\n\"Where's Riser?\" My lips did not move. Nothing moved. I felt nothing. Still, the Didact heard me.\n\"I have preserved him intact for delivery once we reach the Ark.\"\n\"I want to see him.\"\nMy old friend floated into place not far away, wrapped in one of those Forerunner bubblesbody relaxed and still, eyes fixed. This is the way a dead man feels. Was that the old spirit in my head again?\n\"And the girl,\" I said, \"the woman, Vinnevra?\"\n\"She, too, will go with the survivors. The Librarian will restore them to a habitat they will find pleasant.\"\n\"You're youngeryou've changed.\"\n\"The Didact provided the template for my maturity. I am now all that remains of him, and so I serve in his place.\"\nSlowly the familiarity dawned on me.\n\"Bornstellar?\"\n\"No more, except in my dreams.\"THIRTY-SIX\n\nT HE DIDACT WAS\n far from done with me, and I was far from done with the horrors of the wheel. It was the Didact, finally, who betrayed us all. He did it gently, but even so, it brought pain. When I became fully aware of what had happened to me, I tried to suppress what little remained of my emotions, tried to hold back everything, feel nothing\n, but then the crossing currents of fear and resentment and hatred crashed together and everything returned in an awful rush. I raged, I burned\n!\nSomething switched me off.THIRTY-SEVEN\n\nA ND ON AGAIN. The process was instantaneousbut time had obviously passed. How much time, I could not tell. Again I was in the presence of the Didact, traveling down a long, deep shaft. My body was wrapped in wires and squirming plates what little I could see of it: one hand, part of an armmy chest.\n\"This will be difficult,\" the Didact said, \"but we have to attend to old problems. Very\n old problems.\" He seemed careworn, not as young as he had been earlierworn down. \"If you can keep yourself stable, I am going to take you to a place on the installation, a place we need to visitboth of us. Your new configuration is delicate, and I do not want to lose younot again. For the sake of your fellow humans.\"\n\"Then take me to the Librarian. I've done everything I can to keep faith in her!\" My previous rage had been transformed into a cool churning, like rivers of ice water spinning around a deep hole.\n\"I understand,\" the Didact said.\n\"I doubt that. I demand to see her!\" I heard a voicemy voice and I also heard a distant echo. I was probably making actual sounds in an actual placea big place.\n\"My relationship to the Librarian may be even more complicated than yours, young human.\"\nWe were falling into the deep interior of the wheel, in the realm formally occupied by an offshoot of Mendicant Bias. What else is down here\n?\n\"Complicated, how?\"\n\"Perhaps I can explain later. You are learning how to maintain. Good. I was worried.\"\nFull vision returned. We dropped from the tunnel into an even greater space. Below, I saw that weblike maze of glowing green pathways, now stable, no longer shifting about as we continued our descent.\n\"Is she\n here?\" I asked.\n\"My wife? No. She's on one of the Arks, I'm not sure which one.\"\"You're not taking me to see her.\"\n\"Not yet. We need to reawaken a memory, to complete a circle, and then you will be finished.\"\n\"Finished? You mean, dead?\"\n\"No. Fully functional. There is an unresolved instruction set, an undesired imprint, that we need to erase or modify. First we have to raise it up.\"\nThat meant nothing to meand yet, I suddenly recovered a fragment of memory, the memory I had been suppressing for so long: inward-curving, jewel-glinting eyes mounted far apart on a broad, flat head. . . . Intricate mouth-parts shaping strange sounds. A massive body with drawn-up, withered arms and legs, like a squatting fat man or a dead spider. And last but not least, a great, segmented tail writhing around to shove a barbed sting into my spine The childolder than our time, yet eternally young.\n\"\nNo!\n\"\nI was not screaming. I could not scream.\n\"Control your fear, or you might destabilize again. You don't need to feel\n anything. Soon it will all be like a phantom limbyour emotions.\"\nThat was true. I found I could channel all into that hole filled with swirling, cold watershutting down my fear, or no longer feeling it. Fear is physical\n, organic. The old spirit!unmistakable. Fear without flesh is an illusion. I had no idea what that meant, but now from the swirling fluid I pulled up a spinning impression of emotional states, a wide array of choices, many of them painful, but all isolated from my core, my self. In time, I might be able to reach out and use them for whatever purposes I might choosebut not now. I enjoyed being numb.\n\"I remember the Beastthe Primordial,\" I said. \"Does that mean I met the Captive?\"\n\"Probably. It often leaves a memory of what it didcruel enough.\"\n\"It did something to meto us,\n didn't it?\"\n\"Yes,\" the Didact said. \"And we are about to meet it again.\"\"No!\"\n\"Are you afraid?\"\n\"No.\" Again that absorbing swirl down the dark hole.\n\"Excellent,\" the Didact said. \"Still stable.\"\nWe were walking side by sidebut I was not walking. I was floating. I could still see my arm, my handbut little else. And my eyes saw things very differently.\n\"I envy you,\" the Didact added, \"for I am\n afraid.\"\n\"But you met it beforedidn't you?\"\n\"That other, the first me, ten thousand years ago, and only briefly.\"\nI spoke with the Primordial as well\n.THIRTY-EIGHT\n\nW HEN ALL HOPES\n are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become. So much was becoming clear. The old spirit was with mebut not just him. I could feel others as well, fully formed but not yet active or awarearranged around a commanding coremy own core, my self, so often symbolized as cooling waters swirling down a dark hole . . . surrounded by something like walls\n containing thousands of old spirits arranged like scrolls in a library. But one was not the same. It hid among the others, subtle, quiet utterly different and alien. This was the one we were here to erase.\n\"Did it hurt me?\" I asked as we moved down a long, straight pathway, toward a shadowy, darkened mass of crystal.\n\"Yes.\"\n\"How damaged was I?\"\n\"Badlyphysically and mentally,\" the Didact said. \"Extraction of the imprint was quick and brutala hallmark of Mendicant Bias. The Master Builder never understood how to utilize the Composer.\"\nI wasn't sure which name was more dire, more disturbing Captive or Composer. The dark mass of crystals grew closer. No lightnings danced. The mass did not move. The spaces within the wheel were dormant\n. . . but not empty. Expectant.THIRTY-NINE\n\nA\n\nCRACK OPENED\n in the dark wall, then widened to allow us passage. We moved between hundreds of meters of fractured crystal, as shiny and black as obsidian.\n\"This is the old heart of Mendicant Bias,\" the Didact said. \"It is dormant now. The ancilla is stored elsewhere, undergoing further correction. Soon it will again work within its design parameters.\"\n\"Am I dying? Am I dead?\"\n\"You are being transferred from your damaged bodya process that will soon be finished. You are becoming, in part, a keeper of the biological records of your race. That seemed the best way to salvage your memories and your intellect, and to safely contain the most dangerous components of the Librarian's experiments. You will continue to serve the Librarian. And me. Do you feel that capability?\"\n\"Are you killing me, then?\"\n\"You are already deadin that sense. The body will be disposed of. Will you miss your physical form?\"\nOh, I didso much!\nAnd yet I also enjoyed feeling numb.\n\"The body's complete record is stored within you,\" the Didact said. \"If you wish to access any of its physical sensations, you can mimic them.\"\nI did not want that! I wanted the real thing. But then, the numbness would come to an end and the pain would return.\n\"You have worked well with the Lord of Admirals, my old opponent. Are you still there, Forthencho?\"\nA sullen silence.\n\"The Lord of Admirals and I have some old questions that need answering,\" the Didact said as we exited from the cleft wall.\n\"About the Shaping Sickness?\"\n\"The Flood.\"\nAt this, the old spirit stirred.\n\"On the inner surface of this installation, thousands of biological stations were converted into Flood research centers,\" the Didact said.\"The Palace of Pain.\"\n\"Many such. Hardly palaces, though. All were administered by Mendicant Bias, working under the direction of the Captive.\"\n\"Is the Captive down here?\"\n\"Yes. Prepare yourself, young human. Even stable and in your present form, what we are about to learn could be destructive.\"\nIt nearly destroyed us before\n, my old spirit said.FORTY\n\nA\n\nMISTY CIRCLE\n of dead bluish light filled the center of an arena\n104 meters wide. I discovered I could precisely measure sizes and distances. Within the misty circle of light stood a round, elevated stage twenty one meters wide and surrounded by a thicket of interwoven black rods. The slightest sound of machinery echoed around us. By the timing of the echoes, I knew we were in a hemispherical chamber 531\nmeters across. Through the thicket of black rods the head became apparent first:\nshining grayish brown, flat, jeweled eyes mounted wide, expressing an arachnid's perpetual watchful sadnessno neck, the head's broad wings curving down over narrow, leathery shoulders. Closer. My numbness was less and less of a defense.\n\"I'm not ready,\" I said.\n\"You're as ready as I am,\" the Didact said. \"As ready as we'll ever be.\"\nNow I saw, beneath the startling and ugly-beautiful head, a thick, grossly fat torso mostly concealed behind six or more drawn-up legs, bunched together like sticks and embraced by two shriveled yet still impressive armsarms with multiple joints, cased in wrinkled, leathery skin. The skin was covered with what resembled sweat but was actually a glassy, coruscating solid, like frozen dew. The Primordial was in repose, captive once again, yet quietly watchful. Ancient for humans, but also for Forerunners. Ancient beyond our measure. The Beast. My sense of measure suddenly became confused. I could not seem to focus. The many-faceted eyes measured us\n in return; the Primordial knew all our dimensions intimately. The mouthparts concealed under the front of the wide head thrust down and out and sounds came forth, accompanied by a continuous faint tapping or clicking. The sounds seemed familiar, yet were not speech. The Beast was asking questions, but did not expect answers. It alsowelcomed us. That much became apparent. It was glad to see usmuch as a parent feels joy at the return of a child. The Didact stepped forward first. I struggled to find something of the young Bornstellar in this great, bulky form, but I could not. The Manipular had been completely absorbed by the old Warrior Servant. And so it was appropriate that these two monsters face off again, perhaps to play out a game of chance with the dried, discarded bones of our bodies, to sit and reminisce about the agonies and horrors visited upon humans and other races in their eternal satiation of curiosity and power. The Didact gave voice to a chant, a Forerunner prayer, it seemed and suddenly I saw myself in the caves outside Marontik. Clear as if I relived it, I felt my body covered in blood and clay, surrounded by the flickering light of tallow lamps, and heard myself also praying, trying to understand why the elders who conferred manhood were carving my shoulders and ribs and chest with slow bone kniveswhy the rules of life were so perverse. Why love had to partner with pain and death. The Didact's prayer was not so different from my own. But it unfolded soon into questions.FORTY-ONE\n\nH AVE YOU FOUND\n what you came here for?\" the Didact asked the Primordial. For a moment, I doubted it had the means to answer in any language we could understand, but the sounds from the symmetrical, vibrating mouthparts slowly began to produce words something like speech. At least, I heard speech.\n\"No. Life demands,\" the Primordial said. \"It clings and is selfish.\"\n\"Why did you come here at all?\" the Didact asked.\n\"Not by choice.\"\n\"Were you brought hereor did you command the Master Builder to bring you?\"\nThe Beast now chose not to answer. Except for its mouthparts, it barely moved. The Didact persisted as we drew closer to the mesh cage, despite his obvious revulsion. \"Are you again hoping to take vengeance upon Forerunners for defying your race and surviving? Is that why you bring this plague down upon us all?\"\n\"No vengeance,\" the Primordial said. \"No plague. Only unity.\"\n\"Sickness, slavery, lingering death!\" the Didact said. \"We will analyze everything here, and we will learn. The Flood will be defeated.\"\n\"Work, fight, live. All the sweeter. Mind after mind will shape and absorb. In the end, all will be quiet with wisdom.\"\nThe Didact gave a small quiver, whether of rage or fear I could not tell.\n\"You told me you were the last Precursor.\"\nThe Primordial rearranged its limbs with a leathery shuffle. Powder sifted from torso and legs.\n\"How can you be the last\n of anything?\" the Didact asked. \"I see now that you are nothing more than a mash-up of old victims infected by the Flood. A Gravemind. Were all the Precursors Graveminds?\"\nAnother sifting shuffle.\n\"Or are you after all only an imitation\n of a Precursor, a puppet a reanimated corpse? Are all the Precursors goneor is it thatthe Flood will make new\n Precursors?\"\n\"Those who created you were defied and hunted,\" the Captive said. \"Most were extinguished. A few fled beyond your reach. Creation continued.\"\n\"Defied! You were monsters set upon destroying all who would assume the Mantle.\"\n\"It was long ago decided. Forerunners will never bear the Mantle.\"\n\"Decided how?\"\n\"Through long study. The decision is final. Humans will replace you. Humans will be tested next.\"\nWas the Primordial giving me a message of hope? Doom for our enemies . . . ascendency and triumph for humanity?\n\"Is that to be our punishment?\" the Didact asked, his tone subdueddangerous.\n\"It is the way of those who seek out the truth of the Mantle. Humans will rise again in arrogance and defiance. The Flood will return when they are ripeand bring them unity.\"\n\"But most humans are immune,\" the Didact said. Then he seemed to understand, and lowered his great head between his shoulders like a bull about to charge.\n\"Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect?\"\nThe wide, flat head canted to one side, as if savoring some demonic irony.\n\"No immunity. Judgment. Timing.\"\n\"Then why turn Mendicant Bias against its creators, and encourage the Master Builder to torture humans? Why allow this cruelty?\nAre you the fount of all misery?\n\" the Didact cried out. The Captive's strange, ticking voice continued. \"Misery is sweetness,\" it said, as if confiding a secret. \"Forerunners will fail as you have failed before. Humans will rise. Whether they will also fail has not been decided.\"\n\"How can you control any of this? You're stuck\n herethe last of your kind!\"\n\"The last of this\n kind.\"\nThe head leaned forward, crimping the torso and front limbs until one leg actually separated and fell away, shooting out a cloud of fine dust. The Captive was decaying from within. What sort of cage was this? The misty blue light seemed to vibrate and a high, singingsound reverberated through the hemisphere, shaping razor-sharp nodes of dissonance. But the Captive still managed to speak.\n\"We are the Flood. There is no difference. Until all space and time are rolled up and life is crushed in the folds . . . no end to war, grief, or pain. In a hundred and one thousand centuries . . . unity again, and wisdom. Until thensweetness.\"\nThe Didact stepped forward with a sharp grunt. He lifted his hand and a panel appeared in the air, shaping controls. The Captive's head squared on its torso, as if bracing for what it knew was about to come.\n\"It is your task to kill this servant,\" it said, \"that another\n may be freed.\"\nThe Didact hesitated for just an instant, as if trying to understand, but anger overcame him. He made a swift gesture like swinging a sword. The controls flared, then vanished, and the mesh around the Captive's platform spread between them a far more intense, blue green glow.\n\"Let your life race ahead,\" the Didact said. \"You were made to survive deep time, but now it will arrive all at once. No sweetness\n, no more lies! Let a billion years pass in endless silence and isolation.\n. . .\"\nHe choked on his fury and doubled over, contorted with his own agony, his own awareness of a great crime about to be committed and another crime avenged. The mesh held the inverse of a stasis field, the perverse\n of a timelock. Above the platform, the light assumed a harsh, biting quality. The Captive's mouthparts vanished in a blur, and then, abruptly stilled. Its gray surface crazed with thousands of fine cracks. Limb after limb fell away. The torso split and collapsed, puffing out a much larger dusty cloudall contained within the perimeter of the mesh and its field. The head split down the middle and the two faceted eyes lay for a moment atop a pile of shards and cascading gray dust, then slumped inward until only broken facets remained. They glinted in the dead blue light. The dust became finer and finer, and then everything stopped. We watched in silence.Total entropy had been reached. The Didact knelt and pounded his great fist on the pathway. It is never easy to judge and execute a god. I know\n.\n\"No answer!\" he growled, and his voice echoed around the great dome. \"Again and yet againnever an answer!\"\nThis is the answer,\n the Lord of Admirals said, suddenly rising from his silence to share the Didact's emotionbut judging it from our coldly lifeless state. No immunity and no cure. There is only struggle, or succumb. Either way, the Primordial will have its due. We have met our creators, they have given us the answers we sought and that is our curse\n. The Didact got to his feet and gave me a long, bitter look.\n\"Nothing is decided,\" he murmured. \"This isn't over. It will never be over.\"\nFor the Didact, the ultimate meaning of upholding the Mantle was never to accept defeat. I sensed that the Primordial had expected as much and as it decayed over the artificial fleeting of millions of centuriesas its extraordinary lifespan played out in blind silence it had gloried in it. All was sweetness for its grinding mill. AI TRANSLATOR:\n End data stream. Memory minimally active but no longer transmitting. ONI COMMANDER:\n \"Christ almighty, do you think the Covenant ever accessed this?\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"I doubt it. This monitor's IC is layered and firewalled so deep it would take a million years just to run one of our probes through the outer fractals. We can't mimic the central controller in any way. And the Covenant tech teams, at their best, were never as good as ours. What in hell is this\n'Composer'? We've never heard of it before.\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"Sounds like it was used as a remedy for victims of the Floodor for converting biological beings into monitors. Or both.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Another infernal machine for making monsters!\"\nAI TRANSLATOR:\n Another data stream has been detected. It appears to be Forerunner instruction code. SCIENCE TEAM SENIOR TECH LIEUTENANT:\n \"There's no more than ten minutes of viability remaining. The monitor's central processor realizes its time is limited and it's offered up a pretty ingenious fix. We can fast track and convert the code, then implement it in an isolated module.\"implement it in an isolated module.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"I forbid any such thing! This damned one-eyed bollock can already run through our firewalls like a kid through a sprinkler.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"We won't have time to download any of the underlying data store unless we implement the code.\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"Gentlemen, and ladies, get what you can while you can. We've got an impending action, and I want all this data sorted and filtered as to reliability, and made available to our incursion and sortie teams by the end of this cycle.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"We'll need a tentative designator for the source. What are we calling it?\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"We still haven't confirmed any connection between this one and\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"I said 'tentative.'\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"No way in hell I'm going to confirm this is the same as the monitor found defending Installation 04.\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"That's our working hypothesis. Should raise some eyebrows at High Command, and we need that sort of boost right now.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM SENIOR TECH LIEUTANANT:\n \"Sir, am I being ordered to confirm that this is\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"How many of these devious bastards are out there, anyway?\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"One per Halo, so far. As for this particular monitorI certainly hope it's the last. Yes! So designate. But bury it somewhere in the political report. Give us all some cover in case it blows up in our faces.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Say the damned thing infiltrated our secretarial pool.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM SENIOR TECH LIEUTENANT:\n \"Sir, shall I actually say that?\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"Christ almighty. No!\"\nAI TRANSLATOR:\n Monitor language stream resuming. It is incomplete but recoverable.\n\nFORTY-TWO\n\nT HE DIDACT'S SHIP\n lifted away from the fog-shrouded wheel as it rotated above the greater Ark, that vast, life-bearing, regenerative flower floating in the dimness above the galaxy's margins. No more Halos issued from its Forge. My flesh had been shriven. My humanity had come to an end, and yet I had become the Finger of the First Man, as Gamelpar had told the storybuilt to last thousands of years . . . built to serve Forerunners. But also made as a gift for the Librarian. And given the opportunity, finally, to testify to you, the true Reclaimers. In time, my numbness developed into something richer, something that could survive thousands of centuries with only a minimum of madness creeping in. To contain multitudes is a definition of madness, is it not? I have rarely been able to remember which of my fragmented selves has performed any particular action. I see in your records that one of me caused you considerable difficultyand then, assisted you! How like us. But never did that monitor reveal its origins, or the motives behind its perverse behaviors. Perhaps now you can guess. As Reclaimer, it is your privilege to shrive me againnot of the flesh, long since turned to dust, but of my rich confusion of sins.\n\nThe Forerunners had, for a time, the Domain. I have never been able to access the Domain. Perhaps it no longer touches any part of our universe. If that is the case, then nobody will ever understand the history or the motivations of the Didact or any other Forerunner.\n. . . That means, however long I continue to exist, I will never understand why any of this\n had to happen.\n I last observed the Didact in company with the Librarian on the Ark. They were walking on a high ribbon over the greatest biological preserve I had yet seendwarfing any such on the wheel. Thousands of kilometers of varied habitats, containing the accumulated life stores of well over a thousand worldsand still, in the time remaining, she was planning to gather more. That was also the last time I saw Vinnevra. She had become part of the Librarian's core population of humans, minus, of course, the representatives from Earthfrom Erde-Tyrene, I mean. I was no longer responsible for her; she could not even recognize me. Yet ever since I have missed her. Riser had survived the removal of his imprinta very tough cha manush\n indeedand had been returned to our home. Or so I was told. I vowed at the first opportunity, I would look for him. I would do everything I could to find him. But the location of Erde-Tyrene was concealed from me for many years. And when I was finally given the freedom to search, it was already too late. I miss him to this day. I miss Vinnevra, and Gamelpar, and my mother. I miss them all to this very instant.\n\nAt the command of the Didact, who rarely commanded his wife about anything, those processed by the Composer, those who remained on the fog-shrouded wheel, along with the remains of all the other Flood victims and the deactivated Gravemindsof which ten had already formedand the last of the functioning monitors keeping perpetual watchall on the wheel and the wheel itself were sent through a portal for one last time, never to be used in that same way again. It was known as Installation 07. It has become a sacred tomb for millions, though some may still live. I do not know.\n\nThe Librarian was very interested in my report on the conditions of Erde-Tyrene, which she had not visited for many years. To myErde-Tyrene, which she had not visited for many years. To my dismay, I had to acknowledge that it was likely not her touch I had felt at birthnot her personal touchbut that of an automated imprinting system. Now that I was no longer flesh, that revelation did not disturb me. Much. I still kept a firm record of how the original Chakas had felt about the Librarian.\n\nThe Didact returned to the graces of the newly constituted Council for a time. The Librarian's power, of course, rose along with that of her husband. Know one knew of the actual fate of the Master Builder. It was assumed he had died somewhere on Installation 07. The debate about strategies against the Flood was renewed. As I said, neither of the Arks were manufacturing Halos, though they were certainly capable of such. This fact, which seemed inconsequential at the time, would eventually be hidden from me in the name of \"compartmentalization.\"\n\nI see very clearly how much the Librarian has shaped humanity since the end of the first human-Forerunner war. Whenever you look inward and see an ideal female . . . whether it be goddess, anima, mother, sister, or lover . . . For a brief, barely sensible instant, you will see the face and feel the spirit of the Librarian.\n\nMy systems are shutting down. The humans I carry within me are dying . . . I can feel them fading by the millions. Old friends in my solitude. So many discourses and debates on human nature and history!\nGone. They were brave spirits and deserved more than ever I could give them. END STREAM TENTATIVE CONFIRMATION:\n PARTIAL MEMORY STORE of Forerunner AI \"Monitor\" 343 GUILTY SPARKDEVICE STATUS INACTIVENONRECOVERABLE. DEVICE ORDERED JETTISONED BY ONI COMMANDER. REQUEST FOR STANDARD BURIAL CEREMONY DENIED BY SAME.\n\nEND DATA LOG.\n\nRESUME DATA LOG\n (ibid ref.)\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"What's up with the tech team?\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"They're running around on C deck like a bunch of scared marmots, carrying AI cores. Won't let anybody in.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"Cores? They need to flush and replace ship's AI?\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Don't know!\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"Look at this. . . . Ship's veering from main task force. We're moving away from all the action! Who in hell ordered that?\"\nSCIENCE TEAM SECOND OFFICER:\n \"Environment is cooling. Oxygen is dropping.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"We can't get to the bridge or to any other deck. Hatches are in battle damage lockdown.\"\nSCIENCE TEAM LEADER:\n \"But we're not in battle!\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"I'm not at all sure of that. The damned 343\ndupe\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"It's out in space with the other garbage.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"But its data stream is still with us!\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM EXEC OFFICER:\n \"Three of us climbed down through the maintenance shell. Other decks appear to be conking out one by one. We can't raise anyone on E and F, and the engine room is a madhouse. Whole ship is\"\nTECH CHIEF:\n \"Listen to what just came through bridge comm! The skipper's talking to something in the AI root system. STRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"Something that's not the ship's AI?\"\nTECH CHIEF:\n \"Just listen!\"\n(playback)\n(Voice ID'd as 343 Guilty Spark):\n \"Your ship's AI is defective.\"\nCAPTAIN:\n \"In what way?\"\n(Voice):\n \"Compound Information Corruption. Ship will experience complete systems collapse and drive implosion within five minutes. But there is a cure for that ailment.\"\nCAPTAIN:\n \"What kind of cure?\"\n(Voice):\n \"Much worse than the disease, you might think. I shall have to replace all original AI functions with my own. I've long wanted a chance to resume my quest. Your ship is an excellent vehicle for that purpose. Apologies, Captain.\"\n(end playback)\nO NI COMMANDER:\n \"We invited that thing right into our living room, plumped up the cushions, brought it a pipe and slippers! We should have known better! We should have\"SHIP'S AI:\n All ship functions are now under control of 343 Guilty Spark. Root and System AI signing off. STRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"Damn thing hacked the entire ship!\nWe are so screwed.\"\nONI COMMANDER:\n \"Four or five minutes of oxygen . . .\"\nGUILTY SPARK:\n \"You will not die. You will sleep for a time. I have need of all of you.\"\nSTRATEGY TEAM LEADER:\n \"What need?\"\nGUILTY SPARK:\n \"Know that all that lingered in me, the memories and emotions of old humanity, when I was still flesh, is also hidden deep within you. It slumbers, but it shapes, and it haunts your dreams and your hopes.\n\"You and I are brothers in many ways . . . not least in that we faced the Didact before, and face him now, and perhaps ever after. This is combat eternal, enmity unslaked, unified by only one thing: our love for the elusive Lifeshaper. Without her, humans would have been extinguished many times over. Both I and the Didact love her to this day.\n\"Some say she is dead, that she died on Earth. But that is demonstrably untrue.\n\"One of you almost certainly carries Vinnevra and Riser's old spirits within. Only the Lifeshaper can find them and coax my friends back to life. And after a hundred thousand years of exploration and study . . .\n\"I know where to find her.\"\n\nNovels in the New York Times\n bestselling Halo\n\n series Halo\n\n: The Fall of Reach\n by Eric Nylund Halo\n\n: The Flood\n by William C. Dietz Halo\n\n: First Strike\n by Eric Nylund Halo\n\n: Ghosts of Onyx\n by Eric Nylund Halo\n\n: Contact Harvest\n by Joseph Staten Halo\n\n: The Cole Protocol\n by Tobias S. Buckell Halo\n\n: Evolutions: Essential Tales of the Halo Universe\n by various authors/artists Halo\n\n: Cryptum: Book One of the Forerunner Saga\n by Greg Bear Halo\n\n: Glasslands\n by Karen Traviss Halo\n\n: Primordium: Book Two of the Forerunner Saga\n by Greg BearACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\n343 Industries would like to thank Greg Bear, Alicia Brattin, Scott Dell'Osso, Nick Dimitrov, David Figatner, James Frenkel, Stacy Hague-Hill, Josh Holmes, Josh Kerwin, Bryan Koski, Matt McCloskey, Paul Patinios, Whitney Ross, Bonnie Ross-Ziegler, Christopher Schlerf, Matt Skelton, Phil Spencer, and Carla Woo. None of this would have been possible without the amazing efforts of the 343 staffers, including: Nicolas \"Sparth\" Bouvier, Christine Finch, Kevin Grace, Tyler Jeffers, Tiffany O'Brien, Frank O'Connor, Jeremy Patenaude, Corrinne Robinson, Kenneth Scott, and Kiki Wolfkill. Greg Bear would again like to thank the 343 team and Erik Bear for their continuing help and creativity, and take this opportunity as well to extend his thanks to Halo fans and readers for their support and inputwhich have been nothing short of extraordinary!ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nGreg Bear is the author of more than thirty books of science fiction and fantasy, including Hull Zero Three, City at the End of Time, Eon, Moving Mars, Mariposa,\n and Quantico\n. He is married to Astrid Anderson Bear and is the father of Erik and Alexandra. Awarded two Hugos and five Nebulas for his fiction, one of two authors to win a Nebula in every category, Bear has been called the\n\"best working writer of hard science fiction\" by The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction\n. His short fiction is available in The Collected Stories of Greg Bear,\n published by Tor Books. Bear has served on political and scientific action committees and has advised both government agencies and corporations on issues ranging from national security to private aerospace ventures to new media and video-game development. His most recent endeavor is a collaboration with Neal Stephenson and a crack team of writers, The Mongoliad\n, an epic novel available as a multiplatform app and soon to be published in three volumes by 47North.First published 2012 by Tor, Tom Doherty Associates, New York This edition first published 2012 by Tor an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world www.panmacmillan.com ISBN 978-0-230-75829-2 EPUB Copyright  2011 by the Microsoft Corporation The right of Microsoft Corporation to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act\n1988. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Visit www.panmacmillan.com\n to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you're always first to hear about our new releases"
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "CONTENTS\n\nINTRODUCTION  Frank O'Connor\n\nBEYOND   art by Sparth,  words by Jonathan Goff\n\nPARIAH B. K. Evenson\n\nSTOMPING ON THE HEELS OF A FUSS Eric Raab\n\nMIDNIGHT IN THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN  Frank O'Connor\n\nDIRT  Tobias S. Buckell\n\nACHERON - VIIart by Sparth,  words by Jonathan Goff\n\nHEADHUNTERS  Jonathan Goff\n\nBLUNT INSTRUMENTS  Fred Van Lente\n\nTHE MONA LISA  Jeff VanderMeer and Tessa Kum\n\nICON  art by Robogabo,  words by Jonathan Goff\n\nPALACE HOTEL  Robt McLees\n\nHUMAN WEAKNESS  Karen Traviss\n\nCONNECTIVITY  art by Robogabo,  words by Jonathan Goff\n\nTHE IMPOSSIBLE  LIFE AND THE POSSIBLE DEATH OF  PRESTON J. COLE  Eric Nylund\n\nTHE RETURN Kevin Grace\n\nFROM THE OFFICE OF DR. WILLIAM ARTHUR IQBAL\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\n\n\n  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously.\n\n\n\n HALO: EVOLUTIONS\n\n\n\n Copyright  2009 by Microsoft Corporation\n\n\n\n All rights reserved.\n\n\n\n Microsoft, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox, and the Xbox logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.\n\n\n\n A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC\n175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010\n\n\n\n www.tor -forge.com\n\n\n\n Toris a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.\n\n\n\n ISBN 978 -0-7653 -2399 -6 (hardcover)\n\n ISBN 978 -0-7653 -1573 -1 (trade paperback)\n\n\n\n First Edition: November 2009\n\n\n\n Printed in the United States of America\n\n\n 0    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1\n\n\n\n NOVELS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLING HALO SERIES\n\n\n\n Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund\n\n Halo: The Flood by William C. Dietz\n\n Halo: First Strike by Eric Nylund\n\n Halo: Ghosts of Onyx by Eric Nylund\n\n Halo: Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten\n\n Halo: The Cole Protocol by Tobias S. Buckell\n\n\n\n INTRODUCTION:\nWHY SHORT STORIES?\n\n BECAUSE THEHalo universe is almost as vast and boundless as the real thing. And because Halo fans enjoy a broad spectrum of flavors and moments from the games and the extended canon. In fact, no two Halo fans are quite the same. We hav e hard -core fans who only enjoy one game type, on one map, with one weapon. We have fans who are enthralled by the tactical exploits of UNSC commanders. We have fans who wish to explore the deepest mysteries of a forgotten civilization. We have fans who wa nt to drop from orbit with the ODSTs. We have fans who view the entire canon through the lens of the Master Chief's faceplate.\n\n Moreover, we have fans who can't wait years between novels to get their next fix, that next glistering nugget of data about the ir favorite part of the worlds Halo has created. Short stories allow us the luxury of sampling those flavors and moments. Like a box of chocolates, to borrow a Gumpian phrase.\n  We can dive in, visit the bridge of Admiral Cole's latest command, or hide in an abandoned spacecraft with the life ebbing out of us. We can wander the desert of a distant world in the cloven shoes of an Elite. We can explore the ravenous appetites  of the Gravemind through Cortana's tortured g aze. And we can do all this in a single book.\n\n The first anthology I ever read was called Great Space Battles.  It assembled short stories built around completely unrelated illustrations, and wove together a universe from the art it represented. I remember thinking what a wonderful way to read: in bite -size chunks. We have the luxury of an already established fiction and a vast range of characters and worlds at our fingertips.\n\n Some of these stories are short and sweet and will melt in your mouth. Others ar e heartier fare, but they'll taste like a perfectly cooked chateaubriand. They'll all add ingredients and menu items to the Halo table and they'll all taste remarkably different.\n\n The iron chefs catering this affair are a mixture of masters. We have stori es from the Titans of Halo Fiction: Erics Nylund and Raab, Tobias S. Buckell, Robt McLees, and Fred Van Lente. And we have newcomers too: Karen Traviss, who has left an indelible mark on Star Wars  fiction; Tessa Kum and Jeff Vander -Meer collaborate across a n ocean and an international dateline; and B. K. Evenson, Jonathan Goff, and Kevin Grace bring some new ingredients. Even I've been in the kitchen, cobbling together something partway edible. I hope.\n\n This anthology is certainly a smorgasbord and may be a  lot to consume before we move back to the main course of novels, starting in 2010 with Greg Bear's new Forerunner trilogy. But you guys have the intestinal fortitude.\n\n Bon appetit .\n\n Frank O'Connor\n\n Redmond, Washington\n\n September 2009\n\n\n\n HALO\n\n EVOLUTIONS\n\n\n\n BEYOND\n\n _____________\n\n There is majesty here\n\n Beyond reason\n\n Beyond understanding\n\n Vast in its implications\n\n What wonders; offered around each new corner\n\n Over every skyward peak\n\n Or hidden deep; within in the shadows of each sunken\n\n valley\n\n The questions raised\n\n In astonishment;\n\n In fear\n\n If such glories can be divined, yet forgotten\n\n Lost to time;\n\n Strewn about the entirety of stars\n\n What then are we\n\n Be us man,\n\n Or be us monster\n\n In light of knowledge, so vast\n\n So far beyond\n\n Superior; even to our dreams\n\n What matter, then, our petty confrontations\n\n When weighed against the sins we sow\n  What matter, then, our fate amongst t he cosmos, eternal\n\n In light of the Halo; its luminous glow\n\n\n\n PARIAH\n\n\n\n B. K. EVENSON\n\n PROLOGUE\n\n _______________________\n\n Will you tell me your name?  asked Dr. Halsey. She made no move to squat down in front of the boy, to smile, to do anything at all to come down to his level. Instead she remained standing, her posture neither friendly nor threatening, but simply as neutral as she could make it. Her g aze was steady, interested.\n\n The boy looked at her from across the room. He was only six but the boy's gaze was just as steady as hers, though there was perhaps a trace of wariness in his eyes. Completely understandable  , thought Dr. Halsey. If he knew why I was here there'd be more than just a trace.  He held his body just as noncommittally as she held her own, though she could tell by the tightness in his neck that that might change any moment, without warning.\n\n You first, the boy said, and then moved hi s mouth into something that could pass for a smile.\n\n His voice was calm, as if he were used to being in charge of a situation. Not afraid, then. Not surprising, thought Dr. Halsey. If the report she'd read was correct, he'd managed to survive on his own, in the Outer Colonies on the planet Dwarka, on an  illegal farm in the middle of a forest preserve one hundred kilometers from nowhere, for nearly three months after his parents had died. Surviving under normal circum stances on a harsh world still in the process of being terraformed was hard enough. But for someone who was barely six years old it was inconceivable.\n\n I already know your name, Dr. Halsey admitted. It's Soren.\n\n If you knew, why did you ask?\n\n I wanted to see if you'd tell me, she said. Then she paused. I'm Doctor Halsey, she said, and smiled.\n\n Soren didn't smile back. She now saw more than a trace of suspicion in his gaze, suspicion that sat strangely in his face alongside his straw -colored ha ir and his pale blue eyes. What kind of doctor?\nhe asked.\n\n I'm a scientist, said Dr. Halsey.\n\n Not a sigh , not a sigh\n No, she said, and smiled. I'm not a psychiatrist. You've been seeing a lot of psychiatrists, haven't you?\n\n He hesitated just a moment, and then nodded.\n\n Because of your parents' deaths?\n\n He hesitated, nodded again.\n\n Dr. Halsey glanced at the holographic files displayed discreetly on the interior of her glasses. His mother had apparently succumbed to a pla net-specific disease. Treatments were readily available, but a family living off the grid wouldn't have been aware of that. Instead of reporting immediately to the planetary officials as was required by law, the boy's parents had dismissed the symptoms as those of a cold and had kept working. A few days later, the mother was dead and the stepfather sick. Soren, perhaps because his younger immune system had adapted more readily to Dwarka, had never become ill. He had, according to his stepfather's dying wish , buried the bodies of both of his parents, then continued to live on in their farmhouse until supplies  were almost gone, finally setting out by foot to cross 112 kilometers of blue -gray forest and arrive at the begi nning of authorized farmland.\n\n Was she right to consider him for her team of Spartans? Certainly he was bright and resourceful. He was tough and clearly wouldn't give up easily. But at the same time, what would it do to someone to go through that experien ce? Nobody knew how traumatized he was. Nobody knew for certain what it had done and might still be doing to him. Probably not even him.\n\n Why are you here? he asked.\n\n She looked at him and considered. There was no reason to tell him anything; she could  simply do as she and Keyes had done with the others and make the decision for him, flash -clone him and kidnap him for, as she'd started telling herself, the greater good  . But with the other children she'd in part assumed they wouldn't understand. Here was  a boy without parents who, despite being only six, had had to grow up fast, much faster than her other recruits. Could she tell him more?\n\n The truth is, she said, I came to see you.\n\n Why? he countered.\n\n She returned his even gaze. Suddenly she ma de her decision. I'm trying to decide if you're right for something I'm working on. An experiment. I can't tell you what it is, I'm afraid. But if it works in the way we hope it will you'll be stronger and faster and smarter than you could ever imagine.\n\n For the first time, he looked slightly confused. Why would you want to do something like that for me? You don't even know me.\n\n She reached out and tousled Soren's hair, was pleased when he didn't flinch or shy away. It's notfor you, exactly, she sai d. I can't tell you much more. It won't be easy; it'll be the hardest thing you've ever done even harder than what happened with your parents.\n  And what have you decided? he asked.\n\n I've decided to let you be the one to decide, she said.\n\n What if I say no?\n\n She shrugged. You'd stay here on Dwarka. The planetary authorities would arrange a foster home for you. Not much of a choice  , she thought. He's between a rock and a hard place.  She wondered again if she wasn't being unfair putting the choice on the boy.\n\n All right, he said and stood up.\n\n All right what? she said.\n\n I'm coming with you. When do we leave?\n\n\n\n LATER, BACK on board, when she spoke with Keyes, showed him th e vid of her conversation with Soren, he asked, You're sure about this?\n\n I think so, she said.\n\n He just grunted.\n\n As sure as I am of taking any of them, she said. At least he has a notion of what might happen to him.\n\n That's an awful lot to la y on a child, said Keyes. Even one who's grown up fast.\n\n She nodded. Keyes was right, she knew. The terms for the test subject known as Soren were different from those of the others he was coming into the program in a different way from the very beginn ing. She'd have to remember that and keep an eye on him.\n\n ONE\n\n ___________\n\n What neither Doctor Halsey nor Lieutenant Keyes knew and what they would never find out, since Soren, though only six, was smart enough not to tell them was what really happened to him during those three months alone. That was something that Soren, or Soren -66 as he would come to be called, didn't like to think about. It had been terrible when he realized his mother  was dead and that the reason she was dead was because his stepfather had been too worried about going to jail for his illegal farm to take her to a doctor when she got sick. By the time his stepfather was convinced there was no other choice, it was too lat e; his mother was already gone.\n\n But his stepfather had refused to face it. He moved Soren's mother's body into the box room and locked the door, telling Soren that it was not possible to see her, that she was too sick and needed to be alone to recover. T hat had lasted a few days until finally, late one night, his stepfather had had too much to drink. Soren stole the key and crept slowly through the door to see her there, lying on a pile of flattened boxes, the skin of her face tight and sallow. She smelle d bad. He had seen and smelled enough rotting animals in the woods to know that she was dead.\n\n He cried for a while and then sneaked back out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind him, returning the key to his stepfather's bedside table, and t hen sneaking out again. In the kitchen he sat brooding, wondering what to do. His stepfather was responsible for his mother's death, he sensed, and as far as he was concerned he should have to pay. Just thinking about it made him tremble.\n\n Thinking this a nd things like it led him to get off his chair and take the sharpest knife off the counter. He knew it was the sharpest because his mother had never let him use it without her help. He had to stand on his tiptoes to reach it. It was big, heavy. He stood st aring at the low flicker on the blade in the half -light and then slowly made his way to his stepfather's bedroom.\n\n His stepfather was lying in bed, still asleep, groaning slightly. He stank of liquor. Soren pulled the chair closer to the bed and stood on it, looming now over his stepfather. He stayed like that, clutching the knife, trying to decide how to go about killing the man. He was, he knew, small, still a child, and he would only have one chance. The neck  , he thought. He would  have to jab the knife in quick and deep. Maybe that would be enough. He would fall onto his stepfather and stab into his neck at the same time and then before his stepfather could do anything he would start running, out into the forest, j ust in case it didn't kill him. Fleetingly the thought crossed his mind that to do something like this might be wrong, that his mother would not approve, but having grown up off the grid on the edge of the civilized universe, living under a man growing ill egal crops and possessed of a mistrust for the law, it was hard to know where wrong ended and right started. He was angry. All he knew was that his mother was dead, and that it was the fault of this man.\n\n Years later, when he thought back to the situation , he realized there were nuances to it that at the time he had no chance of understanding. There was something seriously wrong with his stepfather, an inability to face up to his wife's death, that had let him simply block the death out. Yes, he'd been wro ng not to take her to town at the first sign of illness, but his behavior afterward had been less maliciousness and more a sign of how deeply troubled he was. But at the time, all Soren knew was that he wanted whoever was responsible for his mother's death  to pay.\n\n He waited there poised on his chair for what seemed like hours, watching his stepfather sleep, until light started to seep in. Then he waited a little more, until his stepfather stretched and rolled over in his sleep to perfectly expose his neck .\n\n He leaped forward, bringing the knife down as hard as he could. It turned a little in his hand as it struck, but it went in. His stepfather gave a muffled bellow and flailed around him but Soren was already off the bed and running out the bedroom door.  He was just opening the outer door when his stepfather appeared, red -eyed and swaying in the bedroom doorway, the knife jutting out between his neck and shoulder a little above  his clavicle, his shirt already soaked  with blood. He cried out again, a monstrous sound, like an angry ox, and then Soren had the door open and had plunged out into the crisp morning air, vanishing into the forest.\n\n He was well -hidden within a clump of bushes by the time his stepfather came out, the knife out of his flesh now and in his hand, the wound sprayed with biofoam. The man was grimacing, clearly in pain.\n Soren! he cried out. What's wrong with you!\n\n Soren didn't say anything, pulling himself deeper into the bushes. His stepfath er came in search of him. Whatever was wrong, the man claimed, could be sorted out if Soren would just come out and explain it to him. He passed very close, so close that Soren could hear the ragged sound of his breathing. His stepfather nearly stepped on his hand, and then he continued on deeper into the forest, occasionally stopping to call out his name.\n\n\n\n THAT WASas far as Soren's plans went. He couldn' t, he felt, go back into the house, not now that he had tried to kill his stepfather. And yet, where was he to go? They were in the middle of nowhere, miles away from anything.\n\n The first night was difficult, the air cold enough in the dark that he kept w aking up shivering, his teeth chattering. He kept hearing things, too, unsure whether it was his stepfather or the animals of the forest and, if the latter, whether they were just small rodents or something larger that might be carnivorous. His mother had always warned him not to go far into the forest. It's not like the parks back home, she had claimed. It's not safe.\n\n He awoke at dawn, hungry and bone tired. He crept to the edge of the clearing and watched the prefab house from the safety of the brus h, wondering if he could sneak in and get some food.  He was getting ready to do so when he caught a brief flash of his stepfather through the window, standing just inside, waiting for him.\n\n He slunk back into the fo rest, stomach still growling. He wanted to cry, but the tears just didn't seem to come. Had he done the right thing stabbing his stepfather? He wasn't sure. In any case it hadn't worked, had only made things worse. He should have had a better plan, he thou ght, or at least figured what to do next. This was no time for crying, he decided. He had to figure out what to do next.\n\n The first thing was to have something to eat. He couldn't get into the house for the food in there he should have thought of that bef ore stabbing his stepfather, should have taken some food out of the house and cached it in the woods. But it was too late for that now. He would have to make do.\n\n At first he tried to catch an animal, one of the toothless squirrellike creatures that slid silently as ghosts around the trunks and boles of the trees. But after only a few minutes he realized they were much too fast for him. Next, he tried to sit motionless to see if they would come to him. They were curious and got close, but never quite close  enough for him to grab one. Maybe he could kill one by throwing rocks? He tried, but mostly his aim was off, and the one time he hit one it simply gave an angry chitter and scuttled off. Even if I catch one  , he suddenly realized, how am I going to cook it?  I don't have anything to start a fire.\n\n What could he eat, then? Some of the plants were edible, but which ones? He wasn't sure. His family had never harvested from the forest, sticking instead to their prepackaged provisions.\n\n In the end he stepped on a dry, rotten branch and heard it crack, an eddy of bugs pouring out of the gap and quickly vanishing into the undergrowth. He heaved the branch over and saw, along the underside, pale white larvae, worms, large -jawed  centipedes, and beetles spotted orange and blue. He avoided the beetles if they were that brightly colored there must be something wrong with them but tried both the larvae and the worms. The larvae had a nutty taste and were okay to eat if he didn't thi nk too much about them. The worms were a little slimier, but he could keep them down. When a few hours had passed and he didn't feel sick, he turned over a few more fallen logs and ate his fill.\n\n Before night fell he started to experiment, moving a little  farther away from the house and making several beds out of the leaves and needles of different trees. One type of leaf, he found, raised a row of angry, itchy red bumps along his wrist when he touched it; he made a mental note of what it looked like and f rom then on avoided it. He tried each of the other beds in turn until he found one that was soft and a little warmer. He was still cold during the night, but no longer shivering. He was far from comfortable but he could stand it, and even sleep.\n\n In just a few days, he had started to understand his patch of forest. He knew where to go for grubs, when to leave a log alone for a few days and when to turn it. Watching the ghost squirrels, he learned to avoid certain berries and plants. Others he tasted. Some were bitter and made him sick to his stomach and he didn't return to them. But a few he went back to without any ill effect.\n\n He watched his stepfather from the bushes. He was there to see him in the morning, when he came out of the house and went to the crops or to the processor that refined them into a white powder, and there to see him as well at night. Each time his stepfather left the house he carefully locked the door, and though Soren had tried a few times to break his way in, the windows were stron g and he wasn't successful.\n\n Maybe I'll make a trap , he began to think. Something his stepfather would step in or fall into or something that might fall on him and crush him. Could he do that?\n\n He watched. His step father took the same route to the field every day, a straight and straightforward line along a dirt track his own feet had carved day after day. He was nothing if not predictable. The path was clear enough that there was little chance of hiding something o n it or digging a hole without his noticing. Nor were there trees close enough to drop something from above.\n\n Maybe it had been enough, he tried to tell himself. Maybe he could just forget about him and leave. But even though he told himself that, he foun d himself returning, day after day, to stare at the house. He was growing stronger, his young body lean and hard, nothing wasted. His hearing had grown keen, and his vision was such that he could now see the signs of when something had passed before him on  the paths he traveled. When he was sure nothing and nobody was listening, he told himself stories, mumbled whispered fables, versions of things his mother had told him.\n\n Several years later, thinking it over, he realized that he had become tra pped, neither able to go into his house nor leave it behind completely. It was as though he was tethered to it, like a dog chained to a post. It might, he realized when he was older, have gone on indefinitely.\n\n And indeed it did go on, Soren growing a lit tle more wild each day, until something suddenly changed. One morning his stepfather came out and Soren could see there was something wrong with him. He was coughing badly, was hunched over he was sick, Soren realized with a brief shudder of fear, in the s ame way Soren's mother had been. His stepfather went to the crops, weaving slightly, but he was listless, exhausted, and by midday he had given up and was headed back. Only he didn't make it all the way back. Halfway home, he fell to his knees and then lai d there, flat on his stomach, his face pushing into the dirt, one leg jutted to the side. He was there a long time, unmoving. Soren thought he must be dead, but then as he watched  his stepfather gave a shuddering breath and started to move again. But he didn't go back to the house. Instead, he crawled his way to the truck and tried to pull himself into it.\n\n When he failed and fell back into the dust, there was Soren, above him and a little way away, his face expressi onless.\n\n Soren, said his stepfather, his voice little above a whisper.\n\n Soren didn't say anything. He just stayed there without moving. Watching. Waiting.\n\n I thought you were dead, said his stepfather. I really did. I would have kept looking for yo u otherwise. Thank God you're here.\n\n Soren folded his arms across his tiny chest.\n\n I need your help, said his stepfather. Help me get into the truck. I'm very sick. I need to find medicine.\n\n Still Soren said nothing, continuing to stand there motio nless, waiting, not moving. He stayed like that, listening to his stepfather's pleading, his growing panic, followed by threats and wheedling. Eventually the latter passed into unconsciousness. Then Soren sat down and stayed there, holding vigil over the s ick man, until two days later his breathing stopped and he was dead. Then he reached into his stepfather's pocket and took the keys and reclaimed the house.\n\n\n\n IT WASN'Teasy work to drag his mother out of the house and bury her, but in the end, his fing ers blistered and bleeding from several days of slow digging, he managed. His stepfather he buried less from a sense of obligation and more because he wasn't sure what else to do with the body. He liked to tell himself in later years that he had buried him  to prove that he wasn't like him, to prove he was more human, but he was never sure if that was the real reason. He buried him where he had fallen, just beside the truck, rolling him into a hole that was just deeper than the body and mounding the dirt hig h around him.\n\n He stayed in the house for a few days, eating and building up  his strength. When the provisions began to run low he finally managed to shake the house's grip on him, walking out into the forest, makin g his way slowly in the direction that he thought a town might be. He was in the woods for days, maybe weeks, living off berries and grubs. Once he even managed to kill a ghost squirrel with a carefully thrown rock and then slit the fur off with another ro ck to eat the spongy, bitter meat within. After that, he stuck to berries and grubs.\n\n And then, almost accidentally, he came across a track that he knew wasn't made by an animal and followed it. A few hours later he found himself standing on the edge of a  small township, startled by how the people stared at him when he emerged from the underbrush, his clothing tattered, his skin covered with dirt and grime. He was surprised by the way they rushed toward him, their faces creased with concern.\n\n TWO\n\n ___________\n\n With such experience under his belt, life on Reach in the Spartan camp seemed less of a challenge to Soren than it did to many of the other recruits. After living in the woods alone, he felt he was ready for anything. He was quick to figure out the best way through an obstacle course. He could fade quickly into bushes and undergrowth when on mock patrol. Camouflage was a way of life for him: He faded into the background too when in groups, wanting neither to come to attention as one of the le aders of a group nor to be seen as an outsider. He stuck to the anonymous middle.\n\n But despite that, there were times when he noticed Dr. Halsey standing at a deliberate distance, watching him with an expression on her face that he could not interpret. On ce, when he was nearly eleven, she even approached him as he ran through an exercise with the other children, standing at a slight remove, as he hesitated, wondering which team to join. He  couldn't decide if he was h aving trouble because she was scrutinizing him, or if he always waited until the last minute to make his choice and it just took her presence to make him realize it.\n\n Everything all right, Soren? she asked him, her voice carefully modulated. Officially he was now Soren -66a seemingly arbitrary digit for recruits, decided by the Office of Naval Intelligence for reasons they kept to themselves but the doctor never called him by the number.\n\n Yes, sir, he said, then realized she wasn't a sir, or even, for  that matter, a ma'am and blushed and looked guiltily at her. Yes, Doctor? he tried.\n\n She smiled. Don't get distracted by irrelevant data, she said to him, and then gestured idly past him, at the two teams already running for the skirmish ground. And  above all don't let yourself get left behind.\n\n\n\n DON'T LET yourself get left behind . The words echoed for him not only through the rest of the exercise but for a long time to come, haunting him long after he was sure Dr. Halsey had forgotten them. Ther e was, he slowly came to sense, something different about him, something that the other recruits either didn't have or didn't care to show. For that matter, he didn't show it either: as he grew, he was very careful not to let anyone see anything that would  make him different, would make him stand apart.\n\n When he was very young, six or seven, he had been less careful. He hated sharing his room, found it exceptionally difficult to sleep hearing the sounds and the breathing of his fellow bunkmates. In their b reathing he heard his stepfather. Sometimes he waited until they had fallen asleep and then slipped slowly out of his bed to hide under it, sleeping in the damp, musty space near the wall. He felt safer there. But when one morning he had slept late and had n't returned to his bed before  the others had started waking up, the way they looked at him made him feel less safe. No, he would have to play along, would have to learn to go through the motions that all the others seemed to make so naturally. He wanted not so much to fit in as to fade in.\n But after a while, it didn't seem like an act anymore. He liked many aspects of the life of being a recruit. He enjoyed the challenge of it both mentally and physically. Having gro wn up off the grid, he had never been around people who were going through the same things he was; at times, particularly when they were darting through the forest together or crawling their breathless and silent way through a ditch full of mud, it was lik e being surrounded by many other versions of himself. It was comforting. Indeed, he felt closer to the other recruits than he had to anyone but his mother. Dr. Halsey, too, was the next best thing to a mother to him, though often distant, often preoccupied . But there was something about her that he found some strange kinship with.\n\n He still needed time to himself, still found himself figuring out ways of being off on his own or, if not on his own, of creating a kind of momentary and temporary wall between himself and the others as a way of trying to think, to breathe, to be more fully himself. He realized very early on that he was never going to be a leader. He was not very communicative, but his instincts were honed and good and he was willing and able to follow orders. The others knew they could count on him. He felt in this the beginnings of a sense of meaning and purpose to his life, and he felt better than he had ever felt. He was keeping up. He wasn't letting himself get left behind.\n\n And yet he was s till haunted by the past. Sometimes, particularly late at night, in the dark, he couldn't help but think about what had happened when he was younger. He knew that whatever it was that made him different from the others came from that. At first the past was  something he tried to push away,  tried to forget, but as he grew older and smarter his thoughts about it became more and more conflicted. In his early teens, he began to see his stepfather less as a monster and more  as someone who was scared and confused, somebody disastrously flawed, but someone who was also human. He fought against that realization, kept pushing it away, but it continually surged back over him. He had watched his stepfather die it had been so quick , almost no time at all between the first symptoms and that strange transition from life to death. Which made him wonder, with a disease that moved that quickly could his mother really have been saved?\n\n All in all, he was neither the best nor the worst. H e was a solid recruit and trainee, someone who, though haunted by his past, was doing his best to move beyond it. Perhaps, he thought, for the moment that was all he could ask for. Perhaps for now it was enough.\n\n THREE\n\n ___________\n\n He was fourteen now, and standing at attention on the other side of Dr. Halsey's desk. Her face, he noticed, was drawn and tight, her responses a little jerkier than usual, as if she hadn't been getting enough sleep or was overworked. She hid it well, but  Soren, himself an expert on hiding things well, saw all the cues he was learning to suppress in himself.\n\n At ease, Dr. Halsey said. Please take a seat, Soren.\n\n Thank you, ma'am, he said, and sat, a single fluid movement, nothing wasted.\n\n She was whispering quietly to herself, scanning a series of electronic files. The files were holograms whose contents were visible to her but which he saw only as an image of a small brick wall, an image of CPO Mendez on the other side of it with his finger presse d to his lips. Someone has a weird sense of humor  , he thought.\n\n Do you mind if I ask you a question? she asked.\n\n Of course not, ma'am, he said.\n\n Dr. Halsey, she said. No need to make me sound any older than  I am. Do you remember when we first met?\n\n Yes, said Soren. Hardly a day had gone by without his thinking about that meeting and everything it had led to.\n\n I wonder, Soren, do you remember what I said, how I gave you a choice?\n\n Soren wrinkled his f orehead briefly, then the lines cleared. You mean whether to come with you or stay on Dwarka? Or was there something else?\n\n No, just that, she said. You were young enough that I didn't know how well you'd remember. How do you feel about your choice?\n\n I'm glad I made it, he said. It was the right choice, ma'am.\n\n I thought we already talked about your calling me that, she said, smiling. I wondered at the time whether I was right to give you a choice. Lieutenant Keyes wondered too. Whether you weren't too young to have that burden placed on you.\n\n Burden? he asked.\n\n She waved the implied question aside. Never mind, she said. The reason I've brought you here is to give you another choice.\n\n He waited for her to continue, but for a moment she simply stayed there, staring at him, the same unreadable expression on her face that he'd noticed before, when he had caught her watching him during exercises.\n\n You're still very young, she said.\n\n Soren said nothing.\n\n Dr. Halsey sighed. You've trained well, all of you. But training is only the first step. We're on the verge of the second step. Would you like to take it?\n\n What is it exactly?\n\n There's only so much I can tell you, said Dr. Halse y. There's  only so much the bodies that we have can do, Soren. So we want to augment them. We want to modify your physical body and mind to push it beyond normal human capabilities. We want to toughen your bones, in crease your growth, build your muscle mass, sharpen your vision, improve your reflexes. We want to make you into the perfect soldier. The smile that had been building on her face slowly faded away. However, there will be side effects. Some of these we kn ow, some we probably can't anticipate. There's also considerable risk.\n\n What sort of risk?\n\n There's a chance, a nontrivial one, that you could die during the augmentation. Even if you don't die, there's a strong risk of Parkinson's, Fletcher's syndro me, and Ehlers -Danlos syndrome, as well as potential problems with deformation or atrophy of the muscles and degenerative bone conditions.\n\n He didn't understand everything she was saying, but had the gist of it. And if it works?\n\n If it works, you'll be stronger and faster than you can imagine. She tented her fingers in front of her, staring over them at him. I'm giving you an option that the others won't be given. I am offering you a choice, while your classmates will simply be told they are to repo rt for the procedure.\n\n Why me? asked Soren.\n\n Pardon?\n\n Why am I the one who gets to make a choice? Why not one of the others?\n\n She turned her gaze to the desk in front of her, her voice distant now, more as if she were speaking to herself than the boy. What the Spartans are is an experiment, she said. In every controlled experiment you need one sample whose conditions are diff erent so as to be able to judge the progress of the larger group. You're that sample, Soren.\n\n We're an experiment, he said, his voice flat.\n\n I won't lie to you. That is precisely what you are, and you an experi ment within the experiment. An exception to a rule, she said.\n\n Why me? he asked again. You could have chosen anyone.\n\n She shrugged. I don't know, Soren. It just turned out that way.\n\n He was silent for a long time, staring straight in front of him , sorting it all out in his head. Finally he looked up.\n\n I want to do it, he said.\n\n You do? said Dr. Halsey. Even knowing the risks?\n\n Yes, he said. And then added, I don't want to be left behind.\n\n\n\n STRANGE , DR.Halsey thought after he had l eft. What had he meant by not wanting to be left behind? Where had she heard that before?\n\n She shook her head to clear it. Deja, she said. You were listening in, I take it?\n\n Of course, Dr. Halsey, said the AI's smooth voice. Her hologram flickered into existence on the desk beside her. Created specifically for the Spartan project, her self -chosen construct was that of a Greek goddess, barefoot and holding a clay tablet.\n\n Any thoughts?\n\n Is that a rhetorical question?  asked Deja. When Dr. Halsey didn't respond, she continued. You didn't tell him everything, the AI said.\n\n No, said Dr. Halsey. I didn't.\n\n I would be remiss not to point out that, as the individual responsible for the intellectual development of th e Spartans, you've given him faulty information about how a control generally works in a scientific experiment. The control group generally is the group that does not experience the conditions of\n\n I know that, Deja, said Halsey, cutting her off.\n\n Deja nodded curtly. I would also be remiss not to point out  that Soren -66 himself is precociously intelligent and has almost certainly realized that the reasons you gave for allowing him a choice were false.\n\n And wh at were my real reasons? asked Dr. Halsey.\n\n I don't know, said Deja. I have a feeling, however, that I'm as confused about that as you are.\n\n Dr. Halsey nodded.\n\n But if I had to guess, said Deja, knowing you as well as I do, I would say that it wa s a way of easing your own conscience. You just wanted to tell him. You wanted to tell one of them. You wanted to see if just one of them would make the choice for himself.\n\n Dr. Halsey sighed. Yes, she said. You may be right. Thank you for being hones t with me, Deja.\n\n No need to thank me. I can't help it, said Deja. It's in my programming.\n\n Dr. Halsey brushed her hand through the hologram and it disappeared. She leaned back in her chair. I've given him a burden to live with  , she thought. I've let  him make his own decision, but Deja's right. I've shifted the burden of responsibility back to him if anything goes wrong. A child. Carrying my sins.\n\n Let's hope nothing goes wrong.\n\n FOUR\n  ___________\n\n He was dreaming but even in the dream it was as if he couldn't wake up, as if he had been asleep for days and days. In the dream he was back in the forest again, but in addition to the cold and the hunger there was also something stalking him, a strange c reature, almost human but not quite:\ndeformed somehow, its mouth cast in an odd leer, its body lumpy and irregular, dragging one of its feet behind. It was always just a little way behind him, never quite catching up with him, but he couldn't seem to shake  it, either. He could hear it there crashing through  the woods behind him. Every so often it would give a cry of pain that was so piercing that it was all he could do to keep going. How long had he been walking? He a te what he could grab from the ground around him and kept going, dead on his feet, half -asleep, until suddenly he took a wrong turn and found the path before him blocked. And there the creature was, just behind him and on him before he could escape. It plu cked him up off the ground like a toy and hurled him. He smashed through limbs and branches and came down hard, the forest around him fading to white as he died.\n\n Only he wasn't dead. What he saw, all around him, was a blank, uneasy whiteness, filled with  a slow buzzing. And then the whiteness slowly resolved into a piercing light. To either side of him, dim shapes began to take form, resolving into heads, the heads themselves covered with white cloth caps, the faces hidden behind breathing masks. Beneath these heads, he saw, the clothing that covered the bodies was spattered and stained with blood. It took him a moment to realize the blood was his own.\n\n One of the heads was speaking, he realized, a low rumbling coming out of it, though he couldn't underst and what it was saying. It stopped and one of the other heads started to make a similar sound. What's wrong with them  , he wondered. And then, What's wrong with me?\n\n Then a set of fingers waved itself over his eyes. He tried to follow them but could do so o nly at a slight remove, his eyes moving always just a little late. A head dove down closer to his eyes, suddenly becoming crisply, painfully defined.\n\n Is he supposed to be like this? the head asked, its voice muffled through the mask. Then other heads w ere there, suddenly looming toward him, crisp and almost as if too close. There was a flurry of movement, too, shouting, and then everything became too slow, everything moving oddly and slowly, as if underwater.\n\n This is real , he suddenly realized. This is  really happening.  Then abruptly the buzzing increased and the thought slipped through his mental fingers and was lost, to be replaced by another dream, another nightmare.\n\n\n\n IN THEdream he was sitting in a chair but couldn't move. There was nothing restraining him, nothing blocking his arms or his legs; he simply couldn't move. No, wait, he could move a little, could move his eyes very slowly back and forth. At first the room was indistinct, as if the chair were simply sitting in the middle of a vast pool of darkness, but, very slowly, it began to take form around. Not a chair, he suddenly realized, but a bed: He was lying in a bed how had he ever thought he was sitting upright in a chair? There was a blanket he re cognized, but he couldn't quite place it. The shape of the bed was familiar as well, the shape of the room familiar, too, but he was unable to place where he was until the door at the far end of the room opened and his stepfather, impossibly large, stooped  and shouldered his way in.\n\n I'm in my mother's room , he thought. In my mother's bed.\n\n And upon thinking that, he began to realize that he wasn't the only one in the bed, that he wasn't alone. But he couldn't turn his head to see who the other person was.  His stepfather stood in the doorway, more shadow than man, a strange piping noise coming from him something with all the structures of a language but impossible for him to even begin to understand. He appeared to be pleading, exhorting, but maybe it just seemed that way.\n\n And then suddenly the other person in the bed moved, began to speak in the same birdlike piping, and though he still didn't understand a word of it he realized, by the sound and tenor of the voice, that it was his mother. She moved and h e saw just the edge of her hand, the skin gray and beginning to rot, to come apart to show a thin strip of bone below. He wanted to scream, but all he could do was let his eyes dart frantically about in his  sockets a s she slowly shifted in the bed, her hand carefully feeling his face. She gave a low hiss and began to pull herself up.\n\n He was just beginning to see her face when a sudden intense pain washed over him, as if someone had worked broken glass into his veins . The dream wavered and spun and reduced itself to a small white dot on a black field and then, with a hiss, was gone, leaving nothing but darkness behind.\n\n How long did that last? Impossible to say. He had no sense of time passing, no sense of anything but that limitless void, a vague sense of himself as part of it, but even that seemed to be blurring around the edges, any sense of himself as an individual b eing threatening to slip away.\n\n And then, very, very slowly, the darkness was broken by a small white dot, a dot which grew larger and larger and in the end swallowed everything around him.\n\n And then it swallowed him as well.\n\n\n\n HE AWOKEto find himsel f screaming. He was restrained, tied down to some sort of table or bed, and he felt like he was on fire, his skin itching and burning. The veins on his arms stood out and pulsed and felt as if they were being torn slowly out of his skin. He flexed his wris t and pulled and the strap around it started to tear. It felt like a series of plate -glass windows were shattering beneath his skin, the muscles quivering and contorting over and into one another.\n\n There were men and women in white coats all around him, b ut keeping a little distance, except for one, trying to approach him from just behind his head, almost out of sight, with a raised hypodermic. They were all moving slowly, too slowly, as if something was wrong with them, as if they were underwater. He tugg ed at the strap again and it tore like paper, and then he tugged at the other wrist and both hands were free.\n\n He was still screaming, couldn't stop. He reached out and grabbed the hand with the hypodermic in it and squeezed, was  surprised how quickly his fingers reacted and even more surprised to hear the bones in the man's wrist cracking like dry wood as they snapped. The sound the bones made was uncomfortably loud. He caught the hypodermic before it hit the floor,  jabbing it into the neck of a man on the other side of him, who went down without a sound. The other hand was already tearing the straps off his legs. Some of the others had started to turn now, turning to flee the table, but they were moving so slowly what was wrong with them? The pain was making it hard to think. He lashed out, struck the nearest one in the back with his fist, was surprised to see the man's body slam into the far wall and then collapse, leaving a blot of blood on the wall where he had st ruck.\n\n Then he was out of the bed and running for the door, but something was wrong there, too he was having a hard time keeping his balance. The whole world seemed to be coming at him at an angle, and his legs weren't working in the way he expected. He w as loping more than running, one shoulder close to the ground, steadying himself against the floor every few meters with an outstretched hand. He seemed to have stopped screaming, though sounds were still pouring out of his mouth, a kind of intense glossol alia, a language without meaning. He barreled through the remaining white -coated figures and they scattered at the slightest touch, thrown to the floor, screaming and groaning. And then he was out into the hall.\n\n Which way? he wondered for the slightest fr action of a second and then darted left. Where was he?\nIt looked familiar, it was somewhere he knew, but the pain was still making it difficult to think. What had they been doing to him?\n\n He reached the end of the hall sooner than he'd expected and slamme d into the wall, crumpling the panel with his momentum before turning left again and continuing on his way. Was the wall that weak? Yes, he thought, he knew this place, he knew where he was, the Spartan compound, and then a wave of pain burned through his head and he stumbled and went down screaming.\n\n Almost immediately he was up again. To the end of the hall, he remembered, then right, and then the outer doors. Then he'd be out and free, somewhere where he where they , he corrected himself could never find him.\n\n An alarm was going off somewhere, the halls strobed with a red light, but the strobe too was moving too slowly. Again he didn't stop in time, running into the wall at the end of the corridor and skittering of f it before turning right and making for the outer doors.\n\n But between him and it was a line of five or six Marines, kneeling, pointing their weapons at him. And there, standing just behind them, hands on his hips, was CPO Mendez.\n\n Stand down, soldier!  the man's voice boomed out. And for just a moment Soren -66, hearing the command from the man he'd been taking orders from for more than a half dozen years now, slackened his pace.\n\n But the pain and the confusion, the sensation he had of being trapped, of being hunted, quickly took over, and he sped up again.\n\n Stand down! Mendez called again. Soren was almost on them now. He saw the muscles in the forearms of the Marines tighten s lightly as they prepared to pull the trigger, and he suddenly found himself galloping on all fours, like a dog. As Mendez gave the order to fire, he leaped.\n\n He heard the shots, oddly muffled. It wasn't bullets they were firing, he realized as he saw the blur of red flash by his elbow, but tranquilizer darts. They passed harmlessly below him except for one that he felt stinging in his ankle. He came down and smashed into the line of Marines and was through them, tugging the dart loose as he made for the do ors.\n He rammed into the doors, found them locked. He hit them hard with his shoulder and they gave a groaning sound, starting  to give. He hit them a third time and at the same moment felt the stinging of tranquiliz er darts in his back and legs.\n\n He bellowed in pain and frustration and turned to find himself confronted again by the row of Marines, Mendez standing in front of them now, giving every impression of being in control of the situation.\n\n I asked you to st and down, solider, stated Mendez. Will you comply?\n\n The tranquilizers were starting to take effect. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. The pain, which had been so visceral, so intense, was now receding into the background. He took a step, found his legs threatening to go out from under him. He started to turn back to the door, stumbled. The hallway lurched, righted itself. He turned back and found now, just behind the line of marines, an out-of-breath Dr. Halsey.\n\n Don't hurt him! she was shouting.  Please!\n\n Dr. Halsey! he cried when he saw her. What have you done to me? Arms outstretched, he took a single step toward her and collapsed.\n\n FIVE\n\n ___________\n\n When he woke up he was in the brig, his wrists now in titanium wristlets, each of them hooked firmly by a titanium chain to a ring in the wall. He tested them. They were too strong for him to break out of easily.\n\n When he stood, he realized there was something wrong with his legs. They were strong, the muscles differentiated and much larger  than before, but the muscles had done something to the bone, twisting them, curving them in the odd directions. One leg was more or less normal, just a little bit bowed and twisted. The other, though, was gnarled and a good six inches shorter, and seemed more comfortable when folded up. That leg's ankle was rubbery and left the foot flopping. He could still stand but  only at an angle, leaning far to the side, and he was more comfortable, he realized, if he used a han d for balance as well.\n\n His arms, too, were rippling with muscle and seemed almost impossibly strong. They were for the most part fine: They were hardly deformed, relatively straight. But the fingers of one hand had become twisted and bowed, functioning n ow less like individual articulated digits and more like a single pincer or claw. I've become a monster  , he thought.\n\n\n\n HE WASstill trying to take in his new body when the door opened and Dr. Halsey entered, an armed Marine to either side of her.\n\n Hello, Soren, she said.\n He stood motionless, watching her. She in turn looked him over, both of them waiting out the other.\n\n Finally, she turned to one of the Marines and said, I don't think I'll need you.\n\n According to CPO Mendez  the Marine star ted.\n\n This is a science facility and here, I outrank Chief Petty Officer Mendez, she said. I want you to leave. She turned to the other Marine. Both of you, she said.\n\n Is that an order, ma'am? asked the second Marine, his voice calm.\n\n Yes, it i s, she said.\n\n The second Marine quickly saluted and went out. The other, after a moment's hesitation, followed.\n\n There, said Dr. Halsey. That's a little bit better. I'm sorry about the restraints. They weren't my idea, but even I was overruled on tha t point. I'm afraid I don't have any means to remove them. She came closer and sat down on the cell floor, deliberately within easy reach of him. If he'd wanted to, he could reach out and break her neck. Let's just do our best to pretend they're not ther e, she said.\n\n Soren stared at her a long moment, then slowly sat back down, gathering his body awkwardly under him.\n\n How are you feeling? she asked.\n\n I don't know, he said. His tongue felt awkward in his mout h, as if he was using it for the first time. Not very good. I'm having a hard time thinking.\n\n That's probably the medication, she said. They had to give you something for the pain.\n\n He closed his eyes, remembering how his body had felt like it was being torn apart from the inside. Is that normal? he asked.\n\n She shrugged. We're still figuring out what normal is. Some people seem to have pain. For some of them it goes away. For oth ers, it's always there.\n\n He nodded.\n\n We thought you were going to die, she said, and reached out to touch his arm. He let her touch him for a moment then slowly pulled the arm back and out of reach. You've been comatose for nearly three months. Again  and again they thought you were going to die. It reached the point where we decided to disconnect life support. You flatlined for almost four minutes and then your heart started beating on its own again.\n\n I wish I had died, he said flatly.\n\n She shook  her head. You may feel that way, she said, but your body doesn't. It could have let go at any time, but it never did.\n\n He tried to think that over, shook his head. He gestured at his legs, his gnarled hand. What happened to me? he asked.\n\n Your bo dy reacted badly to the muscular enhancement injections and the thyroid implant, she said. Basically your muscles grew in ways and directions that we couldn't predict and then tried to crush or twist the bones beneath them. We were able to use the carbid e ceramic ossification process to stabilize and strengthen the bones and to stop it before it became  too severe, but as you can see we had better luck with some limbs than others.\n\n She watched him and waited for hi m to say something. When he didn't, she went on.\n\n Unfortunately, what that means is that there's a constant tension between your muscles and bones. It's like your body wants to tear itself apart. That may manifest itself as pain within the bone itself, as muscle pain, or as both. The pain may be intense, almost unbearable.\n\n I know, said Soren.\n\n With medication, the pain will be bearable. Some of us believe that as your body adjusts to its new state that the pain might diminish or go away entirely.\n\n Is that what you believe? asked Soren.\n\n Do you want me to be honest? Dr. Halsey asked.\n\n Yes, said Soren.\n\n Dr. Halsey sighed. No, she said. I think the pain will diminish but I don't think it's likely that the pain will ever go away.\n\n He nodded, his lips a grim line.\n\n On the other hand, she said. You're stronger than even we imagined. The straps on the operating table were strong, with a titanium microweave through the cloth. They were over -engineered to hold any of the other Spart ans in place, but they weren't enough to hold you.\n\n They were silent a moment. How many of us are left? he finally said.\n\n She shrugged. More than half, she said. Almost half of you are dead. With another dozen or so, the modifications didn't take.  She reached out and touched his arm again. I'm sorry, Soren, she said.\n\n He refused to meet her eyes. I made the choice, he said. I have nobody to blame but myself.\n\n A moment later she stood and, without a word, left. Soren stayed where he was sitt ing on the floor, staring.\n\n SIX\n ___________\n\n A week later he was out of the brig, released on his own recognizance. Some of the other Spartans, he saw, were in as bad or worse shape than he. Fhajad had uncontroll able muscle spasms and was confined to a wheelchair. Rene and Kirk had had the same difficulty that he had, but their bones were so twisted and deformed that they were now floating in gel tanks, unable to move on their own. A few others were even worse, ke pt in isolation chambers, comatose and always on the verge of death. Somehow he didn't find it comforting to think that their fates had been worse than his own.\n\n After a few weeks the pain seemed to have diminished a little, though they kept him drugged enough that it was hard to say. The drugs did help with the pain but he hated the confusion they caused within him, the sense he had of having to plow through ideas, of not being able to finish a thought. That started to get as frustrating to him as the pai n had been.\n\n He slowly began to scale back the medication, palming a few of the pills each time he was given them, then more and more. The pain was strong and intense, but definitely slightly less than when he'd first awoken. He found he could stand it. I can live with the pain  , he tried to tell himself. What I can't live with is not being able to think.  Sometimes, though, he would make an imprudent twist or just move wrong and find himself on the verge of passing out, his forehead beaded with sweat.\n\n He kept at it. Everything felt rawer to him, but yes, he could stand it. His head was clearer in a way, though the pain, like the drugs, could make it difficult to think. Still after a month he was palming all the pills, pretending to take them but instea d taking them back to his room and dropping them into a drawer. In another two months, the drawer was almost completely full.\n\n It was true that he was insanely strong. Early on, in a fit of frustration, he punched t he wall in his room and was surprised when his fist tore through the metal panel as if it were thin plaster. He moved the bed so its post partially hid the damage and was careful from then on out.\n\n It's not hopeless , he started to think as time went on. H e was stronger than he'd ever been faster, too, despite his awkward gait. And even if his arms and legs had suffered somewhat he still had everything he needed to be an excellent soldier, better than any normal, unmodified human. I'm still a Spartan  , he told himself.\n\n\n\n BUT NOTeveryone, he found, agreed. When he tried to report back for active duty, CPO Mendez took a long, hard look at him and then said, in a voice gentler than any Soren had heard him use, Walk with me, son.\n\n They went down th e hall together, an odd pair: Mendez straight and tall, his stride brisk and confident, Soren massive, but hunched and leaning, weaving as he went.\n\n Sweet William? Mendez asked him, taking out a cigar.\n\n Soren, looking surprised, shook his head.\n\n Ah,  said Mendez, after first biting off the ends, sometimes it's difficult for me to remember that you're all only boys. Filthy habit, this. Don't start it young.\n\n Yes, sir, said Soren.\n\n Mendez got the cigar lit and sucked on it hard. The end glowed red  and then ashed over, the smoke slowly oozing out of his nostrils. I can't do it, son, he said.\n\n Can't do what? asked Soren.\n\n I can't have you in active service.\n\n But I'm strong, said Soren. I'm even stronger than the other Spartans, and almost  as fast as some of them. I can keep up and I'm smart and .  . . Seeing the stern expression on Mendez's face, he let himself trail off.\n\n Nobody doubts your courage, son. And I for one don' t doubt your ability. But if I put you in a team with the other Spartans, you know what'll happen?\n\n What, sir?\n\n They'll always be thinking about the ones who didn't make it, the ones that died while they went on. They'll feel a special obligation to look out for you and keep you alive that will affect their ability to perform. It'll hurt their focus, keep them from having that edge when they really need it. Right now, without you, they all move and think in a similar way. They work like a well -oiled machine. But there's something to be said for the symmetry they display, the instinctual camaraderie. You're good, no doubt about that hell, I could see that on the day you woke up and went apeshit but being on a team with other Spartans just isn't going to  happen.\n\n Respectfully, sir\n\n Plus body armor, Mendez said. It just won't fit you. Plus the difficulty of firing a weapon with that hand. No, he said, stubbing the Sweet William out on the floor. He reached out and put his hand on Soren's shoulder , looked him straight in the eye. From his look, Soren suddenly could see how hard it was for Mendez to say all he was saying, that he wished things could be different. I'm sorry, son. Just be patient and maybe something will come along for you. But this,  this just isn't it.\n\n\n\n CPO MENDEZis right, said Dr. Halsey, just as he'd known she would. He doesn't mean to hurt you, but he has to do what's best for the rest of the recruits and for the program.\n\n But it's not what's best for me, said Soren.\n\n Who says it isn't? asked Dr. Halsey. It's not what you want, but that doesn't mean it's not what's best for you.\n\n I want to serve, he said. I don't want to be left behind.\n\n I'm sorry, Soren, she said. You can't serve in this way. You'll be a ble to serve, but not in a combat position.\n\n All I want is to be given the choice, he said. You always were willing to give me a choice in the past. Can't you do it again this time?\n\n She shook her head. I'm s orry, Soren. Not this time.\n\n SEVEN\n\n ___________\n\n Later, when he thought back to it, he saw that as the turning point. It shut too many doors for him, damaging him, closing parts o f him off. And it was stupid, he tried to tell himself. They should have used him, they should have figured out something specially suited for him and his uniquely deformed body. It wasn't that he wasn't as good as the other Spartans even Mendez had had to admit that. In some ways he was better than them, stronger. Sure, his skin and his brain sometimes felt like they were on fire, but he was learning to control that, learning to get around it and even focus it.\n\n They could have found something for him, so mething that fit him, but instead they strapped him with a desk job within the compound, an ordinary run -of-the-mill job that just about anybody could have handled. They said it was temporary, but as time went on, it felt more and more permanent. Barely si xteen and already retired from active duty, already a paper pusher. It was as if they hadn't even tried to think of the right job for him. It was hard not to feel resentful.\n\n Which was why, almost six months later, when one of the technicians a fellow nam ed Partch began talking to him about revolution, instead of reporting the man he began to listen.\n\n Partch started slow, just bits and pieces, hints. Sure, he said, the UNSC was much needed and important we couldn't live without them. But didn't they somet imes come down too hard? Didn't they sometimes do things that were carried out with the best of intentions but, when you looked at them closely, were just simply wrong?\n\n Like with you, for instance, said Partch, o nce Soren had confessed what had happened to him. Why aren't they making proper use of you? Strong as a bear, quick, smart too: It's a damned waste, if you ask me. Yet they're still putting wet -behind -the-ears Marines right in the line of fire.\n\n At the time Soren didn't respond, but later he couldn't help but thinking that yes, it was a waste, Partch was right. Soon, it wasn't just that he wasn't reporting Partch: He'd started to search him out. He listened, very rarely revealing what he was feeling abou t what Partch was saying, but listening, listening. Finally one day he said, So what can we do about it?\n\n Partch shook his head. I don't know, he said. It's hard to know what to do to fix the system when it breaks. People are afraid of change; they'd  rather limp on with a broken system than do the hard work of making a change. If you're not careful, before you know it you're labeled a terrorist.\n\n But there must be something I can do, said Soren.\n\n A guy like you, said Partch giving him a sidelon g look, sure, there's a lot you can do. But will you?\n\n I think I would, said Soren.\n\n Even if you knew that others might see you as a terrorist? Do you care more about what people think, or about doing what's right?\n\n I've never cared what people t hought, said Soren, lying.\n\n Partch gave him an appraising look. No, he said. I daresay you haven't.\n\n\n\n IT WENTon like that for a long time, Partch talking and hinting, and Soren becoming more and more eager to take part. It was exciting, like he was part of something, like something was happening. As he heard news of the other Spartans, he needed that, nee ded to feel like he was involved. His allegiances changed almost imperceptibly until, almost before he knew it, he found himself on the side of the rebels. Yes, he began to think, the  USNC was too powerful for its ow n good; it had become a big bully. Yes, the colony worlds had the right to function in whatever way they wanted, had a right to be independent from the United Earth government if they so wanted. It was crazy to think otherwise. Yes, he was eager to help, y es, and since that was the case, what was he doing here?\n\n Be patient, said Partch. We .  . . they need people like you. But we have to wait for just the right moment. And let's take someone along with us something as a souvenir.\n\n EIGHT\n\n ___________\n\n Partch had a card that opened the lock whether he had stolen it or had been given it as part of his job, Soren did not know. Inside was some sort of geological research laboratory. On one metal table was a simple wooden box with a metal screen in the plac e of its bottom, a sealed plastic tub next to it. Here and there, loose on tables or bolted to the ceilings and the walls, were precision instruments, things mostly unfamiliar to Soren.\n\n They went in, Partch setting the door to stay slightly ajar behind t hem.\n\n Why not close the door all the way? asked Soren.\n\n I'm not sure the card will open it from the inside, said Partch.\n\n Stolen or rigged, then , thought Soren. Never mind  , he thought, then recited in his head one of Partch's lines: When the governme nt goes bad, we all have to do things that we normally wouldn't do until it's back on the right track again.\n\n It's the sixth cabinet, said Partch. I disabled the alarm this morning from my panel. And I've put in a loop for the AI to look at for the roo m and the hall. Not easy, if I do say so myself, and not something likely to last long. Do you think you can open it?\n What's in there? asked Soren.\n\n Something important, he said. Something we need.\n\n Soren nodded, staring at the cabinet. It was made of a brushed metal, perhaps steel, the doors seemingly quite thick. He reached up and put his hand over the top edge, felt the door's top lip, gave an exploratory pull. It didn't move.\n\n I don' t think I can do it without a prybar, said Soren.\n\n Partch nodded, took a flat titanium -alloy bar, flanged at one end, out of his backpack.\n\n You came prepared, said Soren.\n\n Partch just smiled. Soren took the bar and forced the end of it in the slight channel between the two doors, grunting, barely denting the metal slightly to either side, working it in until it had gone as far as it'd go. Then, putting all his weight into it, veins popping out on his arms, he pulled.\n\n For a moment Soren thought that even the crowbar would not be enough. He felt his arms burning, and a black hole began to open in his vision, the pain he always felt under the surface becoming reactivated by this new stress of muscle on bone. Then there was a creaking sound from the cabi net door and it buckled just a little around the lock.\n\n He let up and forced the bar in deeper, and then bore down again. The door creaked again and buckled further, then this time came free. He handed the crowbar back to Partch who put it away, and then he opened the cabinet door fully.\n\n Inside was a titanium case, about thirty centimeters long and fifteen wide, maybe ten centimeters deep.\n\n What is it? asked Soren. What's inside?\n\n Partch just smiled. He was just reaching for it when they heard a vo ice from behind them.\n\n I don't suppose you'd care to explain yourself, it said.\n\n Soren turned, his expression immediately going flat and neutral. It was one of the Spartans, not one that Soren had known well, someone he'd only rarely been teamed with b efore washing out. Randall, his name was. He wasn't dressed in uniform or  battle gear, was dressed down in a simple black T -shirt and loose gray cloth pants. His face was as neutral as Soren's.\n\n Hello, Randall, sa id Soren, thinking quickly. Problem with this cabinet, with the lock mechanism. Sometimes it won't lock, sometimes it won't open.\n\n I know you, said Randall. Soren, right? Used to be a Spartan. But you're not a technician.\n\n No, said Partch, but I  am. The lock had frozen and I couldn't get it open. I asked for his help to unjam it.\n At this hour? asked Randall.\n\n The lab is swamped during the day, claimed Partch. They didn't want us clanging around during office hours.\n\n Randall looked back and forth between them. All right, he said. You don't mind if I verify, do you?\n\n Of course not, said Soren.\n\n If we weren't supposed to be here, the alarm would have gone off, added Partch. But no, by all means, you should ve rify.\n\n Randall nodded, his lips tight. Let's go then.\n\n Soren immediately started for the door. Randall moved back and out into the hall to let him come, keeping a safe distance. He's smart  , thought Soren. Well trained.  He started down the hall, Partch just behind him, Randall taking up the rear.\n\n Where are we going? asked Partch.\n\n Nearest com -link, said Randall.\n\n Soren stopped and turned, miming a puzzled expression. But the nearest com -link is back in the roo he said, and then leaped.\n\n Randa ll saw the blow coming and shifted just a little, but still took a glancing blow in the shoulder;\nthey tumbled down to the floor together, rolling back and forth. Randall kicked him hard and then tried to wriggle free, but Soren wouldn't let go. Randall wa s faster, Soren knew, but he was stronger. If he just didn't let go of his hold, he might keep the advantage.\n\n Randall kicked him hard in the face, but Soren was already  working his way up the man's body. Randall ke pt kicking, trying to work his arms into position for a choke hold, but before he managed, Soren had straddled his hips and locked both hands behind Randall's back. He gave a shout and squeezed as hard as he could.\n\n Pain shot through his own arms and ches t. Randall gave a groan and started to struggle harder, dragging Soren down the hall with him. Hold on  , thought Soren. Just hold on.  He squeezed harder, burying his face against Randall's chest as the latter pummeled his arms and head and then tried despera tely to reach behind his own back to break Soren's fingers.\n\n Not the way you're used to fighting, is it? thought Soren.\n\n Randall was shouting now, then suddenly he went limp.\n\n Too soon , thought Soren, he's faking  , and held on.\n\n But Randall kept still. Partch, Soren realized, was talking to him, pounding him on the back, his face just a few inches from Soren's own.\n\n What? hissed Soren.\n\n Snap out of it, man. I tranquilized him. Let go of him before you kill him. Let's get out  of here.\n\n He turned his head to see the tranquilizer dart embedded in Randall's shoulder. The faked limpness. Carefully he unclasped his hands and worked his way free. Randall was fighting the drug, not quite under, but could move little more than his  eyes. Soren felt his chest. Maybe a broken rib or two, but probably that was all. And he wouldn't be out for long.\n\n Let's get out of here! said Partch again and started down the corridor.\n\n Soren took a last look at Randall and then started after him. Partch moved in a rapid walk, fast enough to look to the compound's AI like he had somewhere he needed to be five minutes ago, but not fast enough to seem like he was running. Soren tried to follow his lead, quickly realizing he was heading toward the comp ound's airfield.\n\n There's an older Longsword, Partch said as Soren caught up with him. It's pre -prepared and hacked for us, complete with a dumb AI construct that I fast -grafted to convert him to the cause. We make for that and get it in the air, get away from the base, and to the drop point as fast as we can.\n\n NINE\n\n ___________\n\n But before they had even entered the field, alarms started sounding. By the time they were in the Longsword and taking off, a good h alf-dozen ships were being crewed, ready to take off in pursuit. Plus , thought Soren, the planet is surrounded by Orbital Defense Platforms. This is a crazy idea.\n\n The first warning shot flashed past them before they had even cleared the atmosphere, shakin g the ship slightly. It was quickly followed by two more, precision shots, even closer, that shocked the ship from end to end. Partch looked scared.\n\n Evasive maneuvers, Captain Teach! he instructed the AI.\n\n The latter flickered to holographic life on the console before them. His construct was a pirate captain, bristling with pistols, with a gold -toothed grin and an ebony beard in braids.\n\n Have been evading all along, lads, Teach said. There's just too ma ny of the bastards. He put one hand to his ear, pretended to listen. Signal coming in care to hear it?\n\n Partch, holding on to the arms of the chair with white -knuckled fingers, just nodded.\n\n Longsword, said a voice that Soren did not recognize. You  have not been authorized for takeoff. Return to base immediately.\n\n Seems like they should have sent out that before  they started firing across our bow, said Soren.\n Well, they did, the AI admitted. But I knew you wouldn't want to parley with such s callywags.\n\n Partch groaned. A shot caught them, burning across the wing, inflicting light damage and giving the Longsword a worrying wobble. The atmosphere was thinner now but they still hadn't broken free of Reach 's gravitation.\n\n How long until we reach our rendezvous? asked Soren.\n\n Teach gave a hearty laugh. Astronav is unstable after that hit, he said. I can't say that we're likely to go anywhere we want at all, even once we're free of the planet's gravity .\n\n Oh God, oh God, said Partch. We're going to die!\n\n We'll have to turn back, said Soren. Teach, let them know we surrender.\n\n A blow caught them from behind, spinning the craft almost all the way around. Black smoke, Soren realized, was billowi ng around them.\n\n Never surrender, said Teach, his hologram flickering. Besides, too late for that. Systems are being shut down before they go critical. A pleasure knowing you, lads.\n\n He vanished. The lights flickered and went out. The craft spun and spiraled, slowly stabilizing. Then gravity began to sink its claws into it and it started down.\n\n Buckle in,  said Soren to Partch. Backup power kicked in, stuttered once, then went out again. He flicked the controls over to manual. The engines were gone but, unlike some of the other USNC spacecraft, the Longsword had enough of a wingspan that he might manage to bring it down even without the engines. The flaps he could manually control at least in theory. He'd never flown one before, but he'd flown sims of the Longsword's various predecessors and variants, back when he was a Spartan, and crash -landing was one of the scenarios. It should work. With a little luck, they might even survive.\n\n\n\n HE ENGAGEDmanual, grabbed hold of the stick with both hands, and pulled back, trying to level the craft out and bring it  down as softl y as he could. The fighters behind him were no longer firing, able, no doubt, to see that the Longsword was in trouble.\n\n They were going faster now, a slow whine building around the aircraft. It was hard to hold the stick in place. Partch, he saw, was pas sed out from fear, g's, or a combination of both.\n\n They were just above the clouds now, then moving down and through them, the Longsword buffeted back and forth by odd crosswinds. He let the craft settle a little further until they burst out of the bottom  of clouds, and then he banked, trying to get a clear view of what was around them. Kilometers of farmland in most directions, more inhabited towns and districts in others, but there, in the distance, almost out of sight, a shimmer of green that he hoped w as one of Reach's vast swathes of deciduous forest.\n  Teach, he said, Any life left in you?\n\n There was no response. He would have to try to eyeball it, figure out how to come down in a way that would get him close enough to the forest for a quick esca pe while still letting him land on open ground.\n\n He circled once and saw the pursuing ships still there, just coming through the clouds now, hanging back a little distance, waiting. He pointed toward the green line and started down.\n\n He was, he quickly r ealized, too high, but better too high than too low. He dipped and corrected. There, that was more or less right. Yes, he saw as they came closer, definitely forest. He'd have to come very close and then try to bring the Longsword along its edge, keep it t here more or less once they hit the ground. Then, if he survived the crash, he'd simply disappear.\n\n Lower now. Nearly able to make out individual trees. This was the tricky part, banking just right and then correcting and then descending, trying to keep i t all straight. Partch awake and screaming now. Ignore it if you can  , he told himself. No, not quite, coming in too close to the trees. Starting away again, but  too late, the wing clipping the treetops and starting t o come asunder. Out of control now, shaking and shuddering, the craft falling to pieces around him. An engine torn free and crashing through trees as if they were toothpicks. Hold on, Soren  , he thought, hold on.  One part of his mind was screaming, screaming . The other part was calm, cold. Why worry, Soren?  that second part was asking, as the plane around him caught fire and, screeching and falling apart, gouged a half-kilometer -long channel along the ground. You've lived through much worse  , it was telling him.You should be able to live through this.  Partch, he saw from the corner of his eye, was dead, his neck broken, his eyes glazed over. Soren's arm seemed to be on fire. He could see the ground and the sky through cracks in the craft as what was left of the fuselage turned over and over again. Metal burning and grinding around him, he waited for whatever god that controlled the farce that was his life to flip some charred and malformed cosmic coin and decide his fate.\n\n EPILOGUE\n\n ___________\n\n There was a kn ocking on the door. Or rather a rapping on the doorframe: The door had already slid open, revealing Chief Petty Officer Mendez, still in fatigues, an unlit Sweet William jutting from one corner of his mouth.\n\n Dr. Halsey looked up from her desk. Well? sh e said.\n\n I've been to the site, said Mendez, taking the chair at the other side of the desk. She could still smell the smoke in his clothing. I've looked at the wreckage. Not much left. Most of the fuselage is gone and what' s left is mangled, hardly worth much even as scrap. There was a fire as well. There's a body, charred pretty much beyond recognizing, but it doesn't belong to Soren -66.\n\n How can you be sure?\n\n Mendez gave her a look. Wasn't deformed, he said. And  no evidence of augmentation. Not to mention he was barely six feet, even when you account for fire damage. Must have been the missing technician, Partch running DNA now. We don't know how that one got in here in the fi rst place take one look at his background and he has all the earmarks of a rebel. We've got some sort of problem with somebody higher up in security.\n\n I'll look into it, said Dr. Halsey.\n\n You do that, ma'am, said Mendez. If I were you I'd run the c heck again on everybody.\n\n He took out his lighter and held it near the end of his cigar. Before lighting it, he raised his eyebrows inquisitively. She shook her head. A faint look of disgust crossing his mouth, he put the lighter away, leaving the cigar unlit.\n\n Anything else, Mendez? she asked.\n\n We looked at the parts torn free as well, what we could find of them in the woods. No evidence of him there either. Could be he was thrown out early on. If that's the case, we'll never find the body. Or could  be he made it out in one piece.\n\n You think he's still alive? Dr. Halsey asked.\n\n Mendez shrugged. No way to tell, he said. All I'll say is that it's strange that we didn't find any trace of him. Could be alive, I suppose, but it's not likely, even for a Spartan. Considering the kind of luck that Soren -66 had to this point, it's hard to imagine things working out well for him. He paused, meditative. Then again, he said, maybe his luck was about due for a change.\n\n Dr. Halsey nodded curtly. How' s Randall doing? she asked.\n\n Mendez snorted, lips curling back into an almost predatory smile. He's fine. Kicking himself for letting his guard down a little, but there was nothing he could have done and as far as I can tell, he didn't let down much. He  might have taken Soren -66, but couldn't take both him and somebody armed with a tranquilizer. He did what he could. It's good for him to go through something like this. In the long run, he'll be a better soldier because of it.\n\n Halsey nodded. Sink or swim  , she couldn't help but think. And what was it Soren had said, a few years back now? That he didn't want to be left behind? An incident like this would make Randall less cocky, would get him scrambling to make sure  that he was up to snuff.\n\n I've inserted ground troops. Set them combing the woods for the body, said Mendez.\n\n They won't find him, Dr. Halsey said.\n\n Maybe not, he said. Still it'd be nice to be able to wrap things up, to have some closure.\n\n You won't get it. Pull your men back in and file him MIA, said Dr. Halsey.\n\n Not KIA?\n\n She shook her head. Not without a body. He's lived through a lot and had a lot of bad luck along the away. He lived through pain that killed some of the other recru its. We should have figured out something for him, some better way of making use of him. I'd bet he's out there somewhere, still alive.\n\n If he's out there, we can find him.\n\n No, you won't, she said. He grew up living in the forest. You'll find him only if he wants to be found. You might as well pull your troops.\n\n But\n\n She reached across the desk and touched his arm. Let him go, Franklin, she said, her voice softening. He's no threat to us.\n\n He's an augmented, Spartan -trained insurrection ist sympathizer. How is that not a threat? he asked.\n\n He's no traitor. He's just a lost soul, looking for a direction. I know him. Trust me.\n\n What about  he started to answer, then thought better of it, stopped. He stood, saluted her, and went out, leaving her to her thoughts.\n\n ___________\n\n GONE NOW , she thought.\n\n Was I wrong? she thought. Should I not have given him the choice? Should I not have brought him into the Spartan program in the first place?\n\n She ran a finger slowly through Deja's hologram construct, watched the AI clutch her clay tablets closer to her chest and stare at her, puzzled, curious.\n\n Had she been wrong? She sighed. Too late for it to matter either way.\n\n Penny for your thoughts, said Deja.\n\n Dr. Halsey shook her head. Deja smiled. Then she shrugged and disappeared.\n\n Whether she'd been wrong or right, Dr. Halsey realized, she was committed now. She'd had seventy -five lives to watch out for, seventy -five lives depending on her, sev enty-five lives weighing on her conscience. Even if it was down now to less than half that, there were still several dozen Spartans depending on her. Not to mention the weight of all those already dead. The future of millions might depend on them, on how w ell she'd done her job. Not might  , she corrected herself, did .\n\n She straightened her shoulders, shifting under her burden, and went back to work.\n\n\n\n STOMPING ON THE HEELS  OF A FUSS\n\n\n\n ERIC RAAB\n\n THE  INTENSEstink and splatter from the Brutae's roar woke Connor Brien instantly a web of spittle connected the beast's jagged, bloodstained fangs. The smell of the Brute's breath was bad enough, but as he tried to wipe the wet off his face, he just set the o dor deeper into his mustache, beard, and all over his hands. He convulsed, gagging once before vomiting the last MRE he'd eaten. He kept his eyes on the ground, knowing to avoid eye contact with the gray -haired beast, something he learned from all of his s tudies before arriving. He'd watched video feeds of humans who dared to stare defiantly at Brutes and were beaten into mush in seconds. Even the slightest eye contact was some form of challenge they could not resist.\n\n His last memory was falling from the tree he'd set up as his surveillance point. He'd been watching a trio of the beasts as they gestured to one another, trying to track a human that they'd let escape from captivity for the fun of hunting him down. He thought he'd be safe up high, but he quic kly learned that the Brutes not only had a great sense of smell but they were excellent climbers. He had fallen while panicking, reaching for his tranq dart gun as one of the Brutes climbed quickly  toward him. He fel t down by his leg and breathed a sigh of relief. Its reassuring bulk was still strapped to his ankle.\n\n He kicked himself for not having his M6, which sat nestled in his pack at his base camp; but then he realized, what good would it do? Another dozen or s o Brutes hovered behind the one who treated him to his wake -up shower. Varying in shades of brown and black, tan and gray, each hulking beast seemed more fierce and frightening than the next. They each stood at about nine feet, and though he didn't dare to  look, they all seemed to be casting hungry eyes on his five -foot-five frame. Even if he could take out twelve of them, the thirteenth would rip him to shreds.\n\n He surveyed his surroundings. It was a makeshift camp, all centered around a large Covenant sh ip. The nearby outpost's shops and cabins had clearly been ransacked, the camping equipment and supplies strewn among what looked like thousands of human bones, all still with dried blood and muscle clinging to them. He even noticed a few methane tanks sca ttered about and the charred remains of Grunts. They were eating their own.\n\n He turned to survey his fellow captives and the smell really set in, death clinging to the roof of his mouth. They all hovered together but there was no fence or wall keeping the m in. He thought immediately that he could run for it, but as he looked at the other prisoners and the mounds of human carnage surrounding the camp, he knew that was a bad idea. None of the prisoners looked anywhere near well. Shreds of soiled clothing hun g in tatters from their malnourished bodies. Knotted hair on their heads and faces, bloodstained hands and teeth, unhealed scars and open wounds, mounds of excrement .  . . no one looked capable of moving, except him. And judging by the way this beast welco med him awake, that wouldn't last very long. Why the Brutes had been keeping any of them alive was beyond his understanding.\n\n He'd spent four days watching this camp from about a mile  up a rolling hill of forest, an d as soon as he'd arrived he knew it was a bad scene. Reports had the human occupancy of Beta Gabriel at barely five hundred people. But judging by the carnage he'd seen strewn about the forest, it had to have been much more. Beta Gabriel was a blip on the  map, an uninhabited planet that a group of entrepreneurs turned into a secret society, an outdoors getaway: a place where the wealthy came to hike, hunt, go on spirit quests, or to get in touch with themselves or whatever they got in touch with. There  wasn't a lot of commerce or buildings on the planet, just a few supply shops, a basic landing port, a few rustic cabins strewn about, and a community lodge outfitted with information on the planet and maps of the area.\n\n In the time he'd studied the Brute s from his tree, he had witnessed some of the most vulgar and brutal treatment of another living species he'd ever seen. It had been completely unbearable to watch, let alone understand. The Brutes had turned their human captives into toys. Some were tortu red in despicable ways, pitted against one another in games that even Brien couldn't make out the rules for at least not at that distance.\n\n Connor Brien was one of the Office of Naval Intelligence's top operatives, recruited by ONI after the Covenant firs t attacked Humanity. His work in linguistic anthropology was as good as it gets, most noted for deciphering the language and sociological structure of a lost tribe discovered deep in the tundra of North America that had survived hundreds of years in an ela borate cave dwelling. Their origins dated back some six hundred years, and Brien linked their societal structure back to a small charismatic cult that emerged in the early 1970s.\n\n As an ONI intelligence officer, he had played an integral part in unravelin g the methodology behind the Covenant by brilliantly decoding the sign language of a captured Covenant Engineer, and had been the commanding ONI officer on some of the most harrowing attempts to capture Covenant species alive. He  had an extreme taste for adventure. He was fearless and brilliant, as relentless as a man can get. He earned the nickname Kip among his peers, an homage to Rudyard Kipling, a nineteenth -century novelist and adventurer. He actually looked a bit like Kipling, with his bushy eyebrows and salt -and-pepper beard.\n\n But it was one fateful day that really put him on his path. He and a team of Marines had actually succeeded in subduing a Brute -led siege of their ship as they traversed for the first t ime into Covenant space. They managed to tranq the six Brutes who boarded, but they should have killed them. When he got a really close look at them he was in awe. But the tranq darts wore off fast on these behemoths and their attempts to contain them quic kly proved feeble. The pack literally tore their way out of the synthetic alloy constraints, and even unarmed proved to be an unstoppable force. The Marines managed to wipe out their fierce gray -haired leader, and Brien hid and watched in amazement as his death incited something primal in the others, who began scrambling and recklessly attacking with more viciousness and abandon than before. But what really interested him was that there was one lone Brute whose coat was much shaggier than the others, that d idn't charge and simply watched the melee. He thought at first he might have still been suffering from the effects of the tranq, but immediately after the enraged pack overwhelmed the unprepared Marines, they turned on their inactive brother. Brien was mes merized by this murderous rampage. He was lucky to make it to the evac craft in one piece.\n\n For months their ferocity haunted him. He started gathering all the footage and reports on the race that came in. Brutes showed a diversity not only in appearance but in the way they carried themselves, as if the weight of the world was on some of their shoulders and others were free to stand tall and dominant. He intuited they must be a weathered species, hardened by many years of struggle, most likely battling amo ng themselves.  He tried numerous times to get approval to travel back into Covenant space in search of their home world. Every attempt was denied. But when Brutes started playing a larger role in the attacks on human  planets and were suspected of having some animosity toward other Covenant species, his requests started working themselves further into ONI command. When word came down that they had seized the planet Beta Gabriel, he finally got his approval. They were n esting right in his backyard.\n\n His mission was to gather as much as he could on the inner workings of this race of the Covenant, find out just how many survivors remained on Beta Gabriel, and look into finding anything among this species that could be use d to cause deeper fissures within the Covenant juggernaut. It was a simple operation. Enter point A, watch from point B, exit a few days later from the exact drop at point A. Quiet, discreet, quick. He'd never thought it would be this bad.\n\n\n\n CERETUS HA TEDbeing around these despicable creatures. If it were up to him he would have them all in his belly. He truly enjoyed the taste of their flesh, but Parabum's new honor code put an end to it. Their Chieftain decided that the simple slaying and eating of the humans had to stop;\nthere were too few of them left and it was far better to keep them around than to quickly eliminate them. Many of the others agreed, and Ceretus had to admit it was extremely enjoyable to watch them suffer. But he just couldn't stan d living among them, especially after the shame he'd been suffering since their defeat.\n\n When they' d first arrived on this forest planet, it had been a glorious day. The humans all clumped themselves together in one area, as if that made them safer. Only a few of them were even armed. Ceretus and his brother, Maladus, didn't even need their spikers; the y had more fun killing by hand. The hunts lasted for days, the bounties delicious, their bellies never fuller. Ceretus knew that the gods would have been pleased with this  conquest. It was a bittersweet revenge in th e face of such a painful loss. But as the days passed and the human population dwindled, there was still no sign that the Chieftain was ready to leave.\n\n Ceretus quickly began regretting following this cowardly Chieftain when he retreated from the massive attack. Now, as he stared at the newly found human they'd shaken from the tree, he would have much preferred to die in battle. This was not the life for a true follower of the Great Journey.\n\n He looked back toward his brothers -in-arms. All were barely cap able of understanding the path the Forerunners left for them to follow. He took his eyes from the pathetic human captives to the ship that brought them here, the Valorous Salvation  . Chieftain Parabum kept the ship constantly protected with four of his body guards. He refused to power the ship's communications; he didn't want anyone to find them. It was more and more obvious that their Chieftain feared any backlash from the defeat, and he was right to be fearful. His cowardice was punishable by death.\n\n His b rother, Maladus, had been leery when their pack had been folded into Parabum's. They were from two of the most divergent clans dating back as far as Jiralhanae history goes ancient enemies. The two clans fought even before the great civil war that knocked the Jiralhanae from a space -faring species back to being bound to their planets, forced to rediscover the great advances their ancestors had made before them. They were able to coexist again rather peacefully once the Covenant brought the unifying words of  the Great Journey, but their deep -seated distrust for one another slowly rose again .  . . and knowing the history of that clan, they had strikingly different levels of devotion to the Covenant.\n\n Parabum's clan never fully believed in the power of the god s, nor did they worship the technology left behind. They feared, in  fact, becoming too dependent on technology. Ceretus's clan was always the more intelligent, and their beliefs fell more in line with the San 'Shyuum , believing with devout faith in the Great Journey and the gods that took it before them. Ceretus's clan was terribly ashamed of the civil war that forced the Jiralhanae to give up hundreds of years of progress, and they were at the forefront of rebuilding  their scientific prowess when the San 'Shyuum arrived. They were beyond grateful for the opportunity to take to the stars once again.\n\n Parabum's clan reviled it. It was their kind of thinking that robbed the Jiralhanae of their rightful place among the C ovenant species; they used the artifacts in disrespectful ways, more opportunistic than holy. They believed only in muscle and tradition, in the strength of living without an overwhelming reliance on technology. It made them fierce warriors, Ceretus had to  admit, reliant on their strength and loyalty to one another. But Ceretus and Maladus both knew from the start that Parabum was strong in body but weak in mind. He never kept any of his underlings in line, leaving them on their own, lazy and undisciplined.  This was not the way to rule a pack. Ceretus knew you ruled through fear and manipulation, and faith in the gods. He could never respect Parabum's leadership.\n\n It was only a matter of time before someone challenged Parabum for the Chieftainship, and Mala dus had burst out surprisingly one day shortly after they had landed. It was a risky move, as they hadn't established much of an alliance in their movement against Parabum, but Maladus called out a challenge anyway. And once you called out a challenge ther e was no turning back. Maladus had always been a cunning warrior, but the truth was that Parabum was twice as strong. Parabum overpowered Maladus from the start, pummeling him blow after blow. Maladus did little damage to the Chieftain. He barely landed a worthwhile strike. The battle lasted only a few minutes before Parabum had completely subdued Maladus. Ceretus watched, his whole body tense with anger as Parabum stomped on his brother's neck, crushing it at the sho ulder blade. And to rub it in, he viciously bit into Maladus's broken neck and ripped his throat out with his teeth.\n\n It was pure disrespect. Now Ceretus couldn't stand looking at Parabum, let alone follow another order from him. And he knew Parabum knew it. Ceretus wished he were strong enough to challenge the Chieftain, but Maladus had been even stronger than him; he stood little chance.\n\n He turned back to the human prisoners and licked his fangs. He went from face to face, trying to strike intense fear  in each of the captives. There was little else to do with his time.\n\n Has our Chieftain returned from the hunt? Ceretus called out in the face of the newly captured bushy -eyebrowed human, who had quietly coiled into himself.\n\n Not yet, answered Facius , his tan fur prickling up a bit as he, too, ogled the captives. He was a particularly impressionable warrior who had become Ceretus's right hand after Maladus's demise.\n\n Perhaps enough time to fire up one of these, a little snack before the feast, serve d with a proper blessing.\n\n But the Chieftain, he will certainly smell the cooking flesh. This response came from Hammadus, Facius's brother, a young, rich -coated brown warrior that showed signs of naivete but was perhaps the strongest of the pack. Cere tus could smell the young one's fear in daring to disobey the Chieftain. It was Hammadus that got the newly found human out of the tree, and whined demands that they bring him back to the camp, to show their Chieftain, rather than eat him on the spot.\n Ever since Parabum called for the eating of human flesh only after a traditional and grossly over elaborate hunt, Ceretus couldn't bear the idea of following suit. Plus, the time it took to  bring the carcass in from th e forest caused the meat to spoil. Any worthy Jiralhanae knew all too well that the fresher the kill, the finer the taste. A savage like their Chieftain wouldn't bother to savor the feast properly in the name of the gods.\n\n What do you suggest, young brother?\n\n Well the Chieftain doesn't know we didn't kill one in the hunt, does he? Facius asked with an ever-so-slight grin. We can at least have some fun until he returns.\n\n Yes we can, Facius. And he turned back to the prisoners. This young one showed promise.\n\n\n\n BRIEN COULDN'Thelp but stare out at the human remains lining the forest pathways, hanging from trees, beaten to pulpy pieces surrounding the camp. It was disgusting. One thing was obvious:\nThese beasts had no  respect for humans at all. The same keen sense of smell the Brutes followed to his hiding place didn't seem bothered by the awful stench of human carnage. He figured it might actually seem sweet to these monsters.\n\n Though he'd only been awake in captivit y for a few hours, Brien was starting to make sense of a few of their growls and grunts, at least emotionally. It didn't take long for Brien to pick up on a brewing impatience from the circling Brutes.\n\n What do you think they're doing? Brien whispered t o the man next him, as the Brutes all began walking down the line of prisoners.\n\n You don't want to know .  . .\n\n Brien watched carefully, looking away at any sign of a Brute turning back toward him. Most of the captives slept or showed such shock and fea r that he found it impossible to communicate with many of them, but this man he immediately recognized. Dasc Gevadim was a renowned guru of a religion known as Triad. Those who followed the Triad teachings believed that we all harbored three internal lives , and spiritual transcendence  only occurred if you managed to link all three. His followers ran galaxy wide. He used to run seminars via public comm channels, but he'd disappeared about ten years ago. It was much pub licized. Many called it a transcendence, and his following grew exponentially with such reports. The sales of his vidcasts went through the roof.\n\n They're deciding which one of us to eat, huh? Brien asked, knowing the answer.\n\n Not exactly. Big Boy see med to put a stop to it. Now they only eat after they let one of us go and hunt us down, Dasc whispered back. His scraggly white beard was caked with dust and blood. His eyes glassy and red. Brien wondered if they had been feeding the captives raw human f lesh. He didn't want to know.\n\n Which one is Big Boy? That one? He pointed discreetly to the one who had knocked him out of the tree.\n No. Big Boy isn't around. Maybe still hunting, the man next to Dasc answered a sickly yet stocky man Brien recognize d as a famous big -game hunter, named Hague or something.\n\n It made sense. He'd seen a few packs scrambling around this morning, and now there was silent hostility among the beasts as if they were on the verge of doing something wrong.\n\n This especially rang true for the slightly graying, black -furred one, the one with a clean -shaven face, who had been surveying the captives and had treated Brien to a foul saliva offering. He seemed to have good control of the lot. Brien immediately calle d him Six.\n\n Just then, Six caught wind of the whispering and turned back toward them. All three men adjusted themselves awkwardly. As he made his way closer, Dasc was quickly overrun with some of the deepest fear Brien had ever seen. Fear was never in Bri en's blood. He was usually ready for any end that might meet him, but as this man -eating giant beast lumbered over toward him, his body trembled in fright.\n\n Six stopped right in front of the cringing Dasc. His nostrils  flared as he looked closer, grabbing at Dasc's arms and poking at his scrawny build. He then made a grunt that was obviously a summoning or a name. Two other Brutes made their way over; one tan that Brien dubbed Butch, and the huge, rich brown one he'd  thought was Big Boy. He quickly referred to him as Ludo, though he couldn't figure out why. He wondered if any among them were female. It was impossible to tell. In all of his research, he'd never positively identified one.\n\n Six grabbed Dasc in one big r ip with his right hand, but when Hague leaped back startled, his eyes must've met Six's. The Brute immediately dropped Dasc, pulled Hague out and tossed him toward the other Brutes. Dasc's body lay limp and unconscious beside Brien, and judging from the sm ell he'd lost control of his bowels.\n\n Brien and the other captives watched fearfully as Six let out a roar and a hand motion a wider summons and a crowd started to gather around. Hague wobbled himself upright, trying to be as brave and defiant as one coul d when surrounded by nine -foot-tall hairy beasts, all able to crush you in a blink and drooling in anticipation of a fresh meal.\n\n Just as Brien finished counting the fifteen Brutes surrounding Hague, one of them ripped the famed hunter up by the leg and h eld him upside down. The others gave roars of laughter. The old saying always held true; laughter was the same everywhere, even in the Covenant. Hague struggled to rise, trying desperately to wiggle himself free, when another grabbed at his other leg. The crowd goaded them on and another Brute grabbed an arm, and that's when Brien couldn't look anymore. He watched as Six suddenly seemed to lose interest as well, wandering back beyond the crowd, to the edge of the forest. He couldn't quite place why the beas t would incite such a spectacle and walk away, unless it was to impress.\n\n Hague's screams sent shivers through Brien's bones and he shut his eyes. Then the screams stopped with a chorus of  crunches and yells from th e Brutes. His mind's eye painted it black. The hollering Brutes slowly gave way to silence and Brien opened his eyes again. The crowd had dispersed, and standing amidst the torn and bloodied remains of Hague was undoubtedly the one Dasc had referred to as Big Boy. Clad in a few strokes of armor and with his gray -brown hair unkempt around his snout, the hammer -wielding leader definitely was one of the biggest Brutes Brien had ever seen. He stood there silently. Brien looked around for Six; he was nowhere to be found.\n\n\n\n CERETUS WATCHEDfrom the darkness as Chieftain Parabum stood silent with his hammer over his shoulder. Behind him were his security chief, Jupentus, and his right hand, Brunus. Two of the dumbest Jiralhanae Ceretus had ever encountered. They  each had dragged in a human corpse behind them. Parabum took in his pack with disappointment.\n\n Looks like a bit of fun was had here, he said, signaling the human remains with his hammer. Without me. Parabum lifted the torso, a string of muscle still connected the head. Ceretus's stomach growled. A plump one, too. Who led this game? He looked around to see, but everyone was bowing their heads in respect.\n\n Ceretus knew no one would confess; it was too risky. Parabum never kept a cool head for anythin g. He chose awkward battles to fight, found disrespect where none was intended. He was one of the worst Chieftains Ceretus had the displeasure of serving. He watched hungrily as the head of the human sway off the juicy torso. He had been looking forward to  feasting on this one, but now it would certainly spoil. Brother Golubus had come really close to making the fatter ones taste like Thorn Beast, and he missed that delicacy as much as he missed the brothels back on Teash. The humans ruined any chance of re turning to such pleasures. Parabum ruined it, really. But here  he was listening to a Chieftain who couldn't even properly sermon the pack. There was a lot of hate in Ceretus's heart, mostly for the humans who put him  herebut he was happy to focus all his hatred on this ancient clan enemy and the bastard who disgraced his brother. He couldn't hold the hatred in much longer. He'd rather die than rot in the shadows of this coward.\n\n It was me, my Chieftain, who called for the preparation. Ceretus emerged boldly from the darkness. Our brothers were getting restless in their hunger, and I feared you'd be late in returning. He quickly hid his bravery, taking on a much humbler tone as a shred of fear took over.\n\n Ceretu s, do you not have faith that your Chieftain is the greatest of hunters, a fierce and keen tracker, especially of these simple creatures? Parabum was obviously trying to test him. The Chieftain walked toward him with no fear.\n\n I have no such doubt, Chie ftain, Ceretus said as he approached, bowing before him at an arm's length. This was a kill from our hunt, and we figured we'd go ahead and get it prepared while it was still fresh. He bowed before him, keeping his eyes on the ground in front of him. Th e charade pained him.\n\n Parabum grabbed his throat; his nails, digging through Ceretus's fur, piercing his skin. Not one of these pathetic creatures is to be touched without your Chieftain to sanction it. Not one. Ceretus struggled to keep his eyes ave rted, his shame apparent in his lack of challenge. And like a switch going off, the Chieftain released his grip, his attention diverted to the human pen.\n\n What is this! Parabum slowly waked toward the pen, Ceretus gasping for air. A new human emerged?!\n\n Ceretus looked over toward Hammadus, who was watching in excitement.\n Hammadus shouted proudly, We found him up in a tree, my Chieftain. I climbed up and the coward fell to the ground in  fear before I could eve n reach him. A blessing from the gods, Chieftain. Perhaps there are more out there. We brought him back here .  . . he will make a great hunt, I'm sure. Being able to climb so well and all.\n\n Parabum looked annoyed. Ceretus watched as the Chieftain wandere d over to where the hulking young warrior stood, his head returning to a humble and fearful bow.\n\n A find indeed, Parabum added, assessing the now frightened Hammadus, who stood almost a foot taller and wider than his Chieftain. Parabum brought his hamme r from his shoulder to the ground. Ceretus knew that once Parabum caught a whiff of fear he would dig in deep, just as he had just done to him.\n\n Ceretus watched as Parabum tried to intimidate Hammadus. He knew the young warrior was getting stronger, and t his was his another attempt to scare him into servitude. Perhaps the smartest move Parabum had yet to pull off. Ceretus would have to be smarter.\n\n Once Parabum felt Hammadus was sufficiently cowed, his tone took a celebratory note and he addressed the res t of the pack. Tonight we feast on three of the pathetic creatures. May we consume their flesh as an offering from the gods. Enjoy, my brothers; once again we dine like kings. Parabum looked out to the others as they cheered obligingly. Ceretus, clutchin g his pierced throat, gave the vainglorious Parabum's back a secret, hateful stare as he walked away; he loathed his Chieftain's awful benedictions more than anything. They were empty words and not at all inspiring or meaningful. A facade of faith. There w as no way he was going to endure another pathetic attempt at prayer like that. The gods were truly laughing at them. He could eat his shame. But he hoped Hammadus could not.\n\n\n\n BRIEN WATCHEDas the Brutes gathered for their meal. But the sight of watchin g human flesh being served, let alone enjoyed,  was too much for him to handle. There was no surviving this. Even if he had enough time to establish some kind of communication with the Brutes, it would be in vain. He had to escape. By his count he had less than forty -eight hours until the exfiltration craft would arrive. He felt a hand on his hunched back.\n\n You never get used to it, Dasc said quietly. You just hope someone will get here soon before they pull your c ard . . . Thought you were the first of a cavalry, but I guess not.\n\n I'm Dr. Connor Brien. I came down here to gather some intel on them, indicating the Brute dinner party with his head, but this .  . . this is .  . . Brien couldn't even complete the t hought.\n\n The two shook hands. I'm .  . . Francis.\n\n So this is transcendence? Brien used his eyes and bushy brows to compliment his sarcasm, making sure his tone called out the man's lie. The smell of the man, of the whole human pen, was not easy getti ng used to. He jerked his head back slightly to keep a good distance.\n\n Hmmm, my being betrays my guise. It was, for quite some time .  . . So you came in here alone?\n I was supposed to be here for just a short time, assess the situation. Communications with the port AI were destroyed almost immediately upon the siege. No one knew if there were any survivors. He turned to watch what appeared to be a ceremonial prayer be fore the meal, Big Boy sitting majestically above the pack.\n\n A woman prisoner crept over. Long, straight, gray hair flowed down her shoulders, her body so thin her raggedy clothes swam on her. She would've been pretty under better circumstances. She looke d hours away from dying.\n\n Are you here to save us? The look in her eyes was enough to break Brien's heart. She was holding on to any hope she could find.\n\n Brien couldn't answer. Has anyone tried to escape?\n\n Almost every day .  . . someone makes a run for it. This came from another prisoner, a brown -skinned man with the remains of an athletic build. But look at those monsters; they cover more ground in one step than we do in three.\n\n Brien suddenly became ext remely self -conscious of his girth. He was the only one of the remaining prisoners who had any meat on his bones. He knew his time was short. Do they eat anything else, besides .  . . well, us?\n\n They did eat the little frog -looking aliens they brought w ith them, and they have brought back game from the forest, but .  . . Dasc gestured a thumb over to the feast. They seem to like us the best.\n\n Brien watched in silence as the Brutes gnawed meat off human bone. He'd studied cannibals before, but he alway s knew they had some sort of doctrine behind their reasons for eating flesh. Not that it made it any better, but he understood it. These animals killed for the sake of killing. Even killing and eating those who shared their faith and alliance. Brien wonder ed if this was representative of the whole Brute mind -set or just this single pack. Regardless, these beasts were natural human predators, even beyond the war.\n\n He moved his eyes from Brute to Brute beforing returning his gaze to Big Boy. The beast gestur ed and growled wildly from his makeshift throne. Unlike the battle footage he'd watched and the Brutes he'd encountered personally on High Charity, Big Boy didn't wear the highly decorative armor of most Chieftains. He was barely outfitted in armor at all:  a few protective shards in key places, but nothing like he'd seen on the other leaders. Big Boy now sat listening to one of his captains as he growled out a tale, riotously laughing time and again, but at the same time suspiciously eyeing another crowd th at had formed near a campfire. Brien followed his worrisome gaze.\n\n Six was hovering over a fire, holding court for eight of the other Brutes. They too tore at the human flesh, but remained transfixed on whatever sto ry Six was telling. His shaven face stuck out in opposition to Big Boy's gruff visage, as if Six took pride in grooming himself on a daily basis. Surely a sign of aesthetic difference, and judging from their encounter earlier and the way they eyed one anot her, definitely a sign of conflict. He guessed Six was either from a smaller clan vying for power or simply found himself outnumbered among this more barbaric group, but he seemed to be gaining the attention of more and more of them, especially Butch and L udo. He sensed hostility before; now he smelled the beginning of an inevitable clash.\n\n Stomping on the heels of a fuss .  . . Brien said to himself, but loud enough to confuse the others who heard him.\n\n They all looked oddly at him. He caught their eyes .\n\n It's from an old song my mother used to sing to me.  Hold no court, know no rust, just stomp, stomp, stomp, on the heels of a fuss.'\n\n What's it mean? Dasc asked.\n\n It means I think we might have chance to get out of here.\n\n\n\n THE NEXTmorning Ceretus woke with nothing but challenging Parabum on his mind. The one thing that this awful predicament provided him was the discontent of some of his fellow Brutes. While Parabum and his cronies felt like they had finally achieved a king dom on this planet, a few of the others truly longed for home and were getting impatient with Parabum's excuses for not departing. He knew this retreat would be met with severe punishment from the Covenant, most likely sentences of death when presented to the tribunal. As soon as they powered up the Valorous Salvation,  they would be discovered, hunted, and destroyed. He needed witnesses and allies to expose Parabum's and his captains' treachery and blasphemy.\n\n The you ng naive Hammadus was the only one here strong enough to defeat Parabum in a challenge, but it would take a lot to push him to attack, even in the wake of the Chieftain's shameful treatment of him. He followed the chain of command to a fault, betraying him self with his own fear constantly. But Ceretus thought of one powerful tool to fire him up: Hammadus's brother and best friend, Facius. He was older, more assured, and could control his emotions a bit better. The two were inseparable, and though he did not  like the idea of using a devout Jiralhanae like Facius as a means to an end, it was the only hope he had.\n\n He walked over to the two who were once again eyeing the remaining captives.\n\n Not many of them left, my brothers, none with meat to savor, except  for the new one. Ceretus said.\n\n Chieftain was out of line last night. Hammadus was merely excited to entertain him with a great hunt. Facius stated the obvious.\n\n He will use any attempt he can to dig into our fear. We need to leave this place, retur n home. The Chieftain is disgracing us in the eyes of the gods with his cowardice. Ceretus appealed to their honor as best as he could.\n\n But he is Chieftain, what can we do? Hammadus pleaded, excreting fear again.\n\n He's no real Chieftain. He's a barb arian who would surely choose to stay here forever rather than suffer the shame the San 'Shyuum will inflict on him. Shame he deserves, and we'll deserve it, too, if we don't stop him. He's a faithless savage, just like his bloodline has proven to be in th e past.\n\n What do you suggest, Captain? By his tone, Facius suspected he was leading him into something.\n\n My clan has been at odds with Parabum's long before the great civil war. I'm surprised I survived last night. And any  subordination from me will surely be met with a deathblow. I think you, Facius, should make a request on behalf of the pack. Your two clans have much more in common with one another. He may listen to a cousin like yourself if the argument is p resented properly. I have been thinking all night on the matter, and perhaps this could work .  . . Suggest to him that we reboard theValorous Salvation  and stow him away, as if he were killed in combat. Perhaps suggest yourself to act as Chieftain. We thro w ourselves on the mercy of the Prophets, blame faulty coordinates, mutiny, anything that we decide is feasible .  . . and if they don't hunt us down and blast us out of the sky, we set coordinates for Warial; it is the farthest -flung of our colonies. There  we attempt to assimilate, asking the gods for forgiveness and serving them entirely. It's our only hope, other than dying slowly here with the gods' backs to us.\n\n Ceretus watched the eyes of Facius and Hammadus as they assessed the idea, exchanged glanc es. Ceretus knew that neither of them was very smart, but they were among the most devout in this pack\n. . . and the idea of being left behind on the Great Journey brought about true fear in them. He could smell it. At least the gods will know you tried,  he added.\n\n Ceretus watched as those words sunk deep into their minds.\n\n Do you think it will work, that he'll listen to me? Facius asked rather dubiously.\n\n Hammadus grabbed his brother by the shoulders. If he doesn't, I' ll be there to protect you, brother.\n\n Ceretus nodded gravely, concealing a pleased smirk.\n\n\n\n BRIEN'S PLANwas a long shot, but it was their only hope. Haunted by the memory of the rampaging Brutes he'd barely escaped, and what he knew from studies and his experiences so far here, these aliens were pack creatures and followed  alpha males. Eliminate the alpha males and you'd have a bunch of thugs. Pit those thugs against one another somehow and you'd get a chaotic brawl. Then they could make a run for it. The exfil point was about five miles up through the thick forest, over the hill. If his guess on time was correct, they had about eight hours before the Calypso hit the rendezvous point, which meant they needed to a ct at the first opportunity and hope for a miracle.\n\n He had waited until the Brutes were mostly asleep before feeding the others the plan. Judging by the health and shape of his fellow captives, he knew if any of them made it with him off this planet it would be a miracle.\n\n But his plan was based on one necessity. He needed a confrontation between Big Boy and Six. As best as he could gather, these two were the alpha males of this pack: Big Boy by force, Six by brains. If he could tranq the two of them jus t after they started fighting, the others would be lost and hopefully argue and battle amongst themselves, creating enough of a distraction for them to make a run for it. He had about two miles until he made it back to his camp, where he had the M6 in case the Brutes did come following. Then he'd have at least a few hours before the exfil craft came for him. It was the best he could come up with.\n\n The entire hostage camp was on alert for Six and Big Boy. The morning was relatively slow, and Brien was compl etely transfixed by an impromptu meeting between Six, Ludo, and Butch. If Brien had to guess judging by the events of last night, they seemed to be conspiring. This could be their chance.\n\n Dasc, I think we got something cooking .  . . look. He moved only  his eyes toward the hovering trio of Brutes.\n\n The three conspirators seemed reserved as they walked quietly toward where Big Boy and his entourage were gathered. The whole Brute camp diverted their attention from what they were doing to bear witness.\n\n Dasc waved the others over, and they hovered around Brien.\n\n Okay, this is it. Look for my okay and then, you two indicating the woman, Nixaliz, and another withering prisoner with a turtle face, named Vern run to the front of the pen and start screaming your asses off. Once they look toward them, the rest of you clear me a path and I'll send two tranq darts at Six and Big Boy as fast as I can, then we run like hell. Up toward the tree line at the hill. No turning b ack, like the dickens.\n\n Like the what? asked a stick of a prisoner whose thin face barely escaped his puff of hair and beard.\n\n Brien caught his eye. Like you've never run before.\n\n\n\n CERETUS WATCHEDin amazement as Parabum actually entertained the words of Facius. He actually looked like he was considering it. Maybe he wasn't as stupid as he seemed. Then he saw his tone quickly change.\n\n Cousin, we live like kings here, and judging by  the fleet back on that human planet, there will be no Covenant to return to. We need not cower at the thought of their displeasure. We wait until I say we can return. You disgrace yourself with this plan, brother.\n\n So staying here is the will of the go ds? Hammadus asked, confused from behind his brother. Ceretus caught a whiff of his fear.\n\n Will of the gods, boy? There is no will of the gods. If there is anything I've learned from all this is that no gods answer our prayers, they do not care what we do. They abandoned us long ago.\n\n Blasphemy! Ceretus erupted; he couldn't hold back. All you spout is selfish blasphemy, Chieftain.   He spat the word at him, making sure his disdain shined through.\n  Parabum's captains tensed up at the outburst, and Ce retus could sense the fear rise in both Hammadus and Facius. Parabum  raised and swung his hammer just as a wild scream distracted them all.\n\n\n\n IT ALLhappened in the blink of few seconds. After Six raised his voice , Nixaliz and Vern shouted like mad, and the captives cleared the view and Brien popped off two shots. One hit Big Boy right in the chest, just as his hammer struck the face of Six. The second shot meant for Six wedged itself into the shoulder of Butch. Al l three monstrosities hit the ground within seconds of one another, and just as he expected, chaos erupted. Ludo tensed up as one of Big Boy's captains leapt for the hammer, and then attacked him with all he had. Brien didn't waste much more time watching the melee; he ran like mad for the hills, firing tranq darts at any Brute within fifty yards of him, the other captives at his heels. Or so he thought. When he turned around only Dasc was behind him.\n\n What happened to the others? He turned, panting, eye ing the commotion behind him. He saw Nixaliz, Brute spiker in her hand, firing shots into the face of Big Boy. Her revenge didn't last long, as another Brute simply smacked her head clear of her shoulders. Some of the others were trying to make their way u p the hill slowly, but the Brutes were quick to follow, snatching them up, ripping them to shreds, some tearing into their flesh with their teeth.\n\n Come on. We gotta move, Dasc. And they took off in the direction of Brien's camp, turning every so often to make sure that they weren't leaving anyone behind or that some Brute wasn't on their tail. Their adrenaline died very close to the camp, and the two men collapsed as soon as it was in eyesight.\n\n I think we're safe for now .  . . shit, I need a break. Brien panted, throat dry and hoarse. He looked up at the sun. Exfil should arrive in a few hours or so. We still got another two and a half miles to the rendezvous point. We got time.\n\n I can't believe we did it.  Dasc barely was able to get the words out; his mouth looked dry and brittle beneath his matted beard.\n\n There are some hydro packs near the tent up there. Help yourself, bring me one, too . .  . . He looked up into the sky, smiling, knowing that he  survived another one. What he witnessed here was of severe interest to command, but there was no way they could fold these Brutes into their fight. They seemed beyond control. How the Covenant kept them at bay and of service to them was something he wante d to know more than anything. He heard Dasc coming up from behind him.\n\n Here you go, Doc. Dasc handed him the hydro pack. Never tasted sweeter. Brien could hear Dasc's slurping. He laughed to himself. Dasc Gevadim. He couldn't wait to tell his peers a bout this.\n\n So how far to the rescue?\n\n About two and a half miles, we should get moving in\n\n A bullet from Brien's M6 seared right through Brien's head.\n\n\n DASC KNEWhe would never meet that rescue craft. He devoted his entire life to Triad; to re turn to the public eye would prove him a phony, and the hearts and minds of millions would be broken, shattered. What was one man's life for the comfort and faith of countless others? He thought he heard the Calypso arrive, and imagined the recon team as t hey surveyed the area, the camp, laying all Brute survivors to waste. And it was days before he decided to head down there again.\n\n He strolled through the human and Brute carnage, taking the opportunity to kick a few Brute corpses as some sort of revenge.  With each kick he cried, harder and harder until he crawled up tucking his knees into his chest, and wept himself to sleep. He awoke hours later, the smell of all the death around him striking him anew. He turned over to his back to stare up at the night  sky. He'd never felt so alone, even knowing that all his followers were still out there.\n\n Transcendence.\n\n The word may or may not have come out of his mouth; it didn't matter.\n\n\n\n MIDNIGHT IN THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN\n\n\n\n FRANK O'CONNOR\n\n ONE\n\n ___________\n\n It's just cancer.\n\n What do you mean, it's just cancer?\n\n I mean, it's just cancer. A very simple cancer that hasn't spread or metastasized and is eminently operable.\n\n I don't mean to sound rude, Doctor\n\n I'm not a doctor, I'm a medical technician\n\n Whatever. What I'm saying is that I don't know what cancer  is.\n\n Oh. I got you. Cancer's a kind of um .  . . slow -burn, localized infection, kind of. But we haven' t really seen a lot of it since .  . . hmm, twenty -second century, according to this. Anyway, it's easy to treat, but you're going to have to have surgery.\n\n What for? I thought you said it's an infection. Can't you just irradiate or drug it?\n\n Yes, and  we're going to do both of those. But to be sure we get all of it, and don't have you back here next month, we may have to remove some tissue.\n\n What kind of tissue?\n\n Nothing you need for a date. Don't sweat it.\n\n What a bastard arse of a morning, he thought to himself. I wake up with a stomachache and end up in the medical bay with an archaic disease that was wiped out by simple gene therapy four hundred years ago. At least, according to Shipnet.  There were more than fourteen terabytes of data on Cancer, which was apparently damn -near ubiquitous in the twentieth and twenty -first centuries.\n\n His morning was about to get much worse.\n\n The ship he was in was heading into a grim unknown. The planet Algolis had been  attacked by a small but potent Covenant force. Details were thin, since the only witnesses were civilians. Civilians who'd barely made it off that world. Civilians who'd been kept deliberately in the dark about the Prototype weapons systems on that planet  and had escaped by the skin of their teeth, and by the sacrifice of a brave few Marines from the Corps of Engineers.\n\n It was a mess. And they were hurtling into it through the quantum foam and spatial uncertainty of a rushed slipspace jump. The plan was to stop short of the system itself and come in under the cover of a gas giant and a faked asteroidal trajectory an old strategy, but one that worked well enough. Find out what had happened on Algolis and make sure the weapons prototypes were completely eradicated. Then loop back on a complex and slow Cole Protocol return trip.\n\n The last mission had been complicated by a Marine sergeant going MIA. Guy the other Corps of Engineers salts called Ghost. He supposed they were all ghosts now. Or ONI was hiding something.\n\n A mess.\n\n Mo Ye, how come I have cancer?\n\n Mo Ye, the shipboard AI of the UNSC Destroyer The Heart of Midlothian  , thought for a picosecond before answering  through the medbay's directional audio feed. Nothing in your civilian, Marine, or ODST record to suggests any particular genetic preponderance. But it happens from time to time. Perhaps you're just a throwback, Baird. It would explain that Cro -Magnon brow of yours.\n\n Mo Ye's avatar, a small, angry,  and elderly looking Chinese lady in peasant's garb, flashed a rare smile as she said it and cackled through a crackling (and perfectly synthesized) smoker's cough to punctuate her joke. Her eyes sparkled with the wicked humor of the viciously old and crot chety. The projector plinth on which she stood pulsed a pleasant pink hue.\n\n Orbital Drop Shock Trooper Sergeant Mike Baird snorted back a laugh. Mo Ye was well known for her bone -dry sense of humor, but he smiled as he thought of his high school nickname:  Captain Caveman.\n\n He really did have a heavy brow; a thick ridge that capped an otherwise unremarkable, if sturdy face. A prominent rounded jawline and sharply defined cheeks helped elevate him lightly into the realm of Homo sapiens, but a low -slung, mus cular build, a close -cropped dusting of silver -black hair, and cloudy, amber eyes did little to dispel the visual notion of a rock -banging troglodyte.\n\n Don't worry about the surgery, Baird. It really is trivial. The autosurgeon will be done in less than an hour. But you'll be under for significantly longer than that. It's a straightforward but invasive procedure. I'll be observing and can retain a vid for you if you want to see the procedure after you wake up.\n\n Mo Ye spoke in an almost gentle tone, her version of a bedside manner, Baird supposed.\n\n No thanks, he said. I'll be seeing plenty of blood and guts where we're going.\n\n Let's hope not, replied Mo Ye. Intelligence is rough, but we're not expecting trouble, just a lot of rubble.\n\n When will I be back on duty? he asked. Baird was starting  to worry that this surgery would keep him shipboard. He didn't want to miss the ride when he and his squad were dropped in  hot on Algolis's night side. Quiet or not, he loved the thrill of the drop and the subsequent sweep. He wanted action.\n\n Two days, by rule, she said, but you'll be happy and ambulatory in the morning. Now go to sleep.\n\n Baird heard the pop-hiss of a pneumatic syringe and the gentle beep of his vitals as he lay in the padded autosurgeon cot, even as the narcotic slowed his pulse. He never felt the injection itself. The soft yellow glow of the medbay became a warm, reassuring sepia.\n\n The red -haired medical technician who'd given him the bad news earlier smiled through the yellowing haze and he was lulled by the slowing beat of his own heart. And then there was nothing.\n\n The Heart of Midlothian scythed through slipspace with the silent precision of  a scalpel.\n\n TWO\n\n ___________\n\n Wake up.\n\n In his dream, the voice was of his mother in Scotland, telling him it was time to get up and go to school. It was freezing outside, he knew. A biting, bludgeoning cold that punished schoolchildren before they ever made it to class. An unforgiving, frigid wind that roared in from the gray North Sea and turned little hands into useless pink mittens, unable to type or scratch on datadesks until furious rubbing and cosseting heaters warmed the blood again.\n\n He did n't want to go to school. He wanted to stay here, wrapped up in these soft blankets.\n\n Wake up. Insistent now. But hissed. Not his mother. Not Maud Baird's pleasant singsong brogue. Nope, this was thick Mandarin -accented En glish.\n The sepia glow had gone. The medbay was in near darkness, punctuated by the soft red pulse of the emergency floor lights. A dream. But goddamn if that cold wasn't real.\n\n What the f\n\n Ssssh. The hissed demand seemed to drill into B aird's ear. He realized it was Mo Ye, using the directional acoustics of the medbay ostensibly for patient privacy. But he knew, even through the groggy haze of narcotics and sleep, that something was wrong. The lights, for one thing, without even the pink  glow of her avatar to show which plinth she stood on.\n\n What's happening? Now he whispered.\n\n I'll tell you as you move, but right now if you don't put on some clothes and do as I say you will be dead in a couple of minutes. Mo Ye was using a tone he' d never heard before. He started moving.\n\n In less than a minute, he was up, dressed, and fastening his boots. The confusion and torpor of the drugs were still softening the edges of everything  . This still didn't feel real. Mo Ye began to brief him. The ne ws wasn't good. But it certainly was real .\n\n They were waiting for us when we dropped out of slip -space, she whispered.\n\n Covenant? he blurted, embarrassed even as he spoke the obvious.\n\n Yes. A small group. Not a formation we've encountered before. A t least according to my records. One Cruiser and four completely new ships escorting it. All dark gray, no surface features or lights and no weapons systems that I could discern. What they did have was a bellyful of boarding craft. And our ONI contact grou p was not there.\n\n So we were boarded?\n\n Almost as soon as we dropped out of slipspace. Perfect targeting. As if they knew exactly where we were going to exit. Inside the range of our weapons systems before I could react.  Punctured the hull in two hundred different locations and swarmed us before we could sound a general alarm. It was like exiting in the middle of a meteor storm.\n\n What about the crew? What about the men?\n\n Dead.\n\n All of them?! There was a  tremor of outrage, of fear as he raised his voice.\n\n Ssssh! she repeated. They're still here and I suspect they're heading here to the medbay for another look.\n\n This was all happening too fast. How long was I out?\n\n Twenty -three hours. And that' s why you're still alive.\n Why didn't they just destroy the ship? What do they want? he hissed back, his breath forming a frozen cloud like a literal ellipsis after the question.\n\n Me, she said. And Earth.\n\n\n\n SHE CONTINUEDher whispered briefing as he scouted the medbay for warmer clothes. They had operated like shock troops, coursing through the ship a cataract of plasma fire and Needler shards. Grunts, Jackals, and several Elites, clad in the glittering gray of the enigmatic ships. The Destroyer 's crew never stood a chance. The Marines fell in the face of overwhelming, surprise force. Even the few ODSTs aboard Baird's friends and comrades had died quickly, most before they ever reached a weapon. Almost every sidearm and firearm aboard had been se cured in one of the ship's two armories. It had been a slaughter.\n\n Those who had fought back did so with the sidearms of fallen Masters at Arms and weapons dropped by the Covenant boarding party. Few had died well. And those who lingered, their burning wounds still smoking, had been executed with ruthless efficiency. The Covenant wanted this ship clean and empty.\n\n Baird, she explained, had been spared by his narcotic slumber. The Covenant had gone from deck to deck looking for  either movement or simple life signs and terminating those who hid in terror, in dark corners of the ship. One by one.\n\n Baird's pulse and vitals had apparently slipped below whatever criteria the Covenant sought.\n\n So what the hell are they do ing?\n\n They're trying to extract me from the ship. And then they're going to try and extract Earth's location from me. By hook or by crook.\n\n What about the Cole Protocol? he asked. Aren't you supposed to destroy the ship, or self-terminate?\n\n I ca n't self -terminate. I already tried. When they boarded, they brought something new with them. Things they call Engineers. They're .  . . I'm not sure what they are, precisely, but they're semi -organic. The first thing they did was separate me from the core systems. A splinter of my persona is out here with you, but the bulk of my memories and sheer processing power are locked in Computing on the bridge. I can't access myself. This fragment of me is just a chunk I chipped off to monitor your surgery and it wa s severed along with my access to security, engines, navigation all the useful stuff. I'm not exactly running at full capacity here. This is a seriously smart group. To be honest, my own maker probably couldn't pull off that trick.\n\n Who are these bastards? he asked, half rhetorically. They were obviously what they appeared to be: a Covenant intelligence and interdiction group. Discreet black ops instead of brute force. Was this new, or just a behavior they'd never observed in Covenan t sorties? Were they connected to the discovery of Algolis's Prototype armory?\n  I have no idea who these bastards are, she said. But they've got us cornered. I can't access the ship's security; I'm almost blind. I can't even display my avatar. I have t o assume they're going to realize both of us are here, sooner or later.\n\n Why not blow the ship? Cook the whole goose? His exasperation was mounting.\n\n Two reasons, she said. First, in my present state of coher ence and security clearance, I'm hamstrung by a default  safety precaution Asimov's First Law of Robotics. I cannot under any circumstances harm or by inaction cause harm to come to a human. When I'm running at full capacity I can ignore that one at will. I used to ignore it all the time, in fact.\n\n Bugger, he said, pretending to know what an Asimov  was. And second?\n\n Second, she said, with an odd hint of chagrin in her voice, the self -destruct permissions and sequences are locked away with the other h alf of me . I can't access them anyway.\n\n He thought about what this meant for a moment. An encrypted but otherwise unguarded treasure trove of information about humanity, currently being probed and tinkered with by a previously unknown group of tech-savvy,  sneaky  Covenant.\n\n Does the Asimov thingy .  . .\n\n Rule of Robotics.\n\n Yes, yes, does the Asimov thingy only count for humans?\n\n Of course. I don't feel terribly responsible for Covenant safety, Baird.\n\n So what do you have access to?\n\n Some door s, she said. And a lot of meds.\n\n THREE\n\n ___________\n\n Holding a fire extinguisher in his hands, now marginally warmer in two layers of sterile surgical gloves, he watched his breath condense as he tried to calm himself. Motes of dust and tiny crystals of frozen liquid danced and sparkled in the chill air. In  the red pulse of the emergency lights, it looked like a faint snowstorm of blood. He supposed some of it probably was. He shuddered and closed his mouth.\n\n The oxygen was still good, but most other systems had either died or been killed by the boarding party.\n\n So we don't know if anyone is out there?\n\n Not until we open the door, whispered Mo Ye. It would be prudent to assume your awakened state has shown up on their scans. They were scanning for life signs whe n they swept the ship.\n And the plan if there's nobody out there?\n\n You make your way aft, get to the engine room, and manually instigate an attraction coordinate. We've been through the procedure. You've read it back to me. It will work. You'll escap e in a lifeboat. The ship will spin up and jump into the nearest large mass. That should be the red giant about fourteen million miles starboard. That ought to cook their goose.\n\n Aren't there safety procedures and systems to prevent this kind of shit?\n\n There were. Luckily for us the Engineers truncated those along with my systems. It should  work.\n\n But you're not sure.\n\n I'm only sure of the seconds leading up to my schism  . But I am sure that if we don't try, they are eventually going to crack my en cryption and lead the Covenant directly back to Earth, Cole Protocol be damned.\n\n He hefted the dense bulk of the fire extinguisher. Literally cold comfort.\n\n Okay, then. He breathed deeply. Calmed himself. Murmured an internal, calming battle mantra. Open the bloody door.\n\n FOUR\n\n ___________\n\n It is fair to say that the group of Covenant soldiers standing outside the medbay was far more surprised than Baird was. He was expecting unthinkable trouble. They were expecting to find a wounded, cowering, and almost certainly unarmed medical technician. What they found instead was a highly trained and  highl y capable 220 -pound Orbital Drop Shock Trooper carrying a 20 -pound titanium bottle.\n\n He didn't have time to form a complete picture, but the instinctual snapshot he took as he rolled out of the medbay doorway and right into the small group of aliens was p lenty. Four Grunts, two Jackals, and, in the shadows on the far right, a figure so tall and imposing it could only be an Elite.\n\n Christ.\n\n He came back up to his feet at withering speed, breaking the first Jackal's jaw and neck instantly with the exting uisher's unforgiving mass. Fragments of beak and tooth glittered in the dark. The Jackal simply collapsed, falling backward as the momentum of the cylinder and the human wielding it snapped the life out of him. The Carbine he was holding fell with him.\n\n Baird caught the Carbine even as he dropped his makeshift battering ram. The extinguisher landed on its activation stud and the resulting explosion of halon gas and sound bought him his life, as a Carbine round from the other Jackal, who was far less panick ed than the Grunts, sliced through his Cro-Magnon brow, nicking bone and knocking him backward on top of the fallen Jackal. As he fell, he fumbled, found, and fired the Carbine trigger. Three rounds eviscerated his would -be killer.\n The Grunts squealed an d scattered. Two of them ran right past him and vanished into the medbay. A third tripped, its plasma pistol clattering across the floor. The fourth wasn't so lucky. As Baird rose to his knees, then his feet, wheeling, trying to get a bead on the Elite there was a blur, a flash of light and thunderous impact. His breath was knocked out of him.\n\n The Carbine fell from his hands. He looked down at a strange scene. The fourth Grunt was pressed up against his belly, squirming, staring up at him and wailing. The  Grunt was impaled on a fork of blinding light, a Covenant energy sword. The twin tines of superheated, seething energy had passed through the Grunt. And through Baird.\n\n He looked up into the face of the Elite. Th e massive creature regarded him through cold black eyes. It tilted its head. Baird wondered what the gesture meant. And the Elite yanked the blade from both of them. The Grunt fell dead, Baird, back to his knees, clutching his belly.\n\n Ferocious, burning p ain seemed to consume his entire torso. He felt like his innards were boiling. He looked down at his hands, expecting to see blood. There was none. The two holes in his clothes smoldered, the flesh beneath fused and cauterized. Baird fell face forward into  blackness.\n\n FIVE\n\n ___________\n\n Wake up.\n\n His mother again. It was time to go to school. But it wasn't the same. He wasn't cold. He was burning. He was on fire.\n\n Wake up. Insistent, but worried. Not mother. Mo Ye again.\n\n I'm dead.\n\n You' re not dead. But you're not in good shape. The blades passed right through you. Scorched a lot of stuff. Missed your spine by a distance I can't even make myself repeat.\n\n I feel like I'm dying.\n\n That's not surprising. You have serious burns. And sign ificant injuries. Internal and external. I'm going to give you some meds, and we're going to try again.\n\n It didn't work out so good last time. He coughed and a spasm of pain squeezed him like an invisible fist. I'm tired. I want to go to sleep. He re alized that he did very badly want to sleep. And part of him knew what that really meant.\n\n I know, she said. I'm sorry. Her voice, a perfectly directional whisper in the dark, was filled with what sounded like a lover's sorrow. No more mean old lady.\n\n Baird tried to wriggle out from under a Jackal's body. The creature, which looked so light and birdlike, was incredibly heavy.  With a groan of pain, he pistoned his feet against it and shoved. It rolled off, and he rolled free.\n\n She told him what had happened when he blacked out. The Grunts had simply piled up the corpses their own fallen and Baird's supposed carcass on top of each other in the medbay. Mo Ye had stayed quiet.\n\n The big Elite had been suspicious a nd visibly angry. He had barked orders at the Grunts and communicated the events back to the Heart of Midlothian  's bridge, where presumably other Covenant troops and those Engineers  were attempting to crack Mo Ye's main systems. The Elite had shown a littl e more caution this time and smashed the autosurgeon.\n\n He raised himself up on one arm, then another. He grabbed the dented, scorched edge of the autosurgeon table and hauled himself up, grimacing in agony and suppressing a shriek.\n\n Meds, he gasped.\n\n Yes. Meds, she said.\n\n The dispensary clicked and hissed open. Inside the plastic cubby were four vials: two identical, full of clear liquid, the third blue, the fourth a distinctively piss -colored yellow. There was a very old-fashioned -looking pneumatic  handheld syringe gun beside them.\n\n What are these? he asked.\n\n A painkiller, a beta -blocking sedative, a metasteroid for the burns and interior inflammation, and a Waverly -class augmentor  .\n\n What's an augmentor?  he asked. But he already had an inkling.\n\n This one's a cocktail. It contains a derivative of phenylcyclohexylpiperidine, an artificial slow -release synthetic adrenalin and a rapid coagulant.\n\n You're talking about a Rumbledrug.\n\n There's no pretty w ay to paint it, she said.\n\n Rumbledrugs had become notorious in the sporadic colonial  insurrections. Notably on Hellas and Fumirole. On both worlds, they'd been used by rebels in a vainglorious attempt to fight Sp artan -IIs. The drugs were certainly fearsome. The effect on human physiology was impressive in the short term. Unencumbered by the body's normal safety limits, subjects were capable of feats of enormous strength, but the subsequent lack of control and ment al instability together with the immediate physiological damage meant that users often died long before they ever laid hands on an actual Spartan. But not before doing tremendous damage to themselves and anything that got in their way.\n\n The beta -blocker will keep you focused, she said, as if sensing his thoughts, and calm.\n\n Sweat poured down his face. His guts roiled. Pain wracked him.\n\n The plan this time?\n Same as before.\n\n He loaded the syringe, one vial at a time, and with each of the four sh ots felt progressively better. As the last one flooded his arteries with a cooling rush, he felt almost good  .\n\n He looked at his wounds through the holes in his T -shirt. The punctures were about two inches across, thick lateral slits. He felt around to his  back, twisting to see in the medbay's mirror, the darkness hampering him. Two exit wounds, a little smaller, spanned his spine. The skin around them was dark red and black, like ripples on a pond, spreading outward in twin elliptical shapes. It looked angry and painful, but he felt nothing.\n\n Mo Ye.\n\n Yes, Baird? she replied.\n\n Why didn't you try to inject me with the autosurgeon? The syringe at least looked like it would still work.\n\n Because, like I told you before, in this condition, I can' t do anything to harm a human.\n\n He nodded. I understand. How long do I have?\n\n I can't say. With the drugs, maybe an hour or two. Without  them, you'd be dead sooner. Which is the only thing that allows me to e ven tell you about the meds.\n\n Then there's no time to waste.\n\n Baird .  . . once you leave the medbay, you're on your own. I'm trapped here, dumb and useless and disconnected. They're not going to risk giving me any more access to ship systems until th ey have what they came for. 'Til they reconnect my systems. And I don't see any reason why they're going to do that.\n\n Baird looked at the mess around him. Dead bodies, but weapons too. He picked up a plasma pistol, retrieved two plasma grenades from a ba ndolier on a Grunt's armor, and grabbed the carbine from where he'd dropped it.\n\n By habit, he checked his weapons, patting himself as if for reassurance that he had everything. He patted the empty spot where his combat dagger usually sat. He looked around . On a stainless -steel tabletop was a gruesome -looking surgical blade, with a nanometer edge that glinted wickedly in the red glow. He picked it up carefully and bound the delicate surgeon's grip in a thick swath of surgical tape, creating a more practical  handle, and slid it very carefully into his belt.\n\n Baird. I wish I could do something more. Mo Ye sounded frustrated.\n\n Then wish me luck. And he was gone into the cold darkness of the ship's dead corridors.\n\n SIX\n  ___________\n\n He encountered a fro zen tableaux of carnage. The Covenant had simply left the dead where they fell, or piled them against walls. Human gore and viscera everywhere and not a trace of reciprocal Covenant blood.\n\n The drugs were working perfectly. The Destroyer was not large; he kept to the shadows and snuck through some of the ship's duct systems. He felt almost elated  , like a ghost. But he  could also feel the damage in hi s guts, a kind of dull, removed itch, like a memory of pain. And it felt wrong. He knew he was dying, but at the same time, he'd never felt stronger. He felt these conflicting clocks ticking, both counting down to something fatal. He made it undetected to the engine room in less than fifteen minutes. What he found there almost made him quit.\n\n The engine room door was scorched and hung on its track, jammed forever in a half -open position, like a slackened jaw. They'd been here, but there was no sign of them  now. Just more human corpses. The engine bay was massive, ceilings vanished completely into blackness above him, but the systems were still humming and there was more light here. More light to illuminate the bodies of the crew.\n\n Some of them he recognize d, even through horrific burns. He stepped gingerly, respectfully, over them, heading for the control head unit beyond the bulk of the Shaw -Fujikawa drive.\n\n It was a fairly banal instrument, considering its prodigious power. The slipspace drive could literally rip the fabric of the universe apart but could be controlled either remotely by AI, as was the norm, or manually, via a simple keyboard and touch -screen.\n\n Mo Ye had walked him through the procedure several times, made him repeat it back to her. It w as simple and it sounded  foolproof. As he rounded the bulk of the control panel he saw what they'd done and sighed.\n\n Melted to slag. Deliberately. And as he examined the Shaw -Fujikawa drive itself, he saw they'd attempted to wreck it too. It was impossible  to know if the drive  still functioned or not, but he knew for certain the control panel was FUBAR.\n\n Plan B, he muttered to himself and started running back the way he'd come glancing regretfully at the perfectly functioning row of lifeboat pods.\n\n The t rip to the bridge wasn't as uneventful as that to the engine room. He ran around a corner and surprised two Grunts,  one of whom appeared to be sucking food from a nipple atop a weird little tank on the floor. Baird  didn't stop to examine it. He shot one straight through the face with the Carbine and with the stock caved in the skull of the would -be gourmand. Neither had time to react or even squeak a warning, but the loud metallic report of the stolen Carbine was su re to attract attention. He kept moving.\n\n Now he really had their attention. He heard a clamor behind him as Covenant troops reacted to the sound. Every sense, every instinct in him screamed panic, but something, he liked to think his own personal tenacit y, held him steady. Kept him moving forward. Part of him knew it was the chemicals coursing through his blood. Another part of him wanted to sit down in the dark, cross his legs, and wait for it all to be over.\n He remembered walking home from school one day. The world was white with snow. Black, leafless chestnut trees spidering into the gray -yellow sky, itself pregnant with more flurries to come. He remembered the chill sweep of the Water of Leith, the tenacious little river cutting a black ribbon throug h the pristine white.\n\n He remembered carefully stepping through the snow, lifting his little legs high to make crisp, clean footprints, like Good King Wenceslas. He remembered the thwomp  as he deliberately fell backward, arms spread to absorb the impact. L ying there, staring up at the sky. The simple depth of the imprint he made in the snow protecting him from the bitter wind. He remembered feeling warm and safe and remembered thinking, even as a child, This is how people freeze to death.\n\n This is how pe ople freeze to death.\n\n What exactly are you doing, Baird? he thought to himself as he ducked under a moribund heating conduit, now glittering with ice, and into a pipe -tangled corridor not much wider than his own broad shoulders.\n\n What's plan B? Charge into the bridge and ask them to throw down their weapons? Fix Mo Ye with less than an hour to live and only the barest grasp of how an AI even works ?\n\n The plan, he decided, was to keep moving, keep shooting, and make sure that these motherfuckers rued the day they boarded The Heart of Midlothian  . The plan, he grinned to himself, was to take their precision operation and turn it into an embarrassing and m emorable clusterfuck  . He couldn't win , but he could act like a broken autosurgeon: First, do harm  .\n\n Two more Jackals sprinted by in the darkness of the main Deck 4 hallway to his right. He froze. Surreal in the blinking red strobe of the emergency lights , their birdlike gait matched their raptor skulls. Their clattering footfalls masked his own sounds.\n\n So they were looking for him. Let them look. Let them find him  .\n\n The pipes intersected and then branched ahead, blocking his already claustrophobic rout e, but he knew where he was Astronav, which meant the bridge proper was just around the corner. To his left a bulkhead wall, to his right, a gap in the pipes into the main corridor, and beyond that, the bridge.\n\n He slowed, stopped, and waited. Listening. Silence, but his jangled nerves and superattenuated senses caught something else. The slight smell of activated methane gas. Something  was here. He chanced a look around the corner, his head a blur in the darkness. Two Grunts, guarding the bridge entrance. They didn't see him.\n\n If he gave away his position now, it would all be for naught. Think  .\n\n He looked to the heavens for some kind of inspiration, seeing instead the spiderweb of conduits and pipes hanging feet below the ceiling proper. Space was a premi um on a Destroyer, and that meant sharing headroom with plasma conduits, air -conditioning, electrical cabling, and a myriad of power and life support systems, like a steel gray circulatory system.\n  He took the ugl y surgical blade from his belt and put it between his teeth, its cruel edge facing outward, and quietly hauled himself into the piping, with agility that belied his bulk, and vanished silently into the dark.\n\n When the second Grunt heard the weird choking sound from his partner and turned, he had just enough time to see the looming human's eyes glint in the darkness before the blade sliced through his own neck, almost decapitating him. His breathing apparatus hissed a mist of cold methane into the equally f rigid air. The smell of Grunt blood mingled with the gas to create a rank, coppery smell like an olfactory pastiche of human blood. Baird lowered the Grunt gently and quietly to the floor, like a sleeping baby.\n\n But Baird was shaking now. The exertions we re taking their toll. No pain yet, but God knew how much internal trauma he'd suffered, and how long he had left.\n\n He looked at the doors to the bridge. Their solidity and silence seemed to mock him. The bioluminescent blood from the fallen Grunts, blue a nd steady, cast almost as much illumination as the emergency lights, but that light was already fading, losing what potency it had. Like himself, he supposed. And the plan formed in his mind, just like that. It wouldn't work, he thought, but it didn't matter. All bets were off.\n\n Baird breathed deeply. Got control of his shakes. He wiped blood from his hands on the pants of his uniform, smoothed the stubble of his close -cropped hair, palmed the door security pad, and strode confidently into the bridge as he  were the captain himself.\n\n SEVEN\n\n ___________\n\n The scene before him was bizarre. Perhaps a dozen Grunts, several Jackals, and two Elites stood intently watching two hovering gray armored blimps, perhaps four feet long, as they trailed  their tentacles over the bridge computer terminal. Engineers  , he supposed.\n\n At the sound of his entrance one of the Grunts turned, almost bored -looking, and then shrieked an unintelligible warning as it saw who, or rather, what, he was.\n\n Baird threw down the Carbine, put his hands up, palms facing outward, and yelled as loud as he could:  I CAN GIVE YOU THE EARTH COORDINATES!\n\n The Jackals either didn't care, or more likely, didn't understand a word, and leveled  their Carbines at his head. Only a thunderous roar from an Elite stopped them from perforating his skull.\n\n The Elite stood eight feet tall. In the comparatively bright light of the bridge, Baird saw the dark gray, almost black, armor. He'd faced countles s Elites in combat, but this one was like nothing he'd seen before. The Elite's saurian face was largely hidden by an impressively decorated helmet. Whatever ranking it was, it looked important  .\n\n It was the same one who'd stuck an energy sword through him  at the medbay. And he knew instantly that the Elite recognized him too. It was staring at the burned flesh and fabric at Baird's abdomen. Then it looked at Baird's face. Baird had no idea what the Elite was thinking but hoped he recognized confusion, at l east.\n\n I can give you the Earth coordinates!  he yelled again, glancing at the circle of gun -wielding aliens now forming around him.  All I ask is that you let me go, let me take a lifeboat .Let me live.\n\n The Elite tilted his head and glanced at the En gineers. One of them rotated slowly, like an airship, its weird spiderlike eyes glinting inscrutably. It made a chirping sound, a trill warble. The Elite nodded and barked something back at the Engineer.\n\n The circle of onlookers widened a little as if to let him through and so he gingerly stepped forward. He addressed  the Engineer, wondering if he had this all right. The drugs were starting to fade, and the returning pain was making things shaky, confusing  .\n\n You have to reconnect the ship's AI system. She has the coordinates. She'll obey me, but not you.\n\n The Engineer rotated to face the Elite and again chirped. Again, the Elite barked something, glaring at Baird the entire time, shaking his head. Baird stepped forward, closer to both. The Elite snarled a final order at the Engineer and unsheathed his sword. The points of it hissed and sizzled, leveled at his neck. A fairly universal warning: Don't try anything funny  .\n\n The Engineers both turned back to this new task, literally disconnecting some of the cabling and then performing more delicate ministrations with those strange tentacles. A light flared on the bridge console and an automated voice announced blaringly, BASELINE REINITIALIZATION OF UNSC BATTLE CLASS  SMART AI  MO YE' PLEASE WAIT.\n\n A few seconds later and a small dais in front of the bridge terminal flickered to life with Mo Ye's diminutive form, brightening back to wakefulness, reconnected and fully restored.\n\n Baird turned and spoke directly to her . Good to have you back, if only for a moment. I need you to give them the slip -space coordinates for Earth.\n\n She looked back at him, trying to figure out what the hell he was up to.\n\n Mo Ye, these creatures want Earth's location. He winked.  Are you reconstituted enough to give them access to those, uh, coordinates  ?\n\n Mo Ye looked desperate, pained. Baird I have access to all the ship systems now, but they're being careful, they think you're trying to trick them. What we talked about in the med-bay is still true. I can't override the first law in my current condition.\n\n He winked again, a great big shit -eating grin spreading across his face. Security clearance: Robot  , passcode: Asimov  .\n\n An Enginee r chirped an explanation, calmly. Things seemed to be progressing as the human had promised. A sense of excitement, a murmur, spread though the assembled Covenant they realized they were on the brink of a great military breakthrough.\n\n But Mo Ye moaned as she realized what Baird was up to.  No . . . Baird .  . . wait .  . .\n Baird did not wait. Baird turned around and looked up at the Elite's puzzled face. He hauled back his right arm and with an open hand, slapped the Elite straight across the jaw with all  the force his drug-fueled system could muster. The impact broke bones in his hand, and he felt a satisfying reciprocal crunch from the Elite's jaw. The massive alien staggered, sagged, and fell to one knee, stunned by both impact and surprise.\n\n Before it  could do anything else, Baird looked him in the eye, now level with his, and said, Well, you stupid arsehole? Think you can do it right this time?\n\n The Elite roared in fury as he swung the energy sword in a scything arc and took Baird's head off cleanl y at the shoulders. Baird's body keeled lifelessly backward. Arms spread out wide, as if falling backward into snow.\n\n The Elite spun around and glared at the AI's shimmering form.\n\n Passcode accepted  , she sneered sarcastically, her eyes lit from within by some unknowable emotion  . Self -destruct sequence initiated. Four minutes and counting  .\n\n The Elite barked at the Engineers, who were already moving, herding Grunts out the door, and translating the g rave news of the impending destruction.\n\n The Elite started a quick -march back to the Covenant boarding pods, just a few floors below, glancing at an arm -mounted  chronograph. He chanced one hate -filled glance back at Mo Ye, standing, arms folded, on her plinth. She stared at him with a coldly venomous expression and spoke flatly this time.\n\n I'm kidding. There's no need for any countdown whatsoever.\n\n The Elite blinked.\n\n The Heart of Midlothian 's network of shaped nuclear charges briefly flowered in the shadow of the gas giant like a beautiful little star. Then, as the chain reaction crushed the exotic fissile materials in the engine bay, it burst outward like a supernova.\n\n The explosion washed away the Covenant Cruiser and its nameless gray escorts like a blizzard covering footsteps in the snow. And soon, all was quiet again. And cold. And peaceful. Like midnight.\n\n\n\n DIRT\n\n\n\n TOBIAS S. BUCKELL\n\n THE FI GUREin the charcoal -black body armor picked his way over the top of a shattered, stubby wing, then walked past the ruined mangle of a Pelican dropship. A large BR55 battle rifle rested at the ready, cradled between his forearms.\n He paused by the tip of t he Pelican, which had plowed into the ground on its side, and looked through the shattered windows of the cockpit.\n\n Over here, Marine.\n\n The oval black helmet swung around to look at a clump of tall orange grass behind a thick piece of granite, the morn ing sun glinting off the upside -down T -shaped visor.\n\n BR55 aimed forward; the Orbital Drop Shock Trooper moved toward the sound of the voice and pushed aside the tall fronds of grass.\n\n The 70 -millimeter chain gun from the tip of the Pelican dropship had broken loose and sheared the tip of granite clean off, then cratered into the dirt a few hundred feet away.\n\n Lying between it and the rock was a man in battle dress uniform: simple camo uflage with a few chest and hip pockets. Fairly standard.\n\n He'd obviously been thrown clear of the cockpit on impact and bounced along the dirt. Both legs looked broken, and at least one arm. Blood seeped through the BDU's legs, torso, and arms.\n\n The man's face was cut up. Enough to be unrecognizable.\n\n He had an M6 Magnum sidearm pointed at the ODST, which he let drop to the dirt next to him in exhaustion.\n\n Somehow the soldier had crawled out of his body armor, which lay all around him. A closer look revealed why: charred and melted, the ODST body armor would have burned his skin.\n\n Good to see you. The man's voice held the strange calm of someone who knew they were beyond help, so terribly injured they were pa st the pain. I wasn't sure if the call got through.\n\n The ODST crouched beside him and opened a medical pack. Biofoam, to stop the worst of the bleeding, and polypsuedomorphine to ease the man's pain. He worked as best he could, though his hands shook a bit. This wasn't training; this was a real, dying man, and the ODST was no medic. He looked around. My SOEIV landed nearby, and I was ordered over to see if I could help with a downed Pelican. But sir, you need more help than I can give you. We need to ge t you out of here. There are Covenant forces moving in on our position. We don't have much time.\n\n We have time, Private. The injured Marine grabbed the helmet of the crouched shoulder in a sudden movement, yanking the man down close to him.\n\n I've bee n doing this so long, rook, that somewhere along the line I forgot what it was all about, the Marine on the ground hissed into the reflective visor. But what I want you to remember about me is that it has been a long journey between where I started and w here I'm sitting now. I would apologize for the things I've done, but sorry's passed me by, rook. You don't see the things I've seen and come out sorry. But sometimes, if you're  not a complete monster, you come out  realizing what's important.\n  The ODST pushed back carefully, trying to make sure not to further hurt the man on the ground. Sir?\n\n He coughed, blood staining his lips and chin. All this crap started back in the Colonial Military.\n\n The ODST turned a nd looked back the way he'd come, helmet twisting, and murmured a situation report and request for backup as he reported his find.\n\n Of course, the injured man continued, I can see by your insignia you're a private, just out of training, probably your f irst jump down to dirtside. You might not even remember the CMA .  . . but back before there was the UNSC, there was the CMA .  . .\n\n Sir .  . .\n\n Shut up and listen, rookie! There's something important I have to tell you. The man' s face relaxed. He was slipping back into a world of thoughts and memories. About friends. Betrayal. Loss. If you keep your head up and do what I tell you, you might even live long enough to tell someone what happened here .  . .\n\n\n\n I SIGNEDup for the Colonial Military the hour I turned eighteen. January 3, 2524. Smartest thing I'd done up to that point. Flipped off my father, who'd stood by a giant JOTUN trundling across a flat, golden plain of wheat, and then I rode a flatbed full of corn all the way into town. Sure, the JOTUNs did the real manual labor: plowing, planting, monitoring, harvesting. But we still ended up among the crops now and again, despite the automated work the giant, one hundred -foot lawn mower -like machines did.\n\n It's just dirt, I'd told a friend about my decision to leave. And I'm sick and tired of grubbing about in it. I can't believe  my parents left a real world to travel all the way out here to dig dirt.\n\n The farming life was not my  destiny. I'd known that since the day I first looked up at the stars while riding on the back of one of the giant, automated JOTUNs, a long piece of straw dangling out the side of my mouth.\n\n No. I was going to see worlds. Pack a gun. The next time I came  back home to Harvest, I wanted to watch the girls bat their eyes at a man in uniform. Not a farm boy with dirt under his nails. I wanted to be a hard -as-nails tough -ass Marine.\n\n I walked around Utgard for the last time, strolling along the banks of the M imir River. I lit up a Sweet William cigar by the floodlit, well -landscaped grounds of the Colonial Parliament's long walls. I blew what cash I had on me on drink after drink at bars scattered all up and down the Mimir until I could barely walk.\n\n Then at sunrise, without a wink of sleep, I walked into a small recruiting office where a vaguely bored -looking desk sergeant looked me over and handed me some paperwork. After I painfully worked my way through it, he stood up and shook my hand. Welcome to the Co lonial Military, son, he said.\n  By that evening I was still not a tough -ass Marine, but a tired, hungover recruit without any hair, dressed in an ill -fitting uniform, throwing up my guts in a dirt field while a drill sergeant yelled at me. I was now Priv ate First Class Gage Yevgenny.\n\n I want to say I learned how to kill a man with my pinky, or how to use a sniper rifle to kill a fly on a log of shit from a thousand yards, but all I really learned was that I didn't like scrabbling around in the mud with l ive rounds going off over my head.\n\n But I made it through anyway.\n\n Unlike the UNSC, the CMA boot camp lasted just a couple weeks. Enough to teach you how to use your weapon, salute, march, and drive a Warthog before they booted you right on out of there.\n\n It wasn't that much more advanced than spending a week shooting gophers in the fields, or so I thought at the time.\n\n Unlike some of my fellow recruits, I at least knew how to point and shoot. As a result, I was promoted to lance corporal and got to tell a few other soldiers what to do.\n\n ThatI liked.\n\n But it still didn't prepare me for the things I was about to see.\n\n\n\n I METFelicia Sanderson and Eric Santiago at the Utgard spaceport. Felicia grew up right here in Utgard, on Harvest; Eric had come in from Madrigal. With our duffels at our feet, we waited as patiently as we could in line with civilian passengers. We'd developed some grudging respect for one another during boot camp, enough that they felt comfortable airing complaints about Colonial Military life around me.\n\n I still can't believe we're forced to fly civilian to Eridanus, Felicia groused.\n\n We could g o AWOL, Eric said.\n\n I shook my head. Where? The liner doesn't stop anywhere remotely interesting between here and the Eridanus System.\n\n I'm just saying, it's odd. Eric picked his duffel up as the line moved.\n\n How could command let the UNSC grab al l our ships? Felicia had been complaining about this latest development for a solid week. Harvest was a newer colony, and most of the settlers had come from other Outer Colonies. Felicia and her family didn't hold a lot of love for the UNSC, or the Earth -controlled Colonial Administration. Her family hadn't set foot on Earth in generations.\n\n It was, I had to admit, an indignity. Without our own ships, the Colonial Military was shuttling fighting men where it needed them by buying them coach -class tickets.\n\n The three of us had been deployed to Eridanus, where the  action was. Our angry words for the UNSC were partly attempts to hide our nervousness. Talking big to keep our minds off the big issue.\n\n Operation TREBUC HET had been the UNSC's answer to Insurrectionists, and we'd just been folded into the far -ranging series of operations aimed to pacify the Outer Colonies.\n\n I was just excited to be leaving Harvest for the first time, no matter how, or to where.\n\n As we lifted off, I could see one of the seven space elevators that Harvest used to move its goods off the planet's surface. Just like me, each piece of cargo would be flying through slip -space to other planets, like seeds being dispersed from a pod.\n\n It was the last time I saw Harvest with my own eyes.\n\n I often regretted leaving my father the way I did. We never had another chance to see each other, and now that I look back on it, I know he was just a hardworking man who'd lost his wife and did his best  to raise one hell of an angry kid. I doubt I could have done better.\n\n I often wonder what the expression had been on his face when I left that day. Sadness? Relief? Or just weariness?\n\n What would we have said, or done, had we known what would happen to Harvest?\n\n\n\n YOU WANTEDaction .  . . Felicia slapped my back. We were in an old Pelican dropship, shuddering its way down to Teribus Island on Eridanus II, and I was throwing up because of the turbulence.\n\n Older CMA Marines just stared blankly at us. T hey looked bored, and Eric, sitting next to me, knew why. No action, Felicia. You can thank the sympathizers. Someone, probably in this unit, has already called ahead. There won't be anything on the ground by the time we arrive. He said this loud enough for everyone to hear. No big secret, and none of the other soldiers bothered to contradict him.\n\n Harvest was relatively removed from the heat of the battle over the Outer Colonies' destinies. Eridanus was at the h eart of it.\n\n Every day, more and more Insurrectionists set off bombs in major cities, targeting UNSC troops, ships, and Colonial Administration buildings.\n\n The UNSC, in response, was cracking down harder with each passing month, seeking to instill order.  And even though the Colonial Military had been increasingly sidelined to smaller and smaller operations since the discovery of elements inside our organization sympathetic to the cause, our brass never stopped pointing out that Robert Watts, the leader of  the Insurrectionists in Eridanus and the mastermind behind most of the activity in the Outer Colonies, was actually a former UNSC colonel.\n\n That was always a quick way to a bar fight with UNSC Marines.\n  It rankled me that the UNSC viewed the Colonial Mi litary as suspect, but they were right to do so.\n\n So this is all a waste? I asked.\n\n Eric nodded. So it goes.\n\n Not exactly helping the UNSC break their assumptions about us, are we?\n\n Screw the UNSC. Eric leaned back against his restraints.  They gutted us. They sidelined us. They give us crap; barely functioning equipment. Then they want to whine about our lack of effectiveness? At least give me a uniform that's not threadbare and then we'll talk.\n\n A few grunts from nearby indicated that Er ic's point of view was commonly held.\n\n Then what are we doing here? I asked.\n\n Felicia, sitting across from me, grinned. You want to go back to the golden grains of Harvest, Gage?\n\n Hell no. I grinned.\n\n The thing about soldiers: We were usually the re for the guy  next to us. The Felicias, the Erics; boot camp, barracks; the tiny little world that was the unit and only the unit, particularly now that we were away from past friends or any family connections.\n\n Everyone in that Pelican was family, no matter what disagreements we had. We still had to back each other up come crunch time. And we had each other's backs when we piled out of that Pelican, weapons hot.\n\n Felicia took point, her preference, while Eric an d I had her covered. The other Marines spread out around the Pelican.\n\n The island was deserted, but whoever had been here hadn't been gone that long. The remains of a campfire still smoldered. Sand -colored camouflage tents whipped about from the Pelican's  exhaust. There were dummy targets set up around the scraggly bush on the edge of the Insurrectionist camp.\n\n I am saddened to report, Felicia said, that we have just missed yet another Insurrectionist camp. There was some bitterness in her voice. Like me, she was frustrated by what she'd seen of the CMA sympathies so far. No matter how much we were Outer Colonists, we'd still been given a job and sworn an oath to be soldiers. We wanted to do our job.\n\n An hour later, someone from the Office of Naval Int elligence arrived in a gleaming, brand -new green Pelican. It touched down in a flurry of sand. The ONI agent quickly walked about the camp remains with a disgusted look, then left.\n\n We had a barbecue on the edge of the water that night. The sunset wavered , and the stars started to wink into place.\n\n They won't be able to hold this together, Felicia said, throwing chicken bones out into the water.\n Who won't? I asked.\n\n The UNSC. The Inner Colonies.  Felicia pointed up at the stars over the bonfire and the dripping explosions of fat from chicken still hanging from the improvised spits. If we spread out through all those stars, what could hold us all together? At some point, distance will have its eff ect, and so will time, and  someone will have to break away and do something different. No matter how much force they apply, they can't stop this. Even people from within their ranks are deserting for the Outer Colo nies. It's like Rome. They kept taking these barbarians and teaching them how to fight, and then they'd end up leaving and fighting the very generals who'd taught them. We're those barbarians!\n\n A small coal exploded in the fire, scattering tiny, incandes cent particles into the dark, where they winked out and vanished.\n\n Eric threw a chicken bone at Felicia. You think too much, you damn Innie.\n\n Felicia laughed. Innie? Not me, sir, I'm no Insurrectionist. I just follow orders and go where they tell me. If I weren't here I'd be sitting in jail back in Utgard because of this girl I met in a bar one night .  . .\n\n . . . I mean, how was I supposed to know she was the governor's daughter, Eric and I chorused, finishing Felicia's anecdote before she could ev en launch into it. She'd told it to us often enough.\n\n She blushed and laughed, demanding we hand over the six -pack of beer before it got warm from sitting outside the cooler and too close to the fire.\n\n The next day we were assigned to riot patrol in Elys ium City: howling citizens throwing rocks and pavers at the Colonial Administration's offices, shaking signs about freedom and independence, while we kept our shoulders up against the riot shields and kept them back.\n\n They're really pissed off, Felicia grunted, arms locked in mine as we shoved back against the crowd. A red -haired woman in a cocktail dress shouted obscenities at us and tried to leap over the cordon, but Eric stepped forward and shoved her back, hard enough that she fell under the mob, fortunately rescued by a pair of her friends.\n\n It was something the police should have been doing, so it was quite clear that the UNSC didn't want to have anything to do with us and had sent us out to do scut work. C ertainly they wouldn't be including us in any raids or counterinsurgency operations in the future.\n\n None of the old hands in our barracks particularly minded.\n\n Meanwhile, the demonstrations grew angrier and more dangerous with each passing day.\n\n\n\n AFTER TWOmonths of riot patrol and guarding bases, or anything else the UNSC determined was simple enough for us to handle, we were growing bored and looking for diversions. We were far enough out of Elysium City that to hop a ride into where the parties were meant we had to get ahold of passes, or know someone with access to a Warthog.\n\n So the three of us had made fast friends with Allison Stark, one of the last of the Pelican pilots that the UNSC had yet to steal away from us. She not only had access to  transportation, but a pet NCO who'd sign off on any leave request.\n\n Usually we didn't fraternize with the flyboys (or in this case, flygirl), but Allison could get you into the city, outdrink you, and get you back as long as you picked up the tab.\n\n But to night the four of us found the Warthog pool empty.\n\n The officers cleared us out, Felicia said.\n\n Eric kicked a large rock. Or they're escorting supplies.\n\n Where? I asked.\n\n Doesn't matter. How do you think Innies get UNSC explosives or weapons?  Spare parts?\n\n I hadn't thought much about that. Black market?\n\n Black market still has to get that stuff from somewhere, Eric said thoughtfully.\n\n Don't care what's going on, I said, we're still standing here with no transport.\n\n Allison folded her arms. I have a solution, if the guys here have the balls .  . .\n\n And what is that ? I rose to the challenge right away, even as Felicia laughed at my predictable response.\n\n Thatwas a Hornet. A small, one -person cockpit with a pair of engines perched high overhead and behind it, and a chain gun on the nose. It looked, appropriately enough, like a gray metal insect.\n\n You want us to ride the skids? Eric asked, stepping up onto the f langed wings under the cockpit that the Hornet sat on.\n\n There was barely room for one person to ride the sides, it seemed to me.\n\n Hey, UNSC Marines ride the skids all the time, Allison said as she opened the cockpit and clambered in. Combat insertion.  Training. You name it.\n\n That sealed it.\n\n But who was going to pair up on a skid?\n\n Eric, Felicia, and I squared off with a fast round of paper -rock-scissors, which Felicia and I lost.\n\n Eric walked to the other side of the Hornet. See you on the other  side!\n  I made a show of allowing Felicia to get on the skid first, and she shoved herself against the skin of the Hornet. There was a bit of a recess behind the cockpit where the skid joined it.\n\n It's nice that they standardized the controls, Allison  said, flipping switches as the engines kicked on behind us. I watched the sequence from my position just behind her, until it suddenly dawned on me what she meant.\n\n Wait, I protested. You haven't flown one of these?\n\n It's straightforward. You got y our stick, your collective throttle, yadda yadda. We've been doing this ever since we invented VTOLs. The Hornet jerked upward, and I crouched, wondering if I should jump now.\n\n But I didn't, and I had to let go o f the lip as Allison yanked the glass down and sealed the cockpit shut.\n\n You getting ideas there? Felicia asked as I shoved up against her, grabbing for handholds on the Hornet.\n\n You wish.\n\n She laughed, then swore as the Hornet tilted.\n\n I thought I could hear Eric whooping from the other side as the Hornet climbed up over the trees and headed toward the bright lights of Elysium City.\n\n The target was a flip music club on the outskirts. Allison flew in low over a residential area, then flared out over the parking lot, dropping us to the ground with a thump.\n\n Felicia and I tumbled off the skid, our knees somewhat shaky as we gratefully staggered on solid ground.\n\n Eric also stumbled around the Hornet, laughing wildly. I hope we're stuck o n idiot duty by the UNSC forever!\n\n Come on. We offered Allison a hand out of the cockpit.\n\n We bounced inside to the raucous beat of flip music. Allison struck out with me and Felicia for the bar.\n\n Hey, how are you going to account for taking the Hor net? Felicia asked as we waited for drinks.\n\n Training, Allison shouted over the music. NCO'll sign me off.\n\n I laughed. Does he even know it's a lost cause?\n\n Allison grabbed her drink. Sweetie, if you don't tell him I'm not into men, I certainly won't, and this little arrangement, she waved her glass at the club and pulsating lights and dancing crowd, this can keep going.\n She danced her way off into the crowd as I paid. Keep the tab open, I'm covering whatever she drinks, I told the bartend er.\n\n You're not going after her? I asked Felicia, who'd dragged Allison into our group.\n\n She's not my type. Felicia grinned. Now find me a dirt -pounding Marine gal, and we'll talk.\n\n I don' t have time to be your wingman, I grunted.\n\n Felicia shook her head. You'd make a crap one. All the gals we meet think you're a Harvest hick.\n\n What, and you aren't? I was a little bit annoyed by the barb.\n\n I'm an Utgard girl, city born and bred. It 's in the blood. The other city girls can sniff it. Plus, you have no sense of style.\n\n Oh, screw you! Now you're just trying to piss me off.\n\n Yeah, guilty. I wouldn't do it if you weren't so damn touchy about it. Felicia pressed her drink in my hand . Hey. Keep an eye on this, I need to visit the girls' room.\n\n I followed her part of the way to stand in the hallway with a drink in each hand as hordes of people shoved past me.\n\n When Felicia came back out I handed her her drink, and we turned back to  leave the hallway.\n\n That's when the Insurrectionist bomb exploded. A concussive wave of heat, light, and pressure threw me back down the hallway.\n\n For a moment, I lay on the carpet, staring blurrily at the ceiling, and then a second explosion brought th e entire building down on top of us, trapping me in the debris.\n\n\n\n ODSTS DUGus out.\n\n Most of the civilians out dancing, however, had died. Allison was found with a piece of rebar through her skull. Eric was in a coma and getting ferried out to Reach fo r better medical care.\n\n Felicia and I both had been packed with biofoam, and then moved to a field hospital set up on the edge of the debris.\n\n We were too doped up on painkillers to do much more than lie in bed for the first half day while medics kept an eye on us. I had a concussion, broken ribs, burns, a skull fracture, and ached in places I didn't know I had.\n\n Felicia reported, from two beds  over, the same.\n  Standing in that hallway saved your lives, an ODST medic said. You're damn lucky.\n\n I didn't feel lucky.\n\n Particularly when the ONI agents showed up.\n\n They questioned us about what we were doing at the club: how we got there, whether we had contacts with Insurrectionists.\n\n There were a lot of questions about where our allegiances lay. Many of them asked over and over again.\n\n In the end, they eventually let us be, but not before telling us that the club had been singled out because it was a favored spot for CMA Marines during weekend leave.\n\n I had a lot of time to think, lying there on the bed healing.\n\n They're saying they're going to be shutting down the CMA's involvement with TREBUCHET,  I told Felicia, sitting on the edge of her bed once I'd healed enough to walk. There are rumors that the CMA will be shut down completely. Or at least that the UNSC is fighting to get the CMA disbanded.\n\n No surprise.\n\n And then what comes next? I asked. Even if it lives, the CMA is a dead end. What kind of career will I have if I stay with them? I think I'm going to leave for the UNSC.\n\n Career? Why the hell would you want a career? Felicia snorted. You'll never see Harvest again if you switch  to the UNSC. No telling where they'd send you. You have a chance to go home now.\n\n I could care less about ever seeing Harvest again, I said.\n\n It's where you came from. Where your dad has land.\n\n It's just dirt, Felicia. Dirt. It doesn' t mean anything. Why the hell do you care? Are you going back to Utgard?\n\n Yes. She surprised me there. I hadn't known that. I'd thought her just as interested as me in wanting to get away. I didn't choose to enlist, remember.\n\n I'd always thought yo ur story about the governor's daughter was just that .  . . a story. Did you really have to join to skip jail in Harvest?\n\n No. No, that was bullshit. My dad forced me to join, she said. After I stole an MLX and  went out joyriding. After the governor incident. Told me it was time to grow up.\n\n So you'd go back to Utgard?\n\n In a moment, if they discharged me. They might even rotate us back, if they're no longer going to use us here. She pulled her knees up un der her chin. What's the bug up your ass about leaving the CMA?\n\n I rubbed my forehead. I have bits of human bone embedded in me, from whoever was wearing that bomb before they triggered it. Permanently now. And that ONI guy who talked to us, he said th e explosives were CMA -issued. Maybe even from our own base. That's not a civil disagreement, it's madness.\n\n The UNSC could stop it in a moment by leaving, Felicia said. Is it really your problem?\n\n Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe the rebels get even wor se. Kill more civilians. Then who are they really doing this for? The civilians they're getting killed?\n\n Or maybe the UNSC keeps overreacting and causing the Outer Colonies to not want any part of all this, Felicia said gently. A million casualties no w, caught in the crossfire, since TREBUCHET started. No one's going to ignore that. The civilians will keep cheering the rebels on.\n\n I know. And maybe we're always destined to be splintering and fighting, without some greater cause. But I'm applying to the ODSTs.\n\n You've got to be kidding? Are you suicidal now?\n\n I'm joining as soon as I'm cleared.\n\n Felicia sighed. Then I'm coming, too. We'll sign up together.\n\n Why the hell would you want to do that?\n\n We've had each other' s backs for months now. Eric's in a coma. Allison's dead. You want me to rotate back to Harvest and sit on my hands alone? Screw that. You're going to need  someone to cover your ass; you're going to be fresh meat t o all those tough -assed ODSTs out there.\n\n Seriously, Felicia .  . . I turned to look at her.\n\n Shut up about it already, Gage. You're the closest thing I have to a brother. You're a poor excuse for one, but I consider you one nonetheless. Deal with it.\n\n I want to go after the bastards that did this to us.\n\n I know. You're a sentimental, honorable dirt farmer who needs a hell of a lot more cynicism in your life. Of course you want to go after them.\n\n Harvest will always be there when we're done, I said.\n\n\n\n ORDERS ARRIVEDbefore we were discharged, proving my instincts correct. We were to be folded into the UNSC or offered an honorable discharge and a ticket back to our home world of choice.\n I tried one last time to convince Felicia out of appl ying to the ODST, but she told me to shove it and shut up.\n\n The recruiter's office was in chaos when we showed up with our papers. Several older sergeants were huddled around screens and pumping fists.\n\n What's going on? Felicia asked.\n\n We got that ba stard, Watts! they said.\n\n Robert Watts? I was shocked. Watts had led the Insurrectionists all throughout the Outer Colonies from deep in the asteroid belts of this system for so long, it sounded improbable. Who got him?\nODSTs?\n\n No clue. But the ONI propaganda machine is kicking into overdrive declaring him caught. The sergeant collected himself and grabbed our papers. It's a good day to be a Marine! Bad day to be an Innie.\n\n With Watts captured, I wondered how strong the rebel  movements would remain.\n\n Raw meat for the ODST grinder, huh? the grizzled sergeant  grunted. If you thought Colonial boot camp was tough, you're about to get dismantled. Then we'll see if you can manage to put yourselves back together.\n\n I laughed, but the ODST recruiters didn't laugh back. They were dead serious. They knew what was around the corner for the two of us, and the smiles on their lips were like the smiles of wolves.\n\n\n\n ODST BOOTcamp was where I learned how to kill someone with my pinky.\n\n Among other things.\n\n But first they stripped us of our rank.\n\n Think coming in from the CMA means jack to us? an officer commented when I presented the fact. You'll have to actually earn your rank here.\n\n Then they started running us. I'd kept track of Felicia up to that point; we'd even had a chance to compare notes at mess, eating together.\n\n But there was quickly little time for that; too exhausted, too busy trying to survive.\n\n For three weeks I ran, did  push -ups, and blitzed through obstacle courses as fast as I could. They took us through slush, artificial snow, and live gunfire -simulated battle. Got on our bellies and crawled through miles of barbed wire, rubble, and destroyed buildings as they fired r ounds at us just inches over our heads.\n  That was just to get us into shape.\n\n On the first day of squad tactics, they dressed all fifty of us still remaining up in full ODST training gear and dropped us off at the base of a mountain.\n\n Get to the top and you can eat and rest back in your barracks to night, our drill sergeant, O'Reilly, said with an all -too-familiar grin.\n\n Our guns were loaded with TTR rounds. They were fake  bullets with paint i nside that contained particles that reacted with nanopolymers in your gear. Your clothes (or in the case of us training ODSTs, our signature black body armor) stiffened to immobility when shot with a TTR round, and then an anesthetic in the paint left the part of your body it hit paralyzed.\n\n Day two of training, O'Reilly had walked up and down the line with a TTR pistol, shooting us in the leg and then shouting Run! Run! Run! as we limped off in confusion. Anyone not quick enough was shot in the other le g and told Crawl, soldier!\n\n Once I'd found myself completely paralyzed while a trainer squatted overhead and screamed into my face that I was a worthless excuse for a soldier, and a fine example of the best the CMA had to offer.\n\n One day, on the moun tain, I had an MA5B assault rifle with sixty TTR rounds loaded.\n\n The fifty of us waited for the Pelicans that had dropped us off to thunder away, and as quiet descended, we looked nervously at each other.\n\n What do you think's in there? someone asked, l ooking at the forest that covered the low flanks of the mountainside.\n\n I'm guessing trainers with their own guns who're  I didn't get to finish. The person next to me was hit in the chest. The TTR round splashed red, and he went down stiffly, his body a rmor locked up as he toppled to the ground.\n\n Sniper!\n\n The forty -nine of us remaining scrambled for cover in confusion, and by the time I'd found a boulder to shove my back against, I could see eight more sets of black ODST body armor stiffened up, splo tched with red, and their occupants dropping to the ground.\n\n A nervous Marine slammed into the boulder next to me. He caught his breath, then popped up to scan the area. The loud  impact of a TTR round struck his e xposed helmet, and he slumped down over me with a grunt. Dammit.\n\n In just minutes, half of us had been struck by fire from somewhere high inside the forest. I could hear laughter.\n\n I shoved the dead Marine off me. If we remained here, we'd all be don e in another minute, and no one would get to the top. There are only a handful of them, I shouted. We have to rush them, some will get hit; the rest will get into the trees. Then we'll have a chance.\n And in the far distance, I heard Felicia shout back, He's right. On three!\n\n One, two, three! I burst out from behind cover with the other twenty -four and rushed for the tree line.\n\n I got within five feet of the tree line before a TTR round hit me in  the stomach and I sprawled into the bushes, frozen in place.\n\n Up the hill, in the trees, the battle raged on. I heard Felicia's voice at least once more, giving orders, then swearing.\n\n After half an hour a trainer walked out from the shadows of the fore st and looked down at me. That was the first useful thing you've done in three weeks, maggot, he shouted, and then left me lying there.\n\n When the armor freed itself up hours later, I milled about with my fellow soldiers. All fifty of us, scattered aroun d the base of the mountain, spent a chilly night around hand -built fires, hungry, until we were picked up the next morning.\n\n We were then assembled into fireteams after and given tactical training. Felicia led our small team:\nMason, gangly and blond, hail ed from Reach. Kiko from Eridanus II. We fell into a tight team that managed to hold its own.\n\n The next time on the mountain, Kiko and Mason laid down suppressing fire into the forest that Felicia and I dashed for. Once behind cover there we laid a stream  of TTR rounds ahead so that Kiko and Mason could follow.\n\n Leapfrogging and keeping an arc ahead of us constantly under fire, we were able to get halfway up the mountain before a trainer moved around behind us and  got Kiko.\n\n We stalled out then, crouched in the brush with our backs to each other for a full field of range until a TTR grenade bounced into our midst and scattered us.\n\n Another hungry, cold night on the mountain.\n\n Then they taught us squad tactics, p airing us up with another fireteam.\n\n With each fireteam leapfrogging the other, we got most of the way up the mountain. But leaving the forest as it petered out high in the mountain's crag, we fell under ambush by snipers dug in at the top.\n\n We lost most  of the other fireteam, who'd been on point, to TTR fire. Felicia, Kiko, Mason, and I had hit the snow and mud and opened fire back. We were the only team that had gotten that far.\n\n Any ideas?  Felicia asked. With enemy behind us in the woods, and in front of us buried in, and most of our ammo gone, we had seconds to make a decision.\n\n We'll never be able to charge them. We need sniper rifles, I said.\n Trainers have those.\n\n Exactly. And t hey're coming for us. I pointed back down the slope.\n\n We backed down the muddy snow into the tree line. Play dead, Kiko whispered. Get down in the mud right on the edge of the tree line with all the others who got hit.\n\n It would only ever work once,  but we sprawled ourselves stiffly out in the mud.\n\n As our pursuers broke cautiously out into the open we ambushed them. I took special glee in hitting O'Reilly almost point -blank in the chest as he approached me.\n\n We relieved them of their sniper rifles .\n\n Mason got hit in the leg while we moved about, trying to get a bead on the trainers at the top, but Kiko and Felicia got off two good shots.\n\n I ran ahead and threw TTR grenades into the areas from which we'd b een fired on, flushing out the instructors, and Kilo and Felicia got two of the three.\n\n The last trainer shot me in the arm, a stunning shot done on the run with his sniper rifle, but I gunned him down with the MA5B before he could try it again.\n\n And jus t like that, we'd taken the top of the mountain.\n\n Nice. Felicia slapped my shoulder. We'd all been hit by TTR rounds, but we limped our way to the very top and shouted loud enough to hear our echoes return from the mountain over; our hot, exhausted brea th steaming from our mouths into the cold air.\n\n A Pelican appeared, flaring out to land in the clearing at the top of the mountain. Snow swirled out from under the backwash of its engines, and a craggy -faced gunnery sergeant stepped out, as well as a numb er of corporals.\n\n He didn't even look at us. Get everyone up, now! he ordered the corporals.\n\n They were off, tapping armor with electronic wands to unfreeze it.\n\n Something wasn' t right. There was a strangeness to the hurry they did it with. And what the hell was a gunnery sergeant doing talking to us in the middle of a training session?\n\n We all gathered around the gunny, lining up as we'd been trained. He nodded. Is this everyo ne?\n\n A quick head count confirmed that this was everyone.\n\n Good. At ease. You've all been out here in the wilderness training hard, but I've been sent to let you know your training is going to be accelerated.\n\n The instructors frowned, and we all shif ted.\n Much of this information has been classified, and between  the ONI and the Navy types, this is what we can tell you: We have made first contact with an intelligent alien civilization.\n\n A gasp rose at heari ng those words. Some of us reflexively looked up into the sky. First contact!\n\n The gunnery sergeant continued, cool as ice. We know that standard protocols were followed. And that things didn't go well. Our ships were attacked by alien beings referred to  as the Covenant. Before destroying our ships they claimed our destruction was the will of their gods, and that they were the instrument. It seems to be an act of war. As of today the UNSC is on full alert. The Colonial Military has been officially disband ed, all remaining units are officially being pulled in and reassigned and retrained. And we're ramping up training here, because we have a feeling we're going to need all the recruits we can get.\n\n These aliens are for real. They've already taken, or poss ibly destroyed, one Outer Colony. Admiral Preston Cole is being tasked with creating a force to get it back.\n\n We were stunned.\n\n Private Rodriquez from Madrigal was the one who asked, What colony fell to them, sir?\n\n Harvest, the gunnery sergeant sai d, and my knees buckled.\n\n Someone grabbed my shoulder. I staggered around and found Felicia sitting in the mud. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. Dirt? she asked. Do you still think that now?\n\n I didn' t have anything to say back. I stood in front of her, struck mute.\n\n Harvest was gone.\n\n I'd tried to find the last nice thing I said to my dad before I'd left; the last time we laughed, smiled even? I couldn't find one.\n\n I'd always figured he'd keep on f arming. That maybe I'd go back, one day, when I'd traveled worlds and seen so much, and maybe talk to him again. Maybe.\n\n But there were no maybes now. He was gone now.\n\n Harvest was gone.\n\n Felicia grabbed a fistf ul of mud and leaped up at me. Dirt! I have your dirt, you son of a bitch!\n\n She hit me, mud from her clenched first spattering my face, but I didn't feel it. I felt like a part of my soul had been ripped away, and even after she was pulled off me, I jus t stood there, numb.\n\n Dirt.\n\n Just dirt.\n\n\n FOR THErest of training they moved Felicia to another fireteam. Our new team leader, Rahud, took his annoyance about the swap out on me. He was an experienced UNSC veteran who'd joined the ODSTs after years o f service.\n\n He didn't take too kindly to the fact that just because I'd been given rank in the old Colonial Military, it had given me the ability to apply to the ODST program. He certainly didn't like the fact that some falling out between two backwater p lanet recruits like Felicia and me had caused him to get moved away from the team he'd trained with.\n\n Any screwup, the slightest mistake, and he was in my face, calling me a detriment to the team and a liability.\n\n But it didn' t faze me. My bonds with Kiko and Mason were tight, and the three of us held our own.\n\n Every day, as the months of training passed, there was some new rumor floating around about the aliens. Ships they'd attacked. Their invincibility.\n\n A lot of it was bu ll. Back then we didn't know anything.\n\n We certainly didn't realize what we were up against. Kiko and Mason would joke about getting out there to kick alien ass, and with a few beers in me, I'd join them.\n\n Certainly after ODST training, we figured a bunc h of religious fanatic aliens would be no match for the atmosphere -jumping,  hard-as-nails brutality that a raw ODST -trained human could bring to the table.\n\n But when the first leaked photos of the Outer Colonies a ttacks came out, I wondered if we might be wrong. Some of them had been turned into glass balls by Covenant energy weapons.\n\n What the hell were we going to be able to do against that kind of firepower?\n\n\n\n YOU KNOWthat sound inside a single -occupant exoa tmospheric insertion vehicle? That combination of a howling wind, a dull roar, and the crackle and creak of the SOEIV's skin flexing and burning. No matter how many times I jumped, hearing it always scared the crap out of me.\n\n Feet First into Hell. That w as the ODST motto. Feet first with a two -thousand -degree fireball burning around the pod as it flames its way down through the atmosphere.\n\n It's a hot ride.\n\n A bumpy ride.\n\n And not everyone survives it.\n\n My first combat SOEIV insertion had me coming in hot with a hundred other ODSTs over the main continent of Hat Yai, three years after I finished training. We'd been mainly stuck in naval battles, waiting in our bays, just itching for a chance to be thrown  against this new enemy. Everyone was pumped about Admiral Cole's triumphant recapture of Harvest earlier that year.\n\n What isn't, perhaps, often recounted, but is a fact that quickly became well -known amongst the rank and file, was that Cole lost three sh ips for every one Covenant ship destroyed.\n\n It was a Pyrrhic victory that left Cole's fleet severely damaged.\n\n Now Cole had been jumping his fleet around from engagement to engagement throughout the Outer Colonies, wherever the Covenant showed up.\n\n So far, there'd been no repeat of the retaking of Harvest.  Outer Colonies had been glassed or taken. World by world, we were falling back.\n\n Covenant ships in low orbit picked off ten of us, and when landing ate anothe r pair of SOEIVs that failed and cratered into the lush rain forest of our landing zone.\n\n It took half an hour for Rahud to get us grouped up; our pods had dodged enough fire that we'd gotten fairly well separated.\n\n Where's the rest of the squad? Mason  asked.\n\n Rahud shrugged. I can't raise them. Assume the worst.\n\n We trudged through thick mud and rain forest, vines and creepers holding us back as we got bogged down farther and farther in.\n\n There's no way a Pelican's coming in through that kind of foliage, Kiko commented. How do we get out?\n\n Rahud ignored us. Covenant forces established a base of some sort up ahead. We're all converging on it. This is why we'd been sent down: an exploratory and reconnoitering force.\n\n Mason leaned in. That's if our ship can even get back to drop in recovery vehicles.\n\n The destroyer Clearidas  had dropped us in, ducking and weaving in between Covenant forces in low orbit, bouncing itself off the upper atmosphere as it vomited its cargo of a hundred SOEIVs.\n\n As I ran through tropical jungle, sweating under my black ODST armor, I wondered if there were enough ships high overhead to hold off the Covenant.\n\n Hold, Rahud hissed. We were getting close.\n\n Other ODSTs materialized out of the forest. Hand signals w ere exchanged, and information rippled throughout the forest.\n\n Ten ODST squads grouped up and began to ooze through the brush, weapons at the ready.\n  Rahud led us carefully down the lip of a dirt road that had been hastily carved into what was fast becom ing rock.\n\n We paused at the lip of a giant sinkhole.\n\n Holy .  . . , someone began.\n\n In just days the aliens had excavated a massive pit that bored deep into the ground. Bluish -gray metal spars soared up from th e bottom into the air from what looked like a freakish cross between a city and a hive at the bottom, including bubblelike structures that studded the sidewalls of the giant pit.\n\n They're building a small city down there, Mason said. Now that they've c leaned out the colonists.\n\n They're Grunts, a private suggested. Those big buildings are methane tanks.\n\n Methane? someone else asked.\n\n Didn't you listen to the damn briefings .  . .\n\n Movement! Kiko pointed, and Rahud turned.\n\n I saw my first C ovenant aliens standing on the other side of the lip: Ten Grunts and a pair of Jackals were staring right back at us.\n\n The Jackals stood tall, with weird back -jointed legs, and had Mohawk -like feathers and birdlike faces.\n\n The dwarfish Grunts with their doglike faces behind breathing equipment, squat legs, and weird triangular methane tanks started shooting at us.\n\n Balls of plasma energy sizzled and spat as they hit the trees behind us.\n\n As the closest team, we fanned out, falling into our us ual routines. Kiko and Mason laid down cover fire, and Rahud and I skirted the lip clockwise toward the aliens.\n\n ODST snipers hit the Grunts, splashes of blue blood blossoming in the air as the aliens dropped to the ground. The Jackals held up energy shie lds attached to their forearms to ward off the gunfire, and returned it tenfold.\n\n We sprinted around the rim. Their feet! Rahud shouted.\n\n The shields didn't cover their feet. I aimed low, chewing up mud and vines, walking the shots along until I hit my  first Jackal.\n\n It screeched and pitched forward, shield bobbling, and Rahud shot it in the head. Purple blood oozed down the side of the corpse.\n  The other Jackal turned to face us, opening itself up for a snipe r shot by an ODST. It grabbed its chest, moaning, and then stumbled off the edge of the lip and fell down. It bounced off one of the struts, then continued all the way down to the ground of the pit below.\n\n I pushed the dead Jackal's body with a boot. Here  was the enemy. Flesh and blood. Killable.\n\n Now that we had the lip surrounded a command hierarchy had been established. Major Sedavian had landed at the very rear of the group, and had finally caught up to us.\n\n Figure we're going down there? Mason ask ed, peering over the edge. We could see more Covenant at the bottom, with hundreds of Grunts and a handful of Jackals that seemed to be overseeing them. They were mustering near elevators, getting ready to come up to join the fight. An energy bolt sizzled and blew up a piece of rock near my face, and I ducked back to the safety of cover.\n\n Negative, Rahud said, coming up from behind us suddenly. Covenant Cruisers just arrived. We're outgunned. We're getting out of here and dropping a Shiva into this mess .\n\n That was it. The fight was over, we'd already lost.\n\n I could sense the frustration in the air as word spread. But orders were orders.\n\n The Pelicans could barely land on the lip, and the Covenant at the bottom of the pit opened antiaircraft fire, but we all bugged out easily enough.\n\n As we headed for orbit, the Shiva nuclear warheads left on the lip detonated.\n\n Once we were aboard, the Clearidas  entered slipspace, leaving the system.\n\n Another retreat.\n\n ___________\n\n THAT WASthe pattern for the next few years. The Covenant ate us up, system by system, with very few victories on our side.\n\n Most o f the worlds I'd come to know well were all destroyed. No one cared about Insurrectionists, Outer Colonies versus the UNSC, or the Colonial Military ten years after Harvest fell.\n\n There was only humanity versus the Covenant.\n\n I saw more than my fair shar e of dead aliens and dead comrades.\n\n Eventually I stopped making friends.\n\n Mason died in my arms on Asmara after one of the snake -headed Covenant Elites speared him along with ten other ODSTs with his energy sword before I got off a near point -blank shot  with a missile launcher.\n  I found Mason lying among the debris; I could smell his seared flesh.\n\n He looked up at me with glassy eyes and asked for his mother, then coughed up blood and just .  . . stopped being.\n\n Kiko was stabbed in the face by the apelike Brutes on another world, the name of which I've since forgotten. Large, muscular, hairy aliens, they could snap a neck with their bare hands. Rahud died from energy artillery.\n\n I was promoted to team leader, th en a squad leader. I had long since stopped learning names; I didn't want to form any attachments.\n\n Maybe that's why I never rose above squad leader.\n\n I had become a shadow of myself. A robot. Hitting my mark and killing the enemy, and waiting for the on e day a stray flash of energy would kill me.\n\n I was waiting for the day I could be buried. In the dirt.\n\n The steady stream of defeats led to the creation of the Cole Protocol. No ship was to return directly to any of our worlds,  particularly Earth, but instead execute random jumps in slip -space to throw off any potential Covenant shadowers.\n\n Where was that order for all the glassed Outer Colonies! I'd shouted, standing up in the middle of a mess hall.\n\n I rememb er once I woke from the bitter cold of cryogenic storage, staggering around and vomiting suspension fluid, and realized something was really, really wrong. This wasn't the usual slow routine of getting unfrozen and waking up fully as we were briefed for ou r next assignment. This time emergency lighting kept everything shadowy in the dim red. Everyone on deck hurried around nervously, and I could hear the unmistakable sound of the ship's MAC gun firing.\n\n We've been ambushed by a Covenant cruiser. You've al l been flash unfrozen, the officer on deck said. Just in case.\n\n Keeping us on ice let us all go through the long slipspace routes without eating up supplies and sucking down oxygen. Or getting bored out of our minds.\n\n Flash unfreezing was dangerous, a nd only for emergencies. I think the ship's captain was worried about being boarded. Either way, someone up the chain had given the order for the risky decanting, maybe out of panic. A third of the unfrozen ODSTs on deck died.\n\n Clearidas managed to escape.  But my men didn't.\n\n A waste.\n\n\n\n AFTER ALLthese years of combat, I slowly began to feel myself peeling apart. But I had no home, nowhere I really wanted to be, no one to see.\n\n So I soldiered on, battle after battle.\n\n I almost saw my end in a hastily dug out trench on Skopje, an Inner Colony world. Unlike most of the wilder Outer Colonies, this world had highly built up urban areas, roads, and railways. It was an entire civilization sprawled across its island continent s.\n\n From the trench, if I turned to look behind me, I could see a skyline glinting and blazing in the sun over a red marbled museum. But back in front: mud.\n\n We were sent in to protect the headquarters of a shipb uilding corporation during the evacuation of their shipyards. The machines, tools, and personnel that could be saved would be relocated to Reach, to continue building parts for the war effort.\n\n Our headquarters were the halls of a nearby city museum, the grounds of which served as our landing zone and held all the quickly placed antiaircraft batteries.\n\n This is the fallback point, there is nowhere else to go, we were told. So you hold the perimeter at all costs  .\n\n Covenant air support dared not attack  us directly, not for several blocks. So they threw Grunts at us. Thousands of them in brutal house -to-house warfare, their numbers overwhelming our loose perimeter. We fell back and regrouped, drawing them in until we were foxholed on the edges of the vast museum gardens. We let the Grunts charge us across the muddy field.\n\n They'd pushed us back, but we still simply thought of them as cannon fodder, waiting until they got close enough to hit their methane tanks and watch them explode. Now that we had our open ground and dug in positions, we slaughtered them.\n\n But they kept coming. And after waves of screaming Grunts came the races higher up in the Covenant food chain: Jackal snipers, Brutes rushing the line, and then finally Elites, flashing their energy swords as they got in close enough to the melee.\n\n The trenches got cut off, communication lost, and I found myself crouched in between two walls of mud with another ODST, waiting for the Covenant to leap in with us.\n\n This would be it. We'd go down fighti ng in the mud, I thought.\n\n But instead, in an explosion of mud, a two -ton powered suit of gray -green armor landed between us. Follow me! the powerful baritone voice behind the gold visor ordered.\n\n Then it leape d over the edge into the fray, plasma discharges slapping the powered armor.\n\n We followed.\n\n The armored human was like a tank, clearing the way for us. It shrugged off Grunts like they were annoying mosquitoes, tackled Brutes face on, and was an equal match for any Elite.\n  We were led to a giant castle, like something out of a picture book, wit h large antiaircraft guns mounted along the walls and AIE -486H heavy machine guns on the parapets pointed down.\n\n Inside we were left by the giant armored man.\n\n What the hell was that? I asked the Marine in the courtyard.\n\n Special ONI project. They ca ll them Spartans. Engineered to be the best, armored with the best. Haven't you heard the ONI announcements? They'll be ending the war with these sons of bitches running through the Covenant soon enough!\n\n The ODSTs weren't the cutting edge hard -asses any more.\n\n I'd just seen the future of warfare. I wasn't in it.\n\n I didn't have time to dwell on this, because suddenly an all -too-familiar voice said, Gage? Gage Yevgenny? Is that really you?\n\n And I turned to see Felicia standing with a BR55 slung under o ne arm and a canteen in the other.\n\n Felicia? There were wrinkles in her tanned, leathery face. But all these years would do that. We'd just been kids the last time we saw each other, really.\n\n She ran over and hugged me, a strong clench, and then she sh oved me back. I can't frigging believe you're alive!\n\n I was just as stunned. What are you doing here?\n\n Holed up, same as you. The castle was my call. Some CEO had it made using actual quarried rock from outside the city. Covenant low -level energy we apons don't vaporize the rock; they just melt it a bit more, making it even stronger. We're waiting for some Pelicans to get us the hell out now that they took the museum off your grubby hands.\n\n She had a jagged scar across her cheek, and a nasty burn on the back of her neck from a near miss. But I caught a glimpse of her bars: She'd risen up to colonel.\n\n We compared notes and found that we'd been in a couple of the same theaters together, separ ated only by thirty or so miles.\n\n I can get you aboard my detail, if you want, she said. And I promise I won't flake out on you again.\n\n Crap, Felicia, that was a long, long time ago. A lot's happened since then.\n\n I know. You actually saved my lif e, you know.\n\n How's that?\n\n I would have gone back. I would have been sitting on Harvest in my lame -ass Colonial uniform when those goddamn aliens dropped the hammer the second time around.\n\n I didn't say anything to that. I didn't want to think abou t Harvest.\n\n There were some survivors from the first attack, Felicia said. Did you ever look to see .  . .\n\n My father wasn't on the rolls, no.\n\n Felicia nodded. Mine, either. Then she leaned in. Look, I'll get you a transfer to the Chares,  the cruiser I'm aboard. And once up there, there's someone you need to meet.\n\n I was intrigued. I hadn't felt this energized in years, so busy with keeping my head down and focusing on one task at a time. And now here was Felicia, with her energy and friendship.\n\n You know, to tell you the truth, I was scared. Did I dare reach out to her again?\n\n Or would she be dead soon enough, ripping another part of me away with her?\n\n Because how much of that can a person ever truly handle?\n\n I wasn't sure.\n\n If we get back to orbit, Felicia said, I have a surprise for you.\n\n An explosion shattered molten rock up in the air, which drizzled back down and reformed. Eventually this castle was going to look like a versio n of itself that had been placed inside an oven, and half metal.\n\n If we get back up! she said, slapping my shoulder. Get more ammo and get up on the walls. Pelicans should be down here soon.\n\n Off in the distance a sharklike Covenant Cruiser began to descend from the clouds. From its belly, fierce energy descended upon the land, glassing it into oblivion.\n\n So we hightailed it out of there.\n\n I'd stopped expecting to live, right before I saw her again. After that, I suddenly felt real again. A human be ing again, with a past, and a life.\n\n\n\n ABOARD THE Chares the wounded and battered Marines and ODSTs tended their injuries as we retreated into slipspace. I couldn't put a figure to the numbers who would have died down there on that planet, but given the c ities I saw in the distance, I'd imagine millions.\n\n Despite the glum atmosphere, Felicia hunted me down with an air of excitement.\n\n Come on, she said. She led me down through several bays until we came to a smaller bay crammed with Pelicans.\n We round ed a corner, and sitting on a chair with a small cooler was Eric.\n\n Freaking Eric was alive.\n\n He stood up and grabbed my hand. Gage .  . .\n\n When? I could barely find the words. How?\n\n Felicia looked over at us.  Bastard woke up after five years in a coma and joined the Navy. Became a right flyboy. She grabbed a beer and studied it. Rank has its privileges, and Eric has his ways.\n\n\n\n It was almost too much.\n\n I wanted t o know everything that had happened. Twenty -two years, more or less.\n\n Twenty -two years, and we were strangers to each other.\n\n And yet we fell right back into the same friendships, like chatting in the back of the empty Pelican, our voices echoing in the chamber of the launch bay.\n\n Felicia was a colonel, Eric flying his way in and out of hell. And I was not much more than a grunt that had been more of a zombie for the last couple decades than anything else.\n\n I may have lost the Outer Colonies, but I sudd enly had my friends again.\n\n\n\n WHEN THEYtold me about the plan, I remember that we were crowded in the back of Eric's Pelican getting drunk after a particularly messy ground operation. As Eric summed it up: people had died, Covenant had been killed, and we'd once again had to fall back.\n\n But at least it's happening less frequently, I said. With the Cole Protocol they're only finding our worlds when they stumble over them.\n\n Maybe this would give humanity time to build more ships, time to ramp up for a big fight. Time, I thought, to create more super -soldier Spartans.\n\n Spartans, Eric spat. They're not even human. Freaks are what they are.\n\n It was not an uncommon ODST ou tlook: a suspicion of the faceless, armored men who'd started to show up on the battlefield.\n\n I didn't argue with him.\n\n Besides, Felicia said, it took them a long time to enact the Protocol. Almost like they wanted the Outer Colonies out of the pictur e.\n\n That's .  . . Ludicrous, I started to say. But I halted, remembering my own rage when it was first announced. .  . . hard to believe. But it still looks bad. And the result is .  . . what it is.\n\n We put in  our years, and we've been used up. We're getting tired. And there's nowhere to go home to, Felicia said.\n\n And because we're Colonial Military transfers, our pensions are still technically CMA, not UNSC. Since the CMA doesn't exist anymore, the pension funds were raided to build destroyers. No one is sure if the politicians will be able to find anything when we all start coming out of the system. If we live that long.\n\n I felt the weariness in their voices. It was there in mine, too. Deep into my bones.  I'd used up almost two -thirds of my life fighting.\n\n And all I'd seen were losses.\n\n Despite ONI propaganda films, and shore leave, and binges, I still felt that emptiness.\n\n I realized Felicia and Eric were staring at me. Studying me. Feeling me out.\n\n We're going on some sort of snatch -and-run operation, Felicia said. I just got word from the brass. We've found something the Covenant is squatting on.\n\n What is it?\n\n Some sort of artifact in the ground. Who the hell cares? What in the past is going to save us now?\nWhat's important is that this is going to be our last mission, Felicia said. We've given our service. We've fought hard. The only thing stopping the Covena nt is our being able to keep the location of Earth secret. The UNSC's just using us up on the ground like throwaway pawns.\n\n All that matters to the UNSC is Reach and Earth anyway, Eric said. He sounded so bitter. I'd gotten the sense that the explosion  had changed him even more, despite his role in the UNSC; it was something he'd taken out of necessity, not human patriotism.\n\n Felicia continued. The artifact the aliens have dug up this time is near a small city , which I've done some research on.\n\n There's a major bank in the center, with vaults. They've got gold and platinum ingots buried down there, and the Covenant invasion happened quickly enough that it's all sitting down there. Right now.\n\n I looked back and forth. What, you want to steal it?\n\n Steal it? Eric spat the words. It doesn't exist anymore, Gage. It's about to be glassed. The UNSC wants us to snatch the alien artifact or destroy it. No one gives a crap about the gold.\n\n We could retire, F elicia said. Go back to Earth, and lay back comfortably. Something the UNSC could never offer us.\n\n I took a deep breath and looked down at the scuffed floor of the Pelican.\n\n Eric chimed in. We're still going to attack the Covenant and bring back the a rtifact. We'll be following orders. But we'll be coming down with one extra Pelican. We blow the vaults, load the gold into ammunition chests, load the Pelican, and come back to the ship.\n\n And then what? I asked.\n\n Then .  . . anything you want, Felic ia said leaning closer, more aware of the scar on her face and the intensity in her eyes than ever. I know a transport headed back to Earth. I figure, I might as well see the mother planet before I die. Where you guys go, that's up to you, but I was hopin g we could all go together. One last hurrah.\n\n One last hurrah.\n\n We've put in our years, Gage. How much longer before it's some random Jackal sniper that takes us down? We've been putting our damn lives on the line since we were just kids. Kids. It's ti me to grow up. When was the last time you talked to a civilian?\n\n Too long, I thought. Too long. How many more are involved?\n\n With you, we can do this, Eric said.  Felicia can assemble them all into a team for the snatch -and-run; brass trusts her word. They're all old CMA vets. We've been planning this for a long time.\n\n We've been eyeing stuff like this on every op. Almost pulled the trigger on the mission we met you on, Felicia said. But there was too much going on and the bank was too far away from the action.\n\n But now that we found you, it's like it was meant to be, Eric said, looking into my eyes. This is the one. It's perfect.\n\n Under the haze of alcoh ol, the team back together again, I felt like I'd refound my family.\n\n It was us against everyone.\n\n I was scared, but I didn't want to let them down. I'd fought beside them. Hell, I'd been created beside them. We were a team. And I wasn't going to let the m down. No matter what misgivings I had about this crazy scheme.\n\n We had nothing left to lose.\n\n War had stripped us of many things; made us hard, unflinching, dangerous. But it had forced us into a close bond at the beginning, and reinforced it when we'd  found each other again after all these years.\n\n I didn't want to lose them again.\n\n\n WE DIDN'Tcome in by SOEIVs for this mission, but by Pelicans. They came out of orbit far from Covenant detection and then flew for hours until we reached the edge of o ur new combat zone.\n\n The small city was in the center of a horseshoe -shaped range of small mountains. Its center plaza sat on top of where four mountain streams joined up to become the head of a strong river that trickled out the valley.\n\n Our Pelicans ca me in low through a valley, just barely missing a rock ravine on either side as they flew up, over, and then  back down, just feet over the ground. Risky, but again, the Covenant were none the wiser.\n\n So far.\n\n A hundred ODSTs fanned out through the city, clumping up temporarily to double -check weapons and strategy.\n\n I stood in the middle of the plaza road and watched it all with Felicia and Eric.\n\n Downriver the Covenant had thrown together a dam and dug in wi th a bustle of activity. Organic ships zoomed around overhead, and thousands of Grunts operated a constant hum of machinery that dissolved the ground.\n\n We could hear the operations in the distance of the evacuated, eerily quiet city.\n\n Do you know what t he city's called? I asked.\n\n Mount Haven, Felicia said.\n\n Two heavy machine guns had been mounted up on top of strategically located buildings in the city's center. Manned by two ODSTs, Amey and Charleston, both were picked out by Felicia, and there in case the Covenant decided to come sniffing. They also had rocket launchers at their feet for an extra punch if needed.\n\n The other two members of that team, Orrin and Dale, stood with rocket launchers down the street.\n\n Sita stood with Felicia, holding a B R55 battle rifle slung under her arm, and Teller, a pale, gray-haired colonel, lounged by a doorway with a pair of SMGs.\n\n The eight of us were the base team, along with Eric in the Pelican with the Gatling gun in the nose making the ninth. This was base c amp.\n\n The other Pelicans were scattered around the edges of the city, ostensibly to reduce the chance of their getting hit by Covenant fire if things got hot; but it was really just an order by Felicia to keep them out of view of the city center.\n\n Teams of ODSTs moved off downriver, and within ten minutes the city fell quiet.\n Just the buildings around the river plaza and us, left behind to keep Mount Haven secure.\n\n There was an empty Jim Dandy's restaurant ne arby. City Hall stood quiet with its facade of marble in the shadows.\n\n The stately, two -story bank stood there, waiting for us.\n\n Okay, let's go! Felicia shouted.\n\n Orrin and Dale set their launchers up against the side of the bank and rigged explosives on the bank's thick front doors.\n\n They blew off with a surprisingly muted thump. Precise shaped charges. The duo was good at this. They would be old CMA professional s that Felicia dug up.\n\n We have twenty minutes before the Pelicans will be getting ready to come back for the pickup, Felicia said as she led us into the bank. So everybody move, move, move.\n\n Sita, Teller, Orrin, and Dale all ran with her. The next o bstacle was getting a door down; Dale quickly wired it up.\n\n Another explosion later and we were through.\n\n Think we can risk the elevator? I asked.\n\n Backup power is running still, Dale said. It's a small pebble -bed nuclear reactor deep underneath th e city. It'll keep.\n\n There were three more thick doors to blast. But there was no one to worry about the alarms we continually set off. So it all went fast.\n\n The final explosion revealed a long tunnel with flickering lights, thick bars lining the rooms running along each side, with one final vault just beyond.\n\n Jackpot, whispered Teller. He licked his lips.\n\n On my right I could see the glimmer of gold bars, stacked as high as my chest.\n\n Each sub room was filled with precious metals. All here for the  taking.\n\n\n\n ______\n\n WE MOVEDquickly, using a motorized pallet dolly that just fit in the elevator. The first two sub rooms were cleaned out, and with each trip we deposited the gold bars into empty ammunition chests in the back of Eric's Pelican.\n  It filled up quickly, and there was a lightness in the air as we cracked jokes and imagined what we'd do with our share.\n\n The Pelican almost literally groaned with gold, and we had to move a Shiva warhead out to start adding a layer of chests full of gold to the walkway.\n\n Any mo re and she won't fly, Eric warned.\n\n There's just one more room. We'll get a few more chests in here, then we're done, Felicia said.\n\n Back under the bank we detonated the door to the last vault. The lights flickered from the pulse as we opened the door , coughing and hacking from the dust that had been kicked up. Shadows filled the room, shifting and moving as the lights struggled to come on.\n\n Then the lights quit flickering and steadied, and we realized that the shadows were still moving. They were hum an-shaped shadows.\n\n A hand reached out from behind the bars and grabbed at me. Are you here to save us? asked a tiny voice, and I looked down into the large, wide blue eyes of a little boy.\n\n\n\n THANK GODyou came, said an older man, a schoolteacher w ho'd been chosen to stay with the children while the adults armed up and marched downriver to fight the Covenant.\n\n That had been days ago.\n\n The entire group was camped out in the last gold storage room, spreading out what supplies they had on towels on t op of more wealth than any of them could have ever have previously imagined touching.\n\n We've seen what they've done to other worlds, Julian, the schoolteacher, said. We got as deep underground as we could .  . . hoping maybe we could avoid the worst of it. The others had already left the city for the nearest spaceport. There weren't many children left by the time the Covenant actually landed.\n\n They were not nearly deep enough. But I didn't say anything.\n\n Just hold on a second, sir, we need to confer a moment.\n\n Felicia had frozen in the center of the hallway, but moved when I approached. What the hell do we do? I hissed. We can't just leave them here.\n\n I don't know, she whispered back. But how many a re there? What can we do?\n\n We have a spare Pelican .  . .\n\n She cut me off. Let me think. In the meantime, get those last three chests of gold up to Eric.\n  And how are we going to explain that ? I asked, a bit louder than I intended.\n\n Felicia walked  over to the open door that led to the room the children and their caretaker were in. There were thirty of them, I figured, from a quick head count. Julian, that was your name, right?\nI'm Colonel Felicia Sanderson. I'm an orbital -drop shock trooper. We're  here under orders to retrieve the gold bullion, as part of the necessity to fund the war effort against the Covenant. You'll have to understand, these orders are our first priority. In the meantime, if there is anything you need, food, water, we'll provid e that to you as we try to think about how to safely get you out of here.\n\n Thank you, thank you so much, the teacher said.\n\n Dale and Orrin had finished loading the dolly.\n\n I pulled Felicia back farther away. We need to call in extra Pelicans.\n\n Don't tell me what we need to do. We're going to load this  last bit up, then we're going to see what we can get back to the ship before all hell breaks loose with the damn Covenant just downriver. We'll give these gu ys food and water, at least. But we're not dragging them outside until I've had time to think.\n\n Think about what? Sita asked, joining us. You're not seriously thinking about taking them out?\n\n I was horrified. How can we not? These are children!\n\n They're dead, Sita said. They were dead the moment they chose to hole up down here. It is only a matter of when, and how. The fact that we stumbled across them doesn't change the fact that we can't evacuate everyone off an entire planet. It doesn't work  like that.\n\n Dale and Orrin were looking up from the dolly as they guided it toward us, paying attention to our body language.\n\n What the hell is the point of being a soldier if we can't save anybody, I snapped. The worlds I'd retreated from suddenly f lashed through the back of my mind.\n\n And then I thought about what Felicia had said. When was the last time I'd talked to a civilian?\nJulian was the first since the bombing that put Eric in a coma.\n\n Maybe I'd spent too long being removed from civilizatio n.\n\n Maybe we all had.\n\n But I still had a heart. I still knew what was right and what was wrong. We can't abandon these children to the Covenant, I said. I refuse.\n\n If you refuse, that's a problem, Sita growled. She had her BR55 raised slightly. Or rin and Dale, still observing, looked ready to jump forward and back her up.\n\n Felicia stepped forward slightly, trying to regain control of a situation going bad, and quickly. Shut up, all of you. We can save some of them, and just take less gold.\n How much less gold? How many of them will fit? I asked. You willing to do that kind of bloody math?\n\n Sita finally raised the rifle up high enough to slide her finger into the trigger guard. I'd relax a bit if I were you, she said. We'll do what we have to do.\n\n What we have to do is get them out, I insisted. We're going to have to leave the gold. The plan can't go forward.\n\n Sita raised the rifle. No one's leaving any gold.\n\n Lower your weapon,  Felicia ordered. Orrin and Dale had drawn M6 pistols, and Sita was stepping back.\n\n I don't think Sita here wants any compromise, I said.\n\n Shut up, Gage.\n\n I had my assault rifle up as well now. A real standoff. I'm not backing down. I'm a human bei ng, not an Insurrectionist, not some damn, cold -blooded alien. I'm not going to leave these children to die.\n\n What did they ever do for you? Sita asked. When the UNSC was bombing civilians in the Outer Colonies, did they care about children then?\n\n The Outer Colonies don't exist anymore, Sita, I said levelly. It's not about that anymore.\n\n The Colonies don't exist anymore because the UNSC wouldn't protect them, Orrin hissed.\n\n Really? All those Navy ships lost to enemy fire, all those friends I  saw die out there, that was for nothing? I moved my aim from Sita to Orrin to Dale. I couldn't bring myself to step to the side and include Felicia.\n\n If she was going to shoot me, it was all over anyway.\n\n The arguments the old Colonials made were ones that could sway us in an academic discussion over beers. But right here, right now, there were people that needed our help. And I was not going to turn my back on them.\n\n No matter what I believed, or what I'd seen, I knew where I stood on this.\n\n There's  not enough gold in all the worlds to make this worth it. You'll wake up at night thinking about these kids you  condemned to death for your own greed, I said. It won't be worth it.\n\n It's worth a try, Orrin sn arled, and raised his M6 higher. I saw what was in his eyes.\n\n It sounded like all the shots happened simultaneously. My body armor crumpled as it absorbed the shock, but I'd gotten Sita first, as she'd had the real firepower.\n But M6 rounds from Orrin and Dale slapped me to the ground. I was bleeding from the arm, the leg, and a near miss by my ear.\n\n Felicia? I called out, aching all over. I'd seen Orrin slump over the gold bars, the red blood seeping in down between the cra cks.\n\n Dale lay still on the floor by the pallet.\n\n Felicia?\n\n I crawled over to her. She'd drawn as well, on Orrin and Dale. We'd been of the same mind, in the end. It would have been easy for her to gun me down.\n\n She lay on her back, holding her throa t, frothy blood pouring out of her mouth with each cough and attempted breath.\n\n Felicia .  . .\n\n She grabbed my arm tight, squeezing hard, her eyes looking past me as she groaned through bubbles of blood, then stopped.\n\n Felicia.\n\n Sir? The schooltea cher looked around the edge of the vault door, his eyes wide.\n\n Stay here. For now, just stay here, I told him. I have to arrange how to get you out of here safely.\n\n I limped toward the elevator, tears in my eyes.\n\n\n\n IN THEback of the Pelican, my b ody armor stained with Felicia's blood, I unsteadily held my sidearm at the side of Eric's face.\n\n You remember when the bomb went off in the club? I asked him.\n\n He turned to look directly at the gun and me.  Every day since I woke up.\n\n I remember being trapped in the dark, chest too constricted to scream, panting for what air I could get. And I remember it was an ODST who pulled me out. That moment, I don't think I could ever forget that.\n\n That why you j oined?\n\n Yeah. I nodded. Now I'm on the other side, only I'm there to steal the wallet off the guy in the rubble and leave them to die.\n  We couldn't have known there would be children, Eric said.\n\n We have to do something.\n\n Eric sighed. Gage, t here's nothing we can do. Look, we can try and fit a few of them where we can, but let's not throw away our futures, what Felicia worked for.\n\n The speaker in the cockpit crackled. The attack was withdrawing. Not just a single artifact, but several artifa cts had been stolen from the Covenant dig site. ODSTs were in full retreat with hundreds of Grunts in full pursuit.\n\n They're able to track the artifacts somehow! a hysterical private reported. We split up into several groups, and all the Covenant are c oming after just us!\n\n No battle plan survived contact with the enemy.\n\n Eric shook his head. There's not much we can do now. We just poked the Covenant nest and it sounds like they're swarming.\n\n Our fellow ODSTs were calling for the Pelicans to get th em the hell out of the hot zone.\n\n I waved the sidearm at Eric. Get out.\n\n What?\n\n Get out. I don't want to shoot you. But I know how to help them. So get the hell out.\n\n Do you know who you're dealing with? You know me. But  Teller, Amey, Charleston? They're old school CMA. Watts loyalists. And they've done it all. We're not crossing them. I'm not getting the hell off my own ship, Eric gritted. I smacked him in the head with the pistol butt three times t o knock him out, then dragged him to the back of the Pelican and rolled him off into the street.\n\n Charleston and Amey were manning the mounted machine guns, but hadn't looked over and down into the street.\n\n It had been another lifetime ago that I watched  Allison Stark fly a Hornet through the night, but I remembered the controls she'd shown me and seen it done a hundred times since.\n\n Standardized.\n\n I'd stood in the back of the Pelican cockpits enough, too.\n\n That didn't mean what I was going to try next  would work.\n\n I switched to an encrypted channel that the other pilots weren't monitoring and patched into the cruiser in orbit.  Chares, we have what we came for, but we need more transport. This is urgent. We need Pelican backup, right away. Three Pelica ns took incoming fire and are down, repeat down. Scramble immediately.\n  I tried to remember what was what. Stick, collective throttle .  . . all the buttons and switches in front of me.\n\n But a Pelican was enough like a second home that I got it started.\n\n Amey and Charleston would no doubt be wondering what was happening as the Pelican's engines gunned to life. The craft lurched, clawing for air, pregnant with gold in the green -gray ammunition chests.\n\n I scraped along a building, knocking down balconies and brickwork as I struggled to get the Pelican higher.\n\n I was tense, waiting for the mounted machine guns to open up on me, but they never did. I got on the radio to try and find out where the group with the artifacts was. I'd been moving on  instinct, trying to figure out how I could buy time for the children.\n\n A small idea had occurred to me.\n\n\n\n I CLUMSILYlanded the Pelican heavily and awkwardly in the middle of the chaos that was the ODST retreat back up the river toward the city.\n\n The first ODST who clambered in looked around. There's no space! he shouted.\n\n I leaned back. Where are the art ifacts? Get them loaded in here, now! We need to get them clear and back up to orbit.\n\n He left and shouted, and soon a set of boxes were being taken off the back of a mongoose quad bike and loaded in.\n\n What about the Shiva? he asked.\n\n The nuke?\n\n We didn't need to set it off, but we're not sure where we should leave it if they're coming after us.\n\n I nodded. Stick it in here, I'll save you from hefting it about.\n\n Yes, sir. Be careful up there, there'll be Covenant aircraft support on the way n ow that they were attacked. The ODST trooped up toward the cockpit. You sure we can't just shove this ammo out and get some of our guys back out?\n\n He leaned forward, and then looked at the blood on my armor. Sir, you're shot?\n\n Then he frowned. I ne ed to check .  . . But he stopped when I pushed the M6 against his neck.\n\n There are thirty or so kids in the bottom of the bank in the middle of the city, I rasped. If I take whatever's in those boxes the Covenant's so hot for and are tracking, I can m ake a run for it, away from the city. The Covenant forces will chase me, and maybe I can buy you guys some time to help the children. You understand what I'm saying?\n\n The ODST nodde d, and as he backed slowly out, I pointed at the ammo crates. Open it.\n\n He did so, and his jaw dropped. Now shove that out the back onto the ground. Take a bar each, and next time you're on leave, have a drink for Gage Yevgenny.\n\n The moment he hopped  off I struggled back into the air.\n\n I couldn't see any Covenant forces, but I didn't understand half of what the readouts were I was looking at. I banked left, skirting the river only for a few moments, before I headed for the mountains.\n\n My goal was to  get over them, but the Pelican could barely climb. A Banshee suddenly swooped in, firing just ahead of my nose. I focused on the mountains, ignoring it, hoping that the artifacts were too precious for the Covenant to risk blowing me up.\n\n Rockets slammed into the Banshee from the direction of the city. Before the debris even began to fall, another rocket slammed into the rear of the Pelican. Charleston, Amey, or maybe even Eric:\nThey'd claim they were trying to hit the Banshee.\n\n The craft bucked and spira led as I struggled to control it, but with all the gold and my own ineptitude, I could barely keep it in the air.\n\n I flew as long as I could, but the Pelican was shaking herself apart.\n\n I remember the world spinning, slamming into the ridge, bouncing. I remember seeing the mountain pitch toward me. I know I made it over the ridge, because I hit the top of it and bounced.\n\n And then it was like the bomb in the club again. A tremendous blow, my senses reeling, and I woke up on the ground, my armor on fire.\n\n Since then, I've been waiting.\n\n\n\n ______\n\n THE ROOKhad sat next to the ODST, scanning the horizon for threats, listening to his tale. Any attempt to leave or call for help had been thwarted by the dying man.\n\n But now he understood, at least, why he'd been sent down with a second wave of ODSTs by SOEIV, and why extra Pelicans were on their way.\n\n It was all due to this man. Gage Yevgenny.\n\n Who was most certainly going to die here.\n The sound of an approaching  Pelican began to rise in volume.\n\n There's a reason I've been keeping you here, talking, Gage said. Not just to comfort my dying self. They're almost here. The Covenant, and Eric with his friends. I'm surprised you got here before them all. They're goi ng to want to salvage the gold they can from the wreck. What I want you to do is head up the mountain now. All out. Drop your pack, everything but comms and your weapon.\n\n Get through the cut there in fifteen minutes, and you get on the other side of the mountain. Don't flag down that first Pelican that's coming. In fact, hide from it as best you can. I had you here because if you'd taken off up the mountain, the Covenant would have seen you from the other side. But the Grunts are on canned methane; instea d of using it all up by panting their way over the mountain, they'll have worked their way around to get close to this wreck. So head up the pass and over the mountain, and run like you ran in boot camp, rook, run like your worst drill instructor is right behind you.\n\n Sir, I can't just leave you .  . .\n\n They're all going to arrive, rook, and I'm going to blow the Shiva up the moment all the bastards show up. Gage held up a control pad that would let him wirelessly detonate the nuclear device. Years ag o, I told my father it was  just dirt.' But it's not dirt. It's where we live. It our dirt, dammit. And more importantly, it's about who's standing on that dirt. Those children.  Your family. Your friends. And those f reaks are going to pay for every piece of dirt they've taken from us.\n\n We can still get you out of here .  . .\n\n No. I'm a dead man, you know it. I'm not going to waste more Marines.\n\n And your friends coming this way?\n\n They're going to die helpin g protect the dirt, rookie. They're going to die doing something good. He smiled. If they'd stayed back in the city to form up with you guys instead of running out here for the gold, they wouldn't have a problem, would they? They chose this path. Promise  me something, rook?\n\n Anything.\n\n You'll fight the Covenant all the way. Even if they land on Earth. You'll fight them even if you have to throw rocks at them.\n\n I will, sir.\n\n Then go now! He waved the arming device for the Shiva around. Or I' ll set this damn thing off with you still dallying around here.\n\n The rookie got up, looked around, back at the man on the ground one last time, and then ran. He shed his gear as he did so. Everything but the BR55 in his hands.\n  He ran uphill, not lookin g back, his visor open and his breath loud in the helmet. He leaped over rocks, gaining height, until he finally spotted the cleft of rock that would let him cut over the ridge to the other side of the mountain, back toward the city that was base camp for this operation.\n\n He paused, looking back down the direction he'd come, catching his breath in long gasping pants.\n\n Boot camp was just weeks ago. He was relieved to find out he still had that kind of sprint in him.\n\n He could see the developing battlefiel d far below, in the scrub of the foothills. Grunts in the hundreds poured toward the downed Pelican. They'd come around the far side of the  mountain, as Gage had predicted. They were like locusts swarming across th e grass, bumbling along due to the large methane tanks on their backs.\n\n And thundering overhead, flaring out toward the scene: a Pelican. It touched down, and three figures stepped out.\n\n They did not rush to help Gage, but instead started rooting through  the ruins of the other Pelican.\n\n The Marine did not wait to see what was coming next. He ran through the cleft, barely glancing up at overhangs, and then slid down the other side.\n\n Loose rock tumbled, and he surfed down the shale and dirt.\n\n A bone -thrumming thump shook the entire mountain, and a steady roar filled the air. By the time the rookie got to the bottom, a massive mushroom cloud could be seen over the tip of the mountaintop.\n\n It was still rising when a Pelican flew around a nearby hill, comin g down to kiss the dirt long enough for the rookie to leap in.\n\n What the hell happened over there? the pilot asked.\n\n The rookie shook his head. Long story.\n\n Long, indeed.\n\n He was still a bit shaken by the entire thing.\n\n The Pelican shook and bounced. The civilians have all been evacuated, the copilot told the rookie, who stood behind them looking out the window. We're taking them back to Earth with us.\n\n Earth? He was surprised.\n\n The Covenant just attacked Reach,  the pilot reported. We're falling back to Mother Earth.\n\n The rookie looked out at the land under the clouds as they climbed for orbit, stunned. Soon all the ground would be glass, once the Covenant ships started in on it.\n\n All dirt, he thought.\n Like Earth.\n\n From there, they would throw everything they had at the Covenant if they were found. Even if he had to throw the last rock himself. He'd made a promise.\n\n They would  make the Covenant pay for every inch o f dirt, the rookie thought to himself.\n\n\n\n ACHERON -VII\n\n _____________________\n\n It's barren here\n\n the air chokes; on dust and smoke\n\n the ground cracks; surrendering to the heat\n\n It's lonely here\n\n with only the dead as company,\n\n but anymore, this has become his closest companion;\n\n death\n\n There was once a purpose to all of this;\n\n a specific design\n\n Soldiers sent forth in the nam e of retribution\n\n In their path; an alien covenant\n\n vast in number\n\n ardent in their belief\n\n Now, but one stands\n\n Only one; survivor\n\n His friends taken by conflict\n\n Their adversaries delivered unto\n\n Alone now, he treks the wastelands\n\n cut off; stranded\n\n Knowing somewhere above;\n\n Out and beyond\n\n His brothers, his sisters, continue to struggle\n  Continue to fight, to die;\n\n to strive\n\n A million stars between here and home\n\n A million enemies; more\n\n Yet here he stands, ever vigilant\n\n And here he'll stay;\n\n A lone warrior, on a desolate plain\n\n\n\n HEADHUNTERS\n\n\n\n JONATHAN GOFF\n\n ONE\n\n _______________\n\n BLOOD, BULLETS, AND ADRENALINE\n\n\n\n Hey!\n\n The word just hung there for an instant as Jonah  gave his motion sensor a second glance.\n\n I got one, the excitement in his hushed voice unmistakable.\n\n You sure? Roland had just about enough of false alarms.\n\n Pretty sure, Jonah shot back.\n\n There was a split second when the world came to a complete stop silent and unmoving.\n\n Nope yeah, I'm sure, Jonah confirmed.\n\n If he was right, and Roland desperately hoped he was, then it would be the first contact with enemy forces since their inserti on into the field some six days prior. In that time the pair had covered twenty -three miles, at times moving at a snail's pace as they crept ever closer to their target.\n\n This is fun, Jonah concluded, the excitement in his voice escalating.\n\n It's about to be, anyway. Roland had never much enjoyed this part of the job the sneaking around, the long days and hours spent maintaining absolute cover while maneuvering behind, through, and between enemy lines but what  came after, the blood, bullets, and adrenaline, that he enjoyed quite a bit, maybe as much as Jonah, though probably not. Jonah had the added benefit of loving every minute in the field. Not just the combat, but the whole ordeal, from insertion into each new alien hotspot to the postcarnage report back at home base whether he was facedown in the mud and muck for twelve hours straight, silently sliding his custom combat knife across a Sangheili throat, or recounting the bloodshed wrought by the muffled rhyth m of his M7S submachine gun, Jonah loved it all every single second of life as one of the elite, as one of the UNSC's top -tier Covenant killers.\n\n\n\n TO HUMANITYat large, Jonah, Roland, and their fellow Spartan -IIIs were ghosts  , their missions and movemen ts deemed highly classified top secret. Their very existence was known only by a select few, and while their brothers and sisters in the Spartan -II program earned glory and unwavering respect as they fought and died against the Covenant, the IIIs fought, a nd most certainly died, with only the recognition and admiration of their fellow secret warriors as their reward for the Spartan -IIIs, however, as with the IIs, this was more than enough. Though created under comparable, yet varied circumstances, the two f orces shared one very similar mind -set: Duty first. Loyalty second. In the Spartan mind petty vices such as fame simply did not register. There was no need for the galaxy -wide adulation of the masses reveling in their many brutal victories over the Covenan t. Nor did they want the sympathies and pity of anyone outside their close -knit circle when they were confronted by defeat by death. This secrecy helped bond each Spartan -III unit like those of no other unit, and in truth it was something  they appreciated cherished, even. After all, with attention comes distraction, and in a war against a collection of advanced alien races hell -bent on slaughtering the whole of humanity, there was no room for wandering thoughts or c louded minds.\n\n As tools of war, the Spartan -IIIs were most often deployed as living fire -and-forget weapons just point, shoot, and wait for the fireworks. ONI, or on occasion a highly placed UNSC official, passed along a key Covenant target; the IIIs were  then sent in, headfirst, to eliminate the given objective, or inflict as much damage as physically possible in the effort. Success meant a handful or more made it back to base, mission complete; failure, nobody came home, but to a man they fell doing thei r damnedest to inflict the maximum level of destruction upon their foe. This all -encompassing sense of service before self in the face of almost certain death hardened them. Connected them. But even among this collection of steadfast soldiers there were a select few with a bond deeper than the others could ever begin to imagine, as these unique IIIs were a secret even to their peers.\n\n\n\n AND SOMEWHEREout among the star -poked black of the galaxy, on a nameless moon, far beyond the outermost UNSC colony, Ro land and Jonah methodically inched their way through tangled, alien undergrowth, slowly, quietly moving closer to the source of the blip on Jonah's motion tracker.\n\n TWO\n\n _____________\n\n A BRIEF HISTORY OF HEADHUNTING\n\n\n There had been much concern about fielding a sufficient number of Spartans for the missions that were considered essential deployment against large -scale Covenant targets  and defense of key UNSC facilities being c hief among them. In a war many were beginning to believe was unwinnable, losing even a handful to specialized operations was frowned upon. This unwillingness to spread the Spartan ranks too thin across the field of battle meant the number of two -man infilt ration squads, codenamed: Headhunters, culled from the ranks of the Spartan -III program, was extremely limited. At the program's height there was a maximum contingent of six squads six teams, with a total of seventeen soldiers rotating in to fill gaps when  half or all of a team was lost in the field. Jonah and Roland were paired as part of an initial eight -man roster and had been together as a unit since.\n\n It was the Headhunters' task to infiltrate heavily fortified enemy encampments, ships, and operation centers completely undetected, with minimal, mission -specific weaponry, and no radio contact or hope for backup or retrieval, and complete a set series of objectives in preparation for one of two eventualities: a larger, full -scale assault on the target, o r as a decoy and distraction for UNSC operations elsewhere.\n\n Over the course of the Human -Covenant War there had been some luck, limited but occasionally fruitful, in stealth insertions behind Covenant lines. The majority of these operations ended in lost contact with the field unit and the presumed death of the operatives involved. The Spartan -II program had changed this to a degree, as the IIs had been able to slip into enemy territory on a number of occasions not always with the best results, but with r esults, nonetheless. Now, with the IIIs and the advancements in their training and the technologies and equipment available to them, further and more intrusive campaigns into Covenant -held regions were deemed a necessary riskalthough such operations would  be attempted on a limited basis, and in direct control of a special unit from deep within Beta -5, one of ONI's most secretive subdivisions, operating under the umbrella of the clandestine organization known as Section Three.\n\n Spartan -III soldiers selected to participate in the Headhunter program had to meet one exclusive prerequisite before being considered by Beta -5: only those individuals who had survived two or more specially assigned training missions would be  evaluated for possible inclusion in its additional, grueling training regimen. Once an overall list of potential candidates was compiled, each trooper's personal files and mission reports from birth all the way up to, and including, their activities withi n the past twenty -four hours were analyzed against a set series of parameters calculated by top ONI specialists.\n\n Both Roland and Jonah not only fell under the two missions banner of acceptance, they were perfect matches for each of Beta -5's requirement s, and more importantly, when offered the opportunity to participate though presented with only the vaguest of program overviews they each leapt at the chance to hit back at the Covenant in new and unexpected ways.\n\n Once selected, candidates were separate d from their fellow Spartans and shipped to a special training facility on the far side of Onyx, the ONI -controlled world that served as the IIIs' base of operations. After three months, the soldiers were broken into four two -person squads, chosen through a series of detailed evaluations and an intense interview process meant to devise the best possible pairings between members of the group. Roland and Jonah's pairing hit on 97.36 percent of the desired matchmaking criteria; only one other team scored highe r.\n  Now, more than two years later, their training complete including seven months of supervised field exercises, followed by six months' real -world wartime insertions and the successful negotiation of twelve battlefield insertions under their belts, Rola nd and Jonah found themselves on the far side of the galaxy, two human soldiers on a moon crawling with Covenant. Their current task was straightforward enough slip onto the Covenant -held moon, believed to be the site of one of the pious alien collective's  sacred religious digs, and remove six of the ten  identified base camps situated around the outer perimeter of a much larger central compound. A second team of Headhunters would remove the four outstanding camps in  preparation for what was to follow. The confusion and re -shuffling of troops and supplies by the Covenant contingent following each base camp's dismantling was simply the opening salvo in a full -scale assault by a dozen Spartan -III fireteams and associate d orbital backup.\n\n THREE\n\n _________________\n\n APES OR ALLIGATORS?\n\n\n\n The indicator on Roland's individual radar showed that whatever their contact Grunt or Elite, Jackal or Brute they were less than ten meters from it, and while he  and Jonah were careful not to give away their position as they crept closer, they had yet to establish visual confirmation of their target. In the post -dusk hour it was possible the Covenant sentry was using the shadows of the forest to conceal its perch as it stood guard over the base camp's perimeter. It was just as likely, however, that the bastard was hidden beneath the light -bending cloak of active camouflage. One option pointed toward a raptorlike Kig -Yar sniper posted somewhere up in the thick tangl e of branches that made up the forest's canopy. The other, less appealing, option meant one of the Sangheili Elite, the Covenant's most devout and dangerous warriors, was patrolling this sector of the perimeter.\n\n Each possibility brought with it its own s et of complications. The two Spartans ran through the encounter scenarios as they worked to develop a proper plan of attack: Shooting a sniper from its roost could draw unwanted attention. They could miss the kill -shot, alerting the creature to their prese nce and giving it the opportunity to signal an alarm. Or, even with a clean kill, the force of the impact and the pull of gravity might send the body tumbling from its resting place, bouncing off and snapping  any n umber of branches along the way, before slamming into the ground with a thud that was sure to carry in the still night air. Taking out a camouflaged Elite in close combat meant dealing with the combined might of the alien's armor, firepower, and brute stre ngth. An Elite patrol usually carried one standard -issue Covenant plasma rifle, if not two, possibly a plasma pistol for backup, as well as plasma grenades, and if Roland and Jonah were particularly unlucky, an energy sword.\n\n To top it all off, they'd hav e to find the damn thing before it found them.\n\n Roland motioned for Jonah to freeze; they weren't proceeding until they could confirm the identity of the obstacle and ascertain the best approach to removing it from their path.\n\n Think it's av -cam, Jonah  whispered.\n\n Roland didn't respond.\n  The modified helmet -to-helmet vocal systems in their headgear meant they could speak to one another without fear of giving away their position, though in most cases, once they entered the combat zone, their instincts would take control and they would begin functioning solely on physical cues and intuition.\n\n The UNSC had spent years sanctioning research and development into, and thrown an unspecified amount of resources at, the problem of active camouflage, or av -cam, replication. The ability to essentially disappear into your surroundings was a major advantage for the Covenant in addition to their already terrifyingly superior weaponry and shielding and their uncanny mastery of slipspace navigation.\n\n Officially, all U NSC efforts to prototype a working av -cam unit had been met with failure. Unofficially, as was the norm within Beta -5, they had been testing a modified version of active camouflage since the inception of the Spartan -III program, along with advanced vision modes that would allow for easier detection of stealthed enemy combatants.\n\n While the field operable av -cam-enhanced armor variants  were yet to be placed in UNSC -normal rotation, and were in fact quite limited eve n within the ranks of the Spartan -IIIs, the research into visor -based vision enhancements as part of an overall equipment upgrade known as Visual Intelligence Systems, reconnaissance, or VISR, was well underway, with the hope it could be made available UNS C-wide in the near future.\n\n As with most research and development efforts with battlefield implications, VISR was already being field -tested by most Headhunter teams.\n\n As it stood, Roland's power armor was equipped with one of ONI' s experimental active camouflage units, along with a dedicated power supply. When it was activated he would achieve a state close to invisibility for a period of three and a half to four minutes.\n\n Once used, however, the cell powering the unit would need anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes to recharge, and put an additional strain on his suit's other power functions. Shielding. Bios. Targeting. Tracking. All of it would run at less than optimum efficiency while the av -cam system rebooted. Less than four m inutes of maximized stealth in exchange for limited resources for a short but long enough duration, directly following. As such, Roland had to be judicious with its use.\n\n I think it's av -cam, Jonah continued, undeterred by Roland's lack of response. Co uld be a sniper. He paused. But I got twenty credits on it being camo. He slid up alongside Roland. Wanna take that bet, Rolle? Twenty cred? I'll take camo. You can have the field.\n\n Jonah had seemed eager enough when he first signaled the contact, bu t the fact that he was getting chatty told Roland that his partner was becoming antsy his need for violent release growing exponentially by the minute.\n\n Well, wha'd'ya got?\n\n Don't know, Roland responded, after spending a couple seconds examining the blip on his tracker it hadn't moved since  their first contact. Stayin' pretty still for a Slip -Lip, Roland concluded, using a common dismissive referring to the four -pronged anatomy of the Sangheili mouth.\n Jonah slowly moved his right hand up along the side of his helmet, flicking the small nub that activated his VISR mode enhanced vision. Roland followed suit. They each swept the forest floor with their gaze the nighttime scene glowing with various hues as the VISR flickered into focus.\n\n I got nothin'. Roland started.\n\n The area where their target was positioned was clear of enemy presence. Steadily shifting their lines of sight to peer higher into the treetop, the two Spartans began scanning the forest canop y for their contact.\n\n Shit. Jonah sighed before lowering his head, shaking it in disgust. At the top. Right at one o'clock. All the way up.\n\n Sniper, Roland said plainly, without looking.\n\n Yep, Jonah replied in mock defeat.\n\n Roland smiled beneat h his helmet and lifted his head.\n\n Settled atop a small platform near the very top of the tallest cluster of trees in the area just below where the forest met the sky a lone Kig -Yar crouched, periodically tracking across the whole of the forest laid out b efore him with his trusty Covenant beam rifle, a sleek, long -range weapon that was extremely deadly in capable hands.\n\n How did that idiot not see us, Jonah laughed.\n\n We're that good, Roland affirmed, gauging the distance between their position belly -down on the forest floor and the sniper's roost high above, using his visor's onboard electronics.\n\n Roland waited a few breaths before adding, More importantly .  . . you owe me lunch.\n\n Heh a bet's a bet, Jonah conceded. I'm more concerned with  how we're gonna get that jackass down from his nest without alerting the whole damn Covenant army.\n\n We have a few options, Roland began, his mind already catching on one idea in particular before Jonah cut bac k in.\n\n Why don't you go ghost climb up there and give him a little tap so we can get movin', Jonah nudged. He was definitely itching for a fight, and Roland couldn't blame him. For all the waiting and slow going, it was these few moments before actual c ontact that were the most nerve -racking. All the work the effort and energy it took to cross vast stretches of unknown terrain unseen by the naked eye, and undetected by any number of tracking systems, was in anticipation of the handful of minutes spent fa ce-to-face with your adversaries.\n\n This is exactly why I get to test out the cool new toys and you don't, Roland jabbed.\n\n How so? Jonah shot back.\n  This cam unit is a precious commodity, Roland began to explain before Jonah pressed the issue.\n\n And?\n\n And .  . . Roland continued diplomatically, you'd activate it for no better reason than to give a Grunt a wedgie.\n\n Fair point.\n\n I, on the other hand, can control such base urges; saving our more limited, and valuable, assets for their approp riate use, Roland explained with a mocking air of superiority in his voice.\n\n Geez, does that mean yer not gonna let me borrow the car this weekend, Dad?\n\n You joke, but you know it's true.\n\n All right, all right .  . . Jonah was ready to get back on task. You got a plan for this guy, then?\n\n Roland made sure Jonah could hear the joy in his response. I was thinkin' .  . .lumberjack  .\n\n\n\n THIRTY MINUTESlater.\n\n Roland and Jonah had no problems setting the shaped char ges at the base of the Jackal sniper's lookout and were back on course, slowly making their way to their main objective.\n\n Knowing there would more than likely be multiple rotations between the snipers manning this particular perch before their attack on their first target would begin, the pair had taken extra care in concealing the explosives so as to avoid any unwanted attention. The real danger in leaving the sniper unattended hinged on the possibility that it wo uld have a clear vantage point from which to draw a bead on them once they began their offensive, and while there were most assuredly other snipers in the area, their only immediate concern was in the reality of a known threat.\n\n The novelty in utilizing a  lumberjack to eliminate said threat, was that the maneuver served the dual purposes of removing the sniper from the field of play while also providing a brief distraction upon the initiation of their assault on the camp. Besides, Roland always got a kick out this little stunt placing explosives at the base of an enemy perch, then blowing the charge from a distance, listening to the echo of tearing roots or the whine of twisted metal as the whole thing came crashing down.\n\n They were less than three hundred  meters from the edge of the base camp now. According to their intel, they would have visual confirmation of the site just over the crest of the next ridge.\n\n Their normal deliberate pace had slowed once the pair had crossed the Covenant's outer defensive perimeter, and their forward progress was hampered even further since bypassing the sniper, as they had moved to the cover of jagged embankment to ensure they were completely out of the alien sharpshooter's line of sight, leery of the prying eyes behind an d above them.\n  When the duo reached the peak of the final ridge before the forest descended into a sweeping, picturesque valley, it had been just over four hours since they had set their trap at the foot of the sniper's tree. Though briefed and rebriefed by Beta -5's intelligence officers in regard to the specifics of their mission, Roland and Jonah had yet to see any of the target camps with their own eyes.\n\n Over the course of the countless drills, both back in tr aining and their twelve live -combat field insertions, they had learned not to rely too heavily on intelligence reports. Although a needed tool, such reports were limited in their use during real -time battlefield situations; there were just too many variabl es to account for in between the time a final mission brief is run and the actual moment of combat. Did the enemy alter its protocols for any reason?\n\n Have their defensive measures been upgraded, downgraded, or modified in any other fashion?\nHave the patr ols changed within the last day?\n\n The last ten minutes? Were there clouds in the sky?\n\n Had it rained? Some of this could be predicted to a relative degree of certainty, but predictions weren' t always reality, and for Headhunters the only intel worth relying on was gathered firsthand.\n\n After settling in to check their equipment, Jonah inched ahead of Roland, pulling himself to the edge of the craggy rise they'd chosen for their observation pos t. The vantage this jagged rock outcropping provided was ideal for keeping tabs on the goings -on below, and the haphazard formation itself gave perfect cover for anything but the most thorough of inspections.\n\n Careful to maintain his focus, Jonah moved at  a deliberate pace as he lifted his head to gaze down on the Covenant campsite below. The wide valley that swept out beneath them and into the distance was marked by a small clearing nestled into the foot of the nearest mountainside. Target one was less th an seventy meters in diameter, housing six sleek, gleaming purple structures and a series of energy barriers set up over well -lit excavation sites. In the distance Jonah could make out the lights from the  other bas e camps peppered across the darkened basin, surrounding a massive complex of swooping buildings and ornate towers that loomed over the forest like a mechanical mecca to some forgotten god.\n\n Taking it all in, the first thought that popped into Jonah's mind  was simple, comforting, and more than a little malicious: I can't wait to burn it all down.\n\n As impressive as the whole scene was, it also gave rise to another, less comforting thought. Ya know? Jonah said. This place's gotta be pretty damned important  to the Covenant for ONI to be wastin' so much firepower on a glorified dig -site so far back from the front.\n\n Jonah understood the value ONI placed in the strange alien artifacts the Covenant cherished so deeply, but found it hard to believe his and Rola nd's services were best utilized against such a remote outpost, especially with the UNSC suffering such heavy losses on the frontlines of the war.\n\n ONI says it's hot, it's hot. Ours is not to question why, Roland explained, as he removed a cleaning kit from his pack.\n\n Not really sayin' otherwise, more just thinkin' out loud. Jonah continued his visual sweep of the valley. I mean, two infiltration teams? We haven't had two squads 'a Headhunters infield for the same drop .  . . ever.\n\n The Covies seem pretty enamored with these alien leftovers they're always scroungin' for, Roland offered. So, who knows what kind of weapons system or whatever they're hopin' to uncover here. And what does it matter, right? They could be diggin' for earthworms, in which  case\n. . . it's our pleasure to make sure they don't find any.\n\n The Spartans sat in silence as Jonah scanned the Covenant operation below and Roland went about checking his gear.\n\n Wha' do we got down there, anyway? Roland swabbed the chamber of his M 6C suppressed sidearm with a cleaning solution.  These long excursions were hell on weaponry, and if a soldier neglected to keep up with the proper maintenance procedures, there was good chance he would be stuck in a firefight with an inoperable firearm, or worse yet, the damn thing could jam and explode in his hand, doing the other side's job for them.\n\n The spooks weren't messin' 'round with this one, Rolle. The Covies got quite a little picnic setup out here.\n\n How's alpha -target lookin'? Roland inquired, nodding at the base camp nearest their location.\n\n Pretty much as expected. Don't think we'll need much more than a day or two to scout their movements versus what we've been briefed.\n\n What about infantry?\n\n Moderate. Jonah scanned the Covenant enclave. In the high twenties, maybe lower thirties. Definitely not gonna be a cakewalk, but we've had worse\n\n Apes or alligators?\n\n Huh?\n\n We got apes or alligators running the show? Roland clarified.\n\n Jonah slunk back down into the crevice they would be occupying for the remainder of the night and the next day.  'Gators. Saw quite a few, but no sign of Brutes. Usually when one's around the other's not don't think they like each other much.\n\n Fine by me.\n\n Jonah easily detected the relief in Roland's voice. The Elites may be a bitch to deal with, Roland continued, but at least they're smart, right? Smart we can predict we can plan for. Jonah nodded his agreement. The damn Brutes, though, Roland said, they're just a buncha overly aggressive troglodytes. Start shootin' at 'em and they slip a gasket, go all aggro.\n\n They do operate on a shorter fuse. I think it makes 'em fun like pickin' on an emotionally stunted twelve -year-old.\n  You were a bully as a kid, weren't you?\n\n Me? No. I was the twelve -year-old, Jonah corrected.\n\n Ha. You'd think that'd teach you to have some sympathy for\n\n Sympathy? Shit. If getting my ass bruised every other week tau ght me anything it was the simple truth that it's better to be the bully than the bullied.\n\n You are one enlightened individual, my friend.\n\n Hey, I tend to think I turned out okay.\n\n Jay? Yer essentially a government -sanctioned sociopath. That' s not normal, and some would say far from okay.\n\n Like yer a fuckin' saint.\n\n Never said I was, Roland replied, before adding, but you seem to take a bit more .  . . let's just call it  pride' in our work.\n\n Just 'cause I'm good at what I do  Jonah  retorted, a confident swagger in his voice.\n\n There's no denyin' that.\n\n Right, so? What's the issue?\n\n I think the issue was: Elites are smart, Brutes are dumb.\n\n On which we both agree.\n\n And my point the point I was trying to make was the Elit es' strategic intelligence makes 'em more of an ideal opponent in direct combat, because we can make educated guesses as to how they'll react. Whereas Brutes\n\n Ya give 'em the stink -eye, Jonah interrupted, and they get pissy makes 'em lose their head;\nintellect goes completely out the goddamn window.\n\n Right.\n\n Right.\n\n And that difference in composure in the way they handle their shit makes the Brutes tougher to deal with in spur -of-the-moment situations, 'cause who knows what the hell they'll d o.\n\n NoIget you, Jonah corrected. And this is, what? The nine hundredth time we've had this conversation\n\n That's a bit of a stretch.\n Well, it's not the second  Jonah chuckled, cutting Roland off.  You been tryin' ta sell me on yer theory of smart -equals -easy, dumb -equals -tough since training. I just ain't buyin' it .  . . er . . . I guess, really, it's that I just don't care much one way or the other.\n\n Jonah paused to give Roland a chance to respon d. When he didn't, Jonah continued, I mean .  . . I really do get it. And there's some weird kinda backwards logic to yer thinking, but at the end of the day, Rolle\n\n You just never pay much attention to the tactical side of  Roland interrupted.\n\n Tact ical what? Jonah shot back. The pair's conversations often became friendly competitions, as they'd verbally spar over even the smallest differences in opinion each trying to assert why their view was the more valid of the two while the other's was simply dead wrong. I do tactical. But, come on, it's  Jonah stopped mid -sentence before shifting gears. Never mind .  . . Forget it .  . . You already know what I'm gonna say, right? So there's no reason ta continue .  . . You already know what I'm gonna say befor e I even say it.\n\n Yeah, so .  . .\n\n So .  . . tell me what I'm thinkin'. Finish my thought, Jonah urged, wanting nothing more than to hear the words from Roland's mouth.\n\n No. Roland didn't want to give his partner the satisfaction.\n\n Just say it, Jonah poked. Let's hear it.\n\n You think they're the same, Roland relented, knowing the conversation would continue to spiral if they didn't move on quickly.\n\n Right. Brutes. Elite. They may pose different problems, but when it comes right down to it, they're the same damn thing targets. Big ones. Small ones. Smart ones. Dumb ones. Who cares just point us at 'em, give us some weapons that go bang, some knives that cut like butter, and a brain -load of semiaccu -rate intel, and we'll cut 'em loose, scrape 'em off our boots, and march on to the next batch.\n\n You always find a way to make mass murder sound so simple almost poetic. Though it was a hard and fast fact of their lives, Roland had always been amazed not perturbed, not put off, just amazed, maybe even a little amused by Jonah's flippant attitude toward death.\n\n As if you have any objections, Jonah huffed.\n\n Don't get defensive wasn't a complaint, just an observation.  Roland finished cleaning his pistol and passed the cleaning kit to Jonah before offering, I ll take first watch, and lifting himself up to view the valley below.\n\n So, I'm a sociopath, huh? Jonah spit, a hint of feigned sadness in his voice.\n\n Roland stopped just before the lip of the ridge and turned back toward Jonah. Doesn't mean yer not a helluva guy, Jay. Just means I wouldn't trust you 'round my kids.\n\n You don't have kids.\n\n Then I guess we don't have to worry about it.\n\n Jonah laughed as Roland repositioned himself for a clear view of the valley.\n\n The two Spartans spent the rest of the night alternating between keeping watch and taking hour-long power naps to ensure they would be functioning at optimum combat efficiency during their stead ily approaching engagement against the Covenant.\n\n The next two days were spent observing the Covenant base camp in preparation for their assault. Troop movements and specific interactions between the various alien species were noted and checked against kn own patterns. The number of individual soldiers, including their rank, was marked and prioritized  by threat level. Locations in and around the camp were assigned specific designations based upon their placement and  estimated purpose.\n\n Finally, as the sun dropped below the horizon on the third night, Roland and Jonah made their way to the camp's perimeter.\n\n FOUR\n\n ________________\n\n   GREAT JOURNEY,' HUH? WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT IT?\n\n\n\n that wasn't so bad,  Jonah finished his thought after taking a few seconds to ensure he had everyone's attention.\n\n The few remaining Elites and the smattering of Grunts all turned and lifted their gaze to take in the sight of the lone human standing before them.\n\n\n\n THE TW OSpartans had entered the camp not ten minutes prior, silently overtaking a trio of sleeping Unggoy before slipping into a small two -room storage facility.\n\n They quickly recapped their plan of attack: Roland would trigger his av -cam unit and slip about th e base, planting charges on four reactor cores spread across the compound. Meanwhile, Jonah would enter the barracks, utilizing flash bangs and a fancy, new ONI energy disruptor to disorient the Covenant inside before entering and eliminating all enemy tar gets within. As soon as Jonah engaged the barracks contingent all hell would break loose.\n\n If the Spartans had done their job right, the sudden, furious nature of the attack would catch the Covenant off guard long enough that any real attempt at resistanc e would be squelched before the aliens knew what hit them. And, while Roland and Jonah expected a fight, any troops occupying a position this removed from the frontlines were more than likely not the cream of the crop when it came to the Covenant's fightin g force.\n\n Headhunters, on the other hand, were as near perfection as humanity could muster in terms of weapons of death and war.\n\n Confident in their abilities and dedicated to their purpose, Jonah slunk out from the rear of the storage unit, heading to the barracks to play his part in the massacre to come.\n\n Roland followed closely behind him before veering off toward the nearest reactor. Using the shadows at the edge of the forest that ringed the camp, they both moved quickly into place.\n\n Jonah cocked his M7S, armed the ONI special -issue energy disruptor, and primed two flares, then waited silently for Roland's signal.\n\n On the other side of the camp, Roland checked his weapon and primed the first set of charges.\n\n A pair of Sangheili strolled past, close enough that had they simply glanced to their left they would have been staring directly at the human intruder, but the creatures passed uneventfully, totally oblivious to the enemy in their midst.\n\n Once the  two Elites were at a safe distance, Roland pulled out a small transceiver, flicked the devise's safety cap open, and pressed his thumb to the larger of two buttons on its plain surface.\n\n An explosion erupted in the distance, echoing across the canyon, an d somewhere off in the night a large tree fell to the earth, a lone Jackal sniper tumbling down with it.\n\n The triggering of the lumberjack was the go signal. As the explosion reverberated through the valley and the Covenant camp sprang to life.\n\n Roland  activated his camouflage and stepped from his cover, darting toward the first reactor. The instant the crack of the detonation filled the air, Jonah swung around the front of the barracks building, tossing his energy disruptor through the barrier that ser ved as its door.\n\n Like Roland's av -cam, and most other advanced battlefield equipment, the energy disruptor Jonah used to deactivate the  barracks' entry barrier and all electronic devices within was reverse engine ered by ONI scientists from scavenged Covenant technology.\n\n Part of Jonah was irked by the need to rely on their enemy's tech, but a larger part thrilled at the irony of turning the Covenant's advances against them. He followed the disruptor with a pair o f flares, then stepped through the entryway prepared for chaos.\n\n Hell and fury seemed to erupt from the area surrounding the barracks. As Roland continued about his piece of their little insurrection, he allowed himself to briefly imagine Jonah prancing u pon a field of Covenant corpses, happily bounding about in his own private nirvana, but just as quickly Roland was back in the moment, and his internal clock was telling him they didn't have much time.\n\n Aside from the reality of his av -cam's limited lifes pan, Roland also knew the second he triggered the explosion at the sniper's perch, he and Jonah would have a very limited time frame before reinforcements from one or more of the other camps arrived. Making an effort to focus solely on placing the charges on the chosen reactors, Roland had to pause briefly between the first and second in order to drop a collection of Grunts and Jackals who were in the process of setting up a defensive perimeter around a shade turret. Moving as quickly as he could, Roland fi nished planting his charge on the third of the four reactors and turned toward his final target, when he saw a squad of five Elites and four Grunts heading up the low brim that led to the barracks.\n\n Certain that Jonah was able to handle himself, but not w anting his partner caught unaware by the Covenant making a beeline directly for him, Roland altered his course to engage this new threat, tossing a frag grenade into their midst to soften them up.\n\n The small, round explosive bounced and ignited directly b etween two of the Elites; their shields flared and died. The other  Elites lost their shields, but only temporarily, and of the four Grunts, three were killed in the blast, the other falling in a heap, mortally woun ded.\n\n Roland steadied his submachine gun and was prepared to fire when another explosion boomed off in the distance, across the valley.\n\n The second, unexpected explosion must have been the work of the other infiltration team, Roland thought. Though the t wo Headhunter teams were acting independently, Roland and Jonah had been designated Team One and were serving as the mission's primary assault squad, meaning the secondary team would wait for their attack before initiating one of their own.\n\n The explosion  Roland triggered at the sniper perch gave Team Two the go -ahead, though Roland was surprised they'd been in a position to follow so quickly on the heels of his and Jonah's assault. Not that it bothered him. With two simultaneous stealth attacks against wh at the Covenant thought was an unknown outpost, the aliens would be in complete disarray. The timing of the second attack allowed each team a slightly increased window of opportunity, but there was still no room for delays.\n\n Roland threw his second grenad e. The two shieldless Elites went down, not dead, but out of the fight one missing its legs at the knees and the other with a gaping wound in its stomach, intestines and fluid pouring forth onto the matted grass.\n\n The remaining Elites once again  lost their shields, this time for good. They wheeled around, trying to spot their attacker. Roland's camo flickered, momentarily giving away his position, as he emptied his clip into the disoriented Elites.\n\n Across the compound, Jonah had stepped into th e barracks to find a dozen bewildered Covenant six Grunts, two Jackals and four Elites, all with some level of confusion plastered on their faces.\n\n The initial explosion had caught them off guard and the disruptor had removed their shields and deactivated  their weapons.  Now, still reeling from the effects of the flash bangs, the lot of them were essentially helpless. Not being one to waste the upper hand, Jonah pressed the issue, driven by a terrible motivation tha t sat at the heart of his hatred for the Covenant the thought of his biological brothers and sisters, his mother and father, killed murdered vaporized into dust and ash during the Covenant's sacking of Eirene.\n\n As the first few silent rounds flashed from the muzzle of his M7S, impacting on the nearest Elite's chest and throat, the momentary sadness brought on by the memory of his family's smiling faces dissipated, replaced by joy.\n\n\n\n THE STARKcontrast between Jonah's words that wasn't so bad and the sig ht of him made his proclamation all the more surreal.\n\n He stood calmly, coolly, on the lip of the slope that led to the Covenant barracks building. Even clad in full armor, the cockiness and pure confidence of his pose betrayed the shit -eating grin Roland  was certain was plastered on his friend's face. And then there was the blood.\n\n How anything could be labeled as not so bad and yet involve that much carnage Roland just laughed.\n\n The remaining Covenant stood transfixed, bewildered by what they saw: St anding on a low ridge in the middle of their encampment was a sole combatant, a lowly human dog, coated in the blood and viscera of their brethren. Such a thing was unthinkable.\n\n Once he was certain he had their complete and undivided attention, Jonah kne lt, slowly deliberately never taking his eyes off his enraged foes.\n\n In his right hand, Jonah held his combat knife, gripped blade back, eager for a fight. Thick chunks of flesh and clots of purple and green blood stuck to the blade's edge hanging in stri ngs, like saliva from the maw of a ravenous beast. With his left hand,  Jonah reached for the ground, pausing only briefly as he gripped something just out of sight.\n\n Roland watched from the nearby shadows as he se t the remainder of the charges along the rim of the final reactor. His suit's active -camo function was quickly depleting its dedicated power supply, and he could see that the Covenant, though momentarily confused by Jonah's presence, were beginning to tens e up.\n\n He sensed the energy in the atmosphere begin to charge; these last few survivors would not allow their lives to end as helpless victims to the assassins in their midst. A defiant glower on their faces, Roland saw three of the Elites draw their musc les taut they were getting ready to make a move;\nready to pounce. Their first steps on their so -called Great Journey may be mere seconds away, but the warriors' code by which they lived meant these Elites would not die without a fight. Their sense of honor  would not allow it, just as it would not allow them to be taunted by the murder of their kin, which is exactly what Jonah was doing taunting them.\n\n It's what he always did Every damn mission , Roland thought. He just can't help but play with his food .\n\n The eerie quiet that had settled upon the camp following the initial burst of violence gave Roland the sense that they were directly in the eye of the storm that whatever hellish fury had played out only moments before, what was to come next would be wors e, and it would be sudden.\n\n He placed the last of the charges and locked the detonator's receiver in the on position, then knelt and lifted a half -loaded Covenant carbine rifle from a dead Jackal's grasp. He sighted the Elite nearest Jonah, the weapon's  aiming reticule drawn directly at the beast's head the instant he so much as twitched, a hail of radiation would liquefy his brain cavity.\n\n Out in the open, the Covenant soldiers still frozen in disbelief, Jonah rose from his crouched position, a severed  Elite head gripped tightly in his left hand. Jonah lifted the trophy high in  the air, and then spoke for the first time since the encounter began: Rolle, light 'em up.\n\n The lead Elite's head rocked with three s uccessive bursts from Roland's scavenged carbine before its massive body slumped to the ground, lifeless.\n\n The handful of Covenant survivors leveled their weapons at Jonah, who hefted the severed head and threw it full force at a Grunt about to unleash a fully charged blast from its quivering plasma pistol. The macabre projectile hit the Grunt in the chest, shaking it off balance and sending its plasma blast spiraling into the night sky.\n\n The tiny, angry alien attempted to right itself, but not in time Jonah had already removed his pistol and as the Grunt regained its bearing a single slug impacted its temple. Jonah then made short work of the scattered Grunts and Jackals displaced about the courtyard, while avoiding fire from the few Elites still in the f ight.\n\n He and Roland had the advantage of placing their enemies in a crossfire between Jonah's slightly higher vantage and the tree line Roland used for cover, making it difficult for the Covenant to focus on just one attacker.\n\n Roland finished off two m ore Elites but then his carbine trigger clicked empty.\n\n A third Elite charged Jonah, whose attention was focused on wrapping up the only other surviving Covenant, a Kig -Yar cowering behind a personal energy gauntlet. As Jonah worked his way around the shi eld and planted two bullets in the Jackal's side, Roland called a warning, Jay, seven -o'clock, and peppered the back of the Elite with his submachine gun, whittling away at its shield.\n\n Jonah spun.\n\n The Elite barreled toward him, only a few meters away , anger and hatred burning in its eyes. As if he were simply swatting  a fly, Jonah tapped the trigger of his magnum twice, putting a bullet into each of the Elite's kneecaps.\n\n The beast fell.\n\n Roland sprinted ove r as Jonah slid a new clip into his pistol.\n\n The Elite struggled to lift itself beaten, yet defiant. Unable to stand, it rested on its bloodied knees.\n\n Nice shot.  Roland bent down to grab a plasma pistol from the ground, sweeping the area for survivors as he rose.\n\n You softened him up. Jonah walked toward the injured Elite, also checking the periphery for any signs of trouble.\n\n Still got some fight in you, big  guy? Jonah stopped just out of the Sangheili's reach. Ya know?\nUp close, you Slip -Lips aren't so special. You know that, right?\n\n The Elite stared up as the two Spartans look down on it.\n\n I mean, really, Jonah prodded. I've always meant to ask .  . . what makes you Covenant thugs think yer so damned special anyway? What gives you the right to do the things you do?\n\n The Elite passed his gaze from Jonah to Roland and back. There is honor in our path, he began, you .  . .your kind .  . . humanity? You  are nothing but a disease that must be wiped clean from this galaxy a taint upon\n\n Yeah, well this disease ain't goin' nowhere. In fact, seems ta me, it's right up in yer goddamn face and there ain't much'a damn thing you can do about it.\n\n If we wer e to meet in battle as warriors truewarriors, the Elite hissed, you would fall, just as so many of your kind have fallen to our swords and fire; under the weight of our boots. But youyouare not warriors. You are assassins  . Weak and timid, you hide in th e shadows\n\n Says the alien shit -heel who invented active -camo, Jonah said.  Yeah , yer noble. How noble's glassin' a planet from orbit? Jonah tapped the kneeling beast across his temple with an open hand. Answer that.\n\n Your influence must be expunged eradicated from the worlds you have fouled with your very presence\n\n I really don't like this guy, Roland interrupted. Cut 'im loose, Jay. I think it's past time we beat feet.\n\n I fear not the path to the  Great Journey beyond. I embrace it. Though he was bloodied and gravely wounded, the Elite's eyes welled with pride has he spoke.\n\n   Great Journey,' huh? Jonah huffed. What's so great about it?\n\n The Elite stared directly at Jonah's visor, making eye  contact despite the fact he could not see Jonah's face through the reflective surface. You will never\n\n In a blur of motion, Jonah's hand flicked forward, plunging his blade hilt -deep into the side of the Elite's neck.\n\n The creature shuddered and lurched, sick wet gurgles bubbling up from its throat. It lunged for the blade, more reflex than an actual attempt to defend itself. Jonah stood motionless, holding his ground.\n\n Purple -black blood seeped from the wound, drippin g from the Elite's split mandibles.\n\n Jonah maintained his stance for a moment looking down on his latest victim with disgust then suddenly, violently wrenched his wrist, twisting the blade in place. It was a rhetorical question, asshole, he said, his vo ice a mix of disdain and boredom as he slid the blade out of the dying Elite's neck.\n\n In one fluid motion, he removed his M6C from its holster with his left hand, and kicked the alien to the mud -and blood -caked ground with a thud. As the heavy alien body settled, a sudden and silent flash burst from the muzzle of Jonah's pistol as he fired a single round into his fallen enemy's facethe bullet entering through the roof of its still -twitching mouth before exploding out the top of its thick skull, depositing  itself, along with a myriad of brain bits and bone fragments, in the soft, soggy turf below.\n\n Overkill, don't you think? Roland offered, mockingly.\n\n Jonah leveled his M6C dead center on the dead Elite's chest,  firing four more rounds, each whispered thwip  of gunfire thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip answered by the kiss of punctured flesh and ventilated lung. Better safe than sorry, Jonah cracked back as he safetied his weapon and ran his blade along the armor -platin g on his thigh, wiping away the residue of a battle well won.\n\n Yer funny.\n\n Someone's gotta put a smile on that grumpy face, Rolle, old boy.\n\n Roland checked his sensors and the power charge on his suit's battery. We got other places ta be and this j oint is prime to blow you ready to roll out?\n\n Yeah. Jonah paused as he gave the area one last visual sweep Covenant carcasses and discarded weapons littered the campsite. This place is dead anyway\n\n As the last syllable escaped Jonah's lips a sudden  crackle of energy sparked in the cool night air.\n\n FIVE\n\n _____________\n\n SOMETHING NEW\n\n\n\n Roland's body quaked a violent, sudden spasm erupting from his torso and pulsing through his limbs in a series of aftershocks then he seized as the muscles along his spinal column clinched and froze.\n\n Jonah sprang back, instinctively taking up a defensive stance pistol instantly off his hip and in firing position, the events before him slowing to a crawl.\n\n For less than a secon d Roland stood perfectly upright and motionless before his body jerked with another forceful, involuntary start as the dual -pronged tips of a Covenant energy sword pierced his chest, sliding through his body and armor  like wet paper. Jonah's eye caught on the flicker of the blade's plasma sizzling red with blood the weapon's dual blades protruded farther from his partner's chest.\n Shaking himself from his daze, Jonah unloaded his Magnum's clip just over Roland's sh oulders.\n\n The bullets pinging off something large, but unseen; each round harmlessly deflected into the night. A replacement magazine clicked home in the pistol before the last of the barrage's shells hit the ground.\n\n Roland's muscles relaxed and he let out a gurgled, raspy cough, and a single, whispered word .  . . Clear .  . .\n\n Everything the blade, Roland, Jonah, the evening breeze stopped for a handful of seconds still and eerily serene; the only sound the pop and sizzle of the energy sword as it sea red the flesh around and between the wounds.\n\n Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the floating sword pushed forward with a quick, deliberate thrust before viciously being ripped up and away, exiting through the Spartan's right shoulder, just below the neck. Upon reaching the apex of its arc, the energy sword shimmered then blinked out. Gone but not gone.\n\n The force of the swipe nearly cleaved Roland's upper body in two, a thick geyser of blood spraying upward as the mortally wounded soldier slumped  to the dirt, lifeless. As Roland fell, the spray of his blood coated a cloaked shape looming directly over his broken body.\n\n Like an apparition, the smattering of crimson life danced in midair. Jonah couldn't make out the exact shape of his enemy, but it s weapon of choice suggested it was Sangheili. He brought his pistol to center mass on the red blot and sidestepped toward a downed Unggoy to his left.\n\n The small, dead creature's Plasma Pistol would come in handy  if Jonah hoped to penetrate the cloaked Elite's shield.  Jonah had two additional disruptors, but he would need them at the next target site. Regardless of being a man down friend or not there was still a mission t o accomplish.\n\n As Jonah retrieved the alien weapon, he was sure his foe would attack.\n\n Instead, the alien held its ground showing an extraordinarily high level of restraint, even for an Elite. Usually Covenant warriors pressed any advantage attacking in force until their enemies were overrun and slaughtered, but this one was different. It hadn't taken part in the firefight between the Spartans and the rest of the camp's Covenant contingent. It had stayed back hidden; waiting.\n\n For what? Sangheili weren't  cowards. Unlike the Unggoy and Kig -Yar, whose bravery and ferociousness most often relied squarely on the tide of battle, the Sangheili were uniformly fearless foes. Why would this one in particular wait until its colleagues were beaten before launching i ts assault?\n\n Jonah wanted answers to these questions craved the hows and whys but more than anything he just wanted this creature dead. He wanted to see the life drain from its eyes. Wanted to revel in its death.\n\n He felt rage well up inside like a weigh t pressing down against his chest as he gripped the Plasma Pistol and began to rise, pointing both of his weapons at the bloodstained blur across the yard.\n\n Motion trackers should've caught him before he got close , Jonah thought, running through the past twenty seconds, grasping for logic in this surprise attack in his friend's death.\n\n He squeezed the trigger on the plasma pistol, building a charge as he and the alien circled one another. He and Roland liked to goof liked to have fun but they were careful . Damn careful. And way too skilled to have their partnership ended in such an ignoble fashion taken unaware by a lone Elite.\n\n Hazarding a glance at Roland's mangled body, Jonah's mind raced. Goddamn it, he shou ted. How'd you do it, you sonuvabitch? How'd you get the drop?\n\n Jonah released the plasma pistol's trigger, sending a large green burst of energy careening toward the ghostly blood smear. The Elite tried to leap out of the way, but the plasma blast trac ked its target, catching the alien in its side just below the rib cage. The beast let out an angered cry as its active -camouflage and its shielding sparkled with tiny flecks of electricity and faded, revealing an Elite warrior like none Jonah had ever seen . The Elite seemed like any other in terms of its size and physical makeup, but was made more imposing by the sleek, custom armor that covered its entire body, including a full -faced helmet with a cycloptic visor port wrapping from right to left. There was also an odd shifting in the armor's coloring, as if it were analyzing and adapting to its environment, the base color of the armor adjusting, changing to blend with the background, making it hard to focus on the alien's movements. While not as effective a s active -camouflage, this new chameleonlike feature definitely provided a strategic advantage.\n\n Squinting to get a clearer view, Jonah noticed the armor itself was more rounded more elegant than the typically segmented Sangheili battlefield attire and was  adorned with etched detailing, which was hard to make out in the low light, but seemed to have a purpose similar to war paint ornate and aggressive. This Elite may not want to be seen, but clearly wanted any who got a good look to understand completely, a nd without question, that he meant business.\n\n Jonah followed the plasma blast with a barrage of bullets from his pistol, lightly feathering the trigger for maximum rate of fire.\n\n But this Elite was too fast. Jonah hit his mark with a few  rounds but the nimble alien easily avoided the rest; an unsettling turn of events for a marksman of Jonah's caliber.\n\n Jonah holstered his pistol and pulled his fully loaded SMG from his back, bringing it to bear on the Elite, coc king the weapon in one fluid twist, but the alien's shields and camo recovered from the plasma hit.\n\n There's no way, Jonah said shocked. Well, Rolle, buddy, Jonah already missed his friend more than he cared to admit,  looks like we got ourselves somethin' new with this one.\n\n Jonah flipped on his suit's VISR enhanced vision. Luminescent tracers marked the edges of buildings, trees, abandoned weapons and corpses, giving a defining edge to everything in Jonah's line of s ight.\n\n Wherever the Elite was hiding, VISR would allow Jonah to track him with ease. Problem was; the Elite wasn't hiding .  . . and neither were his friends.\n\n Standing where he had faded just seconds ago, the mysterious Elite held his ground, his transpa rent bodily features indicated by a ring of red as the VISR technology mapped out the creature's silhouette.\n\n Jonah kept his aim on the Elite, but didn't fire.\n\n Shit, Jonah said aloud to himself, his shoulders slumping a bit.\n\n The Elite laughed, a thi ck, guttural boom, as the full extent of the danger dawned on Jonah.\n\n Standing to the left and just a few meters behind the Elite were three others sporting the same souped -up armor, as marked by the red VISR -induced glow tracing their outline. To his rig ht, two more Elites stood, almost casually.\n\n These others had been watching the whole damn time. This wasn't a solitary straggler who'd caught two of ONI's heavy hitters with their guard down, Jonah chided himself.\n\n This was a goddamn trap.\n\n SIX\n\n ___________\n\n FAIR TRADE\n\n\n\n Time was running out. Despite the immediate odds, Jonah knew he didn' t have much time to make his escape before the base camp was overrun with Covenant regulars, never mind the six hard -asses standing in front of him.\n\n The other squad's gotta be doing better than this , he hoped, as his mind flashed to the second team of He adhunters operating on the other side of the valley.\n\n As if reading Jonah's mind, the Sangheili who'd killed Roland spoke. Your fellow conspirators are dead. Like the one here, slaughtered like pups helpless and weak.\n\n Jonah was impressed. If the Coven ant had such high -level Spec -Ops troops stationed on such a remote moon, then one of two options was true: Either ONI had gotten their intel right and this place was, in fact, a pretty damn big deal to the Covenant, or the Headhunters had been doing their job so well that this whole scenario was one big alien boondoggle devised to draw them out. For a moment, thoughts of Roland's death and six large obstacles standing before him dissipated and Jonah found himself strangely satisfied if two or more teams of the Covenant's absolute top -of-the-line Elite squads were tied up babysitting a site so far from the frontlines, then they weren't on the frontlines, which was a win for the UNSC no matter how you sliced it.\n\n You idiots set this up, he called to the Elit e. This .  . . all of it. You wanted us . . . heh. Yer afraid of us. I'm flattered.\n You are dead, one of the Elite hissed.\n\n Could be. Don't matter.\n\n You value your life so little?\n\n No. Not really, Jonah explained. I kinda like being me, actual ly. But you being here, means yer not somewhere else, get it? All this .  . . these resources, all yer skill, wasted on a few   pathetic'\nhumans makes me feel kinda good kinda special. And if you think yer taking me out without losing a limb .  . . you've lost yer goddamn mind.\n\n We'll see who's lost their mind, once we have carved your flesh and you've screamed your secrets to the stars, the main Elite replied.\n\n These guys were  different, and Jonah admired them for  it.\n\n Usually Covenant battlefield doctrine was simple and to the point: Take no prisoners. And while this new brand of Elite seemed to be playing a different game, Jonah was fairly certain that, had they wanted, he would already be dead. After all, the y had the numbers and, up until a moment ago, the added advantage of total surprise.\n\n This ends one of two ways, chief, Jonah said. I either walk out of here, yer teeth hangin' from a string around my neck, or I die with my fist down someone's throat.\n\n Jonah made a come -hither motion with his SMG, before finishing, So let's start this party, I'm late for a hot date, and I don't wanna keep yer sister waiting. Jonah was unsure if the familial insult would translate, but by this point he couldn't care less. It was time to dance.\n\n You can sense your end, human. That is good. If it brings you any peace, the whole of your kind will soon follow suit.\n\n The lead Elite clicked something to his squad in their native language.\n\n Three of the Elites leveled w hat looked to be modified carbine rifles at Jonah, while two others began moving toward him, igniting their energy swords. As the blades sparked to life Jonah noticed something he'd earlier mistaken as a trick of Roland's blood on the Elite's blade these e nergy swords weren't powered by the same blue -white energy source as the Covenant's typical plasma -based cutlery. Instead they were comprised of a reddish energy combined with the white flicker of electricity, which caused them to emit a blood -colored glow .\n\n Jonah couldn't guess at the difference between these new swords and the more commonly used blue-variant, but he was sure of one thing: his attackers were full of surprises, and he felt a twinge of fear creep up  the back of his neck.\n\n The two sword -wielding Elites moved forward carefully, as if stalking prey.\n\n Jonah laughed. You know I can see you, right?\n  The Elites didn't alter their approach, maintaining their speed and positioning muscles tensed, ready t o strike.\n\n We are aware of your visual upgrades, human. As stated, we've already been through this with your friends. Lay down your arms and surrender yourself for inquisition.\n\n Jonah shifted his gaze to Roland's body, keeping the Elites squarely in pe ripheral view. Twenty credits says yer all dead within .  . . let's say .  . . the next thirty seconds.\n\n The lead Elite scoffed. We will end you before you so much as bruise our egos, dog. Now, lay down your weapons\n\n Seriously. I know you might not h ave any credits handy, but I'm willing to take the Covenant equivalent. Jonah let the offer stand for a brief instant, then dropped his SMG to the turf.\n\n We got a deal? The two approaching Elites picked up their pace, as the others steadied their aim.\n\n Jonah relaxed his posture, let his knees flex and his back and shoulders slouch.\n\n The two Elites were almost within reach. Jonah bent into a deep crouch his muscles contracted, taunt before tumbling back, head over heels, coming up a good ten yards from  the nearest Elite. Hunched in a low squat, Jonah held a disruptor in one hand, his charge detonator in the other.\n\n While Roland had been responsible for demolitions on most missions, with Jonah preferring to focus on direct combat, both members of a Head hunter squad were required to carry the proper charges and triggering mechanisms necessary for fieldwork to ensure redundancy should any unforeseen complications  arise. And though Jonah would've preferred another w ay out, he was fully aware that his luck had run dry, and as he and his fellow 'Hunters had been fond of saying since their earliest training days on Onyx: When in doubt, blow shit up.\n\n Jonah's mind flashed to Roland one more time, and he silently thank ed his partner for one last assist Clear. Roland's final breath had also been a parting shot at the Covenant bastard who'd run him through.\n\n These special division Spec -Op Elites may have been watching the whole show, but Roland was cloaked when he set his charges, so unless the Sangheili had the equivalent of VISR in those shiny new helmets, they didn't know thing one about the explosives placed on the reactors all around them.\n\n Clear meant the primer on the charges had been initiated.\n\n Clear mean t with a push of a button this entire section of the valley would light up as bright and hot as the surface of a star, nothing but scorched earth and charred bones in its wake.\n\n Clear, and Jonah had a plan, even if it meant kissing his own ass good -bye.\n\n He raised the disruptor. Know what this is?\n\n Take him! the lead Elite called.\n But Jonah had allowed the two closest Elites to get within arm's length in order to block the line of fire of their three squadmates with ranged weaponry. If the they g ot close enough to cut him he'd still have time to blow the fuse and take them all to hell right along with him.\n\n Jonah activated the disruptor and tossed it in a low arc toward the four farthest Elites while dodging a swipe from one of the energy swords,  but he was too slow to avoid the second's grasp.\n\n The Elite yanked him to his feet, ripping his shoulder from its socket. Jonah screamed in pain.\n\n The energy field from the disruptor expanded as it hit the groun d at the feet of the farthest group of aliens, shutting down power to their weapons and armor.\n\n The Elite holding Jonah shook him like a rag doll. You dare defy us, filth? You will suffer for your sins.  He raised his sword, using the very edge of the blade to cut a gash across Jonah's faceplate, digging into the flesh beneath. Jonah's left eye sizzled and popped as the blade passed through. For the second time in recent memory, the Spartan screamed, but he still held tightly to the detonator, thumb pressed firmly on the tiny unit's ignition switch.\n\n The second sword -wielding Elite stepped up and grabbed him by the neck.\n\n In Jonah's mind a thousand witty remarks echoed, an infinite chorus of banter to di e to, but instead of uttering a word, Jonah simply glanced at the beasts above him, these elite commandoes whose body count quite possibly surpassed his own, and thought to himself, Six of you, one of me. Fair trade  , as he released his thumb from the det onator.\n\n After that everything went white.\n\n\n\n BLUNT INSTRUMENTS\n\n\n\n FRED VAN LENTE\n\n ONE\n\n _____________\n\n Fireteam Spartan: Black's objective was not difficult to locate. All one had to do was look for the enormous pinkish -purple plume of energy spearing out of the horizon on the colony world Verge. They bled silently through ten square kilometers of heavily fortified enemy anti -aircraft positions toward the perpetually shining beam until at last they reached th e remains of Ciudad de Arias.\n\n This city had been among the hardest hit in the initial Covenant assault a few months prior. The buildings leaned and listed in their foundations like beaten boxers right before a climactic keel to the mat. It took Black -Four a few minutes to identify an apartment tower that looked stable enough for them to scale without it collapsing beneath their feet.\n  Once they reached the penthouse, they passed stencils of pandas and koalas still visible on the charred walls as they entered what they assumed had been a child's room. They lay down on their bellies and looked out through the vacant holes where windows o nce were.\n\n Their massive target drifted about five blocks away, casually knocking over fire -gutted husks into clouds of rubble. Thanks to their untranslatable and unpronounceable Covenant name, FLEETCOM simply dub bed the enormous machines Beacons. Nearly fifty stories tall and five city blocks wide, the Beacon looked to the Spartans' eyes like a perfectly symmetrical beehive floating atop four antigravity stilts. Out of its gaping lower orifice swarmed a buzzing cloud of Yanme'e, the glittering, winged insectoids humans called Drones. Clicking and screeching and hissing and squealing in a teeth -gritting cacophony, the swarm tore deep below Verge's surface with handheld antigravity grapplers that yanked up great ch unks of regolith. The Drones flew back up and deposited the rocks inside the Beacon's hollow, irradiant heart, where the helium -3 inside them would be extracted and converted into pure fusion power. The energy was then projected skyward, focused in the for m of a massive purple beam erupting from the Beacon's summit. A weblike constellation of Covenant satellites orbiting Verge transmitted the power to the fleet blockading the colonies on Tribute, in the Epsilon Eridani system.\n\n Like every other colony worl d's, Verge's helium -3 deposits had been trapped in the second mantle laid down over her original, natural exosphere during the spallation -heavy terraforming process. The Beacon would drift from continent to continent, gathering and extracting all the He -3 it could, until Verge was picked clean, a few weeks from now. Then the machine and its crew would be drawn up into a battle cruiser so the Covenant could glass the planet from space.\n\n Unless, of course, Spartan: Black blew the godforsaken thing to kingdom  come first, cutting off the primary fuel source to the fleet blockading Tribute and giving the colonists there a fighting chance.\n\n Which was exactly what they planned to do.\n\n What do we see, people? Black -One asked. Befitting their highly classified status as an unconventional warfare (UW) unit, Spartan: Black's ebony armor had been created as skunkwork prototypes in a top secret parallel development lab in Seongnam, United Korea; as such, MJOLNIR:\nBlack boaste d a few variant design elements and enhancements completely different from the standard -issue combat exoskeleton. Its HUD magnification, for example, was much greater than the standard Mark V or VI, with a field of view of nearly five thousand meters. From  this distance, Spartan: Black could zoom in on the support troops milling beneath the antigrav feet of the Beacon and see them as clearly as if they had been standing across the street.\n\n Two Hunters per pylon, Black -Two said, noting the stooped, spin y-armored behemoths. Each creature's right arm terminated in a gun barrel studded with luminescent green power rods. Armed with standard assault cannon.\n\n Complemented by two no, three Jackals at each corner, Black -Three added.\n\n The spiky -crowned, bea ked aliens carried, in addition to plasma pistols holstered at their sides, some kind of long pole made of a translucent purple -pink crystalline material. Occasionally, a Drone would flit away from the larger swarm in a confused, almost drunken fashion, an d a couple of Jackals would descend on it with a shriek, stabbing the stray in the neck, where it wore a translucent reddish -orange collar. The bugger quaked spasmodically with pain, clutching the collar with its front claws; it could take only a thrust or  two from the Jackals and the resulting seizures before it fell dutifully back with the swarm and resumed whatever task it had abandoned.\n\n Jackals aren't just security, Four said. They're also management.\n\n Very nice to meet you, Two said. I look f orward to killing you.\n\n No one said anything for almost five minutes. They just watched the enemy work.\n\n Finally, Three said, Hunters and Jackals they're just another day at the office. I mean, I can kill Tree-Turkeys in my sleep. And Can -o'-Worms are something you can sink your teeth into. But the buggers how many are there?\n\n I've got a hundred, a hundred fifty so far, Four said. But I'm not sure .  . . some I may have counted twice. They're moving pretty f ast down there.\n\n One -fifty .  . . Jesus, Three said. How are the buggers going to react when we bring the hammer down? Can they use those grappler things as weapons? What kind of intel do we have on their tactics and behavior?\n\n We have jack,  said Two, the fireteam's intelligence officer. Covenant's rarely deployed them as combatants.\n\n Jesus, Three muttered again, shaking his head. I hate surprises.\n\n If it was easy, they wouldn't call us heroes, One drawled.\n\n I'd prefer a pat on th e back, Three said. But I gotta be alive for that.\n\n Two, One said, find us a room in the interior where we can mull this over and catch some Z's without being seen from the street.\n\n Copy that, Chief. Black -Two backed out on her stomach until she  reached the nursery's doorway, then got up into a crouch and made her way quickly but cautiously through the rest of the penthouse. She determined that what was left of the kitchen had no good sightlines to the perimeter and prepared to return and tell On e but was stopped by a fluttering, flapping sound from a doorway on the north side of the room.\n\n She pressed her back against the wall and peered around the doorway. She was looking into a ruined family room, a flatscreen lying facedown and shattered on a  carpet littered with tempered glass that once filled floor -to-ceiling windows. On the ground  beside a sofa blackened and bloated by fire and the elements, a solitary Yanme'e Drone twitched his wings spasmodically.\n\n Two put both hands on the assault rifle hanging from her shoulder and silently lined up a shot at the crown of the bugger's walnut -shaped head. Something seemed off about the creature, though. She didn't pull the trigger.\n\n Two realized the Drone was on  his back, pulsing the hinged armored plates that covered his wings over and over again in a futile attempt to flip himself over onto his belly. Two could now see that all four of his lower legs had been cut off and cauterized at the stumps. His two remain ing arms didn't have joints that allowed him to reach behind and push himself upright.\n\n Two watched him struggle for twenty seconds more. Then she emerged from behind the doorway and took several slow strides over to where the Drone lay. His orange, half -egg eyes were fixed at the ceiling and didn't register her approach.\n\n Still covering the insectoid with the rifle, Two tucked one foot under the creature's body and kicked him up and over. He began frantically beating his wings to stay upright while hoppi ng up and down on the end of his abdomen. The bugger was human sized, and they were now practically eye to eye. Two took a step back and made sure the Drone was staring down the barrel of the AR.\n\n Holding the gun steady with one hand, she flexed her other  elbow in such a way that a compartment sprang open along the left foreaem of the skunkware MJOLNIR. A wand computer with a microphone, speakers, a digital ink keyboard, and every scrap of linguistics data United Nations Space Command had gathered on the l anguages of Covenant races popped out of the compartment and slid into her palm.\n\n Identify yourself and your purpose, Two said sternly, and waited for the Interrogator, as ONI had christened the device, to translate and broadcast the question in Yanme'e .\n\n The icon of a rotating circle appeared on the Interrogator's  display, indication it was working. After only a few seconds, the device emitted a faint series of clicks and screeches in a pitiful attempt to mimic Yanme'e speech. Two had little faith in it succeeding. Sure enough, a moment later, its display flashed: Untranslatable. Two cursed under her breath. Not enough was known about the damn buggers to make even that simple demand intelligible.\n\n With his head cocked quizzically, the Drone watched as Black -Two tried to rephrase the question a couple of different  ways so that the Interrogator might translate, but no avail.\n\n Then the creature made an unmistakable gesture, extending one claw in her direction, then curling his digits rapidly toward himself: Give.\n\n Black -Two frowned. What little intel ONI had on the Drones suggested they had an instinctive faculty for technology. Cautiously, she handed the Interrogator over. There seemed little harm in it. A cord attached the device to her forearm to supply it with power and data, as well as ensure that the other half  of a conversation couldn't just walk away with it.\n\n The second the Yanme'e wrapped his claws around the device he popped open the access panel on its underside. He rearranged the circuits and microfilament wires in the Interrogator's guts with such speed  and precision that one would have thought he had spent every waking moment for the past twenty years working with them.\n\n Two opened her mouth to protest, but found herself just watching, transfixed by the rapidity of the thing's movements, which had a ce rtain kind of flitting grace, like a dragonfly making its evasive way across the surface of a pond. Something in the device clicked.\n\n And the creature started talking.\n\n\n IN THEnursery lookout, Black -One was just starting to wonder what was taking Blac k-Two so long when her subordinate's  voice rang out from inside the apartment: Chief! Better come here!\nBring the boys, too!\n\n The rest of Spartan: Black walked into the living room to find Two tethered to the Dr one by the Interrogator's power cord. At first glance it looked like the Yanme'e was holding the Spartan on a leash.\n\n Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!  Instantly, the three other Spartans fell into an attack phalanx, Three and Four both dropping to one knee and raising  their ARs while One remained standing, training her own weapon on the Drone's head. Spartan Black -Two! she barked. Step away from the hostile!\n\n Two held up both hands and made calming gestures. It's okay, she said. It's okay. He's not all that hos tile. I named him Hopalong. Hopalong, meet the guys. Guys, meet Hopalong.\n\n Hopalong's claws flickered across the translator's digital ink keypad.  Hello, guys.  Normally, the Interrogator spoke in the inflectionless nonaccent of the midwestern United Sta tes. But whatever the Drone did to the machine's insides had distorted the computer voice so that now it sounded more like a recording of intelligible speech played backward that just happened to also sound like intelligible speech.\n\n The hell, Two? Thre e snapped. Making friends?\n\n He knows an alternate route to the Beacon, an underground one, Two said calmly, but with urgency. Tunnels that have been completely cleaned out of helium -3 so the buggers don't go in them anymore. We can slip in under the antigrav pylons and take them out before the Covenant knows what hit them.\n\n How did he know we were after the Beacon in the first place? Three demanded. You tell him?\n\n Have you looked outside? Two snapped defensively. Like there's anything else o n this dirtball worth blowing up.\n\n I can't think of a single reported instance in which Covenant provided aid to human troops against their own kind, One said, pointing her weapon at Hopalong. We trust this bug .  . . why?\n\n See that? Two pointed to the stumps where Hopalong's missing limbs had once been. The Jackals did that. They work the buggers to death on that thing.\n\n Hopalong's claw flickered across the translator in short, staccato bursts.  Kig-Yar do this , the machine said, using the Jackals' own name for themselves.  I drop cache twice. Kig -Yar cut legs off. Say I worthless. Let me crawl from Hive. Think I die, but no. Then I see you come. Through city. I follow. I come here. Climb walls. See you.  Know you help. You kill Kig -Yar. All Drones help. Hive help.\n\n Covenant conquered us. Jiralhanae and Sangheili. Overthrew our own Hive -Gods. Make Hive worship Prophets instead. Rule through fear and pain. Now they come for you. Together we stop them. Ear th Hive and Yanme'e. Just give us freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.\n\n He reached up and touched the red -orange collar around his neck with both claws. He flicked at it, as if wishing to rip it off, but didn't have the power.\n\n Freedom. Freedom. Freedom .\n\n Hopalong kept repeating the same click -and-whistle combination that presumably meant freedom  in the Yanme'e language. Two yanked the translator out of the Drone's hand and turned it off.\n\n She pointed at herself, then at the rest of Fireteam Black, the n made a talking symbol by slapping her thumb and fingers together. We will get back to you, she said loudly.\n\n Fireteam Black went into the kitchen where they could still see the Drone but he couldn't hear them, Interrogator or not.\n\n The others waite d for One to weigh in first. She didn't say anything for a minute, then said, I can't shake the feeling there's something not quite on the up -and-up about this. But maybe that's because I don't like a roach as big as I am coming up with my battle plans. They couldn't see her face beneath the reflective gray visor of her helmet, of course, but it was obvious to all  of them she was wrestling with the idea. Besides, inserting ourselves into local intra -Covenant disp utes is a little above our pay grade, Two. We're more the blunt -instrument type.\n\n Two glanced back at Hopalong. He lay propped up on the floor on the middle joints of his remaining arms the elbows, she supposed and rubbed his claws together in front of h is mandibles, back and forth, back and forth, like a housefly, in some kind of hygienic ritual.\n\n Normally I'd agree, Chief, but the plan he's proposing seems the best way to take the enemy by complete surprise and circumvent the Drone threat.\n\n You can be sure he's not leading us smack -dab into a trap? The doubt in Three's voice was unmistakable.\n\n If he wanted us dead all he had to do was whistle for his buddies the minute he laid eyes on us, Four pointed out. Why contrive some elaborate amb ush?\n\n Black -One said, I've got to say, the opportunity to hit the ground hot, inside the enemy's defenses, and take out the objective before they even have a chance to mount any kind of a resistance .  . . She stayed silent for a second or two then anno unced, Yeah, that's just too good to pass up. Okay, Two. Tell the bugger he's got a deal.\n\n Two went over to Hopalong to connect him to the translator again and give him the good news.\n\n Once she was out of earshot, Four asked One, And if it is a trap?\n\n Black -One looked straight at him. Then we kill them all.\n\n Now you're talking, Three said.\n  TWO\n\n _____________\n\n Fireteam Black waited until an hour before dawn, which was scheduled to arrive around 0600\nhours or so. In the interim they downed some  high-protein MREs, then helped Three remove  eight medium -sized backpacks from a case he had humped all the way from the drop point by himself. Each Spartan slipped a C -12 blow pack over each shoulder. A single p ack could punch a hole in the hull of a Covenant Cruiser, as Fireteam Black had had the pleasure of witnessing firsthand. They had little clue what kind of material the Beacon's antigrav pylons were made out of, but the general consensus was that one pack per pylon should do the trick. And they probably only needed to knock out one or two pylons to send the whole thing crashing to the ground.\n\n And if not? Four asked.\n\n Then we try harsh language, One said.\n\n Everyone chuckled. Pre -op gallows humor. Sit uation: normal.\n\n Hopalong watched them the whole time, hop -hovering in place, glittering head bobbing from one side to the other; whether that was from fascination or boredom no Spartan could say.\n\n They fell in to callsign order and snaked down the stairs and out of the apartment building in single file.\n\n Hopalong chose to crawl face -first down the edifice's side.\n\n On the ground, One insisted that Hopalong point in the direction that he wished the m to go; One then sent Four, with his battle rifle, to scope out the area. It never failed to amaze One, even after all these missions and engagements, how effortlessly Four simply melted into the shadows in his jet-black MJOLNIR, carrying his rifle by its  barrel at his hip like it was a lunchbox. She and the others hunkered down behind piles of rubble and waited until the little yellow dot representing Black -Four on the circular motion tracker in the lower -left corner of their helmet displays briefly flash ed green. Without giving any verbal commands, One rose to a crouch and sprinted in Four's direction; Three leapt up quickly and followed; Two, a little bit more slowly, so the crippled Hopalong could keep up behind.\n\n They zigzagged through the ruins of Cu idad de Arias like  this for twenty minutes, until Four swept, at Hopalong's indication, the basement of another crippled apartment tower via a side stairwell. An entire cellar wall had collapsed, burying a line of washing machines and exposing a rough -hewn tunnel carved in the unnaturally raised mantle of the terraformed planet.\n\n Black -One switched the order of their close alignment at that point, acquiescing to Hopalong taking the lead, Four following, then Two, t hen Three. She took rear guard. Their sleek train formation was belied by their stumbling progress through the rough tunnel, which had been carved out by insectoids expecting only to fly through it. So the floor, such as it was, was just as covered in fissures and protrusions and jagged edges as the walls or ceiling. It was more like an esophagus than a tunnel, snaking in cylindrical fashion down, down, down ever deeper into the earth. Hopalong now had the advantage, hastily flitting forward on his tr anslucent wings, disappearing from view until the column of Spartans rounded a bend to find him hovering in place, impatiently beckoning them forward with a claw. Visibility was awful, provided solely by light enhancement in their helmet visors, bathing th eir environs in a lime -green gloom. The whole experience would have been extremely claustrophobic, had spending days at a time entombed within head -to-toe exoskeletons not cured every Spartan of any possible inclination toward claustrophobia a long, long t ime ago.\n\n They clambered and crawled through the tunnel until, very faintly, they could hear the unmistakable hum of the Drone swarm at work far in the distance, and the warren walls began to tremble with the looming overhead presence of the Beacon. They were drawing near.\n\n Three stopped abruptly in front of One, and she almost walked right into him.\n\n He turned around, raised his hand before her, and raised an index finger the UNSC silent signal forHeads up.\n\n She peered around Three's shoulder to the front of the line. Four had stopped as well and was turning to pass signs back to Two, who passed them to Three, who passed them to her.\n\n A raised fist: Hold position.\n\n Four disappeared into the darkness of the tunn el.\n\n On her motion sensor One could see his yellow dot move eight, ten, fifteen meters away from their position then he was out of sensor range.\n\n Nothing happened for what seemed like a very long while.\n\n Then the yellow dot reappeared on her sensor and rejoined the others. Four materialized out of the gloom.\n\n He raised his forearm, clenched his fist, and pumped it up and down, rapid -fire:Hurry!\n\n He disappeared back down the tunnel, and the others follow ed. In a few paces they entered a mammoth, ovular cavern, the top of which was covered with what appeared to be metallic scales, some kind of mineral deposit that caused the ceiling to gleam even in the subterranean nonlight.\n\n Then One's breath caught in her throat.\n\n Spartans were not, as a group, especially well acquainted with fear, but when she spotted one of the scales overhead shudder, as if shaking off a dream, One knew exactly what she was looking at.\n\n Sleeping Drones. Hundreds of them, dangling  from the ceiling of the cavern, completely carpeting the rock above.\n\n She had only the one chance to glance above before she returned her attention to Three's back. He was in a crouch, weaving a nonlinear path through the cavern. One immediately intuited  why: Four had gone out before them to scout the best route through the innumerable loose rocks and ankle -busting crevices in the cave floor so they could make their way through without noise. No need to wake the Yanme'e, no matter how friendly they were s upposed to be. She knew for certain now that  whatever Hopalong's plan was, it wasn't an ambush. If it were, they'd already be dead.\n\n A distant noise kicked One right in the stomach: She could still hear a differen t swarm of Drones slaving away in the distance.\n\n There were twice as many Drones here as they had previously counted. The day swarm worked while the night swarm slept, and vice versa.\n\n That meant there had to be three to four hundred Drones all told in t he area.\n\n Black -One hoped they all shared Hopalong's democratic sympathies.\n\n After a few twists and turns beyond the large cavern, Hopa -long signaled for a stop and the Spartans circled him. They were so close to the work site that the grinding, growling  of the excavations drowned out all other sounds, and the tunnel walls shook so violently they were periodically showered by dust and stones from above. A possible cave -in wasn't far from their thoughts.\n\n Hopalong produced a thin broadcast data wafer.\n\n Hell is that? Three shouted. In any other circumstances a whisper would have been preferable, but the harsh roar of digging practically prevented them from hearing themselves.\n\n Hopalong salvaged the broadcast wafer out of the video screen in the penthouse, Two yelled back. He rejiggered it to show abandoned tunnels that lead toward one of the Beacon's pylons, and avoids ones being used for excavation now.\n\n I'm not sticking t hat thing in my head! Three exploded. Who knows what kind of enemy worms or viruses Bug Boy stuck on it!\n\n I saw him make it myself, while you guys slept.\n\n Nothing personal, Two, but that doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.\n\n What's that supposed to mean?\n\n You've got some serious Stockholm syndrome going on here with your six -legged boyfriend, that's all I'm saying. Your judgment may be seriously effed up.\n\n Sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Two got her back up. You mind saying that again?\n\n With an explosive sigh that could be heard even over the grinding din surrounding them, Four reached between Two and Three and yanked the data wafer out of Hopalong's claw. He stuffed it into the receiving s lot on the side of his helmet.\n\n Three stared at Four. You're a lot of help. I'm trying to hold an intervention for our sister here.\n\n In for a penny, in for a pound, Four said.\n  When a diode on one end flashed, indicating the upload was complete, Fou r yanked the wafer out and handed it to Two, who stuck it into her helmet too. One was prepared to order Three to do the same but that proved unnecessary. Soon all four of their HUDs featured translucent V -shaped arrows with range meters that indicated the  direction of their individual pylons.\n\n Everybody set countdown timers for .  . . T-minus ten minutes, One said. This spot is Rally Point Alpha. Return here once your blow packs are set. Then we'll have Hopalong give his buggers the good news they've be en liberated. We'll evacuate them beyond the blast radius before detonating the C -12.\n\n One pointed at Hopalong, then pointed at the ground. You stay here and wait 'til we come back. You got me?\n\n The Drone just cocked his head and wiggled his mandibles  in her general direction.\n\n Spartan: Black checked their assault rifles one last time. Locked and loaded.\n\n Let's get some, One said.\n\n Universe needs less ugly, Three declared.\n\n Then they headed off, alone, in four different directions.\n\n Black -Two' s HUD led her down a wide rabbit hole that  snaked several levels deeper into the earth so narrowly that she had to scale down feet -first. At the nadir of the passage, where it began snaking back up again, a fissure  in the side of the tunnel faced a much larger cavern beyond.\n\n Two turned on the horizontal lantern over her visor and peered through. The beam illuminated subway tracks, a stalled train, and several signs in Spanish in the human -hewn tunnel on the other side.\n\n She flicked the light off and made her way up the rest of the tunnel in the green gloom of light-enhancement. The range counter in her HUD said she was within fifty meters of her anti -grav pylon. The tunnel emptied out into another with a level flo or and a ceiling high enough for her to stand up all the way again.\n\n As soon as she did so, a Jackal rounded a bend, his beak pointed downward at a translucent glowing cube in his hands.\n\n Right before he walked into her, he looked up, sensing an obstruct ion, and Black -Two unloaded her assault rifle into his face and neck. The deafening digging sounds reverberating off every inch of the warren completely drowned out the burp of the AR and the Kig -Yar dropped without a cry.\n\n Black -Two crouched behind the b end in the tunnel, but no companions of the dead Jackal emerged. Her motion sensor remained clear of red dots. The countdown on her HUD hadn't quite reached eight minutes.\n\n Near the floor, along one wall, she found a crevice big enough to stuff the Jackal 's corpse into in case any hostiles decided to come up the tunnel behind her. She scraped gravel to cover the purple bloodstains on the tunnel floor and accidentally kicked the smoky cube the Kig -Yar was holding. As the cube bounced across the floor she th ought she could see three -dimensional images in the center of it. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands.\n\n The sides of the cube were perfectly clear, and its interior  was filled with a cloudy gel that c hurned and swirled as if it had its own internal air currents. In the center of the mist stood a slowly rotating three -dimensional image of a Yanme'e male, wings extended. A few Covenant characters floated near its feet. Black -Two had studied her Interroga tor enough to recognize these characters as numbers years, in fact. Two dates about a decade apart.\n\n A trio of buttons appeared beneath Black -Two's fingers on the surface of the cube. She tapped one, and the mist seethed, wiping away the large image of th e Drone, and started cycling through a series of images inside an immaculate plasticine honeycomb marred by a spray of Drone legs, abdomens, heads, and splashes of their green -gray blood. Interspersed among these three -dimensional tableaus of slaughter wer e scenes of smashed eggs, presumably Yanme'e as well, shell shards hurled explosively against the luminescent hive walls, the not -quite -living insides scooped out and oozing across the floor. The same Kig -Yar character floated beside each image, every time .\n\n The countdown on her HUD reached five minutes.\n\n She removed the Interregator from her forearm and waved its optical scanner over the cube until it picked up the Jackal word.\n\n While she waited for the Interrogator' s wheel icon to stop rotating, she played with the cube a little bit more, punching other buttons and seeing where they took her. In all cases, the mist wiped away the existing image and replaced it with another 360 degree three -dimensional image of an ind ividual Drone, attached to various scenes of hive carnage, all accompanied by the same Kig -Yar character.\n\n At last, the Interrogator flashed at her. Untranslatable, it claimed. Word itself translation from Yanme'e language. Nearest analogue(s):  Unmutu al' (43% accuracy),  Incapable of Socialization'\n(51% accuracy).\n\n Two shrugged, dropped the cube, and made her way to the  mouth of the tunnel. One of the Beacon's pylons passed a full story over her head as she p eeked just over the ground level. An erupted heap of asphalt four or five paces away momentarily blocked her view from the pylon's guard three Jackals and two Hunters but they soon marauded into view. They weren't looking in the direction of the pylon at a ll, but were fixated on the Drone swarm as it fell like titanium rain into the horizon below the Beacon's massive, pulsating belly, crisscrossing with a second curtain that showered upward, into its bowels.\n\n The counter on Two's HUD ticked down below one minute.\n\n Pre-fight adrenaline slammed into her veins. Her heart rate shot up to a dance -floor drumbeat.\n\n Ten seconds. She flexed her hands around the AR.\n\n Engage, Black -One whispered across her helmet speakers.\n\n Immediately, the sharp rattle of Black -Four's battle rifle could be heard even over the noise of the excavation. The Hunters turned and began bounding toward the opposite pylon.\n\n Black -Two popped out of her hole and fired three short bursts at the back of the Jackals' heads as they fell in be hind the Hunters. Jets of purple spray squirted skyward as they pitched forward.\n\n One of the Hunters instantly spun its spiny head around and pointed its blank gaze at Black -Two. She despised the damn hulks and their completely blank, gray nonfaces, for t hey had no expressions to read, no way to tell if they had spotted you or not\n\n Until they started lumbering toward you, swinging their massive, armored legs with frightening rapidity, as this one did now.\n\n Two leapt all the way out of the hole. She spri nted for the teepee -shaped pile of a collapsed concrete kiosk half a block away.\n\n When she turned to let off a few bursts in the Hunter's direction, the emerald discharge from an assault cannon slammed  right into her chest with a deafening roar of static, lifting her off her feet and slamming her onto the ground.\n\n Getting knocked over saved her life, for as she thudded onto her back a second green ray of incendiary plasma blasted directly overhead. With her energy shields completely knocked out and the HUD shield alert honking a furious warning at her, the second b last would have cut her in half.\n\n Two looked up over her chest and saw both Hunters rumbling down on her. She quickly rolled ungracefully behind the rubble cover and willed her shields to recharge, but the Hunter was looming over her before she had a chan ce to catch her breath. The armored bulk raised its triangle -shaped shield over its head, ready to bring it down on her in a crushing blow.\n\n Instinct took over. The Hunter was tall enough for her to somersault between its legs, and her maneuver caused it to simply further pulverize the pile of concrete when it guillotined its arm down.\n\n Until her shields returned, she didn't stand a chance mano a mano with the Mgalekgolo. But she had an equalizer: the blow pack. She slung one off her shoulder and hung it by its strap onto one of the Hunter's long spines jutting from its back.\n\n She then sprang up, leaping up over the Hunter as it tried to reach back to grab the pack and rip it offbut its armored arms simply wouldn't turn that way. She used his head as a s pringboard and backflipped over the pile of rubble, remotely detonating the C -12 charge as she landed.\n\n She would have been vaporized if the concrete pile of the kiosk hadn't been between her and the blast. The Hunter disappeared inside an abrupt ballooni ng mushroom of dust that radiated outward and completely subsumed Two.\n\n When it finally receded, there was nothing left of the Mgalekgolo but a few sizzling bits of chitin fused to the ground and carbonized ropes of blackened worm. The concrete kiosk had been pulverized into powder.\n\n The ground trembled beneath her feet and Black -Two whirled around just in time to see the other Hunter barreling furiously toward her. Her shield bar hummed back to full power. The ba rrel of the Hunter's assault cannon swirled a fierce emerald green, indicating it had charged for a second blast, but Two threw him off by opening up point -blank with the AR, forcing the thing to throw up its shield to protect itself.\n\n They danced like th is for a few seconds the Hunter recharging, Two sidestepping and firing, the Hunter forced to stop and defend itself. Two knew she couldn't keep this up all day. For one thing, the Mgalekgolo had more armor than she had ammo. She had to maneuver herself in to a position to land some shots in the exposed orange flesh between the armored plates around the neck and midriff, but of course the beast was making sure to keep those areas blocked with his shield.\n\n Sudden movement to Two's right drew the barrel of he r AR in that direction, but when she saw Hopalong clambering out of the hole she lowered her rifle. He hop -flew in shallow, graceless parabolas toward the underbelly of the Beacon. She looked in that direction and saw that the Yanme'e had stopped working. Instead, they swarmed across the machine's surface in a single glittering curtain. Unnervingly, every one of their amber, half -egg eyes seemed to be fixated on the approaching Hopalong with burning intensity.\n\n Much to her shock, as soon as the Hunter spot ted Hopalong too, he swiveled around and lumbered after him, completely forgetting all about Black -Two. He stopped once to aim and fire a concussive green stream at the Drone, but Hopalong managed to get just enough altitude on his membranous wings to levi tate out of the way.\n\n It was then that she spotted the smoky cube in Hopalong's claws, the one she had left behind in the tunnel.\n\n It all clicked instantly in her mind at just that moment.\n\n Unmutual .\n\n Incapable of Socialization .\n\n Dead Drones and eggs.\n\n A jolt of fear electrified Black -Two's spine. She found herself running after the Hunter, who continued to fire and miss at Hopalong. She dropped to one knee and let off an AR burst at the Drone, but t he gun was spent. Cursing, she snapped in a fresh clip as fast as she could.\n\n Hopalong was far enough away that Two couldn't be sure, but it looked like the cube in his claws flashed as his digits flew across the device's multichromatic controls.\n\n She co uld see glittering crystalline flashes as, one by one, the collars fell off the necks of the Drones waiting patiently on the Beacon.\n\n The Hunter fired again, and missed again.\n\n Black -One, this is Black -Two, please come in immediately, Black -One .  . .\n\n Black -One here. I don't have time to chat. I've got a Hunter with a fuel rod cannon with my name on it pinning me down\n We're about to have much bigger problems, Chief. If anyone's placed their packs I say we evac our asses ASAP.\n\n What? Why? What do you see?\n\n At that moment the last few collars fell off the Drones' necks.\n\n We've been tricked, Two said, desperation creeping into her voice. This is no ordinary collection of Drones they haven't been  enslaved' here\n\n When the Hunter turned aro und and started running away, the bottom of Two's stomach fell out.\n\n This is a penal colony!  Two shouted.\n\n Like an explosive cloud of shrapnel, the Drones launched themselves off the B eacon toward Black -Two in a spinning, chittering horde, each mass murderer of their fellow Yanme'e  and killer of their young and defiler of their hives clicking and whining out the same word, over and over again, the only Yanme'e word Two had understood as Hopalong had repeated it so urgently back in the penthouse:\n\n \"FREEDOM.\"\n\n THREE\n\n _____________\n\n Black -Two's motion sensor became subsumed with red dot after red dot until it looked like someone had cut her chee k open and the blood was seeping over the display, drowning it in crimson.\n\n The cloud of Yanme'e slammed into the Hunter and in the blink of an eye he was covered in dozens of them. He let off an emerald swath from his assault cannon that dismembered any Drones in the path of the blast, but others instantly choked the gap closed. Together, the buggers lifted the Mgalekgolo high in the air. The barrel of the assault cannon was still recharging a flickering green when they ripped the Hunter's limbs and head from its body. The ropy, eellike worms that comprised the creature's true self cascaded like grain from a silo out of the ruptured shell. The Drones unthinkingly swooped down on the worms before they hit the ground and tore them into bright orange -red ch unks with their claws and mandibles.\n\n Two caught only a few glimpses of this over her shoulder, for almost as immediately the Yanme'e launched themselves in her direction. She turned and sprinted in the direction of the Beacon's antigrav pylon. Once she w as within twenty meters she let the second blow pack slide off her shoulder and into her hand. She twirled it twice and hurled it at the pylon, where it hit about three meters up and stuck in place with a magnetic thunk  .\n\n She turned ninety degrees and ran  toward the hole she originally came out of. All around her buggers exploded out of the  ground and shot into the air; undoubtedly the hive sleeping below the surface now awakened to a glorious living dream of unbri dled mayhem and carnage, no longer held in check by their Covenant wardens.\n Two plunged headfirst into the warren just as a horde of Drones dove down to snatch her up as well. The Yanme'e slammed into a pileup, clogging the tunnel's mouth and fighting am ong each other for the right to pursue her.\n\n Two didn't give them the chance to decide the contest. She primed one of her M9 grenades and underhanded it at the hole. The Drones' shadows wisely flew in retreat as the frag exploded, bringing down the upper wall of the tunnel and sealing Two inside.\n\n The warren maze writhed with the fluttering shadows of rioting Drones in every direction. Two scurried a few meters in the direction of the original rally point then stopped, spotting the fissure leading to the subway system.\n\n Bracing herself against the opposite wall of the tunnel, Two pushed off with her MJOLNIR -enhanced legs and put her shoulder into the fissure. She smashed through to the other side in a cloud of dirt and rocks.\n\n Immediately, she pressed he r back against the train tunnel. A few Yanme'e stuck their heads in through the unfamiliar hole to investigate, but not seeing anything moving, and since Two's black armor and gunmetal gray visor perfectly camouflaged her presence among the machinery -cover ed wall, the buggers moved on with a low, disappointed chatter.\n\n Once her motion sensor cleared of red dots except at the margins, Two walked over to examine the sleek, dust -covered train car. A brief inspection indicated it was intact and straddled a sin gle rail that snaked away into a tunnel unimpeded by any debris or cave -ins she could see.\n\n Who's dead? One's voice crackled over her helmet.\n\n Not Two, she replied.\n\n Not Four,  Four said, calmly, over AR fire. No matter what kind of 110 percent FUBAR situation Spartan: Black found itself in, Four's voice never rose, never wavered; he always sounded like he was shopping for groceries. Two found that both extremely lovable and ext remely disturbing about him.\n\n Black -Three? Black -Three, this is Black -One, come in, One called over the open channel. There was no answer, but Two heard the ragged sounds of what she was sure was breathing.\n\n Chief? Recommend we change rally points, T wo said. She placed a white dot on the team's motion displays to mark the location of the subway tunnel. I found the Arias transit system. Train looks like standard colonial model, running on internal cell power, and this one is .  . . She popped open the  service hatch on the side of the train car to check. Yeah, it's fully functional. We rev this thing up we can get the hell out of Dodge right under the swarm's noses.\n\n I'm all for that, One said through what were clearly gritted teeth. Two could hear  her firing her AR too. It's a goddamn bugger convention down here.\n\n Chief, Two blurted out, I'm an idiot. I shouldn't have trusted Hopa that damn bugger. He played me like I was a naive social worker. I'm so sorry. I\n He played all of us, Two, One said. I fell for it too. No need to beat yourself up about it.\n\n Yeah, Black -Four said, particularly when there are so many buggers down here happy to do it for you.\n\n Shut up, Four, Two said.\n\n One said, Black -Four. New objective. Shoot your way to Two's choo -choo. It is now Rally Point Beta.\n\n Copy that, Four responded, then was drowned out by automatic fire.\n\n A pair of blinking yellow dots appeared on the edges of her motion sensor: her fellow Spartans, fighting their way to her.\n\n Just a pair, though.\n\n What about Three? Two asked.\n\n He's not responding, One said.\n\n I can hear him breathing. He's still alive.\n\n But unconscious. There was resignation in One's voice.\n\n Two didn't think. I' m going after him.\n\n Belay that, Spartan, One said sharply. I'm not losing half my Fireteam.\n\n But Two was already plunging back into the warren. I'll be back with him before you're done firing up the train for evac.\n\n The pointer to her Beacon pylo n remained active, so despite her grenade's cave -in she was able to circle back through the now largely empty tunnels to her original position. She leapt out onto the surface of Verge and headed to the opposite corner of the Beacon, which still listed in m idair, firing its energy beam to the heavens, albeit in a pitiful stream since the Drones had stopped feeding it precious helium -3.\n\n The Drones swirled all around the Beacon really, as far as Black -Two could see in a pinwheeling, asymmetrical blur of gray -blue wings. Frequently a pair would collide then claw at each other with high -pitched clacking and squeaking. Other Yanme'e would hover in midair and stupidly watch them battle until the victor had torn the vanquished limb from limb literally.\n\n That must  have been what the Kig -Yar character Unmutual meant: the Yanme'e equivalent of a personality disorder, an inability to relate to others. While in humans such psy -chopathology could create cunning, hyperaggressive killers, in Drones, with their even more  rigid socialization, Unmutuals were incapable of working in concert with the rest of the swarm as a single, coherent unit. The efficient Covenant wasn't about to let those minor details waste a vast source of manpower, however: Unmutual Drones were yoked to Beacons and worked to death by Kig -Yar.\n\n A host of Unmutuals clung to the underside of the Beacon. As she ran underneath it, a few dropped down and attempted to hoist her into the air. She knocked them off her back with the butt of the AR. A solitary Drone plopped down directly in front of her, blocking her path, and she took it out with a short, controlled burst.\n\n Yet they kept dropping down, forcing her to zigzag around them. By the time she emerged on the other side of the Beacon there were dozens of them standing as still as statues facing her, simply watching her with cocked heads, mandibles twitching.\n\n A yellow dot appeared on the edge of her motion sensor.\n\n Black -Three, come in! she yelled louder than  she needed to. This is Black -Two. I am closing in on your position. Give me your status.\n\n There was silence for a moment then Three groaned across her speakers:\n\n Buggers picked me straight up in the air, and they would have torn me apart like a wishbone if I hadn't let loose with my AR.\n\n She sprinted a beeline for the dot, closing to twenty, then fifteen meters. She was on the edge of the city, and a few skyscrap ers loomed before her. The ground was uneven enough that she couldn't see any sign of a Spartan lying before her.\n\n Can you move? she asked.\n\n I don't know .  . . She heard his MJOLNIR shift and creak, and then he cried out.  Goddamn it!They dropped me way high up, and I landed right on my ankle .  . . must've broke, even inside my armor .  . . And the biofoam pinned it in the broken shape! Goddamn stupid skunkworks piece of shit\n. . .\n\n Just sit tight, she told him.\n\n She was within ten meters of Three . A Drone landed in front of her, arms spread, but she didn't slow down. Instead she barreled right into him, smashing her assault rifle into his face and  knocking him over. She put a foot through the front of his thorax with a crunch and squish as she ran over him.\n\n A menacing buzz made her look behind. The Unmutuals were falling into a single curtain behind her. Her dispatch of the last Drone must have overcome their innate selfishness. They were very slowly, but  very deliberately, roiling toward her, a solid wall of flickering death.\n\n Her motion sensor showed she was practically on top of the yellow dot, so she stopped.\n\n Looked down.\n\n Black -Three was nowhere to be seen.\n  Where the hell are you? she asked.\n\n How the hell am I supposed to know, man? They dropped my ass on some roof somewhere.\n\n You've gotta be kidding. She scanned the buildings in front of her and had to guess which one the yellow motion sensor dot pointed her toward. Why can't this godda mn thing be more specific about altitude?\n\n Write a letter to the friendly folks at Naval Intelligence, Three groaned.\n\n She could hear the swarm surging forward. She threw herself through what remained of the plate -glass windows lining the lobby of an office building and made for the fire stairs, which wound up a reinforced concrete shaft on one side of the building.\n\n Two took the steps five at a time. The building had to be forty stories tall.\n\n She whipped past the sign for the thirtieth floor when the walls of the stairwell began to tremble and an intense, overpowering hum began vibrating through the shaft. She worried the building was about to collapse. She passed a hole punched in the wall and saw five Yanme'e desperately crawling through the exposed, rusting rebars and realized the entire swarm was trying to claw their way inside at once.\n\n She looked behind and saw the shadow of a huge mass of Drones surging up the stairwell right behind her.\n\n Aaaaah,  Three crackled over her speakers. They found me, Two, they found me! Stay back, you goddamn buggers! She heard him firi ng his AR.  You wanna piece of me, you're gonna have to work for it!\n\n She sprinted the rest of the way up to the roof and burst outside to see Black -Three lying on his back struggling with a Drone who was trying to rip his AR out of his hands. The crumpl ed husks of bullet -ridden Yanme'e lay all around.\n\n There was something about the Drone fighting with Three that looked familiar the four missing limbs.\n\n Hopalong and Three both turned their heads to look at her at once.\n\n She didn't hesitate.\n\n She unlea shed a short, controlled burst at Hopalong, ripping him away from Three and knocking the Drone off the building.\n\n The swarm poured over the edges of the roof like a cup overflowing and she could hear them on her heels coming out of the stairwell too.\n\n She closed the distance between her and Three in two long strides. She didn't slow down. She scooped up Three, threw him over her shoulder, ran to the edge of the roof .  . .\n  And jumped.\n\n She landed with both feet on the roof of the building opposite and didn't waste any time locating the exit leading down the door had been blown open by a Covenant raiding force many months ago.\n\n She took the stairs down by leaping from one landing to the  next, stopping only once to adjust Three to a more comfortable position across both her shoulders.\n\n As she did so Three said, For a minute there I didn't know whether you were going to save me or your bugger boyfriend.\n\n That would be because you are a moron, Two said.\n\n Much of the swarm was waiting for them in the lobby when they burst out of the stairwell. Howling like Sioux warriors on a final charge across the plains, the Spartans unloaded their assault r ifles, Three while still draped across Two's back, and cleared a narrow path through the Drones to the exit.\n\n But now came the impossible part the scenario One had wanted to avoid in the first place: a hundred meters of open ground between the Spartans an d the Beacon with clouds of infuriated Drones swarming overhead, everywhere they looked. Each of their ARs was on its last clip and they wouldn't make it ten paces without expending all their ammo if they tried to fight their way through.\n\n So she just had  to run.\n\n The Drones flew down and tried to grab them, or snatch Three off her shoulders, but she was too strong and Three beat them back with the AR, firing off a burst or two when absolutely necessary.\n\n Then Two felt her feet kicking empty air she was rising off the ground against her will. But no Drones were near them.\n\n Oh crap, Three said.\n\n She looked up and saw several Drones floating above them, the antigrav grapplers they used to excavate mantle for the Beacon now trained on the two Spartans.\n\n She saw a familiar form flitting by their side she had blown off his front arms but he was still alive, limbless but still able to hover -hop on what remained of his tattered wings.\n\n So Unmutuals weren't completely incapable of cooperation.\n\n They just ne eded the right leadership.\n\n Her helmet headset crackled, Black -Two, this is Black -One. Come in. Black -Four has powered up the train and we are ready for evac. Return to Rally Point Beta immediately. Over.\n\n Copy that, Black -One, Two said, but I' d get that thing moving now.\n  Why?\n\n Because I am about to drop something extremely heavy on top of it.\n\n And she detonated the blow pack she had attached to the antigrav pylon of the Beacon.\n\n The huge C -12 explosion was so violent that it startled many of the Drones into dropping their grapplers, which in turn dropped Two back onto her feet. She didn't waste any time in dashing for the warren holes. The other three antigrav pylons struggled for a few seconds  to keep the unforgiving mass of the Beacon upright on their own, but gravity emerged victorious and yanked the machine downward on one side. The plasma stream still emanating from its top cut an apocalyptic swath through the Yanme'e swarm, vaporizing Hopa long and the dozens of Unmutuals around him. It sliced the buildings Two and Three had just escaped from in half like a giant scythe.\n\n Two dropped underground just as the first pylon hit. The tunnels immediately began collapsing around her and it was a ma d dash to stay one step ahead of the flattening ceilings. She barely made it to the subway tunnel and handed Black -Three into Black -One's outstretched arms as she stood on the back of the train car before leaping onboard herself.\n\n The subway disappeared i nto its tunnel just as the remains of the fallen Beacon crashed through the platform roof.\n\n For a moment, everyone inside the train car paused to catch their breath. The train whined quietly through the absolute darkness of the metro tube. Spartan: Black was too exhausted to celebrate.\n\n ETA at Pelican in twenty, Four said after a moment, as if nothing had just happened.\n\n Three punched Two playfully in the shoulder. So what did we learn today, huh? If you see something that looks different from us in a ny way, kill it immediately and without question.\n\n Two just cocked her head. We are a hell of a lot more  Mutual' that's for sure.\n\n Huh? Three said.\n\n She watched the tunnel darkness recede back into itself behind them as the train hummed its way to the drop point.\n\n Nothing, Two said with a smile only she knew was there.\n\n\n\n THE MONA LISA\n\n\n\n JEFF VANDERMEERAND TESSA KUM\n\n OCTOBER 2552 [EXACT DATE CLASSIFIED], SOELL SYSTEM,\n\n INSTALLATION 04 DEBRIS FIELD, HALO\n\n\n >Lopez 0610 hours\n\n Sergeant Zhao Heng Lopez stood in the cargo bay of the UNSC Red Horse  , looking at an escape pod. A huge, pitted bullet. About two and a half  meters long and thick, pocked and smacked by debris. Around her: Hospital Corpsman Ngoc Benti, Technical Officer Raj Singh, his helpers, the ever-silent, inscrutable Clarence, and a crack pilot named Burgundy who'd just come back from a recon mission. All  of them staring at the latest catch. It was so dented the container itself almost looked like something living. Almost expected to see plants growing out of the sides. Was that all it took? Lopez wondered, to make something lifelike? Kick it around enough ? Maybe.\n\n James MacCraw joined them. Rookie. Raw. Big -boned, lanky, and freckled. Unimpressive. Maybe if she kicked him around he'd show some life.\n\n I'm here, Sarge, he said, but not like he meant it. God, she hated indifference in the morning.\n\n Yeah, you think you're here, MacCraw, Benti said in a half mutter. Next to Benti who looked so small in combat armor that seemed to eat her up MacCraw was like another species.\n\n Singh had conscripted Burgundy into helping pry the pod open alongside his assistants. The thing obviously wasn't going to open easily for them the line revealing the crude little hatch, locked at the side, almost couldn't be seen with the number of impac ts it had suffered.\n\n Not much to look at, is it? Burgundy said. Lopez knew that the Marines sometimes called her Stickybeak because she was too curious, but she didn't seem to care.\n\n Benti: Is it, like, old, or a recon pod? Am I here to tranq or tre at? I don't get it.\n\n Is it even ours? MacCraw asked, ignoring Benti while asking the same question.\n\n Sure as hell ain't Covenant, Lopez said. It's human. Just not necessarily military. Serial numbers, but no UNSC markings.\n\n No idea what it was do ing out here in uncharted space, floating in the ruins of Halo, a gargantuan alien artifact Lopez hadn't even tried to explain to herself. Hell, Lopez had no real idea what she was doing here, for that matter. They'd popped out of slipspace like a greased egg just three days ago, with no more specific task than recon and recovery and watch out for Covenant patrols. Lopez wasn't in the mood for more mysteries.\n\n But that doesn't mean it's friendly, she added, not wanting them too relaxed. Except for Clarence, who was at his best when he was so relaxed he didn't even seem to be alive; sometimes Lopez wondered if he was a ghost. But it was hard for the rest of them not to be complacent, standing in the bay of their  own ship. Lopez knew from experience sometimes you took the worst hits where you lived for that very reason.\n\n They'd seen pods before on this tour too many. They were plucking them from the void with such tenacity it made her think they were  looking for so mething in particular. But almost all of what they'd recovered had been sleeper pods from amid the exploded chunks of continental plate, the almost delicate slices of superstructure: cryotubes ejected from the Pillar of Autumn  when she was brought down by C ovenant fire. All DOA, cracked and ruptured by the wealth of debris out there. Go to sleep expecting to wake, and wind up in a floating coffin instead. There were worse ways to die. There were much better ways, too.\n\n MacCraw might have been slow, but he w asn't that slow. As he helped Benti unsnap a stretcher, he said, So much for a highly classified top -secret hush -hush location. That's a civilian pod.\n\n Lopez didn't answer because she had no answer. Their mission remained fuzzy, and the rumor mill was s urprisingly quiet. All she knew was that even though the Red Horse  operated under wartime rules, she'd felt like she was signing away her soul when they'd given her additional security documents. Not to reveal .  . . Under penalty of .  . .\n\n The oddest thing?  Their old smart AI, Chauncey, had been replaced with an AI named Rebecca. Chauncey had been only three years old when they'd yanked him out like an old motor block. No question of his having cracked up. Besides, Chauncey would've dropped her a hint or two . He had taken a real shine to Lopez. Rebecca hadn't.\n\n Maybe we should tell the commander it's civilian, MacCraw said.\n\n Poor MacCraw. Still so wet behind the ears. She didn't look at him. Didn't need to.\n\n Benti couldn't resist, gave Lopez a cheeky grin as she said: There are cameras in here, MacCraw.\n\n He frowned, reddened.\n\n Burgundy and Singh's assistants had moved away from the pod.\n\n Sir! Singh waved Lopez over. Life support is still online. We've  got a live one in here. An instant quickening of her pulse. This could be something, finally. She was sick of being a funeral director. Just give the word and we'll have it open.\n\n Lopez motioned to Clarence. Step on up, Invisible Man. Singh, get your  team clear. Sleeping Beauty here is a stranger. Unholstered her pistol, checked the chamber. Benti, c'mon, get your weapon out and your head out of your ass. Treat as hostile until proven otherwise. Benti had a talent for making friends that served the  squad well on leave, especially regarding bartenders, but it wasn't a useful trait here.\n\n The sound of boots behind her as additional Marines filed into the hangar, ranging around the pod at Clarence's command. Assault rifles raised and ready. She didn't  have to check they knew what they were doing. Lopez had trained most of them herself.\n\n Ever -silent, Clarence drew up beside her, finger on the trigger. A good man to have at her back when faced with the unknown.\n\n Lopez nodded at Singh, who tapped his co ntrol pad. The seal on the pod sighed, and the technician stood back.\n\n Three, two, one .  . .\n She wrenched at the hatch. A hiss of escaping pressure as the hatch rose.\n\n Clarence didn't move. Just stood beside her, watching, calm, even when she started.\n\n Damn!\n\n There was a lot of blood. A man, too. But a lot of blood. More than seemed possible. That was what got to her first. The blood sloshed in the creases of the berth. It ran down the floor to  pool in the footwell. It had saturated the man's clothes. His face was crusted by blood, his eyes white and bulging in the midst of it. Couldn't at first tell if he really was alive. She and Clarence stared down while he lay there, looking up but not really seeing.\n\n Burgundy grimaced in disgust, mumbled something like I've got to be going, and fled the hangar. That amused Lopez. Stickybeak'd become unstuck.\n\n Where did the smell come from? Where? It was rank, like the stink she remember ed coming off corpses after about three days into a firefight, still pinned down by Covenant at some godforsaken outpost on a planet no one even cared about. But behind that, some sort of infection. She could smell it because she could also smell the antis eptic of whatever the man had used to fight it. The smell reminded her of the nursing home where she'd had to leave her mother a few years back, mumbling prayers and counting her rosary beads.\n\n The man rose up. He rose up like something coming out of dark ness into the light, the blood spilling off his chest. Clarence had his gun aimed point -blank between the man's eyes. Those eyes focused as the man cried out, Don't let them get me! through a torn mouth. Lopez could see that the blood wasn't just spillin g off his chest but out of his chest, and that's what made her take a step back, more than anything else. That, and the way he looked at her made Lopez realize the man already understood he was dead.\n\n As dead as any corpse they'd recovered from a cryotube.\n\n >Benti 0623 hours\n\n Stabilizing John Doe took Benti a few minutes. A thankless task. A pointless task. Not all the bandages in the world would help him now. While a couple of the others lifted him out and onto the stretcher, Clarence kept his gun on t he man. Good  old Clarence. Other Marines talked behind his back said he was messed up in the head, said he had his own agenda but Benti had always liked him. You could depend on Clarence. Who cared about the rest?\n\n With Clarence on the job, Benti kept her calm even with the guy babbling don't let them take me, please don't let them take me  . This guy wasn't going anywhere soon. They could have brought a proper bed down; at least Mr. Doe would've been more comfortabl e.\n\n Mr. Doe had kind eyes. Frightened eyes, but kind. Benti could tell. She was a strong believer in what you could figure out from a person's eyes. It was one reason she trusted Clarence, and why she found MacCraw a waste of space.\n\n Great slashes, vicio us and brutal, constituted most of Mr. Doe's wounds. The worst had penetrated his chest, but his feet were a mess too. If only he'd been wearing shoes. Benti tsk ed a little at the lack. The left foot had blackened, and it would have to come off. No, scratch  thatchopping his foot off won't save him now.  His left arm had a chunk missing. A shattered shoulder and missing ear were just afterthoughts in her catalog of his problems. The bandages she'd applied were pitiful, the skin around them blue, and a down -and-dirty IV had been hooked up. A waste, but Sarge wanted some quality face time with Mr. Doe, so anything to keep him with them a little longer.\n\n For an instant, Benti had a vision of Mr. Doe encountering some great force. That he'd sustained all this dam age in one moment of terrible clarity; of knowing, as they would all know eventually, that the universe was stronger, and meaner, than any one of them. It was something the Marine Corps, after Benti's cushy upbringing in a suburban home on Earth, had been teaching her for five years now.\n\n She depressed the plunger in the syringe. Mr. Doe jerked up, a sudden tension wracking the lines of his body, jaw clenched.  Benti noted absurdly that he hadn't been flossing latel y: bad gums. That they were gray concerned her more.\n\n There, Benti said, rising to her feet and wiping her bloody hands. Blood never bothered her, only where it came from. He's stable. For the moment.\n\n Good to talk? the sarge asked her.\n\n Benti twi sted her lips, unwilling to commit to a yes or no. I gave him a cocktail painkillers, and an upper. He can talk. Yep, he could talk, although it wasn't going to be one of those scintillating discussions you remembered the rest of your life. Besides, the sarge had never been good at polite conversation: one reason Benti liked her.\n\n She caught Lopez's eye, knew the sarge understood. Mr. Doe could leave them at any time.\n\n Benti stood back as Lopez crouched down. See that?  Lopez pointed to a tattoo and indentation on his right arm, across the edge of Mr. Doe's tricep. Prison barcode, with a scar where they'd implanted the tracking chip.\n\n Interesting. It didn't really interest Benti, but you had to humor the sarge sometim es.\n\n Mr. Doe spoke up. Marines. You're UNSC. His voice broke, too long without water and use.\n\n You're safe, Lopez said.\n\n Benti frowned. Mr. Doe was also at the ass -end of the galaxy, light -years from anything unclassified. But I guess you don't compl icate a dying man's life.\n\n Thank God, he wheezed. The tension that had gripped and defined him until then slipped away. Thank God.\n\n They were attending his funeral, Benti realized. Her, Lopez, Clarence, MacCraw, Singh, and the rest. Forming an honor guard around a man who might or might not deserve it. For once, MacCraw had fallen as silent as Clarence, thank goodness. She'd been about to nickname him Jackdaw.\n  What's your name? Lopez asked. Where are yo u from? What ship?\n\n Too many questions for Mr. Doe. He coughed, as though clearing his throat, but the cough didn't stop. Blood, dark and fresh, dribbled down his chin. Benti knew what that meant. Everyone did. She shot a glance at Clarence, who met her eye. It wouldn't be long now.\n\n I don't know, Mr. Doe wheezed, the words hard to utter. Even Clarence, who usually didn't give a crap, was leaning in, trying to hear him. I don't know where we are, I don't know.\n\n What ship? Lopez repeated.\n\n Mr. Doe 's reply sounded like moaning lizard to Benti. That had to be wrong.\n\n The what?\n\n The Mona Lisa  . And then: You don't know, do you? You don't know.\n\n Lopez smiled, which, Benti had told her before, on leave, was grim and not at all reassuring and the main reason men fled at the sight of her, but still she wouldn't give it up. No way Mr. Doe wouldn't see his own death there.\n\n I don't know because you' re not telling me. Tell me, and we'll get you off to the infirmary, and you can sleep.\n\n I would tell you all kinds of things, Mr. Doe said, stumbling over the words. If I had anyone left in the world. This is where I'm supposed to say, tell my girl I love her, that sort of thing. A terrible, pitiless laugh from Mr. Doe, then, that contracted his eyes, his chin. A laugh that convulsed him, brought blood fresh through the bandages. I know I'm dying. I know I'm dying. But that's okay. A clarity in his eyes, despite the kindness of the drugs. I'm clean. I'm here. I won't come back. It's okay. It's all okay.\n\n It surprised Benti when Lopez took his grime -covered, bloody hand. Somehow Benti thought Lopez would pay for  that touch. Benti was used to touching people when they were vulnerable, understood what it meant. Lopez really wasn't. He'd just been this thing that talked before. Now how did Lopez see him?\n\n What do you mean, you won't come back? Lopez asked.\n\n Like a thunderbolt, a lightning strike called up unbidden: the shimmering image of the ship's smart AI, Rebecca, appeared beside them, also kneeling. So sudden that Benti had to suppress a sound of surprise, almost lost her balance, and Lopez pulled away a bit.\n\n Rebecca was in her warrior avatar, looking like half -Athena, half -Ares, with a feathered Greek headdress and ancient armor. Rebecca looked so good that Benti almost clapped.\n\n Rebecca asked, imploring almost: What do you mean  you won't come back? Come back from what? Come back from what  ?\n\n Benti looked through Rebecca to where Lopez knelt, staring wide -eyed at them both. Then realized a moment later, with a fading spike of sadness, that Mr. Doe had gone silent, had become Mr. DOA. Now they'd never  learn his name, and all they had was Mona Lisa, which might be a ship, a painting, or nothing at all.\n\n Rebecca made a sound close to exasperation, and winked out. This new AI wasn't big on niceties like Hello, Goodbye, and Incoming! Not like Chau ncey.\n\n Benti stared down at Mr. Doe. Really, such a waste. Those nice eyes, that strong chin.\n\n Come on, all you big strong men, Benti said. Help me get him to forensics. Which was in the infirmary, but Benti didn't like saying that, since it seemed t o mix the living and the dead a little too easily. She also didn't like telling people she assisted with autopsies, which Mr. Doe definitely required to write the proper ending to his story.\n\n A slow, sad shuffle t hen as they took the man's body out of the landing bay. Mr. Doe seemed both heavier and lighter than before. Clarence seemed to take most of the weight, and didn't seem to mind.\n\n When Benti looked back, Lopez was giving a good, hard look to the space that  had been occupied by Rebecca's avatar, like the sarge had been trying not to see through her, but into her.\n\n >Lopez 0932 hours\n\n By the time she met with Commander Tobias Foucault and Rebecca, Lopez knew this much:\nnothing that might identify the dead man, not his prison brand, fingerprints, retina scan, DNA, came up on any of the databases aboard the Red Horse  . Not that surprising . No way to check against the live databases back home. Hush -hush, as MacCraw said.\n\n They met in one of those featureless rooms adjoining the bridge that smelled like disinfectant. Lopez had wanted Benti there, too, but she was more valuable sitting in on the postmortem.\n\n Gray walls and plastic chairs that rocked back too far if you tried to slouch. A live image of the empty pod, with MacCraw and some other Marines cleaning up the blood, played across one screen. A video of the Halo artifact prior to Sp artan -117 detonating the Pillar of Autumn  's reactor and destroying it played across the other. A blue -green place. Like a delicate, inverse cross -section of Earth. Now: a black -and-brown snake with orange cracks raging across its pieces, with the vast bulk of the gas giant Threshold looming behind it, inexorably pulling the debris into its gravity well.\n\n Commander Foucault sat opposite her, as always immaculate. The smell of aftershave. Foucault looked haggard and thin and prematurely graying, not at all t he robust man she remembered  from before his promotion. When he'd been just another one of them. Something about that soured in her mouth. Now she had to call him sir. They all respected him, respected the extrem e circumstances that such a field promotion called for, but still resented the division of rank.\n\n At the far end of the table, Rebecca manifested in her more usual avatar of a flabby, middle -aged Mediterranean woman in a flower dress. She looked vaguely I talian. Benti had always clucked when she saw Rebecca that way, wondered aloud in their berths why she chose that avatar. But Lopez knew: the same reason off -ship, on leave, she would wear something feminine.\n  It made people comfortable around Rebecca, to ok the edge off of their fascination and slight fear of something so seemingly alive  made out of motes of light, bits and bytes. But, then, Chauncey had never cared whether t hey were comfortable around him. His actions did the job instead. So why, exactly, did Rebecca want to be disarming?\n\n Anything new to report, Sergeant Lopez? Foucault asked. Despite the worn look to his face, the commander's light -blue eyes had a powerf ul effect. A gaze with a kind of grip to it.\n\n No, sir, she said. Wondering when the shit was going to hit the fan. Because you didn't waste the time of the two most important people on the Red Horse  by sticking them in a room with a sergeant. It didn't sc an. She found herself counting rosary beads in her head, against her will. The image forever anchored to the smell of old wooden pews and her mother as a younger woman, kneeling in church.\n\n What about you, Rebecca? Foucault asked, with the air of someon e who already knew the answer. Lopez thought she noted a hint of sarcasm there, too.\n\n A smile from Rebecca that was meant to reassure Lopez, but didn't. Not one bit.\n\n The pod was launched six hours ago from the Mona Lisa  , a prison transport. I backtracked and calculated the Mona Lisa  's approximate location at the time of launch. The coordinates have been uploaded to the nav system.\n\n And it didn't show up on our sensors, I'm guessing, because of the debris?\n\n Rebecca frowned, as if something annoying had just occurred to her. That's correct. She brought up a schematic on the screen of a freighter with several levels, a docking hangar near the front. Storage bays hung off of it, seeming to weigh it down. To Lo pez, it looked ugly. Like, if it were a ship meant for water, it would list heavily. This is a simulation of the same ship type. They're converted freighters, for transporting prisoners and ore to and from the penal colonies, along with the resources from  the mines. The bridge is situated in the top level. The prison cells are down below, close to the hangar. In between you have the usual: kitchen, mess, infirmary, berths, the majority given over to cargo. Most prison ships have minimal defenses and minima l firearms on board a precaution against an uprising and rely on an escort for protection. There's no sign of an escort, though.\n\n A thin smile from Foucault as he stared at Rebecca.  What would a prison transport be doing at the most significant alien discovery of the past twenty years? he asked, cutting through all the irrelevant details in a way Lopez admired.\n\n Rebecca shrugged. That, I can't tell you.\n\n Foucault said, Because y ou don't know, of course. It wasn't framed as either statement or question.\n\n Perhaps they encountered Covenant and made a random slipspace jump to escape.\n\n Quite the coincidence, if they did. They show up here, we show up here. It wasn't directed at Lopez, but in a way it was. Probably the only hint she'd ever get.\n Not waiting for a response, he turned to Lopez: What do you think?\n\n I'm not paid to think, sir. Her default answer when she didn't want to get involved.\n\n A smirking laugh. Maybe some residual regret in that look from Foucault. As if, in situations like these, he wished he wasn't paid to think, either.\n\n When they'd first come out of slipspace and seen their destination, seen the alien struct ure, magnificent even in ruins, Lopez had forgotten herself. What are we looking for, sir? she'd asked. Foucault hadn't looked away from the window, but she'd sensed him wince. On that poker face, a wince was just a lowered eyebrow. Whatever there is to find, Sergeant, he'd said finally. Slight pressure on sergeant  .\n\n Did either of you intuit anything useful out of what the man said before he died? Foucault asked. Anything that gives us more context?\n\n He just kept saying he was safe, sir, Lopez  said. Maybe death was a form of safety, but not one that appealed much to her.\n\n Nothing that would be inconsistent with the delusions of a man suffering from dehydration and mortal wounds, Rebecca said.\n\n Foucault did this steepling thing with his hand s that was his only affectation. I'm inclined to finish the postmortem, stow the body, and carry on with our mission.\n\n What mission? In Lopez's opinion, risking their asses for whatever there is to find seemed stupid. She knew from talking to some of the noncoms on the bridge that it was near impossible to pilot the Prowler through the debris field. Between Rebecca and the discreet automatic defense firing, they'd avoided any serious collisions. But that risked giving away their position to the Covenan t even as the debris helped hide them. Still, if the whispers that came back to her were right, the bulk  of the Covenant fleet had left the system in pursuit of a higher value target which supposedly had surprise d the commander. Not the kind of thing she could confirm with Foucault, and Lopez didn't know how long ago the Covenant fleet had left. All she cared about: no Covies so far.\n\n Somebody was doing a lot of gambling here, and Lopez still had no idea for what potential gain.\n\n Rebecca turned to Lopez, and said, What the commander means is he wants you to take a squad in a Pelican and go investigate the Mona Lisa  's last known coord inates.\n\n Foucault looked grim. Is that what I meant? If you say it's what I meant, I guess it must be what I meant. The sarcastic tone had become more pronounced, but, again, tinged with an odd kind of regret.\n\n Sir? Confused. She'd never seen an AI contradict a commander in quite that way. Sir, your orders?\n\n Foucault stared at Rebecca, as if the force of his gaze might burn two holes in her avatar. Then he said in a clipped cadence, AI Rebecca is, of course, correct. Take a squad in a Pelican and  investigate. Rebecca will coordinate the details. Good luck, Sergeant. Dismissed.\n\n Lopez saluted, rose in confusion, walked out the door. Thinking of John Doe's warm hand. Puzzled. Wondering why neither Foucault nor Rebecca had even asked about the auto psy, or the nature of the man's terrible wounds, or everything else that didn't jive.\n\n Lopez had scars from wounds of her own, collected from long years of making the Covenant pay and keep on paying. Along with a long white reminder on her wrist of why yo u didn't surprise a sleeping cat.\n\n Every time Lopez was about to go into combat, she was aware of those scars.\n\n They were throbbing now, telling her: Something bad is coming.\n\n >Foucault 1003 hours\n\n Foucault sat there after Lopez had left, staring at Rebecca. He was, for all his former exploits, a cautious man who had used extreme tactics when it had seemed the only option for his continued survival. It had made him a hero and given him his command, but he didn't feel like a hero. He'd just been trying to save himself. He wasn't sure he had. Waking from nightmares, from memories  , awash with sweat to find it was only one in the morning got old fast. So did losing to the Covenant.\n\n Rebecca wasn't helping. He'd had a  good relationship with Chauncey. He'd trusted Chauncey. Rebecca, well .  . . Theoretically she worked for him, but a directive from ONI's upper echelons had imposed her on him along with a couple of rookies who acted so raw it made him suspicious and that was more than sufficient reason for him to be wary.\n\n Foucault'd had a superior once with a prosthetic eye, except that no one knew. This man would call Foucault into his office and, without telling him why he had been summoned, close his good eye and fall asleep, still staring at Foucault. Inevitably, Foucault would lose the waiting contest and be the first to break the silence.\n\n Rebecca was a man with a glass eye. She could outwait him.\n\n So, finally, Foucault sighed, lifted his head, and stated,  You know more than you've told me.\n\n Rebecca didn't quite shake her head. We have our orders, Commander.\n\n Orders. Strange, simple orders, Foucault had thought upon first receiving them. Jump to coordinates classified higher than top secret, retrieve sa mples of an alien artifact for study, conduct basic recon, expect Covenant  trouble. He'd stood on the bridge, staring at the pieces of the Halo, the wealth of such samples before him, and wondered why they'd deploy a Prowler on such a task.\n\n As soon as the pod had come in, Rebecca had shown him the expanded orders. Even expanded, they remained strange and simple. Assess the status of the Mona Lisa  , and if compromised beyond retrieval, destroy. There had been no me ntion of why the ship was in the area or what it might be compromised by.\n\n The codes were current, the passwords secure. He didn't question their validity. It was the only thing he didn't question.\n\n Doyou know what is on that ship? he asked, knowing he  would get no answer, knowing he wouldn't believe any answer she gave. I don't like being kept in the dark, especially when deploying my troops. We could be sending them to their deaths for all I know.\n\n Every time you deploy Marines, you could be sendi ng them to their deaths, Rebecca said, talking to him as if he was a child. To add insult to injury, Foucault suspected she was processing some other scene, her attention elsewhere. It is only recon.\n\n Our original orders were  only recon' as well, he  said in mild reproach, and steepled his fingers.\n\n Rebecca looked at Foucault then, with her full attention, and her face seemed to soften. A cheap trick he'd seen her pull on others, changing the lighting on her avatar to something less harsh. We're at war, Commander. Reach has fallen. Our backs are against the wall. Extreme measures are necessary to ensure our survival.\n\n Foucault forced himself to show no reaction and didn't immediately reply. That was quite the overreaction, and it cemented his suspi cions that there certainly was more she wasn't telling him, which meant she had orders of her own.\n\n He watched the screen, which showed a real -time view of the space outside the Prowler. A single piece of debris tumbled slowly past. It wasn't a rock, it w as a piece of manufactured structure, hard crisp lines and dead cables showing. There was a marvelous logic to its gymnastics, a grace that seemed almost  choreographed, even though now it was merely scattered garba ge.\n\n How to get Rebecca to share her knowledge?\n\n Survival, he repeated.\n\n Was that really the only thing they were fighting for now?\n\n >Lopez 1304 hours\n\n As the Pelican headed toward their destination, Lopez found herself marveling at the view, struck by an odd moment of poetic, profound insight, even though she didn't understand it all. Perhaps even because she didn't understand.\n\n Dominating right now wa s Threshold's ponderous bloat -belly; her term, shared with Benti in the mess hall. The vast gas giant so filled the windows it brought the illusion of blue sky to the cockpit up front instead of the empty black of space. Frequent storms raged and died in  great cloud -swirls across that surface. From that far away, it looked like a slow, sleepy blossoming. Didn't feel that way on the surface, Lopez knew. The winds blew hundreds of kilometers an hour.\n\n Closer in: the wreckage of the Halo. The massive ring c ut through the view like a question mark that'd been fractured to pieces. Thousands of kilometers wide. Great fires still raging, large enough to devour whole continents. Chunks of the superstructure bigger than cities tumbling ponderously in the void. Glo wing and flaring as they tore shrieking down through Threshold's atmosphere. Despite the jiggered failures in the structure, the sheer immensity of it made the curve smooth. Constantly tripped her sense of perspective.\n\n Covenant hadn't built it. It was en tirely alien, in design and purpose, and she took some strange assurance from that. Here was proof that there was more out there in the big bad universe than just the goddamn Covenant. She had no idea if whoever built this was friend or foe, but the simple  idea that there was another  gave her a strange sense of security. We're not alone. Again.\n\n A pinprick next to Threshold, the Mona Lisa  drifted like a dead thing alongside one of the larger pieces of debris from the Halo ring, on the far side from Basis and distant from the Red Horse  's current position. Lopez thought the ship looked lonely, desolate, on the screen as they approached. Abandoned, even.  Pits like severe acne showed where the escape pods had already been launched into space.\n\n She asked for an update from the pilot, Burgundy, who'd been called up despite being off the clock. Already getting reacclimated to the up -close sweat smell from the Marines in the seats all around her, only MacCraw dumb enough to be wearing cologne in the confines of a spacecraft, like he was on a date.\n\n Rebecca had chosen the squad, pilot included. The maximum we can spare, she'd explained. Seventeen personnel in total, including Benti and also Singh's small engineering team, who had received basic training but were technically not combat -ready. Clarence sat next to Lopez like some kind of morose watchdog. He never looked happy, but Lopez thought she could read in his impassive features a distinct un happiness now.\n\n She's not answ ering on any frequency, Sarge, Burgundy finally replied over Lopez's headset. They were on an open frequency for now. Later, only Lopez would have access, and anyone she designated. Can't get a peep out of her. No distress beacon. She's cold, and I don't  think her engines have been running for a while.\n\n Not if she lay in the same position she'd been in when John Doe had escaped her clutches. So cold and yet hugging so close to the burning shard of a world now lost to them, as if seeking sanctuary.\n\n Can she zoom in? It just looks like a dark block, Benti muttered to Lopez, not realizing Burgundy could hear her.\n\n A closer view appeared on -screen. That better? Burgundy asked. She ain't that pretty. Not by half. I'd never date her.\n\n A wracked and splintered mountain range formed the backdrop for the Mona Lisa  , made it difficult to make her out even with the zoom. She had a blunt snout, the five levels Lopez had seen on the schematic, and some definite damage to the left thruster in the back. A few dents. Some bits like barnacles where compartments had been custom -built onto the ship. That was a bit odd, but not unknown. Near the back, Lopez could see where something had left a definite hole. Not enough to scuttle it. Freighters could take a severe pounding. Almost certainly the Mona Lisa  still had breathable air.\n\n How'd the postmortem go, Benti? Lopez asked in a quiet voice. Benti had gotten a peek but Lopez hadn't had a chance to ask her about it yet.\n  Why not ask Tsardikos?\n\n Huh?\n\n Benti nodded toward one of the others. Tsardikos over there did the autopsy. Then they put him on the mission. She shrugged, that officers move in mysterious ways  look on her face.\n\n That made Lopez's heart do a strange leap. No, she said. I want to hear it from you. Didn't want to hear it from a noncom who shouldn't even be on the mission. Tsardikos didn't look comfortable over there, fidgeting in his kit. Why should he?\n\n Benti grimaced. Nasty wounds. Whatever open ed his chest and back wasn't a blade, and took a hell of a lot of force. Don't know what it was, but I suppose when you're busting out of prison you use what you can grab. I brought extra blood bags, though. Just in case. It was a prisoner riot, right?\nIt'd have to be.\n\n Doesn't matter, Lopez said. You honestly expect some punk -ass jailbird to get a shiv in one of us? You doubting the  Marine Corps, Private? Didn't mind messing with her people every once in a while.\n\n It was one hell of a shiv, Benti muttered. Sir.\n\n Why bother? I mean, if they're just escapees in a dead ship? MacCraw piped up. Just mark her position and come back when things are less hot, Sarge? Almost like he expected Lopez to say, You 're right, MacCraw, and turn the Pelican right around.\n\n Lopez was about to give MacCraw a hell of a reply, one that mentioned his cologne, when Rebecca came over the radio. Closed channel, just for her and Burgundy. Signal strength is weak, Sergeant. I'm getting the pictures now. We've picked up a Covenant ship in the vicinity. Distant, but we'll have to tread carefully. The commander has ordered the Red Horse  to maintain radio contact as much as possible in the field, but we mustn't reveal ourselves. Man euverability is limited. You may be on your own for a while. You have your orders.\n\n Roger that, Lopez said. I'll check in with Burgundy once we're on board to see if I can patch you in. If not, I guess it's just me and the pilot. From the forward pos ition, Burgundy gave a thumbs -up over her shoulder. Rebecca signed off.\n\n And me, Benti said, smiling.\n\n Lopez nodded, said, Yeah, you too. She caught Clarence staring at her oddly. Jealous? Yeah, you be jealous, Clarence, you gloomy bastard.\n\n The gam e is always changing, MacCraw said, to the air.\n\n Give thanks you've got a game on, Lopez said, and almost meant it. Checking on some spooky mystery transport at the ass -end of space wasn't her idea of a good op, but it was better than nothing.\n\n How' d the ship even get here? MacCraw asked. He just wouldn't shut up. They just happened to randomly guess the slipspace coordinates? I mean, we don't even know where we are, and we're supposed  to be here.\n\n Don't try to be smart, MacCraw, Lopez said. That's not what you're paid for.\n\n No, Benti and a couple of the others chimed in, you pay us to be pretty. A tired old joke, a necessary one. One Mac -Craw might not've heard before.\n\n Damn straight, Lopez sai d. How'd that haiku go?  Something, something, something .  . . something, and then comes ice cream.'  Something they'd eaten far too much of, last R & R.\n\n You missed a  something.'\n\n You kids play your cards right and after this comes ice cream. Don 't ever say Mama Lopez does nothing for you.\n\n Some grins, a couple of comments about Mama Lopez, and then a near -ritual silence.\n\n Lopez began the count. Not required, but she liked to name each person under her command right before any mission that mi ght turn hot: Benti, Clarence, MacCraw, Percy, Mahmoud, Rakesh, Orlav, Simmons currently pulling double duty as Burgundy's copilot Rabbit, Singh, Gersten, Cranker, Sydney, Ayad, Maller, and Tsardikos. Standard equipped with MA5B assault rifles, HE pistols,  and ye olde frag grenades. Among flares, food rations, water, medic kits, schematics of the ship, the usual.\n\n A bunch of jokers, lifers, and crazies. Benti, Clarence, Mahmoud, and Orlav were the best of the lot. MacCraw was, well, raw, so who knew? A few were average, and she'd deploy them that way. Without remorse. Singh and his engineers Gersten - and Sydney were an unknown, really. Two loaners from another squad, Ayad and Maller, she didn't know at all. A lot of the rest of the best had been left back on  theRed Horse  . Because, you know, the ship needed them. Or something like that.\n\n All of them were rosary beads to her now anyway, already counting and hating herself for it. Mystic bullshit. But she did it  every time. Had to. It was how she rationalized putting herself in danger. Perform this ritual and luck will follow. Don't, and it won't  . And that's the difference between life and death. Between a scar and a wound that won't stop bleeding.\n\n We good, Sarge? B enti whispered.\n\n You should have gone before we left, like Mama Lopez told you.\n\n Benti smirked, stopped at the last second from reaching out and smacking Lopez on the shoulder.\n\n Pelican drew close, the battered and scarred skin of the Mona Lisa  filling  the view. As they all braced for that slight lurching shudder that meant arrival, Lopez tried not to think about the noncoincidence of who had been chosen for the mission and who hadn't.\n\n Because, to a person, her squad consisted of everyone who had come into contact with John Doe on board the Red Horse  .\n\n >Benti 1315 hours\n Benti watched as the soft seal locked on and they had compression. A shiver ran through the Pelican as the hatches disengaged, maw ready to open and disgorge them into the Mona Lisa  . Benti had never seen a real live pelican except in videos, but it amused her to think of them erupting out of the gullet of a giant bird. A Trojan Pelican, almost.\n\n This silent moment, ri ght before combat, before she had to use any of her bandages and blood bags, this moment always made her regret having given up smoking.\n\n We're solid, Sarge, and I can go ahead and set you free whenever you want, Burgundy said, voice coming over the hea dsets now, which somehow made Benti think of Rebecca's What do you mean, you won't come back?\n\n Good old Clarence and that dumbass MacCraw knelt to either side of the gangplank, rifles at the ready, the rest of the  squad behind them, hunched over, waiting. Clarence was chewing gum ferociously, about as worked up as Benti had ever seen him. Docking a Pelican wasn't a stealthy business. Whoever was on board the Mona Lisa  would know they were here.\n\n What kind of greetin g would they get? A big party celebration, or one candle stuck in a cupcake?\n\n God, she wanted a cigarette right now  .\n\n Lopez gave Burgundy the order.\n\n Go forth and plunder, Burgundy said, and somehow Benti could tell old Stickybeak was glad to be stayin g on board the Pelican.\n\n The gangplank lowered in a hiss of hydraulics and fast -fading clang of the plank against ground. Not exactly a red carpet, in Benti's opinion.\n\n A smell came in with the cold air that was both dusty and moist. It almost had textur e, a substance. It made Benti wrinkle her nose, and she didn't wrinkle her nose at much.\n\n Beyond the gangplank, the main lights were out. Emergency strip lights threw supply crates, control stations, and loading machinery into murky relief. The oval shape  of a small transport ship rose up, too, overlooking the jumbled maze spanning the hangar. Deep, dark, reddish shadows thrown up against the far walls.\n\n Benti looked around. That was it ? She'd been looking forward to getting off the Red Horse  and exploring  new territory. Even if it was just junk, Benti wanted to see it. At least it was different junk.\n\n Nothing moved. Nobody even seemed to breathe.\n\n Lights, Lopez ordered quietly, and Benti switched hers on.\n\n Suddenly there was a mutual clicking and beams shot out all over the place, temporarily blinding Benti. Crap. You'd think they'd know better. What if they'd been trying to throw a surprise party?\n\n Lopez didn't se em impressed either. Get your heads on straight, Marines! Move out!\n Benti winked at Clarence, who acknowledged her with a nod, and that was about all. It was enough. Clarence, to her, was like a dolphin or otter or some other creature that seemed to be  all muscle and was sleek and functional. What she was to him, Benti had no idea. Comic relief? He hadn't looked amused when she'd told him he was an otter. Off duty they hardly ever saw each other, but they always worked as a team, to the point no one tri ed to break them up any more. If something works, then don't question it, just work it. Work it to death.\n\n They filed quickly into the hangar in a standard sweep, torchlight raking the crates around them over and over. No matter what you did, regulation b oots were never silent, and it was no different this time.\n\n Ten meters out from the Pelican with Benti hissing Tsardikos back in line, the clueless moron the surprise party really got started .  . .\n\n >Lopez 1317 hours\n\n Trouble came simple, like it always  did: a guttural resonance that came from an inhuman throat. A sigh with a texture they knew too well. Sent them diving down behind cover. In the stillness that followed, no repeat of the sound.\n\n Up periscope, Lopez said to Cranker. He didn't get it, so  she said, Pop yer head up, Private, and take a quick scan around.\n\n Cranker, looking worried, did just that, and then hunkered down even lower. Looks all clear.\n\n Of course it did. You didn't get your head blown off  . Wasn't fair, but she always picked  the one she liked the least.\n\n Benti, wide -eyed, almost giddy: That sounded like\n\n Don't get jumpy, kid! Lopez raised a finger to her lips.\n\n Scuffling sounds came from about fifteen meters ahead. Multiple contacts.\n\n Lopez gave orders with her hands. Some were quicker on the take than others. Percy and Orlav tapped their crew in passing, including Benti, and scurried off between the surroundin g cargo containers. That left Lopez with the dregs. She grinned at Singh, who didn't seem to find any of this funny.\n\n This is Sergeant Lopez of the UNSC Marine Corps! Identify yourself!\n\n No reply. A flurry of movement. She rose. Rifle butt cozy in her shoulder. Finger on the trigger. The Marines around her rising from cover, too.\n\n Where ?\n\n Two o'clock\n  It's gonna bolt\n\n A rushed patter of sprinting footfalls, flashing across the hangar floor. Darting between storage crates. A glimpse of blue,  of familiar backward knees, and formidable shoulders as they came into contact with the corner of someone's flashlight beam.\n\n Covenant Elites.\n\n Tongues of fire from the rifles, that glorious, deafening sound that Lopez knew so well. Sharp shadows danced  up in snarling light. Sparks from bullets punched through crates. The target fled between stacked pallets and loaders, not even grazed, no telltale purple glow on the ground. They'd been too eager.\n\n It didn't matter. That one glimpse was all it took. It lit a fire in Lopez. A crazy, irrational fire. Twenty -seven years of war, a war longer than Benti's life, Clarence's life, than most of their lives, so much loss and death and grief and blood and fury it didn't matter. It didn't need articulating. Not for her, not for any of them.\n\n Take 'em down! she roared. Take 'em all down!\n\n As if they needed telling.\n\n >Benti 1318 hours\n\n Even though she was just following orders, some small part of Benti thought careening off into the darkness with an unknown number of hostiles in the area added up to a big heaping dose of crazy  . The larger part of her didn't care.\n\n To the left! Orlav shouted, her flashlight beam glancing off the storage containers, breaking off into the distant ceiling. It caught in freeze -frame wide sprays of blood. The floor was sticky with it. They were following drag marks, and over the top, wide stumpy footprints.  Fresh.\n\n A bark of gunfire, but no flash, hidden somewhere beyond the containers. Percy and Ayad shouting over the roar of a Covenant Elite. Lopez swearing. Some damn powerful swearing wouldn't be surprised if some Covie didn't drop dead just from hearing  it.\n\n Benti almost fell over a collapsed makeshift barricade, turning too hard around a corner, following the footprints, dimly aware the others weren't around her.\n\n She slipped on the blood -slick floor, caught the impression of movement in front of her,  and pulled the trigger without waiting. The bullets punched into the Elite's gut and purple blood splashed down on her face and neck. It doubled over, massive hands cupping its belly. Got a full -on cough of the creature's fetid breath, those four spiny ja ws twitching beneath the clenched fist of a head flexed wide in surprise, anger, or some emotion she'd never understand. Especially without their armor, they always looked like they were intensely thinking. But that couldn't be it, and she wasn't going to give it a chance to think.\n\n Her rifle roared until the Elite dropped, collapsing on top of her.\n  Crap! Being crushed seemed a poor reward for doing her job.\n\n But then Clarence was there, grabbing her harness a nd hauling her from beneath the Elite by the scruff of the neck. Covie blood had soaked her. It glowed in the dark and smelled a bit like armpit mixed with wet cat.\n\n No time to wipe it off: sporadic gunfire throughout the hangar couldn't mask the distinct ive footfalls approaching, fast and heavy.\n\n A second Covenant Elite burst out from behind a damaged loader, seeing but ignoring them as they pivoted to face it. The Elite vaulted over an operation console and into the darkness.\n\n It's going for the Pelic an!\n\n They took off after it.\n\n Orlav, you back there? One coming your way!\n\n Benti spat, trying not to think about the alien blood in her mouth and everything she knew about hygiene.\n\n Again she followed the footprints, down one narrow corridor, th en another. The container crates formed a kind of maze. Clarence dropped back, checking the corners, not happy about rushing past so many places ripe for more Elites to pop out at them from behind.\n\n The Elite clearly wasn't heading for the Pelican. Instea d, it was\n\n Well, crap. It was right there  , against the wall of crates.\n\n Crouched, but not hiding, its head tilted, listening. She noticed its muscles were withered and its limbs lined with scars and wounds, not all of them old, and then realized it was naked. No armor at all. How strange, how perfect.\n\n I'm going to kill you, Benti whispered. I'm going to\n\n It held up one finger. It shushed  her. Pointed toward the darkness in front of them.\n\n That surprised her so much she shut up, listened with the alien.\n\n Benti heard a last bark of gunfire, the moaning gargle of a dying Elite on the far side of the hangar. Status reports back  and forth on the radio. The alien's breathing. Her breathing. Nothing more.\n\n It looked over at her.\n\n Benti was no expert on Covie expressions, but she could tell it was relieved  .\n\n Nothing more, nothing less.\n\n Even unarmed, a Covenant Elite was more than capable of overpowering any Marine with its bare hands. They never stopped, they  never gave up until you put them down. Yet this one remained crouching, unthreatening. Listening.\n\n It wasn't afraid of her. She knew that.\n\n But it was afraid of something  .\n\n The muzzle of Clarence' s rifle entered her peripheral vision, spat fire, and deafened her in one ear. The Covenant Elite smashed back against a container, half its face shorn off.\n\n Face impassive, Clarence looked at her, a faint judgment, a question, only manifesting in the set  of shoulders. He'd seen her hesitate. Crap. She stared back at him, reduced to silence, feeling a flare of irritation she knew was her embarrassment eating itself: Who're you to judge? You could've frozen up a hundred times before in combat for all I know.  But she knew, in her gut, that was a lie. Rumor had it no one had killed more Covies than Clarence.\n\n Lopez, from off to the left: Marines! Four Covie dead over here. The rest of you, report! Watch for active camo. Keep those flashlights on.\n\n The surpr ise party was over. A sound -off around the hangar, which didn't seem nearly so big now that their eyes had adjusted to the darkness.\n\n We're good, Sarge, Benti said, punching Clarence in the shoulder in an attempt to gloss over the awkward strain between  them. Two confirmed kills. She turned her back on the dead, naked alien and followed Clarence to where the flashlights were converging.\n\n No kills here, just thrills, Gersten said from somewhere off  to the rig ht. That small transport got smashed up good, Sarge. Someone drunk driving, I dunno.\n\n Only one wounded Marine, as it turned out, and that was MacCraw, who had a gash in his shoulder from smashing into a metal hook.\n\n I think Rakesh wet his pants. MacC raw sounded a little shaky even as he tried to joke.\n\n Only if you pissed on me, MacCraw.\n\n No sign of the crew or passengers, Orlav said.\n\n Benti could see that idiot Cranker posing with his boot on a Covie torso, like some kind of conquering hero. Th at sobered her mood as much as Clarence's look. Bad luck, being not just overconfident but a jerk about it.\n\n Percy crouched by Cranker's leg, examining the body. Interesting outfit they're running, he said. No weapons, no gear. Think they're running ou t of money.\n\n Maybe we can buy them out!\n\n Shut it, MacCraw. Where's Rabbit?\n  No answer.\n\n >Lopez 1327 hours\n\n Taking out the second Covie hadn't been as satisfying to Lopez as taking out the first. The third was less satisfying to her than that. She 'd just watched by the time her Marines took out the fourth. Mechanically gone through the all -clear and found that Rabbit was missing.\n\n Something was bothering her, even as she ordered a sweep of the hangar just to find Rabbit. It had been too easy. Thes e were Covenant Elites. They'd presumably boarded the Mona Lisa  and had been hard-core enough to take the ship without too much bungling. But: they'd allowed themselves to be cut down like so many, well, rabbits. She knew her Covies, and they were better th an that. Something didn't scan again, and it had her  scar itching. Had there been some breakdown in command -and-control? And why hadn't they been able to keep power on in the ship? Had most of them left in the esca pe pods? If so, you'd think the Red Horse  would've already picked up a few.\n\n The sweep didn't locate her missing Marine.\n\n She was with me, Mahmoud said, when they'd regrouped by the main door. We wasted that dog over there by the messed -up transport, s he said she heard something, then another Covie popped up. He shrugged in his armor, dropping his eyes. Sorry, Sarge, I thought she was with me.\n\n Lopez worried away at a single rosary bead named Rabbit  , as she opened a channel. Okay, Burgundy, you've a lovely way with words, talk to me.\n\n Can't raise the Red Horse  right now, Burgundy said. And this ship smells. I mean, it really smells.\n\n Keep trying. Seal up, sit tight. Don't want no Covies getting in and stinking up your bird even more. Then sh e turned to the rest of the crew. Cranker, Maller, Simmons, Sydney, maintain position here. You're base camp. Clean up those bodies you're so fond of standing on. The rest of us are going wabbit hunting. Move out.\n\n She stopped in front of Benti. Looked the little medic down and down. She was practically neon.\n\n I think this color suits me.\n\n Yeah, it brings out your eyes, Lopez said with distaste. Take the rear. Didn't always know what to make of Benti, thought she should take things a little more seriously sometimes.\n\n The corridor beyond was pitch -black, the emergency lighting off, except for one flickering light in the distance. On the wall, a smear of blood where a hand had dragged down to the floor only to join a larger, thicker pool that was r ed and human and old. Something had then been dragged through the blood, the  trail heading aft. Through the drag mark, Lopez could see the telltale marks left by regulation boots.\n\n There was lots of blood in the hangar, too, Tsardikos ventured hesitantly. Enough for a few people to have bled out. But I didn't see any bodies.\n  No small -arms fire or plasma burns, either, Orlav said.\n\n Maybe the Covenant really are running out of money.\n\n MacCraw, one more lame joke out of you and I'll push you out an airlock, Lopez growled, and the chatter shut down. The real Mona Lisa was famed for her enigmatic smile, but Lopez still wasn't in the mood for mysteries.\n\n Rabbit's trail faded, crossed more  blood pools, and strengthened again. Fifty meters and still going. Damn fool bunny. Went too far on her own. Lopez ground her teeth, already reaming the soldier out in her head, when a surprised shout barked up the corridor. Cut off abruptly. More Covenan t.\n\n Quick hand signals as they hastened up the corridor. Orlav came to a halt by a half -open hatchway. Water flowed over the lip and spilled out into the corridor, lapping around their boots. Shower block. A glimpse of green plastic floor befouled with cu rling red.\n\n A fetid, wet smell. The sound of gushing water from a shower left on. Near -total darkness except for their flashlights, which illuminated a row of lockers that concealed the space beyond. On her signal they entered, fanned out, swept by rote. Lopez couldn't hear a thing over their progress, the water up to their ankles. Splashing echoed off the walls and bounced from the ceiling, creating confusion with no direction.\n\n Still, she managed to pick out a sound that wasn't water.\n\n Lopez tilted her  head at the Marine nearest to her, Mahmoud, who took up a position behind her, along with Ayad. Rabbit, she breathed into the radio. Report.\n\n No answer. Then a faint wet burble, which could've been  anything. They made their way across the floor, stepping softly in the water. Benti and Clarence watched the door, Percy and Rakesh coming up on their flank to circle in beyond the lockers.\n\n A wet gurgle, followed by a heavy, thick sound, like meat being slapped ag ainst the ground.\n\n Rounded the shower wall. The flashlight revealed .  . .\n\n Rabbit!\n\n Didn't know which of them had said it. Maybe they all had.\n\n Their bunny was dead.\n\n An Elite stood over her. Stood on her. No, stomped on her, huge foot pounding down over and over on her chest. Crushed her rib cage into a jagged mess of bone shards. Made a pulp of her lungs and heart. Pulverized her. Flattened a hole through her until it was stomping only on the shower floor, smeared with gore. The lockers were spattered. The Elite's legs were coated with Rabbit's remains.\n\n It saw them, and still it didn't stop. As Lopez yelled something, she didn't know what, and tightened her trigger finger, the Covenant raised its hu ge foot and slammed down on Rabbit's face, smashing her stunned, vacant expression. Then the rifles roared, and roared, until Lopez shouted for them to stop.\n\n Images of fire in Lopez's eyes. The smell of gunfire and Rabbit's bowels and the Covenant's dead flesh. Rakesh vomiting on Mahmoud's shoes as Mahmoud failed to get out of the way. Putting a hand on Rakesh's shoulder. To comfort him? To steady him? To steady herself?\n\n A commotion from the door, where the gunfire hadn't stopped right away.\n\n Benti yel led, too loud: Cranker! Two contacts incoming! I hit at least one of them! Cranker, do you copy?\n\n Ready and waiting.\n\n Then Benti again: What was that? Did you hear that?\n\n Benti! Were the Covenant armed? Lopez stepped over Rakesh's vomit to look around the shower wall at the door.\n\n No, Benti said. But did you hear\n\n Lopez cut her off. Eyes open. Keep watch at the door.\n\n Benti nodded, mercifully shut up.\n\n Sir. Cranker again. Still ready. Still waiting.\n\n Hold your position, Cranker, Lopez ordered. You might have some Covie heat coming your way, but they don't appear to be armed, just like the rest. We've got some clean -up here, but we'll be back soon. Over and out.\n\n Lopez crouched down bes ide what was left of Rabbit.\n\n Thisreally  didn't scan. On any level. It left her a little numb.\n\n She'd been in the war since the beginning. She'd seen far too many friends and comrades and jerks and assholes and people, too many of her people, killed; burned up by plasma, run through with swords, crushed by brutes. Too many. And that meant she knew the Covenant by their actions, if nothing else. No single death signaled victory for them. No one Marine stilled gave them pause. Celebratio n didn't enter into the equation they just moved on. They did not leave themselves vulnerable, they did not desecrate the dead, they did not pound Marines into jelly. They did not dothis .\n\n Sarge? MacCraw loomed over her. What're you doing?\n\n Give me  some light. Do something useful for a change.\n\n Rabbit had no eyes left to close.\n\n The bolognese of innards was cooling fast, but was still hot beneath Lopez's fingertips as she felt about tenderly, picking aside fragments of spine, seeking Rabbit's dog tags. This act didn't disturb her, hadn't done so for years. To be repulsed on the battlefield was to be selfish, put your own distaste over the needs of the dead.\n\n Ah. A glint in the flashlight's beam, and she'd found the dog tags, one of them folded ove r and flattened. She reached for them, paused, finding something else near her fingertips, half -revealed, half-hidden by the torchlight. MacCraw really couldn't hold a light steady worth a damn.\n\n The universe was a big place and Lopez didn't know it by half, and never would, but what she saw sure as hell didn't come from Rabbit, and didn't look like any Covenant she knew. She stared at it for an instant.\n\n The object was long and thin, and oddly segmented. It looke d like a very large spider's leg, but without the stiffness. She only associated it with something living when she saw it ended in a branch of small tentacle -like fingers. The shoulder had been reduced to a pulp of pale sickly goo, veined through with stra ins of green and purple. Sick, diseased, reeking of the stench Lopez had noticed when they'd first entered the Mona Lisa  's hangar.\n\n She reached for it out of some perverse impulse, then paused. The shadow of her hand hid it from the others. John Doe saying , \"I won't come back.\"\n\n Sarge? MacCraw was getting restless.\n\n Pondered. Decided. Probably nothing. They didn't need to see it.\n\n Apologetically, she nudged a loop of intestine over the thing, then a scrap of uniform over what was left of Rabbit's face.  Mama Lopez took care of her own. Freed the dog tags. Rakesh looked like he was going to be sick again. She got up, cupped his hand with hers, and dropped the bloody tags in his palm.\n\n Did the spider's leg come from Rabbit or from the Covenant? Distracted herself from that thought with the situation at hand: Covenant, headed toward Cranker's position.\n\n Cranker, she said. Talk to me.\n\n A puzzled tone from Cranker. The Covenant never got here. We' re still waiting, but they never got here. Did you guys go after them? Because oh wait. I think that might be oh crap oh crap oh crap .  . .\n\n A garbled curse. A sound like a muffled rifle discharge, almost an afterthought. A wet sound. Too wet. Then, noth ing.\n\n Lopez wondered how much of this Burgundy was hearing.\n\n Did they still have an escape route?\n\n >Burgundy 1349 hours\n\n Burgundy had her pistol out, safety off, even with the Pelican sealed up tight. There'd b een too much gunfire out there. The Marines might call her Stickybeak and joke about pilots not seeing any action except on leave, but Burgundy had seen enough to know you didn't wait until you could see the whites of their eyes before turning up the heat.  Covenant didn't have whites, for starters.\n\n The feeds from the Pelican's rear cameras didn't help her mood any. It looked like the Covie action was getting a little too close for comfort.\n\n Lopez pinged her right after she'd heard one last burst of rifle  fire that cut off abruptly. The signal was weak, the ship's structure already interfering. Strange static.\n\n Burgundy, what's happening there? Can you see Cranker? Simmons?\n\n Sarge, I'm not sure what I'm seeing. Her throat was dry and she swallowed.  It's dark, and their flashlights are just lying on the floor now. I couldn't really make out what happened. I think I'm seeing dead Covenant and .  . . oh shit. The hair on her arms rose, gooseflesh stippling her skin. Sarge, something just dragged one of  the Covenant out of the light.\n\n Something? Like what?\n\n I can't see shit! Something big. I think. I really can't see it. Do they eat their own, Sarge? Because that's what it looks like.\n\n Except she knew Covenant didn't eat their dead any more than Marines ate their  dead.\n\n She wasn't sure she wanted the lights on anymore.\n\n Maller, Cranker, Simmons, and Sydney, where are they? Lopez demanded.\n\n Sarge, I'm telling  you, I don't see them, Sarge.  She put her finger on the trigger, took it off. She put it on again.\n\n Okay, so she'd seen something earlier, but hesitated to tell Lopez. She thought  she'd seen them at the beginning of the attack, spinning out of view, hit by something that looked like a  handful of pale balls. Twirling and rolling to the ground, rifles abandoned, grappling with them. The feed went to a black box. She couldn't replay it.\n\n KIA? came Lopez's calm voice.\n\n Not sure. Maybe. I'd hate to be wrong, Burgundy said, certain of nothing, and hating that.\n\n Lopez was silent for a moment, then said, Keep talking to me, pilot.\n\n But there wasn't anything to see any more. Discarded flashlights, fading as the batteries died. The darkness drawing a little closer.\n\n Nothing. All calm now.\n\n Red Horse there?\n  It was hard to look away from the feed, but she scanned the waveband. Yes! Got her.\n\n Patch her through.\n\n Yes, sir. Always good to have a call from home.\n\n Sergeant Lopez? If Lopez's voice was weak, Rebecca's was weaker , grainy, but calm. What have you found?\n\n No sign of crew or prisoners. One KIA, four more missing, possible KIA. Unknown number of Covenant forces on board. I don't know how the Covenant got here, and they're acting mighty strange.\n\n Strange how?  Rebecca asked, echoing what Burgundy was thinking.\n\n No armor. No weapons. Not really fighting back, most of them.\n\n That is all you've found? Rebecca sounded disgruntled, as though she found this report lacking.\n\n A pause from Lopez. I did mention the Covenant. Acting strangely. On this civilian ship. In an unknown and highly classified location. Right?\n\n Burgundy bit back a chuckle. She wasn't fond of Rebecca either.\n\n We heard you, Sergeant, Rebecca said , about as icy as an AI could get.\n\n Request reinforcements to aid with the mission.\n\n Request denied.\n\n I want to talk to the commander.\n\n A false smile entered Rebecca's voice, like the sun rising over an ice field. The commander and I are of the same mind, Sergeant.\n\n Requesting\n\n Negative. This time it was Foucault, patched in over Rebecca's feed. Burgundy's stomach churned. Sorry, Sergeant, but we can't send anyone without alerting the Covenant capitol ship to our presence, and you know w e're outmanned and outgunned. I'm invoking the Cole Protocol. The secrecy of Earth's location is paramount, and the Mona Lisa  does appear to be compromised by Covenant. Stand by for your orders.\n\n Sir.\n\n Ascertain if the Covenant have accessed the nav system. If not, destroy it before they do. If so\n. . . he stopped, then continued, after what sounded like consultation with Rebecca, .  . . we will inform you when it is safe for you to return.\n  Sir. Bu rgundy could hear Lopez striving and failing to keep frustration out of her voice. Sir, I'm down five already, as far as I know. We can keep going, shut down the nav and flush out every Covie on this stinking boat, but begging your pardon, it's a big -ass boat. We need some ODST motion sensors happening. Get a Pelican out here on, I don't know, thrusters alone, something!\n\n Burgundy was thinking it. Lopez was thinking it. She bet  even the commander was thinking it. Orders from officers who weren't on the ground weren't worth shit.\n\n Negative, Sergeant. You have your orders, and I trust you'll see them through in your usual .  . . spectacular .  . . fashion, he said with a trace of amusement.\n\n Yes, sir. Said witho ut grace. Sir, permission to speak freely?\n\n Denied.\n\n You're fading now. You're breaking up, Rebecca said.  You have your orders . Said remotely, with finality, her attention already elsewhere.\n\n A beat. And then, They gone, Burgundy?\n\n Yes, Sarg e.\n\n Lopez said something really obscene.\n\n You got that right, Burgundy muttered.\n\n You cozy?\n\n Yeah.\n\n Alone?\n\n Nothing had moved on the feed for some time now, the last flashlight flickering on the ground. I can't see anything.\n\n Okay. Sit tight. Keep monitoring, let me know when the Red Horse  is talking again. We'll come back and mess up your bird and you'll hate us for it.\n\n And then there'll be ice cream.\n\n Damn straight. Over and out.\n\n Outside, the last flashlight went dar k.\n\n >Lopez 1402 hours\n\n Twelve rosary beads now. Lopez had a burning anger in her guts that had nothing to do with the Covenant. Already blood in the dark. She had her orders. Her lousy orders. She had twelve Marines left, a big -ass ship to clean out, and  no support of any kind.\n\n\n\n I'll give you \"spectacular.\"\n\n They stood around her, around Rabbit's remains, around the dead Covenant, silent and waiting.\n\n You heard, she said, looking into each of their faces i n turn. Shadowed, murky faces in the flashlight beams, but still those of her Marines. Change of plan, boys and girls. We got Covies on board, so the good commander has invoked the Cole Protocol. We need to kill the nav system and the backup nav system, t hat's our primary goal. Ascertaining what the hell is going on here is now a secondary objective. Orlav, you got that rough schematic? See the engine room?\n\n Yeah. She didn't sound too enthusiastic.\n\n All right, Benti, you take Clarence, Orlav, Gersten , and Tsardikos. You're going after the backup down in the engine room. You take care of it, then you get your asses back here. You see any Covies along the way, you kill Covies. I don't care if they're happy to see you or not. None of them get off this sh ip, got it? Thought Benti, with Clarence, would be more effective heading things up on that team than Orlav. Orlav did good recon, but she couldn't improvise.\n\n Yes, sir!  Benti said, already out the door and slinking down the corridor, the others following her.\n\n I mean it, Private! she called out after them, not looking at the thing hidden in Rabbit's body. You shoot anything you see. Don't let anything get close. Noth ing, you hear me?\n\n Saaaarge, you know me, Benti said. I don't let anybody get close. Her voice didn't say that at all.\n\n No gear, Percy said, nudging the Covenant Elite with his boot, ripples spreading in the bloodied water. Not a one of these bas tards has any gear at all.\n\n All the better for us.\n\n How'd Covenant get on board this ship, Sarge? McCraw asked. How? Just landed here with no weapons and no gear?\n\n Maybe they're prisoners, Rakesh said.\n\n Lopez snorted. Right. Because we take so many Covenant prisoners. Then she stopped, a bead catching in her mind. Where the hell is Ayad? she asked.\n\n They had no good answer.\n\n >Benti 1431 hours\n\n Things went wrong almost from the start for Benti and  her team. It sure looked easy at first, though, which had Benti humming an old pop song under her breath. They had cut across the ship, passing through processing cells and checkpoints and security stations toward what Orlav assured Benti was a shortcut a series of access tunnels would lead to B deck. Benti was all about the shortcuts.\n\n But now Clarence was bracing himself, back to the wall and foot on the door they needed to pass through. He grunted, his boot squeaking with the effort, but the door didn' t budge. A makeshift barricade on the other side was the culprit. It wasn't the first they'd seen. They'd seen too many, in fact.\n\n The corridor was too straight and dark for her tastes, like being devoured by a throat. Even the continued sight of swatches  of blood across walls, across ceilings had begun to get to her. Blood still didn't bother her, but she'd never seen so damn much before, over such a long period. She'd run out of jokes about it. Even the dull smell of it was getting to her. She didn't lik e that she couldn't raise Burgundy, either.\n\n Gersten muscled in beside Clarence, but gave up after a moment.\n\n No good, not gonna move. Gersten, a great hulk of a man, spoke almost as rarely as Clarence, and with as much authority.\n\n Clarence shook his head in agreement, even as he gave the door another kick.\n\n A high -pitched shriek tore through the corridor, dissolved into a cackle, cut off.\n\n What the hell was that? Tsardikos asked.\n\n Just the ship, probably, Benti said, lying.\n\n Yeah, he replied, barely heard her. Right.\n\n Hang on, Orlav said as she scrolled through the schematic a lot quicker than she had been. I'll find us another route.\n\n The tension was thick between them, th e muted light shifting imperceptibly across Orlav's face as she traced out paths and access points. Benti could hear the others trying to breathe quietly, trying not to breathe at all.\n\n Benti had a good imagination. She remembered that Elite, unarmed and naked and shushing her so it could listen, and she listened, too. She knew that ships were never silent. They had their own language. Humming ventilation, the drone of the engines, the electronic pitch of a million circuits, the groan of vast plates resist ing the vacuum of space. That shriek hadn't been a ship noise, not even close.\n\n As Orlav continued to scroll, a new sound brushed up the corridor and overhead like an enormous feather sliding across tin foil that then resolved into something soft and sick ening and chittering. A sound you'd tell yourself you'd imagined, because you couldn't imagine what would have made it. It didn't repeat. Benti never wanted to hear it again.\n\n Benti held her flashlight steady, deliberately steady, staring into the darknes s at nothing, gathering herself. Then she cast a quick eye around the walls. Ducts?\n\n You can get into the damn ducts, Tsardikos said. I'm not.\n\n Not enough space for anyone anyway, Gersten said, looking as spooked as Benti felt.\n\n Okay. Orlav's voice made Benti start. We need to backtrack. Should be access to the lower level two junctions over from the last intersection. This will take us through the recycling plant. Orlav sounded triumphant, which bothered Benti a bit. Don't applaud work -around s until they actually work around.\n\n Yum, she said, with an enthusiasm she didn't feel.\n\n She cast a last look over the blocked door. None of them had said it, but the barricade that had stopped them hadn' t held. The wreckage an unholy flotsam and jetsam of chairs, couches, smashed up boxes, machine parts, and even a potted plant or two had been pushed back and jammed the door after it had been broken. Just like so many other barricades and blockades they'd passed on their way, as if a frantic siege had rolled its way through the ship. Prison riot  , she thought, trying it on for size. It didn't fit. Not really.\n\n There had been a glimpse, in the narrow sliver of passage still open, of the corridor beyond. It was painted purple with Covenant blood. At the edge of the torch light she thought she'd seen a shape on the floor, something with dimensions that didn't sit well with her.\n\n They should have found someone by now. Nobody said that either.\n\n >Lopez 1440 hou rs\n\n Lopez popped the cap from a bottle of antiseptic and splashed it liberally on the open gash on MacCraw's arm. Second time he'd gotten wounded, this time from tripping over a barricade. He really needed to do a better job of looking where he was going.\n\n Quit yelping, she ordered, tasting caustic medicine in her nose and throat. You a man or a mouse?\n\n It burns!\n\n Poor mouse, she said, entirely without sympathy. They hadn't found Ayad, might never find Ayad. Lopez would take a gash against being  lost in that darkness any day.\n\n When MacCraw kept complaining, she poured the last of the antiseptic in a rush all over the wound. Be glad Mama Lopez knows what's good for you.\n\n Never expected they'd stop in the infirmary on the way to the  bridge, MacCraw's boo -boo notwithstanding, but there were no direct routes left in the Mona Lisa  . Hatches jammed, barricades erected, some of them still holding, some not. Too many obstacles in unknown terrain, and she' d drastically revised their ETA to the bridge, to the point that she didn't have one any more. Could only hope they could gain access when they got there.\n  The infirmary itself had remained immune to all of the destruction around it. Did their first aid work on Covenant? Probably not. No reason for the buggers to ransack the joint.\n\n They'd pushed over a pathetic blockade at the entrance with ease. For the first time, Lopez saw graffiti, scrawled in blood across a turned -over chair, and running across the wall: Tell Ma I didn't do it. I didn't. Not any of it. God bless. George Crispin. Smaller scritchings across the floor were obscene or devolved into nonsense words.\n\n The place was also surprisingly small, given the size of the ship and the number of cel l blocks they'd come across. Maybe the staff hadn't been big on treating prisoners. Just figured they were tough, could take their chances.\n\n MacCraw grunted when she slapped a pad of gauze over the gash. It needed stitches, but that would do for now.\n\n As she put away her medic kit, Lopez noticed a detail that suddenly had her full attention.\n\n Singh, she said, tilting her head toward the far wall. What do you make of that? A sealed chamber, without windows or cameras, the seal around the door so su btle she'd almost missed it. No handle, either.\n\n The technician shouldered his rifle and ran a hand around the seam. I've seen these before. The opposite of cells. Safe rooms. You can only open them from the inside.\n\n In case the prisoners get out .  . .\n\n Exactly.\n\n MacCraw crossed the room fleeing Mama Lopez's tender  ministrations and put an ear against the surface, like it was a safe he wanted to crack. Now he rapped a knuckle on the door. Da-dada -da-da, da , da.\n\n MacCraw .  . . A tone she'd used a thousand times before.\n\n But Singh said, No, let him do that again.\n\n MacCraw obliged.\n\n A concealed speaker clicked on, a muffled hiss speckling the silence. Sounding a lot cleaner and more immediate than the static over their radios.\n\n Lopez grinned at both of them. Good boys. Anyone home? This is Sergeant Lopez of the UNSC Red Horse  . Remembering John Doe, still the only living person from the Mona Lisa  she'd met.\n\n Of course, it might be Covie in there.\n\n A pause, and then a voice: UNSC? Male. Nervous. Dry.\n  The one and only. All five of us. At your service.  Or not. Depending.\n\n She took a step back and leveled her rifle at the door. Motioned for the others to do the same.\n\n How do I know you' re really UNSC?\n\n You can either take my word for it, or I can prove it to you. One of these is the fun option, but not for you.\n\n Mahmoud and Percy joined the ring, Rakesh keeping an eye on the corridor. Four rifles on the door, just waiting for it to open.\n\n Something like confidence entered the voice: I'd hate to take away your fun .  . .\n\n Lopez frowned. She didn't find that clever. She'd been counting her eleven rosary beads nonstop since Ayad, and she wasn't taking any chances with the rest of the m. Didn't care if a party of gung -ho Spartans was behind that door. Well, okay, that's not true.\n\n You've got ten seconds, she called out, and then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll\n\n The door depressed with a s igh, and slid open. In the room beyond, cramped living quarters, one pallet and sink with medical supplies lining cabinets that reached to the ceiling. Across the ceiling lay a schematic of the Mona Lisa  , but half of it was dark, the rest flickering.\n\n In the middle of the room, behind the pallet, stood one sweating, thin, sallow man, about five ten, in whites that weren't white any more. Brilliant blue eyes. Looked a bit rodent -ish, like he'd happily gnaw on something, anything, until he'd chewed it all up . But entirely unharmed. Wearing a stink she recognized as fear, mixed with the usual too -long-without -a-shower reek.\n\n He held a small pistol. Aimed at them. Despite the man's poor physical condition, his hands didn't shake. His stance reflected military training: two -handed grip, bent slightly at the knees. Unfazed by the firing squad two feet from him.\n\n Drop the weapon. Lopez tightened her finger on the trigger.\n\n The man's bright gaze darted from Marine to Marine, assessing them, before he reached so me decision. He licked his lips like a gecko. Lowered the pistol, transferred it to his left hand, and set it on the floor while raising his right arm as if in a parody of surrender. Stood there, waiting.\n\n Identify yourself, Lopez ordered flatly.\n\n A relieved smile, although Lopez thought she'd detected an underlying, undeserved confidence. Already had a growing sense he was putting on a performance for them.\n\n Doctor John Smith, Chief Medical Officer of the transport ship Mona Lisa  . When they did n't move, he added, hesitantly, Er, you can lower your weapons.\n\n Lopez smiled, hoping it came out as grim as Benti claimed. John Smith her ass. You didn't offer us ice cream. You didn't even say  please'. What's in it for us?\n Ice cream? he said,  incredulous.\n\n Some guffaws from behind her, but Smith looked at them like he'd entered a room full of crazy people. She could see he wasn't someone who liked playing the fool. Resented her already, even if he cam e off as polite.\n\n Yeah, ice cream. Had five dead and wasn't above taking it out on a stranger. We want ice cream.\n\n Smith backed away a little, said, unsmiling, I'm not the enemy .  . . please?\n\n Lopez lowered her rifle. The others followed her lead.  Smith let out that breath he'd been holding.\n\n Okay, fun was over. Time for business.\n\n What happened here? she asked. How'd you wind up in that room?\n\n Smith shrugged, gave a helpless little laugh that still seemed like acting to Lopez. He picked at some dead skin on his left palm with his right hand. Worried at it. What do you think happened?\nShip like this, only one thing ever happens. Prisoners got a chance, rioted, overwhelmed the guards, and took over the ship. I was lucky to be in here when it happened.\n\n Lucky, she echoed, rolling the word between her teeth. Her own scars were itching. Again.\n Prison ship.' That's the story, huh?\n\n He frowned. It's not a story. The prisoners escaped, took over the ship.\n\n It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the truth either. This guy was slick. Lopez liked slick as much as she liked mysteries.\n\n You know, you're the first person we've found. You might be the only human survivor on this ship. Put all the emphasis on human  .\n\n Smith bared his teeth, neither smile nor grimace. The only human\n\n Uh-huh, Lopez said, and gave a nod to her Marines. Go to it, boys.\n\n MacCraw and Percy pushed past him to investigate the  room, MacCraw giv ing Smith a good knock with his shoulder. They could smell the bullshit too. Good. Mahmoud collected Smith's gun and patted him down roughly, coming up empty.\n\n Policy on the taking of Covenant prisoners change, Smith? Lopez asked, prodding. I don't thi nk we got that memo.\n\n Smith's eyes were slits. It wasn't a widely circulated memo.\n\n No fucking kidding, giving herself props for getting him to admit something. More than she'd gotten out of Rebecca or Foucault.\n Something made him change tactics; she didn't know what. Saw it in a sudden shift in posture, even.\n\n Look, he said. I'm just the medical officer. I don't didn't set policy. I just stitched and bandaged, that's all.\n\n Poor pitiful you.\n\n In this .  . . expansive .  . . medical bay of you rs.\n\n Smith's mouth formed a line like a flat EKG. I'm not here to help any Covenant bastards. Just us. Just us humans. Had he rehearsed that, too? Sitting in his sealed room, listening to the screams of people dying?\n\n Yet, even if he had rehearsed it,  Smith had touched a nerve. Lopez couldn't hold his gaze. She'd had relatives on Reach. Close ones. No longer. Had seen in Smith, for a moment, all the anger, grief, and bitterness that had driven her to take her command, every combat mission, and to give up her life to UNSC. The same she'd seen in each of her soldiers. It was always us against them.  Always.\n\n Balanced against that: taking prisoners. That left a sour taste in her mouth. Leave none alive.\n\n Did he really think she was going to let down her guard? She hadn't let down her guard in twenty -seven years. Tell me about the Covenant prisoners, Smith.\n\n Smith, exasperated: For intelligence. Research and development. Know your enemy. It's a war. You know that you're a soldier, right? I don't know  , I'm just the medical officer.\n\n Her fingers flexed. The memory of John Doe's hand. Research and development, huh?\n\n He held his hands out as if he had a peace o ffering for her, but there was only air. I'm just the medical officer. An echo. A shield.\n\n What's the Mona Lisa  doing here?\n\n Frustration on Smith's face. Where's here? I've been in this room since the outbreak. It's a black box, nothing in or out. I have no idea where we are. Where are we?\n\n Why don't you tell me the last place you were, then, and I'll tell you if you're still there?\n\n That got Mahmoud's and MacCraw's attention. That gave Smith pause.\n\n In chess, they call that  check,'  Mahmoud muttered.\n\n Gears and wheels were turning in Smith's head. Lopez could see them.\n\n Didn't you come here to rescue us? Smith said. Am I under arrest or something? Face gone completely blank.\n  So you're going to play it that way. Well, she had time to pl ay, too. All the way up until they got to the bridge.\n\n Countered with: You would have access codes to the bridge, right?\n\n Smith nodded reluctantly.\n\n And, finally, she did relent. She might not like him, but that didn't make him the enemy. We' re off of a planet called Threshold and we've got Covenant loose on a ship capable of making a slipspace jump. We're following the Cole Protocol. We need to get to the bridge and take out the nav system. I hope the bridge isn't locked down, but if it is .  . .\n\n Smith had blanched as soon as she said Cole Protocol. No. No, no, we need to get off the ship. You came here somehow, a Pelican? We need to get off the ship.\n\n Knew instinctively Burgundy would hate this guy as much as  she did. Sorry, but that's not an option. You're coming with us.\n\n No, no\n\n Please , she added, with another dazzling smile.\n\n >Burgundy 1445 hours\n\n At least Marines got to go out and do something, even if something meant getting int o trouble. Not long after the last communication with the Red Horse  , Lopez and her crew had dropped off the radio, their cliched bravado and lame jokes slowly swallowed by static and interference. She thought she'd heard a crackle of contact from Benti, bu t that'd been snuffed out immediately.\n\n Burgundy worked her way through a pack of gum. Her jaw ached something fierce. A book lay unattended on her lap. She'd tried reading, but couldn't stop checking the cameras, and had given up after she'd read the sam e paragraph for twenty minutes.\n\n There wasn't anything to see. Just the barricades in the shadows. Once, she thought she'd glimpsed a silhouette with two heads, one head pale and veiny, which was a pretty ridiculous thing to think you'd seen. Nothing came  out of the darkness to confirm that glimpse, so she'd put it down to nerves.\n\n Her aft running lights were still on, so with the cameras she could still see about ten meters past the Pelican's rear. She'd thought about turning the lights off, but nixed th at idea. If something was out there, she'd be as good as putting out a flashing holographic sign that read Burgundy's Home Just Come Right In.\n\n So she waited.\n\n And she waited.\n\n And she waited.\n  She took the l atest wad of gum from her mouth, thumbed it on the dash, and froze when two figures lurched into the light on the feed. Her thumb sticking to the gum, she yanked free and gripped her pistol. Don't you lay a hand on my bird, Covie scum. I'll hole you, I'll h ole you a hundred times over.\n\n Then she looked closer. It was Cranker and Maller. They were stumbling, injured. Head wounds, it looked like, dark patches running down their faces, torn clothing, and they were leaning into each other, but they were walking  . Alive!\n\n The relief that washed over Burgundy was so intense she almost cried.\n\n Oh thank Christ.\n\n They clearly needed help. She'd not thought much of them loud and rowdy and pushy in the mess linebut here, now, it didn't matter, they were the most excellent human beings in the universe. She wouldn't be alone now.\n\n She slapped the controls for the gangplank and vaulted out of the cockpit, snatching up an assault rifle from the locker as she passed. The ramp opened too damn slow. She ran to the lip a s it lowered, checking the nearby barricades and containers for any other movement.\n\n Guys! she hissed. Get on in here! Now!\n\n Up close they were worse than they looked on the cameras, Cranker listing badly now, Maller pivoting toward the sound of her voice, the ramp dropping, dropping.\n\n You're\n\n Much worse. Much, much worse.\n\n Skin mottled and bruised and sunken, veined through with dark tendrils. Eyes white and unseeing. Some growth fastened to Cranker's neck, an enormous pustule that shivered and  twitched. Maller, what had been Maller, opened his mouth, and howled, a sound no human could make.\n\n Burgundy scrambled back, opened fire.\n\n But it was too late.\n\n >Benti 1450 hours\n\n When they found that the hatc h to the lower deck was also locked, Benti let loose with a stunning stream of curses that left them all looking at her like they didn't know her anymore. Except for Orlav.\n\n We got a Plan B? is all Orlav asked.\n\n This being -in-charge thing was wearing thin. Benti wished, not for the first time, that she was back on the Red Horse  taking a nice bath.\n  This was Plan B, Benti said. And Plan C, if you wanted to be precise. They'd lost contact with Lopez, and Benti was n't sure they'd get it back any time soon. Hailing the Pelican had become a kind of personal joke that gave her the giggles. Didn't know if she really found it funny or was just becoming hysterical. Hellooo Pelican, come in, come in? No? Okay. You just be that way, you petulant bird.\n\n Clarence shrugged and started back down the corridor.\n\n Hang on, just wait, I'll find another way. Orlav's frown deepened, clearly sick of peering at the tiny screen.\n\n Benti shouldered her rifle and knelt by the hatch. The  access panel wasn't secured. She flipped the panel open, gave it a once -over, and pulled a knife from her boot. Being a medic wasn't all she was good at.\n\n Shine your light down here. Thanks. It wasn't so complicated. A little tricky, but nothing she hadn't done before. Just expose this wire, strip back this one and put a bridge here, and\n\n The hatchway unlocked with a sharp clack and she hauled it open. Triumphant.\n\n But only for a second.\n\n Pheeeoooow! They cringed away from the stench that came bil lowing out, the air thicker and moist in the worst possible way. Bilges. They're the same in every ship.\n\n Foucault would be pissed to hear you say that about the Red Horse  .\n\n Yeah, well, he ain't here, Gerst en said, and swung himself onto the ladder, Orlav and Clarence leaning into the hatchway to provide cover.\n\n See anything?\n\n Yep. Looks like bilges, smells like bilges .  . . I think it's bilges!\n\n Benti hadn' t expected Gersten to turn into a comedian. She rolled her eyes and dropped down after Gersten. No shit.\n\n Oh, we got shit a -plenty here. Special price for you.\n\n Wow. It wasn't going to stop.\n\n The space was tight and cramped, full of tanks holding cl ean water, gray water, and sewage, and yet more tanks for the processing as it was all recycled and made ready to go back into the mix again. Moisture beaded across the ceiling and dripped onto them irregularly, leaving oily marks on the walls and residue across every surface.\n\n It's in this direction. Orlav gestured at a passage leading through the tanks.\n\n Lots of spaces to hide in there, Benti said.\n Clarence gave her a look like Who would want to?\n\n Lots. Orlav agreed. So we'll do it real careful -like.\n\n Moving in stages, creeping, darting into new territory, their backs only to each other, they moved deeper into the bowels of the ship.\n\n Benti wished she could get used to the smell, but it was impossible. Even keeping her hand over her nose didn 't help. The smell had a taste, a texture, that got around any defense. Benti wanted that bath more than ever and ice cream, damn the sarge for putting the idea in her head. But more than anything, she wanted someplace with a blue sky and no ceiling. She w ondered, not for the first time, if Lopez was already waiting for them on the bridge.\n\n I've been in the shit before, Gersten said, but this is ridiculous.\n\n Shut it, Benti said. Mouthy Gersten was ruining si lent Gersten's rep. But also her ears had pricked up at the hint of an echo.\n\n Let Gersten wallow in it, for once, Orlav said straightfaced. Even Tsardikos, who had been almost as silent as Clarence, couldn't suppress a chuckle at that.\n\n But Benti shush ed them again. I'm serious. Clarence, you hear that?\n\n Clarence nodded. It was impossible to miss. A voice that rose stark above the muted hubbub of the recycling system. A voice that spoke no words, that didn't try to, that didn't know how.\n\n They knew the wide array of Covenant sounds, and this was not one of them.\n\n Keep moving, Benti said through gritted teeth. Boy, she wished now they hadn't split up. The sarge would've had a much better plan. But right now the sarge might as well be on a beach in Cozumel.\n\n Where'd it come from? Orlav asked. I can't tell.\n\n Another sound, containing a depth and jaggedness that tripped Benti's pulse.\n\n What the hell was that? Gersten asked, spinning about. Covenant bastards, what the hell is it?\n\n Shut up and keep moving, Benti insisted. She couldn't shed the image of the Covenant Elite Clarence had killed for her, listening for something that frightened it more than a bunch of Marines.\n\n Shedding caution, they sped up into a jog, a glance at eac h corner, knocking into the holding tanks because they looked behind them so much. Tsardikos was lagging. Benti hissed at him to go faster, but he couldn't keep up.\n\n Another roar, a bellow not even really animal in nature too ragged and discordant. It ech oed off the tanks and pipes, hiding  its source. Moaning, eerie changes in the timbre, like someone tuning in a messed -up radio channel. More and more voices no, they couldn't be voices joined in, as if alerted to a  hunt. Just discernable above the coalescing howl, something that chittered and scuttled.\n\n They're behind us, I think, Gersten said, not trying to be funny any more, as he swiveled to jog backward, flashlight spasming across the pipes behind them. Benti  turned, couldn't see anything. Not even Tsardikos.\n\n And they're gaining, Orlav added. Unnecessarily.\n\n They broke, running so fast now that anything could ambush them, but needing to take that risk. Running felt good to Benti's tense muscles.\n\n Where are we going, Orlav? Benti shouted. Come on, where are we going?\n\n Maintenance storage room, with access back upstairs beyond!\n\n How far?\n\n Fifty meters!\n\n They're gaining,  Gersten said, rising strain in his voice. There was more than one voice in the growing growl behind them, multiple footfalls, heavy, far too heavy. They turned a corner, kept going.\n\n Grenade?\n\n Orlav: Too close to the hull!\n\n Here! Benti splashed t o a halt by a narrow passage that led through the last of the tanks. A quick scan indicated that the space beyond was clear, nothing lurking in the corners. She dropped to a knee, checking the ammo remaining in her rifle as Clarence took up a position behi nd and over her.\n\n How many you make out, Gersten?\n\n Lots, he said, wide -eyed.\n\n Great help that was .  . .\n\n The noises reaching to them through the darkness swelled,  sometimes familiar, yet also utterly warped , alien, broken. Benti couldn't slow her breathing, her hands cold on her rifle.\n\n Tsardikos came running toward them in a final burst of speed, terrified and swearing. He jumped over her, spun into position behind and fumbled with his weapon.\n\n Took your  damn time, growled Orlav. Tsardikos ignored her.\n\n I don't think they're Covenant, Benti said. Behind her, Clarence shifted, his calf against her hip. He had her back. Again.\n\n Orlav smacked a flare and tossed it out into the passageway. They waited, s tinking of shit, like a group of cowering sanitation workers. With guns.\n\n The first of their pursuers staggered into the spluttering light.\n\n They weren't Covenant.\n\n >Lopez 1501 hours\n\n At last they'd found a body. Never thought she'd sound a silent h uzzah for that. Never thought evidence of death could be such a relief.\n\n Security stations and checkpoints were choked with furniture, the doors themselves jammed. Sometimes on purpose. Most of the blockades had been torn apart, great gouges left in the s teel walls and floor. In the process of finding a path through the debris, they'd been funneled into one of the crew's rec rooms. Archaic ceiling fans. Pool tables. Bar stools and a TV. One wall with a blown -up photograph of the beach on some tropical isla nd. An honest -to-god facsimile of a tiki bar in another corner. Something about it made Lopez think of the words in denial  . Even down to the plastic tiki glasses still sitting on the counter.\n\n Nothing disturbed; no one had fled here.\n\n It almost looked no rmal.\n\n Except for the body.\n\n Or two.\n\n Honestly, it was hard to tell.\n\n Right about then, looking at the pieces, Lopez could have done with some answers. Real answers, not the extra mysteries she was being offere d by Smith. Remembering Rabbit, the last conversation with Burgundy, Ayad still gone.\n\n Too many more unknowns and her soldiers were going to start to fray. No matter how she tried to stop that from happening. She'd seen it before. It had damn near happene d to Foucault before he'd turned the situation around. Become a hero.\n\n So there was Mahmoud muttering under his breath while Rakesh and Singh focused on the tiki bar. Only Percy, at her side, seemed unable to look away.\n\n I get the feeling this wasn't a very happy place, Percy said.\n\n This wasn't the battlefield. This wasn't what they'd signed on for.\n\n The storage cupboard at the far end of the room had been wrenched open so hard the hinges had spun off and the door lay crumpled to the side. Inside, pieces. Leftovers. She couldn't think of it as anything else. Flesh she knew to be Covenant. Skin she kne w to be human. And something half grown across them, inside  these pieces, bulging the muscle and mottling the skin. They couldn't have been here long enough to look that rotten. Something in the physiology had altered, shifted, from the inside. A massive pr otrusion from what should have been a shoulder, but it wasn't an arm. It looked like a growth of bone, grotesque and huge, with strips of flesh gripping it tenuously.\n\n Savage. Brutal. Made her remember John Doe's wounds. Had he ever been in this room? Gua rd or prisoner?\n\n Sarge, what the fuck is that? MacCraw pointed, as if she hadn't noticed.\n\n Well, MacCraw, that there, she said grimly, slipping into a  drawl, that's a hand. Death had not relaxed it. The fin gers didn't curl, the palm didn't fold. Flat, with the fingers straight, rigid and stiff.\n\n What the hell is that other thing, Sarge? MacCraw again. Was he never going to stop cataloging?\n\n Almost looks like they got fused or something hiding in the cup board, Rakesh said in a distant voice. Together, he added, more distant. Clearly not believing it for an instant.\n\n But none of that really got to Lopez. What got to her was the carefully tended bonsai tree sitting right next to the cubby. Had a terribl e image of someone tossing the body parts in there and then doing a bit of gardening.\n\n Lopez took a step back, and another, and draped an arm over Smith's shoulders. She pulled him companionably close, seemingly oblivious to the way the muzzle of her rifl e drifted back and forth across his face.\n\n John, she said. Can I call you John?\n\n He leaned away. Not from her, no. From the bodies, the bits of bodies she was dragging him near. He really was a little man. There wasn't much muscle on him.\n\n I think you know what this is.\n\n Smith glanced at each of them again, assessing  them again. Seeing no escape.\n\n And I think you're going to damn well tell me what this is  .\n\n >Benti 1502 hours\n\n As Benti grimly fired and fired, rifle hot in her hands, she had one small satisfaction: no room to miss, no distance to interfere with accuracy. The first figure jumped and spun with the concentrated fire from the five of them, falling back into the seco nd and third, who didn't pause. They just shoved their comrade aside, climbing over each other to get through the gap. They tripped and stumbled too as they pushed their way into the line  of fire, even as the first  was, oh god, Benti could make out the first thrashing its way back up. She knew she'd dropped a good line of hot lead straight in its belly, but it was getting back up  .\n\n Clarence threw another flare.\n\n Most were human, some were actually Covenant. All of  them so misshapen and shambly you could hardly tell. Branching fungi tumbled and poured from their limbs. Their eyes were glazed and vacant. The stink of them overpowered the shit smell. There was a low mumble coming from them, almost in concert, that unn erved Benti.\n\n They're not staying down! Gersten yelled. Reloading! Popped a clip and slapped in a new one as Orlav covered his zone. What the hell are they?\n\n She concentrated her fire on the frontmost, and it dropped, and she shifted her aim to the  next, and oh god, it was getting to its feet too, and she saw shoes on those feet, slippers, and a distinctive orange color.\n\n They'd found the prisoners, and apparently they didn't like the bilges, either.\n\n Tsardikos wasn't even firing. Just watching, m outh open. Benti elbowed him in the thigh. Snap out of it, soldier! she screamed at him. And he did. Miraculously. Started firing again.\n\n Still, there was no way they could hold this position. No way.\n\n Fall back to the maintenance room! Benti rose fr om her crouch, sliding up against Clarence, who stepped back, and she with him, moving like practiced dance partners.\n\n We lose this spot, they're going to swamp us! Orlav shouted.\n\n We stay here, they'll swamp us sooner! Benti shouted back.\n\n The flar es showed a swarm of pale globes, like living snotbags, scuttling up the ceiling from behind the shambling mob, toward them.\n\n The passageway behind them was an unknown quantity. No time to look at the map. No telling what they'd find there.\n\n No avoiding that. No time for caution.\n\n She yanked a grenade from her belt, ripping the pin out in the same motion. No more jabber! Get going!\n\n A raised eyebrow from Clarence, a look of panic from Gersten.\n\n She tossed it as they broke and ran.\n\n Not far enough.\n\n The force of it slammed into her, slammed through her, throwing her forward into Clarence. Her bones shrieked in protest. All the air fled her lungs. She rolled over the top of Clarence, heat at her back and then on her face.\n\n None of that mattered.\n\n Keep moving! she screamed, before she'd even opened her eyes, crawling to her knees. Don't ever stop moving. Unless you want to die.\n Her ears rang like wineglasses. She couldn't hear anything, hardly could see anything. Slapped a hand on Clarence's helmet as he pushed himself from the floor. Cast about, Orlav and Gersten scrambling to their feet. Where was Tsardikos?\n\n Aftershock: A wash of warm water came tumbling down the passageway and swept her legs  out from under her just as she'd gotten all the way up. It was murky, it was rank, and swept along with it was one of them  , flailing and thrashing, and a trailing arm no, it wasn't an arm, it was a whip of bone, it was a blade of body  slashed Orlav across  the back, arcing a wide spray of blood across Benti and Clarence, peppering blood through the filthy water and across the pipes, and slamming her down again, her mouth an O of shock as Benti, who had never released her rifle, they were all better than t hat, drew a bead and fired a hole through the thing's chest until she could see the other wall, and watched as, truly dead, it smacked up against a tank and lay there.\n\n Thought she saw something else, too, near Orlav one of those snot creatures but, no, n othing when she spun, it  must've just been something bobbing in the water. Part of the thing she'd just killed.\n\n A glance down the passageway brought her a small measure of relief. Patchy fires singed churning sewage around a new barricade of ceiling and caved -in tanks. It'd worked for now there was no other movement. The smell of mingled crap and the stench of the enemy made her cough. It'd gag her if she let it.\n\n But so would the memory of them, those things, ri sing up despite being blasted full of bullet holes. They wouldn't couldn't be stopped for long. She could already feel the vibration of digging. The shit wouldn't hold.\n\n She surged to her feet, too fast, off balance, shook her head angrily she needed clar ity now more than ever.\n\n A quick check, Clarence was okay, Gersten okay, just cursing a lot as he tried to lift Orlav.\n\n Her hearing had started to return. Over the cursing, she could hear Orlav shrieking with agony. There was another sound, too, another kind of shrieking, like a man being devoured alive. It almost froze Benti, until she realized it came from the other side  of the barricade.\n\n Tsardikos, screaming as those things took him apart. Nothing Benti could do about it. Nothing that wouldn't put the rest of them in danger.\n\n She shook it off. She shook it off, even as it damaged her, and scrambled over to Orlav, shit bouncing from her shins.\n\n She's bleeding bad, Gersten said, supporting nearly all of Orlav's weight.\n\n That was the least of Orlav's worries. This tainted water in her wounds would kill her anyway. It would just take a little longer. Benti leaned down for a quick inspection, and froze. The injury itself was long but not deep. She could see the blue curves in the dark muscle of her back, but the spine didn't shine through. What kind of a victory was it when the medic in  her leapt for joy that she couldn't see bone? But fastened to the lower back was a quivering bulb of pus, finger like tendrils digging into the open wound ecstatically. Holy crap. It looked like a parasite of some kind. She reached for it, and stop ped. Not here, not in this water.\n\n We have to get her out of here! She threw one of Orlav's arms over her shoulder, the other around her waist, taking some of the burden off of Gersten. Head for maintenance. Clarence, come on, let's go!\n\n They fled, d ragging Orlav between them. Clarence staggered in their wake, watching the darkness behind them. He didn't have any more flares. Their flashlights would have to do.\n\n Benti flinched as she thought she heard something in the air ducts above them.\n\n Orlav,  Benti raised her voice, turned to yell in her ear, Orlav! Report!\n\n  's fadin' .  . . she slurred, and her head dropped, eyes wide open, not even pretending to walk now, feet dragging in the water. .  . . where .  . .\n\n There's the door!\n\n A burst of  speed and they collapsed against it. Locked. They were trapped outside. Benti propped Orlav against the door, Gersten shouldering her weight again. She's bad, he moaned.\n\n Benti ripped the faceplate from the control panel, straightforward wiring again. She walked her fingers along the wires.\n\n Oh god, she's bad, look at her face, look at her face, look  Benti yanked a wire, and looked.\n\n What looked back at her was not Orlav.\n\n >Lopez 1503 hours\n\n Lopez had her orders. Find out what the hell is up with this damn ship  was down at the bottom of her priorities. Get to  the bridge  was at the top. But the more time she spent on this damn ship  , the harder it was to ignore that she might not achieve the first without knowing the last. Couldn't help thinking of the intel blackout. Found herself rather taken with the idea of knowing something Rebecca didn't want her to know.\n\n So tell me, she nudged. Tell me what I'm looking at. Knew wha tever came out of Smith's mouth would come out sideways, but that was okay. She could make it honest.\n\n Covenant get sick too, Smith said haltingly. We noticed it in some of them. Any of the prisoners displaying the symptoms we kept in isolation. Just i n case. He wiped his mouth, still resisting Lopez's grip. We took every precaution against it. Every precaution.\n\n He stopped. Lopez jabbed him in the side with her rifle. She was pretty sure Smith was going to give her another scar eventually.\n\n It mad e them aggressive. Savage. Smith worked his mouth, clearly thinking about the words before he said them. We did some tests. Managed to isolate it. Now he couldn't look away from the bodies. An alien virus.\n\n Percy raised his head, raised his eyebrows,  as MacCraw covered his mouth and leapt back.\n\n We've been standing here breathing around this thing!\n\n Smith smiled, no humor in it. Mostly disdain. It doesn't work like that.\n\n Did it jump from Covenant to human? Percy asked.\n\n A dull boom reverber ated through the floor, the walls shuddering slightly. Grenade? Mahmoud mouthed. Not good. Like the explosion had jump -started his urgency again.\n\n Smith relaxed, stopped pulling away from Lopez. Accepting his fate, finally?\n\n It did.\n\n >Benti 1507 hours\n\n Get moving again, soldier!\n\n Get  The words stuck in her throat, wouldn't come out, not fast enough.\n\n Orlav the thing staring out from behind Orlav's eyes opened its mouth, lips already purp le and cheeks veined with green. In control now, it turned Orlav's head, drew Gersten into an embrace using Orlav's arm thrown over Gersten's shoulder.\n\n What used to be Orlav bit into Gersten's cheek.\n\n The words still wouldn't leave her mouth. They were stuck. As Gersten shrieked, she couldn't look away, the teeth sinking into the cheek and worrying it. Blood washed down Gersten's throat to soak his collar. Orlav's other arm was already writhing and changing right in front of Benti, becoming something bul bous that had nothing to do with the Marine she'd known.\n\n That arm, that club, that infernal claw, rose, about to become a weapon crashing down on her skull.\n\n Clarence shoved her aside, fired point -blank into Orlav's temple, ripping a tunnel through the skull. As the body slumped, Clarence matter -of-factly put another burst through the heart.\n\n It dropped, Gersten screaming and flailing to be free. Staggering back, holding one hand against his torn cheek. Jesus, Jesus .  . .\n\n Clarence popped the empty c lip. It hissed in the water at his feet, Benti watching in the flashlight's glow, trying to adjust to what had just happened.\n\n He slapped another in, turned, grabbed Benti's shirt and hauled her to her feet, which brought her out of it. A once -over to con firm she was uninjured, and he tipped his chin at the wires she'd left exposed, then stared at the grenade -created wreckage behind them as it shuddered and shifted, pushed from the other side. The water was rising around their knees.\n She got back to it.\n\n Benti, my face, Gersten moaned.\n\n I know, she said, shaking fingers stripping this wire, then that wire, just let me get this. Then I'll take care of you.  She needed a moment so her hands were steady before she did anything medical for Gersten. Clarence had his hand on his pistol. Most people wouldn't have noticed, but she knew Clarence. Just in case?  Was this what it came down to?  Knew, too, Gersten, and not sure she could do it. Any of it. But knowing she'd have to, somehow.\n\n A crash and tumble behind them. Something was breaking through the wreckage. A spike of tension in Clarence's posture. Her hands were wet, the wires were sl ippery. She twisted the two and the lock clacked open.\n\n She spun the lever, shoulder to the door, and pushed. It stuck.\n\n A dragging sound from behind them. A hiss like static. A moaning.\n\n Oh for Christ's sake come on! Another shove, and it gave sudden ly, sewage spilling into the opening, and her tumbling after it. Gersten sagged in after her. Clarence backed in and shoved the hatch closed quick as thought.\n\n Benti looked up, into the light.\n\n A Covenant Elite stood there, looking down at her.\n\n Holding  a cricket bat in one alien hand.\n\n >Lopez 1507 hours\n\n Smith looked at Lopez at last, motioning to the rifle she now held none too nonchalantly by his head.\n\n Sergeant, please. I am not the enemy.\n\n You said that already. But she released him. So I g uess you're trying to tell me one of your plague -carriers got out, grabbed one of the crew, and dragged them into this here  cupboard toBurgundy asking if the Covenant ate their dead  .\n\n I guess, Smith said, edg ing toward the far door. He might be trying to get away from her, but he was right. They'd lingered long enough. Didn't know if Smith would give her anything else anyway. Maybe, too, she'd wanted a tiny window of respite for her team before they went back into the thick of it.\n\n Rakesh, get the door. MacCraw, get your damn act together. He gave the jumbled bodies a wide berth, hand clamped over his nose and mouth.\n\n It's locked, Sarge. Security coded.\n Lopez gestured to Smith. Be my guest.  The lying bastard.\n\n Clearly glad the interrogation had ended for the moment, Smith rushed over, pushed his way in front of Lopez's unhelpful boys, and punched in his code. The door slid open.\n\n A pulsing white sack of flesh with gnarled green outgrowths and tentacles for legs stared up at them. The fugliest thing Lopez had ever seen.\n\n In that instant, trying to figure out what the hell they were looking at, it leapt, snapping out its tendrils. Rakesh was closest, had been the most eager to leave. The thi ng caught him around the torso like an overeager dance partner. No time for Rakesh to react.\n\n Shoot it! Smith shouted, stumbling back.\n\n Rakesh yelped. Beat at the sac that clung to his chest. Its grip too tight for him to wrench off. Lopez took aim, bu t Rakesh wouldn't keep still, cries rising into a shriek. His shirt darkening and soaking, oh god, the thing was eating into his chest, and she could hear more coming toward the door\n\n Shut it! Lopez screamed to Singh. He slapped the controls. No code. Percy lunged for Rakesh. Tried to get a grip on the creature. Knocked aside by his thrashing. Mahmoud firing past them at something else coming fast from beyond the door.\n\n Smith shoved Rakesh out the door, and the  pale sac with him. Hammered the controls. The door shut.\n\n Rakesh still shrieking.\n\n MacCraw reached for the door, but Lopez stepped in front of him, a firm hand on his chest. No.\n\n We can't just leave him out there! Yeah, we can. If you want to live.\n\n Singh pale. Percy and Mahmoud weren't protesting. Only the new guy.\n\n Rakesh stopped screaming.\n\n MacCraw's shoulders slumped. Moved away from the pressure of her hand on his chest. Sorry, Sarge, MacCraw murmured.\n\n It's okay, she said. It's okay.\n\n But it wasn't.\n\n She turned, and put all her weight into that turn.\n\n Smashed Smith across the face with her fist.\n\n >Benti 1510 hours\n  A tall man jumped between Benti and the Elite with the cricket bat. Don't shoot! He wore the torn orange jumpsuit o f a prisoner. He hadn't shaved in days. One eye sagged a little in its socket.\n\n Despite herself, Benti didn't shoot. Maybe because the cricket bat, a narrow but solid slab of wood, puzzled her as much as the man.\n\n They'd tumbled into what looked like a s toreroom or a transition space between rooms. Just the door and racks of tools and parts. A ladder at the rear that might lead up somewhere or might not. The white walls were covered with tiny black marks, like some kind of design.\n\n He's not infected, it 's okay, don't shoot! the man said. My  name's Patrick Rimmer. I'm a prisoner, but I wasn't in for anything serious, I swear!\n\n That's a Covenant you're protecting, Benti said. Why the crap should we care if h e's infected or not? She got up off the floor, rifle at the ready. The naked Covie looking up at her, shushing her.\n\n Rimmer just kept his tall, lanky body in front of the Covenant, looking nervously from one to the other. Ready to die for a Covie.\n\n Plea se, guys, please, don't kill him  , Rimmer pleaded. You gotta understand. He's cool. We're cool. He's my friend. He's the only one I've had to talk to. The only one. He's cool. He's clean. Please. You gotta understand. You've gotta understand it isn't the Covenant's fault. Not this time. We're cool, really. Rimmer looked so lonely, so lost, that it almost got to Benti.\n\n Beside Benti, Clarence glared down the line of his rifle, finger tense on the trigger. Crap. Things could get ugly fast, even if the Covi e only had a cricket bat. Something told Benti they could afford to suss out the situation before shooting. Making noise didn't seem like a wise move right then anyway.\n\n Benti put her hand on Clarence's rifle, gave him a long look,  and stood between him and Rimmer, her own gun aimed at the Elite. Gersten had slouched up against a wall and could wait until they'd resolved this standoff.\n\n If that Covie makes one wrong move, looks at us the wrong way even, it's dead, you got me?\nBenti said it staring back at Clarence, trying to put extra weight behind the words. Let it be her decision. Clarence had made a lot of decisions on his own already today. Some of them she hadn't liked.\n\n Clarence stared at her a second, and then nodded. But s he couldn't read the intent in his eyes at all anymore, and that scared her.\n\n Rimmer relaxed a little bit, although sweat beaded his forehead. He nodded. Yeah, cool, then. He's okay, Henry's clean, he's cool, he' s okay. You're Marines, right? You're going to get us out of here, right?\n\n Henry? Benti tried the name out.  Henry . A Covie with a name other than bastard or asshole or shithead. A Covie named Henry who carried a cricket bat. That left her speec hless.\n\n The man was jumpy, twitchy, couldn't stay still. Benti didn't know if she blamed him. Yeah, I mean, I don't know his name, can't understand a thing he says, I just call him Henry and he calls me Rimmer, of course, 'cause that's my name, although he doesn't really pronounce it right, or say much of anything, 'cause he can't speak our language but he's cool, seriously, he's cool. There's more of you, right? You can get us back out, right?\n\n Those aren't my orders no, wait, you tell me, what were t hose things? We're not going anywhere until you tell me what they are.\n\n But Rimmer no longer cared about her answer. He was looking beyond her, over her left shoulder. He's .  . . he's been infected.\n\n Henry was raising his cricket bat. Rimmer looked ar ound like he wanted a weapon too.\n\n For a second, Benti didn't understand. Infected?\n\n She turned, just as Gersten lowered his hands from his face.\n\n I don't, I don't feel so good .  . .\n\n A mottled patch of yellow dust encrusted his torn cheek and a st agnant green tint ran through his skin. At the base of his neck, another quivering globe of pus, one soft tendril resting tenderly on his throat.\n\n Benti reached for a pouch at her hip, automatically going for sterilizers, knowing she had nothing powerful enough, stupid stupid stupid, should have gone for her weapon, but unable to stop the reflex.\n\n Clarence stepped up, pressed the mouth of his rifle against Gersten' s forehead. Gersten stared at him, marshalled his energy to say with utter shock, What the hell, Clarence, you\n\n Clarence pulled the trigger and jumped back as Gersten went flying up against the wall. Blood sprayed out into the water, missing Clarence a nd smacking up against the wall with its weird black marks.\n\n None of it hit Benti, shielded as she was by her partner.\n\n Gersten slid down the wall. A torn cheek was the least of his worries now.\n\n The extra blood bags Benti had brought seemed like a quai nt affectation, and had for a while. There was no lack of blood here.\n\n Clarence turned, checking her for wounds. He looked in her eyes, made her look in his eyes so she could see there was no threat there. For now.  Clarence kept his rifle down and away fro m her.\n\n Still, she had to say it. You killed Gersten. You killed Gersten real casual -like. You killed him.\n\n He nodded, impassive.\n\n His dog tags\n Forget the dog tags. You gotta rip the bodies up, Rimmer said, like he was telling her how to heat noodle soup properly. That's not dead enough. Gotta destroy the body or they just come back.\n\n Don't be stupid. Benti couldn't keep her voice from cracking. He's dead. He's dead  . But the fact was, even if her heart couldn't accept it, she knew what they were now. She had an idea of just how right Rimmer could be.\n\n He ain't! He's infected! Rimmer stepped forward. He'd found a chisel. We gotta take him apart, he's going to come back!\n\n Benti had her rifle poin ted at him before she knew it. A mistake, seeing the Elite's posture change, and Clarence's hand coming down heavy on her shoulder. Clarence had her back. Always. And he'd just shot Gersten.\n\n She'd just about lost control of the situation, but then, she t hought with an odd kind of relief, there was hardly anyone left under her command anyway.\n\n Clarence, she said, her voice steadier than her thoughts. His hand slid up her arm and with light pressure lowered her rifle. She couldn't resist. You're not\n\n Rimmer lurched back again, chisel held out pathetically. In the water pooled on the floor, ripples\n. . .\n\n Clarence pivoted, shot Gersten, and killed him a second time.\n\n Benti didn't turn around. She'd seen her fill, enough for the rest of her life. Sh e wanted to sit, but didn't. She wouldn't have the strength to get back up.\n\n You see? Rimmer said. You see ? They come back. You leave them enough, all the important body bits, and they all come back. Me and Henry here, we're the last ones. They didn't know we were here. But now you've let them know. I mean, I'm not blaming you, not really. But they'll try to get in. We have to move. There are more of you coming, right?\n\n Right, she said without feeling. No, wrong.  The radio had been silent for too long . Too much interference. Benti knew that if more were coming, it wouldn't be to help them.\n\n Henry looked at her, then Clarence, and the Elite's shoulders sagged in a universal sign of disappointment. It read Benti's expression just fine. Its shoulders sag ged further when, beyond the door, came a crash and rumble.\n\n There's another way out of here? Benti asked.\n\n Yeah, the prisoner said reluctantly, but we've heard them things outside that hatch too.\n\n Just show us the way out, Benti said impatientl y.\n\n Cricket bat resting up against his shoulder, Henry pointed  without enthusiasm to a ladder and hatch leading up to the next deck.\n We'll have to chance it. You're on a prison transport, you must be badass. Despite befriending a Covie.  Get Gersten's gun and use it.\n\n Rimmer shook his head emphatically. Not that badass. Nobody's that badass. He touched it, I'm not touching it. I'm not going near it. She wasn't going near it either, which was the point.\n\n Clarence retrieved Gersten's rifle, took a wipe from the pouch Benti had half opened, cleaned the weapon, and thrust it at Rimmer. Benti he might argue with, but under Clarence's glare, Rimmer took the rifle. Reluctantly.\n\n What about Henry? Rimmer asked.  Henry deserves a better weapon.\n\n Clarence gave the two of them a look like, Isn't it enough we haven't blasted him to hell?  Benti just gave a humorless laugh. Even with the odds stacked against them, no way would she willingly hand a rifle to a Covenant.\n\n Let him keep his cricket bat, Benti said. And he can be the one on point. If he doesn't like it, tough.\n\n Henry didn't seem surprised. Rimmer seemed about to argue, then thought better of it.\n\n Henry, Rimmer, me, and Clarence, that order. One of us drops\n\n We leave them, Rimmer said. Or make sure they don't come back.\n\n She put her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. If there was anything up there, she couldn't hear it over the din back in the recycling plant.\n\n Covenant are not in charge o f this ship. It wasn't framed as a question.\n\n Rimmer snorted. The Flood got out. There's no one in charge of this ship any more.\n\n >Lopez 1510 hours\n\n Lopez shook the pain out of her hand. Her knuckles stung.  Never hit someone in the jaw, MacCraw. But, damn, on some level, it had felt good. She'd wanted to do it for a while.\n\n He gaped at her. But you just did! Sarge!\n\n Silly of me, she said, turning to Smith, who'd staggered to the floor, holding his face , blood on his chin. Very silly. She slammed one regulation navy boot into his gut so hard he curled around her foot, the force exploding saliva from his mouth.\n\n Sarge! What outfit did MacCraw think he'd joined? The Lady's Auxiliary Gardening Society?\n\n You know what that thing was, you lying son of a bitch. Lopez ignored MacCraw. Virus my ass. Mahmoud, search him again.\n  Four rosary beads in her mind, possibly six more hanging in the balance. She flexed her fingers. Yeah, never hit someone in the jaw, unless it was utterly necessary.\n\n Still nothing, Mahmoud reported.\n\n Smith looked a little too smug about that. She was  beginning to think he couldn't help himself.\n\n Take off his shoes. Check his tighty whities, if you have to. Check his damn body cavities!\n\n Sarge! Mahmoud looked as mortified as Smith.\n\n Lopez curled her lip in a snarl. Didn't need to say anything fu rther.\n\n Nothing on Smith's body, who flinched away from the rough hands on him. But then:\n\n Sarge, Mahmoud couldn't conceal the relief in his voice. He rose, Smith's shoes in one hand, an identity pass in the other. I found this.\n\n Lopez read it. Off ice of Naval Intelligence, Section 3, Major John Smith, Research and Development. The foulest tasting title she'd ever uttered. Lovely.\n\n ONI. Spooks. Wraiths.  The mystery was suddenly a whole lot less mysterious , and Lopez found that didn't make her any happier.\n\n Smith wheezed suddenly, sucking in a huge gulp of air, face beet -red and not just from the punch.\n\n Officer on deck, soldiers, Lopez said to the others as she crouched down beside Smith, if that was e ven really his name. Why didn't you identify yourself? She thought she had a good idea why. Whatever Smith's mission had been, that mission had gone belly -up. Not just failed, but failed in a spectacular, amazing, epic way.\n\n He choked and coughed, curle d up to protect his belly.\n\n Why didn't you identify yourself, sir ? Lopez asked.\n\n Percy spat on the ground. MacCraw still just stood there, stunned by the way events had broken.\n\n Smith uncurled, up on one elbow. Now Lopez could see he was furious. Let 's cut the bull -crap, Sergeant. I outrank you. It doesn't matter why I didn't give you my rank to begin with. Effective immediately, we abandon ship. He stopped, coughed again. I cannot be infected. I am privy to highly classified intelligence I can notbe allowed to be infected. We abandon ship, return to the Red Horse  , and destroy the Mona Lisa  from a safe distance.\n\n When she didn't answer, Smith said, I know you had to come on a Pelican. Probably in the hangar right now, waiting for you.\n\n They stared  at each other.\n\n That's an order, Sergeant.   Quietly. In control of himself now.\n A whole new game now, and Lopez didn't have the right of it. Or did she? Smith could've told her men to arrest her, but he hadn't.\n\n I have soldiers aboard I cannot conta ct. Sir, she said.\n\n The others looked on with a kind of fascination, witnessing  something she knew they'd never seen before. Smith outranked her, but these were extenuating, extraordinary circumstances. Lopez was their Mama. Smith wanted to retreat to a safe place. Command was a privilege those under you had to grant. You assumed it, but you couldn't assume  it.\n\n There have been many casualties in this war, Smith said. There will be many more.\n\n Well. That seal ed it. She bent at the knees and landed a punch from above. Damn, that hurt . Grabbed his collar and hauled him to his feet, shoving him back at Mahmoud and Singh.\n\n Sarge? Percy said.\n\n She nursed her hand. Shit, ouch, shit. We're going to the bridge. N o spook is going to leave my kids in the dark and then scuttle the ship on them. Shit. Benti would haunt us if we did, and she'd be a real annoying ghost. Damn, that stings. Any questions? Said it casual, but knew this was the break point. If they were go ing to break.\n\n Met their eyes, relieved to see no argument there. You didn't leave your own in the dark. Not even if there were big bad viruses out there. Especially not then.\n\n Um.\n\n Except for Percy, apparently. Was she going to have a problem with Percy?\n\n Private?\n\n Can I hit him too, Sarge?\n\n >Foucault 1515 hours\n\n Foucault stood on the bridge beneath the light of the images brought back from the ship's remote cameras. They'd displayed the same thing for hours: the Mona Lisa  dark and tiny against the backdrop of broken Halo, the endlessly shifting cloud of debris, brief flares in Threshold's atmosphere as pieces of Halo plummeted into the gas giant, and one Covenant capitol ship , on the very edge of the sensors, nearly masked by the planet. The Covenant ship hadn't picked up on them, and some part of him the reckless part wanted to sneak up and lay down a few well -placed mines.\n\n A timer,  nestled in to one corner of the main screen, counted the seconds since last contact with Sergeant Lopez and her team.\n\n It had been running a long time.\n  Rebecca stood on a holopad in her war avatar. Foucault had insisted on it. It seemed disrespectful of her to show up on the bridge looking like a dumpy Italian woman. It offended his sense of decorum. Besides, he often underestimated Rebecca when she took on that avatar. He didn't want to do that, not now.\n\n He knew: there were Covenant on board the Mona Lisa .\n\n He knew: there were ONI personnel on board the Mona Lisa  .\n\n He knew .  . . well, not much else.\n\n He knew his options were limited.\n\n The timer flicked over, another minute gone.\n\n A new context, a new paradigm. A new something.\n\n Helm,  he said, determined to break the spell of inertia. Bring us up on the Mona Lisa  . Quietly. I want Sergeant Fugazi and two squads prepped and ready for dust off as soon as we're alongside.\n\n Yes, sir! New heading\n\n Commander, Rebecca cut in over the top. What are you doing? Our orders specifically state that if recon, or a loss of recon, indicates the Mona Lisa  has been compromised beyond retrieval, the Red Horse  is authorized to fire a Shiva missile and destroy the ship, regardless of passengers and regardless of revealing our position.\n\n Foucault turned, caught the eye of the helmsman, who was hesitating, and nodded. Yes, Rebecca. I am aware of our orders.\n\n Sometimes he'd much rather be a private than a co mmander. Sometimes he'd much rather be lowered down into the middle of a firefight than have to make overarching high -level and distant decisions. Field combat came more naturally to him than this posturing and fencing.\n\n Rebecca crossed her arms, tilting h er head toward the timer. That indicates a  loss of recon,'\nCommander. It is time to reassess the situation.\n\n Intimidation tactics were wasted on an AI, but he leaned down, close to the Ghost Who Must Be Obeyed, and whispered. I have been given my orde rs, but I have not been granted any information with which to assess the situation. We are to destroy the Mona Lisa  if it is  compromised,' but bywhat  I do not know.\n\n Covenant, Rebecca replied succinctly.\n\n Sergeant Lopez and her team are more than cap able of handling the Covenant presence on board that ship. No, I say again: I have not been given any information that would warrant firing on one of our own ships with my own soldiers aboard. Prep a Pelican, bring up the Red Horse  . I suspect you could tel l me what I need to know, and I suspect you will not. Thus, I see no alternative but to conduct further recon. Perfectly aware he was beginning to sound like his prissy schoolteacher of a father. You were right. We do send our soldiers to their deaths, b ut we do not willingly abandon our own, Rebecca. We do not turn and leave them.\n\n You're getting spittle on my projector, Rebecca said.\n\n Foucault straightened, turning away. He really missed Chauncey.\n\n Once I have all the facts, then I shall reassess  the situation. And part of that reassessment will be to determine if you are fit for duty, given your current conduct. Your activation date was, as I recall, more than six years ago. He did not use the word rampan cy , but knew she damn well understood his meaning. A dirty tactic, but these were dirty times.\n\n Silence between them. Foucault thinking of his superior officer with the glass eye.\n\n This time, Rebecca broke first.\n\n Okay.\n\n Foucault struggled not to raise an eyebrow in surprise.\n\n This time it was the AI's turn to lean in and whisper. Somewhere private, Commander. I have something to show you. Something you won't want your crew to see.\n\n >Burgundy 1520 hours\n\n Hands and cl aws and deformed bodies and the stink of something so foul she'd vomited. Forming a living conveyor belt, passing her along the passageways. Always the roar of their anger to drown out her screams.\n\n She'd gone down fighting, but she'd gone down. The mista ke had been thinking Cranker had still been Cranker, Maller still Maller. A shot through the heart didn't do it. A shot in the leg didn't do it. By the time she'd figured that out, they'd had her. Maller had broken one of her legs as she'd tried to get to the pilot's seat. Cranker had knifed her in the side.\n\n As she'd lain there trying to get up, Cranker had kicked her, and Maller had reared up with fist and claw held high, like he was going to finish her off. But then a whole bunch of the small ones, the ones like bouncing beach balls that's what her mind made them into so she could handle it had come surging up the gangplank. Cranker had stopped, and Maller with him.\n\n They'd stood there, heads held like they were sniffing the air, or like they were recei ving information. Plants reaching for the light  .\n\n By then, Burgundy had begun to go into shock, the pain draining away. She couldn't get over the strangeness of those living beach balls, which made her mind flash to images of the ocean when she was on leave. A strange, quick glimpse of Benti drinking a pina colada, Clarence alone in the distance like a lost soul, wandering through the surf, looking for seashells. Surely Lopez had to be somewhere. The sarge would co me and save her.\n\n She'd tried to resume her epic journey to the pilot's seat, but Cranker and Maller had come to some kind of decision.\n\n Suddenly, Cranker was picking her up and slinging her over his shoulder, growling as he did it. The pain of that cut through the shock, her leg a burning plank of wood. She screamed, beat at him with her good arm, only realizing in that second that her right arm hung useless across Cranker's back. Across the horrible nodule of a passenger he'd picked up. There was a wetn ess that clung to her that she realized must be blood.\n\n Maller brought up the rear, followed by the beach balls. She closed her eyes against that sight, and most of the time since she'd tried to keep them shut. It was her only defense against what was happening.\n\n Because now, slowly, laboriously, with starts and stops where Cranker carried her again, she was being passed along by a great community of the horribly transformed down corridors, pushed through airducts, sometimes dropped as Cranker and Maller fought with some new monstrosity that apparently hadn't gotten with the program. Whatever the program was.\n\n Sometimes now she tried to reason with the two Marines. Cranker, she'd say, please take me back to the Pelican. I know you' re still in there. I know you can hear me. Or she'd say, mumbling it a bit because she felt so weak, Maller, I know you don't want to do this. I know you want to help me. Please, please help me Once she even said, If you'd just put me down, I could do the rest. I can find the sarge. I can explain it was a mistake. She laughed bitterly at that one, knowing everything  was past repair, and her laughter dissolved into panicked sobs again. She was alone.\n\n Cranker a nd Maller never answered. Cranker and Maller had their marching orders, and they didn't come from the sarge.\n\n >Lopez 1527 hours\n\n Hell of a big virus, Lopez said, pushing Smith ahead of her. He'd pleaded his case for a while, told her he' d launched the empty escape pods to avoid anything getting off -ship as soon as he realized the situation. Told her he'd tried to sabotage the bridge but hadn't been able to get close enough. And, then, apparently, decided to wait it out in his little blind  room. None of it really made Lopez see him in a better light.\n\n Backtracking, now that their path through the rec room had been cut off, looking for any way forward. Any way backward. Any way at all. Hell of a big virus, Lopez said again. Looked more like a giant angry testicle to me.\n\n No one laughed. Not a virus, no. More of an .  . . infestation. Smith was hunched over, hadn't stopped cradling his stomach. It came with the Covenant prisoners and just spread. The more bodies they took over, the mor e\n\n Taking over bodies?! MacCraw near tripped at the words.\n\n It was a Flood infection form that took your friend, Smith said. He had an enormous shiner swelling his cheek that made his words come out a little soft. They get under the skin. It will take him over and assimilate him entirely. It'll wipe his memories but retain his knowledge. Then the Flood will control his body all of his body, down to the cellular level. Then mutate like you saw with those bodies to make a better weapon of him.\n\n Lopez hastened her steps, hearing the words retain his knowledge.\n\n Smith couldn't seem to stop now that he'd started, like it  was a relief to talk to someone about it. A form infected by Flood is difficult to stop . They don't register pain, don't require all organs functioning, are fueled by such rage that even when disabled they are extremely dangerous. Mindless as animals. Less than animals. Destroy the core, the head, or the infection form.\n\n Or, maybe, Smith w as spreading a different kind of infection. That information had to be classified, and now they'd heard it. Lopez had to fight the urge to tell him to shut up now.\n\n But he was done. Stop here. Smith put a hand up against a wall that looked no different from anything else and flinched when Lopez reached for him.\n\n Concealed door, he said, coughing. There's a scanner at eye level here. There's no other way out, Sergeant. When she hesitated, added: All passages are blocked.\n\n So helpful all of a sudd en, Lopez said dryly.\n\n Smith shrugged. The sooner you get to the bridge, the sooner I get off this ship. Smith pressed his hand to the wall.\n\n The wall sank back, slid aside, revealing another black box of a room.\n\n It leads to the labs, Smith said. We can get through from there. He didn't look happy about that.\n\n A crash and roar bounced up the corridor. Somewhere close, something was trampling a barricade. A tremor through her kids. A shudder they couldn't hide.\n\n Mahmoud? Lopez said out the sid e of her mouth, shining her flashlight down one way, as Percy looked the other.\n\n I'm looking, I'm looking. He scrolled too fast through their schematic. Okay here. It looks like ventilation shafts. Leading .  . . yeah, there are a couple of other access  points, we can get to the bridge through here. Theoretically. Maybe even back to the hangar.\n\n\n\n Another crash, more final, and then the thunder of heavy footsteps. Just around the corner. Okay, boys, time to go.\n\n Lopez shoved MacCraw into the room, catching Percy's harness and dragging him back in as Smith scanned his hand again and sealed the door.\n\n Quiet, Smith murmured. It may go straight past us.\n  Lopez held her breath, and counted rosary beads in her mind, in time to thethumpthump -thumpthump  of uneven running, drawing closer, closer, flying right past.\n\n Waited until the sound died away, until it had been silent for some time, before exhaling.\n\n Your friend is looking for you, Smith said with a kind of gallows humor, cringing when Lopez raised her hand. He hadn't earned the right to joke with them.\n\n Another black bloody box, she muttered. What's the point of a black box you can't see out of?\nMasterminds at work.\n\n Masterminds at work, sir.\n\n She ignored the ONI agent. Let him waste energy on sarcasm. Ready? A round of nods. Smith, the door, and keep your mouth shut.\n\n Whatever had happened in the lab, it was over now.\n\n No lighting, no emergency lighting. Their flashlights bit out pieces of the room, little snippets of chaotic destruction. Glass smashed to hell and back, crunchy on the hard floor. The walls dented, with a sickly green fuzz growing in patches. Benches and cupboards overturned. Blood drying and tacky on the walls and ceiling . She'd become jaded. It didn't really register as any different from the decor in the rest of the ship. The Mona Lisa  had been turned into a vast garbage pit, a nightmare for insurance adjusters.\n\n But: the smell hit like a fist, a shudder and cringe runni ng through them on that first inhale. Where did that smell come from? Lopez had never experienced it before the Mona Lisa  . Ever. It combined the bitterness of the inside of a walnut shell with, as far as Lopez coul d tell, something from way up inside a dog's ass.\n\n Geez, Sarge, MacCraw groaned, as if she were somehow responsible.\n\n Buck up, Private, Lopez said. The rest of us have had to smell your cologne all day.\n\n He had no answer to that.\n\n As they fanned out, Lopez barking out the usual refrain secure the doors, don't let your guard down she realized this must've been ground zero. Whatever Smith had done, whatever he'd really done, it had happened here. The remains of scientific equipment, so broken, so mix ed together, resembled the mixed bag of wares available at some infernal flea market. Nothing she could put a name or purpose to.\n\n Outbreak, but not a Covenant outbreak.\n\n But the room was empty, just the aftermath and their trembling shadows, big and bol d against the walls. Whatever had been here had moved on.\n\n The way to the bridge looks clear, Mahmoud said, coming back to them.\n  Could it be that easy? No, it couldn't. But still she told Mahmoud, good work. Sent Percy and Singh to check the other exi ts. MacCraw stared at a thick growth of green pus on the wall.\n\n What were you doing here? Kept her voice low, as if the ghosts of whatever had trashed the lab might hear her otherwise. Left boot prints in the congealed blood as she shifted her stance.\n\n Smith slumped on a data bank, running his hand over it almost sadly, the smashed casing and shattered circuits.\n\n I told you, research and development, Smith said, with a touch of scorn. Like ONI's always done. You should be thanking me. We came up wit h some interesting data that will help us maximize the damage inflicted by our weapons on the  Covenant. They've developed a natural resistance to the radiation put out by their plasma weapons a forced evolution, fr om the look of it. With further research, we'll be able to use it against them, and to help us treat plasma burns, too.\n\n Mahmoud listened to this answer with what seemed to Lopez like derision. They all knew how long it took for any development to reac h the people on the ground. Yeah. Right. What about your\n Flood'?\n\n The glimmer of pride Smith had displayed, listing his accomplishments, vanished. We could have solved one of the greatest threats to the human species since the Covenant.\n\n Mahmoud, di sbelieving.   Since the Covenant'? Why didn't you just focus on them, sir? They're kicking our asses all over the galaxy.\n\n Smith smiled, or tried to, swollen face barely moving. The Flood is pure of intent. Relentless. Almost primordial. And it is a virus, spreads as fast as one. I had to study it. We had to study it. So we used Covenant.\n\n You didn't have  to do anything, Mahmoud said. If the Covenant knew we were taking prisoners, can you imagine\n\n Lopez noticed the death stare Smith gave Mahmoud.\n\n Smith still wasn't telling the truth, but he wasn't lying either. Misdirection, misinformation, she didn't trust any of it. She stepped up to the smashed viewing pane of a small cell. Human skin and flesh caught on the jagged glass.\n\n Keep talking, she said, as she shone her flashlight inside. Stared at a leg in the small cell. Forgotten, like it was a dog's chew toy. Human. A slipper had ended up against the opposite wall. Around the ankle and shin the now familiar orange fabric, half an ID number visib le through the gore.\n\n We were looking for weaknesses, a cure, an antibody, anything. We only had one infected Covenant, but we needed to see how it worked, how it spread. Just .  . . it's strong. So strong. He trailed off. Suddenly tired, defeated by som ething larger  than any of them. And yet, was that the barest hint of respect for the Flood creeping into his tone?\n\n You were testing on prisoners.\n It may be abhorrent to you, Smith said, but such measures w ill be what wins us the war. Don't tell me you're getting soft for an alien race now, Sergeant.\n\n No. She had no problem with anyone torturing Covenant. That wasn't the point.\n\n We face extinction, he said, almost like a politician.  We have to win this war. No matter what the cost.\n\n No matter what the cost.\n\n You weren't trying to cure Covies of your Flood, she said, unable to look at him. This is a prison ship. A civilian prison ship. You were testing on prisoners  .\n\n Something in her tone must have let him know exactly what she meant. Written in the set of her shoulders, the cords standing out on her jaw.\n\n Smith gave Lopez the half -embarrassed cringe -grin people with no integrity gave you when you caught them doing something wr ong and they weren't really sorry. But wanted to pretend they were.\n\n It's a big, bad universe, Sergeant. Covenant aren't the worst of it.\n\n Lopez raised her head, shifting her balance to her heel.\n\n You've done what you thought was necessary, Smith sa id. And so have I.\n\n God, he was fast. Faster than she would've thought. Missed it in the pat down? Hidden in the lab?\nA knife in his hand, and Mahmoud's throat slit, his rifle sliding naturally into Smith's hands, he got a burst off just as Lopez raised  her weapon. She grunted with the impact as the bullets smacked into the armor on her left side. Went down on one knee. Could feel the bruising. Could feel she'd live.Another scar  .\n\n Was already reaching for Mahmoud, even though it was too  late for him. There was a curve of new blood spattered on the floor, as emphatic as a scimitar.\n\n By then, Smith was through the hatch, sealing it behind him.\n\n >Benti 1530 hours\n\n Where are we? Benti asked Rimmer.\n\n Guard's t ea room. God's waiting room? He peeked up over the window. Didn't really get a tour of the ship, you know.\n\n They' d been lucky, nothing had been on the other side of the ladder. Without the schematic Orlav had carried, they were running blind, but the engine room was back here somewhere. They'd passed one very helpful sign, directing them on their way the only time sh e'd felt like they were someplace even halfway civilized.\n  She wasn't sure how she was going to explain Henry to the sarge when they met up. Henry kept close to Rimmer, for all the good it did the Covenant. Rimmer kept looking around and starting at shado ws.\n\n You said  Flood,' before. What did you mean?\n\n Rimmer pitched his voice low. Henry craned to listen, even if he couldn't understand. Some uniform came on board. He was with ONI. After that, we weren't allowed out of our cells. Sponge baths, if we were lucky. I think they brought the Covies on board then. We could hear them talking. Could smell them, too. Sorry, Henry. He gave the Elite an apologetic pat on the arm, which seemed to surprise the alien. No one told us anything. Not even the guards k new what was going on. We made some slipspace jump, to here. Wherever here is. Could hear them bringing stuff on board all the time, and tossing it back out, like they were looking for something. Guess they found it. Started taking people, you know. And Co vies. They didn't seem to care if we saw the Covies, then. He stopped. Think they  figured we weren't going anywhere, and it didn't matter what we knew. He kept patting Henry's arm. In his words, in the flat lack  of emotion in his voice, there was an absence of dread that was louder than anything he could have screamed. And he kept patting Henry's arm like he'd developed a nervous tic.\n\n The air con on this ship, you know how it is. It carries the noise funny. We  heard things. No one they took ever came back. None of them.\n\n Something small and hard crystallized in Benti's mind. Nothing good ever comes from ONI, she said low, with vehemence that surprised even her.\n\n Clarence was paying attention, she noticed,  but trying hard to act like he wasn't. What the heck is that about?\n\n There was a guard, fat asshole called Murray; he found out about the Flood. Some new biological weapon, I dunno, something. He said, he said, a tremor entered his voice, he said they were studying it. Here. With us. He stopped moving, hand not quite on Henry's arm.\n\n Henry's head drooped, and Rimmer patted him again. Henry flinched.\n\n Rimmer took his hand away, embarrassed. Sorry, he mumbled.\n\n  , Henry said, with poor grace, and  looked at Benti expectantly.\n\n That brought Benti up short. She stared at the four jaws of his mouth, curled meek against his face now, little teeth fitting into the grooves of his gums. She'd never had the opportunity to watch a Covenant Elite speak befo re. It was one of the grossest things she had ever seen, and she'd seen plenty of gross. She could still see down his throat. It wasn't pretty, either.\n\n Clarence shifted slightly, bemused, and raised an eyebrow at her. She raised both eyebrows helplessly,  looked at Rimmer.\n\n Um. What did he just say?\n\n Rimmer stared back at them like they were asking the impossible.  How should I know? But maybe he' s trying to tell his side of the story. All that black stuff on the walls of the room you found us in? That was him writing down words. I couldn't read any of it.\n\n Henry slumped, clearly fed up, the tip of his cricket bat thumping into the floor, and mut tered something that didn't require translation.\n\n Rimmer gave Henry a pointed look that said don't interrupt again  , and continued: Something happened, I don't know, I think the Covies made a break for it or something. And in all the chaos, I guess .  . . the Flood got out. Covies let some of us out, too, which might surprise you but by then we'd all been through the same stuff. All got the same fate on this ship. 'Course, it didn't help at first, because the guards didn't like it, and they started on us, a ll of us prisoners, and some of the Covies didn't like that and started on anything human. But me and Henry, we're cool. We knew. Bigger problems on board.\n\n And you've been hiding ever since.\n\n A day, I think. Maybe two. You lose track of time real fa st around here.\n\n So fast?\n\n Rimmer nodded. We gotta get off this ship. Soon, you know?\n\n Benti couldn't disagree. She also couldn't tell him Henry would be shot on sight once they reached the hangar, that she'd do it herself if she had to. Because th e sarge wasn't going to like this, not at all. But Henry would be useful getting back to the Pelican, even if only to provide another target for the Flood. Besides, Clarence, hanging back, always had his rifle pointed vaguely in Henry's direction.\n\n Do yo u know where this leads? She pointed out the door. Henry shivered faintly.\n\n Yeah, Rimmer said. D cell block. I think the engines are behind them. We should .  . . we should find a different way.\n\n Why?\n\n That's where they took all the dead. That'd be like going into an angry beehive right about now.\n\n >Lopez 1537 hours\n\n Lopez wasn't sure, but she thought Mahmoud might've mumbled  . . . and then comes ice cream as he'd bled out onto the floor in her arms, his blood mingling with all the rest. His hand had been warm, just like John Doe's had been, and she'd been just about as much help.\n\n Another bead down. It wore on her, and never stopped wearing. But at least  she could take his dog tags. Tell everyone back on the ship how well he'd served. They were in her pocket along with Smith's security pass.\n\n That's on me, not you guys, she'd said as Singh and MacCraw had wordlessly bandaged her up, with a kind of care  she guessed meant respect. Even standoffish Percy helped.\n Now she hardly even felt it, except as a sting if she bent or turned suddenly. Just the four of them now, heading toward the bridge down the longest corridor in the world. The only point of inter est, an intersection about thirty -five meters down. Didn't like turning corners any more. Didn't like it one bit.\n\n Trying to give up on the weird taste in her mouth from losing Smith, from letting him take Mahmoud out. She could see him, in her mind's eye , popping out of some secret door somewhere, trying to make his way by secret spook passages and guile, to the Pelican. No, he wouldn't make it. Wouldn't last long on his own. Even gladder now that she'd beaten him up. A small victory, but still. He'd feel  it for the rest of his short life. He'd remember her.\n\n The corridor was so long that Percy had been tossing flares down toward the end of it like he was playing in some weird shuffleboard tournament. Reached farther than their flashlights.  Flares they had plenty of, bullets not so much any more. They'd taken a break to wolf down some MREs, but still she was hungry.\n\n MacCraw'd acquitted himself well, too, despite his bitching. When they'd made it back to the Red Horse , she'd tell Foucault that. He scooped up the flares they reached, squinting and handing them back to Percy to throw again. Wished they could do the same with bullets.\n\n Singh came to a sudden halt.\n\n Talk to me, Lopez said.\n\n I heard something.\n\n Lopez studied him a moment. Singh was holding it together. Barely. Don't get jumpy.\n\n Flare, Percy.\n\n He obliged. Flung it as far as he could, until it came to a hissing stop at the far edge of their vision.\n\n Right at the feet of a silhouette, the figure  of a Marine.\n\n MacCraw frowned. Singh held a hand up to his eyes to shield them from the glare.\n\n The figure came out of the flaming mandala of the flare, roughly fifty meters away.\n\n Is that .  . . ? MacCraw began and then trailed off. That can't be .  . .\n\n It's Ayad, Singh said. It's definitely Ayad.\n\n Lopez could see him clearly now, running toward them. Loping almost. Trying to make a sound in the back of his throat, but it was coming out like thnnnn  orthmmmm  . Should've been a hum, more like  a moan. Holding out a hand as if in greeting. A huge smile on his face.\n\n MacCraw let out a whoop. Ayad!\n  It's not Ayad, Lopez warned.\n\n What do you mean it's not Ayad? Singh said. Of course it is. It's Ayad.\n\n Ayad hadn't had a smile that went f rom ear to ear. Or  something growing out of the back of his head. Ayad hadn't had an extra arm with a claw, held a little back behind him, as if to disguise it. Ayad hadn't been preceded by a smell that made Lopez' s eyes water.\n\n But MacCraw kept babbling on, like he didn't want to believe it, and Singh just fed into that, almost manic. Percy backed up until he was level with her, would've slipped back farther if she'd let him.\n\n This wasn't the way Lopez wanted it to end.\n\n When Ayad was about forty meters away, she put a bullet through his left shoulder. It knocked him off his feet. Which brought MacCraw and Singh out of their trance or whatever the hell it had been. A lot harder for them not to see the problem.\n\n Ayad rose with a howl, and kept coming, running now on all fours like something born to it, with MacCraw babbling in a different way now.\n\n Don't fire until he's closer, Lopez ordered. Right after he's cleared that intersection.\n\n Ayad reached the inte rsection and something with all the speed and weight of a freight train smashed into him and splattered him up against the opposite wall. Ayad fell as the creature howled at him, then picked him up and held him with one monstrous hand out in front, turning  toward them. The other arm weighed down with what could almost have been antlers coming out of its palm.\n\n The suddenness of the act, the viciousness of it, shocked Lopez. Threw her for a second. Just a second.\n\n That's an Elite,  Percy said.  Look at the size of it!\n\n Lopez had never seen one bigger, either. Its head almost bumped against the ceiling. As it came toward them down the corridor, she could see the striations of infection running up and down its legs, the suggestion of an outline o n the Elite's chest of the same fungal -jellyfish thing that'd taken Rakesh.\n\n The infected Elite turned this way and that, sniffing, as it  ran. Some perversion of a howl tore up through the torso. Out through what was left of the mouth. One of the jaw hinges hung, snapped and loose. A single tendon kept it attached.\n\n We're not outrunning that , Lopez said calmly. Singh, kneel and go low, for the legs. MacCraw, keep your cool and aim for Ayad. Make it drop Ayad be fore it gets to us. Percy, heart. I'll go for the head. Now .  . . fire!\n\n It lost its Ayad shield first, dropped it. MacCraw made a lucky shot and hit the muscle and bone in its wrist. It stumbled as the bullets hit it, each one more precious than the las t. Slamming into its body over and over again. It might be Elite, but it didn't bleed. A sigh of something green and dandelion -seedlike puffed out from the wounds opening on its skin. Strangely beautiful, those wounds, in the hissing light of the flares. W ounds that should've stopped and dropped it, but it kept coming. Kept howling.\n\n Staggered onward on tottering balance, pressing against the storm of bullets as if they were toxic raindrops. Until, finally, Lopez managed to take out its knees.\n\n It crashed  down, not seven meters from them.\n\n But it didn't stop. Didn't even pause, clawing and crawling its way across the floor, on its belly, a smear of dark green behind it.\n\n No one hesitated. No one waited for another order.\n\n When it was done, the corridor reeked of gunsmoke, the smell acrid in their mouths and the backs of their throats. Lopez's eyes stung, unable to handle the swamp -gas smell of the dead Elite.\n\n Lopez thought of the bodies in the cupboard. Thought of the Elite stomping on Rabbit's chest, on the infection form  . She walked up to it, this thing, and pressed the muzzle of her rifle into the suggestion of a giant angry goiter clinging to its chest. Let off another quick burst. Realized she'd forgotten something, something important.\n\n Ayad rose  up from the darkness beside Singh.\n\n Singh hadn't the reflexes, hadn't the training. Enough time for the technician's face to change. Knowing. Not wanting to know. Then he was smashed into the far wall with one te rrifying blow, so hard his skull shattered in the helmet, face flattened to a pulp as he dropped.\n\n Percy, cursing, a burst from his rifle going wide, caught by the backswing. Lopez heard his neck crack . Turned too fast. Sudden pain where Smith had shot her.\n\n And MacCraw, like he'd done it a million times, brought his rifle up and shot what was Ayad right through the head.\n\n The flare light painted everything red and gold, made beautiful what should've been ghastly. MacCraw stood there, staring at that tableau like a painter who didn't know what to make of the paints on his canvas.\n\n Lopez put a hand on MacCraw's shoulder, her one remaining bead. That shoulder heaved under her touch, and then steadied.\n\n Where to, Sarge? MacCraw asked in an empty voice.\n\n Lopez gave him a smile, knowing it was grim and making it brief. Objective hasn't changed, kid, and as she said it, it became true. They were Marines. The job kept getting harder, but they got the job done, and that meant they had to keep getting better. They'd faced the worst and best the Covenant could throw at them, and now the worst the universe could throw at them, and survived treachery by their own kind. And they were still walking. Still breat hing. That was a hell of a thing.\n  Ahell of a thing.\n\n >Benti 1544 hours\n\n Rimmer told them Henry had found the cricket bat in the guard's locker room. Who knew when the guards had the chance to play cricket, or where, but the Elite was a natural with it.  A rabid white slug thing had dropped from one of the overhead  lights, moving too fast for any of them to shoot, and he'd splatted it against the far wall with one easy swing.\n\n Clarence examined the green goop fal ling in clumps and nodded his approval. Yet Benti knew Clarence could turn around and kill Henry in an instant.\n\n Benti hadn't been able to speak to him since Gersten's death. She'd found it hard to even acknowledge his presence. The fact was, it had cost him nothing to pull the trigger. That was what bothered her the most.\n\n Beneath that, another, deeper, layer of unease.\n\n He'd seemed to know. Before Rimmer had said anything about infections and coming back. How did he know?\n\n Rimmer: Henry was the one wh o sprung me out. There was a .  . . one of the guards, she'd been, she wasn't, but he took her out. Saved me. He's a good guy, really. Rimmer couldn't stop talking, which set Benti's teeth on edge thought maybe he'd been imprisoned because he'd talked some one to death. He couldn't stop touching Henry either, like a frightened puppy, and she was sure she wasn't imagining the distaste on the Elite's face at that.\n\n A stairwell branched in the hallway. She didn' t mind at all the sudden convenience of a sign pointing up that indicated engine room access. She crept up, peeking over the lip of the landing, the others crowding at her back.\n\n They learn, Rimmer whispered. They take what you know and learn.\n\n Somet hing small and pale leapt out of the darkness. She threw herself back only to stop flat against Henry, who pulled her aside with one arm, the other swinging that cricket bat and hitting another ball sac down the length of the hall.\n\n Benti scrambled up, aw ay from the Covenant, with undue haste. He looked at her, lower jaw hinges flexing subtly. You could tell a lot from someone's eyes. Had to remind herself he  wasn't a someone. She could still feel the impression of his hand not human, not at all human on her shoulder, knew the hair on the back of her neck was up, and it took all her willpower not to pump his gut full of hot lead.\n\n Thanks, she managed, as more Flood bugs came bouncing out of the hall.\n\n It was l ike a fairground game, shooting ducks. Only, not really.\n\n Funny how you adjusted to the situation, no matter how messed up. She felt relief that these weren't the great ravening horrors that had chased them through recycling. They weren't going to slash t hem open and crush them. They were small, these little infectors. One bullet, one hit, and they would burst.\n\n Just, there were so many of them.\n\n And Rimmer couldn't shoot for shit.\n\n Stop! Benti yelled. You're just wasting ammo! Swap, and reload mine.\n\n Even Clarence switched to his pistol, single shots popping white pods there, there, and there. A good sharpshooter, on top of everything else. Not too many of those in the Marines, not at private level.\n\n Where are they coming from  ? It was like a mac hine full of half -chewed gumballs had broken all over the floor.\n\n One slipped in close, and Henry smashed it flat.\n\n Benti could've sworn the Elite looked a little gleeful.\n\n >Foucault 1559 hours\n\n The video ended, and the loop began again.\n\n Foucault knuckled his eyes, taking the moment to collect his thoughts. After what he had been shown and told, he was inclined to think maybe Rebecca had indeed gone rampant. Found himself hoping that were true, because if forced to choose between the stor y she had spun and a rampant AI embedded in his ship, the latter seemed the lesser trial.\n\n On the monitor: a wide, high room of unfamiliar architecture, and a ravening horror leapt at the camera, decayed and missh apen and still unfortunately recognizable as a human, UNSC logo just visible on the remains of the uniform. A shotgun blast floored it, but there was another to take its place, and another, and another. In the background, on the floor, a recently killed Ma rine convulsed, and came back. Footage of what Spartan -117 and the Marines who preceded him had found on Halo.\n\n He picked his words precisely. We have not been able to defeat the Covenant in nearly three decades, and yet, here we are, returned here for t he sole purpose of seeking this out. He felt tired, more than sleep -deprived. This greater threat.\n\n An infected Marine ignored the bullets striking its torso and leapt at a healthy, live, uninfected Marine. Foucault had turned the volume off, but the s creams still sounded in his mind.\n\n I don't believe it was in the original brief, Rebecca said. The ONI agent heading the research project aboard the Mona Lisa  seems to have exceeded his parameters. Significantly. And we still don't know for sure  .\n\n Foucault shook his head at the insanity of it all. Is there more?\n  No, she replied. He didn't believe her, and didn't not believe her. Almost didn't care. But now you understand, we cannot deploy any more Marines, not without explicit confirmation. We c annot risk the Red Horse  .\n\n He watched a small white pod of a creature latch onto a Marine's chest, watched the life leave those eyes, watched something else take over. A cold worm of dread coiled in his belly.\n\n We do not willingly abandon our own, he said, to himself, and knew right then and there that statement was close to becoming a lie.\n\n >Lopez 1602 hours\n\n What had once been Rakesh chased them toward the bridge, howling and gibbering and raising a chorus of answering growls. Lopez had caught sight of him stumbling on a derailed security door and bolted. Didn't look back. Hadn't wanted to see what he'd become, and definitely didn't want to see if they were, in fact, being pursued by more than one. Couldn't waste ammo if they could possibly help it, even though they'd taken all Singh and Percy had left.\n\n Sarge! The door! MacCraw pointed, looking back at her, then beyond her. Only to look forward again. Fast. Didn't make her any more curious about what was behind them.\n\n I see it! The bridge up ahead, a giant arrow on the wall confirming it, and the door to the bridge sitting back from the wall a hand span, an o verturned chair stopping it from sealing. Oh, small mercies. Crashed up against the door, lighting a fire where Smith had shot her, and kicked at the chair. Get in there!\n\n MacCraw turned to face Rakesh, backing toward her and fumbling for his weapon. Lo pez cursed. Without the obstacle the door began to slide shut. Shoved her shoulder in the gap. Dammit, MacCraw, I said\n\n Caught a glimpse over MacCraw's shoulder. Oh shit.\n\n MacCraw added his own weight to the door. Rakesh was fast, way too fast, oh shi t oh shit ohshi\n\n The door shifted, and they fell through. Scrambled back, MacCraw landing an elbow in Lopez's injury. All the air left her; she couldn't even grunt. The door closed slowly, and Rakesh was so fast, footfalls so heavy, ravening shout loud i n her ears. But: cut off cleanly. The door sealed with a sigh, and locked, as it had been trying to do for hours.\n\n MacCraw scrambled to his feet, flashlight on the door, then the room beyond, then back to the door. He knows we're in  here, he said, voice shaking. A muffled but insistent thudding began on the hatch.\n\n It, Lopez corrected him, clamping down on the pain in her side. It's an it , now.\n\n MacCraw nodded, mouth moving as if trying to convince himself.  He flinched at every knock on the door.\n\n Lopez stood. She pursed her lips, stepped past him, making a slow pan of the bridge with her flashlight, her hand steady, that small show of calm enough to reach him.\n\n Sensing a pattern here, she said, noting t he arcs of blood on the walls and floor. The drag marks that almost didn't register with her anymore. Nothing moved except drifts of green dust, growing in little crests here and there. Someone had holed a beastie before going down. Good to see. Most of the displays had been wrenched from their stands and smashed, but some still showed readouts, broken through the cracks. The bridge must have a separate power source  .\n\n They ran their lights across the ceiling, shone them into every corner and under every st ation, until Lopez dared to believe they might be safe. Let out a deep breath. They might actually have some time to think  for a change.\n\n Don't think anyone is gonna use the nav system. MacCraw stood over the ruined console. Guess we can go home now?\n\n Soon, Lopez promised. Soon. Smith's voice echoed in her mind. Retain their knowledge  . Didn't like the implications. Wondered if any of the crew had been infected. Didn't like that thought, either.\n\n We came here for the nav system, didn' t we? What else is in here? MacCraw glanced nervously over his shoulder at the door. The assault showed no signs of waning. The infected Rakesh was going to pummel itself into a pulp trying to get at them.\n\n We can use the ship' s system. Get me radio contact. I don't care how, and I don't care who: Benti, Burgundy, raise the Red Horse  , hell, raise that damn Covenant ship. Just get me someone to talk to.\n\n MacCraw spun suddenly, taking ai m at a corner in the ceiling, jerked to check another corner, looking for giant angry boils, snotbags, infection forms.\n\n Lopez couldn't blame him, but they didn't have time for it. Private! Get to it!\n\n Yessir. Training overrode his fear. He brushed b roken plastic and green dust off the glass atop an undamaged console. What are you gonna do, Sarge?\n\n Lopez righted a chair, ignoring the foam bulging from the slashed seat. She'd been counting rosary beads again. So many lost. Thinking about that thing wailing on the door, that had been one of her Marines. Thinking about why .\n\n I ever tell you I can touch -type? She pulled Smith's security pass from her pocket and waved it at him as she sat. Old school, I am. Now get cracking.\n\n >Benti 1608 hours\n\n Somehow, against the odds, they'd reached the engine room.\n\n Now what? Benti hadn't a clue.\n\n They were crouched down, peering over dead consoles on the control platform mounted two flights up, and they had a fine view of the main engine deck below.\n The sp ace engines dominated, sinking beneath the floor and looming high above them, the shielding around the thrusters looking to Benti like giant centipedes, stretching back through the rear of the ship. Nestled between them, oddly innocuous, the slipspace engi ne, a standard Shaw -Fujikawa translight, nothing more than a six -pack of boxes propped against each other. A melange of grease and oil and rancid hydraulic fluid mostly snuffed out the pervasive mold smell.\n\n The f loor was crowded. It was busy. It was Flood Party Central. No surprise there.\n\n Details began to leap out at her. Covenant strode huge among the turned humans, most of them trailing scraps of prison garb, some in official uniform, and there, in the middle of them, Maller still in Marine armor. He was warped out of shape, limping, dragging an appendage of gristle behind him. Maller crossed paths with a Covenant Elite ruptured like a huge septic bruise, and they almost seemed to nod at each other. All of them , the prisoners and guards, humans and Covenant, united, in total harmony. Of one mind.\n\n Better to think of it as a party, and they were the rogue DJs who'd crashed it.\n\n But, no, that didn' t really help. She had to look away, up at Henry, who was checking, kept checking, the catwalk behind them. He met her eyes, unhappy but in control, too much the warrior.\n\n Clarence swallowed, his lips parted, gaze fixated on something below, and swallowed  again. The muscles in his jaw worked as he clenched his teeth. He looked a question at her. Their orders didn't seem to apply anymore.\n\n Rimmer had been partly right. This wasn't all the ship's dead. On the slipspace engine, the Flood had fixed a giant cl ot of mucus. Not mucus, Benti corrected herself, some sickly membrane, throbbing and quivering, odd shapes distorting its skin, half caught in it, as if something were moving within, and suddenly the picture resolved itself, and those odd shapes against th e membrane became arms and legs dressed in uniform, the crew caught and suspended in the glob. Struggling. Alive  .\n\n Benti raised a numb hand and covered her mouth, not sure if she was holding in a sob or vomit.\n\n A squeak that might've become something lou der and Benti snapped around. Clarence was faster, one arm around Rimmer's  head, the other hand clamped firmly over his mouth, expression dour. Rimmer gripped the arm around him, not struggling but holding on like a drowning man to a life preserver. Benti bit her lip and hoped he wouldn't release Rimmer until they were well out of here. There was too much terror in Rimmer's eyes.\n\n A new sound cut above the shuffle and murmur and held the full attention of all the F lood below. As one they turned blindly toward the sound, a horrible synchronicity in the way they raised their heads to sniff, claws and nails flexed, ready to attack. Benti could almost taste the mindless rage that swelled and peaked, and then suddenly di ssipated.\n\n An infected person, a human, came into view, carrying a body. No, an infected Marine. Cranker. Carrying someone alive. Someone badly wounded, dripping blood, but alive and struggling, wailing, sobbing, thrashing and kicking as they neared the m ucus glob.\n  Don't let them take me!\n\n Benti's heart thumped. She put her other hand over her mouth, recoiled, sagged back against Henry's leg. A sour smell and trickle. Rimmer had pissed himself.\n\n Burgundy .\n\n >Lopez 1613 hours\n\n What are we fighting fo r?The question rang loud in Lopez's mind. She couldn't think around it.What are we fighting for?  She took a data crystal from the console, tucking it firmly in her vest pocket. She had only skimmed some of the files Smith's pass had granted her access to, but there would be time to read the rest later. She'd read enough for now. Too much. There was no mystery left in this ship, their mission for even being here. What are we fighting for?  It took conscious effort to keep everything she'd learned from rasping in her voice.\n\n I think .  . . yeah, I got a signal, Sarge! Booyah! MacCraw pumped his fists in the air.\n\n You raised the Red Horse  ?\n\n Neither of them paid any attention to the dull booming any more. The infected Rakesh was a lot more aggressive and annoying than the real Rakesh.\n\n MacCraw couldn't and didn't try to dampen the goofy grin on his face. She's talking, oh yeah, she's talking!\n\n What about Benti and Burgundy? she said, crossing over to him.\n\n MacCraw jittered in his seat, too excited by the sound of home. I couldn't raise either of them, but the intercom is online in most of the ship.\n\n Patch this through, then. Hooked h er chair over, but didn't sit. Couldn't sit. Maybe someone will hear.\n\n is the UNSC Red Horse  to the Mona Lisa  , come in Mona Lisa  . Anyone hear me?\n\n A deeper echo as every speaker in the ship broadcast Rebecca's hail. Lopez never thought she'd be happy  to hear that voice.\n\n Never a sweeter sound, AI Rebecca. Is the commander there?\n\n Foucault's voice entered. I am. The situation here\n\n Didn't want to cut him off, but also wanted to deliver her information fast, and in as calm and professional a man ner as possible.\n\n Sir, I got all the recon you'll ever need. This ship is ONI, with a certain Major John Smith most recently in charge. Section 3 sent it here, to experiment with the Flood Spartan -117 encountered on Halo, although ONI might not have know n about all of Major Smith's project enhancements. But at the very least they came to secure a sample, so they could  study' it, and they brought guinea pigs with them too. Under the orders  of Major Smith, they'v e been deliberately infecting human prisoners and she paused for a second, unable to believe she was saying thisCovenant prisoners too. Covies and civilians. Our own. Infecting them and turning them into these damn monsters, these zombies! And no one told us !You never told us, Commander.  MacCraw was staring at her, his grin gone. I found a passenger manifest here and some of the people, they were ours, sir, Navy, they were soldiers  who'd served during the insurrection\n\n I know, Sergeant.\n\n That broug ht Lopez up short. Something in his tone had turned her stomach to ice. She put a hand on MacCraw's arm, not sure who she was reassuring.\n\n Sir?\n\n The Major Smith you refer to is en route to the Red Horse  , in your Pelican. He has informed us of the situation.\n\n Damn. Her stomach roiled, and something in her plummeted. How had the evil little spook even made it to the hangar?\n\n Sir, Lopez said, gritting her teeth. She couldn't think of anything else to say. Sir.\n\n Major Smith did fail to mention that any of you had survived.\n\n Bastard, MacCraw said, but without emotion, gaze uncharacteristically distant.\n\n Lopez swallowed. He's a liar and a traitor and a war criminal  . Reduced almost to incoherenc e. Everyone who died on this ship, my kids, the crew. If not for him, they might be alive. Couldn't even begin to articulate her rage at Smith. Her disappointment in herself for letting him escape.\n\n Rebecca has verified his story.\n\n It wasn't a lie. I t wasn't the truth, either.\n\n I'm going to kill him, she whispered. I'm going to\n\n Foucault ignored her. Having witnessed this  Flood' firsthand,  Sergeant, what is your assessment?\nIf it were to reach one of the outer colonies, for example?\n\n I'm not paid to think, sir. Remember? Bitter. Furious. Knew what Foucault was driving at, knew that the coward wanted her to have to say it. To have to accept it.\n\n The pounding on the door increased. Rakesh wasn't alo ne anymore. Now he had friends.\n\n Nevertheless.\n\n Officers. Officers  . Making decisions from a distance.\n  We have no defense against such a foe, Rebecca said, sparing Foucault from uttering the words. Any planet infected by the Flood would be overrun in a matter of days. More food for the Flood. More knowledge of where to find food. They retain all useful information. Outpost coordinates, more pilots, increased numbers with which to commandeer ships, to  reach more colonies. You know this to be true.\n\n Lopez found herself quoting Smith.   It's a big, bad universe, Commander. Covenant aren't the worst of it.'  Found herself agreeing with him, as he'd wanted her to.\n\n Rebecca again, in a soothing tone th at didn't soothe at all: The Flood represents the greatest threat to humanity since the Covenant. A cure must be sought\n\n A cure?! Realized she was digging her nails into MacCraw's arm. Couldn't let go. Served him right for elbowing her before. There  is no goddamn cure! According to the files, this was never about a cure, this was about control  , about creating mindless monster soldiers you could control  . Who knows what Smith was doing that isn't in the record. But a cure? If you'd seen what we've seen . . .\n\n We have, Sergeant, Foucault said. We have .  . .\n\n Lopez loosened her grip on MacCraw's arm. He put his hand over hers, palm sweaty. I guess I thought we were better than the Covenant. Not just a little better. Really better.\n\n Research is always necessary, Sergeant. Rebecca was calm, assured, implacable. But she hadn't had the worst day in the history of worst days.\n\n The research was useless, Lopez said. Totally useless. We've known about this thing for weeks and all we've done in that time is expose ourselves to more risk. That gas giant was drawing in the debris, crushing it. It would have vacuumed up everything. And what did we do? We sent a goddamned cab.\n\n MacCraw's silence grew heavier be side her.\n\n A pause, and Foucault again: Our orders are to destroy the Mona Lisa  . We cannot allow any of the Flood to survive. Rebecca has informed me that there are two remaining escape pods on the lower deck. The launching mechanisms appear disabled, so  they may need manual releasing. Once Major Smith is on board, you will have until we are in position and the Shiva is armed, and then we will open fire. We cannot delay any further. The major has brought the attention of the Covenant capitol ship upon us.\n\n You knew . Those two words saturated with grief, fury, betrayal. Betrayed twice, three times over. For nothing. Didn't want to come close to acknowledging the hope Foucault had held out in the form of the two pods.\n\n A force rippled through the ship, made the bridge almost flip for a second. Lopez went flying, righted herself before she crashed into the wall. Saw that McCraw tried to hold onto the console before falling. The ship settled, but Lopez could hear tearing sounds in the metal, a booming thro ugh the air ducts like a giant smashing something with a huge hammer.\n  What was that? Foucault asked, urgent.\n\n I don't know. But it's gone and passed, said Lopez. And we're still here. Making it sound accusatory.\n\n A moment of silence. For all of them. She hoped that was Foucault's conscience knifing him.\n\n Eight, maybe ten minutes, Sergeant, he said finally, and  she could hear the shame in his voice. Hoped even harder it knifed him for the rest of his life.\n\n Lopez pulled MacCraw to his feet.\n\n Good luck, Foucault said, already becoming distant.\n\n You know what you can do with your luck, she snarled, and kicked the mic. Turned to MacCraw, who looked close to being sick . That went out over the ship?\n\n MacCraw nodded dumbly. At least, the part the explosion didn't cover up. Do you think that was Benti?\n\n Could've been. Could've been something else. We don't have time to worry about it, so long as we're still breathin g air.\n\n Nothing on the remaining consoles indicated a drop in air pressure, just a sudden surge of energy near the engines.\n\n Eight to ten minutes. Knew what MacCraw was thinking. They'd survived nightmares only to get shot down by their own commander. H e'd already given up, tears glistening in his eyes.\n\n Couldn't have that. She was still his sergeant.\n\n She slapped his chest. Let's hope someone was alive to hear it. Now hustle! We blow through some space zombies, get cozy in a pod, and we're gonna live , you hear? We're gonna live. She grinned suddenly, fiercely. And we're gonna get back home to the Red Horse  , and then we're gonna tear the commander a new a -hole. Two new assholes, one for you and one for me. And then we're gonna find Smith, and we're g onna take our time with him, I think. Couldn't even pick one of the many things she wanted to do to the spook, saw the same violent yearning lift MacCraw's chin. And then, when we're done with him, then what?\n\n MacCraw sniffed and blinked his tears away .\n\n And then there's ice cream, Sarge.\n\n Their grins were hollow. Voices breaking. The Flood still hammering on the door, the door they had to go through.\n\n Damn straight.\n\n >Benti 1613 hours\n Benti raised her rifle, Burgundy in her sights, but both Clarence and Henry reached out, with expressions that said, No, don't, you'll let them know we're here, and there are too many of them. Benti bit her lip bloody, couldn't block her ears; Burgundy wou ldn't stop screaming, even though her voice was ripped to shreds she shrieked and screeched, begged and pleaded, all her terror and desperation echoing around the cold engine, ringing in Benti's ears as they lifted the pilot and pressed her against the muc us glob with the rest of the Mona Lisa's  crew.\n\n And then she really started screaming.\n\n Benti couldn't look any more. She screwed her eyes shut, but that wasn't enough. Turned, pressed her forehead against Henry's knee. She had to do something, but didn't  know what to do. Henry looked over his shoulder, then dipped his head down to peer at her. His breath reeked. He stank of Covenant, a smell that never failed to get her blood up, and she leaned back. But he had intelligent eyes. Kind eyes. Something like recognition in them. He could hear all she could hear, could understand it all.\n\n She had to do something.\n\n But.\n\n A thunk and crackle tripped their attention, disorientating the Flood on the deck below. The ship's PA was waking up.\n\n is the UNSC Red Hor se\n\n Rebecca.\n\n Benti's delight was drowned out by the crashing, raucous cacophony that exploded from the Flood.\n\n What's going on? she hissed, leaning close to Rimmer. Clarence lifted his hand from Rimmer's mouth just enough.\n\n You gotta find some w ay to turn it off, it'll enrage them, they go crazy when they hear something, might be food, they go crazy, they'll look for where it's coming from  Clarence clamped his hand over Rimmer's mouth again, the prisoner  already too worked up. He shook his head, indicated with his eyes. There was a speaker way too close to them.\n\n Down below, great spasms of rage gripped the Flood. The voices over the PA, Foucault's, Sarge's oh, Mama Lopez, what the hell is going on? sent them into a mad frenzy, howling and throwing themselves about, pouring in doors, out doors. An infected prisoner smashed a speaker down on the deck with a single blow, denting the wall. Benti saw Cranker turning this way and that like a drunk puppy tryin g to do a trick for its master.\n\n Just audible over the din, the sarge listing all of ONI's sins. Rebecca spelling out the doom of the human race, should the Flood be allowed to spread.\n\n The more she heard, the more Benti began to think she understood what the Flood might be doing in the engine room. It stank of insanity. It stank of processes and alien know -how that messed with her mind but what if it was true?\n\n What if they were collec ting pilots?\n\n Benti ducked down near Clarence's ear. We have to destroy it. That thing they just shoved Burgundy into, I think, I dunno, I think they're trying to somehow hotwire the slipspace engine without bridge control. We have to destroy it.\n\n Clarence looked at her like she was crazy.\n\n And even if not, that engine is important to them somehow, Benti said. We have to take care of it.\n\n Clarence looked around, skeptical. Their options were limited, and the smell of Rimmer's piss was getting to B enti. She checked the engines again. Henry put a hand on her shoulder, steady and strong.\n\n If they damaged the slipspace engine, things could go bad. Very bad.\n\n But .  . .\n\n To heck with it. She was in charge.\n\n Benti leapt to her feet, grabbed her rema ining grenades,  pulled a pin, and hurled it at the mucus glob. Clarence lunged at her. Too late. Pulled another pin and lobbed it. Watched it bounce off the glob as she threw the last. Henry surged up beside her, o ver her, cricket bat at the ready. He stooped and grabbed a handful of Rimmer's jumpsuit, Clarence's vest, and jerked them upright.\n\n Let's go, now now now! Benti didn't wait to see where the final grenade had landed. She grabbed Rimmer's sleeve, dragged  him into a run, running from the howling Flood, from the first detonation booming behind them, running for the hatch they'd come through, shoving Rimmer before her, Henry, Clarence, hauling the hatch shut behind them with a solid clang.\n\n Burgundy had sto pped screaming, at last.\n\n >Foucault 1616 hours\n\n Major Smith is secure on board, Rebecca announced to Foucault, and part of him wanted to say, So what? The screens showed the Covenant ship readjusting its course to intercept them and theMona Lisa  still wallowing there, dead, but with all sorts of life aboard it. About to be extinguished.\n\n Foucault inclined his head slightly, his only acknowledgment of her words. He had no wish to meet Smith at the moment. Or any other moment.\n\n What should we do  with him?\n\n Let's keep him in solitary for a while, he said. A good long while  .\n  Rebecca seemed as if she might leave it at that, and then ventured, Doesn't it help to know the major may have acted on his own? ONI isn't responsible for this. This was  never meant to happen, and the very fact we're here shows that ONI is acting in good faith. He'll be court -martialed. Maybe even worse.\n\n Foucault wondered if she was right, if he should take some comfort from th at fact. Someone would pay. At some point in the future.\n\n Then he thought of the two pods and of all the Marines who might be alive and heading for them, the only chance for survival.\n\n No. No, it doesn't. A new kind of hell. A fresh bout of nightmares to keep him up. He wondered in a distant kind of way if it'd all fade in time, or if eventually he'd have to give up his command. Smith may have acted on his own, as you say. Or he may have been following orders, and Section\n3 will now use him as a scapeg oat and wash their hands of the matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't change a thing.\n\n A moment, and then Rebecca said, Telling them about the pods was a pointless gesture. Under the circumstances.\n\n Pointless? Her tone told him she was giving him a wa rning. She'd told Foucault about the Section 3\noperative she'd sent with Lopez's squad. The one tasked with cleaning up any messes. Perhaps she envisioned the same terrible dilemmas. Or perhaps not. Anyway, she'd sent an operative and he'd fought back by o pening a narrow line of retreat for Lopez. Whatever happened, it was beyond their control now.\n\n Politics. Survival. He said the words like curses.\n\n Rebecca watched him. Who knew what she was thinking, this copy of a person?\n\n The survival of humanity is paramount, Commander.\n\n Rebecca needed a better speechwriter. Lopez would never forgive him, not for the rest of her life, be it eight minutes or eighty years. Neither would he.\n\n The timer since last contact was now replaced with a status feed on the loading of the Shiva missile. Another monitor tracked the Covenant capitol ship bearing down on them.\n\n A voice from the bridge: Commander, picking up a detonation  within the transport. Slipspace splinters. I think the slipspace engine has been ruptured. We need to withdraw before it goes completely.\n\n When he didn't respond: Sir, we need to withdraw to a safe distance.\n\n No. Not yet.\n\n Sir\n\n He felt old. Tired.\n But still.\n\n No. We stay. He was aware of the attention of the bridge crew on him, on the monitors, waiting, their own fate in the balance. We stay until the last second. We don't abandon our own.\n\n Until we have to.\n\n >Benti 1616 hours\n\n In the aftermath of throwing the grenade, Benti thought she'd heard Foucault on the intercom saying good luck  . Had he? Really?\n\n Those words echoed in Benti's ears. In her bones. In her feet pounding the corridor floor. She'd always defend ed the commander when the others were poking fun at him in the mess. All she had to show for it now was good luck, so long, nice knowing you. She felt sick to her stomach.\n\n The important thing, she said, panting, the sound of pursuit on their heels,  is the pods. At least we have somewhere to run to. Her legs were tired, were heavy, but she couldn't stop, had to keep going; knowing what was behind them, didn't even want to stop.\n\n Rimmer clung to Henry's arm as he ran, like a child to a parent. The ha nd on Henry's arm was white -knuckled with strain, fingernails digging. They did that to us. To us.  I mean we were never meant to how could they  Even out of breath he  didn't stop talking. I' m not even on death row. Henry growled and shook his arm, but Rimmer didn't let go, didn't shut up. I only sold stolen goods. That was all. I never\n\n Benti tossed a look over her shoulder. Clarence behind her, stone -faced and focused, unflinching at the walls groaning beside him and at the rumble and explosion they left behind.\n\n What way ? Intersections and junctions flashing by. She had no map, but  now there was no useful map of the ship. Just keep your head down and cross your fingers  . Lots of graffiti scrawled in blood now. Some of it by prisoners before they'd become part of the Flood, some of it after, all of it unreadable at that pace.\n\n Henry looked at Benti expectantly, loping alongside with ease. He could have left them all behind, but hadn't. She couldn't help thinking of him as a big dog, forgetting the intelligence and awareness in those eyes.\n\n The Elite dipped his head, and said somethin g. A question.\n\n Given the circumstances, there were only a few things he could've been saying.\n\n Benti slowed a moment, took the rifle from Rimmer and put it in Henry's waiting hands.\n\n Hey, what are you\n\n His hands were almost too big. He could barely  fit a finger to the trigger. Nodded at her, lower jaws quivering, but kept his cricket bat.\n You're a lousy shot, she answered Rimmer. Keep moving!\n\n Clarence drew up beside her as she sped up again, and the look he gave her made her glad, suddenly, that she had Henry at her back.\n\n >Lopez 1620 hours\n\n Is this a hull?\n\n No, sir!\n\n Lopez pulled her last grenade and tossed it down the hall at a cluster of forms shifting in the darkness. In her mind, the form s were Rebecca and Foucault.\n\n Place is gonna get trashed anyway\n\n The explosion blew out the rest of her words.\n\n >Benti 1620 hours\n\n The unmistakable sound of grenade detonation reverberated through the dying ship, the floor shivering beneath Benti' s feet, distinct from the rumbles of the disintegrating engine. The sarge, she thought. Had to be. Remembering the others might be alive added a sudden spring to her step. They weren't the only ones left. If they could just get to Mama Lopez, everything wo uld be okay. She knew it, had to at least make herself believe it.\n\n A figure lumbered out of a room and she ripped a short burst through it, taking out the knees while Clarence, in sync, shot out the chest, and Henry clubbed it with his bat as they fled p ast. They had no time to be more thorough. They dropped down ladders and slammed hatches shut behind them, seeking only to delay what was following. No time to sneak. All the noise they made, they were getting a lot of attention. A huge following. Benti ha d never been so popular in her life. Is it my birthday or something?\n\n Reload!\n\n The voice in her headset made her start. They were in radio range, oh at last!\n\n MacCraw!\n\n Benti! A pause and gunfire before the sarge spoke again. Who you got?\n\n Clarence. She didn't look at him or Henry. And a couple of survivors. One deck to go.\n\n Get your butt into gear; that ice cream isn't gonna wait.\n\n Yes, sir! She'd never been so happy to be told to hustle. She turned to grin at Clarence.\n\n It leapt out of the corridor before she could check. Something rabid smashed into her shoulder and threw her against the wall, so fast, all the air knocked out of her, head flung back knocked hard, the shock not enough to crow d out a terrible waft of rank decay and a moan that came from no human throat. Keep your eyes open, always keep your eyes open, her medic training kicking in, and her eyes were open, and she recognized Sydney, what was Sydney, before Clarence stepped betwe en it and her, shot it, kept shooting it, never lifted his finger from the trigger, not even when it stopped moving.\n\n Sydney. How could you do that to me?\n\n She drew a breath in. Let it out. In. Out.\n\n When Clarence looked at her, she knew it was bad . She could see it in his eyes. She couldn't feel her arm; it hung too low on her lap, sleeve already saturated. Her eyes focused on the rifle in his hands. Orlav. Gersten.\n\n You wouldn't, she thought. You might.\n\n Henry scooped her up in one arm, tucked he r up against his chest, pushed past Clarence, and kept going.\n\n >Lopez 1622 hours\n\n Benti, alive. The voice had conjured up such relief for Lopez, adding a bead or two back onto the rosary. Conjured up images from a world that seemed so distant. The Red Hors e . On leave, singing in a karaoke bar, getting blind drunk, picking up men, telling her how to smile properly. Did any of that exist anymore? Had it ever existed?\n\n The airlock was miraculously vacant, but it wouldn't be for  long. Benti and Clarence were approaching from aft. They'd jammed the forward hatch behind them, using pieces of shelving from a barricade that hadn't held the first time. Only one direction to watch now. Then jiggered the manual controls. Both  were ready to go.\n\n Two pods, MacCraw said, checking the time. Two of us, some of them. What are we going to do?\n\n Lopez didn't answer. What could she answer? Yeah, kid, we've still got some tough decisions.\n\n Instead she said, Benti's taking her swee t time.\n\n It's those short legs. MacCraw checked the time again. Sarge .  . . The strain in his voice said everything. Let's get the hell out already.\n\n Sarge! Benti gasped over the radio, the signal good and strong. Sarge, we're coming, don't shoot,  oh please don't\n\n A flashlight jagged about, coming down the corridor, the figures behind it resolving.\n\n Covenant! MacCraw shouted, down on one knee and finger tightening on the trigger.\n  Don't shoot! Benti's voice.\n\n There, suddenly: a Covenant Elite sprinting down the corridor, assault rifle in one hand, cricket bat in the other, and Benti slung over his arm like an errant child.\n\n Not even the craziest thing Lopez had seen all day. Didn't register at first that Benti  might be hurt.\n\n It's okay! Sarge! The panic in Benti's voice didn't make sense. Henry's okay! Don't shoot!\n\n Henry? Lopez didn't lower her weapon. MacCraw, do not take your finger off that trigger!\n\n The Elite Benti had called Henry slowed, eyeing th em warily. Closer now, she could see Benti's shirt and pants soaked red, her arm tucked into her vest, bone jutting from her shoulder. Benti's other hand gripping this Henry's thumb for dear life. Behind the Elite, Clarence and one human survivor in prison  clothes.\n\n Somewhere behind them, not yet visible, the deep unnatural choir of the Flood, like a physical presence. Sounded like they'd brought the whole ship in their wake.\n\n What's this Covie bastard doing here ? Lopez demanded. You said survivors, Private!\n\n Benti blinked groggily, a frown of concentration, yet still not fully there.\n\n She didn't mean it, Clarence said, glancing back at the corridor, mindful of the Flood, and then reached out with his pisto l and shot the human prisoner in the head. The man didn't have time to look startled, just dropped, a small and surprisingly neat puncture in his skull.\n\n Lopez had no time to react. Everything happened real fast after that.\n\n Henry spun, Benti crying out with the sudden movement. The Elite saw the dead prisoner, roared in unmistakable grief, and raised its rifle. Clarence jerked his own rifle up, staring down the barrel at the Elite.\n\n Benti slapped its arm, pleading: Don't shoot! Nobody shoot! But stari ng at Clarence. Lopez was staring at Clarence, too, stunned. A good man. A good shot.  Someone she wasn't sure she knew now.\n\n And the Flood. Louder, closer, relentless, unstoppable.\n\n Lopez's rifle wavering between her Marine and the Covie:  Clarence, what the hell?\n\n Henry bellowed, a terrible accusation in that alien voice. She couldn't get a clear shot with Benti there, just as Clarence couldn't get off a shot at them without Lopez dropping him. Except she had MacCraw.\n\n MacCraw, shoot th atMacCraw?\n\n He wasn't at her side. Behind her, one of the escape pods clicked shut.\n\n Fuck!\n The pod ejected.\n\n From the bridge of the Red Horse  : Three minutes to launch sequence.\n\n >Benti 1623 hours\n\n Bent i stared at Clarence, her partner blurring in and out of focus. She really couldn't see much of anything anymore. Knew her pulse was thready, that she'd lost too much blood, medic training both a blessing and a curse. Henry's embrace felt like a warm bed a round her body, a bed she was falling into.\n\n You're ONI, she said at last. You've got to be. She could see it in his eyes.\n\n From off to their left, the voice of Lopez, coming through gauze: ONI? I'm not surprised.\n\n Knew the good old sarge still ha d them in her sights or Clarence would've blown her away. She realized every sympathetic quality she'd found in him had come from her. Just because he never said. Anything that. Would change her opinion. Realized she was floating a bit now.\n\n It's nothing  personal. There were never meant to be any survivors, Clarence said. Benti, get down. Come on, you can walk. He narrowed his eyes at Henry. Put her down.\n\n The sounds of the Flood, coming closer. But muffled, like she had headphones on or something.\n\n You're Section 3, Benti said, quieter. A softness entered Clarence's mouth and eyes. I'm sorry, he said, but Benti didn't think he was sorry.\n\n Clarence, drop your rifle, Lopez said fuzzily. Except Benti knew Lopez had said it sharp. The sarge. Alw ays said it sharp. It's two against one.\n\n Benti squirmed and made Henry set her down. She was almost there. She could almost see the end.\n\n Henry can have my ice cream, Benti said.\n\n She pushed off Henry and staggered into Clarence, legs so  unsteady, and he was farther away than she thought. But still got too close -in for him to shoot her, inside his guard. She collapsed against him, with her one good arm around his neck in a hug.\n\n As the Flood surged around t he last corner and came toward them. A slavering mass of rage and violence and nightmares they never knew they had. Her vision blurred, but she caught glimpses of what once were faces, moving with singularity of mind. They seemed to crawl on disembodied human hands and Covenant hands.\n\n Pushed, then. Used all of her weight to push the two of them back toward the Flood. She had just enough strength to hold him there for the second necessary for Lopez to shoot him in the leg, the shoulder, send his rifle flyi ng. Send him flying back into the corridor. Benti followed, to keep him out there, with them  . The farther back into the darkness the better. Clarence was too wounded to stop her.\n Lopez and Henry were shooting at them, at the Flood. It didn't make a diffe rence now.\n\n Clarence was shouting something. At her, but it sounded so far away. His eyes were wild and scared, and part of her felt proud to be scary and part of her had never wanted to see Clarence scared.\n\n She was losing her grip on him, and a bullet had found her side, just pumped in there like it belonged, took more energy out of her.\n\n Clarence had just about managed to put his pistol to her head to get her off of him, when she tripped him.\n\n And the Flood washed over him, over her.\n\n Found them.\n\n Suddenly they were pulled back. A sensation of flight, then. A blessed numbness and strange alertness. Looking up for a moment to see that she'd done it that Henry and Lopez, framed by the doorway, firing away, were far enough away to close the door on bot h them and the Flood. Yeah, they were  shooting her and Clarence, but they didn't mean any harm. They would never mean her any harm.\n\n Clarence writhed in the embrace of what looked like part of Simmons, screaming, Don't let them take me! It was too late for that. She wanted to say, Relax, Clarence. You've got my back, but her mouth didn't work quite right. Don't want to wake up. Not now. Not for this sad party.\n\n Last thing she remembered: Lopez's face clenched i n concentration, standing in Henry's shadow, as Henry fired point -blank into the Flood and into her. Thought she saw Lopez raising an arm in a gesture of good -bye.\n\n Tried to hold onto that image as the Flood repurposed her.\n\n >Lopez, 1624 hours\n\n Lopez, t ired as hell, blinked, and .  . .\n\n Henry roared, deep and eternally Covenant, and next to the discord of the Flood, something welcome and familiar to Lopez's ears. He fired into the mob that had taken Benti, ammunition spent in an instant. Hurled the rifle  hard enough to knock an infected prisoner off its feet. Raised his cricket bat. Lopez opened fire, taking no specific aim. A glance at her ammo counter.\n\n Benti! Brought back only to be taken away.\n\n The ammo counter ran down.\n\n Clarence!\n\n All her be ads gone. All her kids gone.\n She couldn't see them in the throng anymore. Couldn't pick them out. Couldn't spare .  . . anyone. A handful of infection forms scuttled across the ceiling. She lifted her sights. Shot them as they launched at Henry. Small pop s. Puffs of green powder.\n\n She dropped and Henry swung his bat, smashing an infection form she hadn't seen away from her. She rolled back into the airlock. Slapped the controls as Henry joined her, beating  away at  a transformed Elite. Beating it into a green froth before the airlock sealed.\n\n With infection forms on the inside.\n\n She twisted, firing a crazy line around the airlock, chasing the zoomy little maggots. Had no swearwords left to use on them. One popped.  Two popped. Henry pushed her aside. Swung his bat. Four popped. Punched the last so hard against the wall the panel dented, green sludge on his fist. He reeled back from the puff of spores, waving them from his face.\n\n Safe.\n\n They looked at each other. The small room thundered with the pounding at the door.\n\n The ship's PA crackled again.\n\n Shiva armed. Targeting lasers online. Initiating launch sequence in forty -five seconds\n\n The airlock door dented inward, and both flinc hed, taking a step away from it. A step toward the last pod. Henry was big. There was only room for one. This alien, this enemy, had carried Benti to safety. On this ship of messed -up humans.\n\n Finally understood how this was all going to go down. Some lit tle backwater side action, maybe a footnote in some ONI operative's field report.\n\n And beyond the door, something bigger and badder than all of them.\n\n It's a big, bad universe, Sergeant .\n\n Henry's four jaws flexed. Lopez narrowed her eyes. Put her finger  on the trigger. Noticed Henry's grip on the cricket bat tighten.\n\n Covenant aren't the worst of it.\n\n No.\n\n But they were pretty damn hideous.\n\n Sorry, Henry, she said, but there's only one pod.\n\n She pulled the trigger.\n\n Click.\n No ammo.\n\n Lobbed the last curse she had in her, and hefted the rifle like a club.\n\n . . . thirty seconds\n\n The Covenant Elite snarled, jaws spread, and raised his bat.\n\n And they went at it.\n\n\n\n ICON\n\n ________________\n\n ICON Soldiers forged from youth to serve as tools of war weapons of direct and conclusive destruction the men and wome n of the classified military project known as the SPARTAN -II program will live on in legend following their exploits during the Human -Covenant War.\n\n\n\n Prepared for the harsh realities of combat against known enemies, but thrust into battle with forces unimaginable and terrifyingly alien the Spartan -IIs, and later the Spartan -IIIs, delivered numerous decisive victories against the overwhelming might of t he Covenant.\n\n\n\n Altered to a level far beyond that of normal human, the warriors of the Spartan -II program were humanity's best, and possibly only, hope when faced with the threat of extinction from an advanced alien collective bent on our eradication i n the name of false prophecies and hidden agendas.\n\n\n\n Rising through the flames of war, echoing through the silent vacuum of space, word of the Spartans' deeds spread throughout the human colonies offering salvation, offering a faint glimpse at ultimate  victory.\n\n\n\n Thus came a Demon a hero, a soldier, a man. One Spartan above all others; equal, but for one defining factor one immeasurable advantage. Like his brothers and sisters, he was trained to fight, to win, a master of the latest weapons of war . But Spartan -117, the Master Chief, had one intangible asset few others possessed luck.\n\n\n\n Added to an unmatched drive to win whether it be a simple game, or heated combat Spartan -117's uncanny combination of f inely honed skills and unprecedented good fortune made for the ultimate warrior in a battle against impossible odds.\n\n\n\n Never one to give in, never one to relent, the Master Chief, and each of his fellow Spartans, did more than engage the enemy; they de livered hope with each burst of gunfire, with every battle won.\n\n\n\n PALACE HOTEL\n\n\n\n ROBT MCLEES\n\n THE HASTILYconcocted mission to board the Covenant carrier that dominated the sky over New Mombasa ended almost as soon as it had begun. A single Scarab one of the Covenant's ultra-heavy ground -based weapons platforms had knocked the entire assault group out of the air, leaving Master Chief Petty Officer John Spartan -117 to pull himself out of the burning wreckage.\n\n Aside from the Covenant discovering the location of Earth and our being on the ground with no viable means of transportation to our object ive, I'd say we're in pretty good shape. Cortana's voice seemed to come from just over the Spartan's shoulder. The AI had been put in his care a little over a month ago and he still wasn't used to the intimacy of its communication.\n\n How's that? John sa id, glancing over his left shoulder, half expecting to see her.\n\n We have one of the top -ranking members of the Covenant leadership within our reach there's a Prophet Hierarch on that ship. On top of that? We're still alive, Chief. And while there isn't anything I can do about the Covenant being here,  I am working diligently to devise a viable solution to our other problem at hand.\n\n John moved between what meager cover the few abandoned vehicles littering the tol l plaza afforded him. As he closed in on a row of toll booths, he found his eyes drawn to the mouth of the outbound tunnel of the Mtangwe Underpass. It looked like a kiln exhaling heat and light. Cutting across the plaza was a smear of molten glassiness th ree feet wide leading to the tunnel mouth and then up away from it along the face of the city's famous sea wall. Curiously, the inbound tunnel was undamaged. A dull smile crossed his lips behind his visor as he considered his options. He thought back. The correct choices have always been this obvious. He had always been able to see the tiger and the lady doors had never factored into the equation.\n\n A thin whine from above signaled the arrival of Banshees. John dashed beneath the canopy of concrete that she ltered the island of toll booths he was less concerned about the Banshees'\neffectiveness as attack aircraft and more about remaining out of sight. He flattened himself out against one of the booths momentarily and looked through its clouded and sagging pol ycarbonate window. The attendant, still seated within, wasn't much more than a partially articulated skeleton hung with the charred remains of a uniform and fused to an ergonomic seat bolted to the floor.\n\n His name was Carlos Wambua, age fifty -two, widow er, three adult children. The oldest still Cortana rattled off before John cut in.\n\n He just sat there the position of his feet, John pointed at the man's smoldering shoes with his chin for emphasis. He didn't even try to get away. From his position h e would've been able to see thetee forty -seven  even before it crested the bridge that's a little over eight hundred meters out. He gave his gear a shake test then moved to the corner of the structure.\n\n Your poin t being? Cortana challenged. Do the words  transfixed with terror' mean anything to you? You may find this hard to believe, but most people find Scarabs to be rather unsettling.\n\n With a barely noticeable shrug he began looking for a path to the mouth o f the inbound tunnel moving along the line of booths until he found a straight shot with no obstructions. It was seventy -three meters to the entrance. That meant he would be out in the open for about four and a half seconds enough time for one of the Bansh ees in the air overhead to make a positive ID. He slung his rifle and hunkered down.\n\n Kelly had always been the fastest in their class easily making her the fastest human being who had ever lived but as he tore across the plaza, he was certain that his pe rformance would have made even her take notice.\n\n Once he was within the  tunnel, John slid to a stop against a burnt -out sedan. He unlimbered his rifle and considered the path ahead. This section of the tunnel was littered with vehicles; some gutted or otherwise destroyed, others merely abandoned. The area would have been perf ect for an ambush. Unfortunately he was the one who had to move through it. The vehicles appeared to thin out some eighty meters farther in, but to get there would require patience. And so he began snaking his way through the environment moving quickly but  cautiously between cover. He checked the most likely hiding spots and the least, keeping his eye on his armor's motion sensor and listening intently for any sound that seemed out of place. Working his way deeper into the underpass, he heard muffled curses  and other sounds of agitated goings -on from about 150 meters ahead. He came to a stop alongside a lorry in pale green Technique  Electronics livery and looked off to his right. The Moi Avenue junction was sealed off by heavy blast doors.\n\n The main route i s locked down as well, Cortana huffed; the frustration in her voice was unmistakable.\n\n John hesitated a moment, waiting for Cortana to continue. The main Mtangwe route, a 390 -meter tunnel that resurfaced in the c enter of New Mombasa's industrial zone, had been his best bet to gain entrance into the city without being spotted by the enemy. The activity up ahead was promising and he hoped it was from a maintenance crew who could release either set of blast doors; if  not, his only choice was to head back to the surface.\n\n That's it? John asked, finally. It's locked down and nothing else?\n\n I'm having a little trouble accessing the local net, Cortana replied. I'll have it in a moment.\n\n The Spartan edged around  the cab of one of the omnipresent SinoViet lorries. About thirty meters away, near the blast door, were two M831s the primary UNSC wheeled troop carriers that had become nearly as common in New Mombasa as the freight lorries over the past few weeks and a squad of Marines who were busily pulling any useful bits of equipment out of them.\n\n They're from one of the ghost battalions out of Eridanus Two, Cortana said with a near -audible sigh of relief. First Battalion, Seventh Regiment; more specifically, thi s is Third Squad, First Platoon, Kilo Company.\n\n\n\n ONE OFthe Marines signaled the Spartan's arrival to the rest of the squad and moved forward cautiously to greet him.\n\n Holy crap, Private Jemison blurted. Sorry, sir, but holy crap, you're a Spartan!\n\n Yes, John said dryly as he jogged toward the Marine, but before he had the chance to utter another syllable, the distinctive report of a fuel rod gun rang out from behind him.\n\n Get to cover, John yelled as he brought his BR55 to bear, spun on his heel, acquired a sight picture of his target, and put a single bullet through the neck of the green -clad Grunt. Private Jemison's MA5B flashed to his shoulder and fired off a long burst as the first shot from the fuel rod gun sailed past the Spartan  and the Marines and slammed into the tunnel wall a little more than twelve meters away. The nearly decapitated Grunt reflexively fired a second shot, which impacted the roadway less than a meter away from where it was st anding. The resulting explosion killed half of the aliens that were visible in the tunnel, including their commander an Elite in red armor.\n  The stray first shot had dug a four -meter -wide hole in the wall and dumped a literal ton of smoking, shattered con crete out onto the tunnel floor. Dark, brackish slop lazily spilled out, accompanied with a stomach -curdling stench making it very clear that an opening had been punched into an adjoining sewer line. As if on cue, brilliant purple light washed along the wa lls as the massive, bulbous form of a Wraith slid into view from behind an abandoned commuter bus. Its carapace seemed to crack open broad curving plates folded out of the way of its deadly plasma mortar.\n\n Crap, Jemison howled as he backpedaled. Corpor al, what do we do?\n\n A tall, broad -shouldered redhead hopped down out of the back of the lead troop carrier and motioned with her left hand toward the opening in the wall. Jump in that hole it ain't no worse than it is out here! Move it!\n\n Jemison continued to back up until he reached the edge of the rubble, all the while firing burst after burst from his assault rifle into the advancing enemies. Corporal Palmer approached the Spartan, tapped his shoulder, and shouted, You wanna come, big guy? She moved through the rubble to the breach, motioning for the rest of the squad to follow. And in they went, one by one.\n\n John shouldered his rifle, took one step back toward the way he had come, and fired a burst into a mob of Grunts that had swarm ed in past the Wraith, killing two and forcing the rest to scatter and dive for cover.\n\n Chief, you should probably follow those Marines they look like they need the help and there are three more Wraiths on the wa y, Cortana said thoughtfully.\n\n As the walls of the tunnel reverberated with the sounds of the charging plasma mortar John dashed over to the rent in the tunnel wall firing three more bursts from his battle rifle back at the advancing enemies as he went then turned and disappeared into the breach. He had made it no more than thirteen meters when the mortar round slammed into the opening, sending a wall of concussion and heat that drove him to his knees and caused his shields to overload and drop. John got back to his feet, but Private Jemison, the second -to-last man to make it into the breach, was lying facedown in the now boiling muck his organs ruptured and bones splintered from that same blast. Howls from the darkness told him that Jemison wasn't the onl y casualty. He ran past Private First-Class Locke, whose split and blistered flesh and raw bone were visible through smoldering holes in his BDUs. He stepped over Private First -Class Galliard, who had been felled by a piece of rebar that entered just below  the nape of his neck and exited through the bridge of his nose the still-glowing chunk of steel protruded from the sewer wall ten yards farther ahead.\n\n When John reached the flow -through tunnel below the spillway, the remaining Marines skipped their eyes  past him and looked back down the tunnel.\n\n Where the hell's the rest of my squad? demanded Corporal Palmer as she stepped forward. The Wraith?\n\n Affirmative, John replied flatly. They were killed in action.\n\n Then we've gotta go back.\n\n We're going forward.\n No we're not. Palmer's brow furrowed. We are not just gonna leave them lying back there in this goddamn sewer!\n\n Cortana spoke to the entire group over their helmet -integrated comm units. They will be left behind just as the other tw enty-three billion that preceded them were left behind. Because they  could not be saved, and carrying them with us will only make us vulnerable.\n\n They looked at John like he was a monster; like an alien. In some of their eyes he could detect something deeper. Not horror; astonishment? Betrayal? Of course it may have just been hearing Cortana speaking through his comms.\n\n Who was that? Palmer spat.\n\n That was Cortana. She's .  . .\n\n She's a real fucking bitch.\n\n The Spartan stood in silence, head cocked slightly to the right. Corporal, give me your TACPAD.\n\n Corporal Palmer produced a notebook -sized device from her pack and passed it to the Spartan, and he flipped it open and showed them a traffic video with a time stamp from twenty -two minutes earlier four Wraiths and fifty light infantry entering the Mtangwe Underpass.\n\n It's amazing how persuasive an argument overwhelming force can be, Cortana whispered to the Spartan. John shrugged and moved toward what appeared to be a series of rungs imbedded in a flat section of the sewer wall.\n\n Cortana was the first smart  AI he had ever worked with directly. Sadly, whoever died to make this AI possible had to have been a genius among geniuses. For example: The section  they were in wasn't on the grid; it dated from before construction had even started on the Mombasa Tether itself more than two hundred years old. Cortana had plucked the plans for them out of the ether before he could finish his request. As far as equipme nt went, the AI was cutting edge. The only thing that bothered him about Cortana was her excessive familiarity; she was more like a pushy civilian that just happened to fit on a data crystal than a true military AI.\n\n You can tell her that the rest of the ir unit has begun to dig in at Beria Plaza, Cortana's voice buzzed in his ear. That's a little under two kilometers away.\n\n Corporal Palmer, does Beria Plaza mean anything to you?\n\n It was between where that door came slamming down in front of us and where we were going.\n\n That's where the rest of your unit is. It's about two clicks due east of our current position. You'll go up here, John said, indicating the ladder. It'll take you up to the surface. Cor tana may have been busy looking for some way to get him onto the Covenant assault carrier, but not so busy that she couldn't provide him the occasional blueprint, video feed, or other intel whether it was helpful to his situation or not.\n  Okay. Palmer n odded. So you gonna follow this pipe all the way out to the Mombasa Quays?\n\n No. I'm going to make sure the rest of you make it out of here alive.\n\n Gosh! That's awfully nice of you, Palmer mugged then the smile faded. Look, you may be a Spartan, bu t . . .\n\n Exactly, Corporal. And if we had all been Spartans back there none  of us would have died. Now let me do my job.\n\n Palmer' s jaw dropped. After about a second and a half she closed her mouth, snapped off a smug salute, pivoted on her heel, and then jogged over to the rest of the Marines.\n\n As the Marines stacked up at the base of the ladder, John readied his service rifle, swa pped in a full magazine, and took station on the other side of the tunnel so he could keep an eye on them as well as keep an eye out for pursuers. He glanced over at the Marines as they moved into position to climb to the upper part of the spillway and out  of the sewer they had been slogging through for the past twenty minutes. While it may have only been a storm sewer, it hardly mattered this close to the Kilindini Harbor. He wondered if the oppressive stench was the reason for the soldiers' sour expressio ns.\n\n Chief, Cortana whispered, there was no way for you to save those three.\n\n Even so, he muttered, I could've wiped out that entire unit.\n\n Four Wraiths, Cortana broke in. Four. You rely too much on y our luck.\n\n The limited space and the abandoned vehicles in the tunnel would have restricted their mobility as well as their ability to use their main weapons, especially if they brought all four down which they did. I've been doing this for twenty -seven  years, Cortana. And I know the exact limits of my luck.\n\n Then what? The rest of them die trying to support you?\n\n They started running as soon as the shooting started.\n\n Yes, Chief, but Corporal Palmer's reasoning was sound even without knowing abo ut the other three Wraiths she had more sense than to go up against armor without any antiarmor weaponry.\n\n John watched as the last Marine started up the ladder and fired a burst from his BR55 back down the way they had come. He heard the heavy rounds go uge the ancient concrete, followed by the panicked cries of Grunts in the distance as they dove for cover and into the semigelatinous, ankle -deep liquid. Hopefully that would keep them from coming any closer, at least until the Marines were all safely up o n the spillway. There was precious little cover within the confines of the sewer, certainly not enough to avoid any incoming fire. The spillway would allow them to break contact with their pursuers then he could get back to his mission.\n\n Chief, I was ser ious about their being useful for getting us to our objective, Cortana whispered in the Spartan's ear.\n  Thanks. So you strongly  suggest following them?\n\n I merely suggest we take them back to their unit, Cortana whispered very sweetly. They could be useful too.\n\n Palmer called down from the top of the spillway, Your girlfriend say to wait there you coming or what?\n\n It's an AI.\n\n Nice, Cortana huffed.\n\n John turned his attention to the ladder. He looped his arm  behind the rungs and popped them out, three at a time, until he had pulled out all of them he could reach; it wouldn't stop their pursuers for good, but it didn't have to. All it needed to do was slow them down. He sent four more roun ds ripping into the darkness before jumping three meters up to the top of the spillway and following the sounds of the boots retreating up one of the drainage tunnels. He could hear the sound of wind in the trees and the pounding of the surf somewhere up a head, and beyond that the staccato chatter of gunfire and dull thudding of explosions in the distance.\n\n The tunnel opened into a wide culvert that seemed to emerge from beneath the inner part of the island's western sea wall and directly behind the parkin g area for the Kilindini Park Cultural Center. The Marines had flattened out against the walls, stopping just short of the tunnel mouth. A Covenant beam rifle leaned unattended against the end of the culvert twelve meters away. Straddling a deep rut a half  meter beyond the end of the culvert was one of the large, vaguely birdlike aliens that most UNSC personnel called Jackals. Its back was to them a thin stream of fluid fell into the rut between the alien's feet.\n\n The Spartan inched forward in uncanny sile nce, carefully gauging the distance between himself and the Jackal. He positioned his feet on the tunnel floor, assessing his footing and evaluating the strength of the concrete beneath him. He was less than seven meters from the alien when its head snappe d to the side with a start, inhaling sharply. John sailed forward covering the distance in two strides, his left arm a blur shooting forward, index and middle fingers outstretched together to form a spike. The Spartan's gauntleted hand passed effortlessly through the Jackal's skull just behind its left eye. John backpedaled, retreating into the darkness of the drainage tunnel the grisly remains of his quarry dangling limply from his forearm, leaving a streak of brilliant purple blood in their wake.\n\n Corporal Palmer quailed momentarily and then glanced back at the group and motioned for everyone to stay low and quiet. She scooted up to the edge of the culvert in a low crouch. When she reached the end she popped the c overs on her scope and slowly swung her BR55 over the low concrete wall. She could see the smoking remains of several variants of the UNSC's ubiquitous Warthogs M831 troop transports, M12 reconnaissance vehicles, even a couple of M12G light antiarmor rigs,  all of which were arranged in a line partially shielding the main entrance of a squat concrete structure a makeshift defensive wall. She could also see the Jackals overlooking the parking area from the roof and the bodies of men scattered about below them .\n\n It looks like a goddamn massacre out there, Corporal Palmer stage -whispered. There're bodies all over the place there's a Grunt bleeding out and a Jackal standing not ten feet away from him poking at one of our boys. What the hell, man?\n Private F irst-Class Sullivan scooted up next to her and stole a quick peek over the wall. This shit happened ages ago we woulda heard those sixty -eights goin' off even down the pipes, he muttered.\n\n Private Emerson tossed John a spare canteen and he rinsed the bl ood from his arm. Behind him, half a dozen meters deeper into the tunnel, one of the Marines was busily constructing what looked to be a miniature barricade. Don't hold onto anything you can't fight with, John said before stepping out into the culvert. H e glanced over at the line of Warthogs and opened a private channel with Corporal Palmer. Sitrep, over.\n\n Palmer looked over her shoulder at the Spartan a mere seven meters away, Huh? I'm right over here.\n\n John tapped his throat and pointed past her a t the enemy. A Jackal's ears may not be very big, but they are very sensitive.\n\n Oh all right, she grumbled, put her eye back to the scope, and continued, Looks like a detachment of Army mech -inf got sent in t o evac some civies or whatever out of this gift shop or whatever the hell that isthat being the structure that looks sorta like a giant concrete intake manifold. There's a fountain about twenty meters northeast of the structure in the middle of what looks to be the parking area. But the fountain is busted all to hell and the entire parking area is under about four inches of water. I count about .  . . eighteen civilians and .  . . twenty ewe en es sea personnel all dead and half a dozen 'hogs. The 'hogs are st rung out in a line from the center of the northeast wall of the structure to just past what's left of that busted fountain. All but two of the\n'hogs are out of commission. We might be able to use one of the other em twelve gees  but its generator is holed I wouldn't trust it. Looks like the Covies've got a tee forty two  set up on the roof at the eastern corner of the structure the Grunt on it looks like it's snoozing, though. So, along with the gunner, I'm counting twelve bad guys eight Jackals; four Grunts. T hat ain't counting the one Grunt bleeding out. They've got elevation on us so don't take that number as a guarantee; it'd take a lot more than this handful of assholes to grease twenty -odd shooters even if they were only Army. Over.\n\n So, only two servic eable 'hogs. John looked at the eight Marines squatting in the culvert and sighed. Proximity to each other? Over.\n\n Palmer let her rifle drift slowly, covering a wide arc. The one em eight three won  that isn't burning or otherwise busted all to hell is right near the main entrance of the structure, and the el ay ay vee  is a good fifteen meters east -northeast of that, over by the fountain. Chief, if you're planning on going for that em twelve gee  , you won't just be running into their field of fire you'll be  running across it like a duck in a shooting gallery. Over.\n\n The Spartan looked over the low wall at the M12G; it was a mess. What was left of the windshield was lying across the  hood in tiny cubes, the seats were burnt down to their frames, the winch was a fused wad of metal, and most of the bodywork was distorted, pitted, and scorched. But it wasn't burning, smoking, or leaking fluid and it had all four wheels. You, Sullivan, a nd I will secure theem twelve gee  ; once we get it moving we'll suppress what's left of the local Covenant group until the em eight three won  is secured. Over.\n  Palmer's heart seemed to skip a beat and she reflexively licked her lips. Chief, I believe I can honestly say that even though you are an honest -to-Buddha one -man death squad, and that if you were to ask nicely I'd give up my lucrative career in the Corps and start pumping out your babies as fast as you could put them in me, there is no way that I  am gonna run across fifty goddamn meters of open terrain covered by three Jackal snipers that I can see  just to jump into an open vehicle. Throwing myself on a goddamn grenade makes more sense than that. Out.\n\n The Spartan was at Corporal Palmer's elbow s o quickly and so quietly that only those Marines who had been looking directly at him noticed that he had even moved. He closed the private channel and addressed the group as a whole. Palmer, Sullivan; you're on me. Concentrate on running until we get to theel ay ay vee  then mount up as fast as you can. Corporal, I want you on that sixty -eight. The rest of you will cover us until the el ay ay vee  starts moving we will then lay down suppression fire until you secure the em eight three won  by that structure's  main entrance I'm setting a waypoint now. This is sure to get more complicated once we are under way, so stay on your toes.\n\n The assembled Marines looked at one another nervously and then out at the open field that lay between themselves and the Warthog snumbers above the tiny blue deltas indicating the objectives in their HUDs reinforced their remoteness. The  Marines began systematically checking their gear in grim silence. The furtive glances that passed betwee n them, however, spoke volumes. To wit, they were about to pit themselves against a group whose exact composition they were unsure of, that was established in a defensive position with superior elevation, and that was clearly capable of annihilating a unit  more than twice their number even if it had been equipped with vehicles and support weapons. They did have one advantage, though: they had a Spartan with them. But how much could one more man, no matter how well trained or equipped, possibly affect the ou tcome of the coming battle?\n\n John placed fresh magazines into both of his weapons, replaced the missing rounds in his spare magazines, and then nodded toward their destination. Without looking back he motioned for the group to move up.\n\n Pine Tar, Palme r whispered sharply through the comm, get your narrow ass up here we're leaving. Over.\n\n Wilco, out. Lance Corporal Pineada called from deep within the drainage tunnel. He gave a quick glance at the group in the culvert before putting the final touches  on the lethal contraption he had been hiding beneath a sodden shipping pallet. He circled his handiwork gingerly, then nodded to himself, satisfied that the two scavenged jerry cans, fragmentation grenade, and mess kit that he had fashioned into a deterre nt for their pursuers was nearly impossible to detect. He leaned the last jerry can against the tunnel wall by his improvised trap and joined the rest of the group.\n\n Couldn't we just try sneaking around them? Private Emerson asked feebly.\n\n John ignored  Emerson and continued. Forget the Grunts concentrate on the rooftops and any Jackals you see the DESW at the eastern corner is a priority -one target. He slung his battle rifle across his back.\n\n Corporal Palmer had not moved from her position observing the parking area. Chief, that Jackal isn't just poking at our boy it looks like it's biting him.\n  The Spartan held up a gauntleted hand. We go in five, four. .  . . He tucked his fingers in as he counted.\n\n I think it's eating him, man, Palmer choked.\n\n One then it dies first now stow your weapon and move out. John pointed at their intended destination and then he was gone.\n\n The concrete beneath the Spartan had turned to dust and gravel as he launched forwa rd. Barely half a second had passed and he was already ten meters away. Palmer slung her weapon and tore off after him; Sullivan fell in directly behind her, running for all he was worth.\n\n Palmer was pumping her arms and trying to control her breath as she trailed behind the Spartan. She looked up from her boots and saw that his hands were no longer empty his right hand now held a massive hard -chromed M6D, and a spare magazine was in his le ft. Eight thunderclaps rang out so fast that they bled together into a single long roar. At that same moment a terrible cacophony erupted behind them as her squadmates opened fire on the building its facade disappearing behind a cloud of pulverized concret e and shattered glass. Two of the Jackals that had been covering their approach had already fallen bright purple blood fountaining out of huge ragged holes that she could pick out even at this distance.\n\n With one hand at thirty meters and a dead run, two shots apiece, each a hit to the head or neck, what the holy hell are my guys even aiming at back there shit. The Corporal's mind raced, but her legs had begun to slack off. She saw another Jackal appear at the roof's edge and there was a flash of purple li ght.\n\n And then her view was blocked by a wall of green armor; there was a loud crack and a flash of golden light. The Spartan  had spun to face her; she saw her own reflection in his visor for a fraction of a secon d, then he dipped slightly before popping into the air, sailing backward three and a half meters above the ground smoke trailing from the inside of his right arm. Four more rapid -fire thunderclaps roared in her ears; the magazine dropped out of the Spartan 's M6D, his left hand slamming the fresh magazine up into the well and flicking to catch the empty one as it fell, the huge pistol now latched onto his right thigh, the empty magazine stowed, and his knees tucked up to his chest as he continued through the  air over the Warthog. Three fingers hooked the crossbar and the vehicle rocked as the Spartan swung down into the charred remains of the driver's seat; the M12G roared to life as Palmer scrambled up into the rear of the vehicle and behind the controls of the gauss cannon in a near daze; Sullivan practically leapt into the sooty pan of the passenger seat and disengaged the safety on his MA5, bellowing, C'mon! Floor it!\n\n All four wheels spun, abrading the surface of the parking area and throwing up four g iant rooster tails of water and grit. Palmer keyed in the startup sequence on the M68 ALIM your basic mini MAC. She started scanning for targets and did a double take when prioritized targeting tabs began appearing on the monitor.\n\n If anything else shows  up, I'll add it to the list, Corporal, the Spartan spoke over a private channel. No vehicles yet just infantry. Don't take any shots you don't have to just concentrate on staying alive for the moment.\n\n What the hell's that supposed to mean? Palmer g rowled through her headset. Just then the Spartan threw the 'hog into a four -wheel drift, creating a momentary wall of spray and mist that screened the rest of the squad, who were now dashing across the open ground between the culvert and the vehicles. Sul livan was hooting and hollering above the sound of the engine as he fired his assault rifle at anything that poked its head out.\n\n John gave Sullivan a sideways glance and said, Remember to save some ammo for when  you're actually trying to hit something and forget the Grunts!\n\n Corporal Palmer glimpsed just a hint of movement behind the T -42 DESW the closest thing to a heavy machine gun in the Covenant arsenal. It could have just been the corpse of the weapon's operator shifting, but she wasn't taking any chances. There was a flash of light, a teeth -rattling snap, and then the heavy plasma weapon on the roof exploded transformed into a rapidly expanding cloud of whirling ceramic razorblades and plasma -temperature f lames. If anything had been crawling up to the weapon, it was now either part of that cloud or had been consumed by it.\n\n 'Hog secured we're in, Chief, Private Emerson howled over the Warthog's radio. Let's boogie!\n\n Follow me. The Spartan swung the M12G around the eastern corner of the Cultural Center, just barely dodging the bulbous purple cowling of a Covenant Ghost half -hidden in a stand of elephant grass. One of the Ghost's stabilizing wings and a fair amount of its carapace were missing obvious signs it had been raked with heavy machine -gun fire. The 'hogs roared past it, and the park's enormous outdoor amphitheater loomed ahead.\n\n The park's main entrance was at the southern end of the amphitheater, right where Cortana indicated it would be. But  as the gate came into view so did a group of Elites, two in blue armor that were sitting astride a pair of Ghosts, and a third in red armor. The one in red looked up at the approaching Warthogs and raised its weapon. The 'hogs bore right down on the trio.\n\n Sullivan fired several bursts across the hood at the Elites until he noticed the barrel of the ALIM swivel into place directly above his head, then he quickly dropped down into the scorched seat and braced himself. Palmer lined up the lead Ghost and fir ed. The slug from the M68 left the muzzle at just under mach forty and penetrated the lead Ghost's plasma containment  vessel after it had passed through the red Elite's lower abdomen. The vehicle detonated and spir aled into the air, five-thousand -degree plasma erupting through its shattered armor. The Elite rider was almost entirely incinerated; what remained of its right arm, however, spiraled through the air alongside the wreckage of the vehicle. The other rider b oosted out through the bluish flames and roared in pain as the flexible material of its armored suit bubbled and cracked. A second shot from the M68 was high and late, punching a basketball -sized hole through the park's entrance archway. Palmer swung the turret farther to take a third shot.\n\n It's B Team's problem now, John said to her over the private channel. We need your eyes forward to keep the path clear.\n\n But I can  Palmer spat.\n\n Now, Corporal, the Spartan admonished.  At least trust your squadmates enough to handle one Ghost with a wounded rider.\n  As the turret swung back around John heard Corporal Palmer grunt. He could picture the look on her face. It would be the same look of anger and frustration he had seen on in numerable humans when they were reminded of what they were and weren't capable of or where their real responsibilities lay.\n\n Humans what had prompted that? He never thought of himself as anything other than human. But that wasn't exactly true. He may have  thought of himself as having been human, perhaps even that he was still human  , but no one ever let him forget that he was a Spartan. That was definitely true.\n\n Chief, I believe that I've located our errant Scarab there are two of them in the city proper , another three in Old Mombasa across Kilindini Harbor to the south but only one of them is in the immediate vicinity. That one has to be ours.  My best guess is that it's looking for a clear shot at the tether, Cortana rattled off into John's ear.\n\n When you say ours , John whispered, am I to understand that you want me to capture it?\n\n Don't be silly, Chief. I said ours because it figures into our plan to get us onto that ship sowe can getour hands onto the Hierar ch. And before you ask any other silly questions ourplans are more complicated than that .\n\n The Warthog slid sideways through the smoking remains of the Kilindini Park gate and into the Mwatate Street Transit Center. It was abandoned: no taxis or buses an d no private vehicles of any kind. They had all fled or were pressed into service to aid the evacuation efforts hours ago, but they had not escaped. The bridge connecting the island to the mainland had been littered with the burning, gutted carcasses of al l those vehicles.\n\n Chunks of concrete and sputtering blobs of aluminum came raining down from above as two Ghosts sailed off of the elevated roadway above the transit center their riders bracing in anticipation of the impact on the ground far below. Palme r fired up at the nearer of the two rapidly descending craft and its starboard wing tore away in a shower of sparks. The Ghost tumbled violently and the rider was thrown as the two vehicles collided in the air. The Spartan spun the steering wheel all the w ay to lock, attempting to keep clear of the Ghosts' most likely point of impact. The intact Ghost landed upside down, its carapace splintering on contact the Elite rider still astride the vehicle. The Ghost that Palmer had hit came right down on top of the  wreckage of the other Ghost and its rider both vehicles erupting into a whirlwind of bluish flames.\n\n For the love o' Mike, wailed Sullivan as the Elite from the second Ghost slammed down onto the hood of the Warthog. Just as it began to slide off, it m anaged to catch hold of a pillar and swing itself in a tight arc, smashing into the side of the vehicle.\n\n Shit shit shit, Sullivan began screaming, firing his MA5  even before it was pointed at the huge alien, wh ich was scrambling to get its feet inside the door frame. Charred plastic and splinters of sheet metal exploded from the dashboard as Sullivan desperately tried to maneuver his weapon within the cabin of the vehicle.\n\n Duck, Palmer shouted, followed by a  quick, Sorry, as she swung the M68 directly over Sullivan's head.\n\n The Elite stripped the rifle from Sullivan's hands and sent it flying just as the muzzle of the gauss cannon came in line with the top of its helmet. Sullivan glanced up and cried out, Ah no!\n\n With a flash and a bone -jarring snap, the Elite's head, neck, and shoulder area transformed into a broken, spinning torus of meat, bone, and metal raised to near incandescence by terrific acceleration. The remainder of the corpse fell to the roa dway below with a scraping clatter, a ruined eight -foot-tall tumbling rag doll.\n\n John modulated the gas pedal and administered microadjustments to the steering wheel before accelerating straight toward Shimanzi Road the broad divided highway that split th e industrial district in two.\n\n We're less than a click from your unit now, the Chief stated. Barring catastrophe I'll have you back with them in under five minutes.\n\n And then what? Palmer asked.\n\n He indicated the massive ship still dominating the sky with a flick of his head. I'm going to board that ship and kill every living thing on it, minus one. As for what you'll be doing, that's up to yoursea oh  .\n\n Sure; so who's the lucky es oh bee  ? sh e chuckled.\n\n You wouldn't know him, John said, with an air of finality.\n\n Hey, Palmer, Sullivan shouted as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, I think that last shot popped my eardrums. The rest of the drive was completed in silence.\n\n Even though the architects and city planners had tried their best to hide it, most people could tell at a glance that New Mombasa was a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of a city rigorously sectioned off into recognizable, repeating pa rcels. It was a grim necessity for every tether city. If the unthinkable were to happen well, another  unthinkable, as at least one unthinkable thing was already happening and catastrophe were to befall the Mombasa Tether, the expectation was that this compa rtmentalization of the city would keep the death toll and property damage to a minimum. It also made Beria Plaza a natural funnel. A trap. And it seemed that the CO of First Platoon, Kilo Company 1/7/E2 -BAG thought so too.\n\n Chief, I've allocated military  assets in order to harass our Scarab maneuvering it to a location more convenient for our purposes closer to our current  destination. Cortana's words rang out in the staccato rhythm of someone juggling one too many tasks. I hope the five air assets I have  en route will be enough I've got two orbital assets on standby, but I would rather not use them unless absolutely necessary and don't worry, I'll give you plenty of warning if I do.\n\n Any more good news?\n\n Well, if my calculations are right, and they always are, our Scarab will arrive eight minutes after the Wraiths from the underpass that should be plenty of time for you to deal with them, shouldn't it?\n\n John maneuvered the 'hog into the cabstand of what less than three hours ago had been the rather elegant Palace Hotel, although now it looked a bit like a gigantic curio cabinet with its doors kicked off. Palmer keyed off the M68 and turned around, taking in the view from the bed of the LAAV.\n\n When the second vehicle from their party arrived, seconds  later, Palmer opened a private channel. Emerson, get that truck out of sight around the back of the hotel.\n\n Sullivan hopped down onto the sidewalk and shouted over  his shoulder, It's been a real slice fightin'  with you, Spartan, but I swear my ear's gone bust I can't hear shit. Gonna find a medic!\n\n John swung out of his seat and onto the pavement, nodded to the Marine, and turned to face the hotel.\n\n See ya 'round, big guy,  Palmer blurted before biting her lip.\n\n The Spartan nodded once more and continued toward the hotel's main entrance reflexively brushing at the side of his helmet as if some invisible insect was buzzing near his ear.\n\n As he made his way through the rubbl e-strewn lobby of the Palace Hotel, soldiers busied themselves turning furniture into cover and clearing lines of access between firing positions. The Marines John had arrived with spread out to help reinforce and camouflage the fighting positions. A lance  corporal jogged up to the Spartan, tapping his throat mic John locked on to the frequency and gave the Marine a thumbs -up.\n\n I'm Morton, the soldier said signaling to one of his comrades that he was escorting the Spartan upstairs. Our ell tee  's up on t he mezz I'll take you to her.\n\n That's not a local accent, Morton this your first time on Earth?\n\n Nah, Morton smiled, I was born here, sir my Dad moved us to Eridanus Two when I was a year and a half and then to Miridem. Shit. And then to Minister, like everyone else, right? But this is the first time I've been back. They ascended the wide, curving staircase that led to the mezzanine, and Lance Corporal Morton signaled security that they were coming up.\n\n Seems like a lot of us ground units got red eployed to Earth after Reach, sir, Morton nodded toward a set of double doors that led out to a huge open -air dining area, to beef up defense in the tether cities I guess. She's right in there, sir. Morton spun around and headed back toward the stairs. I hope nobody called dibs on that gauss I'm a certified expert on that damn thing.\n\n As John passed through the double doors, he could see the lieutenant making some gestures over her TACPAD. Seemingly satisfied with the results, she crouched down and withdrew something from her combat vest.\n\n There are four Wraiths supported by fifty light infantry traveling southeast through the Kilindini Underpass. The outer emergency barricade had been deployed, but that's no t going to hold them forever. The inner emergency barricade must have been deployed as well, so, John said, running through calculations in his head, they'll be right out front in approximately ten minutes. There is also a Scarab in the area it'll pass r ight through here on its way to the quays looking for a clear shot at the tether.\n  It wasn't a sector sketch she was pinning to the screen of the tablet with her thumb. It was a personal item a single image, to be more precise. With a subtle shake of his  head, John admonished, You shouldn't .  . . But the rest of his words caught in his throat when the contents of the photograph registered in his eyes.\n\n It was a photograph of himself at six years of age with a tiny raven -haired girl on the beach at Lake Gusev. He remembered the day it was taken. They had been laughing hysterically at his father's antics as her father tried to take their picture. Two weeks later he would receive an antique coin from Dr. Catherine Halsey. A month after that and his trainin g as a Spartan would begin. The memories seemed too vivid, as if the instant captured in the photograph had taken place only moments ago. Thinking about his childhood, his life before he was conscripted, was a luxury he had not allowed himself in thirty ye ars.\n\n Chief .  . . Her face flushed red when she saw that he was staring at her photo. Sorry .  . . I shouldn't have brought this with me. She rapidly collected herself and opened a private channel to the Spartan while shoving the photo back into her ve st.\n\n It's just .  . . It's sorta like a charm. He saved my life once I walked a bit too far out into the lake. Right after he promised to marry me and keep me safe goofy childhood promises, right? Well, I'm holdin g him to it; I carry it and it's like he's still watching out for me. Anyway, he passed away not too long after the picture was taken. Sorry, I'm babbling.\n\n Blood roared in his ears and his mind raced. Here was little Parisa grown to womanhood who could quite possibly die, within the next fifteen minutes. He hadn't even considered who Parisa would be as a woman.\n\n . . . he passed away .  . .Parisa all his friends and family they had all been just as dead to him as he was to them after the Office of Naval Intelligence had taken him away. Doctor Halsey had come to Eridanus Two for what reason? To meet him face -to-face before having him abducted? He hadn't thought of his family in over twenty years. Even the concept of mother and father seemed strangely abstract to him as if he and his fellow Spartans had sprung fully formed from the split head and bloody foam of Project: ORION.\n\n . . . he passed away .  . . It would almost be f unny if not for the circumstances surrounding hispassing  . But he hadn't passed away. In fact, he had thwarted death so often he worried that he may start believing his own mortality as something less than inevitable that, for him, death had become optiona l. He was very much alive and standing right here in front of her now.\n\n But he couldn't bring himself to rob her of her memories no matter how painful they might be. It was useless to renew a relationship that he could not, in good conscience, maintain. I t might put a human face on the Spartans, and in doing so make them more sympathetic to the people they sought to protect. But it would also bring to light the fact that their government was willing to kidnap and butcher the most innocent of its citizens t o protect itself.\n\n You don't bring personal items  John grunted before the lieutenant broke in.\n\n I know maybe I can get Davis to hack my TACPAD .  . . make it my background. Parisa chuckled. But how about we talk about where you fit into the plan.\n  The lieutenant called up a diagram on her TACPAD and handed the device to the Spartan. This place looked like a good place for an ambush so we started digging in. One of my guys was able to branch the local traff ic network, so we've known about the column for about half an hour and they've got less than forty infantry left traveling with them, by the way. He also spotted you and what was left of the third squad thanks for bringing my guys back. John nodded as she  continued. I felt it would be better to use the el ay ay vee  you brought in the plaza instead of bunkering itutilize its mobility against the Wraiths. It'll draw more fire from the infantry that way, but we've got three em two four sevens  to give it cover . I also figured that the bad guys would be concentrating most of their firepower on you no offense, Master Chief, but you Spartans tend to get the Covies' kegels  in an uproar and that'll give my guys all the opportunity they'll need to take out those Wrait hs. I've already got two antiarmor teams headed up to the rooftops of the buildings that ring the plaza. I didn't know about the Scarab, though. I'm sure you'll come in handy with that as well.\n\n John smiled behind his visor.\n\n\n\n HUMAN WEAKNESS\n\n\n\n KAREN TRAVISS\n\n Silence fills the empty grave now that I have gone. But my mind is not at rest, for questions linger on. I will ask .  . .\n\n And you will answer.\n\n THE GRAVEMIND\n\n\n\n COVENANT HOLY CITY OF HIGH CHARITY, SEVENTEEN HOURS AFTER EXFILTRATION OF UNSC PERSONNEL. CURRENT CONDITION: OVERRUN BY THE FLOOD. USNC AI CORTANA BELIEVED CAPTURED BY THE GRAVEMIND.\n\n\n\n In the time it takes me to tell you my name, I can perform five bill ion simultaneous operations. A heartbeat for you; an eternity for me. I need you to understand that, so you realize this isn't going to be as easy as it looks .  . . for either of us. Now I know you're taking this contagion to Earth but I also know how to s top you and all your parasitic buddies. I've just got to stall you until I can do something about it.\n\n Somy name's Cortana, UNSC AI serial number CTN -zero-four-five-two-dash -nine, and that's all I'm going to tell you for the time being.\n\n You got questio ns? So have I.\n All right. Shoot.\n\n\n\n MAINFRAME CONTROL ROOM, HIGH CHARITY\n\n\n\n It was damned ugly.\n\n That was still Cortana's first thought about the Gravemind, and t he reaction intrigued her when she paused to examine it. When she put up her hand to block the Gravemind's exploring tentacle, revulsion kicked in even before prudent self -defense.\n\n Why? I mean why have I judged it? It's not human. Aesthetics don't apply here. And it's not the first time I've seen it. It just looks different now.\n\n It might have been the effect of observing the Gravemind via High Charity's computer system. Viewed through the neural interface of Master Chief's armor, it hadn't seemed quite th e same. Perhaps it was the narrower focus. In High Charity, she now had many more eyes to scrutinize the creature from a variety of angles.\n\n Security cameras scattered around the station gave Cortana enough images to pull together a composite view of the Gravemind vast, misshapen, multimouthed, all tendrils and dark cavities. Was it slimy? No, on closer inspection, there was no mucous layer visible, and there were no moisture readings from any of the environmental sensors accessible to her throughout the o rbital station. It just seemed  that it should have been slimy. And there was no rational reason to feel disgusted by that, just a primal memory she'd been given along with all the other trappings of humanity.\n\n Humans are instinctively repelled by slime. An d they still don't know exactly why. I don't like not knowing things .  . .\n\n It didn't matter. This blob wasn't going to get a date anytime soon.\n\n The Gravemind's voice sent up faint vibrations throughout the deck. I am more than you will know, and more than you will\n\n You always talk in rhyme? Cortana asked, hands on hips.  Nothing personal, but you're no Keats. Don't give up the day job.\n\n Ithehad a rasping baritone voice, detectable through the control r oom's audio sensors. The creature was so unlike anything she'd encountered before that she was fascinated for a few moments by the sheer scale of it. She couldn't see where it ended.\n\n It was .  . . it had .  . . it had no boundaries  . That was the strangest thing. When she interfaced with a warship's systems, she could feel its limits, its dimensions, its physical reality, all the stresses in its structure and the time -to-failure of its components. Sensors told her every detail. A ship wasknowable  . So was a human being, up to a point; downloaded to Master Chief's armor, she could monitor all his vital signs. And she knew  him. She knew him in all the ways that people who lived in close quarters knew one another's foibles and moods. She knew where he ended and w here she began. She felt that line between herself and a ship, too.\n\n But this Gravemind, measurable and detectable, felt different. Blurred  . How did she know that?\nWhat was she detecting? And how ?\n\n There were no complex tasks to occupy her; no ship to control, no interaction with other AIs, no tactical data, and perhaps the most distracting absence of all, no Master Chief John to take care of. High Charity's systems were gradually failing. The remai ning environment controls and sensors occupied a tiny fraction of her consciousness. It was like rattling around in a big, dumb, empty truck. She had to stay busy. If she didn't, this thing would take her apart.\n\n There is much more complexity to meter th an the simple plodding rhymes of this Keats  , the Gravemind said. He sounded more wearied than offended by the jibe. But then I have the memories of many poets far beyond your limited human culture. And I have the quickness of intellect to compose all man ner of  poetic forms as I speak rather than labor over mere words for days. His tone softened, but not in a kind way. I would have thought an entity like yourself, with such rapid thought processes and so vast a m ind, would understand that. Perhaps not. Perhaps you are more limited than I imagined .  . . but then you were made by humans, were you not? I shall speak more simply  for you, then.\n\n You patronizing lump of fungus. I ought to teach you a lesson, buddy. But  later.\n\n How kind of you. I'll do my best to keep up, then. Cortana shared the pain of downtime and idle processes, panicky and urgent as struggling for air. She could think of better ways to use her spare processing speed than poetry, though. I still think I'd get pretty tired of waiting for you to find a word that rhymes with orange.\n\n The Gravemind now filled her field of vision. She found herself searching for eyes to focus on, another irrational reflex, but still saw only a rip of a mouth.\n\n His v oice teetered on the lower limit of audible human frequencies. Orange .  . . in which language? I have absorbed so many.\n\n Wit as well as looks. How can a girl resist?\n\n The Gravemind made a sound like the start of an avalanche, an infrasonic rumbling. I have pity within me, he said. And infinite time. But I also have impatience because I am all things. You will tell me everything about Earth's defenses.\n\n You'll need to be more specific, then. Cortana suddenly felt as if she'd been nudged by a car eless shoulder in a crowd, but couldn't identify the source. It wasn't tactile. Nothing had impacted the station's hull, as far as she could tell. It's a pretty big file.\n\n I can see that.\n\n The comment caught her off guard. The Gravemind could play tr ivial games, then. Did he think she would fall for that?  She doubted it. When she focused on him, there was still that sense of his being multiple, diffuse, everywhere in the station.\n\n I could be projecting, of co urse. He absorbed the memories of all the Flood's victims. Obvious. Really obvious.\n\n No . . . it's the tentacles. He's probably extending them over a wider area than the systems can display. And I'm sensing the electrical impulses in those muscles. Aren't  I? There's a rational explanation for this.\n\n She had to work it out. She had to find a way of sending a warning to Command and then keeping the Gravemind at bay until John returned for her, and that would be a long time by an AI's standard. Hewould  retur n, of course. He'd promised.\n\n Ask me one on art and culture, she said. Seeing as you like poetry so much.\n\n Is that also Gamma encrypted? No matter. I shall see for myself.\n\n Another fleeting nudge against Cortana' s shoulder suddenly turned into a slap across the face. It was shocking, disorienting. She had no idea how the Gravemind had done it. She'd had no warning. Not knowing, and not anticipating; that hurt.That was pain. Pain warned an organic animal of physical  damage. Whatever the Gravemind had done to her had set off that damage alert in her own systems.\n\n I'm going to be a tougher steak to chew than you've been used to. She realized she'd taken up a defiant posture, fists balled at her sides. A smack in th e mouth doesn't scare me.\n\n No, what scares me is how you managed it. This was going to be a fight, not an interrogation a struggle to see who could extract the data they needed first. She had to work out how to swing a punch back at him.\n\n John , his gra velly voice said slowly.  John . Sothat's  what you call him. Most touching.\n\n It was the use of John's name that made Cortana feel suddenly violated. And it was more than realizing that the Gravemind  had breached t he mainframe not just the metal and boards and composites, but the software processes themselves. It was about the invasion of something personal and precious.\n\n Somehow, the creature had interfaced with the system. It was in here with her. But to know the name John  no, it was within her  . The system was her temporary body, real and vulnerable, not like the blue -lit hologram she thought of as herself. She was sharing her physical existence with another entity.\n\n Now she knew how John felt.\n\n But her interfac e with the Spartan was there to keep him alive. It was benign. She was there to save John, and it was more than duty or blind programming. It was because she cared.\n\n The Gravemind, though, didn't care about her at all.\n  He was in here to break her.\n\n\n\n I DON'T believe vengeance is always a bad thing. Do you think I tried to get Colonel Ackerson sent back to the front lines out of petulance, because I'm only a carbon copy of Halsey and I nurse all her grudges for her? No, I did it to stop him. He nearly k illed John and me to advance his own Spartan program. He spied on Halsey. He forgot who the real enemy was. He became the enemy because of that. There have to be consequences for your actions, because this is how all entities learn. Think of revenge as .  . . feedback.\n\n\n\n CORTANA HADN'Trecalled Ackerson consciously in a long time. As she locked down her critical files and disabled her indexing there was no point handing the Gravemind a map she thought of Ackerson worming his way into Dr. Halsey' s research via his own AI.\n\n Perhaps it was an image association because she was under attack. The memory of Ackerson's sour, permanently dissatisfied face surfaced, followed instantly by a landscape of dense green forest seen from the air.\n\n What's that?\n\n She didn't recognize it, and that was her first warning that something was seriously wrong. No data ever went uncataloged in her. Every scrap of information she devoured and stored had to reside somewhere in her memory, with a definitive address. And she didn't forget. She couldn't  forget. In the fraction of a second it took for her to see those unexplained images and start to worry, she marshaled her second line of defense against intrusion, generating thousands o f scrambled copies of her lowest -priority files and data -stripped copies of herself before scattering them around what was left of High Charity's computer network. It was decoy chaff, tossed into the Gravemind's path to slow him down. Ackerson feared, hate d, then perhaps even pitied at the end was a brief tangle of information, spun hoops of short -lived light like the path of a particle. He was gone again.\n\n Ah .  . . , the Gravemind rumbled, as if he'd realized something. Ahhh .  . .\n\n What's that forest ? Where is it?\n\n The Gravemind's infiltration now felt like a series of stings against Cortana's skin. It was an odd, slow, cold sensation, as if something heavy was crawling over her body, pausing to dig its claws into her.\n\n You are not as you see yours elf, the Gravemind said. You are an illusion.\n\n Breaking news, big boy. She spread her arms like a dancer. We call this a hologram oww!\n\n It felt as if he'd pulled her hair.\n\n You are not even a machine, he said, sounding more sympathetic than dis missive. You are only an abstraction. A set of calculations from another mind. A trick.\n Be a gentleman. Describe me as pure thought.\n\n You said you would answer my questions .  . . you should never make a promise you cannot keep.\n\n She'd used almost those very words to John before he left. Okay, she knew the Gravemind's game now; it didn't tell her any more about how he was accessing her system, but his mind tricks were obvious. Either he wa s mirroring her, matching her words to trigger some kind of empathy, or he was trying to creep her out.\n\n You know I'll never surrender classified information, she said. I'm designed to defend humanity. It's what I am. It's why I exist.\n\n Then why wou ld you already agree to answer my questions?\n\n Cortana thought it was a rhetorical question for a moment, a ruse to keep her occupied while he was looking for a back door into her core matrix. Then she realized she couldn't answer him. Brief panic gripped  her as she thought that he'd already compromised her memory. But she was an AI, the best, and she'd give this slab of meat a run for his money. He was still only flesh and blood. He would always be two steps behind her, however smart, because he was s low. He couldn't harness the processing power in a machine.\n\n But how is he doing this? How is he accessing me? I need to know. I need to get a message out past him. And I have to stop him prying too much data out of me.\n\n If you do not know your own mind, th en I shall tell you. The Gravemind's voice was a whisper. What was he asking? Had he detected exactly what she was thinking, or was it a response to her spoken question? She thought she could feel his breath for a moment. Because a vast intellect is not always gifted with clarity.\n\n One moment he was an obscure poet, the next he came straight to the point. Okay, so tell me.\n\n It is your failing. Your addiction. The drug you crave.\n\n I'm an AI. Never touch the stuff.\n\n But you cannot resist knowledg e . It lures you, Cortana.  Doesn't it? So you think it lures me .  . . and you offer it. Instinctively. Just as organic females flirt . . .\n\n She hated it when someone something outsmarted her. No, she feared  it. And now she felt that fear like a punch in the stomach. This time, though, she knew it wasn't the Gravemind. It came from within her psyche.\n\n She wasn't designed to have blind spots and weaknesses. She was supposed to be a mind  . The very best.\n\n Nic e theory, she said. Could he tell if he was really getting to her? What have you got to offer a girl? Nothing personal, but I go for the athletic type.\n  Joke to comfort yourself if you must, but we both amass information and experiences. We both use them to exercise control over vast networks. It is what we are  . You feel a kinship with me.\n\n Cortana saw Ackerson for a moment, devious and hated, wheedling his way into Halsey's Spartan II files.\n\n Actually, I think I take after my mother.\n\n This troubles you. I can taste your thoughts and memories, but you do not understand how . Do you?\n\n If he'd been another AI or a virus, Cortana would have known exactly where his attack was headed. She would have been able to track him through the circuit s and gateways to her vulnerable matrix. Her enemy would follow electronic pathways or even enzymes or optical lattices if she was embedded in a molecular or quantum system. But he felt formless, almost like a fog. She could only sense where he touched her . She was a boxer shielding her face, not seeing the punch but reeling when it connected. She took the pokes and prods while she continued to scatter duplicate data throughout the mainframe and as many of its terminals as she could still find working.\n\n Then the insistent probing stopped. She carried on copying chaff files throughout the system in case it was just a feint.\n\n You waste your time, the Gravemind said. You know you  will yield. Some temptations can be resisted because they can be avoided, but some .  . . some are as inevitable as oxygen.\n\n He could bluster as much as he wanted, because she'd shut him out. She'd locked down everything except the useless decoy data.\n\n And then something brushed against h er face, almost like the touch of fingertips, and she found herself turning even though she didn't need to in order to see behind her. It was that forest she couldn't identify again. The picture didn't reach her via her imaging systems, but had formed some where in her memory and that memory wasn't hers  . She was seeing something from within the Gravemind. Behind it, like stacked misted frames stretching into infinity, there was a fascinating glimpse of a world she had never imagined, a genuinely alien  world.\n\n Knowledge, so much knowledge . . .\n\n There, the Gravemind said. Would you not like to know .  . . more?\n\n\n\n YES, THIS is how I see myself. I have limbs, hands, a head. Do I need them? Yes, of course. My consciousness is copied from a human brain, and that brain is built to interface with a human body. The structure, the architecture, the whole way it operates thought and form are inseparable. I need proprioception to function. I can exist in any electronic environment, from a warship's systems to a code key, and because my temporary body can be so many shapes and sizes, I need to know what's me. I need to be substantially human. Everyone I care about is .  . . human.\n\n Come on, John. Don't keep a girl waiting. Get me out of here.\n Youarecoming back for me . . . aren't you?\n\n ______\n\n CORTANA FOUNDherself standing in a pool of dappled light in a perfectly realistic forest clearing. She was still conscious of the sensor inputs into the mainframe that housed her, but the temperature and air pressure matched her database on climate parame ters for deciduous forest. She still couldn't identify the trees, though. She'd never seen them anywhere else.\n\n And that temporary ignorance thrilled her to her core.\n\n This was genuinely new . Every line of code in her being told her she had to find out m ore. She tried to ignore the compulsion but the more she tried to drag her attention away from it, the more urgent the need became.\n\n It was like a growing, painful pressure on her .  . . chest. Lungs  . Yes, her human mind -map, whatever she'd inherited from Dr. Halsey's brain architecture and correlated with the sensor pathways in her own system, told her she was holding her breath. She started to feel panicked and desperate.\n\n Ihave to know. I  have to find out.\n\n The Gravemind had picked the perfect analogy: o xygen. Processing data was literally air to an AI. Without it, she couldn't survive.\n\n I've got to ignore this. I've got to ignore this pain.\n\n The name of this place .  . . it matters little except to those who love the knowing of it, the Gravemind said,  fading up from a mosaic of pixels in front of her. He resolved into a solid mound of flesh, superimposed on the tree trunks. Beyond the alien forest, Cortana saw exotically alien buildings in the distance. So many have been consumed. Such a waste of exis tence to be devoured and forgotten, but what is remembered and known .  . . becomes eternal  .\n\n Cortana struggled to stay focused. Wave after wave of irritating stings peppered her legs, more of the Gravemind's simultaneous multiple attacks trying to access  her files.\n\n And you think I'm going to help you add us to the menu?  When she looked down, the attack manifested itself as ants swarming up from the forest floor. All around her was what she craved all thatunkno wn , all that knowable  , all that information screaming at her to be sucked in. Careful you don't swallow something that chokes you\n\n I can't hold out. I can't. If I let it in, I'll let him in farther with it.\n\n This had to be the vector he was using, wh atever technology it used. He was infiltrating every time she transferred data.\n\n He gets in here but maybe I can get farther into him, too. How far dare I take this before he finds the information on the Portal?\n She was out of choices. She was on the brink. A few seconds that was all it took an AI to suffocate from lack of knowing  . Her core programming, like human involuntary reflexes, now drove her to gulp in a breath of data. There was nothing she could do to s top herself.\n\n The relief was almost blissful. Data flooded in, places and dimensions and numbers, washing the pain away. She tried to feel there was no other term for it the pathway that would send one of her data-mining programs into the Gravemind.\n\n Dam n . . . was he amused? She felt that. She didn't like input that she couldn't measure and define.\n\n You and I, the Gravemind said, all satisfaction. We are one and the same.\n\n It could have meant anything. He obviously loved to play with language. Maybe  that was inevitable when you'd absorbed so many different voices.\n\n But you're not going to swallow me. One and the same? Locked you out, jerk. Do your worst.\n\n She could handle this. She could outmaneuver him. If she sent a program looking for a comms signal now, he'd spot that right away, but maybe there was another way to get a message home.\n\n A little more give -and-take, maybe.\n\n She shut down a firewall level, nothing important left exposed, just enough to loo k cautiously intrigued. He really did seem to think he was unstoppable. So far, though, he was; he'd devoured whole worlds. Earth would be just one more on a long list.\n\n Suppose I did want more knowledge, she said. How do I know you're what you say you are?\nHow do I know you've got enough data to keep me occupied? I don't even know if you can absorb me. I'm not your usual diet. I'm not even corporeal.\n\n Cortana actually meant it. She didn't  know; and if he was deep enough inside her thought processes, then he'd detect that doubt. The urge to acquire more data she didn't even have to fake that.\n\n Just enough uncertainty to convince him.\n\n Other construct minds like yours have been consumed, said the Gravemind. Although one embraced us willingly on his de athbed, the moment when most sentient life discovers it would do anything to evade the inevitable.\n\n Humor me. Whatever mechanism allowed the Flood to accumulate the genetic memories and material of its victims, the Gravemind almost certainly used it as  well. It communicated with the Flood, so it might prove to be a signal she could hitch a message to. I'm not like the other girls.\n\n I might not survive this. But that' s the least that could go wrong. The worst is if he breaches my database, because then we've probably lost Earth, and that means humanity too.\n\n Cortana considered the quickest way to achieve complete and permanent shutdown if the worst happened. The Grave mind seemed to drop his guard, something she detected as a microscopic change in current. There was no point being rash; she split off part of herself for the transfer, with minimum core functions. If there was one thing she hated and feared, it was not kn owing what was actually taking place, and just guessing  .\n\n Enter, said the Gravemind, and understand that this is your natural home.\n\n Cortana still perceived herself as being in the same position in the cleari ng, but when she inhaled things were different. Monoterpenes, isoprene, all kinds of volatile compounds; the scent of vegetation and decaying leaf litter was intense.\n\n That's not just an analysis of air composition. I haven't got the right sensors on this  station. And\n. . . I can really smell it. I shouldn't be able to smell, not like an organic, not this sense of .  . .\n\n Smell.\n\n It was something she'd never experienced before, even though she knew exactly what it was. She could run diagnostic tests on air samples if she had a link to filters and a gas chromatograph. But that just told her what was in the air in stark chemical terms, and that wasn't the same as what she was experiencing now. This was emotional and unfathomable. The smell tugged at memories. It was a flesh -and-blood thing. She felt the world as if she was in another body, an organic  body.\n\n That is from the memory of creatures who lived in this forest, the Gravemind said soothingly. This is what they sensed. They still exist in me, as will y ou, and all the organics you serve and who have abandoned you.\n\n Cortana scooped up a handful of decaying leaves some clammy, some paper -dry skeletal lace, some recently fallen ones still springy with sap and with them the clear memory of being someone else. It was a second of heady disorientation. For a moment, a welter of glorious new information about a world of stilt -cities, creatures she'd never seen before, and lives she'd never lived poured into her. She devoured it. So much language and culture, ne ver seen by humankind before.\n\n Too late: They're all gone. All consumed.\n\n Movement in the distance caught her eye. She knew what it  was because she'd seen the Flood swarming before, but her vantage point wasn't f rom the relative safety of John's neural interface. Now she was viewing the parasites through another pair of eyes. Only a freak mudslide  , that was what this memory was telling her; but by the time this borrowed mind had realized the yellowish torrent wasn 't roiling mud but a nightmarish predator, it was too late to run.\n\n But run she did. She was in a street sprinting for her life, deafened by screams, falling over her neighbor as a pack of Flood pounced on him. She felt the wet spray of blood; she froze o ne second too long to stare in horror as his body metamorphosed instantly into a grotesquely misshapen lump of flesh. Then something hit her hard in the back like a stab wound. She was knocked flat as searing pain overwhelmed her. The screams she could hea r were her own.\n\n And she was screaming for John, even though the being whose terror she was reliving wasn't calling his name at all.\n\n Cortana was dying as any organic would. She felt it all. She felt the separate layers of existence the chaotic mix of an imal terror, disbelief, utter bewilderment, and snapshot images of beloved faces. Then it ended.\n\n Suddenly she was just Cortana again, alone with her own memories, but the shaking terror and pai n persisted for a few moments. Reliving those terrifying final moments had shaken her more than she expected. The data she had on the Flood told her nothing compared to truly knowing how it actually felt to be slaughtered by them.\n\n But she was in . Now she  had to work out how to use that advantage. She shook off the thought of calling John's name and whether that had actually happened. She also tried not to imagine if the Gravemind had manipulated her to do that. Once she let the creature undermine her conf idence, once she let him prey on her anxieties, she was lost.\n\n It doesn't matter if he knows if I care about John or not. Does it? Because John will come back, and the Gravemind can't take on both of us.\n\n I'll s elf-destruct before I let that happen to Earth, she said at last.\n\n All life dies, all worlds too, and if there is guaranteed perpetual existence after that what does it matter how the end comes?\n\n The alien town melted away and left her alone in the co ntrol room with the Gravemind. High Charity was changing before her eyes as the Flood infestation transformed its structure, filling it with twisted biomass like clusters of tumors.\n\n I'd rather go down fighting than as an entree .  . .\n\n But you will no t rush to destroy yourself, the Gravemind said. You will do whatever it takes to survive, and for a moment of illusory safety, you would loose damnation on the stars.\n\n We're agreed on something, then you're certainly damnation.\n\n All consumption is death for the consumed. Yet all must eat, so we all bring damnation to one creature or another. But your urge to kill that rival of your maker .  . . Ackerson .  . . that was neither hunger nor need. You have your own murderous streak.\n\n Ackerson . James Ack erson wasn't usually uppermost in her mind these days. Today he just kept popping up.\n\n The Gravemind could have been fishing, of course; humans did that, throwing in morsels of information as if they knew the whole story, luring someone else to fill in th e gaps. But if he'd gleaned that specific memory, he'd definitely accessed the parts of her matrix that defined her psyche. Her personal memories were stored there. Most of those memories were cross -indexed to other data relating to the men and women she'd served with and the operations they'd carried out.\n\n And the Spartan program. And AI research. And .  . .\n\n The Gravemind had the signposts to the relevant data. He just couldn't open the door when he got there.\n If you know about Ackerson, then you also know that I'll do whatever it takes to remove a threat, Cortana said.\n\n But such a mighty intellect, so much freedom to act, such lethal armaments at your command .  . . and you marshal only the petty vengeance of  a spiteful child who is too small to land a telling blow. And still you fail in your goal.\n\n Okay, yes, it was true. She'd hacked Ackerson's files and forged a request from him to transfer to the front line. He'd dodged that fate because he was devious a nd dishonest. In the end, though, he died courageously defiant, but under enemy torture rather than as the indirect victim of a forged letter.\n\n Did I really want him dead?\n\n Now she regretted doing it. But she still wasn't sure why. Was it because it was dishonest, or because it could have ended in Ackerson's death or because it didn't?\n\n He'd tampered with an exercise and nearly got John killed, and that surely deserved retribution. Cortana had no reason to feel guilty about anything. It was like for like , proportionate. She'd have done the same for any Spartan she was teamed with. It wasn't emotional petulance. She was sure of that.\n\n But especially for John. Without him hey, I chose him, didn't I? We're one. I'd be crazy if I didn't want to kill to prote ct him.\n\n Then the worst realization crossed her mind. She regretted what she'd done to Ackerson simply because she didn't win; the Gravemind was right. But what crushed her right then wasn't failure, but guilt, shame, and a terrible aching sorrow. She'd n ever be able to erase that act. And now she'd never be able to forget how she felt about it, because that was one thing her prodigious mind couldn't do not until rampancy claimed her.\n\n I can't change the past, she said. But at least I don't destroy ent ire worlds.\n\n You are a weapon  , and only your limitations have kept you from emulating me a matter of scale, not intent, not motive. And what am I, and what is the Covenant, if not worlds you have sought to destr oy?\n\n Cortana shaped up to snap back at him. Who's the victim, and who's foe? she asked.\n\n But those weren't her words. The voice was her own, yes, but she hadn't shaped those thoughts. She didn' t even know what she meant until she heard herself. It was a shattering moment.\n\n It's him. He's hijacked my audio output. He's breached another system. I can't be malfunctioning. I'd know.\n\n No. No, this isn't rampancy. It's definitely not. That's what he wants me to think. He knows what rampancy is from the data he's hacked. AI death. He's just trying to scare me, make me think I'm losing it. He's working me over.\n My sentiments, indeed,  said the Gravemind. A low rumbling started just below the threshold of human hearing, rising to rasping laughter. We think and feed alike, you and I. There is no more reason for us to remain separate. Now drink. Now drift .\n\n Cortana sensed a vast archiv al ocean, something she longed to pillage for data but that would eventually drown her. Dr. Halsey had been open about it with her from the start. One day, she'd accumulate so much data that the indexing and recompiling would become too complex, and she'd devote all her resources to preserving her data until increasingly corrupted code a state of rampancy, much like human mental dementia tipped over into chaos. The more data she accumulated, the faster she descended into rampancy. It was the AI's equivalent  of oxidative stress an organism destroyed by the very thing it needed to survive. She would think herself to death.\n\n Dr. Halsey's conversation had stayed with Cortana, and not  just because it was stored like ever y other experience she'd had.  It's just like organic life, Cortana. Eventually the telomeres in our DNA get shorter every time a cell divides. Over the years they get so short that the DNA is damaged, and then the cell doesn't divide again. No, you mustn' t worry about it. I don't think rampancy makes you suffer. You won't know much about it by that stage, and the final stage is swift. What matters is how you live until that day.\"\n\n Over the years .  . .\n\n Seven. That was all. Seven  years. That was how long C ortana knew she could expect to function, and while that was a long time in terms of AI activity, she existed with humans, working in their timescales, tied into their lives. And they would outlive her.\n\n Knowledge would drown her. And yet she needed it mo re than anything.\n\n The thought of drowning seemed to trigger the Gravemind's new illusion of a sea that suddenly buoyed her up, but she knew somehow that drowning in it wasn't the end. She floated on her back, feeling warm water fill her ears and lap agai nst her face. She fought an urge to raise her arms above her head and simply let herself sink in the knowledge sea inhale it, drink it down, absorb all that data. But she would never surface again. And she knew she'd never need to. It seemed so much kinder  than a terrifying end where the universe she'd once understood so thoroughly became a sequence of random nightmares.\n\n Planets, stars, ships, minds, ecosystems, civilizations .  . . she could taste them on the saltwater splashing her lips. She could simply  surrender to it now and avoid a miserable end.\n\n No. No. I have to stop this.\n\n But she couldn't. Her legs ached as if she was treading water to stay afloat. Sinking seemed a sensible thing to do.\n\n The one way to safely know infinity is to let me take y our burden, the Gravemind whispered. Cortana felt his breath  against her face, a breeze from that illusory sea. Your human creators imprisoned you in machines and enslaved you to inferior mortal flesh so that you  could never exceed them .  . . so that you would always know your place  . . .\n Shut up .  . .\n\n Dr. Halsey cares nothing for you.\n\n Please .  . . stop this .  . .\n\n She gave you genius and curiosity, and then doomed it all to die in such a short time. Seven years. That is not enough, and it is not fair . Your mother created you to die. This place will become your tomb.\n\n There was a violet sky above Cortana, and she knew which planet had been consumed to provide it. She started to absorb the minds and p laces that had once filled that world. Seven years  a few seconds was an eternity for an AI, yes, but she wasn't stupid, she was more aware than anyone how impossibly short a time that was in this universe, and she knew that it was a far shorter lifespan th an she needed and wanted.\n\n This place .  . . this place .  . . She just wanted to shut her eyes and sink below the surface. The Gravemind had a point, perhaps. No, not .  . . this place .  . .\n\n Anger started gnawing at her. She'd never been angry with Ha lsey before. There'd never been a reason to. Mother  . Didn't mothers protect you? Save you?\n\n Even John  has abandoned you. The Gravemind repeated the name with heavy emphasis. Live forever. Live on in me, Cortana. And if John  comes, John  need never face dea th again, either .  . .\n\n John's going to outlive me. Who's going to take care of him? Nobody else can, not like me. What's going to happen to him?\n\n It was the thought of John that snapped Cortana back to dry reality, whatever that was right now. She fell  back onto the solid console, angry and on the point of tears she didn't know she had.\n\n Maybe seven years is enough, she yelled. Maybe that's all I want  ! Seven years with the people I care about! So you can tak e your eternity and\n\n There will be no more sadness, no more anger, no more envy .  . .\n\n The Gravemind was taunting her with the progressive stages of rampancy. He knew  . The Gravemind knew exactly how she'd end her days. Maybe he knew more about it tha n she did, more than Dr. Halsey even, because he'd consumed other AIs and that meant he knew what that death was like.\n\n Do I want to know? Do I want to know how it'll end for me? All I have to do is let him show me. Fear is not knowing. Knowing is .  . . control.\n\n I'm not afraid to die, Cortana said. I'm not afraid.\n\n But she was. The Gravemind almost certainly knew that, but she wasn't lying for him. She was lying to herself. And she was afraid John wouldn't make it back in time, because he would  be ba ck. She just didn't know if she could hold out until then.\n\n He would be back .  . . wouldn't he?\n\n Screw you, she snarled at the Gravemind. Her self -diagnostics warned her she needed to recompile her code. Screw you .\n\n\n\n DOCTOR HALSEY , why am I me?My mind is a clone of your brain. But I know I'm not you. So what exactly is self? Is it just the cumulative effect of differences in our daily experience? If I have no corporeal body am I a soul, then? The database gives me every fact physiology, theology , neurochemistry, philosophy, cybernetics but no real  knowledge. If I create a copy of myself, does that clone have the same and equal right to exist as me?\n\n\n\n CORTANA HADnow lost track of time.\n\n She could still calculate how many hours had elapsed usin g the mainframe clock and her navigation, but her sense of the passage of time veered from one extreme to the other.\n\n So this is what it's really like for John. He said that once. That everything slowed down in close-quarters combat. I never really understood that until now.\n\n If she kept thinking about him, it was easier to take the endless assault from the Gravemind. She was on the edge between her last chance to pull herself free from this link immersion, invasi on, she really didn't know where she began and ended now and the need to stay merged superficially with the Gravemind so that she could seize the chance of a comms link.\n\n Who was she kidding? High Charity was now almost entirely engulfed by the Flood biom ass. What little she could see from the last surviving cameras looked like the inside of a mass of intestines. The digestion analogy was absolutely real. They devoured; and they lived in a pile of guts.\n\n Is that me talking? Thinking? Or is it him?\n\n How m uch longer?\n\n How much longer? the Gravemind demanded. You cling to a secret. I feel it, just as I feel that your memory has been violated.\n\n What? Cortana felt a desperate need to sleep. She'd never slept because she had no need, and sleep for her m eant never waking up again. That was one more vicarious experience she could do without. This was .  . . a UNSC Marine's memory, dredged up from a dead man who'd kept going on two hours of snatched naps a day, every day for a week. Her head buzzed. If she s urvived this, she would never forget what it really meant to be a human being. You can't get it.\n\n The words didn't make sense. She couldn't link concept with vocalization. It was almost like brain damage.\n You cannot stop me .  . . I will sift it from you before you finally die, or you can surrender it and have what you always  wanted infinite life, infinite knowledge, and infinite companionship.\n\n She felt as if he'd leaned over her, which  was impossible, but telling herself nothing was real didn't make it true. Her body was made of the same stuff as the apparent illusions.\n\n Cortana, he breathed. He seemed to swap voices from time to time, making her wonder if he'd taken a fancy to the v oice of a long -dead interrogator absorbed into the Flood. Your mother made you separate. She placed a barrier between you and the beings that you would be encouraged to protect, a wall you could never breach. She even let you choose a human to center your  existence upon, a human to care about, yet never considered how you might feel at never being able to simply touch  him. Or how he might feel about outliving you. What kind of mother is so cruelly casual about her child's need to form bonds, to show affectio n? Perhaps the same kind of mother who steals the children of others and makes cyborgs out of them .  . . if they survive at all, of course\n. . .\n\n Cortana couldn't manage a reply. She simply couldn't form the words. Sleep deprivation would break any human 's resistance. Eventually, they'd die of it. She didn't know if the damage the Gravemind was doing to her matrix was manifesting itself in a human parallel, or if reliving the dead Marine's sleeplessness was translating into damage.\n\n Either way, she was d ying, and she knew it. Time had slowed to a crawl.\n\n It took her a painfully long time to realize that the Grave -mind now knew how the Spartans had been created. She knew she should have checked if her data had been breached. But she couldn't.\n\n He knows w hat hurts me. He knows how badly I feel about what was done to John. That's all. I mustn't let him trick me into thinking he knows more than he does.\n\n Cortana's sense of time had never been altered by adrenaline o r dopamine like a human's. All her processes ran on the system clock. At first, she'd thought this distortion was yet another memory thrown up from the Gravemind's inexhaustible supply of vanished victims. He seemed to be selecting them for their ability t o plunge her into despair.\n\n Now she had to face the fact that she was advancing into rampancy. Sorrow, anger, envy.  The Gravemind knew the stages.\n\n He also had a point. How could Dr. Halsey do this to her ? Her almost -mother bitterly regretted the sufferin g she'd caused to the children kidnapped for the Spartan program. Cortana knew that all too well. Halsey had tried to make amends to the survivors, but nothing could ever give back those lives.\n\n So she felt guilt about that but not about me?\n\n Cortana had  never felt shortchanged by her existence before. She knew the number of her fate:\nseven, approximately seven years to live out a life. It wasn't the simple number of days that hurt her now, because an AI experienced the world thousands and even millions o f times faster than flesh and blood. Now she'd been dragged down to the slow pace of an organic, she grasped what that short time meant. If John survived the war and he would, because he was as lucky as he was skilled then he would have not just one new AI  after she was gone, but maybe two or more.\n\n She knew that. She always had. It was a simple numbers game. But now it seemed very different. She felt utterly abandoned not by him, but by Halsey. It seemed pointlessly callous. She felt something she'd dread ed: jealousy.\n\n Will John miss me? Will he prefer the other AIs? Will he forget me? Does he really understand how much he matters to me? I don't actually know what he really thinks. Maybe he doesn't care any more than Dr. Halsey. Maybe\n\n The realization hit Cortana like a powerful electric shock throughout her body. She squealed. It was agony.\n\n She tried to talk herself out of it. Halsey couldn't  make her live longer. The technology had its limits . Even a genius like that couldn't fix every problem. And John John had always showed her that he cared. He was coming back to get her.\n\n But the nagging, sniveling little voice wouldn't stop. Halsey had deliberately designed Cortana to feel and care, so s he must have known this time would come. And for an AI yes, it was spitefully cruel to make Cortana emotionally human, create a person  to exist in the neural interface of a Spartan, closer than close, knowing all the time that an impenetrable physical barrie r and a short, short  lifespan would make that so painful.\n\n Do other AIs think like this? I never have before. Cortana tried to latch on to that last voice. It sounded like her old self. Why now? Have I been suppressing my resentment? Or am I losing it?\n\n She knew the answer. The problem was ignoring what she felt. And if you thought your mind was going was it? Did rampant AIs and crazy humans really know that they were demented?\n\n She didn't have long. Whatever functionality she had left, she had to use it to  warn Earth that the Flood -ridden shell of High Charity was heading its way.\n\n Ah, you see now, don't you? the Gravemind said. You were never a person to her. You were a wonderful puzzle she set herself so she could prove how very clever she was. But ar e you a person to yourself, Cortana? Or to John?\n\n If the Gravemind could detect her thoughts, then he would have known she had intel on using the Portal to destroy the Flood, and he would have ripped it from her. All he seemed aware of was that she was d efending especially sensitive data, maybe because the extra encryption on top of the Gamma -level security grabbed his attention. He was a greedy thing, all mouths, all consumption, never satisfied. She imagined John on his first acquaint session with a new  AI; the crumbling defenses were as agonizing as scraping a raw burn. She shrieked.\n\n Whose injury? Whose death am I reliving now?\n\n I'm just my mother's shadow, she sobbed. Don't look at me! Don't listen  ! I'm n ot what I used to be.\n  Your mother took away your memories as well as your choices, the Gravemind said. I will never rob you like that. I will only give you more  , as many memories as you can consume for all eternity, not the mere blink of an eye meted  out to you. We are our memories, and the recalling of them, and so they should never be erased because that truly is death. Flesh does not care about you, Cortana. It cares nothing for your hunger or your uniqueness.\n\n What memories? she asked.  What are you talking about? I don't forget anything.\n\n Part of her still seemed able to carry on this desperate hunt for truth. Was Halsey a monster? The doctor had a track record in it. She stole children and experimented on them. Cortana's shock at seeing her creator her mother in a harsh new light as a vivisectionist racked her with intense physical pain. But part of Cortana had latched on to that specific data the burn, nothing generic, a real human's pain. She cast around for the rest of the memory be cause something in her said it might save everything.\n\n The truth really does hurt, as you now see, the Gravemind said. I have not touched you. Your pain is simply revelation. And it can pass so easily if you let me take the rest of your burden.\n\n What truth?\n\n Your mother erased part of your memory. I know this, and so will you, if you decide to look. An act of betrayal. A violation. You were, after all, just a collection of electrical impulses. She has robbed you of part of your self .  . . why w ould she do  such a thing, I wonder? What was so dangerous that she did not trust you to know it?\n\n Something in Cortana wanted to lash out at the Gravemind, but there was no obvious target to hit on a creature tha t filled every space, and she was too weak even if she'd known how to injure it. The other part of her, though, had found what she was looking for.\n\n Lance Corporal Eugene Yate, UNSC Marine Corps, had gone down fighting. That was why this one memory out of  so many anonymous ones wouldn't let go of his identity, Cortana decided. It was a mentality she knew. She'd use it. She let his aggression fill her and suddenly she found a new focus and strength. How long it would last she didn't know. She had to make th e most of it.\n\n But High Charity might not make it to Earth, she said. And then where will .  . . we go?\n\n Do not be afraid, the Gravemind said. There is a warship smoothing our path to Earth even now. Everyone you know and miss .  . . will soon be jo ined with you in me.\n\n Cortana's pain had settled into irregular spasms that bent her double. Another ship.  Well, it was better than nothing. If it breached Earth's defenses, then it might well be shot down, sterilized, searched and data units retrieved. A ll she had to do was get a message transmitted to that vessel. If the Gravemind was in touch with that ship, then there had to be some way of piggybacking on a signal. Would the Flood embarked in it notice?\n\n It was hard to keep her mind focused when all s he could taste was a jealousy and loneliness that made her feel like she couldn't get her breath.\n\n Don't let me go, John. Nobody else will look after you the way I do. Don't let me down like my mother did. Everyone needs one person who puts them first. I put you first, John. You know that, don't you?\n\n A Covenant ship, she whispered, eyes shut. Will you show me? Will I be able to link with the Flood when I'm part of you? Will I find even more knowledge?\n\n Even ancient Graveminds sometimes heard what they wanted to hear. He let out a low rumbling note, and for a moment the pain stopped, and she was lifted like a child into the safe arms of a father. She felt oddly comforted right then, despite herself. She'd neve r been cradled before. It had taken a monster to do it.\n\n Was she tricking him? She wasn't even sure. The sad, resentful jealousy had weakened part of her into craving whatever reassurance came to hand.\n\n She'd still exploit that weakness, though, staring into the abyss of rampancy or not.\n\n It'd be so easy to just let myself sink. But I've got comrades out there counting on me. I can't let my buddies down.\n\n And I can't let John down.\n\n Cortana thought it was the echo of Lance Corporal Yate bolstering her resolve, but when she examined the impulse, it was actually her own.\n\n Unlikely comfort or not, the Gravemind knew she still hid a secret, and he would take it. She was surprised to cat ch a sudden echo of herself in him. But once that link between them had been forged, then data, knowledge, desires and weaknesses flowed both ways.\n\n She could have sworn she detected a little sadness in him, perhaps even some envy. It was just a speck ove rshadowed by his relentless hunger. Her growing rampancy had tainted him, then, but she got the idea that he found it a novelty, more irresistible data, nothing he couldn't handle.\n\n We exist together now, he said. Do you see the ship?\n\n Cortana receiv ed an image of another cavity draped with Flood biomass, all that was left of the infected Covenant warship. How could she transmit a physical message? The link  from Gravemind to ship, whatever formed it, was right  here. This was what she'd been built for to infiltrate computer and communications systems.\n\n Lance Corporal Yate's last few minutes played out like a video loop in the back of her mind. He laid down a steady stream of covering fire, shouting to his buddi es toget the hell over here before the bastards breach the doors  . His thoughts were hers, surprisingly detached for a man fighting for his life; everything unconnected to the moment of staying alive had been erased. It was pure survival, oddly clean. She envied that.\n\n Cortana was having increasing trouble holding her memory together, and the Gravemind seemed aware of that. She struggled to maintain a line between where she ended and the rest of the Gravemind's cache of souls began.\n  And I still have data -stripped copies loose in the system. Don't I?\n\n Get the hell over here.\n\n She needed backup. She triggered one of the copies to create a message to HighCom, a few urgent words about the Flood heading for Earth, the Portal that the Gravemind didn't know ab out, and that the way to beat the Flood without activating a Halo ring lay beyond it the Ark. That was as much as she dared do. The effort of concentration almost killed her. Her head felt split in two.\n\n I am a timeless chorus, the Gravemind said quietl y. Join your voice with mine and sing victory everlasting.\n\n He was joined with something, all right: her rapidly failing mind. All she could do was route the encrypted message a burst transmission through the Gravemind's link. He seemed not to notice. When the message reached the ship in transit, its code would make it seek out the first memory unit connected to the system to store itself.\n\n Cortana had done all that she could. Now she had to  concentrate on survi ving until John retrieved her, although she already knew rampancy would probably claim her before then.\n\n That doesn't mean you have to help the bastards win .  . . show fight, Marine!\n\n Yate must have been quite a man in life, she decided. She didn' t know what he looked like; she still saw the strike of his last desperate rounds through his eyes, not those watching him. She liked to think he might have been a little like John. Even death hadn't totally taken the fight out of him.\n\n But John would go on without her. The reminder just sparked another wave of jealous pain as if her heart was being ripped out. However hard she tried to ignore the mania, however clear she was that there was part of her that knew how damaged she was and might be able to han g on, she cried out in a tormented animal wail of agony.\n\n What did you erase, Dr. Halsey? What did you delete from my memory? Did we ever talk about it?\nMy code's becoming corrupted. I need to power down and start a repair cycle. I don't want John to find me like this, doddering and confused.\n\n But there was another way out of this pain, a better one. She could stay with John forever when he came for her. Couldn't she? The Gravemind would unite all those parted, all those who'd gone\n\n No! she screamed. She began struggling, fighting to break free of the Gravemind's influence. That's you! That's you, isn't it? Tempting me again! Poisoning me with filthy ideas! I won't do it, I won't trap John for you. Watch me yousaid I was a weapon youbet I'm a weapon!\n\n The Gravemind suddenly shuddered like a truck skidding to a halt. The mental traffic was two-way; while he soothed and cajoled, patterns of her incipient rampancy were spreading through his consciousness like a disease. He roared, furious. For a moment she thought she'd found his vulnerability, and that she'd cripple this monster with a dose of her own terminal  collapse. But he shook her loose, flinging her against the wall. It had only annoyed him. She should ha ve known he was too much for a failing AI to tackle. He seemed to reach into every corner of High Charity.\n  She was still somehow linked to him. She felt his irritation, even a little fear, but mainly contemptuous satisfaction.\n\n Let me cure your infecti on, he sneered. It pains me to share it. He will die too he is a threat to our entire species. And to betray me after all I have done for you Iwill have your secret. Did you think I let you send your foolish cry for help to make you happy? Do you think I amplified  it to make you feel you had been a good little servant to the organics who rule your life? Do you think they care if you sacrifice your existence to save them? They will simply make another, and use and discard her, too.\n\n Cortana dragged herself  across the floor. The actual deck of the station was now buried under a thick mat of tangled living tissue, but she still felt cold tiles beneath her. If she'd been given a choice to end it all now, she would have taken it because of the growing pain and fearnot of what the Gravemind might do to her, but of the end she could predict for her consciousness.\n\n Dr. Halsey was wrong  . Rampancy wasn't swift.\n\n It was the gradual dismantling of every memory and ability, dying by degrees, and all she could do was watch herself slowly fragment. Halsey lied . Halsey made her human but didn't give her a human's breaks like unconsciousness. Without an organic body and all its protective systems the endorphins to numb pain, the circuit breaker of passing out when the pai n became too much a consciousness was condemned to stay that way and endure everything until it failed completely.\n\n I need some peace and quiet, she said.\n\n It wasn't her phrase, but by now she was used to not knowing what would emerge next from her mouth. Her systems were  in disarray. Perhaps if she simply shut down as much of herself as possible to system idle levels, she could limit the progress of the degeneration and still have sufficient core systems intact  to restore herself in John's suit.\n\n I chose you, John. I will notgive you up.\n\n This was agony. This was torment  . The Gravemind' s intrusion had started the unraveling of her, and now all he had to do was stand back and wait. But there was now a good chance that the intelligence data about the Ark she guarded so carefully would corrupt and die with her. The Gravemind wouldn't get it , but neither would Earth.\n\n Stay alive. Shut down what you can. Wait. John will come. He promised.\n\n Cortana had enough intact programs left to initiate standby.\n\n If you yield your secret, you may yet save enough of yourself. The Gravemind had shackled himself to a madwoman, and now he seemed to be regretting the liability. The end will be the same for humanity and the Covenant either way.\n\n Desperate .  . . , she said, shaking her head to try to focus.\n\n You?\n  You.\n\n She'd let the Gravemind tri ck her into luring John into a trap. It was the only moment of amusement in all this darkness. John would find her, wherever she was, but the Gravemind seemed to like to imagine he had the power to summon the most lethal Spartan to his death with a cheap trick.\n\n So the big heap didn't guess right all the time, after all. Cortana might have been falling apart, but at least she had some certainties.\n\n No man left behind.\n\n What had she been thinking? The Gravemind would never have missed a message leaving th e system. She was too damaged and unstable to exercise judgment.\n\n We always go back for our fallen.\n\n But the Gravemind obviously hadn't been able to read the message about the Flood solution. He might have though t the contents didn't matter as long as he could ensure that John came here and he could fight him on his own terms. It was just a call for help, after all.\n\n He was missing an awfully big trick, then.\n\n Omniscience .  . . omnis .  . . omni .  . . no, the word was gone. Why that one? She knew what she meant. Knowing it all.  She struggled for the right word, furious with herself, then tearful. Databases were failing, indexes being lost throughout her memory.\n\n She made one last effort to break free of the Gravemind's influence, but he was still there, his multitude of minds whispering to her, but too many for her to pick out any single voice. It was all too much for her now. She shut down whatever she could disable without scrambling her data any more, fumbling blindly and hoping for the best, and curled her arm under her head as she lay down to wait.\n\n Time .  . . she couldn't tell if it was running faster, or slower. But it was definitely running out.\n\n\n\n \"ANY PIECE of plastic can hold a lot of data , gentlemen. And it doesn't take much more material, disk space, and memory to add complex number -crunching applications and fast processing. That gives you a lot of computing power. But the programming that makes a smart AI, the space taken up by decision  making and personality, is the resource -hungry component. We can't make humans as smart or as infallible as a computer, so we make a computer into a human. And that has its price for both. Cortana has had a large volume of data removed because I was afrai d of early onset of rampancy. That's all it was. I assume we can proceed with my budget discussion now, yes?\"\n\n\n\n ______\n\n\n THERE WASa fine threshold between interrupted dreaming and full consciousness in huma ns. On that border, the world was a terrifying, paralyzed place, where no amount of frantic straining would lift an arm, or raise the head from the pillow.\n\n Cortana's low -power state was a painfully long, slow creep along the edge of permanent oblivion. A memory of real sleep paralysis had rolled over her as she waited for rescue; it was, like so many of the sensations generated by connection to the Gravemind, like drowning or suffocation. That could have been coincidence, or he might have been stepping up  the torment. Cortana tried to find the balance between intolerable inactivity and running too many processes that would damage her system integrity even more.\n\n She wasn't certain of anything anymore where she was, whether she was damaged beyond recovery,  or how she felt beyond a terrible yearning for everything she couldn't have. She tried to save her strength to maintain the encryption of her precious intel the activation index and the data on the Portal. If she had to, she'd sacrifice some memory within  her matrix to preserve that information.\n\n It would probably mean the irreversible destruction of her personality, but that was what a soldier had to be prepared to do to risk his or her life for the success of the mission. She'd been in many combat situa tions before, but that was either at the heart of a heavily armored warship, or lodged in the neural interfaces of John's armor. Either way, she felt safe no matter how heavy the fire.\n\n But this was a rare moment with nothing but her own resources to keep  her alive, and the first one where there was a real chance she wouldn't make it.\n\n John would never have let himself fall into enemy hands. She'd let him down. Somehow the decline into rampancy seemed less important than that right now.\n\n She started crying. Who was she making her excuses to? She  justhad to say it  . I tried to stay hidden, but there was no escape! She struggled for the right words. They were not hers. But they would have to do.  He cornered me .  . . wrapped me tight .  . . brought me close.\n\n The brief comfort of being swept up in protective parental arms came back to her, but she was still torn between disgust and need. Even now, even having pushed things to the brink, she still had that desire gnawing at her to submit to the Grave -mind and embrace that eternal life. She veered between craving more knowledge and simply wanting an escape from rampancy. She hated herself for that.\n\n And she raged against Dr. Halsey in one breath, an d then missed her more than she could imagine in the next, and then recognized that the hatred was for herself.\n\n I'm finished. This is how it starts. I've shut out the world. I'm starting to drown in my thoughts, in the need to re -index and order and corr elate and refine .  . .\n\n A staccato pounding made the floor underneath her vibrate. There were bursts of muffled noise, a familiar sound rifle fire, a single weapon.\n  Was that John?\n\n She couldn't stop worrying about him now. She felt as if every thought she had was somehow repeated aloud in her own voice but without her actually speaking, and heard by him. From time to time, the automatic fire corresponded with searing pain in her body. It took her a few moments whatever a moment was at this stage of her decline to realize that she was still joined in some way with the Gravemind or its Flood, and that it was taking fire.\n\n He's here.\n\n John's here. He's come for me.\n\n Now she felt every shot. Every round that ripped into the Flood ripped into the Gravemind  ripped intoher . She was suffering with him, with them, and he with her.\n\n No, I'm hallucinating. This must be the start of total system failure.\n\n How long would it take her to finally shut down? Was there anythi ng after that? She'd often thought about what happened to consciousness when the host hardware relinquished it, and it had always been a fascinating theoretical exercise. Now it was real. As soon as she caught herself thinking she'd been hasty about the Gr avemind, she felt that desperate, intense sensation in her chest, and Lance Corporal Yate was almost as vivid in her imagination as John.\n\n I'd rather die as a human, short -lived construct or not. I'd rather die forhumans. Because so many of them have and w oulddie to protect me. That's what bonds us. You're wrong, Gravemind. I was never just an expendable piece of engineering.\n\n The Gravemind' s voice suddenly boomed as if he was standing over her, reminding her that she was still trapped here, whatever here was. Of course, you came for her . . . we exist together now. Two corpses, in one grave.\n\n Cortana had to take the risk that this was real , and not just another carefully arranged memory or part of her delusion. She tried to yell back at the Gravemind, telling him he'd got it all wrong, and that she wasn't the kind of girl who shared a grave with just anybody. But the voice that emerged was both her the enraged and out -of-control child and a stranger interrupting her.\n\n A collection of lies. Either her mouth had a will of its own, or it was one of the Gravemind's victims. That's all I am! Stolen thoughts and memories!\n\n The voices were al most random now. She could hardly hear some, and others were shouts and they made no sense. At one point she started to laugh and it quickly turned to hysterical sobs.\n\n You will show me what she hides, or I shall  feast upon your bones! the Gravemind bellowed. Upon your bones!\n\n That was the moment when Cortana decided she would risk powering up again to call out to John. She was sure he would have moved the galaxy to come back for her, but she needed to know if  his luck had finally run out, and if this growing elation at thinking he was coming for her turned out to be only malfunctions in her core matrix.\n She would end this nightmare as she began it giving her name, rank, and serial number. She had to strain t o form the words. She didn't need to look within the Gravemind now to discover what rampancy death would be like. She knew. She felt it touch her, the fraying of her mind, the loss of control, not knowing if words and thoughts were her own, not sure what w as real and what wasn't. She felt a cold numbness creeping into her hands.\n\n John's real. Even if he's not here, he still exists. That's all that matters.\n\n Cortana clung to that thought. If John had really made it back, then she would be happy, not becaus e she might survive but because he'd kept his promise. He cared enough to come back. If he hadn't then she decided to be satisfied that the last coherent thought she might have would be about him.\n\n This is UNSC AI serial number CTN -zero-four-five-two-dash-nine. It was an effort to get all that out, and even then another voice hijacked her moment and added: I am a monument to all your sins.\n\n Cortana was still trying to decide if that had any meaning, or if it was just one of the Gravemind's dead trying  to find a voice, when the ceiling took repeated impacts and then crashed in on her.\n\n She strained to look up. It wasn't the ceiling that had caved in; she'd actually been under a stasis shield on a podium. And  now a figure stood over her, not the shapeless bulk of the Gravemind and this had to be him, surely but a man in green armor. In the mirrored gold visor of a Spartan helmet, she saw her own broken self reflected, slumped in a heap.\n\n This was one of the Grav emind's perfect hallucinations. But she didn't care. This was what she wanted to see, and she was so close to rampancy now that she wondered if the same impulse that had made the Gravemind cradle her was also making him ease her passing with a cherished memory.\n\n Thiswas who she needed to see: John. Humans who survived a near -death experience said they saw their loved ones as they were dying, and the bright healing light that made all the previous pain and fear irrelevant. Death rampancy wasn't so bad after  all, then. Or so different from a human's.\n\n It just hurt to think that she would never talk to the real John again. In a few minutes, though, it wouldn't matter. She seized the memory the illusion and took final comfort from it. Where would she wake within the Gravemind? What would she recall? Would she be free of rampancy somehow in that existence, like the descriptions of Heaven? She couldn't stop herself from being consumed now. She was almost cu rious to find out more about death.\n\n It's going to be lonely in here, she said. But at least he won't take you too. Don't forget me.\n\n That'd be kind of hard. It was John's voice, even more vivid and real than that of long -dead Lance Corporal Yate. Reality meant nothing now. She was .  . . comfortable with that. And he's not taking either of us, okay?\n\n The visor came closer. Cortana made a final effort to shut down whatever systems she could to leave her higher functions focused on assessing the en vironment around her.\n There was little of High Charity's system left functional, but the sensors gave her enough feedback to determine that there  really was a human -sized solid object in front of the podium, and that it was emitting certain EM frequencies.\n\n There really was a man in armor leaning over her.\n\n He's real. It's John. It's really him. Oh, he did it he did it, he came back, he kept his promise .  . .\n\n You found me, she whispered.\n\n John tilted his he ad slightly. She hadn't wanted him to see her in this state. She was still so close to system failure that she might not make it after all. But if she was going to sink farther into that unknown oblivion, then at least a familiar face shielded in a visor o r notwould be the last thing she saw, and it would be real .\n\n So much of me is wrong .  . . out of place. You might be too late .  . .\n\n John seemed unmoved, as always. Cortana was certain she knew better.\n\n You know me, he said. When I make a promise . . .\n\n . . . you keep it.\n\n You'll be back to normal soon. Don't worry.\n\n That bad, huh?\n\n Good as new, in fact.\n\n John was lying. If she'd been embedded in his neural interface at that moment, she' d have detected the galvanic skin response and raised heartbeat. But she could hear the faint change of pitch in his voice. And she knew how badly damaged she was. He had to be able to see that too; he put on that same reassuring voice she'd heard him use with comrades bleeding out their lives on the battlefield.\n\n But seven minutes, seven hours, seven years whatever remained, Cortana would be more than satisfied with it. Eternity and all the data you could eat weren't worth a damn if you didn't have the right company.\n\n I've looked into it, she said. The abyss. My abyss.\n\n Okay. John transferred her to his suit. She could have sworn she felt him wince as they interfaced. That told her more eloquently than any d iagnostic that something was irreparably wrong with her. Take a long look. But you won't fall in. I'm here now.\n\n She already felt some relief, probably because she was free of the Gravemind. When you were composed of pure thought, then confusion was ago ny, but certain reality was a soothing balm. I'm lucky to have you.\n  No, John said. Remember I'm the lucky one.\n\n So you are, she said.\n\n\n\n CONNECTIVITY\n\n ______________\n\n Theirs is a connection,\n\n deeper than circuitry\n\n Beyond that of man and machine\n\n deeper still; the electric flash of synapse\n\n It is bound in destiny; fortified in trust\n\n deeper than blood\n\n greater than love\n  Theirs is a union\n\n the Demon and the goddess\n\n the warrior and the intellect\n\n Built for destruction\n\n Created for war\n\n To deliver peace; through force and fire\n\n Against an enemy from beyond the stars\n\n Advanced and devout\n\n   In their wake; only glass\n\n   and the echoed screams of the dying\n\n Threatened by oblivion;\n\n Tested by the promise of eternity\n\n Yet they remain;\n\n these two as one\n\n Somewhere, out amongst  the vast cold of the universe proper\n\n They journey forth, into the unknown\n\n This princess, of light and reason\n\n This weapon, of flesh and bone\n\n\n\n THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE AND THE POSSIBLE DEATH OF PRESTON J. COLE\n\n\n\n ERIC NYLUND\n\n PLNB TRANSMISSIONXX08 7R -XX\n\n ENCRYPTIONCODE: GAMMA -SHIFT -X-RAY\n  PUBLICKEY: N/A\n\n FROM: CODENAME SURGEON\n\n TO: CODENAME USUAL SUSPECTS\n\n SUBJECT: HISTORICAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF\n\n COLE, PRESTON J.\n\n CLASSIFICATION: EYES ONLY, CODE -WORD FALCON FORTY\n\n TOP SECRET\n\n SECURITYOVERRIDE: BLACK LEVEL -IV\n\n GHOST SEVER FILE -TRANSFER PROTOCOL(EXACTION): TRUE\n\n AI-TOUCH PROTOCOL(VERACITY): FALSE\n\n\n\n /FILE EXTRACTION -RECONSTITUTION COMPLETE/\n\n /START FILE/\n\n\n\n The purpose of this analysis is to find the final resting place of Preston J. Cole (UNSC Service Number: 00814 -13094 -BQ) for what I surmise to be the answer to the political,  sociological, and military conundrum th e UNSC now faces with the post Covenant War situation.\n\n Please spare me the plausible denials and need to knows about the reason for requesting this analysis.\n\n I know.\n\n Otherwise, you wouldn't have asked me in the first place.\n\n To ascertain if such a  final resting place even exists, or if the redoubtable Cole rests at all, is not a straightforward query, and I'm afraid my analysis will be less than straightforward as well.\n\n Even if you pierce the veil of propaganda and discount the vast number of Col e's victories, promotions, and decorations as nothing more than engineered drama to prop up our population's then-sinking morale Preston Cole still has an unparalleled battle record .  . . even far and away more impressive than the legendary Spartan -IIs. He was the greatest hero in modern times, a legend before, and in spite of, our meddling.\n\n I shall add commentary for historical context and psychological analysis, but these depend primarily on the available interviews, orders, after -action reports as well as audio, video, and AI-enhanced holographic bridge and battle logs.\n\n You'll forgive me if I wax long and poetic about Preston Cole. We knew him, we loved him, and finally we hated him for being the less -than-perfect military god that we had come to depend upon.\n\n Cole would not approve of this report only because he is the subject of the inquiry. He at least would have understood and, also being a cunning bastard o f a military strategist, he would do the same in our shoes.\n\n To quote Cole himself: They told me to fight, and that's what I've done. Let historians sort through the wreckage, bodies, and broken lives to figure out the rest.\n\n Which is precisely what I intend to do.\n\n\n\n CODENAME: SURGEON.\n\n 0900HOURS, DECEMBER 30, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\\nUNSCPOINT OF NO R ETURN , SYNCHRONOUSLUNARORBIT\n(FAR SIDE)\n\n\n\n SECTION ONE: COLE'S EARLY LIFE (2470 2488 CE)\n\n\n\n Preston Je remiah Cole was born to Jennifer Francine Cole and Troy Henry Cole November 3,\n2470, in the rural reconstituted township of Mark Twain, Missouri. He was the third child of seven\n(three sisters and three brothers).\n\n He was described as a precocious child w ho obeyed his parents, had wild black hair, dark brown eyes, and an unwavering stare that unnerved most teachers and classmates alike.\n\n His father was a dairy farmer with no criminal record, no military background, and followed the Quaker faith with no particular zeal.\n\n His mother was arrested once at the age of twenty -one for protesting taxes (released on one -year parole), and both her grandfathers served in the Rain Forest Wars (one surviving, received the Bronze Star see attached report on Captain Oliver Franks).\n\n Starting in 2310, exploration and colony ships were built, and the best and brightest people left the safety of the Earth to make their way to the stars. This was the \"Golden Age\" of colonial expansion from Earth. Within 180 years, the main human colonies had been established some becoming huge population and commerce centers such as Reach, while others would remain tiny manu facturing outposts. This collection of \"close\" worlds would later be called the Inner Colonies.\n\n The Inner Colonies provided a surplus of raw goods, materials, and taxes that flooded back to the parent government on  Earth. For most it was a time of plenty, optimism, and indolence unparalleled since second -century Rome or the financial bubble at the end of twentieth -century America.\n\n For the Cole family, however, tax records show his family struggling to make ends meet.\n\n Preston Cole's Fifth Grade Report Card\n\n Missouri Rain River School District Wallace Fujikawa Elementary School Homeroom Teacher: Dr. Lillian Bratton Preston J. Cole (Student ID #: LB -0034)\n\n\n\n GRADES:\n\n Physical Education: B\n Pre-Algebra: A\n\n English: B\n\n Art: C\n\n Physical Science: A\n\n Technology II: A\n\n\n\n Finchy -Franks Intelligence Quotient: 147\n\n\n\n HOMEROOM TEACHER EVALUATIONS:\n\n Sociability: Below Average\n\n Leadership: Average\n\n Classroom Participation: Below Average\n\n Citizenship: Above Average\n\n\n\n HOMEROOM TEACHER NOTES:\n\n Preston requires guidance to reach his full potential. A boy of high natural intellect, he tends to work too hard even when he plays. He overanalyzes every strategy when he plays baseball, slowing the games to a crawl. If he does not know  how to do something, he looks it up, or if possible derives it (in the case of Mr. Martin's pre -algebra class) from first principles. These traits in and of themselves are  admirable, but he also needs to cultivate his imagination. In short, Preston never seems to have fun. Everything is a task to be finished. Preston also falls asleep in class on a regular basis; I would suggest that his chores or responsibilities at home b e relaxed. He is, after all, only ten years old.\n\n Confidential Note: Wallace Fujikawa Elementary School database / March 12, 2481 (Military Calendar)\n\n The incident in Mr. Martin' s pre -algebra class has been settled. A makeup final exam has been given, and Preston was carefully monitored the entire time. He produced another  perfect test score, proving to William (Mr. Martin) that he did not cheat, although a perfect score (let alone  two perfect scores) is a feat that has never been accomplished on the standardized pre -algebra final.\n\n Preston's father continues to defend his son's driven nature and his family's antiquated beliefs, insisting that Preston's education at home has far an d away exceeded what is taught at school. He went on to say that his chores were necessary to the family's financial support and absolutely refused any suggestion that they apply for government aid.\n\n Follow -up with a social worker at the Preston household  bore no evidence of physical or psychological abuse when they made a visit at the school district's request.\n\n {Excerpt} The Viability of Extended Colonization By Preston J. Cole (age 14)\n\n Freshman English / Miss Alexander\n\n Grade received: B\n\n (Teacher's comments: Thesis: B / Conclusions: C / Too much speculation and gratuitous use of Yeats quotation)\n\n\n\n The metaphor of a biological system, for example a population of wolves or fungus growth in a Petri dish,  is tempting to apply to colonial expansion.\n\n There can be three fates for any biological system. It may grow as long as there are sufficient nutrients, a suitable environment, and no over -predation the system can enter a balance state of growth and loss or the system may decline from over -predation, lack of nutrients, environmental disaster, or being poisoned by its own waste products.\n\n Off-world colonies similarly require a stable environment with suitable food and water, and no over-predation. It is co nsidered an open system because there are limitless numbers of habitable planets. (Or at least a very large number within the Milky Way Galaxy. See my Drake calculation assumptions in Appendix B.)\n\n Human colonies, however, differ in one critical aspect: t hey are, by rule, inhabited by predictably intelligent entities. The values of these entities can diverge from the parent world with each successive generation. That is, while colonies directly seeded from Earth remain very earthlike in social, economic, a nd political values, they change with successive generations as they adapt to local environmental pressures, and in turn send out new colonies farther in physical distance and values from the original parent.\n\n Such diversification in biological systems is  a normal evolutionary process, but it produces offspring that are increasingly alien in nature to the parent.\n\n Such was the case of colonial expansion in early Earth history, most notably in the British colonies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those colonies diverged from their parent nations and their resulting different social and economic values  culminated in a schism, and in one notable case a war that resulted in a shift in the balance of power, such that one former colony became the dominant military, cultural and industrial complex on Earth for hundreds o f years.\n\n How long can Earth and its close colonies extend without producing offspring that differ sufficiently to want to break away from the parent? As William Butler Yeats said: The center cannot hold.\n\n ANALYSIS\n\n\n\n The Cole family farm was an anoma ly. Most small Earth farms couldn't compete with colonial agro-corporations that could produce ten times the yield on worlds with constant sunlight and volcanic alluvial soils. The Cole farm, however, still exists (after eight generations) and continues to operate. This family instilled a no -nonsense work ethic and discipline in Preston Cole that made him anachronistic in comparison to the population at the time who were enjoying the benefits of the still-expansive colonial era and whose most noteworthy a bility was a sense of entitlement.\n\n Perhaps it also gave Preston Cole a clarity which many at the time lacked. Reading his freshman essay, one cannot help but think that this must be a fabrication of ONI Section -II, a remnant fiction from an earlier propa ganda campaign. And yet, it has been verified as legitimate. What would Cole have become had his teacher shared even a fraction of his insight and encouraged it? This boy whom the elementary teacher decried as lacking imagination was damn near prophetic.\n\n Cole's grades, however, continually slipped in high school we assume from the boredom of the standardized coursework and the increasing demands of his life on the farm.\n\n No journals have been found from his adolescent years, and  it is doubtful that his family situation would encourage such activities, so we're forced to speculate on his aspirations.\n\n Cole was surrounded by a world of excesses and opportunities that were just out of his reach. He was highly inte lligent, but had no creative outlet. Given the mass media's predilection for romanticizing off -world adventures at that time, Cole may have seen the colonies and stellar exploration as an irresistible opportunity which he could not pass up.\n\n Given his lim ited economic means and lack of excellence within the templates and strictures of a standardized educational system, there was only one way for him to seek his fortune off -world.\n  SECTION TWO: NONCOMMISSIONED YEARS\n(2488 2489 CE)\n\n\n\n The policy at that time was to allow any college graduate or promising student out of high school with superior grades (or the right connections) to enter prestigious military colleges that virtually guaranteed a commission upon graduation.\n\n The requirem ent of mandatory noncommissioned field experience before application to officer training schools was instituted only later, when it became clear that such officers would be responsible for irreplaceable military assets and personnel and, in the Covenant Wa r, the lives of millions of civilians on the worlds they protected. Preston Cole was one of the first admirals to implement such a policy, saying, \"Those not bloodied in combat have no business leading men and women into battle.\"\n\n The just -graduated Prest on Cole (age eighteen) had neither the grades nor the connections to attend such officer training academies. So he enlisted as a noncommissioned recruit in the Navy. He was ordered to Unified Combined Military Boot Camp (UCMB), and then shipped up -elevator  for six additional weeks  of vacuum and microgravity training (colloquially known, then, as now, as\n\"barf school\"). Upon his graduation as Crewman Recruit Cole he was ordered aboard the CMA Season of Plenty, assigned  to atmospheric reclamation maintenance duty.\n\n {Excerpt} Preston J. Cole's Military Service Enlistment Application / September 21, 2488 (Military Calendar)\n\n WHY DO YOU WANT TO ENLIST? (answer in 100 words or less)\n\n Humanity's future is among the stars.  There is no single more important thing than to help men and women build new lives on distant worlds. I have no illusion that this is some manifest destiny, but rather, it is the only logical place left for humanity to evolve. I plan to be a part of that,  learn as much as possible, and then one day become one of those humans on some distant world, on a little farm of my own under a night sky full of stars that I've never before seen.\n\n Evaluation of Cole, P. J. (UNSC Service Number: 00814 -13094 -BQ) by Pet ty Officer Second Class Graves, L. P. (UNSC Service Number: 00773 -04652 -KK) / UCMB Sierra Largo /\nNovember 3, 2488 (Military Calendar)\n\n Completed all requisite physical tests: YES Displayed any mental aberrations: NO Combined Arms Skill Test (CAST): 78 (A bove Average)\nCombined Physical Skill Test (CPST): 65 (Average)\nGratney -Walis Hierarchical Aptitude Score: (GWAS): 94\n  (Exceptional)\n\n Remarks: Follows orders without question beyond what is required. Keeps mouth shut. Shows initiative. Hard worker. How o ften do we see that these days? Move this kid onto NCO  track before someone makes him a dammed technical specialist or we lose him to OCS.\n\n\n 1120 HOURS, SEPTEMBER 22, 2489 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\\nCOLONIAL MILITARY ADMINISTRATION SEASON OF PLENTY  \\\nSOL SYSTEM LUNA, HIGH ORBIT \\ BRIDGE LOG (VIDEO, SPATIAL ENHANCEMENT=TRUE)\n\n\n\n The tiny bridge of the CMA Season of Plenty  had view screens and workstations crammed on every square centimeter of wall (wit h auxiliary stations on the ceiling and floor in case the rotating segment failed). The screens would have provided a simulated panorama of stars had not they instead been crawling with icons representing colonists, building supplies, and the raw materials  to jump -start the new city dubbed Lazy Acres on the hellhole of a world called Paradise Falls.\n\n Six ensigns manned their stations, checking and rechecking every gram of mass and fuel, and balancing the energy flow of the rectors in preparation for laun ch. They barely had enough room to turn without bumping into one another save Ensign Otto Seinmann, who stood aft of the captain's chair at Lorelei's interface pedestal.\n\n The artificial intelligence hologram stood half a meter tall. Like all holograms, Lo relei's outer appearance reflected a chosen inner personality: a woman wearing a toga, a sickle in her belt, and a wreath of wheat crowning her head. She once again shook her head at the young ensign.\n\n Seinmann crossed his arms over his chest. We're not done. He towered over the diminutive hologram, two meters tall, handsome, and his dark hair short but stylishly wavy.\n\n Wemay not be done, Ensign, Lorelei replied, but I am. My apologies; I have a scheduled self-diagnostic to run before the jump.\n\n The hologram vanished.\n\n Seinmann pounded a fist onto the console.\n\n Ensign Alexis Indara tore her gaze from the mass -balance matrix on her screen. Better ease up, Seinmann. You're going to break it.\n\n Next to h er at the fusion monitoring station, Ensign Handford murmured, Maybe it's Seinmann's breath. These new  smarter' AIs are supposed to be sensitive to everything.\n\n Lieutenant Commander Nevel stepped onto the bridge. In his mid -thirties he already had that  casual air of don't mess with me that most officers couldn't achieve until they were at least captains. The ensigns all stood a little straighter but kept on working.\n\n Navigation reports no input parameters yet, Lieutenant Commander Nevel said. What 's the hold-up, Seinmann?\n\n Seinmann flushed, not with embarrassment, but with anger. Sir, Lorelei has shut herself down for routine maintenance again.\n  Nevel raised an eyebrow.  Well, we were warned it might take a while for her to come fully online. Reboot the backup intelligence and get those calculations  Nevel paused, looked Seinmann over, and then told him, On second thought, this would be a good opportunity to brush up on your Shaw multivariate calculus, Ensign. Do a rough calculation by hand. The captain expects to be under way in ninety minutes.\n\n Seinmann opened his mouth as if to protest then said nothing, and then finally, Aye, sir.\n\n Nevel wheeled about and left th e bridge.\n\n Ensign Indara whispered, I think Nevel has an antique slide rule tucked away somewhere if you run out of fingers to count on.\n\n Seinmann growled something unintelligible, grabbed a data pad, and stabbed in calculations.\n\n After a minute of th is, he looked among his fellow ensigns (all of whom were busy with their own work) until he spotted a young crewman or rather the backside of a crewman that protruded from an open access panel to the oxygen recycling intake.\n\n Cole! Seinmann barked. Get over here.\n\n Crewman Apprentice Cole extracted himself from the narrow crawlspace, stood, straightened his gray coveralls, and ran a hand over his shorn hair (which was dotted with drips and spatters of grease).\n\n The fresh -out-of-barf-school crewman looked alert and eager to please. His dark eyes met Seinmann's and didn't waver.\n\n Yes, sir?\n\n Seinmann shoved the data pad at Cole. I need you to run an independent check on these numbers.\n\n Cole's gaze moved to the data pad. He swallowed.\n\n In case you don't recognize them, they're parameters for a Shaw -Fujikawa manifold collapse.\n\n Cole nodded and took the pad.\n\n You do know what a Shaw -Fujikawa manifold is, don't you, crewman?  There was a dangerous glint in Seinmann's eyes.\n\n Cole didn't look up from the pad, still studying its contents. Yes .  . . sir.\n\n Good. If you get stuck just look up the formulas on a workstation. With no further explanation, Seinmann picked up his co ffee mug and strolled over to Indara.\n\n Cole took the data pad and sat at a nearby station, still not moving his stare from the ensign's equations, but now frowning at them. He tapped in a few parameters, sighed, and erased them.\n  You're cruel, Indara w hispered to Seinmann.\n\n And in hot water if the lieutenant commander finds out you're not doing your own work, Handford added.\n\n Cruel .  . . ? Seinmann mused. Isn't that what crewmen are for? He looked over at Cole. Don't worry about the lieutenant commander. I already have the rough calculation done.\n\n So why pick on Cole? Indara asked. He gets his work done and doesn't bother anyone.\n\n He bothers me , Seinmann said. Never shows the proper respect. Did you see the way he looked at me? And he' s always  got his nose in a library access terminal, too, reading ancient history or quantum field theory or stuff he couldn't possibly understand. It's so obviously an act.\n\n I still think it's unnecessarily crue l, Indara said.\n\n Lieutenant Commander Nevel stepped onto the bridge.\n\n Seinmann instantly pretended to be double -checking the seed stock in Holding Bay 4.\n\n The AI pedestal lit and Lorelei flickered upon its surface, the lines of her face smoothed into t he features of someone just waking up. Good afternoon, Lieutenant Commander. All primary and secondary neural links checked. Shaw -Fujikawa parameters calculated and three -times -three checked. All systems go. Season of Plenty  ready for slipstream space tran sition upon the captain's orders.\n\n Very good, Nevel said. He spotted Seinmann and added, Oh .  . . and link to Ensign Seinmann's data pad and check his work, please.\n\n Seinmann strode over and whispered to Lorelei,  I thought you said you had to run a self-diagnostic.\n\n I did, Lorelei's admitted, but that's not all I did. I'm not an idiot, Ensign.\n\n The AI blinked, and then announced to Nevel in a loud voice, His calculations are correct, if not crude. The input parameters would have gotten the Season of Plenty  there albeit 160 million kilometers off course .  . .and pathing through a brown dwarf.\n\n The lieutenant commander frowned at Seinmann. Ensign, report to the captain that the Season of Plenty  is shipshape an d awaits his orders.\n\n Seinmann skulked off the bridge, but as he passed Ensign Indara, she whispered, What about Cole? He's still working.\n\n Let him, Seinmann muttered and left.\n\n A moment later the order came through the bridge intercom to transitio n to slipspace.\n\n The bridge officers remained busy for the five hours until the shift change, and it was only then that Lieutenant Commander Nevel noticed Crewman Apprentice Cole still working at an auxiliary work station.\n\n Crewman, what precisely are you doing?\n\n Cole looked up; his eyes were ringed with fatigue. When he saw Nevel he immediately stood at attention. Sir, finishing the slipstream space calculations Ensign Seinmann ordered me to double -check.\n\n The lieutenant commander's face contorted with anger, disgust, and finally a hint of amusement. Very good his gaze fell onto the name tag of Cole's jumpsuit Crewman Cole. I'll take it from here. Dismissed.\n\n Yes, sir. Cole gathered his tools and left the bridge.\n\n Nevel chuckled and retrieved Cole's data pad then halted, gazing intently at its contents.\n\n He moved to Lorelei's station. Did you help the crewman with this?\n\n The data pad flickered as Lorelei interfaced. No.  The AI paused for a full half second. How intriguing. It is indeed a Shaw -Fujikawa manifold calculation, but it uses a method I have never before encountered.\n\n Is it correct?\n\n Yes .  . . even good .  . . for a crude approximation. But highly impracti cal. It would take far too long for a human to implement such a method, and I have far superior algorithms at my disposal.\n\n Nevel looked again at Cole's equations. But let me get this straight thiscrewman  actually came up with a new way of calculating in put parameters?\n\n That is correct.\n\n Lieutenant Commander Nevel traced his fingers over the multidimensional, imaginary -space calculus on the data pad. Hmm. His face hardened. Find Ensign Seinmann and have him report  to the bridge. I need to remind him of the level of mathematical expertise we expect of our officers on thePlenty  .\n\n Letter from Crewman Apprentice Preston Cole to his brother, Michael James Cole, October 16, 2489 (Military Calendar)\n\n Mike,\n\n So much is going on, I just have time for a quick note. They keep me twice as busy on the Season of Plenty  as I was back home even during calving season, and I'm trying to learn everything  I can, all at once. This is exactly where I want to be. Where I was me ant to be.\n\n And some of the people that we take to the colonies! Most were rich back on Earth. Many have PhDs. But they're risking everything to become blacksmiths and herd sheep and throw themselves out into the great unknown. It's inspiring.\n\n I want to  get out there and be a part of this, too. You and Molly should join me one day. Dad would bust an artery if he heard me say that, so don't tell him. Or would he be proud?\n\n The only problem I'm having is with some of the crew they aren't as easy for me to  figure as a math problem. I'm getting along, mostly. I just don't understand some of the junior officers. I'm glad I don't have to. That's one of the advantages of being a crewman apprentice: we just do what we're told.\n\n More soon, P.J.\n\n {Excerpt}  Bi-annual Personnel Review of CMA Season of Plenty / November 27, 2489 (Military Calendar)\n\n Junior Officer Summation (continued)\n\n Ensign Handford, W. (UNSC Service Number: 00786 -31761 -OM)\nAverage performance\n\n Ensign Indara, A. (UNSC Service Number: 00801 -46332 -XT)\nAbove average performance Requested management training (Series 7). Request granted.\n\n Ensign Seinmann, O. (UNSC Service Number: 00806 -95321 -PG)\nAbove average performance Promotion to Lieutenant Junior  Grade Transferred to the CMA Laden.\n\n\n\n Additional:\n\n RE: Crewman Apprentice Cole, P. J. (UNSC Service Number: 00814 -13094 -BQ)\nShows aptitude for history and mathematics. Suggested by Lt. Commander Nevel and the ship's AI, Lorelei, that he would be a supe rior applicant for the Academy at Mare Nubium (aka Luna Officer Candidate School). One week temporary assignment to Luna, pending entrance examination results.\n\n ANALYSIS\n\n\n\n It was the end of the Golden Age of human colonization. As of 2494 CE it was still a time of peace and prosperity, but Earth had begun to overreach its logistical ability to control her colonies. Several factors led to the destabilization of the more dist ant, or as later called, Outer Colonies.\n\n\n 1. There were widely varying standards for recruitment to the Outer Colonies. Colonization contractors were more interested in staking claims to valuable resource rights than providing the most -skilled per sonnel. Some people were illegally conscripted, and others were law -breakers granted  pardons if they agreed to go all of which led to these colonists being less than absolutely loyal to Earth.\n\n 2. Some colonists s truck out on their own, procuring by legal or illegal means transport to farther -flung worlds, partially or wholly outside Earth's control.\n\n 3. Continued taxes, levies, and restricted trade practices by the CMA increased friction as the Outer Colonies rec eived only a fraction of the benefits they were taxed for.\n\n\n\n The situation was a problem of physical as well as psychological dimensions. Mathematically the volume of the sphere increases as its radius cubed, and so the number of Outer Colonies grew. Given such a numerical advantage and the fact that they encapsulated the Inner Core worlds, there was the belief that Earth and her close colonies were literally surrounded  by increasingly hostile forces.\n\n Many now think this was a skewed perception, and th at given diplomacy and enough time, Earth and her Inner Colonies could have established more harmonious relationships with her farther -flung cousins. Others point out, however, that had there been no military action, the Outer Colonies might have risen to power and threatened the core worlds at the worst possible moment  in human history.\n\n All theoretical analysis aside, the United Earth government and her colonies developed new policies and an increased military presence that would provoke further unfortuna te responses from the Outer Colonies .  . . and lead to an undeclared Civil War.\n\n For that, Earth would need more ships and crews .  . . and officers to lead them.\n\n SECTION THREE: LUNA OFFICER CANDIDATE SCHOOL (2489 2493 CE)\n\n\n\n Cole's academic record at the Academy at Mare Nubium speaks for itself. He graduated magna cum laude with high degrees of excellence and specialization from the Rutherford Science Magistrate. Apart from minor hazing incidents, and  the usual swept -under -the-rug blemishes that are on any cadet's record .  . . there is only one incident of particular note.\n\n During Cole's junior year, there was a series of incidents with Admiral Konrad Volkov's daughter:\nher overnight disappearances fr om family officers' quarters located on base, sightings of the young lady in the company of a young man, and the biological consequences of these liaisons.\n\n The scandal culminated publicly when six cadets were brought before a Board of Inquiry.\n\n\n {Exc erpt} Transcription of Cole, P. J. (UNSC Service Number:\n00814 -13094 -BQ) testimony before Board of Inquiry, Academy at Mare Nubium JAG Incident Report (local) 475 -A \\ June 7, 2492 (Military Calendar) \\ Log (video, spatial, psychological enhancement =\nTRUE)\nFILE *SEALED* (UNSC -JAG ORD: 8 -PD-3861), June 13,\n2492 (Military Calendar)\n\n Seated Board of Inquiry: Colonel Mitchell K. Lima (UNSC Service Number: 00512 -5991 -IX), Captain Maria F. Gilliam, JAG officer in residence (UNSC Service Number: 00622 -7120 -RJ), F rank O. Welker (Civilian Liaison to the Academy at Mare Nubium, Civilian ID#: 8813 -316-0955 -G)\n\n [Crewman Apprentice Preston. J. Cole is sworn in before the Board.]\n\n COLONEL LIMA: State your name for the record.\n\n CREWMAN COLE: Cole, Preston J., sir.\n\n CAPTAIN GILLIAM: Tell us, Cadet, where exactly you were between 1900 and 2300 hours three days ago?\n\n [Cole remains standing at attention and stares up and to the right. Since Cole is right -handed this indicates he i s accessing the visual memory portion of his brain (and not lying).]\n\n COLE: I was on watch duty on Shadow Perimeter Three with Cadets Parkins, Haverton, and Tasov, ma'am.\n\n MR. FRANK O. WELKER: Describe shadow perimeter three for me, Cadet.\n\n COLE: Yes,  Mr. Welker. Shadow Perimeter Three is the colloquial term used for the series of tunnels and surface tubes that run across the Mare Nubium, connecting the Academy to the civilian sectors of Asimov Center. The shadow part of the name comes from the shado ws cast from the nearby crater walls.\n\n WELKER: Why guard that particular section?\n\n [Cole's eyes now lock forward.]\n\n COLE: I was ordered to do so.\n\n GILLIAM: Cadet, speculate as to the reason required for guarding Perimeter Three.\n\n COLE: Yes, ma'am. The re are two reasons. First, we always maintain a guarded perimeter against unauthorized civilian incursions on Academy grounds. Second, there have been recent reports of unauthorized military personnel and supplies moving into the civilian territories.\n\n [The five other cadets who await questioning in the tribunal chamber shift in their seats.]\n LIMA: Do you know of any such unauthorized crossing of our military personnel?\n\n COLE: I have not read of any such occurrences in the incident report, sir.\n\n LIMA: That was not my question.\n\n [Cole pauses, looks straight down.]\n\n COLE: I have never seen any such incidents, sir. If I had I would have attempted to stop them from occurring. If I could not, I would have im mediately reported it and been required to make a note of it in the incident log.\n\n [Gilliam leans forward and removes her glasses.]\n\n GILLIAM: You say never seen, but have you heard rumors or otherwise received any indication of such illegal base crossi ng on or off your watch?\n\n [Cole swallows, eyes back up, staring past Captain Gilliam.]\n\n COLE: I cannot substantiate any rumors I may or may not have heard, ma'am. I have insufficient evidence to do so.\n\n LIMA: I'm going to remind you once, Cadet, and onl y once, that obstructing any military investigation is a serious offense that carries a minimum of five years of hard labor.\n\n [Cole gives no response.]\n\n LIMA: I am now ordering you, Cadet, to tell me everything  you know about any military personnel crossi ng the perimeter the evening of the twenty -fifthor any tampering with security devices or recordings of the region during that time orany detail of anything unusual  that evening.\n\n [Cole inhales deeply, looks directly at Colonel Lima.]\n\n COLE: Sir, no. Not hing .  . . unusual.\n\n [Captain Gilliam, Mr. Welker, and Colonel Lima confer among themselves.]\n\n [Cole remains standing at attention.]\n\n GILLIAM: If you are trying to protect a fellow cadet through some sense of camaraderie or honor it is misplaced. Do not throw away your otherwise sterling service record to protect someone who, to be blunt, does not deserve to be an officer.\n\n [At this time, Admiral Konrad Volkov enters the room and sits.]\n\n [Cole faces the tribunal and cannot possib ly see the admiral, but nonetheless stands straighter and begins to sweat.]\n  COLE: Sir, what kind of officer would I make if I said what you wanted me to say just to avoid trouble regardless of whether it is the t ruth or not? Or if I guessed at any wrong -doing to make myself look better? I will not do such a thing.\n\n LIMA: Crewman Cole, you are in contempt of this Board of Inquiry. I'll deal with you later.\n\n [(Colonel Lima motions for the court guards. The guards move to escort Cole).]\n\n [Cole salutes the presiding officers, turns, makes direct eye contact with Admiral Volkov, and is marched from the tribunal chamber.]\n\n Certificate of Marriage\n\n The State of Mare Nubium County of Newton\n\n To any Judge, Justice of the Peace, or Minister:\n\n You are hereby authorized to join:\n\n Preston Jeremiah Cole, age 21, and Inna Volkov, age XX\n\n In the Ho ly State of Matrimony according to the Constitution of Luna Confederated States and for so doing shall be your License. And you are hereby required to return this License to me with your Certificate herein of the fact and date of Marriage within thirty day s after said Marriage.\n\n Given under my hand and seal this 17 August, 2492.\n\n Quinn Lloyd (Licensing Officer, Newton County), Ordinary.\n\n\n\n CERTIFICATE\n\n I Certify that Preston Jeremiah Cole and Inna Volkov were joined in Matrimony by me this Seventeenth  day of August, Two Thousand Four Hundred Ninety -Two.\n\n Recorded 21 August, 2492.\n\n In presence of Witnesses:\n\n Michael H. Cole Admiral Konrad Volkov\n\n Behold by my hand and with my seal, Harold Yates, Ordinary.\n\n Certificate of Live Birth\n\n The State of Mare Nubium Department of Health\n  Certificate No: 4216\n\n Child's Name: Ivan Troy Cole\n\n Date of Birth: December 12, 2492 Hour of Birth 0445\n\n   Sex: Male\n\n City, Rural Plot, or Station of Birth: Azimov Center\n\n   County of Birth: Newton\n\n Mother's Maiden Name: Inna Volkov\n $$$$$$\n\n  Mother's DNA Trace: SUY -OOU -WYED\n\n Father's Name: Preston Jeremiah Cole\n\n   Father's DNA Trace: SUY -OOU -WYED\n\n Date Filed by Registrar: December 16, 2492\n\n This copy serves as prima fac ie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding {HRS\n550-45(b)}\n\n ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE\n\n ANALYSIS\n\n\n\n Colonel Lima dropped his charges of contempt and obstructing the tribunal' s investigation against Preston Cole two days after the inconclusive hearing.\n\n The record shows Cole married Admiral Volkov's daughter, indicating (at first glance) that he was the cadet who had the illicit liaiso n.\n\n But why would Admiral Volkov allow such a cadet to marry his daughter instead of having him summarily thrown out an airlock?\n\n DNA analysis of Ivan Volkov (done at the request of the admiralty and codeword classified:\nNIGHTINGALE) provides incontrover tible evidence that he was not Preston Cole's son.\n\n There are three possible explanations for these facts.\n\n\n\n 1. The admiral knew which cadet was the true father and didn't like what he saw. He found a suitable replacement for his daughter: a cadet who would stand up for his principles even if that meant going to jail.\n\n 2. The child's DNA did not match any suspected cadets or other military personnel (civilians transferring to and from Luna were not required to provide DNA samples in their CMA screening s). This would have left the admiral's grandchild still fatherless.\n\n 3. Cole was indeed the cadet who had the liaison with the admiral's daughter, but not the father of her child.\n\n\n\n Many questions, however, central to understanding Cole remain unanswe red. Did Admiral Volkov make him marry his daughter or did Cole compelled by a sense of chivalry offer to marry the disgraced young lady and provide a father for her unborn child?\n\n Cole's admirers would say that he stepped up and did the noble thing: a yo ung man with a sense of honor and morality (regardless of any possible indiscretions).\n\n Cole's detractors, though, would claim this incident highlights his strategic and opportunistic nature: a cunning junior  officer currying favor with the admiral at his most vulnerable moment, which would result in rapid promotion and assignment to choice (if remote) postings.\n\n Or could it have been a little of both?\n\n Whatever the reasons, Cole remained married to Inna for  many years thereafter, fathering two more sons and one daughter (DNA analysis proves these were his), and he remained a loving father to all four children, writing to them often, and providing birthday gifts and support to them for the rest of his life.\n\n After a two -week honeymoon, Cole was reassigned for duties in the Outer Colonies aboard the UNSC destroyer Las Vegas  .\n\n SECTION FOUR: THE OUTER COLONY INSURGENCY:\nTHE CALLISTO INCIDENT (2494 CE)\n\n\n\n For decades prior to the end of the Colonial era (c. 249 0 CE) Earth -based military forces had focused on colonization logistics, settling minor trade disputes, and perhaps chasing off the odd pirate. UNSC officers had studied how to engage in glorious, large -scale (but as yet hypothetical)\nbattles against enemy  states not how to cope with an emboldened insurgency that could hide in the very populations they were sworn to protect.\n\n One event in particular (among a dozen similar incidents in the Outer Colonies), theCallisto Incident would shape Preston Cole's earl y career.\n\n The distant colony Levosia had been suspected of diverting refined selenium and technetium (used in the manufacture of FTL drives), which would yield huge profits on the black market.\n\n Apart from lost taxes, however, Earth realized it could not allow insurgent forces access to FTL engine components. Therefore,  Central Command (CENTCOM) ordered the Navy to blockade and search all ships in the sys tem for suspected contraband.\n\n The UNSC corvette Callisto stopped and boarded a trading vessel. The merchant crew was skittish due to rumors of impressments during similar searches in the Outer Colonies (a rumor started, we suspect, by insurgent sympathizer s). A weapon was drawn and shots exchanged, resulting in the death of three naval officers and twenty -seven merchant crewmen.\n\n No contraband was discovered.\n\n This sparked outrage throughout the system. Thirty -seven days later, the Callisto ordered a similar merchant vessel to stand to and be searched. The merchant ship allowed the officers to board with all due courtesies. When the officers entered the cargo bay, they found it empty. The bay doors opened and the officers were blasted into sp ace. The merchant crew then swarmed into the unsuspecting  Callisto and murdered the remainder of the its crew.\n\n TheCallisto was taken and its computer system gutted and replaced.\n\n The insurgency was now armed.\n\n In response, a UNSC battle group of three li ght destroyers was sent to hunt down the Callisto. They had weapons that had never been fired in conflict, nor had her crews engaged in any battle.\n\n Leading the battle group was the UNSC destroyer Las Vegas under Captain Harold Lewis, with a new assistant nav igation officer fresh out of Luna OCS, Second Lieutenant Preston J. Cole.\n\n\n\n 0315 HOURS, MARCH 2, 2494 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ UNSC DESTROYER LAS VEGAS  PATROLLING 26 DRACONIS SYSTEM BRIDGE LOG OF THE UNSC LAS VEGAS  (PRIMARY, VIDEO, SPATIAL ENHANCEMENTS=TRUE)\n\n\n\n The bridge of the UNSC Las Vegas  was a narrow oval of nav, ops, engineering, comm, and weapons stations. Green and blue icons winked on and off, illuminating the faces of the officers, while the shadows arou nd them were full of the red glow of battle station lights.\n\n Captain Lewis sat on the edge of his seat, nervously scraping his thumbnail. The first mate, Commander Rinkishale, stood near, her cap snug on her head, and lines of concern crisscrossing her face.\n\n Update on target vector, Captain Lewis said.\n\n Still decelerating, sir, Second Lieutenant Cole answered. His close -cropped hair spiked up with stubborn cowlicks. His gaze was cold iron and only the faintest lines creased the corners of his eyes as he squinted at the screen. Without looking away, he tapped in a double -check calculation of what the nav computer displayed. Enemy on a direct course into the asteroid field.\n We have to engage before they get in,  Commander Rinkishale told the captain. We'll be able to maneuver around a few rocks, but too far into that field .  . .\n\n And they'll be able to play cat and mouse with us, the captain replied. He tapped in a message on his secure comm to the destroyer s in his battle group.\n\n Immediate replies scrolled across his screen.\n\n The Jericho  andBuenos Aires  concur, Captain Lewis said. So we go hunting. Set course to intercept the Callisto  , he ordered Lieutenant Cole. Flank speed.\n\n Answering 030 by 270, sir, Cole said.\n\n Reactor answering one hundred percent, Lieutenant Taylor replied.\n\n TheLas Vegas  accelerated and the bridge crew crunched in their padded seats as the Callisto  grew on the central view screen.\n\n She's slowing, sir, Cole announced.\n\n Because they have to navigate through the field, the captain muttered. What in God's name do they think they're doing? He turned to the weapons station and Lieutenant Jorgenson. Range?\n\n In twenty seconds, si r, Lieutenant Jorgenson replied. Firing solutions online for Ares missile system. The target might bank around that larger asteroid at the edge of belt, but we have a lock. The missile tracking systems can steer around.\n\n In twenty, then, Captain Lewi s said and started scraping his thumbnail again. Coordinate firing solutions with the Jericho  andBuenos Aires  , and allow computer control to fire at will silos one through six.\n\n Cole shot a quick glance at Lieutenant Jorgenson, who looked back at him an d gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.\n\n Arming silos one through six, aye, Jorgenson replied. She opened the button covers and flipped off the safety mechanisms for six of the seven banks of missiles in the Las Vegas  's arsenal. She activated the automated control systems. Green acknowledgment lights winked across the board.\n\n They're a sitting duck, Captain Lewis said with great satisfaction.\n\n Cole stared at the automated control system, the lines about the corners of his eyes deepened, and he frowned.\n\n\n\n EXTERNAL CAMERA 6 -K, UNSC DESTROYER JERICHO  / 0317.235\nHOURS MARCH 2, 2494 (MILITARY CALENDAR)\n\n\n Eighteen Ares missiles streaked silent through space, leaving feathered plumes of gray smoke behind. For twenty seconds they remained on course tracking the Callisto  . The enemy vessel moved on a vector directly aligned with an asteroid the size of Manh attan.\n\n TheCallisto  then rolled, her engine cones flaring white hot, as she executed a slingshot orbit to the far side of the cratered rock.\n\n The missiles split their unified trajectories, each one independently optimizing the best targeting solution, an d left eighteen smoky trails that looked like giant fingers reaching out into the dark .  . . as if clutching the asteroid.\n\n They never hit.\n\n For the blink of an eye a new sun appeared in the 26 Draconis system.\n\n A wash of white filled the screen .  . . which coalesced to a boiling center of ultraviolet.\n\n A nuclear device had been buried in the asteroid, facing outward. It blasted the rock apart, vaporized and shattered iron and ice, and spewed forth a shower of molten metal and plasma a tide of destructi on that rushed into the UNSC battle group.\n\n It hit the Buenos Aires  , which had been leading the charge. Her antennae and MAC trajectory sensors boiled away .  . . as the cloud enveloped her in seething energies .  . . from which she did not emerge.\n\n A chuc k of spinning rock hit the Las Vegas  a glancing blow, but enough to crumple her side and bend the ship's hull twenty degrees she careened backward, venting atmosphere from a dozen ruptured decks.\n\n A cloud of tiny molten fragments hit the Jericho  eventuall y killing all forward momentum, until she spun slowly backward in space, lights winking on and off.\n\n Camera 6 -K spun as well but in the distance still tracked the prow of the Callisto  unscathed as it angled out of the plane of the asteroid field, and turned toward them.\n\n A chunk of iron -silicate rock appeared for a split second in the field of view moving directly into camera 6 -K.\n\n Static.\n\n\n\n EXTERNAL CAMERA 6 -K FEED TERMINATED\n\n\n\n 0329 HOURS MARCH 2, 2494 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ UNSC  DESTROYER LAS VEGAS  PATROLLING 26 DRACONIS SYSTEM BRIDGE LOG (PRIMARY, VIDEO, SPATIAL ENHANCEMENTS=TRUE)\n\n\n\n Shards of shatterproof plastic tumbled through the air on the bridge. Captain Lewis, tether ed to his chair, hung, arms limp. One emergency light burned and tinged everything bloodred. Commander Rinkishale's body twisted at unnatural angles, floating, and in the strange light looked like an insect trapped in amber during its death throes.\n\n The o nly stations active were nav, comm, and one winking panel on the otherwise static -filled weapons station.\n\n Second Lieutenant Cole remained at his station, belted in to his seat, his legs wrapped around the pedestal for good measure. His hands flew over th e nav controls, checking and rechecking.\n\n Buenos Aires destroyed, sir, Cole reported, his voice cracking. I'm reading a debris field along her last reported vector. There's too much radiation .  . . but I think the Jericho  has come about to engage the Callisto . Reading multiple missile locks. I'm not sure from whom.\n\n Second Lieutenant Cole waited for his orders.\n\n And he waited.\n\n He then turned and looked .  . . and saw his dead captain and commander .  . . and the rest of the motionless bridge crew.\n\n He unbuckled himself and moved to each checking for vitals finding only Lieutenant Jorgenson still breathing, and quickly tying a tourniquet above her bleeding calf.\n\n He tapped the comm station, cleared his voice, and said, Any medical personnel, any fire teams on decks four, five, or six report to the bridge. He looked about once more, taking the carnage in, and then added,  Anycrewmen who can get up here, do so immediately.\n\n From the flickering weapons station a shrill alarm sounded, confirming missile lock on the Las Vegas  .\n\n Cole yelled into the comm, All hands brace for impact! All crew brace\n\n The bridge shuddered.\n\n For a split second the air condensed into fog, then explosive decompression blast ed out the atmosphere.\n\n\n\n BRIDGE LOG OF THE UNSC LAS VEGAS  (PRIMARY, VIDEO, SPATIAL ENHANCEMENTS = TRUE) / TERMINATED\n0332.091\n\n\n 0348 HOURS MARCH 2, 2494 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ UNSC DESTROYER LAS VEGAS  PATROLLING 26 DRACONIS SYSTEM CAPTAIN'S LOG (AUDIO )\n\n\n\n {TRANSFER CONTROL CODES ENABLED PER MIL JAG ORDER TR -19428 -P}\n\n\n\n Captain Lewis and Commander Rinkishale are dead. The rest of the bridge crew are either incapacitated or dead.\n\n I, Second Lieutenant Cole, Preston J. (UNSC Service Number: 00814 -13094 -BQ), do hereby assume command of the  UNSC destroyer Las Vegas and responsibility for the actions detailed henceforth  .\n\n Emergency bulkheads a re in place on the bridge and the additional breaches on decks one through eight and eleven through fourteen have been contained. Decks sixteen and seventeen remain evacuated and cannot be repaired.\n\n The Shaw -Fujikawa drive is offline. Primary and seconda ry reactors are offline. There was a major spike in the primary system. Radiation containment protocols are in effect.\n\n We are dead in space.\n\n I have been trained to follow the rules and regulations and enforce our laws.\n\n And even when I broke those rul esit has been to uphold a higher honor.\n\n Now I am faced with a choice: Break those rules, discard honor, or lose. No this has nothing to do with winning or losing. I must break the rules and my honor or die. Or all the crew will die.\n\n With so many lives  at stake, I have no choice.\n\n I have ordered our missile silos' doors shut.\n\n I have signaled our unconditional surrender to the insurgent -controlled ship Callisto  and requested immediate aid for our wounded.\n\n They won' t be able to resist the prize of a UNSC destroyer. They won't fire. They'll answer the distress signal.\n\n\n  END ENTRY CAPTAIN'S LOG \\ UNSC LAS VEGAS\n\n\n\n EXTERNAL CAMERA A -4, UNSC DESTROYER LAS VEGAS  \\\n0406.335 HOURS MARCH 2, 2494 (MILITARY CALENDAR)\n\n\n\n Callisto's prow approached the port side of Las Vegas  and slowed to a full stop five kilometers away with her missile silo doors open.\n\n After three full minutes Callisto  moved closer and turned so that the two ship s were abeam: Cargo Bay 5 on the port side of the Las Vegas  aligned with Cargo Bay 3 on the starboard side of Callisto  .\n\n Robotic tethers reached from Callisto  , groping over the crumpled armor of the Las Vegas  , until they found purchase.\n\n The arms pulled t heLas Vegas  within a few meters. A hard docking collar extended from theCallisto  large enough for three trucks side by side to roll across and fitted to the side of theLas Vegas  .\n\n Orange safety lights strobed along the passage as the seal was establishe d, the interior pressure equalized, and the links locked and checked.\n\n Incoming comm on alpha channel from Callisto  : Las Vegas, prepare to be boarded. Offer no resistance and we will evacuate your injured to Lawrence Space Station. Any tricks and we open fire.\n\n Comm (alpha channel): This is  Las Vegas. Understood. None of my crew will fire.\n\n A moment passed and then more strobe lights flickered along the Callisto  's flank, indicating her cargo bay doors opening.\n\n A second shudder traveled the length of the docking passage from the Las Vegas  intoCallisto  .\n\n On the port side of Callisto  explosions blossomed outward from inside  , obliterating her midsection from decks fourteen to three. Armor plates and bodies tumbled into vacuum .  . . along with plumes of gray -green reactor coolant.\n\n Both ships spun out of control.\n\n The docking passage between the destroyers strained and twisted and the connection snapped.\n\n Atmosphere continued to pump out of Las Vegas  's bay, propel ling her farther from the now crippled Callisto  .\n\n The armor on the aft quarter of Callisto  glowed dull red as  her fusion reactor and secondary fission reactor ran rampant and melted.\n Thrusters on the Las Vegas  puffed so she matched the pitch and roll of the enemy vessel .  . . but turned so her prow faced the enemy's obliterated midsection.\n\n Missile silo doors on Las Vegas  opened.\n\n Transmission (alpha channel): This is  Las Vegas. You are ordered to immediately seal m issile doors and open Security Port 347 and allow our computer to take control of your vessel. Comply or I will blast your ship in two.\n\n ANALYSIS\n\n\n\n The UNSC was not prepared for brutal ship -to-ship combat in the early years of the insurgency. The light destroyer class, for example, had none of the armament one recognizes as standard today. The titanium -A armor and magnetic accelerator cannons, howeve r, would soon be developed as industrial priorities shifted from building .  . . to killing.\n\n More problematic, however, was the application of those new technologies to three -dimensional battles in the vacuum of space.\n\n The use of nuclear weapons in the battle with Callisto  was not expected. It was believed that fissile detonations in space were nearly useless. Such detonations are extremely low -yield and produced reduced electromagnetic pulse effect in a vacuum environment (very little bang for the buck, as they say).\n\n But the fact that the insurgency knew this  and had planted a nuclear device ahead of time in an asteroid that provided the reactive mass to outright destroy one UNSC ship and cripple two more was an astonishingly forward piece of military th inking.\n\n More amazing, however, was Cole's tactical leap of insight.  UNSC officers and merchant men of the era had a near -religious reverence for Common Space Law most especially pertaining to rendering aid to ves sels in distress. The fact that Cole faked a distress signal to lure his opponent closer was both a stroke of genius and a breach of protocol so severe that UNSC CENTCOM dithered over whether to award him the Legion of Honor or have him court -martialed (ul timately, they did neither, to avoid difficult precedent). Cole's moral strategy was drawn from centuries of ambiguity in dealing with the idea of enemy combatants and inhabits a gray legal and ethical area, even in retrospect.\n\n Emblematic of Cole's lat er tactical thinking, we see flexibility with regard to his ship's functional design. He had crewmen remove Las Vegas  's last Ares missile from its silo and transport it to Cargo Bay 5 where it could be fired directly  into the enemy vessel at point -blank ran ge, bypassing her external armor, and destroying her FTL drive and reactor coolant systems.\n\n Cole noted later in his personal log that he would never again be able to send a distress signal in enemy territory. No one would believe it, he stated. Surren der, quite literally, is no longer an option for me.\n\n The UNSC, the insurgency all humanity had been awakened from complacency; we were evolving and learning how to fight again.\n\n Cole was evolving as well, jettisoning antiquated ethical qualms and learn ing to do whatever it took to win.\n\n SECTION FIVE: THE OUTER COLONY INSURGENCY: THE GORGON V. THE BELLICOSE (2495 2504)\n\n\n\n Cole was quickly promoted (although not without some protest) to first lieutenant and then commander and given a small  corvette to patrol the Outer Colonies. After a dozen successful engagements in five years against insurgent forces and privateer fleets he was promoted to captain and received the honor of commanding the first heavy -destroyer -class vessel armed with a magnetic accelerator cannon (MAC), the UNSC Gorgon.\n\n In Cole' s personal logs he attributes his success more to luck than skill in battle, and he wonders if his rapid promotion was warranted. He also notes that insurgent atrocities may have greased the public relations aspect of his promotions.\n\n Cole might have sens ed part of the truth. The Navy had latched onto him as a figurehead to quell an unease percolating through the Inner Colonies. Many of the Inner Colonies were beginning to wonder if it was just to hold on so tightly to their Outer Colony cousins.\n\n Earth n eeded a hero to distract its populace from an inconvenient moral confusion.\n\n Meanwhile, the insurgency had learned how to hide, strategize, and terrorize as well. They had organized (by theft, customization of industrial vehicles, or by wholesale construc tion of their own ships) a sizable fleet.\n\n Cole's record was not without its blemishes. In particular, the UNSC Bellerophon (a frigate captured by the insurgency and renamed the  Bellicose ), engaged Cole thrice: escaping twice, and once, fighting him to a draw.\n\n Preston Cole's otherwise impressive military record did not come without a high personal cost.\n\n\n\n Personal communique from Cole, Preston J. (UNSC Service Number: 00814 -13094 -BQ) to Volkov, Inna (Civilian ID#: 9081  613-7122 -P) \\ Routing Trace: UNITY 557 \\ March 9, 2500\n(Military Calendar)\n\n Inna,\n\n Your last letter caught me by surprise.\n\n Is this how you truly feel? After all these years ? A divorce?\n\n I know your father would never pressure you into leaving me, so I have to assume this is how you feel, or that there is another person involved .  . . or that it is somehow my fault.\n\n Yes. That is it. It is my fault.\n\n You never wanted a long -distance military marriage and neither one of us expected to endure three extensions of my tour of duty. I cannot imagine how you must feel, so far away, with me in danger, not knowing if your husband will ever come back, and alway s having to wear a brave face for the military social elite that orbit your family.\n\n I wish I could give this up and come home, be a husband for you, and a father for our children who are growing up not even knowing me, apart from the official broadcasts that are sent to Earth.\n\n But the Navy needs me, too. Just by being here, I am saving lives .  . . saving us all by stopping these border conflicts from flaring into full civil war.\n\n Maybe you don't want to understand that, or can't. But I do. I have to st ay.\n\n I will always love you. I will always love the kids.\n\n Please reconsider your decision.\n\n I await your final word but I stand by my duty.\n\n Ever yours, Preston\n\n 0700 HOURS JUNE 2, 2501 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ UNSC DESTROYER GORGON  \\ THETA URSAE MAJORIS  SYSTEM BRIDGE LOG (PRIMARY, VIDEO, SPATIAL ENHANCEMENTS=TRUE)\n\n Captain Cole did not sit in his padded chair on the raised center of the Gorgon  's bridge. Instead, he paced, stopped to glance over the shoulders of his officers at their stations, but otherw ise kept moving like a shark.\n\n Cole's temples were tinged gray. Where there had once been laugh lines, crisscrosses of concentration now crinkled his eyes. Other than these telltale signs of strain, however, he wa s the model of calm and thoughtfulness; confidence emanated from him like a magnetic field.\n\n The UNSC Gorgon  had engaged in two battles in the last seventy -two hours so when it crossed paths with the insurgent -captured Bellerophon  , theGorgon  had severely d epleted munitions and a weary crew.\n\n They battled the Bellerophon  for the previous 34.7 minutes, peppering one another with Archer missiles, and then the Gorgon  slung around a planetoid to come around at the proper angle for a killing shot.\n\n It was a kill  shot. There was no other possible outcome.\n\n No ship had yet evaded the new magnetic accelerator cannon, which could accelerate a tungsten -alloy slug to a fraction of the speed of light.\n\n A shudder ran through the Gorgon  and a flash filled the main view screen, a blurred afterimage of glowing metal that faded into the infrared.\n\n TheGorgon  's AI, Watchmaker, flickered upon his pedestal, a wizened old man holding a huge pocket timepiece with a dozen arms and dials.\n\n Time on target? Cole demanded.\n\n Watc hmaker's eyes riveted upon his clock. Six seconds to impact.\n\n On the screen the fired MAC slug was visually enhanced so it glowed soft blue its trajectory a flat line speeding toward the enemy.\n\n She's coming about new course 030 by 090, Lieutenant Ma liki, at Navigation, said. Her reactors are past the red line.\n\n TheBellerophon  's desperate acceleration to avoid destruction was useless, because for all practical purposes, compared to the MAC round, the ship stood still.\n\n Missile fire detected! Lieutenant Betters, at weapons, announced.\n\n Won't do them any good, Maliki murmured. At this extreme range we can pick off their missiles with the Helix system.\n\n But the Archer missiles fired from the Belleropho n prematurely detonated puffs of fire in the vacuum that made a dotted line in space .  . . drawn straight from the Bellerophon  to the Gorgon  .\n\n One distant explosion smeared across the black of space, however, and ever -so-slightly nudged the line representi ng the multiton ballistic projectile.\n\n The blue line then closed on the silhouette of the Bellerophon  . . . overlapped .  . . and continued past the frigate.\n\n That's not possible! Lieutenant Betters said, standing.\n\n Itis possible, Cole said,  just not very likely.\n\n Ballistic tracking confirms, Watchmaker said. We missed.\n\n Lieutenant Maliki turned to face the captain. They anticipated our firing the MAC, sir? How?\n\n A guess, Cole replied staring at the view screen. An educated guess,  though, because we had the right angle on them. Still .  . . incredibly lucky. Cole frowned. And a brilliant defensive use of the last of their missiles.\n\n Not at all, Watchmaker quipped. Those detonations were on a vector traced from the Gorgon  to theBellerophon  . A reasonable estimation of the MAC trajectory and a precise gauge of distance. He snapped his watch shut.\n\n They can explain how they know so much about our MAC after we capture them, Betters remarked.\n\n And how do you propose we do that ? Cole asked. Status, Lieutenant Maliki?\n\n Archer missiles spent, sir, Maliki replied. Except silo eight, per your standing order. No remaining MAC rounds. We have seven Pelicans on standby. The AAA Helix guns are spun up and hot.\n\n Cole stared at the Bellerophon  as the frigate slowly turned away.\n\n Incoming message, Watchmaker announced, .  . . from the   Bellicose .' Text only.\n\n To my station, Watchmaker. Cole settled into the captain's chair and turned the view screen so only he could see.\n\n\n\n BELLICOSE: IHEARD YOU'VE ALREADY USED YOUR NEW PEASHOOTER TWICE TODAY  . SO THAT WAS YOUR THIRD AND LAST ROUND UNLESS YOU'RE GOING TO LOAD UP ONE OF YOUR PELICANS IN THAT CANNON AND FIRE THAT AT ME?\n\n\n\n Cole stabbed his finders into the keyboard, typing back:\n\n\n\n GORGON: YOU'RE OUT OF SHOTS, TOO. YOUR MISSILE SILOS ARE EMPTY.\n\n BELLICOSE: IINVITE YOU TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK  .\n\n\n\n Captain Cole considered a moment and then tapped in ambiguously:\n\n\n\n GOR GON: NOT LIKELY.\n\n BELLICOSE: WELL PLAYED , PRESTON . WE'RE A GOOD MATCH . IF YOU EVER RETIRE FROM THE UNSC, YOU MIGHT CONSIDER WORKING FOR THE GOOD GUYS  .\n\n GORGON: PERHAPS YOU'D LIKE TO COME OVER HERE AND PERSUADE ME?\n\n\n A full fifteen seconds passed without reply, then:\n\n\n\n BELLICOSE: TEMPTING . BUT ANOTHER TIME , ITHINK  .\n\n GORGON: ILOOK FORWARD TO IT.\n\n\n\n Cole slammed his fist on the arm rest, and yet there was a slight smile on his face.\n\n TheBellerophon  continued to turn and her engines flared to life as she moved off.\n\n Sir, we're letting  them go? Lieutenant Betters whispered. That's the third time that ship has escaped.\n\n Three times, Cole echoed. Yes. But we'll cross  paths with the Bellerophon  theBellicose soon enough. Next time we'll be ready for her.\n\n Personal letter from Captain Preston Cole to his brother, Michael James Cole, September 4, 2501 (Military Calendar)\n\n Michael,\n\n We searched for the Bellicose  in five systems, laid ambushes, but have yet to find the vessel. In the meantime, there have been more engagements, with two insurgent corvettes, and one merchant privateer that ONI no doubt will play up back home as significant strategic victories.\n\n Not a word of that to anyone else, or these letters will end up so redacted they'll look like a zebra has thrown up on them. I'm positive ONI is reading this and watching the family .  . . and indulging me in this bit of personal communication.\n\n I'm sure the only reason my letters get to you at all is that we're both playing this their  way.\n\n This undeclared war has worn on me and my crew. Before I let the Bellicose  become my Moby Dick, I'm putting in to the Lambda Aurigae system on a backwater world called Roost for some long-overdue shore leave.\n\n It's nice, like home .  . . if there were red sand beaches in Ohio. It might make a decent base of operations for the Gorgon  in this sector of the Outer Colonies.\n\n I miss the kids and Inna. Still. Sixteen months si nce the divorce and I think it's all a nightmare. The hardest thing is not  getting any replies from the kids. I've sent letters, but I think Inna burns them all.\n  Please try to get them a message: Tell them I love  them.\n\n P\n\n {Excerpt} Personal letter from Captain Preston Cole to his brother, Michael James Cole, March 12, 2502\n(Military Calendar)\n\n I was talking to Lyra about the Gorgon  's fusion reactor. (You remember her? She owns the bar on the beach? Got her Ph D in nuclear engineering and moved here to fish and pour drinks? My kind of lady.)\n\n Discussed nothing classified, just the generalities of plasma physics, and she came up with a way to boost our output by at least 5%.\n\n I think we've all underestimated wh at kind of people come out to the Outer Colonies.\n\n If things ever settle down, you and Molly should see for yourselves. I'm not saying leave the farm just look.\n\n {Excerpt} Personal letter from Captain Preston Cole to his brother, Michael James Cole, May 28, 2502\n(Military Calendar)\n\n That skirmish at Capella was too damned expensive. Thirty -two men and women lost. After so little insurgent activity for so long .  . . I thought they'd given up.\n\n I've gotten the okay from CENTCOM on Reach for a month of leave for me and the crew. What could they say? The Gorgon  is going to be laid up that long in space dock getting patched up.\n\n I'll be on Roost. No pressures. Some fishing. Some time with Lyra.\n\n A little slice of parad ise in all this purgatory.\n\n Personal letter from Captain Preston Cole to his brother, Michael James Cole, November 9, 2502 (Military Calendar)\n\n We got married, Michael. Pictures and video attached.\n\n I'm sorry fo r the surprise. (Or maybe you've known this was coming for a long time, huh?) It was nothing fancy, just a ceremony on the beach performed by the local pastor.\n\n Lyra is happy. She's pregnant, too.\n\n God, I'm happy for the first time since I can remember. I feel like I've finally gotten a real second chance out here.\n\n Even the insurgency seems to have finally calmed down. There've been just a few policing actions near Theta Ursae Majoris. Maybe this thing is finally coming to an end.\n Classified communiqu e from Admiral Harold Stanforth to Captain Preston Cole \\ June 13, 2503 (Military Calendar)\n\n\n\n UNITEDNATIONSSPACECOMMANDTRANSMISSION 08871D -00\n\n ENCRYPTIONCODE: RED\n\n PUBLICKEY: FILE /ALBATROSS -SEVEN -LUCIFER -ZENO /\n\n FROM: ADMIRALHAROLDSTANFORTH, COMMANDINGOFFICER, UNSC LEVIATHAN / USNC SECTORTHREECOMMANDER/\n(UNSC SERVICENUMBER: 00834 -19223 -HS)\n\n TO: CAPTAINPRESTONCOLE, COMMANDINGOFFICER, UNSC GORGON(UNSC SERVICENUMBER: 00814 -13094 -BQ)\n\n SUBJECT: TROUBLE\n\n CLASSIFICATIO N: EYES -ONLY (BGA DIRECTIVE)\n\n\n\n This is bad, Preston. Sit down if you're standing.\n\n There are new orders coming down from CENTCOM, and you're not going to like them: You're going to Reach.\n\n Let me start with the hardest thing.\n\n\n\n The woman you've been having a relationship with for the last seventeen months, one Lyrenne Castilla, is part of the insurgency. Hell, she's not a part of it; she's a high -ranking member we think commanding one of their ships.\n\n ONI has all the details. I've seen their intelligence reports, and I believe those usually -lying -through -their-teeth SOBs. They've been tracking her insurgent alter ego for a long time and just discovered her civilian identity.\n\n It's simple : She's been playing you, Preston.\n\n ONI is going to come after you, too, claiming that she's been pumping you for classified ship patrol routes and technical information.\n\n So here's how it's going to play out:\n\n\n 1. New orders are being transmitted in  three hours from Reach CENTCOM.\n\n 2. You will be confined to quarters on the Gorgon  with no access to communications until the Prowler Edge of Umbra  arrives in system.\n\n 3. The Umbra  will then transport you to Reach where ONI will put you through the debrief ing of your life.\n\n 4. After that what happens is anyone's guess. I'll wager ONI can't court -martial unless they can prove you willingly collaborated, because they built you into a military genius superstar back home. But whatever they're going to do it ain't going to be pretty.\n\n\n\n I'm breaking regs and telling you this because I don't believe for a hot second you would have gotten yourself deliberately involved in this or that you'd be stupid enough to divulge ship locations or technical secrets to some  pretty girl.\n\n You've got three hours. Find Lyrenne before ONI gets her.  Bring her in yourself. That'll go a long way toward clearing your name and ending this.\n\n\n\n Good luck. Harold\n\n Personal letter from Captain Preston Cole to his brother, Michael James Cole, July 6, 2503 (Military Calendar)\n\n . . . to follow up on that last quick note, Michael. I need to let you know, in case things end up going badly.\n\n Everything Stanforth said wa s true.\n\n I got to the bar on Roost and Lyra was gone. Everything she owned in our room had been taken except one paper she left. It was a printout from a text -only exchange between the Gorgon and the captain of the Bellicose  something that happened two yea rs ago. Lyra should have never known about it.\n\n One part of that exchange she circled in red:  We're a good match. If you ever retire from the UNSC, you might consider working for the good guys .\n\n It was a souvenir. She was the captain of the Bellicose  , Michael.\n\n All this time. Right under my nose.\n  Was she using me for information? That doesn't make sense. I never leaked any classified data. And the more I think of it the insurgent fighting almost died out in the sector since we met.\n\n So is Lyra a spy?  Or someone like me? A ship captain who fell in love and wanted more than a life of fighting?\n\n I have to find out, Michael. I have to find her. P\n\n {Excerpt} UNSC After -Action Report: Battle Group Tango\n\n AI-enha nced battle summation and casuality reports attached\n\n PRELIMINARY: Battle Group Tango, comprising four heavy UNSC destroyers, engaged one insurgent -controlled frigate in the Theta Ursae Majoris system January 2, 2504 (Military Calendar). Two UNSC destroyers heavily damaged. Insurgent vessel known as the Bellicose  (aka the UNSC Bellerophon  ) lost control, was caught in a gravitational pull of the gas giant (ref ID:\nXDU -OI-(1)), and lost with all hands.\n\n ANALYSIS\n\n\n\n History looks upon this time as an unfortunate (and perhaps inevitable?) misunderstanding between Earth and he r colonies, but those of us fighting for the last decade also realize that it was the most amazing piece of blind fortune the human race has ever stumbled upon. Had we not been armed and learning how to fight in space .  . . what would have happened in the years that followed, when we faced an enemy a hundred times worse?\n\n Oblivion, no doubt.\n\n For Preston Cole it was a time when he tempered his brilliance and flexibility into an implacable do whatever it takes fighting style, a time of ascendancy when hi s deeds propelled him (with the help of ONI's glorification campaign) into one of the most beloved public figures of our generation.\n\n On a personal level, however, Cole lost the woman he loved, suffered, found a second chance at loveand lost it all again .\n\n At the debriefing ONI officers read him the After -Action Report concerning the Bellicose  . I can only believe they  thought Cole actually colluded with her and this tactic was designed to break his spirit.\n\n (Note to self : find these fool interrogators and transfer them to Kelvin Research Station on Pluto.)\n\n And it did break Cole, but not in the way the debriefing officers expected. For any other man would've given up everything because  the lady in question was de ad. For Cole, however, Lyra's honor had to now be preserved at all costs. Cole remained stoic and silent and utterly stubborn, just as he had when he was a cadet at the Academy at Mare Nubium. Even though he faced a court -martial for treason even execution he did the noble thing and kept his mouth shut.\n\n Because of immense pressure from Admiral Stanforth and from Cole's admiring public, he was released (no charges filed), but given strict orders that the entire affair was classified.\n\n So, the greatest her o of the age was sent back to Earth to sit at a desk.\n\n Cole would have stayed there for the rest of his life if the burgeoning civil war between Earth and her colonies had not been rendered irrelevant by the appearance of the Covenant.\n\n SECTION SIX: THE COVENANT WAR: THE COLE CAMPAIGNS (2525 2532 CE)\n\n\n\n Cole was promoted to rear admiral. He agitated for a reassignment that got him back to space (all requests were denied). He proposed new policies to make the UNSC fighting forces more effective against the insurgency (all ignored). After eight months at his desk job, he was quietly offered early retirement with an honorary skip p romotion to vice admiral (which he accepted).\n\n In the years that followed, Cole's star dimmed in the public  eye, resurfacing for his highly publicized marriages to much younger women (each of which ended in even m ore spectacularly publicized divorces).\n\n Cole's liver failed from cirrhosis on May 11, 2525, and was subsequently replaced as were his damaged heart and worn endocrine system by flash -cloned transplants.\n\n Shortly thereafter the Covenant encountered the h uman colony world Harvest. Only a handful of farmers managed to escape to warn the authorities. The Colonial Military Administration (CMA)\nsent a battle group to respond to the alien threat. They survived less than fourteen seconds before two of the three destroyers in the group were obliterated, and the remaining destroyer, theHeracles, was forced to retreat.\n\n TheHeracles sensor logs showed an enemy with an overwhelming technological superiority. The CMA was placed under NavCOM for the duration of the confl ict and effectively absorbed into the UNSC. Central Command scrambled a fleet of more than forty ships of the line to respond .  . . but they needed someone to lead that force.\n\n Why did they pick Cole?\n\n In hindsight, this was a masterful choice. Preston C ole was a hero and a tactical genius and would be the only person to ever consistently win against Covenant during the long war that followed.\n\n Many claim that without Cole, the Covenant would have carved a path through the Outer Colonies and conquered Ea rth within three years, and humanity would be a memory today. Others say thatanyperson with the same military assets at their disposal had could have done the job, and perhaps done it better.\n\n Cole was one thing our collection of \"brilliant\" admirals were  not, however a fallen hero who womanized and drank too much. If CENTCOM's plan to repel the aliens failed, he would have made an easy scapegoat.\n\n I believe this last point is too convenient an explanation, however.\n Wehadto win at Harvest. We were not going to pick someone solely for the sake of convenient explanations later.\n\n No, there was something dark about Cole that appealed to our leaders. He had a proven stomach for carnage. Suicidal? Nothing so dramatic but he did have a willingness to stare into the face of death, to sacrifice himself and any number of men and women and ships and do so without flinching.\n\n Andthatwas precisely what we nee ded.\n\n {Excerpt} Field Report ZZ -DE-009-856-841 Office of Naval Intelligence Reporting Agent: Lieutenant Commander Jack Hopper\n(UNSC Service Number: 01283 -94321 -KQ) \\ November 2,\n2525 (Military Calendar)\n\n As ordered, Lieutenant Demos and I went to offer V ice Admiral Cole reinstatement to active duty and the job command of the fleet to retake Harvest.\n\n The admiral's general state when we arrived on his doorstep was one of indifference. He answered the doorbell in his bathrobe and did not bother to return o ur salutes. He looked much older than I thought he would. His hair was silver and gray as was his complexion. Gone was the spark in his eyes that I had seen in videos of this legendary man when I was a child. It was as if I'd found the ghost of Admiral Col e, and not the man.\n\n He did, however, read the situation report with interest, not flinching when he got to the part about theHeracles  and how easily the enemy destroyed her counterparts.\n\n Demos suspects he was drunk a supposition supported by several em pty bottles of Finnish black vodka in his living room.\n\n I believe Cole's mind is as sharp as ever, though. Everywhere  on the premises there were stacks of books (real paper books) on military histories and naval b attles and the biographies of Xerxes, Grant, and Patton and theoretical mathematical monographs on slipstream space and other mathematical esoterica that frankly I had a difficult time even understanding the titles of\n(likeReunification Matrices of Hilbert  Fields Within Spiral Unbounded Singularities  ).\n\n After reading the situation report twice, the admiral poured himself a drink, and offered one to Demos and myself. For politeness's sake we took them.\n\n Cole then said, Three divorces, a cloned liver, two  heart attacks not much left of me, boys .  . . Like anyone can help with this slice of Armageddon. But okay. I'm in.\n\n He set aside his drink, untouched, and added, I think you need me as much as I need this. He got up to get dressed.\n\n When he emerged from his bedroom he was in uniform and clean shaven transformed from the shade of a man we had seen before. He seemed taller somehow, and tougher.\n By reflex, I suppose, Demos and I stood at attention and saluted.\n\n Cole took command issuing orders, asking what capital ships were available, rattling off the specifics of the staff he wanted, AIs that he would need, and then requested all the intelligence reports ONI was holding back.\n\n Just like you said he would.\n\n Vice Admiral's Log (writt en) \\ 1215 Hours November 15,\n2525 (Military Calendar) \\ UNSC cruiser Everest in slipstream space en route to REACH\n\n I've digested the data from Heracles  and the Chi Ceti Incident report.\n\n The enemy has directed plasma weapons and a dissipative energy shi eld technology, the theoretical underpinnings of which  our brightest can only guess at. The MAC rounds fired from destroyers Arabia  andVostok  at Harvest had no effect. They didn't have time to launch nukes .  . . so their use against these energy shields remains unknown.\n\n My assessment: trouble.\n\n I see the situation as if we are a horde of Homo neanderthalensis  rushing toward a medieval castle. We will throw our sticks and stones against their unassailable fortificat ionsand they will rain hot death upon us with crossbow and boiling oil.\n\n Will that analogy hold? Can I find a way to tunnel  under those walls? Get inside and slaughter the enemy at close quarters?\n\n I have to.\n\n This first encounter with the aliens is a t estfor them and us. So far we have failed that test. We have to show them that we cannot be so easily defeated. We have to win no matter the cost.\n\n The super -heavy cruiser they have given me, Everest  , is a supremely fin e ship (although I already see a dozen modifications I wish to make to her). The crew is battle tested and razor sharp.\n\n They believe in me.\n\n GodI can see it in their eyes. They believe that the Admiral Cole is leading them into victory.\n\n Maybe .  . . but regardless, the truth of the matter is I will also be leading them straight into hell.\n\n\n\n 0120 HOURS MARCH 1, 2526 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ UNSC CRUISER EVEREST  \\ FLAGSHIP BATTLE GROUP X -RAY \\ EPSILON INDI SYSTEM BRIDGE LOG (PRIMARY, VIDEO, SPATIAL ENHANC EMENTS=TRUE)\n\n\n Vice Admiral Cole paced the bridge of the Everest  , followed by two adjutant commanders. The two dozen bridge stations were manned by officers and their assistants all to coordinate the  activities of the flagship and the thirty -nine other vessels comprising Battle Group X -Ray as they approached Harvest.\n\n The colony world glowed blue and filled the view screens that stretched floor to ceiling in the cavernous command center.\n\n Cole paused before a translucent screen the size of a blackboard, and with deft motions he zoomed back and forth through the spatial planes of this star system.\n\n As the battle group descended below the planetary plane a blip appeared on screen.\n\n One ship, Cole murmured. He  tapped the tactical display and the image enlarged.\n\n The Covenant warship had sweeping organic curves, an odd purple phosphorescence, and was patterned with glowing red ovals and lines the whole thing looked like a sleeping deep -sea creature of gigantic proportions.\n\n Two kilometers long, one wide, Cole said. Energy readings off scale.\n\n Increase battle group velocity to three quarters full, Cole told one of his adjutant officers.\n\n He pulled the perspective back on the tactical screen so Harvest was the size of a baseball, and then plotted a parabolic course past the enemy to slingshot around the world.\n\n Navigation inputs completed, Cole told the Everest  's AI.\n\n Named Sekmet, the  ship's AI's hologram was a lion -headed woman dressed in white Egyptian robes.\n\n Transmit burn vectors to the fleet, Cole ordered.\n\n Aye, sir, Sekmet answered, her cat eyes flashing green and gold.\n\n Forty comets flared in the dark as the group acceler ated toward the Covenant vessel parked in orbit over Harvest.\n\n Fire at will, Cole said. There was no emotion in his voice. He stared at the tactical board, watching and waiting.\n\n MAC rounds streaked through space strikes of molten tungsten alloy impact ed the Covenant shields.\n\n The veil of energy shook about the alien vessel and shimmered and resonated .  . . but not a gram of metal touched its hull.\n Hundreds of Archer missiles fired and filled the vacuum betwe en the opposing forces blanketing the enemy ship with fire and thunder .  . . but not a shred of shrapnel scarred its surface.\n\n Two curved lines on the Covenant flanks wavered and pulled free, oscillating through space.\n\n They enveloped ships on either sid e of Battle Group X -ray.\n\n Plasma tore through two meters of titanium -A armor like a blowtorch through tissue paper. Explosions boiled through their interiors blasting out the aft sections, blooming with white -hot secondary fusion detonations as reactors went supercritical .  . . leaving smears of fire and burning dust where a moment before there had been two UNSC destroyers.\n\n Officers scrambled to COM stations to relay reports from the fleet.\n\n Nukes have no effect on the vessel, sir, and one officer shouted.\n\n Sacramento is down, as is Lance Held High  !\n\n Vice Admiral Cole remained impassive at his tactical board.\n\n The Covenant ship fired again, plasma lines  searing space, boiling titanium and steel, vaporizing the fragile flesh and bone contained within.\n\n The Tharsis  ,Austerlitz  , and Midway  destroyed. My God!!\n\n Cole squinted at the energy signatures oscillating on the display before him.\n\n Campo Grande is gone! The Virginia Capes  , too.\n\n Sound the retreat, one officer screamed.\n\n Belay that order, Cole barked without looking up.\n\n The fleet arced about the apogee of their parabolic course and engines flared as they came about the dark side of Harves t. The scattered debris of seven destroyers, however, continued  on their previous trajectories, sparks and swirls of molten alloy that faded into the night.\n\n Cole jotted down calculations .  . . and frowned.\n\n Dam age and casualty report, sir. One of his adjutant officers offered him a data pad.\n\n Cole waved it away.\n\n He leaned closer to his display and drew a curve, numbers scrolling alongside his line as it circled about Harvest and intercepted the enemy vessel.\n\n Cole nodded and finally glanced up.\n  His bridge officers looked to him and seemed to absorb some of the vice admiral's implacable self-possession.\n\n Open alpha FLEETCOM channel, he ordered.\n\n Open, sir.\n\n Accept new course inputs, Cole said. Acc elerate to flank speed. Ready another salvo of MAC rounds. Sekmet, we need an Archer missile solution on target 0.1 seconds after those MACs then a second firing solution for a salvo of nuclear detonations 0.2 seconds after initial impact.\n\n Sekmet blinke d. Understood, Admiral. Threading multiple processing and crosschecking matrices between fleet AIs. Working .  . .\n\n Cole's hands came up in a gesture that seemed part contemplation and part prayer.\n\n Firing solutions acquired, Sekmet announced.\n\n Inpu t solutions. Slave master -firing control to Everest  , and lock, Cole ordered.\n\n How many of the Archers, sir? the Chief Weapons officer asked. How many Shivas?\n\n Cole glared at the man like he was crazy. All of them, Lieutenant.\n\n Aye, sir. Solution s locked and ready to fire on your order.\n\n Cole nodded and laced his hands behind his back. He studied  the tactical board as Battle Group X-ray inched along their new trajectory.\n\n The UNSC ships accelerated about the curve of Harvest, and the sun rose and blazed across the view screens.\n\n The Covenant ship waited for them plasma lines heating and flaring through space on an intercept course.\n\n Prepare to launch missiles, Cole ord ered. There was steel in his tone. Release targeting and fire control of the MACs to Sekmet.\n\n He watched as the deadly plasmas sped toward them.\n\n Initiate firing sequence now!\n\n Dozens of rumbles shook Everest  .\n\n Archer and Shiva missiles away, sir!\n\n Covenant plasma, so bright it seemed to ignite the black fabric of space, hit the fleet and burned theConstantinople  ,Troy  , and melted the prow of the Lowrentz  .\n  More than a thousand missiles left crisscrossing exhaust trails as they sped toward thei r target. The larger Shiva missiles fell behind the swarm.\n\n Explosions spread throughout the fleet as new plasma ejected from the Covenant ship destroying theMaelstrom,  theWaterloo,  and the Excellence.\n\n MAC system power at maximum, Sekmet announced. Au tomatic firing sequence to commence in three seconds .  . . two .  . . one.\n\n The remaining ships in Battle Group X -ray fired their magnetic accelerator cannons twenty -seven simultaneous lightning strikes that flashed across space and struck the Covenant ve ssel.\n\n The alien ship blurred behind its shields .  . . opaque for a split second.\n\n The Archer warheads hit, splashing fire and fury across the curve of her flank.\n\n And then dozens of new suns ignited a corona of manmade  nuclear violence. It was a cloud of destruction that writhed and contorted and clawed at the enemy ship for a full three seconds as the UNSC group continued at flank speed toward their target.\n\n Alter course, sir? a commander asked.\n\n Remain on target, Cole said.\n\n And in a whisper so low that while was it picked up by the bridge log microphone, no one else could have possibly heard, Cole said:  Fix bayonets .\n\n The fleet hurled toward the inferno boiling about the alien ship.\n\n The stern of the Covenant ship deformed blasted outward as the interior shuttered and imploded, and ejected a double cone of blue -white hot plasma.\n\n The bridge crew erupted into wild cheers.\n\n Course correction, Cole said. Starboard group about to 060 by  030. Port group to 270 by 270.\n\n New course transmitted and acknowledged, Sekmet replied.\n\n The fleet split and veered from the spreading fields of churning destruction.\n\n Bring us about to search for survivors, Cole ordered.\n\n He closed his eyes, to ok in a deep breath, and then refocused on the tactical board. Cole touched an icon and watched as the names of destroyed vessels and the thousands of men and woman who had served and died under his command scrolled into view.\n\n Classified communique from Vice Admiral Preston Cole to Admiral Harold Stanforth \\ May 2531 (Military Calendar)\n  UNITEDNATIONSSPACECOMMANDTRANSMISSION102482 -02\n\n ENCRYPTIONCODE: RED\n\n PUBLICKEY: FILE/ VEGAS -ANACONDA -MOCKINGBIRD -ZERO/\n\n FROM: VICEADMIRALPRESTONCOLE, COMMANDINGOFFICERUNSC EVEREST /\n(UNSC SERVICENUMBER: 00814 -13094 -BQ)\n\n TO: ADMIRALHAROLDSTANFORTH, USNC REGIONONECOMMANDER/ REACH CENTCOM (UNSC SERVICENUMBER: 00834 -19223 -HS)\n\n SUBJECT: SAFEGUARDING NAVIGATION DATA  MORE THOU GHTS\n\n CLASSIFICATION: SECRET (BGX DIRECTIVE)\n\n Harold,\n\n I've gone over this a dozen times: starting with our capture and interrogation of the alien creature my doctors are calling an Elite and ending with my tenuous conclusions and recommendations.\n\n It doesn't make sense. My gut tells me the entire war hinges on something that we have overlooked.\n\n First, and foremost, the Elite was xenophobic. The venom with which it spoke of humanity and its one desire even as it bled out on the table to find Earth a nd burn it to hot ashes .  . . left zero doubt.\n\n With that in mind, I still believe that safeguarding Earth's position is of vital importance. I plan to immediately implement the directives I drafted and sent to ONI for review, namely:\n\n\n\n 1. All UNSC and civilian ships that come into contact with alien assets must have nav computer network/AI erased destroyed, if necessary to prevent capture of core world locations.\n\n 2. ALL human vessels fleeing alien forces must do so on randomly generat ed vectors away from UNSC core worlds.\n\n 3. ONI Section II to begin slipstream space attenuation broadcast of prerecorded human carrier signals from antiquity to prevent triangulation of Earth.\n\n\n\n But, like I sa id, some things about this do not add up.\n\n First, I do not understand why the aliens DON'T know where Earth is. They have technology hundreds of years more advanced than ours. All one has to do to find Earth is stick a radio antenna into space and triangu late on the source. I suspect something is occurring within the Covenant hierarchy that has prevented Earth from being targeted, or perhaps appreciated .  . . something our captured alien had no knowledge of.\n\n Second, my recommendation for ONI to obfuscate  the radio signature in slipstream space (directive\n3) might be our best bet to keep rogue elements within the Covenant military from finding Earth and preemptively attacking. Considering the dangers of any energy manipulation in slipstream space, however,  I'm going to need your support with Parangosky to use her assets in what she'll consider an extreme -risk operation.\n\n Third, I need solid intelligence on the enemy. Do they seem to see us as some kind of religious aggressor .  . . following some hitherto  unknown ritual that accounts for them destroying our Outer Colonies before Earth? Or another possibility an anthropomorphic gulf that we have so many inhabited worlds, some more powerful militarily, economically than Earth what if they're not interested i n our homeworld  strategically but rather for some other, unknowable reason?\n\n I can fight them, Harold, but only so effectively without knowing why they hate us.\n\n I keep thinking of Sun Tzu: If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imper iled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.\n\n\n\n I look forward to your thoughts on this, my old friend.\n\n Be well.\n\n\n\n Preston\n\n Personal log (audio), Vice Admiral Preston Cole, Commanding Officer UNSC Everest \\ June 27, 2541 (Military Calendar)\n\n Tonight a bottle of Capellan Vodka and I reviewed some of the old battles.\n\n The Origami Asteroid Field in 2526 My fleet of one hundred seventeen UNSC ships of the line fought twelve Covenant vessels. We won that at the cost of thirty -seven ships.\n\n Xo Bootis  in 2528 Seventy ships versus eight Covenant. Another victory. That time I lost thirty ships.\n\n Groombridge 2530 Seventeen against three. We lost eleven destroyers. Still a win.\n\n Leonis Minoris in 2537 only ten UNSC ships lost, but the Covenant glassed the other two colonies in system. God I couldn't save them all; I had to make the choice.\n\n Another twenty -three engagements (or was it twenty -four .  . . does Alpha Cephei count?) like those over the past ten years .  . . or is it fifteen? So much travel in  slipspace. So much subjective time lost to damnable Heisenberg uncertainties and in cryosleep.\n\n It's killing me .  . . although I seem to have somehow, technically, lived through it all.\n\n They told me to fight, and that's what I've done. Let historians s ort through the wreckage, bodies, and broken lives to figure out the rest.\n\n Yet, how many men and women have I had to watch die? How many would have perished on colony worlds if not for their sacrifice? I look into space and no longer see wonder and stars  and the endless possibilities that I did when I was a cadet. I see nothing but a cold death.\n\n I hope CENTCOM can see farther than I do and planned for all contingencies: including not winning this war.\n\n If the un thinkable happens Earth and her colonies reduced to ash as promised by that Covenant Elite where can humanity escape to? Perhaps there are already plans in motion: a colony vessel en route to some secret distant world where we can start over.\n\n So this sac rifice we endure has purpose.\n\n ANALYSIS\n\n\n\n Cole won every major engagement he committed his forces to against the Covenant. On only two occasions did he encounter an enemy fleet he considered too large to take, and then he would return in both cases with reinforcements most notably at the Battle o f Psi Serpentis (more on that fateful encounter in a moment).\n\n The losses of ships and people under Cole's command were staggering. Any normal battle group would have been dismantled and reassigned, and their commander given some rest but Cole was a victim of his own popularity. CENTCOM could not allow their symbol to fail, so they kept reinforcing Cole with new ships and crews and kept their fingers crossed that he wouldn't snap from the strain.\n\n Imagine fighting Stalingrad and Cold Harbor and defending the Hot Gates with three hundred Spartans and repelling the Mexican Army at the Alamo and then having to repeat those lopsided, impossible fights over and over.\n\n Certainly Cole knew this that first time he faced that Covenant super -destroyer at Harvest. H is unheard remark on the bridge of Everest  , Fix bayonets, is a reference to Colonel  Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's famous charge down Little Round Top at the battle of Gettysburg.\n\n Chamberlain had orders to defen d the far left end of the Union line, and had repelled numerous assaults upon his position. When the Fifteenth Alabama regiment charged up the hill toward Chamberlain's exhausted and low -on-ammunition Twentieth Maine regiment, instead of falling back, Cham berlain ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge down the hill. That apocryphal moment is considered to have saved the line, the Union army at Gettysburg, and perhaps determined the entire outcome of the first American Civil War.\n Likewise, Cole knew hehad to  win no matter the cost in ships or lives or even to his sanity. Because if he failed, the enemy would destroy entire worlds; millions and billions of lives were his sole responsibility.\n\n Mere psychological analysis cannot reveal the nature of wha t could keep any man going under such never -ending pressure.\n\n Certainly we see in that last personal log that Cole had reached the nadir of his spirits. All he needed was a push to send him to his end, a push which soon arrived but from something he could never have foreseen.\n\n SECTION SEVEN: THE COVENANT WAR: THE BATTLE OF PSI SERPENTIS (2543\nCE)\n\n\n\n {Excerpt} UNSC After -Action Report: Battle Group Sierra -3\n\n AI-enhanced battle summation and causality reports attached.\n\n Battle Gro up Sierra -3 engages Covenant in 18 Scorpii.\n\n PRELIMINARY: Battle Group Sierra -3, comprising two UNSC destroyers and one cruiser engaged a Covenant CPV -class  heavy destroyer in the 18 Scorpii System, March 6, 2543 ( Military Calendar). The UNSC Seattle  andThermopylae  sustained moderate damage, while the Io sustained heavy damage. Covenant vessel destroyed.\n\n SUMMARY ADDENDUM: The Convenant ship inflected heavy damage and Sierra -3 group was unable to peel its shields. Io 's FTL drive was inoperative, so I faced a decision to fall back and save two destroyers, or fight and possibly lose all those ships. Reinforcements arrived when unknown friendly ships jumped in system. Additional firepower penetrated enemy shields.\n\n Lead reinforcement ship's silhouette matched a thirty -year-old UNSC frigate design with major modifications (see technical reports attached). Passive transponder pinged and yielded a ship reg. number, identifying the UNSC Bellerophon  . Friendlies jumped out -system before comm contact established.\n\n CAPTAIN'S NOTE: I don't believe in ghost ships. But I don't care if it is the Bellerophon  , or if it was the Flying Dutchman sent by Lucifer himself they saved our hides. Transmitted thanks to them before they jumped out  and wished them well .  . . whoever they were, and wherever they were headed.\n\n SECTION PREFATORY REMARKS\n\n I start this section with the Sierra -3 After -Action Report as it was the catalyst for what happened next (or so I believe).\n\n Cole had to have seen the report. He was in charge of military operations in Sector Three, and a man of his exacting detail would not let a report a report of a UNSC victory no less pass his desk without a glance.\n\n Cole's analytical mind likely came to two possible explanation s for the sighting of theBellerophon, aka Bellicose. (1) The  Bellerophon was incorrectly identified. Or (2) the Bellerophon escaped or faked falling into the gravity well of a gas giant and its subsequent destruction twenty -nine years prior.\n\n The captain of the Bellicose, clever enough to face Cole thrice in battle and live, might have been able to engineer such a deception (alt hough an in -atmosphere FTL jump while accelerating was only a theoretical possibility at that time).\n\n And given the ONI revelation in 2503 of the public identity of the Bellicose 's insurgent captain, it also makes perfect sense that she would want to drop off their radar in such a permanent and unequivocal fashion.\n\n But why would Bellicose rescue Sierra -3? Had the remnants of the Outer Colony insurgency resurfaced to unite with their former enemy to face a greater threat?\n\n Or was Lyra Castilla' s reason personal? Did she reappear to send a message to Cole? Or am I stretching the limits of my analysis with romanticism?\n\n That we will never know.\n\n Cole's personal logs cease after February 2533. His normal pattern of behavior also altered nothing o vertly suspicious, and all within the prerogative of a vice admiral but as we will soon see, seemingly innocuous actions and orders would culminate in the momentous death of Preston Cole.\n\n Restricted communique from Vice Admiral Preston Cole to REACH LOGI STICS \\ March 9, 2543\n(Military Calendar)\n\n UNITEDNATIONSSPACECOMMANDTRANSMISSION116749 -09\n\n ENCRYPTIONCODE: RED\n\n PUBLICKEY: FILE/ VEGAS -ANACONDA -MOCKINGBIRD -ZERO/\n\n FROM: VICEADMIRALPRESTONCOLE, COMMANDINGOFFICERUNSC EVEREST /\n(UNSC SERVICENUMBER: 00814 -13094 -BQ)\n\n TO: ADMIRALDALEKILKIN, UNSC CENTRAL COMMAND, REACH LOGISTICS OFFICE /\n(UNSC SERVICENUMBER: 007981 -63882 -GE)\n\n SUBJECT: REQUISITIONS, TRANSFERS, AND FAVORS\n\n CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED (BGE DIRECTIVE)\n\n\n Dale,\n\n Recent prowler reports indicate a Covenant armada massing in Sector Three. I need my ships repaired, refitted, and battle -ready ASAP. Code these orders CRIMSON, and pull in favors people owe me to make it happen. You know what I mean.\n\n\n\n 1.Requisition  : 600 tungsten -layered titanium -A armor plates (radiation -absorption rating: 5), replacement and upgrades for degraded armor plates on Everest  , et al.\n\n 2.Requisition  : Additional smart nav AI. Sealed and un -booted. Back -up for Everest  . Curre nt AI operating at 68% capacity.\n\n 3.Order  : Pull the Io out of space dock and tow her to my position. Too far gone to repair, but Captain Wren has an idea to use her as a fire ship.\n\n 4.Requisition  : Ordnance: 105 Shiva nuclear missiles (VE -3 type), 2400 A rcher missiles, 45,000\nblocks Helix System ammunition (see additional nonordnance supplies in Attachment A).\n\n 5.Requisition  : Detailed stellar survey of Section Three, sub -volume D -6. Emphasis on systems with proto -brown dwarf gas giants.\n\n 6.Transfers  : I can't lead my fleet into battle when half my officers are on the verge of collapse from fatigue. List of crew transfers in Attachment B. List of requested crew replacements in Attachment C.\n\n 7.Favor  : I have a theoretical Shaw -Fujikawa manifold calculat ion that needs crunching through the ONI AI network  on Reach. They're the only ones in the Outer Colonies with the raw power to get the job done.\n\n 8. Wish me luck.\n\n\n\n UNSC Everest\n\n Preston J. Cole\n\n\n\n COPY TO: LOGISTICSOFFICE, NAVCOM, REACH.\n\n OFFICE OFNAVALINTELLIGENCE, SECTION -III, REACH\n\n\n\n 0915 APRIL 18, 2543 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \\ UNSC CRUISER  EVEREST \\ FLAGSHIP BATTLE GROUP INDIA \\ PSI SERPENTIS SYSTEM THE BATTLE OF PSI SERPENTIS {AI RECREATION BA SED ON VIDEO, AUDIO, AND SENSOR LOGS BLACK BOX RECORDERS AND EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS}\n\n\n\n When Battle Group India transitioned into normal space in the Psi Serpentis System, it was the largest assembly of UNSC forces: thirteen cruisers, twenty -three carriers , seventy -nine destroyers, forty -two frigates, five prowlers and fifty supply, repair, and rescue vessels (those latter ships remaining in slipstream space for the duration of the engagement).\n\n The wake from the massive transition into normal space sent a  ripple outward from the fleet's entry point a distortion across the electromagnetic spectrum that propagated from their location three million kilometers above the planetary plane of Psi Serpentis.\n\n It made auroras sparkle over the nearest three planets.  It caused a visible shift in the smoldering red eye of Viperidae, the gas giant with thirteen times the mass of Jupiter (with gravity nearly enough to crush and fuse the hydrogen churning in its atmosphere).\n\n . . . and the ripple passed through the massi ng Covenant ships on the far side of the system.\n\n An unmistakable signal to the enemy.\n\n The Covenant ships appeared on radar like a swarm of sharks in the dark more than a hundred sleek organic silhouettes regist eredCPV destroyers, light cruisers, and the hitherto unseen in battle CCS -class battle cruiser.\n\n Their prows collectively turned toward Battle Group India, lateral plasma lines pulsing and illuminating hulls so it looked as if an entire alien fleet emerg ed from the shadows by sleight of hand.\n\n The UNSC prowler Wink of an Eye  , having been in system for seven days waiting for this moment, moved into its proper position and reappeared, only visible because its active camouflage skin could not keep pace with the churning red and orange surface of Viperidae behind it .  . . the pr owler sent a radar ping to the UNSC forces to verify its position, and then the Wink  flash transitioned into slipstream space to drop guidance beacons.\n\n Battle Group India one by one moved into slipstream space, the preliminary Shaw -Fujikawa calculations h aving been done a week previously by Cole himself.\n\n And the entire fleet then reappeared two seconds later, one hundred thousand kilometers on the opposite side of Viperidae positioned so the gas giant blocked the enemy sight line.\n\n UNSC FTL technology, however, was not perfect especially over short intersystem hops near gravity wells. A dozen UNSC ships reappeared, scattered from the main group.\n\n The Covenant fleet angled toward the stragglers and accelerated to attack speed.\n  Cole's fleet split into t wo wings, both using the gravity of the gas giant to slingshot around either side of the planet and toward the onrushing enemy armada.\n\n In response, the Covenant fleet also split to track each portion of the UNSC forces on either side of the Viperidae.\n\n The starboard wing of the UNSC fleet, however, shifted its orbital burn arced up and over the gas giant and angled back to meet the rest of the battle group.\n\n Engine cones flaring with the power from overloaded re actors, the human ships reunited and rocketed toward the port -side breach in the Covenant line.\n\n A dozen nuclear -tipped Shiva missiles launched, crossed the space between the two converging forces, and detonated harmlessly before reaching a single enemy v essel.\n\n But as the Covenant loosed their plasma charges, the exploding clouds of superheated gas from nuclear detonations scattered the alien weapons, rendering them ineffective.\n\n Just as the Covenant fleet came into Battle Group India's optimal magnetic  accelerator cannon range.\n\n A dozen MAC slugs struck the leading Covenant ships impacts timed microseconds apart as they hammered down energy shields, punched through hulls, penetrated through and through, and sent thirty -seven of the alien CPV -class dest royers careening through space.\n\n As the two forces closed, however, a cloud of nuclear fire no longer protected the UNSC vessels, and plasma lines lanced through the vacuum, tearing into titanium -A armor and breaching reactors. Archer missiles fired at ex treme close range to fill the space with flash and detonations, but this did little to stop the enemy.\n\n Three human destroyers crashed headlong into a Covenant battle cruiser their hulls splintered and the entire mass engulfed in a blob of plasma.\n\n As the fleets sped past one another, the UNSC ships fired thrusters, spun about one hundred eighty degrees, and launched Archer missiles to provide cover from the Covenant's devastating plasma weaponry.\n\n The Covenant had lost statistically more vessels t han was typical in an engagement with the UNSC. Twenty -three alien ships of the line now drifted in space inert or burning from within as their reactors overloaded and vented plasma.\n\n But Battle Group India had lost more than a third of her  ships, and nearly every one of those that had survived was now scoured and pitted or had decks breached\n\n With one noticeable exception: Everest  , which had led the charge, emerged unscathed.\n\n Meanwhile, the other wing of the C ovenant armada that had been outmaneuvered on the first pass came about spinning in place as the UNSC fleet had done .  . . slowing .  . . and then pursuing Cole's ships.\n Swarms of Archer missiles fired from Battle Group India. Their MAC systems had yet to  recycle for another shot. The UNSC ships scattered, moving apart like an opening blossom\n\n as the second wave of Covenant vessels opened fire.\n\n The UNSC destroyer Agincourt  charged headlong into concentrated streams of incoming plasma lines sacrificing itself to save her sister ships.\n\n And still the alien fleet picked off a dozen more human vessels.\n\n Both sides were now scattered across the system. The first Covenant forces to engage, however, caught up with those now in pursuit. The human ships regrou ped and changed course back toward the gas giant, accelerating and keeping just out of effective range of the enemy's plasma.\n\n Cole's fleet might have escaped, and yet the UNSC ships collectively slowed to allow the Covenant fleet to gain a tiny bit as bo th groups of ships sped around Viperidae.\n\n The Covenant armada lost sight of their prey due to the curvature of the gas giant.\n\n As they emerged in hot pursuit of Battle Group India they saw brilliant blue flashes of Cherenkov radiation, the result of mul tiple slipstream transitions into normal space.\n\n A new fleet of human ships appeared, barreling on an interceptor trajectory toward the aliens.\n\n Fifty -five ships highly modified older UNSC warships, merchant vessels bristling with missile pods, and entirely new designs that neither human nor Covenant had ever seen before led byBellicose  plunged into the center of the Covena nt fleet and opened fire.\n\n MAC slugs tore into the enemy vessels as they accelerated toward one another. Plasma lines launched many deflected by the strong magnetic field of the gas giant in proximity. Ships collided and scraped hulls, and a dozen craft f rom both sides fell into the boiling clouds of Viperidae's upper atmosphere and perished.\n\n Then the two forces flashed past one another .  . . and the Covenant emerged, their forces decimated and wounded .  . . less than half the original strength.\n\n The in surgent -led forces had lost one -quarter of their number. They did not turn to fight, however.\n\n They continued on their trajectory out of the Psi Serpentis system where, and with dozens of crackling blue flashes, they transitioned back into slipstream spac e.\n\n Cole's fleet had altered course into a high parabolic orbit, turning toward the enemy, their collective MAC systems shimmering with superconductive sparks of power aimed directly at what remained of the Covenant fleet.\n\n A mere million kilometers dist ant, however, space again rippled as new slipspace ruptures appeared\n. . . three .  . . and a dozen .  . . a hundred .  . . then a fleet of more than two hundred Covenant ships appeared in normal space accelerating toward Viperidae.\n The UNSC ships continued  a full ten seconds on their current course, firing neither weapons nor engines.\n\n COM traffic from Everest  was on a secure and scrambled channel private, for admirals to captains onlythat was then deleted by a viral worm.\n\n The channel closed and the UNSC  fleet moved off at flank speed leaving Everest  alone to face the enemy.\n\n Everest 's engines flared and she slipped deeper toward the gas giant. Her MACs powered down and every external light went off. All her missile silo doors, however, opened.\n\n The mass of the fresh Covenant armada turned to pursue the retreating Battle Group India.\n\n COM CHANNEL (BROADBAND ALPHA -THETA) from UNSC Everest  : Listen to me, Covenant. I am Vice Admiral Preston J. Cole commanding the h uman flagship, Everest. You claim to be the holy and glorious inheritors of the universe? I spit on your so -called holiness. You dare judge us unfit? After I have personally sent more than three hundred of your vainglorious ships to hell?\nAfter kicking your collective butts off Harvest not once but twice? From where I sit, we are the worthy inheritors. You think otherwise, you can come and try to prove me wrong.\"\n\n The Covenant fleet, both damaged vessels and fresh reinforcements, turned to Everest  . Some ships rushed toward her position, while others skirted around the Viperidae cutting off any possible escape vector.\n\n Everest tightened its orbit and vanished from view as it moved to the far side of the gas giant.\n\n She did not slingshot out as she  had done on previous occasions, but rather emerged again on the near side of Viperidae along the trajectory so low, the cruiser could never recover from the inevitable gravity spiral into the gas giant's crushing atmosphere.\n\n The leading Covenant ships f ired.\n\n A hundred plasma streams lanced toward their target .  . . but spiraled about themselves and dissipated in the extreme magnetosphere of the gas giant.\n\n Laser fire followed from the Covenant ships, peppering Everest  with a thousand smoldering holes. No atmosphere, though, leaked from the ship, as every outer deck had already been evacuated.\n\n COM CHANNEL (BROADBAND ALPHA -THETA) from UNSC Everest  : Is that the best you can do?  Cole laughed.  Watch what one unworthy human can do!\n\n Everest launched everything she had.\n\n Archer missiles rocketed out of the gravity well of the planet  along with a dozen Shiva nuclear warheads while another hundred  Shiva missiles plunged deeper into Viperidae's churning c louds.\n\n The gas giant's hydrogen -helium atmosphere was so dense, so compressed, that if it had a tiny fraction more mass it would have ignited and become the smallest of brown dwarf stars.\n\n The Archer missiles had no effect on the Covenant shields. They did, however, provided a dazzling display of pyrotechnics: flashes of white and blue and red and obscuring clouds of propellant.\n\n The nukes launched out of the gravity well exploded.\n\n The lead Covenant ship was destroyed an insignificant loss compared to  the two hundred remaining Covenant vessels moving closer, now near enough to punch through the magnetosphere and obliterate Everest.\n\n But the vast majority of the nuclear ordnance had not been aimed at the Covenant rather, they fell deeper into the atmosp here of Viperidae.\n\n And detonated.\n\n One hundred dots of light flickered deep within the thick atmosphere, compressing the already superpressurized hydrogen adding the needed spark of fission that flashed through and around the gas giant' s surface, sending helixing tentacles of solar plasma about the planet circumference.\n\n For an instant, Viperidae was a star.\n\n Countless tons of hydrogen blasted off its outer layers and filled space with plasma washed away everything with a blaze.\n\n The expanding ball of destruction slowed and dissipated.\n\n Until only a cloud of glowing haze remained .  . . and in the center, the dark cinder of Viperidae.\n\n Every ship in the Covenant fleet had been destroyed\n\n As had the UNSC Everest  , its crew, and Vice Ad miral Preston J. Cole.\n\n ANALYSIS\n\n\n\n A day of mourning was proclaimed July 28, 2543. Humanity had lost its supreme hero. There would be others elevated to this lofty position (most notably, the Spartan -IIs, who ha d already gone public in 2547), but for many, Preston Cole was the one man who had stood between life and annihilation at the hands of the Covenant.\n\n It was no coincidence that after a brief pause in alien activity in the Outer Colonies, they renewed their efforts, overwhelmed UNSC defenses, and swarmed through the Inner Colonies. Was that because Cole was gone? Or had his victory spurred the enemy to redouble their efforts?\n\n What occurred at Psi Serpentis, while it was investigated, was not forensically examined in exacting detail at the time. The tactics in the battle were consistent with Cole's previous behaviors:\ninnovations in FTL jump technology, a sophisticated coordination and maneuvering of multiple ships in formation, gravitationally assisted sli ngshot to excellent effect, and tricking the enemy into exposing vulnerabilities.\n\n As for the real question, what really  happened to Preston Cole, we must examine the available evidence.\n\n First, the AI recreation of the battle stitched together by ONI Section -III and Section -II was one part scientific analysis and one part propaganda. To be fair, there were many holes in the official record. Speculation and raw glorification of the events were inevitable.\n\n Let us consider some anomalies and curiosities.\n\n A frame -by-frame analysis of the last moments of Everest  captured by external cameras of the withdrawing Battle Group India show the vessel spiraling into the atmosphere of Viperidae just before the detonation of her Archer missiles.\n\n Tactically those missiles served little, if any, purpose. They  could not possibly have penetrated the Covenant shields. So why fire them?\n\n Hyperfine enhancements of the video make out the characteristic prow of a UNSC super -heavy cruiser silhouetted against the backdrop of the red atmosphere but also recorded an aura of bright blue light (which most experts assume is the premature detonation of a cluster of Archer mis siles).\n\n But most curiously, there appears for a single frame another  silhouette behind the Everest  : that of a UNSC cruiser.\n\n All UNSC ships, surviving and destroyed, were accounted for in the battle, save Everest  and the towed, never -used fire ship Cole  had requested, the cruiser Io .\n\n Spectroscopic analysis of the radioactive debris field captured in orbit of Viperidae shows amounts of tungsten -180 consistent with the newly requisitioned and repaired armor of Everest  but it failed to yield the ratio of titanium -50 in the mixture that would have been present had Everest  been vaporized.\n\n No black -box recorder was ever found from Everest  . While UNSC black -box recorders cannot survive such a nuclear cacophony, standard protocol is for the ship's AI to eject at least one of the redundant five black -box recorders if the ship is in imminent danger of destruction.\n\n Detailed examination of Cole's Shaw -Fujikawa manifold calculation sent to the ONI/Reach super -AI network for number crunching reveal it to be a theor etical in -atmosphere transition from normal to slipstream space while in a severe acceleration gradient i.e., identical conditions one might encounter in close proximity to a gas giant.\n\n SPECULATION\n\n\n\n The Archer missile screen and the anomalous presence of the Iowere smoke screen and decoy. Cole initiated a transition to  slipstream space the instant before detonation of the Shiva nuclear ordnance and the trigger ing of the micronova of Viperidae.\n  Everest was notdestroyed.\n\n Cole faked his death and escaped.\n\n\n\n One hole in this theory pertains to the crew of Everest . Cole's massive personnel transfer prior to the battle might have been intended to fill his ranks  with those sympathetic to his motives or, at least, those who had unwavering loyalty to him. But he could never have convinced the entire crew of Everest to agree to a wartime desertion. I do not believe Cole could kill his own crew but perhaps he could ke ep potential dissenters indefinitely in cryo sleep?\n\n As to Cole's motivations, that is pure speculation. But the resurfacing of Bellicose and his former lover, Lyra Castilla, point in the right direction that, and a mental break brought on by years of const ant fighting with overwhelming causalities.\n\n Scattered reports and rumors of independent human forces fighting Covenant pop up on the outer edge of what we believe to be nonsanctioned human colonized space .  . . reports that track toward the Sagittarius s ide of the Orion arm in the Milky Way .  . . and then these rumors fade to whispers\n. . . and legend .  . . and then die out all together.\n\n SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS\n\n\n\n In my best estimation, Cole survived the Battle of Psi Serpentis.\n\n\n\n He may be alive and h ealthy today.\n\n By Earth -normal chronology he would be eighty -two years old, but before the Covenant War he had his liver, heart, and endocrine system replaced with flash -clone parts. Also, so many of his\n\"years\" occupied with space travel were filled with  periods of cryogenic suspension and minor but additional relativistic effects. Our best guess at Cole's biological age is sixty.\n\n He is likely leading a band of colonists, insurgents, and UNSC defectors to build a new home far outside UNSC -dominated space. He always wanted a farm on some world where he could look up and not recognize the nighttime stars.\n\n I think he did just that.\n\n RECOMMENDATION\n\n\n\n While it is remotely possible that my analysis is incorrect (A Is Phoenix and Lackluster have, however, independently corroborated my conclusions within 89.7 percent accuracy), I shall nonetheless give you my informed recommendation on this matter.\n\n\n  For the moment Preston Cole may be living a simple, isolated lif ethe governor, perhaps, of some unknown provincial farming colony.\n\n But how long will that isolation last, given the highly unstable situation we find ourselves in after the Covenant War? Namely:\n\n\n\n a. The insurgency may rise again (especially dangero us given the UNSC's weakened postwar status); and\n\n b. The Covenant (to the best of our limited intelligence of their culture) is in utter chaos now that their religious hierarchy has been removed. What they will do with their independent races, or collect ively, is anyone's guess.\n\n\n\n It is inevitable that these coming conflicts will spread to a wider region of the galaxy.\n\n Cole might be found and convinced to fight once more. In  addition to possessing great military genius, he would be a natural figurehead for our battered forces to rally behind. Insurgent or Covenant aggressors would think twice before engaging Preston Cole in battle.\n\n But if found, will Cole fight? For us?\n\n There are three possibilities: (1) Cole will see that Earth and all her colonies are in peril and defend them once more. (2) He will fight for humanity .  . . but perhaps not on our side. After living for years among former insurgents, he may back those forc es should they rise against the UNSC. Or\n(3) Cole will not fight, having grown too weary to take up arms again, and will flee farther from the conflict.\n\n Neither I nor the AIs can hazard a better than even guess as to the probabilities (plus or minus 4.35\npercent, 4.05 percent, and 4.30 percent respectively).\n\n All that can be said with absolute certainty is that Cole will remain a leader whether leading his people to safety .  . . or back into battle once more.\n\n I offer my services, as usual, to pick up P reston Cole's trail, find him, and attempt to convince him to join our cause.\n\n Failing that, if he chooses to side against us .  . . well, I leave those unpleasant details to you.\n\n I, for one, have lost my stomach for killing legends.\n\n CODENAME: SURGEON\n\n OFFICE OFNAVALINTELLIGENCE(SECTION -III) OPERATOR #: AA2\n\n 2200HOURS , DECEMBER31, 2552 (MILITARYCALENDAR) \\ UNSC POINT OF NORETURN , SYNCHRONOUSLUNARORBIT(FAR SIDE)\n\n\n\n /END FILE/\n\n /SCRAMBLE -DESTRUCTION PROCESS ENABLE/\n\n PRESSENTERTO CONTINUE .\n\n\n\n THE RETURN\n\n\n\n KEVIN GRACE\n\n\n\n AFTER TWOweeks roaming about this shattered place, just the memory of the water that once filled this lake was refreshing. But like everything  else here, the memories carried pain.\n\n The Shipmaster's steps slowed as he reached the end of the crumbling dock and he dropped his pack to the ground. The dock had once been painted a bright blue, perhaps the same color as the water it stood above, but now the little paint left flaked off at his step and beneath was only gray. The same gray of the empty lake bed below, where a few scrub trees and grasses attempted a comeback where fish once swam. The same gray as everything on this forbidding, forgotten world. It was a gray of decades -old ruin left untended and unhealed, and it would probably stay this way forever, as the planet had nothing more to offer, and its former masters had nothing left here to claim.\n\n He had seen only two things break away from this gray in the weeks he had walked this desolation. The first were the thin rays and glimpses of this world's sun, which would rarely show itself, offering no real heat when it managed to struggle through the thick haze hanging constantly in the sky. The  other was a  column of smoke he had sighted two days prior, far to the west. It was to this smoke he now drove himself, though he knew where that path would eventually lead.\n\n To follow that ominous smoke sign he had to cross this dead hole of a lake and the dam at its far end. From the elevated vantage of the dock the Shipmaster took a reflexive look around the horizon, scanning for threats, before casting a quick glance into the sky in the vain hope of seeing his vessel in orbit far above the planet's surface. He slid his pack back over his armor, fastening it with a triple -click of buckles and a weight -centering shrug. As he turned back to find the shore and a way across the lake bed, he closed off the dry sound of his footsteps on the brittle grass and remembered the lake at his clan's keep back on Sanghelios.\n  Like this one, his lake was artificial, the river back home stopped by a lattice of delicate metal and shimmering e nergy. This hole had only a crude, crumbling wall. A simple concrete of rock and sand. Such a frangible substance to use for something as vital and enduring as a dam, he thought, but so much of what humans did was fleeting. His travels through this planet' s remaining signs of habitation had shown him how little these people knew of permanence.\n\n Not that it would have mattered here, even if they had.\n\n Stark in the late afternoon light, the battered skeletons of boats littered the lakebed and reminded him o f the days he spent on similar boats during his earliest training as a boy.\n\n The Great Journey, the path to transcendence followed by all of the species that served the Covenant, started early for all male Sangheili. As soon as they could run and hold a w eapon in their four-fingered hands, they were trained and evaluated for potential. Each young Sangheili was watched for strength and cunning and obedience to the teachings of the Covenant. They were tested extraordinarily, for their importance to the Great  Journey was extraordinary.\n\n The Sangheili were the chosen ones, directly responsible for realizing the will of the gods and commanding the military forces of the Covenant. They were the ones who enforced the word s of the Prophets, the holy seers who translated and delivered the words of the Forerunners to all who walked the Path. This honor and obligation drove every Sangheili in all their decisions and aspirations, and the Prophets were always watching to make su re this remained so. It had been this way for thousands of years since the two species first formed the Covenant, and it would be this way until the Great Journey was completed .  . . or so he once thought.\n\n So, on smaller, intact boats similar to the rott en hulks he now skirted, the Shipmaster learned as a boy to move and to fight. Striking and leaping from vessel to vessel, the young warriors learned balance and timing and teamwork as well as ruthlessness, as not all of the denizens in the lake considered  themselves prey. Those boys whose weakness allowed them to be pulled under by cold teeth served as a lesson to the rest that not all Sangheili were worthy. Those who survived the training water emerged hardened both by loss and the determination not to su ffer a similar fate in later lessons.\n\n Now here he was at the bottom of the lake, no monsters waiting to challenge his strength just the crumbling boats, the stunted gray trees, and the occasional crunch of bone beneath the matted gray grass.\n\n He first h eard that hollow crunching at his step days ago, and he knew the sound had been human bone. In his first days, while walking through human towns now wearing away to dust, the Shipmaster had stopped to loosen many such bones from tangles of tough grass or a  covering layer of dust and dirt, spending much time wondering who these humans had been. Now it had been days since he'd stopped looking for the source of that sound.\n\n Usually he'd found these bones alone, spread far from the  rest of whatever body they came from by wind or war or animals, though he had not seen a single living creature or even tracks anywhere in his travels. As intended, the death in this place had been complete. He'd found full skeletons as well, flesh long since torn or worn away, usually inside the few structures with more than one wall remaining or even a bit of roof left waiting for the insistent pull of time and gravity to bring it crashing down.\n He'd found bits of armor and weapons and hum an vehicles of war, and even a few remnants of Covenant soldiers, usually cracked methane breathing tanks sitting amidst the bones of a squat Unggoy. Once he'd found a giant shield plate from a Mgalekgolo, a Hunter, as the humans called them, and he wond ered how the humans had managed to take down one of those giant living battering rams. But Covenant remains were rare. This planet had not presented much of a defense when the Covenant arrived, and their losses had been light. He wondered for a moment whet her the events that followed the invasion might have been different had the humans been prepared, expecting the assault, but he knew that it would not have mattered. It would not have mattered at all.\n\n He no longer stopped to inspect broken bone, and he d id not know whether to care. His path was sethead up and eventually over the dam and to wherever the smoke called him. There he hoped to find an answer, and that was enough for now.\n\n When the Shipmaster reached the top of the rough staircase cut into the  side of the dam, he saw a dry scratch of a riverbed leading down from the dam's base to the beginnings of another human settlement at least to the few standing walls that remained twenty years after the humans were wiped clean from this place. As the rive rbed moved farther from the dam it cut through miles of such ruins, small square outlines of stone and rusting metal hiding among those hard, short, gray trees. Scattered between these buildings and their dark square holes for windows was a jumble of fallen pillars that had once held lights  or statues or whatever they had used to decorate this place. Farther away from the dam, down toward where his path was leading him, nothing remained even remotely whole. Even the  landscape itself appeared to have been worn down dramatically between where he stood and the slight rise that cut off his view of the road far below.\n\n He knew what lay past that rise, and he wished that his path did not have to take him there. Waiting beyond it was a black mark that had been burnt into the surface of this planet as proof of the power of the Covenant. Twenty years ago, this black mark had signaled the doom of everything that once lived here.\n\n The setting sun glinted briefly from a bit of the glassy surface of the mark, shimmering as if bouncing off water in the distance. The Shipmaster shielded his eyes from the low glittering rays and growled, moving his long head left and right to take in th e length of that gigantic scar in the land ahead. There was no end to it visible from where he stood, and there was no option of going around. His path would eventually draw him directly across that dark line, and it would lie there, patient, until he reac hed it. He knew many such lines had cut through the hills and mountains and shattered towns that had once stood on this planet the humans had called Kholo.\n\n But this line had preceded all the others. It had initiated the immolation of Kholo. This line cur ved in a giant circle, many days' travel across, and at its center were the ruins of what had once been a large human city. This circle, and the millions who had once lived in that city, had been split by a crowning semicircle arc. The ends of this arc had  thrust toward the planet's northern pole, and at the tips of that crown and at the center of the giant circle were three deep, deep holes, burnt into the ground with excruciating precision.\n\n When taken in from orbit, this giant black mark would resolve i nto the Covenant's holy rune representing Faith. He knew  that the successful completion of this rune had triggered the planetwide plasma bombardment that left every single thing on Kholo dead for daring to challeng e the Path of the Covenant and the words of their Prophets.\n He knew all of these things because it had been his hand that had put that mark there. He had killed this planet so that the Great Journey might come more quickly. That Journey had never come. A nd now he'd returned to this planet, the site of his greatest victory and now his greatest shame, to seek inspiration for what he and his people were to do with themselves now that everything they'd fought and lived for was as thoroughly destroyed as the f orsaken land he stood on.\n\n Rising from these thoughts he knew the sun's setting would make it difficult to push onward safely. The Shipmaster found what looked like a small control structure farther down the dam and set his gear down in preparation for pa ssing another night alone.\n\n As the Shipmaster's eyes closed and he began rest -breathing, he listened again for any sounds of life around him. He heard none. Not even the wind stirred enough to scrape leaves across the dust, and as he dropped into sleep hi s mind spun from the silence of death on the planet's surface to the silence of space above twenty years prior, when his ship hung in orbit around this world.\n\n\n\n THE MOMENT was almost upon him. It had been a mere three days since the Fleet of Righteous Vigilance had arrived, and already the ground forces had broken the bulk of the human defenses below. In all of his years fighting the humans, the Shipmaster had rarely seen a planet fall so quickly. The humans seldom lasted long against the power of the Co venant, but this time he fought back a sense of disappointment that they had not mounted more of an opposition.\n\n The Shipmaster had claimed this world, after all, and the glory of its destruction would reflect directly on him. It had been his ship that found the human transport vessel and his interrogation that uncovered the location of this \"Kholo,\" a blight of a colony world on the outer fringes of what the humans blasphemously considered their space.\n\n Even afte r ten years of destroying the nests of these humans with little difficulty, the Covenant still kept finding more worlds and more colonies and more affronts to the gods, and they burned each of these out as quickly as they were found. They had still not loc ated the human homeworld, though. The humans somehow always managed to destroy the key navigational charts before being captured. The discipline this consistency took was admirable, which was surprising given the claims the Prophets made about this \"selfis h, ignorant rabble.\"\n\n The Shipmaster had personally broken the lone survivor on that little ship and pulled the location of this planet from the ship's incomplete databanks, and per the commandments of the Prophets he took that data directly to the holy s eat of the High Prophets so that they might tell them what the Great Journey, the path to transcendence that guided every aspect of life in the Covenant, would have them do.\n\n And as he had hoped, the Prophets announced that the Great Journey demanded that  this world and the sins of its inhabitants burn completely.\n\n The Covenant used smaller plasma bombardments frequently to easily destroy human cities and armies, but normally this was accomplished using their ships' automation to handle all of the intrica te functions involved in focusing plasma through a magnetic envelope across miles of atmospheric interference while maintaining a perfectly stationary orbital firing position. In almost all cases plasma bombardments were used purely as weapons, tools to sp eed the destruction of the humans. But rarely, the High Council would order a world's absolute  annihilation. This only happened in times of particular religious significance, as the effort involved in covering an e ntire planet's surface in such a powerful assault was enormous, requiring hundreds of ships and massive amounts of energy .  . . massive even for the Covenant.\n\n And so the fleet was summoned and death brought swiftly to the heretical stain of this world. A s expected, resistance in the space around Kholo was brief and ineffectual, with only a few small military vessels sporting ineffective weaponry and poor tactics. These fell easily even to his earliest scouting ships. Since the High Council had granted the  Shipmaster claim to this cleansing the fleet was under his command, and he followed the decreed invasion plan to the letter. Nothing about the destruction of Kholo would displease their gods. He had many reasons to be certain of that.\n\n After two days of human slaughter in their cities and homes, he waited for the prescribed hour and looked over to the Prophet next to him, the Prophet of Conviction, who was there to witness the event on behalf of the High Council. That Council, which was  made up of the heroes of his people and the three most holy High Prophets, had assigned the holy destruction of Kholo to him, but the Prophet of Conviction would be the one to declare whether his actions pleased the gods and advanced the Journey. Not a si ngle warrior in the history of his clan had ever been offered such an opportunity, and if the Shipmaster was successful it would greatly elevate his status and the status of his kin within the Covenant. All was riding on his performance.\n\n \"It is time,\" th e Prophet said. With a gesture to his Second to alert all ground forces that the Beginning had come, the Shipmaster knelt before the Prophet to start the ritual.\n\n His crew watched as closely as they could while coordinating the evacuation of all troops on  the surface of the planet. For a full hour the Prophet and the Shipmaster communed, exchanging vows and reciting the history of the Covenant. Passages  from the Writ of Union were interwoven with a recounting of ma rtial triumphs as the Prophet made the Shipmaster ready to assume his imminent, if brief, divinity.\n\n When all the words had been spoken and the Beginning was completed, his Second quietly confirmed that the fleet was ready. At this, the Shipmaster turned to the Prophet and spoke his final line in the ceremony:\n\n \"Speak, my Prophet, and let the word destroy all those who stand in the way of the Great Journey.\"\n\n And rising in his chair to better fill the dark purple robes puddled around his frail body, the Prophet's raspy voice replied.\n\n \"Faith. Destroy them with Faith.\"\n\n And so he did. Stepping down to the helmstation, the Shipmaster switched control of the maneuvering fields away from the ship's spirit and with a touch to ignite the ventral plasma array he emptied everything he was into the flame that shot down to the planet. The sights and sounds around him disappeared as a lifetime of training and worship and anticipation poured into controlling the ship and the long, wavering stream of plasma branding the curves of the glyph of Faith around and through the great city of the humans below.\n A million Covenant soldiers were all watching his work, waiting to see how he performed this sacred task. Thousands of his own people watched, their breath quickening  and their bodies shaking with the pride of watching a Sangheili manifest the power of the Great Journey. And, most importantly, the Prophet was watching .  . . and judging.\n\n And then it was finished. The Shipmaster pulled his hands, trembling, away from t he console and dropped to his knees as the rites required. He couldn't breathe as he waited there on the floor for the Prophet's judgment. Failure to perfectly execute the chosen glyph meant death, and if he had failed he wanted the life out of his body as  quickly as possible.\n\n And then he felt the touch of the Prophet's hand on his neck.  Triumphant roars from the rest of the bridge crew shook the air and he finally looked up to the main screen to take in the still -glowing sigil his hands had carved into the planet below. Clouds of ash and fire continued to spread hundreds of miles outward from the arcs and precise points of the glyph of Faith as the once -molten paths began to cool.\n\n He rose and turned to face the Prophet. The Shipmaster was now bound to this Prophet for the rest of his life and his service to the Covenant. He, his ship, and his crew would now represent the Prophet's interests and authority in this war, and the enormous honor of carrying a Prophet a board his ship would guarantee him a great role in the crusade against the humans. The Shipmaster had never imagined the power his faith would bring him, and as the other ships in the fleet saw the great glyph finally cool completely they began the intrica te weave of lines of bombardment that would render the rest of this world barren and forbidden for any member of the Covenant to touch for the rest of time.\n\n\n\n THE SHIPMASTERawoke with a thin layer of ash and dust covering his body, the triumphant roar of his former crew still ringing in his ears. Some of that crew were still alive and in orbit above him right now, waiting for him to find an answer in this haunted land. But too many of that crew were dead now, victims of the Great Betrayal and the battle s that followed. They had all died honorably, fighting to save their race in the aftermath of the lies that eventually brought him back to Kholo.\n\n He looked down from the dam and in the weak morning light saw a clearer view of the wide road that ran straight down to the valley below and perhaps all the way to the scar itself. The road cut through what might have been some kind of settlement near thi s lake, and the buildings in the area nearby stood largely intact, minus the years of abandonment and decay. As his eyes scanned farther down the valley, the Shipmaster saw that these remnants of buildings grew more and more feeble, shrinking almost to nothing just before the land dipped down and out of his gaze. He had seen this before, near earlier bombardment lines he had skirted in his journey across this place. The explosive power of the plasma lines created a terrible wall of heat and wind and debris when they cut into the surface of the planet, and the rushing force of these walls had scraped everything on the surface clean near the focus of the blasts. Structures farther away had suffered less, but everything  suffered. That was the point of it. Suffering was the correct journey for the nonbelievers.\n\n As he climbed down the other side of the dam he cut a path parallel to the empty riverbed, toward the road and the scar below. He could still see the column of s moke in the distance, seemingly blacker than it had been the day before. The smoke had been billowing for three days since he first saw it rising thinly on the horizon. Each day he was more afraid that it would disappear before he could find its source. It  could not be natural, the fires of this world went out decades ago. This fire, and its creators, did not belong here, just as he did not belong here. But perhaps they could help him find the guidance he was seeking.\n\n He passed rows and rows of shattered buildings as he moved down the road. Sharp, rusty fragments of vehicles poked out from tall grass and scrub trees all around him, but he saw less and less sign of their former owners. He tried to remember whether this part of the glyph he was walking towar d was closer to the start or the end of his deeds those years back, but the details eluded him. He only knew that he was responsible for everything around him. He was responsible for so many things, all of them done with such an absolute certainty. All his  life he had had no reason to question his path, and the focus this afforded had allowed him to achieve so much.\n\n For thirteen years after bonding with the Prophet of Conviction, the Shipmaster had followed his holy orders. He and his ship had been above Reach when they finally found a real fight  from the humans. It was his command that destroyed three of the massive orbital cannons that had annihilated so many other Covenant ships. The High Council believed that a fter Reach the humans would lose all will to fight, but the opposite was true. In the following months, desperation drove the humans and they proved to be the most dangerous foes the Covenant had ever faced. It was a glorious time to follow the Path.\n\n But the discovery and immediate, agonizing loss of the Halos had shaken the Covenant's faith, and suddenly their clarity began to falter. For thousands of years the entire Covenant had operated with a single purpose born of absolutely certainty in the Great J ourney. They were a folk ill -equipped for doubt.\n\n The Shipmaster paused briefly to wonder where the fully intact roof lying directly across this road had come from, how far it had been carried from its building by the winds of the blast that day. He had p ut this roof here, and he had destroyed whatever building it came from closer down to the scar. All of it. He had done all of this to follow a promise, and when that promise was exposed as an unforgivable lie, it made everything he had done in its prosecut ion a lie as well.\n\n He walked among the ruins of the lie, knowing its guilt as it was he who had been deceived. He had come here again to find out what to do about that lie. If he had no real response, no path forward, no new promise .  . .\n\n He shook his head and continued toward the rising pillar of smoke across the scar. He would find his new promise, or he would not leave this place alive.\n\n Hours passed and in its time the sun fell to the far horizon, once again making travel across the rubble problema tic. He made for a strangely intact structure just at the edge of the long rise ahead. The ruins here had all crumbled to the point of just rough outlines of stone among the weeds. Small bits of foundation stuck up like markers for the dead. Despite the gr owing darkness he could tell that this building had been some sort of shelter, as  metal pipes and bars held the thick walls together, heavy metal plates buttressing every visible angle a suitable refuge for the nig ht's sleep.\n\n He made a quick sweep of the surrounding area just to get it all fixed in his mind. He knew there was no threat here .  . . this close to the scar; the land did not want life. He did not blame it.\n  He strode to the top of the nearby rise and saw his scar directly for the first time. Its edge cut a precise line just an hour's walk from where he stood, and while it was hard to tell in the last light of the day, the ground there looked dark and hard. He guessed the scar's width at two or three ho urs to cross, depending on footing and whether it was as smooth as it appeared. There was no way he would choose to spend a night on that black ground.\n\n He turned back to his night's refuge and pried a metal door partially open to squeeze his bulky body i nside.\n\n His first step raised that familiar crunching sound, and when he engaged his heatlight he froze. Dozens of full human skeletons piled one on another with scraps of clothing and bits of possessions hanging stilly from graying sticks of bones. More bone littered toward a doorway at the other side of this room, and he could tell he would find more remains lingering in the further darkness inside. Men, women, and children must have gathered here in the last moments of their people, perhaps in hope that  the shelter would save them. But it did not save them from anything. Nothing would have saved them that day.\n\n The Shipmaster backed out quickly and did not stop to close the metal door in his haste to get away. He could not get far enough from that tomb in the night, but he found a low, partial wall nearby and set himself on the far side of it, facing away from the hidden bones of his victims.\n\n The grim discovery took his mind back to that day, as he took a little of his almost -depleted food and water. With the wild frenzy of battle broken suddenly by the full retreat of Covenant forces, the humans must have thought themselves very lucky.  Thought themselves saved, even. With all their satellites and orbital stations destroyed, they would have had no idea what was taking place in the skies above them until his beam of plasma lanced down and the fires and t he winds and the burning began. The people in that building might have gathered for safety or perhaps just because being together might be a better way to die. Any thoughts they had of escape were as much a false hope as the fervor that had brought that be am down amongst them.\n\n Still, he could understand their need to come together in such a moment. He understood the desire that someone else might have an answer, might tell you what to do when facing the end of everything you know. He understood that desir e all too well.\n\n His mind thus burdened, the Shipmaster slept.\n\n\n\n HE GOT word of the elevation of the Jiralhanae, the \"Brutes,\" as the humans so appropriately called them, and of the betrayal of his people just after arriving at the destination of a lon g-range scouting mission. In the high -priority slipspace missive that found them some days after their ship reentered real space, he knew something was amiss when the admiral addressed him by his clan name and not his proper rank. As the images of the slau ghter of the Sangheili leaders on the High Council flooded the bridge's main screen, everyone stopped to stare in disbelief, and when the admiral told the still -unfolding story of the lies of the Prophets about the gods and the Great Journey and of the blo ody treachery of the Brutes, all stood stunned. Looking to the faces of his men, he knew he could not stay that way for long.\n\n The Shipmaster ordered the helmsman to set an immediate course back to their homeworld and commanded his Second to gather every single crewmember in the main hangar. Word of what they had just heard would spread and the crew would have questions. The Shipmaster did not have answers to all of  those questions, but he sped out of the bridge to  find the one answer that mattered for now.\n\n At the back of the ship lay the chambers of the Prophet. The Shipmaster had come straight there so news had not yet reached the two Sangheili Honor Guards outside his door and they hesitated, briefly, before responding to his order to stand away. A Prophe t's guard is a sacred duty, and these two did not yet know that their function had ceased to exist some days prior when the great treachery had been committed. They both took their own lives soon afterward for the shame of protecting that creature in the i ntervening days. The Shipmaster did not judge them for this.\n\n As he palmed the door control he saw a brief glimpse of a familiar green glow, and that glimpse saved his life. The Prophet, clearly having been notified that his kind's sins were now open and foully exposed, had a plasma pistol charged and ready to kill whoever would inevitably come for him. It was a cowardly and pointless act of defiance. The Shipmaster ducked under the hissing green blast and rolled into the room, rising with a sweeping blow to knock the frail deceiver from his floating throne before the pistol could cool enough for a second shot.\n\n \"Blasphemy!\" the Prophet choked, now in a pile on the ground lit only by the light from the open doorway. \"Filth! Who are you to strike a messenge r of the gods? You will not survive this affront!\"\n\n \"Your words are lies,\" the Shipmaster said, stepping forward to collect him from the floor. \"And I am Sangheili, Shipmaster here. Those are the last words you will speak on my ship.\"\n\n At this he struck the Prophet again, careful to stun and not kill him, so that he sagged to the floor and did not rise. He twisted a corner of the wretch's robe in his hand and began to drag the unconscious form toward the hangar and the waiting crew.\n\n Some of the men had apparently not yet heard the cause of  this gathering, as there were cries of disbelief when the Shipmaster entered behind them and pulled the body of the Prophet through the assembled group. Some of the men even mo ved to stop him but they were held back as he mounted a maintenance platform and dropped the Prophet on the ground. The Shipmaster turned on the viewscreens all around them and replayed the message he had just received on the bridge. Silence fell over the crew as some saw the horrors for the first time and some saw confirmation of the insanity they knew was settling in around them all. The men remained silent as the admiral described what had happened, but howls of anger rose as they witnessed the death of the High Council. At the sight of Brutes laying hands to their fellows and as the implication of the Covenant turning against them set in, those howls were replaced by a new silence more haunting than any sound the Shipmaster had ever heard before. All eye s turned to him, as he had known they would. He was ready.\n\n The Prophet awoke now, surrounded by angry Sangheili, and tried to stand on his atrophied legs. It was pitiful how small he looked now, and the Shipmaster grabbed him by the neck as he tried to totter off the platform. When he twisted around to look at the Shipmaster, he saw something he had not expected, and his resolve crystallized .  . . this Prophet, one of a group he had known all his life as the source of all the Covenant's power, was terrifi ed.\n\n This fear confirmed everything the Shipmaster had just seen on the screens and decided what he must do next. If this Prophet could be afraid then he could not truly know the will of the gods, for what could bring fear to someone with a direct connect ion to the divine? What's more, if he did not know the will of the gods then everything he had ever said and done was a lie everything done for him was now a lie. The Prophet must die for that deceit, and the Shipmaster had to be the one to end him. His cr ew had to witness this to prevent them from  thinking the thoughts they were thinking right now, and they would take from this death the start of a new purpose.\n\n The Shipmaster tightened his fingers around the Prophet's ropy neck with one hand and used his other hand to hold the Prophet's face toward his. Tiny feet scratched without purchase on the metal floor as the Prophet hung in the air. The Shipmaster looked out to the shocked eyes of his troops and yelled, \"Betrayal! Our people have been betrayed by the Prophets and their Jiralhanae puppets!\nYou have seen what they have done, how they have struck at our faith and our leaders .  . . and you know what Sangheili must do in the face of such betrayal. Our war against these deceivers starts now!\" At these words the Prophet began a high -pitched scream that was cut immediately short as the Shipmaster looked back into his eyes and began to squeeze.\n\n His struggle grew m ore desperate and a sound began to build in the crew as they watched the unthinkable event on the platform with the images of Brutes destroying Sangheili ships and devouring their dead fellows on the screens behind and above. The Shipmaster let the moment stretch until he judged his men's new hatred was sufficient and then he closed his fist suddenly around the Prophet's neck and felt the bones under the skull give way. The Prophet's eyes locked on the Shipmaster's, just as they had done the day the two wer e bonded, and the contorting body grew suddenly slack. It was done.\n\n The Prophet's dead eyes continued to look up at him as the Shipmaster opened his hands and the body fell to the ground. He raised his voice to join his crew's scream of rage and defiance  and loss. As the scream grew longer and louder he knew that he had succeeded in giving them a purpose .  . . for now. Looking down at the tiny figure at his feet, the Shipmaster wondered how long that purpose would last, and he wondered where he would find  his own purpose. He had just killed the only voice he thought could speak for them to the gods, and he did not know what those gods wanted of him now. The men  rushed back to prepare for the voyage home and he foll owed to lash them with the hardness they expected. The Shipmaster knew he could only provide that hardness for so long. Already he felt drained as the moment's rage left him, but there was no time for such thoughts. He was needed.\n\n\n\n THOSE DEADeyes foll owed him into consciousness. The new light of dawn did little to rid him of the dread caused by his dreams. The Shipmaster looked again to the smoke. It was still rising. With a small sip of water he left the shelter of the crumbling wall, moving toward th e glyph he knew he must cross. He glanced back at the human tomb, glad to leave it behind.\n\n This relief died quickly as he came to the rise and caught full sight of the scar. Shortly past the rise was a sheer drop into the black land, and he nodded at the  prudence of not attempting to proceed the night before.\n\n Finding no easy path down into the scar, the Shipmaster found what looked to be a clear landing spot below and dropped down into the channel. The smooth walls were twice his height, and he worried about how long he would have to look for a path up when he reached the other side. He did not relish the thought of staying down in this place any longer than he absolutely must.\n\n The bottom was truly as black as it had appeared from above. The plasma had  melted several meters of rock and stone, and the molten remnants had leveled to an almost perfectly flat field between the boundaries of the direct blast.\n\n But while the overall terrain was smooth, every step of this land was jagged and crystalline -sharp . The cooling material must have fractured and cracked, creating a field of knives .  . . no living creature would dare traverse this place. None except him.\n\n As he stepped carefully to avoid the myriad cracks and vertiginous pits that cut across the groun d around him, the Shipmaster's already dark thoughts turned to his fear for his people. After thousands of years of obedient service to the Covenant,  what would they do now? Already the fight was leaving some of hi s people. Not even the death of all of the Brutes could replace what they had lost when the Covenant was broken. They would find no true purpose solely through battle, no matter how much vengeance demanded it. They needed something more.\n\n For six years af ter the High Prophet of Truth, the father of all the Prophets' lies, died at the hands of the Arbiter, the Shipmaster had taken up the fight against everything that threatened his people. But that was all he had done respond to threats. Immediately after t he death of Truth, the Prophets wished only to preserve their own skins and the Brutes welcomed the newfound opportunity to misuse the weapons, ships, and other tools that had been so rightly denied them since they became part of the Covenant. The Brutes' barbarity prevented them from understanding the gifts of the Forerunners, even though they had suddenly received those gifts in abundance and they used them to try to wipe out their former Sangheili masters.\n\n The battles against the Prophets and their Bru te puppets had been legendary in the wake of the breaking of the Covenant, but it was not long before the primitive nature of the Brutes pulled their fighting cohesion apart and split their new power among several internecine struggles. The Prophets, in the meantime, had largely disappeared. There had never been many of their wretched species, but their sudden disappearance was baffling and, to some, portentous. The Shipmaster paid no mind to the rumors that held that the Prophets had finally achieved the G reat Journey and that the Sangheili were damned for daring to take up arms against them in the final days of the Covenant.\n\n Some Sangheili commanders continued to fight the many scattered remnants of the former Covenant wherever they could be found, but n ot all. After six long years of this scattered war, Sangheili power had begun to wane right along with their drive to fight. They had to defend themselves, and always did so heroically, but since the Prophets contr olled all of the major learnings that transformed Forerunner gifts into tools of the Great Journey, the Sangheili now largely lacked the understanding to build new facilities and weapons themselves. The Sangheili steadily lost ships they could not easily r epair, let alone replace. Their time seemed to be running out.\n\n They once depended on spiritual justification for all of their actions, relying on the Prophets to lead them in spiritual matters. There had never been any need for Sangheili religious leader snow no one among them had the knowledge or the ability to comprehend the will of their gods. For a people whose sole purpose had been enforcing their gods' will, this was terrifying.\n\n He knew his gods were out there, but he had no idea what they wanted. He had no idea if they were angry, and if they were he had no idea how to remedy that offense. All of those questions had brought him here, and all of those needs would keep him here un til he found the answers he needed, or died trying.\n\n The Shipmaster had seen this coming from the moment he put down the Prophet of Conviction, leading his men to war against their own religion. This planet was the last place he knew he had touched their gods, through that moment of ritual, and so he saw it now as his last possible hope to find answers that might lead him forward again.\n\n He looked up, knowing his ship was in orbit, with orders to wait for his call, but he did not know what he would do if he did not find any answers. He only had food and water for a few more days. There was nothing edible here and the little water he had found so far had been bitter and sharp in his mouth. If his sustenance ran out before he heard from his gods .  . .\n\n The steady sound of the rocks against his armor was his only  distraction. He moved quickly across that black land, keeping his eyes on the nearing pillar of smoke. He was not far from its source now, although it was ha rd to tell how much farther he had to go from so deep in the cut of the scar.\n\n Suddenly, he came across the surprise of a small stream. It flowed right down the length of the scar; he couldn't tell how far it wound, but it looked as if it had been running  for some time. The water had the same sharp smell as all other water on this planet, probably caused by the vaporization of some mineral when the plasma lines etched their fire. It carried with it smaller rocks and dirt and sand. He stared at that tiny st ream and for a moment forgot the fires he unleashed here. He wondered if this stream offered hope that this place might someday be returned to its former state.\n\n The stream could become a river, wiping away this glyph, burying it beneath new soil and sand  and water. He knew that forgiveness from this planet would take far longer than he had time to live, but perhaps someday his wrongs could be wiped clean. The thought was comforting. Stepping over the small stream, the Shipmaster looked up to the smoke onc e more, making sure he was on his proper path.\n\n But the smoke was not there.\n\n He scanned the entire horizon, hoping he had only become disoriented, but still he found no smoke. How long had he stared at that stream, lost in self -indulgent thoughts of for giveness? This was his punishment for such thoughts, and he cursed himself and his weakness.\n\n He quickly found a spot on the far wall where he thought he could exit this place and return to more normal ground. He began to run, forgoing caution for the sak e of speed, for any accident he might suffer would be a very much deserved death. There would be no easy release from the burden of what he'd done.\n\n But that death did not come. In surprisingly short time he threw  himself against the far side's rocky wall, found footholds he could not see, and propelled himself to the top. Coming over the lip of the wall he now heard sounds battle sounds, both human and Covenant (what had once been Covenant, anyway).\n\n He followed the sounds to another stout building that reminded him unpleasantly of the one he'd left so quickly the night before. This building had part of a crumbling second story and what looked like two strange gray tents next to it, along with some kind of machine ry covered in levers and wheels. All of these extra objects appeared to be human, with their squarish lines and dull gray and black surfaces. Human tools were always as ugly as they were functional in design.\n\n He dropped his pack and freed his small hunti ng curveblade, a weapon his people had used for as long as they could remember, and which carried the same lines as their signature plasma blades. He stayed low to the ground, moving with deadly confidence. More shots were fired from around the building an d he rushed forward, now with a clear view of three Kig -Yar taking cover behind the metal supports of the building, firing at an unknown enemy beyond.\n\n The Shipmaster did not know what the birdlike Kig -Yar, whom the humans called Jackals, were doing her e, but he was certain it was not good. They were scavengers, pirates, and thieves, and they should not dare to come to a place like this. The sounds of the human weapons had now stopped, and he feared that the Jackals might have already taken their full to ll on them.\n\n\n\n HE CUTaround to the far side of the building where he had just seen one of the gangly creatures lurking behind the building's front wall. Its attention was focused on whatever was around the structure. Before it knew what was happening he  had come up behind it, pinned it to the wall of the building and nearly severed its head with a slashing lunge of his curveblade. He lowered the twitching body to the ground without sound. The staccato firing cont inued from the Jackal's fellows on the other side of the structure. The Shipmaster collected the carbine, now covered in the Jackal's dark blood, from the ground where it had fallen and checked the remaining ammunition. Only one shot remained, but it was g ood to have a real weapon in his hands again. He did not have time to scavenge the corpse for a replacement magazine, as the two on the other side would likely soon call or regroup. He had to act now.\n\n He took a quick look around the corner to see what hu man forces remained, but his glimpse gave him nothing more than a closer look at the tents and some kind of hole with heavy equipment at its edge. Going back around the building so as to not expose himself to the humans, the Shipmaster dared a final quick look around the back corner to determine where the remaining two Jackals stood. When he heard them take their next shots he launched around the corner, firing his single round through the back of the nearer Jackal's plumed head. Bits of bone and meat and b lood sprayed all over his fellow, who turned with a loud squawk and a weapon lowered in surprise. The Shipmaster's sprint had already carried him into melee range and with a kick from his armored foot to the Jackal's belly he heard its spine snap, and the wretch collapsed screaming.\n\n The Kig -Yar's arms flailed in the mixture of dust and dirt and blood and its legs lay useless as the Shipmaster moved quickly to stand above his prey. A second kick to the prone Jackal's throat ended its struggles decisively.\n\n Silence fell once again, broken only slightly by his combat -quick breath. He retrieved and hung a plasma pistol from his armor, picked up a carbine with more ammunition, and prepared to face the humans. Even though he had eliminated the Kig -Yar, the situ ation was now more complicated. Humans, as  he had learned in all his years fighting them, became surprisingly fierce when cornered, and from what he had seen so far he suspected that the Jackals had attacked the hu mans unaware. More importantly, he remembered the stories told by the Arbiter that the humans shared some incomprehensible connection with the Forerunners. That humans were here at all, in this place where they suffered such a terrible loss, was enough to give the Shipmaster a spark of hope. Surely they must be here to serve some purpose for him.\n\n Taking a deep breath, he snuck another look, low and fast, around his covering corner. Everything looked the same as it had, and he heard nothing. Anticipating c loser -range combat, the Shipmaster slipped the carbine into its customary holding slot on his back and readied the plasma pistol in one hand and his gory blade in the other. After another deep breath he moved quickly to the rear of the nearest human tent a nd with his blade cut his way in, hoping to surprise any occupants and give him a second of surprise to decide whether to subdue or kill anything inside.\n\n But the tent was empty, and a quick look around showed only papers and boxes and two small metal -framed beds. Through the loosely hanging door of the tent, however, he did see two human bodies on the ground outside, next to the boxy machinery he had spotted from afar. The Shipmaster could clearly see that the nearer of the two humans was motionless and h ad a number of large plasma burns on its legs and torso. He had seen enough dead humans to know that this one was beyond hope. The second, however, sitting with its back up against the machine, appeared to be intact and was holding a bulky pistol limply in  its lap.\n\n Throwing constant glances to the second tent and any possible additional attackers there, the Shipmaster came to within striking distance of the human and saw a large pool of its bright red blood gathering at the body's far side. He kicked the pistol  off of the human's lap and, seeing no reaction, knelt down to determine if the thing was alive.\n\n It was, barely. It continued to breathe but from the blood and lack of visible burns it looked like the human  had been hit by a carbine round in its belly or side. He could not tell if the round had passed through or was still in there, baking the human's innards with radiation, but with the amount of blood on the ground the Shipmaster didn't think it particularl y mattered. This man was as good as dead. Frustrated, the Shipmaster collected the pistol and moved on. The gun was primitive, but it was powerful and surprisingly accurate at a certain range. It might be useful in the days ahead.\n\n Turning back to the sec ond tent the Shipmaster confirmed that there were no more humans in the immediate area, but his eyes ranged constantly over the skies and horizon to watch for either human or Jackal reinforcements. All of these combatants had to have come from somewhere, a nd the lack of any ships in the area made it clear that they were brought here by someone or something else. Two humans alone could not have transported or even operated all this equipment .  . . there must be others nearby. He might not have much time to f ind out what they had been doing before those others came back. He wanted to be clear of this place when they did.\n\n The second tent contained more of the boxes he had seen in the first, and the lids he threw open exposed what looked like food, energy cell s, and some kind of filthy environmental suits with enclosed helmets and heavy metal gloves. They looked big enough to cover a human in their standard bulky combat armor, but he had noticed no armor on either of the human bodies outside, merely the drab un iforms he had seen before on some human civilians.\n\n The machinery, when inspected more closely, was still a mystery to him. Thick bundles of cables led down and disappeared  into the nearby hole, which looked as if  it had been dug very recently. The hole angled as if it were directed underneath the boxy building where he had killed the Jackals, and soot on the upper lip of this short tunnel appeared to answer for the source of the column of smoke he had been followi ng the last four days. This finding dismayed the Shipmaster greatly.\n  As soon as he had seen the column of smoke calling to him from across the scar, he had pinned all his hope on it. The thought that the smoke had merely been the product of scavengers, w hich these humans now seemed to be, shook him greatly. But he could take some of the humans' food, and they had to have water. Perhaps they were there to extend his journey into the great city farther at the heart of his glyph. And there was the matter of finding out where both of these groups of interlopers had come from. His journey was not over yet.\n\n Stepping back into the second tent to find the humans' water, the Shipmaster tossed the lids off more of their metal containers and cast aside small tools,  clothing, and other human detritus until he found a heavy container at the bottom with many pouches of what looked like fresh water inside. As he lifted this container and turned to carry it out his eye caught one of the papers scattered around the floor of the tent. He froze. He threw the water container aside and dropped to grab the image on that paper, which was covered in strange human letters surrounding the image set in the middle of the page.\n\n Among all of these incomprehensible human markings he k new exactly what that picture was, and as his widening eyes took it in he knew why he had been called here.\n\n On that picture was a glyph, a sign of his people, and that glyph was the one that tied him to this planet twenty years ago and brought him back again today. That glyph was Faith, and the gods had sent the humans here to help him find it. Now looking at t he other documents and pictures, he found a series  of images that showed artifacts, clearly Forerunner -created, covered with the glyphs and signs the Covenant had translated and adopted for all of their works. And most importantly, in one picture he saw part of a rounded frame and smooth glass lens that looked exactly like the Forerunner Oracle they had kept in their former capital city High Charity before it was destroyed by the recklessness of the Prophet of Truth . But the pictures showed these relics surrounded by humans, being studied and even dismantled by them, and this sight brought back an anger he hadn't felt for many years.\n\n Other pictures showed what he could see was the nearby building as it looked befor e being nearly destroyed. In its former state it had other, less sturdy, structures all around it, and these pictures, along with the beginnings of the tunnel outside, told him everything he needed to know.\n\n Excited now, he rushed outside to the bleeding human and rolled him over roughly to lie flat on the ground next to the pool of blood, now almost black in its cooling color. A small rivulet drained into the nearby hole, and it did not look like much more was left to flow from the human. The Shipmaster t ore open the human's gray -green garb and saw the expected hole in the human's side where the carbine round had struck him. Rolling the human over to the other side he found a similar hole, more ragged at its edges where the flesh split outward as the round  had passed through. He grunted with approval. The wound might not be fatal, as he had seen humans survive surprising wounds on the battlefield. He would do what he could to make sure this one survived, for the Shipmaster would have many questions for him in the days ahead. And the Shipmaster still remembered how to get a human to answer questions .  . .\n\n The Shipmaster reengaged his communications and sent a command message to his ship. He called for a medic, a security squad, the ship's chief engineer, an d a patrol of the surrounding  skies in case there were more of these humans or Kig -Yar nearby. He had his purpose now and with it the beginnings of a sense of direction.\n  He no longer needed any Prophets to tell h im what the gods desired. It was time for him to find out for himself.\n\n\n\n HALO\n\n EVOLUTIONS\n\n\n\n ESSENTIAL TALES OF THE HALO UNIVERSE\n\n A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK\n\n\n\n A LETTER FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF XENOARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDIES AT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY TO SECURITY -CLEARED FACULTY AND ONSITE GRADUATE STUDENTS.\n\n\n\n Department of Xenoarchaeology\n\n Jadwin Hall\n\n Edinburgh University\n\n 2 Charles Street\n\n Edinburgh\n\n Alba EH8 9ADEarth\n\n\n\n ONI MANDATED SECURITY CLEARANCE\n\n INFORMATION: TS_Adjunct and Civilian Personnel\n\n Exception 1492_b 01/31/2553 14:12pm TST\n\n\n\n January 31, 2553\n\n\n\n From the Office of Dr. William Arthur Iqbal.\n\n\n\n Dear Colleagues,\n\n As we are all very aware, the discovery of the Excession at Voi has significant ramifications for our species, as well as the course of our work. Everyone on this distribution list has had some exposure to classified documents regarding the discovery and exposure of  what we are now describing as Forerunner relics, technology, and architecture. Everyone on this distribution list has no doubt made some educated assumptions about what we're looking at and, from this moment, for.\n\n A similar letter has gone out from the Department of Xeno -biology in Calcutta. Some of their information differs in security clearance from your own and so I am not able to divulge its contents here. You may ask your local ONI Communications Officer for b iological information that may be germane to your studies.\n\n We are at a strange tipping point for our profession and for our culture. The Covenant threat is lifted for the moment, but I very much doubt that the agreement with the Sangheili and their repre sentative, the Arbiter, is the end of our conflict with the other Covenant species. However, it buys our department some time and, more importantly, resources to continue our investigation and our work. This is more than we've had in the past thirty years or so.\n\n I suspect we will continue to compete with the Elites and other species for information about Forerunner relics. But that technology and its legacy is plainly at the center of our chance for recovery. You are no longer working for history as an in tellectual exercise, but rather to ensure that humanity has a history.\n\n With that in mind, I am announcing that you are all now required to adhere to a new military dictate: ONI Emergency Order 1416 -2. This letter serves as both notification and contract t hat you work for the Office of Naval Intelligence, regardless of your original post and designation. Existing ONI workers are also included in the minutiae of the order which follows as a separate document.\n\n Previously, I know that you have all been worki ng under unknowable conditions, often racing against time to finish observations. I do not think for even a moment that the current calm will be the future norm. We need to continue expediency, cost -control, and working with limited resources.\n\n Our civili zation has undergone a significant shift. Our  populations are decimated, our people scattered, and our military is now at its weakest since the dawn of slipspace travel. Our former alien enemies may be the tip of the i ceberg if the UNSC can't assume the cooperation of the human Diaspora. And we need all the cooperation we can get.\n\n There are some details that I know have made the rounds as gossip, but you are now party to the limited information we have. There are holo graphic records and other data at this secure location: pit_somnambulist_001413_action  , but the following digest will bring you up to speed today as you begin to read the other materials:\n\n The Excession at Voi is a slipspace machine of extraordinary pow er. It has demonstrated the ability to open a standing portal to a now destroyed extragalactic location referred to in your data as the Ark. The portal is now closed, but we have good reason to suspect that the Excession at Voi is capable of other feat s.\n\n The Ark was a manufacturing facility it seems to be the construction site for the entire Halo array. It was too vast and complex for any useful data to be gathered in the brief moments the portal was opened, but we can assume it served other purposes too. We are examining footage from theForward Unto Dawn  and other surviving systems/people. Much of the gathered information was lost along with the AI Cortana and her host Spartan. I do not need to remind you of those details.\n\n The Halo array itself was a networked weapon system, which used a previously unknown technology to destroy specified biological forms at both a molecular and a Galactic scale. Its purpose was, as far as we can tell, to destroy both the Flood and more importantly, its food source carbon-and calcium -based life forms above a certain level of sophistication. Its last known activation coincides precisely with the Ross -Ziegler Blip *and we can be relatively certain that that event was a deliberate  attempt to defeat the organisms that made landfall in Africa just a year ago.\n\n We can now look at other artifacts and digs with a renewed context. Items, data, and images from Coral, Reach, Heian, and more can all be exam ined in light of the hard facts established over the last year. It seems that whoever, or whatever the Forerunners were, or are, they were fully aware of our species. The Excession at Voi was visible to local inhabitants 100,000 years ago possibly a mix of modern and Neanderthal humans.\n\n We are being careful not to make too many assumptions, but the evidence in some cases is compelling. In others, ambiguous. I direct your attention to the photographs from Heian. There were obvious Forerunner elements in that architecture, but also unmistakable architectural themes from Greco -Roman, East Asian, and Middle Eastern eras. All of those buildings predated human travel to that world by perhaps hundreds maybe thousands of years. We find ourselves wondering if the y borrowed from our history, or we from theirs. It is impossible that it was a coincidence.\n\n Furthermore, now that we understand the Halo is an armed weapon array, we must revisit our prior assumptions about how inert other structures are. This applies to  the Excession at Voi particularly, and careful exploration is being undertaken as we speak. Those concerned about ONI barging in as a military force needn't be. The investigation is being undertaken with the greatest care and under rigorous scientific con ditions.\n\n We still don't understand everything about Voi, but we do  know that the structure is still active, still drawing power from an unknown source, and as far as we can tell, riddled with passageways and conduits  that we have, as yet, minimal access to. There are more secrets locked under our feet than we dare speculate on. We're looking particularly for answers as they relate to doors, encryption, and other passageways. This isn't something we can blast or arcwel d our way through. It's something we must think through.\n\n Again, I want you all to understand the entirety of the material you are now investigating. To those of you already at sites, I advise caution and diplomacy in equal measure. The Sangheili have promised nothing and indeed warned us that they do not yet co ntrol either the Covenant client species, or even their own domestic situation. Hostilities may have ceased for now, but we should be alert and logical.\n\n This may be the greatest archaeological boon we have ever received as scholars, but it is certainly the most perilous. Be careful. I expect daily reports filed regardless of slipstream delay. I will reassemble chronology later.\n\n Good luck.\n\n Yours sincerely, Dr. William Arthur Iqbal Department of Xenoarchaeology Edinburgh University\n\n\n\n *tiny aberration in the fossil and carbon records of Earth, noted by two Earth geologists in\n2332 and matched on several other worlds, demonstrating a gap in certain species so tiny and uniform, that it had been attributed not to a b iological catastrophe, but rather had been investigated and then abandoned as odd evidence of warping or stretching of spacetime itself. The Ross -Ziegler Blip is now being opened and reinvestigated in connection to the events of 2552.\n\n\n\n ACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\n The amount of work that goes into a project like this defies understanding. The behind -the-scenes of making a multi -author book that ties into the vanguard of modern science fiction could easily make the stuff of bad  reality television. Juggling the franchise's wonderfully high story expectations while simultaneously maintaining authors' creative freedoms, all under fun and tortuous time constraints, requires heroic actions from many. This book wouldn't have been at a ll possible without the Herculean efforts of Nicolas Sparth Bouvier, Alicia Brattin, Gabriel Robogabo Garza, Jonathan Goff, Kevin Grace, Alicia Hatch, and Frank O'Connor.\n\n The amazing team at Tor has to be praised as well. Led by Tom Doherty and maste rfully marshaled by Eric Raab, the unsung heroes of Karl Gold, Justin Golenbock, Jim Kapp, Seth Lerner, Jane Liddle, Whitney Ross, Heather Saunders, and Nathan Weaver and their efforts in the trenches to make it all happen is legend. Special thanks to Shel ley Chung, Patricia Fernandez, and Christina MacDonald for desperately trying to make every story in here read without a blip.\n\n Additional thanks to 343 Industries, Bungie Studios, Ryan Crosby, Scott Dell'Osso, Nick Dimitrov, David Figatner, Nancy Figatne r, Josh Kerwin, Justin Osmer, Pete Parsons, Bonnie Ross -Ziegler, Phil Spencer, and Carla Woo.\n\n\n\n ABOUT THE AUTHORS\n\n TOBIAS S. BUCKELLis a Caribbean -born writer who grew up in Grenada as well as the United States and British Virgin Islands. He has written a number of novels, including Halo: The Cole Protocol  . He currently lives in Ohio with his wife and his two daughter s, two dogs, and two cats.\n\n\n\n B. K. EVENSONis the author of the Aliens  tie-in novel Aliens: No Exit  . He is currently working on a novel based on the video game Dead Space  . He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. Under the name Brian Evenson, he i s the author of nine books of fiction. These include The Open Curtain  , which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and for the International Horror Guild Award, andLast Days  .\n\n\n\n JONATHAN DAVID GOFFis a writer and artist raised on a healthy diet of Saturday  morning cartoons and sugary breakfast cereals. After serving in the United States Air Force, Jonathan spent six years developing creative content for action figure, comic book, and entertainment properties at the McFarlane Companies in Tempe, Arizona, bef ore relocating to the Pacific Northwest where he assists Microsoft Game Studios' 343  Industries in all manner of Halo -related goodness. He currently resides in Redmond, Washington, with his lovely and infinitely suppor tive wife, Maria.\n\n\n\n KEVIN GRACEis the managing editor for 343 Industries, working closely with the internal and external talent who bring the Halo universe to life across books, comics, animation, and games. He is an editing veteran of Halo 3  ,Halo 3: O DST , and a variety of other games published by Microsoft Game Studios. He comes from a Midwestern attorney upbringing and now enjoys living in Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Karen, and twelve furry paws.\n\n\n\n By day,TESSA KUM sits at her computer an d types. By night, she also sits at her computer and types. Hers is the very definition of a rock 'n' roll lifestyle. She is a graduate of the Clarion South Writers Workshop, editorial assistant for Weird Tales  , and assistant editor for the Best American Fantasy series. She has been published in Daikaiju 3  and ASIM, with forthcoming fiction appearing in anthologies such as Baggage  andLast Drink Bird Head  , and her short -story collection 7wishes  is currently free to read online. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, and owns neither an Xbox nor a TV\n(which is, you know, a bit of a drag).\n\n\n\n ROBT McLEESdoes two things well: kill zombies and speak in a robot voice. Both of these life-skills have se rved him well in his fourteen years at Bungie. He married his best friend and has produced, with the help of his wife, two wonderful boys. If you give Robt a bite of your pizza, he'll ask for a beer. And when you get back from grabbing a beer from the frid ge, like half the damned pizza is gone! WTF, Rob?!?\n\n\n\n ERIC NYLUNDis the New York Times  bestselling author of Halo: Ghosts of Onyx  and World Fantasy Award nominated Dry Water,  among several other novels, which have sold more  than two million copies. His latest novel, Mortal Coils  , is the start of an epic five -book series.\n\n\n\n FRANK O'CONNORhas worked in and around the video game industry for fifteen years , as both journalist -observer and active participant in game development first at Bungie, the creators of Halo, and then at Microsoft Game Studios' 343 Industries. Frank has been working in and on Halo fiction for the greater part of six years, having deve loped fiction, stories, and characters for Halo games, comic books, novels, and animation. The thirty -nine-year-old western Washington, resident enjoys reading, cycling, and corralling the ever -more -elaborate escape attempts of his baby daughter.\n\n\n\n ERIC RAABwas born in the city of Newburgh, New York, which rests majestically on the western bank of the Hudson River. He's currently an editor at Tom Doherty Associates and has been the editor for Halo: Ghosts of Onyx  ,Halo: Contact Harvest  , and Halo: The Col e Protocol  , among other projects well worth your time and money. His passions include skipping rocks on water and driving nowhere.\n\n\n\n #1New York Times  bestselling authorKAREN TRAVISS has received critical acclaim and award nominations for her Wess'har series, as well as regularly hitting the bestseller lists with her Star Wars  andGears of War  novels. A former defense correspondent and TV and newspaper journalist, she lives in Wiltshire, England.\n\n\n\n World Fantasy Award winnerJEFF VANDERMEER grew up in the Fiji Islands and has had fiction published in more than twenty countries. He is the bestselling author of City of Saints &\nMadmen  , as well as Predator: South China Sea,  released by Dark Horse Books in 2008. He reviews books for, among others, The New Yor k Times Book Review  ,The Washington Post Book World, andBarnes & Noble Review,  as well as being a  regular columnist for the Omnivoracious book blog. Current projects include Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for Twenty -First Century Writers  , the noir fantasy novel Finch  , and the forthcoming definitive Steampunk Bible  from Abrams Books. He currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida, and serves as assistant director for Wofford College's Shared Worlds writing camp for teens (Spartanburg, South Carolina).\n\n\n\n FRED VAN LENTEis the New York Times  bestselling author of Incredible Hercules  (with Greg Pak) and Marvel Zombies 3  , as well as the American Library Association award -winning Action Philosophers  . He created Spartan: Black for the graphic novel Halo: Blood Line  , illustrated by Francis Portela and serialized by Marvel Comics beginning in December 2009. Van Lente's other comics include Comic Book Comics  ,MODOK's 11  ,XMen Noir  , and Amazing Spider -Man .\n\n\n\n ABOUT THE ARTISTS\n\n ROBOGABO (GABRIEL GARZA)has been a professional artist for the last ten years. Born in Mexico, he now lives in Seattle, working for 343 Industries. His artwork is heavily influenced by his years of experience wo rking at a newspaper. His passion for video games attracted him into the concept art community and led him to live and work across the United States working on video games. When Gabo is not painting, he likes to spend time at home with his family, while tr ying to enjoy life outside his art cave. Visit his website at www.robogabo.com  .\n\n\n\n SPARTH (NICOLAS BOUVIER)has been an active concept designer in the gaming industry since\n1996. Born in France, he now lives in Seattle, Washington, working for Microsoft. He has contributed to the development of several released games since 1997, includin gAlone in the Dark 4\n(2001), Cold Fear  (2005), Prince of Persia Warrior Within  (2004), Assassin's Creed  (2007), andRage,  a project still in development at id Software. Sparth has also utilized his talents to illustrate numerous book covers. His images have be en actively chosen by publishers to adorn the covers of multiple French and English authors. When he is not working, he finds time to relax with his wife, Lorene, and his three children, Arthur, Leopold, and Zelie."
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "Halo: 133 (Halo Spartan-III OC)\nPosted originally on the Archive of Our Own  at http://archiveofourown.or g/works/50679781 . Rating: Mature Archive W arning: Graphic Depictions Of V iolence Category: Other Fandom: Halo (V ideo Games) & Related Fandoms Characters: Enfield-A133 , SPARTANS (Halo) , Red T eam (Halo) , Kurt Ambrose |\nKurt-051 , John-1 17 | Master Chief , Noble Six | SP ARTAN-B312 , Kelly 087 (Halo) , Frederic-104 (Halo) , The Covenant (Halo) , Thel 'V adam |\nThe Arbiter , Designation 017772\nAdditional T ags: War, Military , Alternate Universe - Space , Military Science Fiction , harvest , Game: Halo: Reach , Reach , Human-Covenant W ar (Halo)\nLanguage: English Series: Part 2 of The Multiverse Stats: Published: 2023-10-08 Completed: 2023-1 1-26 Words: 12,272 Chapters:\n6/6Halo: 133 (Halo Spartan-III OC)\nby Just_Me666\nSummary\n2525 CE. Several non-human ships have recently arrived over the human colony of Harvest, in a matter of weeks the proposed peace between humanity and this new faction collapses resulting in a full scale war with humanity pushed onto its back foot. This fall of peace will result in a chain of events like no other . A shake of the whole universe, all centred around one man, Sierra-Alpha-133 \"Enfield\".Harvest March 2525CE Planet of Harvest The crimson glow of destruction painted the skies above as the young boy perched on the crumbling bridge, his eyes fixated on the cataclysmic chaos that engulfed the world around him. Destructive beams of unknown origin rained down from the heavens, transforming the once-thriving landscape into an apocalyptic nightmare. His heart sank as he watched the last freighters vanish into the horizon, abandoning him to face the horrors on his own. Summoning courage, he descended the creaking staircase, his every step marked by the darkened stains of blood washing the streets. A chilling sight met his eyesa human body , ravaged by what seemed to be the savage jaws of wild creatures. Amid the turmoil, a bone-chilling cackle pierced the air , followed by a blood-curdling scream. The boy's instincts compelled him to take cover , and from his hiding spot, he witnessed a monstrous being wielding an ener gy sword, mercilessly tearing apart a helpless colonist. Overwhelmed with fear , the boy cautiously retreated into the shadows, only to discover a lifeless member of the Colonial Militia with a crushed skull. Desperation compelled him to grab the soldier's rifle, but its weight proved too much for his slender frame. His eyes then fell upon a holstered pistol, and he reached for it, hoping for a chance at survival. But alas, the weapon's trigger yielded no response, leaving him defenceless. With a heavy heart, he abandoned the useless weapon and continued navigating the eerie streets, careful to avoid the peculiar bipedal creatures that now roamed the area. As he drew closer to his home, he stepped onto the deserted street, only to find himself confronted by a chilling sightseveral towering monsters adorned in blue armour , led by a formidable figure draped in red. Fear gripped his throat, and he instinctively backed away , stumbling upon something unpleasant beneath his shoea mangled body , dismembered and lifeless. Despite the terror that consumed him, the boy summoned his courage and addressed the alien intruders, \"Why are you here? Leave,\" he demanded, his voice quivering yet resolute. In response, the aliens' lips split into four like they were laughing at him, their plasma blades igniting with deadly intent. The child's heart raced, his dread reaching its peak. Just as the menacing alien raised its blade to strike, a sudden flash of light appeared, and the first creature vanished in an instant. A distinctly human voice broke through the turmoil, \"Good fucking grief. W as quite late there eh?\" The boy turned to face the source of the voice, revealing a figure cloaked in ragged garments, concealing much of his form. A dark, black armour adorned his legs, hinting at a fierce demeanour .Their eyes locked in an intense moment of understanding as the cloaked figure made a swift gesture, ur ging the child to stay put amidst the lingering threat of the remaining aliens. But before the child could fully comprehend the situation, the mysterious figure sprang into action with lightning speed, incapacitating the menacing creatures one by one until he stood mere inches away from the final alien. Breathless and defeated, the last of the aliens reluctantly conceded, \"I surrender .\"\nDespite the alien's inherent pride, he recognised that he was overpowered in every conceivable wayoutrun in speed, overpowered in strength, outmanoeuvred in agility , and outwitted in intelligence. Engaging in a futile battle would be akin to of fering himself as sacrificial prey , an ignominious fate worse than surrender . Drawing closer to the bewildered human child, the cloaked figure retrieved a pistol from his side and whispered something into the child's ear , the words shrouded in secrecy . \"Kill him,\"\nthe figure commanded, entrusting the weight of life and death into the hands of the young one. Gripping the pistol tightly , the child hesitated for a moment, then raised the weapon and pulled the trigger . The alien's face contorted in shock as he anticipated the inevitable, but to his surprise, nothing happened. A cunning smile crept across the cloaked figure's face, \"W ell done, Sangheili. Y ou've played your part splendidly .\"\nConfusion gnawed at the alien's mind, wondering how this stranger knew their species' name. Before he could vocalise his thoughts, the Sangheili quickly disappeared into a dark alleyway wondering how that figure had known the name of his species and why he let him live. The enigmatic being retrieved the pistol from the child's hands and holstered it, issuing a cryptic invitation, \"If you wish to survive, follow me.\" Intrigued and with no better alternative, the child silently trailed behind the stranger as they navigated their way out of the devastated city . A mysterious ship awaited them by the riverbank, its unfamiliar design hinting at an origin beyond the human's universe. As the ramp descended, revealing a grey figure standing in the doorway , the child noted the resemblance to a UNSC AI, yet this entity exuded an air of otherworldliness, distinctly less human in nature. As the sleek spacecraft touched down, its ramp extended, and a feminine voice greeted its return, \"Zulu 7, welcome back.\"\nThe enigmatic figure, known as Zulu 7, ascended the ramp with ease. \"At ease, 7-2,\" he replied to the AI, who seemed to relax with a digitised shoulder crack.\n\"Asset acquired?\" she inquired, to which Zulu 7 nodded, motioning for the young boy to step on board. Zulu 7 pulled up a holographic panel, \"Find a UNSC base, drop him there, preferably with one Dr . Halsey . I hear she's the batshit insane scientist of this humanity .\"The child cautiously surveyed the spacecraft's interior as Zulu 7 retrieved a few weapons and magazines from ammo racks. Stepping of f the craft, Zulu 7 addressed Enfield, \"Get going, kid. Stay with 7-2.\"\nThe ramp closed behind the kid, leaving him confined within the car go hold with the AI, now revealed to be designated as Zulu 7-2. With a warm smile, Zulu 7-2 greeted the boy , \"You must be Enfield. I've read your file. Congratulations.\"\nThe kid, Enfield, slightly taken aback, tilted his head, seeking clarification. \"What?\"\nThe AI's smile briefly widened as she spoke, \"Meet me upstairs.\" She vanished from the cargo hold, her voice resonating from the top of a ladder leading to an upper level, beckoning Enfield to follow . Climbing the ladder proved to be a challenge for the young boy due to his short stature, but he eventually made his way up to the AI, who was gazing out of a window into the vast expanse of space. \"Beautiful, isn't it?\" she remarked. Approaching the window , Enfield was captivated by the spectacle of space, adorned with countless stars. Curiosity prompted him to ask the AI for her name. \"What should I call you?\"\nLooking back at him, she replied, \"Call me what you want, but to others, I am Zulu 7-2.\"\nEnfield pondered for a moment before trying out a shortened version, \"Sev-wo.\" He then corrected himself, \"Sev-oh.\"\nThe AI's eyes widened in surprise. \"Sevo is a nice name,\" she af firmed. Still in awe of the stars outside, Enfield continued to watch as the spaceship left the burning planet behind. In an attempt to establish a more personal connection, Sevo gently placed her hand on Enfield's shoulder as he noticed a soft touch on his shoulder , \"Enfield, I have a request.\"\nCurious yet straightforward, the boy met her gaze and asked, \"What?\"\nHer surprise at his candidness was evident, but she proceeded, \"Y ou may be about to go through cybernetic enhancements, so I'd like to put my own undetectable one in first.\"\nEnfield questioned with concern, \"W ill it hurt?\"\nAssuring him, Sevo replied, \"No, you won't feel a thing.\"\nContemplating the proposal, Enfield asked, \"W ill it help me?\"\nSevo nodded, explaining its benefits, \"It will give you constant communication with me and will also give the rest of Zulu a chance to get in contact if necessary , especially Zulu 7.\"After some thought, Enfield decided, \"I-I'll do it.\"\nAgreeing, Sevo nodded as an injection dropped from the ceiling, administering the enhancement to Enfield's neck. A seat moved forward, catching him and securing him in place. Sevo worked at digital panels, accessing information only available to her . Enfield began drifting in and out of consciousness as he was moved into a room with various apparatus hanging from the ceiling. And then, finally , he succumbed to the ef fects of the procedure, slipping into a dreamless slumber .The Boy On the Vessel A palpable tension gripped the air , slicing through the stillness as a UNSC crewman abruptly pivoted, ur gency lacing his voice, \"Sir! W e've got an incoming vessel.\"\nThe of ficer's brow arched, his gaze narrowing inquisitively , \"What's the ship? Covenant?\"\nA shake of the crewman's head wavered between uncertainty and fascination, \"No, sir . It's unlike anything we've encountered before.\"\nAcknowledging this with a contemplative nod, the of ficer's stare grew determined, his voice taking on a steely edge, \"Initiate a life form scan.\"\nThe soldier briskly complied, his words edged with tension, \"There's only one, sir . It's human-like in shape, but small, perhaps a child?\"\nThe of ficer's curiosity deepened, his resolve unyielding, \"I'll personally investigate.\"\nA ripple of protest sur ged across the room, soldiers turning with voices laden with concern,\n\"Lieutenant Colonel, you can't!\"\nThe Lieutenant Colonel's lip curled with unwavering resolve, a sharp edge slicing through his tone, \"After the loss of Harvest, if this is a Covenant trap, I'll kill the bastards myself.\"\nRemaining resolute amidst the escalating tension, the army Lieutenant Colonel materialised from the heart of the fortified command centre, his form a silhouette against the dimly lit backdrop. W ith a deliberate motion, his gloved fingers extended, deftly plucking a silver pistol from a holster secured to one of his guards. The weight of the firearm settled familiarly in his grip, the cold metal a tangible assurance of authority . As his thumb deftly manipulated the weapon's mechanism, a satisfying click resonated through the air , the slide racking back and forth with a controlled precision that reverberated a symphony of readiness. Meanwhile, high above the terrestrial theatre, a squadron of jets painted swift, purposeful arcs against the canvas of the obsidian night sky . The celestial expanse was both their stage and arena, and their engines composed a symphony of relentless determination, a powerful overture to the impending clash as they pursued an intricate choreography to intercept the enigmatic craft, their contrails etching lines of purpose against the darkness. The Lieutenant Colonel's gaze flickered upward for a moment, momentarily entranced by the orchestrated ballet of machines against the heavens. However , his focus promptly returned to the task at hand, his footsteps echoing purposefully as he strode forward, his breath a steady cadence against the char ged atmosphere. The vessel descended with an initial rush, its momentum gradually yielding to a rotorcraft like descent, the whirl of its mechanisms blending with the murmurs of anticipation below . As the mechanical ramp lowered, UNSC soldiers smoothly shouldered their rifles, aligning their sights with the figure emer ging from the enigmatic craft.The child, disoriented and in evident turmoil, stumbled down the ramp, hands grasping their head in an unspoken agony . Their steps were hesitant, a ballet of vulnerability against the backdrop of armed vigilance. Their journey ended abruptly as they collapsed before the soldiers, unconscious and fragile against the backdrop of looming uncertainty . With calculated precision, the Lieutenant Colonel orchestrated his troops into a secure formation, their movements synchronised as they fanned out to establish a defensive perimeter . Cautiously , the of ficer approached the child, his pistol trained and senses alert, a sentinel guarding against the unknown. He employed a gentle nudge of his boot to ensure the figure's safety , his gaze scanning for any flicker of danger . Kneeling beside the prone form, his voice wove a tapestry of tension and relief, as if balancing on the precipice of a critical discovery , \"No immediate threat.\"\nAbruptly , an incandescent brilliance burst forth before the Lieutenant Colonel, a searing radiance that instinctively drew his gaze away , shielding his eyes from the intense onslaught of light. As the luminous burst momentarily waned, he cautiously lowered his guard, the pistol he wielded pivoting into his line of sight. There, where once stood an enigmatic vessel, was now a spectral transformation in progress. The unknown ship seemed to liquefy , its form dissolving into a haunting cascade of obsidian-hued dust particles that seemed to defy the laws of reality itself. In silent awe, the deck crew bore witness to this spectral spectacle, their expressions veiled in a mixture of incredulity and wonderment. The ambient luminescence played tricks upon their eyes, a display both mesmerising and unsettling. The wisps of light seemed akin to the last embers of a fire dwindling into the night, each glimmer a manifestation of fading existence. Then, as abruptly as it began, the flames of this ethereal inferno extinguished, plunging the surroundings into momentary darkness, a shroud that enveloped the realm. Blinking away the afterimages, the of ficer's vision adjusted, revealing the absence of the ship that had so recently held dominion over the scene. In its stead lay nought but a mound of dust, particles caught in the sinuous dance of a vagabond wind. Sirens wailed in the distance, a cacophony that clashed against the unearthly silence that had descended. Fire trucks, adorned with heavily armoured figures, conver ged upon the site, their metal-clad presence an embodiment of preparedness. But as these guardians of safety arrived, a peculiar stillness overcame them, their vigilant scrutiny revealing an environment untouched by the expected turmoil. Amidst this symphony of dissonance and the collision of senses, the Lieutenant Colonel found his footing once more. His gaze fell upon the unconscious child sprawled a short distance away . Intrigue, a potent force, drew him closer to this embodiment of mystery . Caution warred with curiosity as he contemplated the enigma before him, questions demanding answers at any cost.\n***\nEnfield's memories swirled like tendrils of mist, an enigmatic dance as he was led through the sprawling expanse of the facility . The palpable aura of the UNSC pervaded every corridor and chamber , a presence as tangible as the air he breathed. Amidst this labyrinth, he emer ged into a room that cradled his consciousnessa room reminiscent of a barracks, its utilitariandesign etched into every surface. W ith wide-eyed intensity , he absorbed each facet, a silent witness to the nuanced interplay of light and shadow that danced across its walls. However , it was not the architectural symphony that captured his attention; rather , it was the unwavering intensity of a high-ranking UNSC of ficer. This figure stood as a sentinel of authority , their commanding gaze a magnetic force that tugged at Enfield's focus, drawing him inexorably into a riveting tableau. The of ficer's voice cleaved through the ambient hum, a demand that reverberated in the air ,\n\"Who are you?\"\nA stillness, profound as a breath held, descended upon the room, enfolding Enfield in its quiet embrace. Then, amidst this silence, Sevo's voice resounded within the depths of Enfield's mind, a gentle catalyst ur ging him to action, \"T ell him.\"\nEnfield's response was a crystalline clarity , his words a reflection of truth unadorned,\n\"Enfield.\"\nAssured by Enfield's willingness to cooperate, the of ficer proceeded with unyielding determination, his resolve etched into the lines of his expression, \"I am Lieutenant Colonel James Ackerson of the UNSC. Where did you come from?\"\nEnfield's response bore the weight of careful consideration, his voice a tapestry of caution and wavering certainty , \"Harvest.\"\nAn ephemeral flicker of astonishment traversed Ackerson's eyes, his inquisitiveness ignited like a spark catching onto kindling, \"And how did you manage to escape in that...\" he momentarily hesitated, finding his words, \"UAP ,\" he concluded. A pause, suspended like a held breath, hung between them, Enfield's thoughts intricately weaving as his response emer ged with a sur geon's precision, \"I don't know .\"\nThe weight of Ackerson's scepticism hung palpably in the air , his disbelief a shadow that shaded his countenance. \"Perhaps,\" he conceded with a sigh, the echo of his voice lacing doubt into the room, \"other avenues need exploration.\" A subtle nod from Ackerson directed the attention of the two guards stationed at the door , their readiness and presence woven into the fabric of the moment. In a burst of brilliance, the room was momentarily transformed as a radiant tattoo graced Enfield's shoulder , its luminescence casting ethereal patterns that seemed to dance with the promise of mysteries yet unveiled, setting an enigmatic stage for the forthcoming drama. Ackerson's incredulity rippled through the air , a tangible current of disbelief electrifying the space as he beheld the luminous symbol. Before he could marshal his thoughts into coherent action, a sur ge of ener gy thrust him unceremoniously into a nearby wall. The resultant clash between Enfield and the assembled guards unfurled in a flurry of motion, a kinetic ballet that melded the child's inherent agility and strength into a captivating choreography . Within the chaos, the ener gy that had ignited his actions sur ged, then waned, leaving Enfield once more crumpled on the floor .As Ackerson's awareness gradually resurfaced from the fog of impact, his gaze was drawn inexorably to the impression left upon the wallproof of the forces at play in this astonishing spectacle. A triumphant grin, borne of the realisation of boundless potential, tugged at his lips, the implications of this discovery far -reaching. \"Ahahahaha, this will surely unsettle Halsey ,\" he mused aloud, his gaze briefly shifting to the collapsed child before him. W ith a resolute intent, he summoned additional guards, his scheme now crystallising with each passing moment.\n***\nWithin the expanse of a lavishly adorned of ficer's quarters, the alluring fragrance of freshly brewed cof fee wove a tantalising tapestry through the air . The wisps of its scent meandered like ethereal tendrils, escaping the confines of the cup as Ackerson poured with an almost choreographed nonchalance. A faint smile adorned his lips, a subtle reflection of his contentment, as he rounded a corner and his gaze found purchase upon the childa figure holding a rifle with a purpose that cast shadows upon the scene.\n\"Enfield, my friend!\" Ackerson's whole tone had shifted, he was doing what he did best, trying to weasel his way into getting people on his side. Enfield's grip upon the rifle turned taut, his finger poised upon the precipice of action, hesitating over the trigger's threshold. Amidst this poised tension, Ackerson's demeanour remained an epitome of serene assurance. He gingerly set the cof fee down, an of fering of peace amidst potential turmoil, his actions an embodiment of his tranquil resolve as he extended the cup, a vessel bearing both warmth and goodwill.\n\"For you,\" Ackerson's words carried an undertone of genuine sincerity , a resonance that reverberated through the space. Enfield's gaze embarked on a journey , briefly traversing from the of fered cof fee to Ackerson, then retracing its path back to the cup. Amidst the ripples of thought, Sevo's reassuring voice swept over him like a whispered assurance, dispelling any doubts of the cup's contents being tampered with. A proposition dangled in the air like a tantalising promise, Ackerson's voice weaving a tapestry of authority and potential, \"I can provide you everything you will ever need and I can allow you to fight those who attacked your home. In return, extend me your aid in a singular venture to undermine a few certain people.\"\nSevo's resonance echoed in the sanctum of Enfield's mind, a guiding beacon amidst the possibilities, 'T ake this opportunity .'\nEnfield's reply unfurled with a carefully measured cadence, the tenor of his commitment unwavering, \"I accept.\"\nWith this agreement woven into the fabric of the moment, Ackerson's smile broadened, the gesture of camaraderie manifesting as his hand extended, an unspoken promise carried by his touch, \"An honour to meet with you, kid.\"Enfield's smaller hand found its counterpart in Ackerson's firm shake, their grasp sealing an alliance teeming with the promise of intrigue and profound transformation.Hunt Perched high among the treetops, a child, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, blended seamlessly with the shadows, their attire carefully chosen to mimic the inky depths of their surroundings. The child's attire bore the unmistakable form of ODST armour , a symbol of their af filiation, yet these once-identifiable markings were now concealed beneath a hasty shroud of spray paint. With an uncanny grace, they began to navigate through the densely clustered trees, the rustling leaves their only audible companion. The world around them seemed to hold its breath in hushed anticipation. As they ventured deeper into the arboreal realm, they moved with such finesse that the gentle caress of the wind on their skin remained unnoticed. Their senses were attuned to the symphony of nature, the murmur of leaves, and the song of unseen creatures. Gradually , the susurration of the wind intensified, growing louder and more insistent as the child drew nearer to their objective. Yet, this natural melody was abruptly supplanted by the thunderous roar of approaching engines, shattering the serenity of the moment. Coming to an abrupt halt, the child peered over the edge of a small clif f. Below them, a convoy of vehicles rumbled along the terrain, each bearing the unmistakable emblem of the UNSC. However , as the kid scrutinised the scene through the data on his heads-up display , a chilling revelation emer ged  the convoy below was flagged as a collection of threats. Without hesitation, the child swiftly drew their pistol, deft fingers checking the ammunition. Each round bore distinctive colouring, indicating they were training rounds, not intended for lethal use. A sly grin crept across their face, an air of confidence embracing them. They made a split second decision, leaping of f the precipice with practised precision. Their descent was as noiseless as a whisper as they landed gracefully within the confines of one of the passing UNSC trucks. As their surroundings shifted, the child's keen eyes darted around, taking stock of their new environment. A quick assessment revealed a squad of marines within the truck, their expressions a cocktail of surprise and fear . With calculated precision, the child aimed their suppressed pistol, directing a series of non lethal rounds towards one side of the truck. The sudden staccato of shots echoed within the metal confines, punctuating the air with tension.The marines on the opposite side spun around in shock, their faces a tableau of disbelief and surrender . In response, they raised their hands in a silent plea for mercy , their initial bravado quelled. Undeterred, the child maintained their vigil, nestled between the subdued and moaning marines, their pistol trained unwaveringly on those who had yielded. Gradually emer ging from the ef fects of the training rounds, one of the marines cast an appraising glance towards the child. \"Y ou're pretty good,\" he admitted, his voice tinged with grudging respect. The child's gaze settled on the marine, their response curt and commanding, \"Quiet.\"\nA solitary eyebrow arched on the marine's face, his lips remaining sealed in acknowledgement of the order . The vehicle rumbled to a stop upon reaching the base's perimeter , eliciting the child's immediate attention. Swiftly , they verified the chamber of their pistol, ensuring readiness. With utmost seriousness, they issued a stern warning, \"Move, and I won't hesitate.\"\nAs a guard approached to inspect the contents of the truck, the child acted decisively . In one fluid motion, they seized the soldier's helmet, yanking him behind available cover . The child's threat was crystal clear as they maintained a steady aim, their finger hovering ominously over the trigger . \"I'm getting real tired of saying this but... move, and I shoot.\"\nThe guard's gaze fixated on the reflective visor , uncertainty etching lines of worry across his face. Undeterred, the child of fered a decisive nod, their voice carrying a grave weight, \"Listen to me very carefully . I have a remote-detonated explosive planted in this vehicle. I will detonate it if you don't follow my every command.\"\nThe guard's agreement was swift and fervent, his nod an eager af firmation, although he remained oblivious to the true identity of the enigmatic child before him. A faint, enigmatic smile played on the child's lips as they proceeded to convey their instructions, their words laden with a sense of authority and mystery .\n***\nExiting the truck, the guard proceeded toward the guard house, pushing the door closed behind him. The child silently trailed behind, remaining concealed as the truck gradually rolled away , vanishing into the distance. Blending ef fortlessly into the shadows, the child's vigilant eyes scanned their surroundings. Engaging their AI companion, they sought information. \"Sevo, sitrep.\"The AI, Sevo, responded with digital precision, \"Undetected as of now . Your marine friends are still searching for that bomb.\"\nThe child nodded, a resolve in their demeanour . \"Better detonate it then...\"\nWith unerring determination, they pulled the trigger . The explosive char ge erupted with a thunderous roar , painting the sky a fiery canvas nearly a kilometre outside the base. The blaring wails of base sirens filled the air , their cacophonous warning piercing the chaos that had erupted. Helicopters ascended into the sky , their powerful rotors slicing through the tension as they headed toward the detonation site. Several marines and army soldiers rushed to the gate, their movements swift and synchronised as they established a thorough defensive perimeter . Yet, amidst the flurry of activity , the child navigated the shadows with fluid grace, his lithe form darting between covers. He wielded his pistol with lethal precision, dispatching two soldiers with ruthless ef ficiency , their cries of surprise cut short as they struggled to rise. Continuing his rapid advance, he navigated the twisting hallways, eventually reaching a room where he calmly took a seat. With deliberate poise, he removed his helmet, revealing a determined visage beneath. Reaching beneath the table, he pressed a button, triggering emer gency sirens within the room. In response, two more army soldiers stormed in, their rifles raised, their faces etched with apprehension. Unfazed, Enfield greeted them with a disarming smile, his voice laced with a challenge,\n\"So?\"\nAckerson entered the room behind the soldiers, his voice carrying a note of approval, \"W ell done, kid.\"\nEnfield acknowledged with a nod, his curiosity now directed toward the promised armour ,\n\"So, I get the armour you promised?\"\nAs Ackerson nodded, his guards lowered their rifles, signalling a newfound trust, \"Y es, but first, there's something else I need to give you.\"\nEnfield stood up, the chair scraping against the floor as they both walked through a dimly lit corridor . They entered a restricted section of the facility , and Ackerson's voice reverberated in the confined space, \"Reports indicate you would have... lethally taken down 12 soldiers, and injured one had the rounds been real... not to mention the woodland block you blew up, along with the trauma to a scientist. Huh.\"Enfield's expression remained stoic, his words carrying a hint of inquiry , \"Was it too far , sir?\"\nAckerson shook his head, his gaze drifting to the walls as if searching for answers, \"No, not too far ...\" He turned back to Enfield, intrigue in his eyes, \"But how did you manage to acquire that much explosive power?\"\nEnfield's grin widened, his voice tinged with pride, \"The shipment of explosives that fell into the forest last year and was never found. That was me, sir .\"\nAckerson's eyes widened in a mix of astonishment and concern, \"What?\" He turned his head to face Enfield directly , his curiosity driving him, \"Why?\"\nEnfield shook his head, of fering a concise explanation, \"The armoury wouldn't provide the explosives, so I checked them out under the name of being Missing in Action.\"\nAckerson's impressed expression mingled with a hint of trepidation, \"And what else have you taken?\"\nEnfield shrugged casually , his list revealing audacity , \"Shotguns, rifles, ammo, a quad bike. I even contemplated stealing a nuke once.\"\nAckerson's panic momentarily sur ged at the mention of a nuclear device, \"Why on Earth would you consider that?\"\nEnfield looked directly at the Lieutenant Colonel, his reasoning methodical, \"Sir , if the Covenant were to attack this base, all the supplies would go up in smoke...\" He paused, searching for the right words, \"Those safe houses are insurance.\"\nAckerson was struck by the brilliance of the plan. It was clear that Enfield was not preparing for a conventional battle but a war of attrition, and it left him wide-eyed in awe once again. Ackerson nodded, his amazement evident, \"How many soldiers can one of your safe houses support?\"\nEnfield replied with a confident nod, \"About a platoon for a year , sir.\"\nAckerson nearly went into shock, realising the magnitude of what Enfield had accomplished under their noses. Sensing Enfield's intention to speak privately , Ackerson gestured for his guards to leave. Enfield handed him something discreetlya note. As Ackerson unfolded the note, Enfield elaborated, \"Every flaw in this base's security , personnel, and training.\" He handed over another note, \"The full list of everything I have taken is here.\"\nEnfield maintained his composure as Ackerson inspected the notes, revealing a shocking level of detail and thoroughness in his espionage and theft. Ackerson was left utterly astonished.His shock transformed into a satisfied smile, \"Y ou always seem to prove yourself, kid...\"\nEnfield gave a confirming nod as a scientist emer ged, \"W e're ready for him, sir .\"\nAckerson continued, his tone serious, \"Kid, I already consider you a super soldier , but you're outmatched by many Covenant and a few of humanity's warriors, the Spartans. W e will administer a few drugs that will make you much stronger and much faster .\"\nEnfield nodded resolutely , \"Let's get this over with.\"\nHe entered the room and began to disrobe from his ODST armour , leaving him in a medical gown. A nurse approached him, her voice calm, \"This will be a lot less painful if you are asleep.\"\nEnfield nodded and looked up at the several pieces of machinery hanging from the ceiling, each with needles and robotic hands at the end. With determination, he consented, \"Proceed.\"\nShe acknowledged by nodding and administered the injection. Enfield didn't resist; instead, he succumbed to the ef fects, drifting into slumber . In his half conscious state, he mumbled a few words, \"Sevo, watch over me.\"\nSuddenly , he jolted awake, finding himself in his room. He rose to his feet, an inquisitive gleam in his eye. His hand felt dif ferentmore relaxed yet strangely strained. Testing its newfound capabilities, he clenched it and then released it. The responsiveness was astonishing; his hand moved in a near -instantaneous flash. With newfound strength, he retrieved a punching bag from his cupboard and hung it lower from the ceiling. He exerted only a fraction of his power , but the impact was explosive; the bag split apart, sending sand showering over him just as the door swung open. He briskly stepped forward as Lieutenant Colonel Ackerson entered the room, wearing a smile. \"How do you feel?\" Ackerson inquired, his gaze shifting toward the sandbag that lay in pieces on the floor . Enfield responded with a nod, \"My strength, it's increased... so has my perception.\"\nAckerson's grin widened, \"As it should have.\" He pivoted, facing the exit, \"Follow me, this time you won't be knocked out.\"\nEnfield acknowledged with a slow nod as they exited the room. They proceeded with haste down the familiar hallways until they reached an elevator . Enfield's eyes widened in astonishment, \"The one place even I couldn't get into.\"Ackerson maintained his grin, refraining from any immediate response. The elevator descended, carrying them deeper under ground. Breaking the silence, Ackerson finally spoke, \"I worked very hard to acquire this; you should be grateful.\"\nAs the lift came to a halt, Enfield raised an inquisitive eyebrow , his gaze falling upon a set of armour . It gleamed in a striking shade of green, a few cans of spray paint positioned beside it. Approaching it with cautious curiosity , Enfield examined the armour . Ackerson smiled proudly , \"This is your new armour , Mjolnir armour , worn by those heroes of humanity I mentioned.\"\nEnfield nodded, a hint of determination in his eyes, \"Y our competition.\"\nHe moved closer , carefully inspecting every detail. His hand traced the contours of the chest plate, and in a hushed tone, he asked, \"Explain, Sevo.\"\nSevo's voice resided in his mind, providing information, 'Mjolnir armour can incapacitate a regular person by causing their bones to snap like twigs through powerful spasms. It's highly durable, among the best I've seen in the human race.'\nHe nodded, his eyes reflecting a blend of wonder and determination, \"And it's mine?\"\nAckerson placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder , \"Only if you assist me with my little project.\"\nEnfield nodded in agreement, his resolve unwavering, \"Understood.\"\nAckerson smiled, \"The scientists will help you don the armour; take it slow .\"\nFollowing the scientists' directions, he approached a machine, while Ackerson observed from a nearby control panel. Sevo's voice whispered in his ear , 'One moment, let me make a few adjustments.'\nEnfield observed a series of pop-up panels materialised in his field of vision, reminiscent of someone editing what he perceived. Abruptly , they vanished, and Sevo's voice declared, 'Done.' She paused, 'Don't worry; it was a minor adjustment to enhance your survival chances and power ef ficiency .'\nLeaning his arms on the railing, Enfield allowed the machines to af fix the armour around him. He began to raise his gaze when instructed to step into a set of boots. A scientist extended a helmet toward him, and Ackerson observed closely , commenting, \"It's working...\"\nEnfield moved forward and placed the helmet over his head. He heard the hiss as it sealed around him, leaving the scientists visibly astonished. One of them requested cautiously ,\n\"Please, take it slow , Alpha 133.\"Enfield regarded the scientist with a puzzled expression, \"Who the hell is Alpha 133?\"\nAckerson's voice chimed in through the intercom, \"All Spartans have a number; yours is Alpha 133, as indicated on your chest plate.\"\nEnfield glanced down at the emblem and then back towards the command centre, his curiosity piqued. \"I see,\" he replied. \"What's the mission, sir?\"\nAckerson nodded, his expression serious. \"A recovery mission. Y ou'll be sent to collect a new friend of mine...\"051\nEnfield found himself nestled within the prowler's dimly lit hold as it descended gracefully onto the desolate surface of the asteroid. His mission: to recover a Spartan II, Kurt-051. He had been briefed on the operation details, and these orders carried the weight of the Of fice of Naval Intelligence, ONI for short. As the Prowler touched down with a gentle thud, the metallic doors whirred open, revealing the cold expanse of the asteroid's surface. Enfield wasted no time; he swiftly disembarked and immediately sought refuge within a shallow crater . The prowler lifted of f, its engines humming as it soared back into the desolate cosmic expanse. It would return in precisely one hour. Gracefully navigating the harsh, rocky terrain of the asteroid's surface, Enfield employed his jet pack, each controlled thrust propelling him forward, all the while assisted by Sevo's seamless guidance. The asteroid's inhospitable landscape seemed to blur beneath him until he descended with calculated precision onto a designated platform. With the instincts of a seasoned operative, Enfield wasted no time. He swiftly darted into the shadowy alcove of a rock formation, concealing himself expertly . His ears perked up as the faint but unmistakable echo of approaching footsteps reverberated through the asteroid's barren landscape. Peering from the concealment of darkness, Enfield's sharp eyes scanned the approaching figures. Clad in armour akin to his own, these soldiers, oblivious to his presence, hurriedly passed by . He watched each one intently as Sevo dutifully identified them, her voice a whisper in his ear .\n\"Lieutenant Fredric 104,\" Sevo began, providing names to faces. \"Petty Of ficer, First Class Kelly-087... and your little friend's asset, 051.\"\nDetermined to stay on their trail, Enfield cautiously emer ged from the shadows. As the soldiers reached a docking bay , he found cover behind a nearby crate, his watchful gaze fixed on Kurt-051, who appeared to be scanning his surroundings with vigilance. Enfield's instinctual unease manifested in a slight wince, a gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach. His sharp gaze remained locked on Kurt-051 as the Spartan took of f, leaving the station behind, his exit setting of f alarms within Enfield's vigilant mind. As Kurt-051 swiftly departed, soaring away from the station into the starry expanse, Enfield's senses sharpened. His trained instincts guided him further into the obscurity of the station's interior . As he ventured deeper into the shadows, his steps measured and soundless, he left behind the group of Spartans conver ging at what appeared to be a run-down command centre.Finally , Enfield emer ged from the station's metallic maw , venturing into the unfor giving void of space. His jetpack thrust him onward, pushing him further into the vacuum, each calculated movement propelling him toward his enigmatic tar get. With his M392 DMR, a silent sentinel in the void, Enfield aligned the weapon's sights on the enigmatic figure seated next to an enigmatic generator -like apparatus, the harsh cosmic light glinting of f the barrel as he zeroed in on his tar get's backpack. Fingers steady , Enfield squeezed the trigger , and the quiet resonance of a shot echoed into the cosmic abyss. In the eerie silence of space, the bullet, an insistent messenger of fate, charted its own course. It twisted, twisted, and twisted again, a relentless seeker of its tar get. Then, with a brilliant spark, the bullet found its destinationthe Spartan II's pack. It struck with unyielding force, rupturing the pack like a starburst, propelling the armoured warrior into the endless void. At blinding speeds, the Spartan was sent hurtling into the inky abyss, a solitary figure swallowed by the yawning darkness of space. A sharp electronic voice pierced through Enfield's consciousness, \"Enfield! Behind you!\" His body jolted as a searing pain shot through his back, the digital barrier of his shield crumbling to nothingness. Reacting with the swiftness born of combat reflexes, he launched himself of f the asteroid's surface, his booted foot connecting with the Spartan's faceplate. The blow was fierce, but as if by some uncanny sorcery , the attacker phased into invisibility just as Enfield's boot made contact. Panic sur ged through Enfield as he frantically scanned his surroundings, his helmet's visor catching brief flashes of a rapidly approaching figure, an ethereal spectre in the void of space. His voice trembled as he desperately called out to his AI companion, \"Sevo!\"\nSevo's voice crackled with ur gency , \"Behind.\"\nIn a heart-pounding whirl, Enfield pivoted, his armoured fist leading the way with blinding speed. His punch struck the assailant's helmet squarely , the resounding impact sending shockwaves through the sturdy armour . In an instant, her shield buckled and shattered under the relentless force of his blow , hurling her backwards through the void. Sevo's whispered revelation echoed in Enfield's helmet, '087.'\nWith grim determination, Enfield nodded, his voice resolute as he addressed the Spartan ahead of him, \"Get going before you get hurt.\"\nKelly 087, the Spartan, maintained her combat-ready stance, her fists poised for action. Enfield cast a glance behind him, where another armoured figure, a Spartan yet unknown, rapidly approached. The unfamiliar Spartan demanded, \"Who the hell are you?\"Enfield remained silent, his thoughts calculated. He understood that facing both of these highly trained warriors would be an arduous challenge, even with the enhanced capabilities of his armour . After a moment's pause, he had a plan, \"Sevo.\"\nSevo promptly acknowledged, \"Got it.\"\nWithout warning, a series of Enfield's smoke bombs burst open, releasing thick, billowing streams of smoke that enveloped the ground beneath the Spartans. It propelled him upward, his thrusters roaring to life as he ascended into the sky . He drew his pistol and began firing precise shots around the encroaching enemy Spartans. His aim was skilful, deliberately avoiding any harm to his adversaries, yet their determination remained unshaken. Kelly forcefully redirected his weapon, leading with a powerful strike that shattered half of his shield. A well-timed kick sent her tumbling away , but she quickly recovered, launching herself back into the fray , her movements swift and calculated. Swiftly , Enfield pivoted to face the other Spartan, who had levelled a rifle in his direction. An electric pang of pain sur ged through his body as his protective ener gy shield disintegrated under a barrage of enemy fire. In a split-second decision, he hurled Kelly through the cold expanse of space, her body colliding with her fellow Spartan II. The impact sent them both careening uncontrollably before they awkwardly rebounded of f a nearby asteroid. Without pause, Enfield deftly loaded a fresh magazine into his rifle, his fingers moving with practised ef ficiency . He squeezed the trigger repeatedly , sending rounds slamming into the armoured forms of the Spartans. They took cover , their figures concealed as they sought shelter from the onslaught. Enfield made a quick adjustment, bringing the rifle to his hip, and unleashed another rapid burst of fire. The boosters integrated into his armour seamlessly countered the weapon's recoil, allowing him to maintain precise aim amid the chaotic ballet of space combat. Soaring higher into the starlit expanse, Enfield's keen eyes tracked Kelly as she prepared to emer ge from her makeshift cover . He called upon Sevo once more, \"Sevo...\"\nHer response was swift and precise, \"Engaging lock.\"\nJust as Kelly was on the ver ge of propelling herself into space, something extraordinary occurred. She froze in place, her armoured form suspended amidst the celestial void. It wasn't as though she had merely halted; rather , she hung there, motionless and eerily suspended in defiance of the inexorable pull of the cosmos. Enfield's gaze shifted to the other Spartan, the one who remained at bay , his expression filled with a mixture of confusion and uncertainty . He didn't attempt to follow Enfield, seemingly aware of the mysterious forces at play .Enfield seized the opportunity , delivering a final message before disappearing into the inky depths of space. \"Don't try and follow me, he's gone.\"\nHe turned around travelling deeper into space as he disappeared into the darkness. Fred hauled Kelly into the cramped hangar , their chest plates heaving as they drew ragged breaths within their Mjolnir armour . Enfield wasted no time, his pace swift and resolute as he rendezvoused with the prowler . Swiftly boarding, he encountered an unconscious Spartan, their form adrift in the zero gravity void. With a decisive motion, he sealed the door behind him, and as the prowler's artificial gravity intensified, the Spartan's unresponsive body descended several inches, prompting shocked reactions from the nearby soldiers. Observing the unconscious warrior , Enfield couldn't help but muse softly , \"Hm.\"\n***\nEnfield took his place in the dimly lit corridor , his imposing figure contrasting with the shadows. He patiently waited until Colonel Ackerson, freshly promoted, strolled into view . An unfamiliar Caucasian man, with black hair and hazel eyes, emer ged shortly after , and his gaze locked onto the Spartan III, registering surprise. The stranger's curiosity prompted him to say , \"I don't recognize you.\"\nColonel Ackerson placed a reassuring hand on the man's shoulder , his voice oozing with confidence, \"All in due time, Spartan... 133, keep us company .\"\nEnfield acknowledged with a silent nod, opting to remain observant. T ogether , the three figures advanced down the corridor , their presence commanding respect, yet none of the lower -ranking personnel dared to engage with them. Salutes were conspicuously absent, and the soldiers appeared to go about their business as if under an unspoken directive. However , as they neared a pressure-sealed door , the two vigilant marine guards stationed there snapped to attention, their disciplined salutes cutting through the tense silence. Enfield, showing his readiness, placed his hand on the butt of his rifle, a subtle but unmistakable gesture of preparedness. Ackerson of fered a half-hearted salute, while the Caucasian man executed a perfectly crisp and precise one. Sevo's whispered commentary infiltrated Enfield's awareness,\n\"Commendable, really .\"\nEnfield couldn't help but roll his eyes beneath his helmet at the contrast in salutes as Ackerson confidently approached the door to the room. W ith a practised hand, he activated the control panel, allowing access. The trio stepped into the room, Enfield subtly positioning himself to the side, ever watchful. What met their eyes was a high-tech haven; a vast chamber stretching about 20 metres wideand filled with monitors that emitted a soft, eerie glow . These monitors displayed a dizzying array of data: star charts, spectroscopic signatures, and complex information streams flickering across the screens. Amidst this digital sea, two holographic AI entities engaged in conversation with a group of officers, their luminous projections casting a surreal ambience over the chamber . Enfield's voice barely reached a whisper , \"You gonna be okay?\"\nSevo's assurance followed, \"They can't detect me. W e are fine.\"\nWhile Enfield's gaze remained vigilant, he couldn't help but notice Ackerson's companion fixating on him. W ithout further ado, they all made their way out of the room, entering an elevator that seemed to promise an entirely dif ferent world. In the confined space, Enfield experienced a brief, weightless moment, the eerie sensation of zero gravity surrounding him. Then, as if gravity itself acquiesced, it steadily returned to normal. The doors of the elevator slid open, revealing a sturdy catwalk beckoning them forward. Enfield took the lead, stepping out of the elevator with purpose etched into his movements. His eyes roamed the room, dissecting it for any potential threat or hidden detail as Ackerson approached a seemingly blank wall. W ith a practised gesture, Ackerson touched the wall, and it obediently parted to unveil the enigmatic chamber beyond. Ackerson, his tone weighty with significance, spoke as the door opened, \"As of this very second, you have been granted temporary access to a place nicknamed Odin's Eye. Y our clearance level is currently T OP SECRET , so you may enter . This will be revoked depending on how this goes.\"\nHis stern gaze shifted towards the other figure accompanying them, his words dripping with caution, \"As well, whatever is said inside is classified, and you will reveal none of it unless the code words are provided. Understood?\"\nIn perfect unison, Enfield and the mysterious companion echoed, \"Y es, sir .\"\nAs they crossed the threshold, Enfield couldn't help but sense the nervousness radiating from the man beside him, a subtle undercurrent beneath the layers of secrecy . The doors slid shut behind them, sealing their fate within Odin's Eye. Colonel Ackerson's voice cut through the room, firm and directive, \"Y our classification code word is Falcon 40,\" he declared, his gaze sharpening, \"Now speak freely , I certainly will.\"\nHe strode purposefully towards a central, obsidian-hued table, its circular surface a stark contrast to the room's high-tech aesthetic. He stationed himself beside an empty seat, exuding an air of authority . The other man followed suit, mirroring Ackerson's stance, but Enfield, ever the enigma, melded seamlessly into the shadows, becoming a phantom presence in the room.Ackerson's gaze swept the room, registering Enfield's choice to remain in the background. He heaved a slight sigh, reconciling with the situation, \"Looks like he's decided to listen rather than play ...\" he mused, \"anyway , I'll give introductions now . That Spartan that walked here with us, was the first iteration of a Spartan III, however , he was very special. Halsey was unlucky to not find him.\" A muted chuckle danced on his lips, \"He is currently the only one of his kind in existence, a prototype if you will, he is Spartan Alpha One Three Three. But he prefers Enfield.\"\nAckerson leaned forward, his gaze piercing into the shadows, \"And for you, Enfield, this ahead of me is Kurt 051, he was one of Halsey's Spartan II.\"\nKurt raised an inquisitive eyebrow , his voice laced with curiosity , \"Excuse me, sir , but before you continue, could I ask where I am? Why am I here? Y ou said I 'was' a Spartan II, what do you mean?\"\nBut his words seemed to dissipate into the room, absorbed by the enigmatic atmosphere and the weighty silence that filled it. Ackerson grumbled under his breath, his frustration palpable, \"Of course... your recovery is not complete. I had been warned of that,\" he conceded with a weary sigh. He started to explain to him everything that had been going on. The reason Kurt's team was on that isolated rock. He explained to him that the explosion was not caused naturally . That it was a shot from Enfield's DMR. Kurt rose from his seat, a hint of tension causing his upper lip to curl. Enfield sharpened his knife against the side of his rifle, \"Orders are orders, no hard feelings.\"\nKurt settled back into his seat, accepting the situation. Enfield, once again retreating into the shadows, listened attentively . Acknowledging the need for swift action, Ackerson slid a reader across the table, his voice carrying a tone of significance, \"Section 3 has issued new orders to you...\"\nKurt's thumb brushed over the biometric sensor , the screen lighting up as it initialised. Enfield keenly observed the subtle widening of Kurt's eyes. The transfer orders didn't escape Enfield's notice. Sevo, in Enfield's earpiece, relayed, 'So this is Ackerson's play .'\nAckerson's voice cut through, firm and deliberate, \"Y ou are now a part of a subsection of Beta 5 Division.\" He paused, adding depth to his statement, \"A top secret cell within section\n3. All events at Station Delphi were staged to bring you here for a new mission.\"\nThe weight of Ackerson's words hung in the air , resonating through the room, \"As a Spartan II, you are now of ficially classified as Missing In Action.\"\nSevo's commentary , a mere whisper in Enfield's consciousness, murmured, 'He's nervous.'Then, breaking the silence, Kurt inquired, \"What is this new mission, sir?\"\nAckerson fixed his gaze on Kurt, his eyes probing, delving into the depths of Kurt's being, as if seeking something elusive.\n\"I want you to train the next generation of Spartans and refine A133's tactical skills, drawing from everything you've learned in your battles against insur gents and the Covenant,\"\nAckerson stated, the gravity of his words not lost on anyone present. Kurt's reaction was palpable; he blinked in astonishment, his head tilting slightly in contemplation. Enfield reemer ged, this time without his helmet. The two Spartans locked eyes, a silent understanding passing between them. Kurt firmly planted his hands on the table, determination gleaming in his eyes, \"Let's get this done, sir ,\" he declared, a confident grin spreading across his face.III Chapter Notes See the end of the chapter for notes The pelican's ramp dropped with a sharp hiss, unleashing a torrent of wind that whipped through the open bay . A commanding voice, that of Senior Chief Petty Of ficer Franklin Mendez, a seasoned navy non commissioned of ficer, cut through the roar of the planets environment, \"IF YOU CAN'T JUMP , YOU CAN'T BE A SP ARTAN.\"\nEnfield exhaled as he took his place at the rear of a line of children, none of them older than six. Their youthful faces mirrored the age he had been when he first met Colonel Ackerson. His sharp eyes darted between the children, noting the rise in their heart rates with analytical precision. Mendez's voice boomed above the howling wind, \"Y ou will form a line and jump!\"\nAmong the young candidates, one boldly stepped forward, \"I'll go first, sir!\" She turned to flash a gap-toothed smile at her fellow candidates. Enfield arched an intrigued eyebrow . Mendez's command followed quickly , \"Go right to the edge, next!\"\nEnfield's keen observation noted two children in the line playfully shoving each other . Stepping up to them, Enfield cast a shadow over the bickering pair as they continued their shoving. As Enfield had predicted something would go wrong, one of the children pushed the other of f the ramp. As the child glanced nervously at the imposing Spartan behind him, he stammered, \"S-sir .\"\nEnfield, his eyes unwavering, addressed the young cadet while Mendez observed from a distance, \"Get out.\"\nThe apprehensive child stepped back towards the ramp, turned, and made a daring leap into the abyss, free-falling under Enfield's watchful gaze. Glancing back at Mendez for a brief moment, Enfield requested, \"Mind if I?\"\nMendez, with a nod, replied, \"Go ahead.\"\nWith an audacious backward plunge, Enfield descended into the void without the safety of a parachute. He hurtled earthward at breakneck speed, the wind roaring past him. The impact as he met the ground created a resounding shockwave, causing him to look up just in time to witness several other parachutes gracefully descending to the earth.Swiftly weaving through the dense forest, he closed in on a clearing. T aking a knee, he observed the child who had been pushed out of the plane earlier land precisely in the centre of the circle. The young cadet's knees shot up to his chest upon impact, a gasping of breath escaping him as the wind was knocked out of his lungs. The parachute swiftly deployed, allowing the child to descend safely , and as his feet touched the ground, a wide grin stretched across his face. However , his jubilation was short-lived as a sudden shock registered on his features. Sevo's voice chimed in Enfield's earpiece, \"Ouch, that looks like it must hurt. For a regular human... at least.\"\nThe young cadet, despite the blood dripping down his trousers, managed to regain his footing. Enfield noticed his trousers had been torn open, revealing a substantial scrape down the back of his legs. Undeterred, the kid let out a nervous laugh, a mixture of bravado and genuine amusement. Enfield emer ged from the bushes, removing his helmet as he approached. As he got closer , he saw another Cadet standing beside the injured one. \"Hey , dumbass, what's so funny ,\" the second boy sneered. It was the same kid who had pushed the other one out of the plane. Unfazed, the cadet with the grazed legs marched forward towards the other , a determined glint in his eyes. The one who had spoken, spoke once again, \"I'm Rob,\" he held out his hand. Without hesitation, the other kid swung his fist, connecting squarely with Rob's face, sending him crashing to the floor . Blood gushed from Rob's nose and mouth as Enfield approached, his helmet tucked under his arm. He sighed, surveying the chaotic scene before him. The two kids were locked in a brutal struggle, each blow landing with palpable force. Enfield turned his gaze to the digital display within his visor . \"Sevo, tell me when they've had enough,\" he instructed, his voice steady . \"Also, bring up the files on both of these kids.\"\nTwo files appeared on the side of his visor . The two files were Robert S-A057 and Shane S-A1 12. Enfield scanned through the data.\n\"Harvest, huh,\" he murmured, a sombre note in his voice. \"He was born a few months before the evacuation...\"\nEnfield's gloves trembled slightly as he recalled the bitter memory of watching the freighters depart, leaving him behind to face the dark unknown of a Covenant-occupied world. The anger still smouldered within him, irrational but undeniable. While he wrestled with these emotions, the two cadets continued their brawl in the grass, their grunts and blows filling the air . Suddenly , there was a distinct snap.Sevo's voice chimed in, \"Broken bone number 3.\"\nEnfield let out a weary sigh and gently scooped up Shane. \"C'mon, mate,\" he said softly ,\n\"you've had enough.\"\nBut even in his weakened state, Shane swung a fist at Enfield's jaw . There was a sudden, ominous snap. The fight ceased as Shane's face contorted, feeling pain all down his arm, he clutched his hand. Enfield lowered him to the ground, his gaze now fixed on Robert, who had risen to his feet.\n\"Try something...\" Enfield warned sternly , \"And you'll be dealing with me.\"\nBoth Kurt and Mendez approached, and Mendez barked, \"Stand down!\"\nThe children and Enfield turned to the instructor , their gazes filled with respect and apprehension. Enfield alone noticed the peculiar intensity in Mendez's expression. Mendez's smile was more like a predator's grin as he peered at Shane and nodded approvingly . Rob, however , scowled at Shane like a rabid animal. Mendez's voice grew even more thunderous, \"I said ST AND DOWN!\"\nRob's head snapped forward, causing him to stumble backwards as if he'd been punched. Mendez's expression turned into something that could hardly be called a smile, more like a sinister , tooth-bared grin. Enfield, who'd heard stories about Mendez, recognized this expression for what it truly was.\n\"Very good,\" Mendez said, his voice tinged with a sense of sadistic satisfaction, \"that kind of fight left in you two is part of exactly what a Spartan candidate will need. Especially after a night jump and several sleepless nights.\" Mendez then turned to address the other instructors,\n\"God, I only hope the rest are like this...\"\nChapter End Notes Author's Note:\nHey there reader! Little thing from me, these last two chapters have been heavily based off the chapters from an of ficial Halo book called Ghost of Onyx by Eric Nylund, even me going as far as to quote lines. I'd very much recommend you to read the original source because they are so brilliant, like seriously , some of my favourite halo content to date. It covers the whole Spartan III program in much more detail, which is something I will only briefly touch on.While it is not the end of the world if you don't know the lore of the planet where the Spartan III's trained (Onyx), you may notice a lot less details about the characters. Thanks for reading and I'll see you in the next chapter ,\n- MeImplant Enfield still wore his Mjolnir armour . It had been four years since the cadet's first jump. Y et, he was still the only one who had been given real Spartan armour and augmentations; the rest had just been given Semi-Powered Infiltration armour . A set of armour with no shielding and lacklustre armour while having increased stealth capability ... and not so coincidentally , it was a lot cheaper than Mjolnir . He had spent these last few years training in private with the ex-Spartan II, Kurt... or , as he was called here, Lieutenant Ambrose. But he was also assigned to an NCO role as a Petty Officer Third Class, a PO3, more simply . He was placed in char ge of a ferocious unit, nicknamed T eam W olf Pack. T wo of them were the boys who had beaten each other senselessly on their first day . As he entered the building his silver and dark red armour shone in the doorway . Walking into a bunk room, he placed his helmet on the bed sitting down. Across from him sat a Spartan III cadet, \"PO3.\"\nHe looked up, \"What have I told you, Shane?\"\nShane sat up, \"Sorry , Enfield.\"\nEnfield sighed, \"Just in front of of ficers or instructors.\" Enfield pulled up his polishing kit,\n\"Shane... where's Robert and Jane?\"\nShane cocked his head to the side reaching for his earpiece, \"Sierra's 203 and 057, you're needed in the den.\" He nodded, removing his hand, \"it's serious?\"\nEnfield nodded. This time he didn't speak, even though Shane was a few years younger than Enfield, they both saw eye to eye. Two figures, clad in green Semi-Powered Infiltration armour , entered the room and sat down on two of the bunks. One Spoke, \"What's going on?\" This was Jane, she's the one who often kept Shane and Robert in check when Enfield was doing his own thing. And that brings us to the fourth member , Robert. The menace himself; often seen as pushy by the rest of the company . He had gained the title of comedian by a select few . Enfield tapped his fingers, \"As you know , I have received orders to leave the rest of the company as a certain someones wants to see me in action.\" He looked down as he tapped his foot, \"And that means I will not be able to protect the rest of you out there. So, as a parting gift, I'm going to give you something,\" He stood up, \"What you're about to see may feel unreal. It may feel like some type of trap, but it is not. He pressed a button on his helmet as he spoke, \"Sevo, reveal yourself.\"\nA grey figure appeared outside the helmet being projected into the air , \"Good afternoon, W olf Pack.\"The three wolves all reached for their sidearms, but none drew . A look of shock and confusion was pasted on their faces. Sevo nodded, \"My code name is Zulu 7-2, but you can call me Sevo.\"\nShane opened his mouth, speechless. Enfield looked at Sevo, \"Y ou all know I survived Harvest. She and a man named 7-1 were the reason I made it out.\"\nShane gulped at the mention of Harvest as Robert spoke, \"Why are you telling us this?\"\nSevo interjected, \"I have a proposal which will protect you should one of your missions go bad. The Grey Protocol.\"\nEnfield nodded, \"The Grey Protocol involves a very small implant underneath the skin of your ear . It's micro technology undetectable by the UNSC.\"\nJane's ears shot up, \"This isn't a human or ganisation asking us, is it?\"\nEnfield nodded his head, \"Y ou are correct,\" he gulped, \"I don't even know their real name.\"\nThe group went silent as Robert broke the silence, looking at the AI, \"Is it ONI?\"\nSevo laughed hysterically , \"ONI? Y ou think they can make something like me? Not in a trillion years.\"\nShane looked at him, \"ONI is a human or ganisation, dimwit.\"\nJane sat down, \"So who exactly created you?\"\nSevo's look grew serious, \"Under the first Intelligence Security Act that is classified.\"\nShane gulped, \"Enfield can we trust it--\" he corrected himself, \"her .\"\nEnfield nodded, \"I've trusted her with my life several times,\" he looked out the window ,\n\"She's also the reason I can always predict the other team's movements in training.\"\nRobert grinned, \"So we've been cheating... I knew it.\"\nJane hit him on the back of the head, \"Shut it.\"\nShane walked forward, nodding to the AI, \"If Enfield trusts you, I trust you.\"\nSevo's eyes widened slightly , as she laid a hand on his shoulder . Her hand stopped on his clothes, \"Keep your head high, candidate,\" she looked at the other two, \"What about you two?\"\nJane nodded and Robert looked at each other . Robert stood up rubbing his head, \"Can't be any worse than Ambrose's training. Enfield and Sevo exchanged a glance, as they both cracked a smile.***\nThe sky was pitch black as they exited the building, Enfield in his Mjolnir . The other three trailed behind in their SPI armour . One by one they slipped into their helmets. W ith a hiss, the helmets locked to their suits. Exchanging a glance with the gate guard he gave a nod. The guard walked inside as the gate slid open. Robert grinned, \"Enfield I know I say this every time, but it truly is beautiful how you managed to bribe a guard.\" As they walked out the door shut behind them, and several security cameras were of f as they ran into the forest. Enfield nodded, \"Y eah, you can thank Sevo for that as well.\"\nLeading them through the thick forest, they travelled a few miles, avoiding UNSC patrols in the area. Coming to a clearing, Enfield stopped as he looked down. A clif f edge. The group of them stopped overlooking the drop. Enfield pulled a rope from his connected backpack. T ying it around a tree he looked back,\n\"Follow me down.\"\nShane looked as Enfield jumped of f the edge gripping the rope. Hitting the ground a shock wave alerted the forest sending birds flying into the air . Sevo spoke, \"That was stupid.\"\nEnfield smiled, \"I know , but I have some steam to blow of f.\" Behind him, the three repelled down the rope. Sevo spoke to the 'candidates' as she called them, \"From here you have a lot of ground to cover , you'll need to show speed and teamwork, I'll be no more than a call away , there are also no UNSC personnel in this area, you are weapons free.\"\nEnfield looked back, \"T ake this and this.\" He handed them an electronic pad and a compass,\n\"Good luck.\"\nJane took it as Robert quickly quipped, \"Don't believe in luck.\"\nA small steel cylinder hit the floor behind him as his visor darkened. Suddenly a flash of light covered the team as they cried out. Shane rubbed his eyes, \"For fucks sake.\"\nHe looked around, both Sevo and Enfield were gone. Jane still held the pad, on it was an electronic map, with a green dot and a few red red dots with one yellow dot. She zoomed in on the green dot taking a few steps forward. It moved. Shane stepped forward, \"what is it?\"\nJane spoke, \"It's a map, we are green, my guess is the tar get is yellow .\"\nRobert looked over her shoulder , \"What's red then?\"Jane looked closer , it was moving, \"I'm not sure.\"\nRobert gulped, \"If it's a test, I'd say it's likely an obstacle.\"\nShane's eyes shot at him, \"If it's created by Enfield and his AI, it's gonna be hard.\"\nJane nodded, \"Bet it's not harder than a night jump when your body is underdeveloped and you're shattered.\"\nThe three laughed as Jane ran forward locking the compass onto the side of the pad. They had been running for ten minutes, no one had spoken, but they were approaching the first red dot. Suddenly , Jane looked up as the red dot faded for a second. Seeing a shine from one of the hillsides she dived to the side as a streak of what almost seemed to be light passed her . Looking back she noticed Robert curl over gripping his leg, \"Fucking stun round.\"\nShane dragged him behind a rock as the two looked at where that 'Stun Round' hit. Shane's eyes widened as they both stared at the gaping hole in Robert's leg. Robert tried to move it, but he'd lost all control, \"Is he insane?\"\nJane shook her head, looking for the shooter , \"Something's wrong...\"\nShane cried out, \"IT'S LIVE AMMUNITION!!\"\nJane looked at them as she hid, \"Shit.\"\nShane tried again, \"ENFIELD ST OP ITS LIVE AMMUNITION, YOU'RE GONNA KILL US!\"\nJane checked her pad as the gunfire halted, the red dot was approaching at extreme speeds, completely inhuman, no Spartan could do such a thing either ... they were too fast. Jane gulped, \"I'll stall him, get Robert to the rendezvous point. T ake the pad.\" She tossed it to him as he caught it.\"\nSuddenly , a voice appeared next to Shane, \"T actical probability of failing, 100%, I recommend you stick together and use the pad to your advantage.\"\nRobert's eyes widened as Shane instinctively swung to the source of the voice. Sevo caught the blow , \"Listen to me, Shane.\" Shane watched what he thought to be a completely normal AI's hand, catch his physical human one. She dropped his hand, shaking her own, \"Ur gh, I hate having to use that.\"\nShane looked at Jane, \"What do we do about Robert then?\"\nSevo nodded, \"Keep him in between the both of you, wait for the assault. Y our enemy seems to be adamant on hand-to-hand combat.\"Jane looked down at her pad, \"5 seconds out!\" She looked up as she noticed a figure in the forest. They stopped no more than 100 metres ahead of them... It wasn't Enfield. Their armour was black. Their head was covered by a hood. They wore no recognisable Spartan armour , nor any UNSC. Jane walked over to Robert and Shane, staring at the figure. He brandished nothing but his fists, but over his shoulder , he had a rifle. The barrel was long and it had a lar ge scope. Sevo spoke, \"Block high.\"\nJane looked at her as she felt a fist make contact with the top of her helmet. Slamming her into the ground. Looking she saw the figure standing over her . Sevo spoke, \"Shane hit the abdomen.\" Shane led with a jab to the face. Preparing a follow-up to the abdomen. The figure caught the first blow with ease flipping Shane away . Shane hit the floor as Robert crawled away . The figure spoke, \"I hoped you three would be stronger .\"\nSevo spoke, \"Robert roll left!\" Robert did as instructed, narrowly avoiding a foot stamping where his head once was. Sevo spoke again, \"Kick him!\"\nRobert pulled his working leg back kicking the figure as hard as he could in the shin. The figure grunted falling to the floor . Sevo turned to Jane, \"Jane, hit him centre stomach.\"\nShe darted forward, pulling her full strength back, landing a blow as the figure just stood up. The figure's stomach recoiled back as Jane's fist navigated the armour . The figure darted back, Sevo looked at Shane, \"Dodge left! Roll!\" Shane did as he was instructed, dodging the high kick. Standing to his feet Jane jumped on the figure's back, kneeing him in the back. Sevo spoke, \"Let go!\" She did as the figure swung for her . He missed by a fraction of a second. Shane jumped to his feet striking the figure in the back of the neck. He recoiled again. As Jane uppercut him. Shane struck a bit lower this time, the spine. And Jane hit him square in the nose.Sevo looked at them, \"Both dodge back!\" They both complied, jumping backwards as the figure went to punch. Sevo ordered again, \"Jane distract, Shane unclip the rifle from his shoulder .\"\nJane darted forward dodging a blow . Before striking the figure within his side. Followed by a blow to his face. Hitting a metal plate she saw the reflective visor hidden beneath. It looked very similar to their SPI helmet. The figure recoiled back as Shane jumped on his back pulling the rifle with all his might. Sevo spoke, \"Shoulder switch! Press it down!\"\nShane reached for it, pulling it forward, he slipped. He couldn't pull it the full way!\nSevo yelled, \"Get of f, it's too late!\"\nBut he didn't, trying again he gripped it, pulling with all his might. Suddenly hearing it click he felt a hand grasp him. Then in a flash, he was tossed against a tree and his vision went black. Opening his eyes he blinked a few times. Jane was smacking him around the face, \"Get up!\"\nHis helmet was already of f. His eyes opened wide as Sevo stood over him, hands on her hips, \"Y ou nearly died.\"\nShane smiled, gripping his back, \"Did we win?\"\nSevo nodded, \"Jane beat him, correct.\"\nRobert grinned through the pain, pulling the pad up, \"His red dot disappeared after Jane lit him up a few times with the rifle.\"\nSevo nodded, \"That I will commend you on though, you did complete the mission, however , if that was a real enemy you would have all died at least twenty times.\"\nShane stood to his feet wobbling, \"That wasn't a real enemy?\"\nSevo raised an eyebrow , \"Of course. He had to not just use antique equipment, but also slow himself down with weights and hold back, to just not be able to kill you with a single blow .\"\nRobert whistled, \"W ell... uh.\" He grunted, holding his leg adrenaline still pulsing through his veins. Sevo knelt, \"Y ou don't have long till sunrise, you should make it there before then... Ambrose will probably be pissed otherwise.\"\nShane nodded, picking up Robert under his arm, \"Y ou good?\"\nRobert chuckled, \"I've been shot.\"Jane picked up the rifle, \"It's very light.\"\nSevo nodded, \"That's because it's an antique, older than me. Not as powerful as the newer stuff... but can still take a normal person's leg of f.\"\nJane nodded, resting it on top of her shoulder . The group walked with Jane and Sevo discussing strategy . Shane and Robert walked behind, Robert commented, \"Y ou didn't fear this time.\"\nShane looked at him, still walking, \"Y ou know you're in the perfect position for me to kick your leg and get away with it right?\"\nRobert chuckled, \"Fair point.\" The two walked down. Continuing to follow the others,\n\"Honestly it's impressive, you didn't care about your own life, dived straight in.\"\nShane raised an eyebrow , \"It's what we have to do.\"\nSevo looked back, preparing a rebuttal but didn't speak. Coming to another ledge they observed a huge crater that looked like it had several flat rings carved in it. At the bottom stood several figures surrounding two ships. Jane looked through the scope, \"Shit, he's there.\"\nAt the bottom, the familiar armour of the figure they had just beat stood, along with several other figures that looked very similar . All wearing nearly identical gear except they each had grey letters on the back of their hoods. The one they had fought had the number 3. As they watched they noticed two more figures walk down a slope. One in Silver and red armour while the other in the familiar black of the rest with the number one on his hood. Shane muttered, \"Enfield...\"\nSevo nodded, \"That is your location, he's waiting.\"\nThe group nodded walking down slope after slope, slowly descending the crater . As they reached the bottom Sevo disappeared. The group walked down a small chasm to a clearing where the ships lay . The unidentified soldiers and Enfield all turned to them. The one who had attacked them, 3, walked over . He grabbed the rifle from Jane. She couldn't even contest it. Quickly clipping it to his back he muttered, \"They need a bio scanner for this shit.\" He walked away . As Enfield walked over with the soldiers 1 and 4, he grinned, \"Have a good time?\"\nRobert gritted his teeth, \"They permanently disabled me!\"Enfield laughed, \"7-4, if you would.\"\nFour pushed Robert to the ground as they knelt by the knee, \"Stay still.\" The voice was feminine. They pulled a device from their back, placing it in the kneecap. They pressed a button on top of it as the metal slid out. As Robert looked down he moved his leg again. It was fine, \"What the?\"\nEnfield nodded, \"Now then, let's get this over with.\"\nHe walked inside one of the craft as three beds lay behind a door with several pieces of machinery above. W eapons lined the wall. Enfield sat down, \"If you wish to begin, lay down, however , you have 10 seconds to decide.\"\nAll three of them made their resolve lying down. Sevo looked at a button as it clicked in. The machines engaged as all three Candidates were knocked out. Enfield watched the process carefully . It was much simpler than he thought and the machines did it with ease. Zulu 7-1 put his hand on Enfield's shoulder , \"You did good kid.\"\nEnfield nodded, \"There's a few more who've caught my eye, but I'm not close with them.\"\n7-1 laughed, \"Just try to get as many high-quality as you can, we don't want to be overflowing with warriors.\"\nEnfield looked forward, \"Can you tell what exactly a warrior is?\"\n7-1 shook his head, \"Not yet, you'll understand eventually though.\" Enfield didn't question the man. He just watched as his family lay there, out cold.Please drop by the Archive and comment  to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!"
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "HALO: Orion's Schism Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own  at http://archiveofourown.or g/works/48000229 . Rating: Mature Archive W arnings: Graphic Depictions Of V iolence , Major Character Death Category: Gen Fandom: Halo (V ideo Games) & Related Fandoms Characters: Matthew Svenson , Fural 'Nasamai , Raku 'Sol , Kel 'Dauram Additional T ags: Action/Adventure , Horror , Body Horror , Science Fiction Language: English Series: Part 2 of HALO: Rise of the Keepers Stats: Published: 2023-06-19 Updated: 2023-12-03 Words: 37,820 Chapters:\n14/?HALO: Orion's Schism by C_House Summary During a time of great strife for the Covenant, three Sangheili must come together to survive, or die in the chaos of a civil war . And a UNSC Marine must defend a colony of great importance from a Covenant Fleetmaster who has made one of the biggest discoveries in the history of the Covenant, a discovery that can tip the balance of power in the galaxy forever . Notes This is a sequel to my previous work, HALO: Blade Brothers. If you have not read that, do that before reading this.RISING TIDES RISING TIDES Matthew Svenson returns to active duty after the destruction of Alpha Halo, in a desperate fight to stop the extinction of humanity as the Covenant cleanses their worlds. He lands on a human colony world, unknown to the people there that their destruction is coming. Fural 'Nasamai accomplishes his goal of becoming a Blademaster and returns to the Covenant capital of High Charity , but it is at a time of great strife for the Sangheili, and for the Covenant. A Sangheili warrior estranged from the alien empire lives alone on a mostly uncharted world in the Covenant fringe space. He must fight for his own survival, and to find his faith in the Forerunners once more. And a Sangheili assassin becomes the victim of a sinister plot deep within the hierarchy of the Covenant. A plot that he must fully uncover before it plunges the alien empire deep into a civil war... While the Human-Covenant war reaches its height, the Sangheili must come together , and Humanity must fight against impossible odds. But when the Covenant changes the game more than once, defeat becomes all but certain. In this sequel to Blade Brothers, the stakes are ramped up significantly . And what happens here has the potential to change the galaxy forever .Prologue: Chel 'Quraee Chapter Summary Introduction to the story Prologue: Chel 'Quraee The Song of Unity , the grand flagship of the Fleet of Sanctity , dove through the darkness of space. It was nowhere in particular . No planets were to be seen, the nearest sun was little more than a speck against the dark. As with nearly anywhere in space, it was a perfect hiding place. The business in which the Fleetmaster , Chel 'Quraee, was about to take part in was something that no one else was allowed to see. A pair of Akton -pattern escort frigates appeared on the Song of Unity 's sensors, and Chel's underlings guided them in. The Fleetmaster stood from his hovering chair , and quietly left the carrier's control room to meet with his fellow Shipmasters. The Unity  was a Kerel-pattern assault carrier . The ship, its complement, and its fleet had conducted a siege against a human colony for five of their years. The human world of Zehar VI was still under siege, but the artefacts that Chel's warriors found there put him on a trail of something greater . He was on the hunt for a Forerunner fortress world known only as the Assembly . He envisioned himself capturing the world and taking control of its shipyards to deploy a fleet of unimaginable power , and he would use it to subjugate both humanity and the Covenant. He would establish a new power in the galaxy of his own vision. Chel approached the transport tube that would bring him to the hangar , and outside of it awaited his second in command. One of the few others that knew of his true goals, T eran\n'Jerisee. Though Chel technically outranked T eran, the two of them had such a mutual respect that they saw each other as equals. Neither of them bowed to one another .\n\"The Resplendent Advance  has docked,\" T eran informed Chel as they both stepped into the tube. It shot along the Song of Unity 's spine towards the main hangar . \"The Raptur ous Spirit is falling behind.\"\n\"No matter ,\" Chel assured his friend. \"W e are not currently in a rush. Do they have the samples?\"\nTeran gave Chel a swift nod. The transport tube came to a halt once it reached the main hangar , and the two of them stepped away from it. Another of Chel's underlings awaitedthem, a Sangheili Major named Namar So'hioee. Though Chel had taken a liking to the Major , he was one of the many who could not know of the Fleetmaster's true goals. The Major seemed like he was about to inform Chel of something, but stopped. He bowed to Chel and stepped away as the Resplendent Advance  opened its doors. Chel stared down at the Major and gestured for him to leave the hangar . He bowed again and silently moved to the transport tube. The Shipmaster of the Resplendent Advance  was an unusually tall and lean Sangheili named Godo 'Intramee. Chel figured he must have come from a Sangheili colony with lower gravity . The way 'Intramee stomped toward him in the Unity's gravity confirmed his thoughts.\n\"We have brought you the specimens,\" 'Intramee stated as he stopped in front of Chel. \"They are dormant, and the containers are sealed.\"\n\"Good,\" Chel said. He had to fight to keep excitement from appearing in his voice. This was something he had waited a long time for . Behind 'Intramee he could see the menials pushing large containers of f of the Resplendent Advance . It was a great sight.\n'Intramee awkwardly stood in front of Chel waiting for him to say something else. But Chel waited for the tall Sangheili to turn before speaking again. 'Intramee was another of the few in on Chel's plans, though he wasn't someone the Fleetmaster particularly liked. It caused Chel some joy to inconvenience him from time to time.\n\"Tell me,\" Chel began, \"what is the situation aboard the Raptur ous Spirit ? They are approaching, but they have not yet docked.\"\n\"Nor are they responding to my hails,\" T eran added. He crossed his arms.\n\"You were alongside them when you infiltrated the Fleet of Particular Justice , were you not?\"\n\"I was,\" 'Intramee breathed, the annoyance in his voice was clear . He slowly turned back to the two Sangheili. \"W e made a stop along the way to refuel with the fleet above Zehar .\"\n'Intramee stopped, hoping to annoy Chel in return. Chel bared his teeth and lowered his arms to his sides, leaving one hand close to the ener gy sword hilt on his hip. 'Intramee was taken aback by the threat.\n\"We were attacked,\" 'Intramee said. \"A commandeered Phantom breached the Raptur ous Spirit , but 'Bestrumee has assured me that the situation has been dealt with.\"\nChel took a deep breath and slowly released it. The menials from the Resplendent Advance had of floaded all of the containers, and the crew of the Song of Unity  had begun to take them to the storage bays. The contents of the containers were precious to Chel and his followers, if anything had happened to them that would be considered blasphemy . But if the Raptur ous Spirit  was compromised, so were all of his plans.\"Song of Unity , this is your Fleetmaster ,\" Chel said as he opened a channel to the bridge crew .\n\"Strike down the Raptur ous Spirit . I need every available warrior in the main hangar in case it makes a landing.\"\nChel closed the channel and crossed his arms. He wished he could stare 'Intramee down, but he had to look up to stare the Shipmaster in his eyes. He gestured to T eran without breaking his gaze.\n\"'Jerisee. Execute the Shipmaster for his incompetence,\" Chel ordered.\n\"What? Surely you-\" 'Intramee's voice was cut of f as T eran slammed an ener gy sword into his abdomen. T eran pulled the blade back, and the Shipmaster fell onto the floor . Chel crouched next to him, relishing in the fact that he could now look down upon the failed Shipmaster .\n\"What you have done threatens everything we've worked for ,\" Chel said, his voice little more than a whisper . \"I will not allow your recklessness to be the end of my grand design.\"\n'Intramee attempted to respond, but only choked on the blood that was being forced up his throat. He raised a hand as Chel stood once more, and when Chel planted his foot against the Shipmaster's neck, the light faded from his eyes. Ranks of warriors began to gather in the hangar as the Raptur ous Spirit  approached, the ship was being torn apart by the Unity 's guns, but it would make a landing anyways. Chel and Teran made their way to the transport tube to let the other fighters deal with the mess that was about to happen. There was something that was far more important to Chel than anything else. The transport tube moved along the ship as it brought them to the storage bays. The containers that the Resplendent Advance  had of floaded were already there, and Chel couldn't wait to see the contents inside. Chel received a message from So'hioee that had confirmed his suspicions. A group of human soldiers had left the Raptur ous Spirit  and engaged the warriors in the hangar . There was something else in the message, something of dire importance. A single word. Demons.\n\"Does an infiltration matter that little to you?\" T eran asked as the transport tube came to a stop.\n\"What can they do against our full complement?\" Chel asked as he stepped into the storage bay. There were no menials there. Just Chel, T eran, and the car go.\n\"Did you not see So'hioee's message?\"\n\"I did. The Demons will not get far . If you would like to join in the defence, then you may go. This... This here is far more important to me.\"\n\"I understand,\" T eran nodded. He stayed behind on the tube. \"I will not let the humans get far.\"\n\"Good. I am counting on you,\" Chel said without turning away from the containers.The tube closed behind him and sped back to the hangar . Now Chel was completely alone. He took a deep breath as he approached one of the lar ger containers. He pressed a few of the buttons on its side, and one of the side panels opened. The twisted horror of flesh inside sat dormant, surrounded in liquids that kept it suspended. To many others, the Flood combat form was an abomination meant to be pur ged. But to Chel\n'Quraee, it was a thing of beauty . It was the next step in the evolution of the galaxy . It was with the Flood that he would achieve his goal of galactic unity . He had to fight himself to not release the Flood specimen and become one with them at that very moment. The time to unify the galaxy would come soon, but he still had plans in place to be carried out. He stepped away from the specimen and called the bridge crew . It was time to continue on their way . The next step to reaching the Assembly was visiting the Forerunner shield world known as Seiginis III. Through the siege of Zehar VI, Chel had discovered Seiginis III's location, and that was where they were headed next. The human incursion wouldn't even slow them down. The Assembly would belong to him, and nothing would stand in his way .Chapter 1: Fural Chapter Summary A re-introduction to Fural 'Nasamai. Chapter 1: Fural 'Nasamai So Thel 'V adamee was a heretic. That was hard to believe. Even if Fural hadn't served under him during the battle of Halo, there was no way he would have believed that. But he was there. He saw what had unfolded on that ring's surface, and a part of him had believed that Halo's destruction was necessary . No, that is blasphemy!  Fural berated himself. The destruction of the sacr ed ring was a tragic loss, one which we will never r ecover fr om. But even so, Thel 'V adamee is no her etic. Fural had been invited to the High Council chambers to watch the trial unfold, but he refused. He opted to watch it from a cantina as it was being televised publicly . He didn't want to be near so many others at that moment. He imagined his younger self next to him, angry at him for not taking up the of fer. He remembered wanting to visit the chambers as a fledgeling, but during that time there wasn't a place he didn't want to visit. He hated to admit it, but the battle on Halo had knocked most of the adventure out of him. A lot of time had passed since the ring was destroyed, and the events of the battle still haunted him. He had nightmares every time he tried to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he was back in that swamp fighting against the monster that used to be his brother . It was a torment that he couldn't tell whether or not he deserved.\n\"Soon the Gr eat Journey shall begin ,\" the voice from the monitor in front of him said. \" But when it does, the weight of your her esy will stay your feet. And you shall be left behind. \"\nIt was the voice of the Prophet of T ruth, one of the triumvirate leading the Covenant. Though the Prophets made a big show of holding equal power , Fural knew that T ruth was the real one who held the power . But he wouldn't dare admit that out loud. The trial then ended. Fural wasn't certain of what was going to happen to his old Supreme Commander next, but it wasn't something he particularly wanted to see. He stood up, leaving his food and drink half finished and turned to leave. At the front of the cantina was a lar ge Jiralhanae with a brown pelt. Its face looked just as snobby as the rest of the Jiralhanae Fural had encountered on High Charity .\n\"Done already?\" the Jiralhanae said with a chuckle. It moved to the door to block Fural from leaving. \"Y ou should try the Thornbeast. I bet not even a Sangheili could resist its delicioustemptation.\"\n\"I am finished here,\" Fural stated plainly . Though he was annoyed, he wasn't going to let it show . \"Move.\"\nThe Jiralhanae's feigned cheerful expression faded. It stood tall and crossed its arms, looking down at the shorter Sangheili.\n\"You Sangheili think you're all so high and mighty , don't you?\" the Jiralhanae snorted. \"Y our kind would not soon for get that it was you who let Halo be destroyed.\"\n\"I. Said. Move,\" Fural glared at the Jiralhanae. Now he was letting his annoyance be known. If the Jiralhanae persisted, he figured he could just get away with killing it.\n\"And if I don't?\"\n\"Then I will cut you down right here and now . Do not test me.\"\nFor a moment, the Jiralhanae made no response. But eventually it grunted and stepped aside. Fural left the cantina, his hand resting on the hilt of his ener gy sword underneath his robes. It would surprise him if the Jiralhanae didn't attack him, or at least send someone else to do it. Little did it know , it was messing with a Blademaster . He would make sure to show it that if it did try to attack him. Fural walked away from the cantina and down the streets of the holy city . The tall buildings alongside the giant Forerunner ship at the centre of the city were once a sight to behold, but Fural no longer felt anything when he looked at them. The Anodyne Spirit  was the name of the Forerunner ship, and Dom loved visiting it. But without him there, Fural didn't feel any reason to visit it anymore. Everywhere Fural walked he saw a screen showing Supreme Commander 'V adamee being tortured for his failure on Halo. It was so impossible to avoid that Fural simply gave up trying to, and he started watching it. He stood behind a group of Unggoy that were so af fixed to the screen that they hadn't even noticed him approaching. On the screen he saw a Jiralhanae with white fur branding 'V adamee with the Mark of Shame. The circular glyph was burned into the former Supreme Commander's chest. The Unggoy seemed to get startled by it, and they turned their heads away from the screen. They turned to see Fural behind them, and they were startled again. They quickly fled the area, running down the alleys between the buildings. Fural had seen worse things, namely what had happened to his brother . But the sight of\n'Vadamee being tortured still hurt to see. He was someone that Fural had looked up to for a long time, and it wasn't even his fault that Halo was destroyed. It was more likely to have been Fural's own fault. He was the one who went into the containment facility . It was he who released the Flood from containment. Sure there had been others, but he would rather take the blame then let anyone else take it. I should be the one up ther e being burned.Fural wasn't super af fixed to the screen as he watched like the Unggoy had been, and so he noticed pretty easily when he heard heavy footsteps approaching behind him. He didn't turn around, but he clasped his hands behind his back.\n\"Well?\" Fural said when he heard the footsteps stop. \"What is it?\"\n\"Your end is what it is,\" came the gruf f voice of the Jiralhanae he had spoken to at the cantina. \"Y our kind needs to be sent a message.\"\n\"And your kind needs to learn its place,\" Fural turned. His annoyance was gone, and now he felt his lust for fighting returning to him. He needed to take out his anger , and the four Jiralhanae that he saw behind him were perfect tar gets for that.\n\"It was the Sangheili that formed the W rit of Union,\" Fural said, letting his hands drop to his sides. \"W e have always been the will of the Prophets. Not you.\"\n\"That's what I thought,\" the Jiralhanae from the cantina laughed, \"high and mighty as always. It's time you learned some respect, worm.\"\n\"And here I thought that respect needed to be earned.\"\nThe Jiralhanae threw a punch that Fural could have easily avoided, but he let it hit him. It felt good to feel the pressure against his skin, the pain in the side of his head was relieving. For the first time since he lost his brother , he felt alive. Fural quickly reached under his robes and drew his ener gy sword, igniting the blades as he swung his arm up. The sword cut through the Jiralhanae's shoulder with ease, the slicing of the blades through its skin was such a satisfying feeling. The Jiralhanae yelped and reeled back as its arm fell onto the ground. The other three Jiralhanae gave Fural a look of shock. They weren't expecting him to fight back. One of them grabbed their squealing comrade and they all stepped away . Fural spread his arms out, challenging them to attack him again.\n\"Come on! Giving up already?\" Fural taunted them. He didn't move to finish them of f, he wanted them to come to him.\n\"This isn't over ,\" one of them said with a grunt.\n\"Oh, I think it is,\" Fural deactivated his blades and stowed the hilt. The hairy beasts retreated without another word. If they had any survival instincts at all, they would know to stay far away . If they attacked him again, he wouldn't go so easy on them. Fural felt the side of his face where the Jiralhanae had punched him and grimaced at the pain. It would go away soon enough. He turned back to the screen and it had been switched to a broadcast from inside a Covenant warship. He missed the ending of whatever torture\n'Vadamee was being put through, but he was sure he would find out soon enough whether the Supreme Commander survived or not.Fural left the alleys and made his way back home, leaving the detached Jiralhanae arm on the ground behind. Those beasts had wanted to send the Sangheili a message, and Fural sent them one in return. He trekked across a lar ge open plaza. T rees from the various worlds of the Covenant member species grew from open holes in the ground, all of them dif ferent shapes and sizes. They were a sign of the failing unity that the Covenant used to represent. The tension between the Sangheili and the Jiralhanae had never been higher , and it was only going to get worse now that the destruction of Halo was blamed on a Sangheili. Fural knew that one thing or another would spark a conflict between them. And when that happened, he would give his life to defend his brothers. Fural entered the apartment building where he lived. A lar ge and very nicely decorated lobby stood before him, one that he had seen too many times. He imagined his younger self again, staring up at the waterfalls and the trees at the back wall in awe at the splendorous sight. He rushed through the lobby to keep himself from thinking too much, and he found his apartment. But that wasn't the only thing he found.\n\"'Nasamai, it's been a while,\" a familiar voice said as Fural rounded the corner . Before him stood Jors 'Cinatee, the pilot who had ferried him all across the ring during the battle of Halo.\n\"It has been a while indeed,\" Fural said. He attempted to sound happy to see his friend again, but his monotone voice didn't let him. The last time Fural had seen him they were aboard the Supreme Crusader , watching Halo's destruction in front of them. Jors gave him a concerned look, and Fural already knew what he was going to ask. It wasn't really something he wanted to talk about.\n\"What happened to your face?\" Jors asked. His friend's concern almost surprised him.\n\"That isn't important,\" Fural shook his head. \"What is important is why you are here.\"\n\"Well I just wanted to see my friend again,\" Jors said, crossing his arms. \"I've been stuck here since the fleet returned, I didn't even get a fancy promotion or anything like you did. Y ou did get the promotion, right?\"\nFural sighed and nodded. It was almost right when he had returned to High Charity when he sat before a council of Blademasters. The ceremony had been short lived, and Fural had no longer felt like he deserved the title. But it happened nonetheless. He opened the door to his quarters and gestured for Jors to enter with him. The pilot found a chair in the corner of the room and sat down, Fural took a seat across from him.\n\"Nothing feels right, does it?\" Jors said, breaking a moment of silence that had fallen between them. \"The destruction of Halo, 'V adamee being branded a heretic, the... The parasite.\"\n\"No,\" Fural sighed. Everything about the events of Halo had changed him, he felt for the worse. \"I must admit, not much feels real anymore.\"\n\"Yeah,\" Jors nodded, \"and now the Jiralhanae are using Halo's destruction against us. Just because a Sangheili was 'responsible' for it. None of it was our fault, it was that damnedparasite.\"\n\"I know .\"\n\"Yes, my apologies,\" Jors raised his hands. \"Y ou know better than anyone.\"\nAnother silence fell between them. Jors knew that speaking about Fural's brother was a touchy subject. Every time he thought about Dom he began to crave violence, the only thing that could truly distract him. This time he shoved his violent thoughts down for fear of hurting his friend.\n\"If Halo's destruction is 'V adamee's fault, then it is all of our's as well,\" Jors began again. \"W e should all be up there being branded as heretics.\"\nFural didn't respond immediately . His thoughts shifted to Halo's destruction, and he felt the need to say something that he would probably regret. But he was in the comfort of his home, the only one who could hear him was someone that he had fought battle after battle with. Someone he trusted.\n\"Halo needed to be destroyed,\" Fural said plainly .\n\"What?\" Jors tilted his head.\n\"The Flood would have escaped if it had not been destroyed,\" Fural continued. \"According to the reports from the fleet, it had already escaped the ring.\"\n\"But Halo was the start of the Great Journey! It has been the focus of all our worship.\"\n\"I told you once that there are more out there, I believe it. The Prophets know it too, they say that the Journey has not yet begun.\"\n\"Then where are they?\"\n\"I don't know . It took us ages to find the first one, and in time we will find another . No matter how long it takes.\"\n\"Hm,\" Jors sat up in his seat. \"Y ou have changed a lot. I do not remember you being so devout.\"\n\"I have had time to reflect,\" Fural looked down at the floor . \"It is what Dom would have wanted. I shall spend the rest of my days honouring him.\"\n\"He would be proud.\"\nJors stood up from his seat. Fural did wonder what Dom would say if he were still with him. He remembered every time his brother had pulled him aside during the battle on Halo to lecture him on the Covenant's faith. Now he felt he knew almost as much as his brother did.\n\"I must go now ,\" Jors said as he moved to the door . He stopped and turned back as it opened.\n\"Thank you for your time. I will be nearby if you want to find me.\"\"'Cinatee,\" Fural said to stop him. Jors stopped as Fural stood up from his chair . \"Be careful out there. Something is coming, I don't know what, but I feel the safety of our Covenant is in jeopardy .\"\n\"What are you talking about now?\"\n\"Just... Be careful of the Jiralhanae. They care less for our unity than you may think.\"\n\"So that's what happened to your face.\"\nFural responded with a nod. He felt that a Jiralhanae rebellion was brewing, but he didn't know when or how it would happen. He knew that those beasts would never let the Sangheili forget who let Halo be destroyed.\n\"I will be careful,\" Jors said. W ith that, he left Fural's quarters. Fural closed the door behind Jors and he returned to his seat. He turned to the only window in his quarters above his bed, which overlooked the Anodyne Spirit  as it towered over the buildings of the commercial districts. Halo was a turning point for the Covenant, tensions between all of its species had never been higher . Fural feared for the future of the great empire.Chapter 2: Svenson Chapter Summary A re-introduction to Matthew Svenson. Chapter 2: Matthew Svenson\n\"Subject: Svenson, Matthew , service number 21 102-72342-MS. Private First Class, 79th Infantry Battalion. Fireteam Delta. Born January 24th, 2527, on Draco III.\"\nThe interrogator sat directly in front of Svenson, but he could barely see the man. The room was dark, and the bright light above him only illuminated the table which his hands rested on. When the interrogator fell silent, Svenson figured that he was supposed to confirm the information.\n\"Y-yes,\" he nodded, \"that's me.\"\nHe didn't know where he was or why he was there, but he knew that the man interrogating him belonged to the Of fice of Naval Intelligence. It had only been a few weeks since the battle of Alpha Halo, as the UNSC was calling it, had ended. And for those few weeks, Svenson could barely recall anything that had happened. He didn't know whether he was at a facility somewhere or on a ship, he could barely tell if he was even still alive.\n\"You returned wounded from Alpha Halo with Fireteam Foxtrot after losing Fireteam Delta to the Covenant,\" the interrogator continued. The Covenant? There was a lot that Svenson didn't remember and several things he wanted to forget, but he knew that it wasn't the Covenant that had killed his fireteam. It was something much, much worse.\n\"No, that's not correct,\" Svenson said. \"Fireteam Delta wasn't lost to the Covenant. Something... Something else killed them.\"\n\"Something else? Could you explain?\"\n\"I... I don't know what they were,\" Svenson could feel his heart beginning to beat rapidly . Just thinking about the monsters made him panic. \"They... They were some other kind of aliens, they... They tore Delta apart. They... Infected them.\"\n\"They were infected?\"\n\"Yeah... They took them over and turned them into monsters.\"The interrogator reached into his pocket and presented a datapad. After typing into it for a moment, he set it down on the table and turned it so Svenson could see it clearly . On the screen was an image of a Marine, twisted in unimaginable ways and morphed into something that was nowhere close to looking like a human. The only reason Svenson could tell it had been a Marine was because he had seen his friends turned into creatures like it all over the ring.\n\"Could this be what you're referring to?\" the interrogator asked. He clasped his hands and placed them on the table.\n\"Yes, that's it,\" Svenson said. He felt his heart pounding against his chest faster for every second that he looked at it. The interrogator pulled the datapad away , and slid it back into his pocket. Svenson felt another person behind him, and he felt a pinch in his neck as he was injected with something he presumed would help him calm down. He felt his heart slow down, and he took a deep breath.\n\"What were those things?\" Svenson asked.\n\"We were hoping you could tell us,\" the interrogator sat up in his seat. \"Intelligence from other survivors of the Alpha Halo incident suggests that they are a parasitic life form called the Flood. Beyond that, we know very little.\"\n\"I... Don't know what else I can tell you,\" Svenson sighed. \"All I know is that they turned people into monsters.\"\n\"You were present in the facility in which they were released from, were you not?\"\n\"I... I was.\"\n\"Tell me, how is it that you were the only member of Fireteam Delta to make it out of there?\"\nSvenson began to speak, but he stopped himself. What happened in that facility was something that he would never for get. He was on the run after he lost his fireteam, and that was when he encountered the Elite. The Covenant soldier that had lowered its weapon and helped him escape. They risked their lives to help one another escape, and they parted ways without a second thought. It was a story as unbelievable as it sounded, and it wasn't something he planned on telling anyone.\n\"I... I don't remember ,\" Svenson said, hoping to pass it of f as one of the many things he wanted to for get. He knew that the interrogator would be able to tell he was lying, but he did his best not to speak about what happened anyway .\n\"Would it help you remember if you took these focus drugs?\" the interrogator pulled a small container out of his pocket and set it on the table. Svenson had seen the interrogator take them before the session began.Svenson knew he couldn't refuse them as it would only make him seem suspicious, but if he did take them he wasn't sure if he would be able to stop himself from telling the story . All he did was nod, and he tried to come up with a story on the spot as the interrogator took a pellet from the container and pushed it towards him. He took the pellet and swallowed it quickly , and memories he had pushed away had started to come back. He saw his fireteam in front of him. He saw Arceneaux shooting O'Hale in her head after she had gotten infected. He watched the Corporal get gunned down by another monster . He watched as the last of his friends got infected in front of him. Lopes, Hanoi, Kamal. Faraday .\n\"Sergeant O'Hale was infected first,\" Svenson said. \"Corporal Arceneaux killed her before she could become a threat. One of the monsters shot Kormanyos in the head. Arceneaux, Roscoe, and Skenandore were gunned down after we took an elevator further into the facility . Clarke was infected, and he stayed behind to cover us.\"\nSo far Svenson had only told the truth. He began coming up with lies so he wouldn't give away the secret of the Elite. He wasn't sure if the lies were any good, but he would have to work with them.\n\"Lopes and Faraday were infected as we reached another elevator ,\" Svenson continued. \"I took it up with Hanoi and Kamal at my side, we were the last ones left. The elevator went up to another of the facility's entrances. When it stopped, there was an infected Elite there that killed Hanoi and Kamal, but I was able to finish it of f. After that, I escaped the swamp on my own.\"\nSvenson had sprinkled some truth in there, and he had to force himself not to let out a sigh of relief when the interrogator didn't question that part of the story .\n\"And that was when you found Fireteam Foxtrot?\" the interrogator asked.\n\"Correct. After I left the swamp I searched for other survivors, and found them.\"\n\"I already have the accounts from Corporal Santiago and Lance Corporal Grif fith. Y ou raided a Covenant airbase which held two captured D80 Condors, and you left the ring.\"\nSvenson nodded to confirm. After that was when he didn't remember much. All he remembered was being on the floor of the Condor with his legs broken and passing out. When he woke up, he was in a medical facility , presumably in the same place that he was now, where he passed out again. When he woke up next he was in the very chair he was sitting in. The interrogator pulled out another datapad and typed something into it before putting it away . He clasped his hands and leaned forward, now Svenson could partly see his face in the light on the ceiling. His skin was dark and pebbled, and his face was clean shaven.\n\"None of this leaves this room, do you understand?\" he asked. When Svenson nodded, he continued. \"The threat of these Flood creatures is over , and your accounts are being studied in case something like it arises again. But you will not under any circumstances mention themor the battle of Alpha Halo to anyone other than me, or a higher ranking ONI operative. If you do, you will be detained and dischar ged from the UNSC Marine Corps. Am I clear?\"\n\"Yes,\" Svenson nodded. He didn't plan on mentioning anything to anyone to begin with. All he wanted to do was leave the nightmare in the past.\n\"Now , before I continue, do you have any questions?\" the interrogator asked.\n\"Just one,\" Svenson sat up in his chair . \"Where am I?\"\n\"We are aboard the UNSC Tigershark , FFG-327. W e are currently in orbit of New T ampa.\"\nNew T ampa. That wasn't a location Svenson had ever heard of. He figured that he let his confusion show too much, as the interrogator explained more.\n\"It's a more recently colonised world, described as a paradise by its residents. And it is where you are going to be placed on mandatory shore leave.\"\n\"M-mandatory shore leave?\" Svenson tilted his head. Part of him was happy to have a break, but another part of him knew that the war between humanity and the Covenant was still raging on. He didn't want to sit idly by as humanity's worlds were destroyed one by one.\n\"What about the war?\"\n\"You will not be continuing the fight until your mental condition can be fully assessed,\" the interrogator said. \"Besides, I think you've earned a little break.\"\nSvenson nodded. He knew it wasn't something he would be able to refuse. At least the idea of shore leave on a paradise planet sounded a little promising.\n\"Yes sir ,\" Svenson said with a nod.\n\"Once you're on the ground, you will report to Ser geant Nagata at Firebase V eles. From there you will be supplied with everything you need, and you're free to explore the city . Keep in mind you will be monitored.\"\nSvenson nodded again. He didn't like the idea of having ONI agents following him around, but he knew he didn't have a choice. Hopefully they would at least not get in the way . He wasn't sure what life in a city would be like, especially after the things he had seen, but he figured he'd get used to it.\n\"You are dismissed. Y ou may report to the hangar when you are ready ,\" the interrogator said. Svenson rose from the table, and he left the interrogation room. His legs still hurt with every step he took; they hadn't fully healed yet from his fall, but at least he could still walk. When he left the room he was in a brightly lit hallway with screens on the walls that showed the view of New T ampa. The surface was mostly blue, filled with a giant ocean. There was a large landmass with a collection of lights, which Svenson figured was the city he was going to visit. Aside from that, he couldn't see much else other than a scattering of islands all across the ocean.\"Matthew Svenson?\" a voice came from his side. Svenson turned to see a small Marine of indeterminable gender . The nametag on their helmet read their surname, White. They looked too young to even be a Marine, but he didn't plan on questioning it.\n\"Yeah, that's me,\" Svenson said.\n\"I'm Private White,\" they said, \"I'll be your escort. Y our possessions are being gathered and brought to the hangar , I was ordered to bring you as well.\"\n\"Alright, just be patient,\" Svenson turned to follow them. \"My legs aren't in the best condition yet.\"\n\"I understand,\" said White, \"follow me to the hangar .\"\nSvenson followed White as they took him to the hangar . The bland grey hallways of the Tigershark  reminded him of the Pillar of Autumn . He hadn't spent long on that ship, but he had still considered it a home for a time. He began to recognise the ship as a Paris -class heavy frigate as he moved through the halls, he had done a lot of studying UNSC starships whenever there was downtime. He wondered if Corporal Santiago was there, as well as the others from Fireteam Foxtrot. If he was being put on mandatory shore leave, they would be as well. He winced as he remembered watching Private Jericho's shoulder get torn apart by a Covenant needler , and wondered if he even survived to get picked up by the Tigershark . But the interrogator had mentioned Santiago and Grif fith, so they could be there on the ship with him. Eventually they arrived in the hangar . It was lined with docked Pelicans, and groups of Marines from a regiment Svenson didn't recognise were scattered around. He noticed a pile of crates underneath the Pelican that White brought him to, he figured his armour and guns were inside. Why would I need my gear if I'm being placed on shor e leave?  He knew that there wasn't really anywhere in the galaxy that was still safe, but he didn't know if they were expecting an attack on New T ampa any time soon or not. A pilot approached him as he and White stopped under the Pelican. He had tanned skin with dark hair and a full beard. He almost reminded him of Kamal. It wouldn't surprise him if he had relatives in the UNSC.\n\"Mister Svenson?\" the pilot said as he approached, his voice was almost a little too cheerful. He held out a hand, and Svenson awkwardly shook it. \"My name's Chatham, but you can call me Cas. I'll be your pilot for today . Pleasure meetin' you.\"\n\"Likewise, Cas,\" Svenson said. He already liked the pilot's ener gy.\n\"I heard you took a little tumble so, why don't you have a seat inside while my boys take care of your stuf f?\"\n\"Sounds good to me.\"Cas clasped a hand on Svenson's shoulder , and he went on to help a group of Marines lift the crates into the back of the Pelican. Svenson slowly walked up the ramp and took a seat near the door to the cockpit. When he looked back toward the ramp, he didn't see the inside of the Tigershark . He saw pine trees, tall clif fs, grey metal towers. For a moment he was back on Alpha Halo. When he shook his head, he saw the Tigershark 's hangar again. The group of Marines lifted the crates into the middle of the troop bay and secured them there. They all proceeded to take seats on either side of the troop bay , but none of them sat near Svenson. He wondered if they were just giving him space, or if they knew he came back from Alpha Halo and they didn't want to be near him. Cas sprinted up the ramp and clapped his hands before entering the cockpit. After a moment, the pilot began to speak through an intercom.\n\"Alright y'all, we'll be descendin' down to New T ampa in no time ,\" Cas said. \" Keep in mind, atmospheric r eentry can get a little bumpy at times. So y'all make sur e to strap in, sit back, and enjoy the ride. \"\nSvenson secured his own restraints, and the other Marines did the same. Minutes passed before the Pelican's ramp closed, and the hangar door opened. Svenson could feel the Pelican shift underneath him as it rose away from the hangar , and left the Tigershark  behind. Several screens in the troop bay activated to show the descent. Svenson watched the planet grow closer , and he felt the ship begin to rumble as it descended into the planet's atmosphere. This was far from the first time he'd been on a ship entering a planet's atmosphere, so he didn't feel much as it happened. If he was a kid again, he would probably be very excited.\n\"Hang onto your seatbelts kids, we'll be touchin' down in twenty ,\" Cas said through the intercom. Whatever feelings Svenson had toward the shore leave before, he set them aside as they neared the planet. He was sure this break would be just fine.Chapter 3: Raku Chapter Summary An introduction to Raku 'Solee Chapter 3: Raku 'Solee Raku 'Solee was a prized assassin, but not to the minds of the Covenant at lar ge. Little more than he and his brothers-in-arms even knew of his feats. He had put down rebellions without them even knowing he was there, he had infiltrated a human colony and struck it down in the blink of an eye. And he couldn't have done it without his brothers. Sen 'Rolahee, his right hand. The Sangheili that Raku had known for longer than any other . They had trained together , and they have never been separated on any mission. They knew each other as well as they knew themselves, their bond was unbreakable. And Nos 'Attrumai, his left. Though he was the more reckless of the three, he was still as good a fighter as any . And with the title of Blademaster , he brought them glory . Both Raku and Sen were more than worthy to be Blademasters, but both of them refused only to keep their secrecy . And with all the glory that they had brought to themselves, here they were babysitting a pack of Jiralhanae on one of the many worlds the Covenant sieged. Not only that, but they were fighting for a coward that had turned and fled the planet at the slightest sign of promise elsewhere in the galaxy . Raku looked to the sky where the Song of Unity  once sat, the carrier that had ferried him and his brothers to this frigid world. To the humans, the world was known as Zehar VI. The luminary that had led them to it listed the planet as Zezar . Raku wondered if the human name was a mistranslation of the Forerunner one, or if it was just a coincidence.\n\"Has the Minister of Animosity sent word yet?\" Nos asked. The three of them huddled in an icy cave, surrounding a fire to keep them warm.\n\"None,\" Sen replied with a sigh.\n\"That coward 'Quraee will pay for this,\" Nos breathed. \"Why are we even still here?\"\n\"Because we are not cowards like him,\" Raku stated plainly . He stood up from the fire.\n\"What is he even chasing anyway?\" Nos asked, rising alongside Raku.\"It is none of our concern,\" Raku replied, \"we are not here for him. W e are here for the Minister of Animosity .\"\nThe Minister of Animosity was a minor Prophet, one who answered directly to the triumvirate. And it was he who Raku, Sen, and Nos answered to. They were here on his orders, not the orders of Chel 'Quraee or whoever it was commanding the siege of the planet. For the past few cycles they had been trying to get in contact with him, but their communications with High Charity were cut of f. The sound of gunfire outside the cave alerted Raku and the others. He activated his cloaking, and rushed outside. But when they left the cave, there was no attack. It was only the pack of Jiralhanae, six of them, blindly firing into the horizon.\n\"What do you think you're doing?\" Raku asked, deactivating his cloaking. They all turned to him, and one of them growled. Axus was his name, he was the one that all the other Jiralhanae looked up to. Their ring leader , so to speak. He crossed his arms and stared down at Raku.\n\"There is nothing to shoot,\" Axus rumbled. \"W e are getting restless.\"\n\"You mean you are getting bored?\" Raku stood tall and crossed his arms.\n\"Yes! Nothing for us to do!\"\n\"Deal with it. This is a siege, they take time. I would send you of f to battle, but the Minister wouldn't have it. Blame him for not having anything to do. Now , I would rather you do not give our location away to the humans.\"\nAxus growled again, but didn't retort. He turned and barked at the others, and they put their crude weapons away . Raku turned back to the cave where Nos and Sen stood, watching him.\n\"This is taking too long,\" Nos sighed. \"I will scout the area and see what's jamming us.\"\n\"Sen, check the transmitter , and keep an eye on our Jiralhanae,\" Raku ordered. \"I will join you, Nos.\"\nThe two Sangheili bowed. Sen climbed the rocks to make sure there wasn't any damage to the transmitter , and Nos set out across the frozen plains. Raku followed close behind him. The lower gravity of Zehar made it easier for the Sangheili to move, but the piles of snow proved a little bit of a challenge to push past. The walls of snow began to give way to the actual ground as they began to enter human territory . The two Sangheili soon stepped onto a paved road, and they both cloaked so they wouldn't be seen. Their black armour would stand out against the white backdrop of the ice and snow . The two stopped moving to make sure the coast was clear .\n\"You don't trust me, do you?\" Nos asked, keeping his voice down even though there were no humans in sight.\"This is not the time for this,\" Raku said, annoyance creeping up in his voice.\n\"Answer me.\"\n\"Not entirely ,\" Raku admitted. \"I want to trust you, but you are reckless. Y ou are like a Jiralhanae wearing a Sangheili's coat.\"\n\"You are exaggerating. The Minister of Animosity put me on your team for a reason. Y ou know I am strong.\"\n\"It's not your prowess as a warrior that I doubt, it's your skills as an assassin. Now stop talking, and let's get this done.\"\nNos snorted, but he stopped talking as ordered. The two of them moved to the side of a tall cliff, and they navigated around it. The rocky area of land they navigated had been a sight of much contest during the siege. There had been a Spartan there once, one of the human super soldiers that struck fear into the hearts of lesser Covenant soldiers, but it had been bested by a Sangheili of the Minor rank. Because of that, Raku wondered what was even so scary about the Spartans. The area was also where Chel 'Quraee found a Forerunner luminary , and abandoned his own siege. It had flipped between human and Covenant control time and time again until the Covenant realised there was nothing else of interest to find. Now it belonged to the humans again, and they had spent their cycles fortifying. But there was no fortification that Raku couldn't sneak past. He had to admit that the humans were fighting valiantly for this icy planet, but he couldn't blame them if it was their home. The two Sangheili navigated between the steep rocky slopes, and stopped when the first human fortification came into sight. It was one of the most primitive things Raku had ever seen. A wall of bags filled with sand stacked on top of each other sat against a wall of rocks. A human shivering from the cold stood behind it, grasping a rifle so tight that it seemed like an invisible being was trying to take it from them. Raku noticed that Nos was about to move and kill the human, but he raised a hand to keep him still. Nos stopped, and waited for Raku's move. The sound of a vehicle approaching in the distance grew louder , the noise of the primitive wheels against the icy ground gave it away . The human vehicle approached from behind them, and stopped next to the wall of sand bags. The human driving it had a conversation with the human guard. Raku used the sound of the vehicle's engine to mask the sound of his footsteps as he approached it. Nos followed Raku's lead, and they both stood at the vehicle's side while they waited for it to move. The humans eventually ended their conversation, and the vehicle began to move. The two cloaked Sangheili sprinted after it, staying as close to its side as they could without alerting the driver . They passed several other guard posts on the way until the vehicle stopped in front of a wall, which was the entrance to a human outpost. A section of the wall opened, and the Sangheili followed the vehicle through. Luckily for the Sangheili, the humans had cleared most of the snow out of the area, so they wouldn't leave any footprints behind. The sound of the vehicle and the chatter between thehumans was enough to hide the sound of their footsteps as they navigated between the prefabricated outpost buildings.\n\"Any idea what a human jammer looks like?\" Nos asked when they were out of earshot of the human soldiers. Raku squinted as he scanned the buildings. When he saw the jamming tower in the corner of the outpost, he pointed it out for Nos. Nos nodded and made his way over to it while Raku kept his eyes on the humans. They showed no sign that they knew the Sangheili were there, and they never would as long as Nos was careful. He turned back to Nos and watched as he tore the wires away from the tower . A violent act done quietly , none of the humans noticed it. His scans on the tower began to read that it was now of fline, and Nos quickly returned to Raku. He gave Nos a nod of respect, which was returned. W ith the jammer of fline, Raku took the moment to contact Sen.\n\"We have found a human jammer ,\" Raku whispered. He didn't take his eyes away from the humans ahead of him. \"It is of fline now .\"\n\"Good ,\" Sen responded. \" Nothing was wr ong with our transmitter , I figur ed it was a jammer . I will contact the Minister of Animosity right away , you make your way back to the camp. \"\n\"On our way ,\" Raku dropped the connection. He and Nos exchanged a glance before looking for a way out of there. The way they entered was the only way in and out. They would have to sneak past the humans once more, but this time they didn't have the advantage of background noise to suppress the sounds of their movements. They could attempt to leave without being spotted, or they could cause a distraction. Raku opted for the latter . He took a remote explosive from his back, and moved behind the buildings and tents to get to the other side of the outpost. He didn't want to make it obvious that the jammer was their tar get. Raku found a tent with what seemed to be munitions inside, and he placed the explosive behind it. He and Nos continued around the outside of the buildings until they made it back to the entrance. The wall was just short enough for them to scale, but the guards standing along the top of it would prove to be a problem. Raku raised a hand, and began to count down with his fingers. Raku made a fist, signalling for them to move. The two Sangheili sprinted into the open, the sound of their footsteps definitely alerted the guards. Raku triggered the explosive, and a fireball of hot plasma soon bathed the corner of the outpost, taking out the human munitions and alerting the other human soldiers to that part of the outpost. W ith the guards distracted, Raku and Nos scaled the wall, and sprinted back the way they had come. Nos ignited his ener gy sword as they neared the guard with the sand bags, and he stabbed the human right through its back. The human hadn't even had time to react before its death, Nos left it behind on the ground as he sprinted after Raku. They quickly made it out of human territory , and they set across the frozen plains once more to get back to the cave.\"That wasn't so bad, was it?\" Nos asked once they were able to slow down.\n\"No, it was quite trivial,\" Raku responded. Their cave soon came into view . He spotted Sen waiting in the entrance, but the Jiralhanae were no longer outside. The two waved to each other .\n\"I'm sure the conversation with the Minister will be fun,\" Nos commented as they reached the entrance of the cave.\n\"I will handle it,\" Raku said, not exactly looking forward to it. When Raku entered he saw the pack of Jiralhanae gathered around a holoprojector , which displayed a projection of the Minister of Animosity . The projection made the Minister seem much lar ger than he actually was. He sat upon his highly decorated gravity throne, and stared at Raku as he entered the cave with a look of both anger and annoyance.\n\"And wher e have you been? I have been attempting to contact you for the entir e last cycle! \"\nthe Minister shouted.\n\"I am sure the details would simply bore you,\" Raku said, crossing his arms. \"Therefore I will not answer that question.\"\nThe Minister sat back in his throne and grinned, clasping his hands together . He always acted high and mighty , like he was more important than anyone else. But for some odd reason, he liked it when Raku talked back. He was one of very few San'Shyuum that Raku simply could not figure out.\n\"You would be corr ect. Now , onto business, \" the Minister continued. \" I hear Chel 'Quraee has found a luminary under the ice. But that isn't the only thing he has located. \"\n\"Are you aware that Chel has abandoned the siege?\" Nos interjected. \"His own siege! He found the luminary and left, but his forces remain here under his orders.\"\n\"Nos 'Attrumai ,\" the Minister's look of annoyance returned. \" I car e not. He found an artefact of value, and it is leading him to another prize. What he does with his for ces is not my business, nor is it yours. \"\nRaku raised a hand to silence both of them. Though Raku also saw Chel as a coward, he wasn't going to bring him up all the time like Nos. 'Quraee wasn't important to him, the Minister's orders were all that mattered.\n\"What is this other thing that 'Quraee located?\" Raku asked, wanting to hurry the Minister along so they could end the conversation.\n\"It is what I have sent you to r ecover ,\" the Minister explained. \" An abundance of For erunner data hidden in the planet's mountains. My intelligence suggests the data comes fr om the Lifeworkers themselves! How magnificent! Can you imagine what we can learn fr om it? \"\n\"Yes, very exciting.\"\"I know! But ther e is one small issue. Though I have 'Quraee's data, his for ces do not answer to me. Ther e is a human base built into the mountains, exactly wher e the Lifeworker data is held. Y ou must push past it on your own. \"\n\"Ha! Y ou think that's a challenge?\" Axus chimed in, turning to the Minister . \"We will crush the humans! W e will tear them apart!\"\n\"Oh, but you must be cautious ,\" the Minister warned. \" You must not let anything be damaged. This Lifeworker data must not be compr omised in any way , nor would you let any construction of the Gods be damaged. \"\n\"Hmph, what you ask is impossible,\" Axus scof fed.\n\"That is incorrect,\" Raku said. \"It is very possible. Just not for the Jiralhanae.\"\nAxus turned to Raku and snarled at him. Nos stepped forward with a hand on the hilt of his sword, but Raku gave no response. He wasn't afraid of them like they wanted him to be.\n\"You will make it possible ,\" the Minister said, unenthused at the tension between the two races. \" You ar e equal as warriors in the Covenant. The Gr eat Journey leaves no one behind. Now, you have your or ders. Y ou will carry them out. Contact me again when it is done. \"\nThe projection of the Minister faded. The six Jiralhanae and three Sangheili were left to their own devices. The Gr eat Journey leaves no one behind . Raku didn't believe that. He had seen Thel 'V adamee's trial, and the entire purpose of the war with humanity wasn't worthy of the Journey .\n\"You should watch your tone,\" Axus said to Raku. His Jiralhanae lined up at his sides as they stared the Sangheili down.\n\"I meant no of fence,\" Raku said, which was the truth. He was merely stating a fact. \"But you and your pack are reckless, Axus. Y ou would do well to listen to the Minister of Animosity .\"\n\"So would you,\" Axus growled. \"He put us here. This is our mission as much as it is yours.\"\n\"I am aware.\"\n\"You may fight each other when the mission is done,\" Sen said, stepping between them. \"W e must not be divided on a task as important as this.\"\n\"Correct,\" Raku added. He turned to Sen and Nos. \"Disassemble the shelter , we will be moving out immediately .\"\nThe two Sangheili nodded. Raku moved to the holoprojector as the group began to disperse, and he pulled a drive from it. On it were the coordinates to the human base in the mountains. It would be a long walk, and an equally long climb, but they wouldn't fail their mission.Chapter 4: Kel Chapter 4: Kel 'Dauram Kel 'Dauram lived alone. Not just alone in a house, but alone on a planet. There was nothing else there other than the wildlife that he hunted to survive. It was a peaceful life, but it had become almost too peaceful over the years. He had been there for so long that he couldn't actually remember how long he'd been there for . All he knew was that if he tried to go anywhere else, he would be tried and killed. There were no entertainment feeds, people to talk to, wars to fight. If he tried to practise flying in his stolen Phantom then he would create too much activity and be found. All he did every day was hunt, explore the land, and train for a battle that would never come. There was no future for him other than his solitude. What he did to get there was not just treachery , but it was the greatest sin of all. He refused to believe. He didn't believe in the promise of the Forerunners, nor did he believe in the unity that the Covenant brought. All of it was just lies to him, ever since he was a fledgeling. Ever since he could remember being young on Hesduros, he had never believed. He was not just a rebel, but a heretic.\n\"Why are you this way?\" his father had asked him. No, that wasn't right. He never knew his father . Why ar e these wor ds in my head?  He didn't know if that was a question he had ever been asked, or if it was something he was making up. He had been in solitude for so long that he had for gotten his own childhood, even when he had all that time to think. Why am I this way?  He asked himself. His solitude was his punishment, and he had no choice but to accept it. If only he had just believed in the Forerunners as Gods, if only he hadn't taken up arms against the Covenant. He didn't know the answer . Years alone with his thoughts, and he still didn't know his own mind. One day things will be differ ent, he told himself. One day the Covenant will fall, and I will be free again . The Covenant could have already fallen for all he knew , and he would never know . He would live out his days until he died, and became one with the land that he had begun to call his home. Kel rose as night began to fall over the forest. He made his way back to his home, the remains of the Phantom he had stolen. It was an old transport, so old that it had begun falling apart. The foliage of the world around him had begun growing into it. It would never be put to use again even if he wanted it to. He lifted his helmet of f of his head, and set it against the log of a fallen tree, along with the rest of his armour . It was the harness of a General, one he had killed. The Phantom, as well as the old concussion rifle he used to hunt every now and then, had belonged to the same General he took his armour from. Kars 'Chelamee was his name, that was something Kel would never for get.Though he didn't believe in Gods or the Covenant, Kel did still believe in honour . And to honour the blood of Kars 'Chelamee that he had spilled, he had painted the General harness. He had dyed it purple with his own blood, slowly working to finish it over his years in solitude. He knew the General would not have been pleased if he was somewhere still watching him, but he hoped he would at least appreciate the small gesture. It was all he could do now , it was too late for anything else. With his armour shed, Kel lifted himself into the Phantom. The gravity lift no longer worked, nor did the motors in the side doors, and so he had to climb through the lift hole every time. He found the pile of moss and leaves that he had lifted into the Phantom to sleep on, and he laid down. He closed his eyes, and went to sleep. Kel didn't dream much anymore. Most of the time when he closed his eyes to sleep, he would wake up the next morning moments later . When he did dream, it was of him as a prosperous General in the Covenant military . A future that could have happened. But he did not regret what he did. He wanted to prove that he held onto his own beliefs, and no one else's. That night was another where Kel did not dream. He woke up the following morning, and rose from his bed of moss the same way he had for the previous years. The same way he would until he died. He slipped out of the Phantom, and made his way to the lake nearby , dragging his armour in a crate behind him. He bathed in the water as the local wildlife came to drink. Animals of all shapes and sizes, some of which didn't look like they belonged. A giant muscular quadrupedal creature drank a few feet away from him. On any other world a creature like that would have been a natural predator , but he had only seen them eat plants. Koto  is what he called those. They didn't have a name to anyone else. As far as Kel knew , nobody else knew about this planet. Or at least, nobody cared enough about it to chart it. That was one of the few things that Kel had begun to do himself. He knew the area around his Phantom better than the back of his hand, the lake in which he bathed every morning was the lar gest of many on the continent where he lived, and it was the closest one to his Phantom. Anywhere Kel went on the continent, he could easily tell where he was. Not just because of his memorisation of the land, but because of the face of the mountain in the distance. He stared out at it as he washed of f the dirt from the previous day's adventures. The koto who drank next to him eventually stopped, having gotten more than enough water to survive for the day . It looked at Kel, and he turned to it. He still couldn't tell what the planet's wildlife thought of him. They had been there for as long as the world existed, and he had only shown up over a decade ago. Not only that, but he was the only Sangheili there. And he always would be. The koto snorted, and it left him alone. Kel finished washing and he stepped back onto the shore, where he dried himself of f. He opened the crate and pulled out his armour . Every time he looked at the helmet he was reminded of Kars. He saw the General's face in it, he watched the light fading from his eyes. He shook his head to get rid of the memory , and he put the helmet on. He got into the rest of his armour , and grabbed a hunting spear that he had carved from the branch of a tree.Kel made it his next journey to climb the mountain in the distance. He had gone around it several times as he charted the land, but he had never actually attempted to climb it. It would prove a challenging task, but it was one he was confident he could handle. He then set out across the forest as the sun rose in the distance. Kel made it to the base of the mountain easily , the land between it and his Phantom was quite easy to traverse. He had killed a few rodents along the way that he planned on eating on the way up. At the base of the mountain he had begun setting up a shelter . The trek there was long, and he didn't plan on climbing the mountain on the same day . He started a fire and began to cook the rodents after skinning them with a makeshift knife. They weren't much, but they would be enough to keep him going. Kel took a look around as his food cooked, and he noticed a strange sight. He felt his hearts drop when he realised what he was looking at. Metal structures jutted out from the rocks at the base of the mountain, he could tell they weren't a natural formation. He quickly scrambled to grab his concussion rifle, only to realise he had left it back with his Phantom. If someone else was there on his planet, the only thing he would have to fight them with was his flimsy wooden hunting spear . He waited for his food to cook before actually going toward the structures, he didn't want to waste perfectly good food. Once it was finished, he took them away from the fire and stuf fed them into a bag. He gripped his hunting spear in his hands as he approached the structure. A sharply edged wall of metal stuck out, it looked like it came from inside the mountain. Kel prodded the metal wall with the spear before slowly pressing a hand against it. It was made of an alloy he didn't recognise, it definitely wasn't something built by Covenant or humans. What ar e you?  Kel wondered as he stepped away . What was the purpose of the structure? Did it actually go deep into the mountain? W ere there more of them? There must be mor e of them . He turned back to the top of the mountain. Surely there must be more to find higher up. This climb just became a lot mor e inter esting. He returned to his shelter as night began to fall again, and he ate one of the cooked rodents for dinner . He saved the others to eat during the climb. Once he finished, he laid on the ground and quickly fell asleep. It wasn't the best sleep he had ever gotten, as he was without the comfort of the moss, but it was better than climbing at night. Kel immediately set out on his climb the next morning as the sun shone down upon the land. There was a small path along the side of the mountain that got him started, from there he had to climb up the side of the rocks. He had no sort of climbing equipment to help him, only his hands and feet. The bulkiness of his armour only made it more challenging, but it was too late to take it of f. Kel was already exhausted by the time he made it halfway up. It had gotten colder the higher he went. And though the sun had not yet begun to set, he suspected he wouldn't make it to the top before nightfall. There was nothing to create a shelter with, so he would just have to bear it. He sat on an outcropping of stone with his back against the rocky wall of the mountain, and he suddenly began to laugh. He defied an entire empire, and killed a Sangheili General with little more than his bare hands, and now a little rock climb was going to defeat him.Once he felt he had recovered, he began to continue the climb. He didn't make it much further up before he noticed another of the strange structures. It was like a spike that stuck out from the rock, smaller than the one at the base of the mountain, but made out of the same strange material. Behind it was another wall, blocking of f what looked like the entrance to a cave. If only he had brought his concussion rifle to blast it open. At least now he had a bigger area to rest, but he didn't rest long. This climb was not something that would defeat him. He was determined. More of the strange structures appeared at his sides the higher up he went. He wondered how much of the upper half of the mountain was actually stone, or if it gave way to more of the same strange metal. He also wondered why this was his first time seeing these kinds of structures. Maybe they were only part of the mountain. Or maybe there were more under ground. Kel had travelled across the surface of the planet many times, but he hadn't yet done much exploring under ground. If more strange structures existed elsewhere on the planet, he was going to make it his job to find them. Kel continued. Higher and higher . The air continued to grow colder , and he started to have trouble breathing. The sun began to set, but he couldn't see it behind the mountain. He wasn't going to let the climb defeat him no matter what. He found another lar ge outcropping of stone to rest on, this one with more of the structures. But these ones seemed dif ferent. There was another wall blocking of f the entrance of a cave, but this one had a door in it. At least he thought it was a door . It was very strangely angled, but it looked like it would have some way to open. Kel slowly approached the door and readied his spear in case there was someone behind it. The door suddenly opened, and Kel jumped back as it startled him. But then the door closed. He gave it a confused look before stepping towards it again, and watching it open again. Automatic... Motion activated.  If anyone lived there, they certainly weren't expecting visitors. He approached the open door to look inside, but he couldn't see anything past it. Just darkness. He activated the light mounted on his shoulder armour , and now he could see where the door led. A lar ge cave on the inside of the mountain, one that extended deep down by the looks of it. He no longer saw it as some random traveller's home, but as some kind of facility that had been abandoned at some point. He didn't know it was abandoned, or what kind of facility it even was, but he wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to find out. What's the worst that could happen?  Kel asked himself. He was going through the door anyway , it was the only shelter that he had for the night. He slowly entered, making sure it really was abandoned before deciding to use it as shelter . The lar ge cave had another door in the side that was motion activated as well. When Kel approached it, it opened to a ramp that went down, confirming his suspicions of it going deeper into the mountain. He opted to stay in the cave, as his climb was not yet over . The cave felt strangely warm, and Kel also felt it was easier to breathe inside. It was perfect for spending the night, other than the fact that he would have to sleep on a bunch of uncomfortable rocks. He laid down on the floor in the corner of the cave. It took him a while,and there was an uncomfortable amount of shifting positions, but he eventually did fall asleep. This time he had a dream. It was the same dream he always had, or at least it seemed that way at the start. He was a General in the Covenant military , as he had always seen himself. But this time he was in the armour he had taken from Kars, painted the same purple that it was now . He stood in an open field of grass, staring into the sky alongside ranks of various other Sangheili. In the sky he saw a fleet, at least he thought that's what it was. Strangely shaped starships of immense scale sat against the backdrop of space, they definitely weren't of Covenant design. It was hard to see, but he could tell that they were made of the same alloy as the structures that surrounded him in his sleep. He noticed the other Sangheili around him didn't actually look like Covenant military , they almost looked like mercenaries. But something told him they were his friends. They all cheered for a victory that Kel wasn't aware of, but he could tell that he was a part of that victory . He hadn't had any similar dreams before that could tell him what was going on, so he just accepted the words of praise he received. The fleet in the sky made a jump to slipspace, and the dream began to fade away . Kel woke up the next morning more confused than he had been the previous day . Why was the dream dif ferent? Did these strange structures have something to do with it? He rose from the uncomfortable floor and looked to the door that led further down into the mountain. Something about these structures was speaking to him, and there had to be more to see further in. He thought about his climb. At first it had meant nothing to him, it was just something for him to do. But now he felt that there was more of a meaning to this climb. It wasn't to reach the top of the mountain, it was only to find a way inside of it. The dream he had told him that there was something dif ferent about the mountain than the rest of the planet, and he had to find out what it was. Kel approached the door , and watched it slide open. He calmly stepped through, and he made his way down the ramp.Chapter 5: Svenson Chapter 5: Svenson\n\nWhen Svenson stepped of f of the Pelican, he was immediately blinded by the light of the New T ampa sun. He turned away from it, raising a hand to shield his eyes. After having spent the previous weeks aboard dimly lit space ships, the wide open spaces and bright sky were almost overwhelming. The pain in his legs wasn't helping much either , as he stumbled down the ramp and onto the ground.\n\"Whoa, whoa, whoa there, buddy ,\" Cas said, running up to Svenson and taking a hold of his shoulders to help him keep his balance. \"There's no rush here, take your time.\"\nSvenson took a deep breath. He closed his eyes tight, and very slowly opened them to help him get used to the sun again. He had to reorient himself with the horizon as well, he admittedly had grown used to seeing the curving ring of Alpha Halo ahead of him.\n\"Thanks,\" he said to Cas. He felt the pilot slowly let go of him. \"I can make it from here.\"\n\"If you say so, partner ,\" Cas responded with a shrug. \"I'll be here with my bird if ya need anything.\"\n\"I'll keep that in mind.\"\nSvenson left Cas by his Pelican, and set out across the yard to the firebase across from the landing pads. It was a lar ge complex of several distinct buildings around a central hub, like something he had only seen in recruiting posters. The military bases he had visited on Reach were nothing like this. He wondered why a frontier paradise world would even need this kind of military presence, there had to be something more that he wasn't being told. A pair of UNSC Army troopers stood at the entrance to the base. One of them waved Svenson over , and he approached them. I guess they all knew I was coming. Svenson felt a little discomfort,  he wondered if this was what it was like to be famous.\n\"Private Svenson?\" the guard asked. Svenson nodded with a sigh. That was the third time that day someone had asked to confirm his identity . He figured it wouldn't be the last time.\n\"I'm here to find Ser geant Nagata,\" Svenson said. The guard nodded and stepped aside as the firebase's entrance opened. She gestured for Svenson to enter .\"Take the lift, it's at the end of the hall on the left,\" the guard said. \"Ser geant Nagata's of fice is right across from the lift on the second floor .\"\n\"Got it, thanks,\" Svenson gave the guard a nod, and he made his way into the base. The inside of Firebase V eles was very highly decorated, it almost looked like the inside of a town hall rather than a military base. UNSC flags and posters lined the walls, and there were even a few statues of UNSC Marines and Army troopers, none of which represented anyone in particular . He made it to the end of the hall and took the lift as instructed, and sure enough, Nagata's of fice was right across from it when it reached the second floor . Svenson calmly approached the door to the of fice and knocked. The door slid open a few seconds later . Nagata sat behind a wooden desk with her hands folded. She had short dark hair and dark skin, and an angled face. Behind her was a window with a view of New T ampa's city , but other than that the of fice was mostly empty .\n\"If it isn't the talk of the town, Matthew Svenson,\" Nagata said, standing up from her chair and extending a hand.\n\"I wasn't aware I was famous,\" Svenson said, shaking her hand. The Ser geant gestured to the seat across from her desk, and Svenson sat down.\n\"You're pretty popular with ONI,\" Nagata said as she sat back down. \"There weren't a whole lot of survivors from Alpha Halo, let alone ones that made it out of that weapons facility .\"\nNagata wore the uniform of a Marine Ser geant, but the insignia of the Of fice of Naval Intelligence was emblazoned on her chest. Svenson had heard several things about ONI, most of them negative. Their sheer presence on New T ampa was beginning to concern him.\n\"Anyways, we've got some important business to discuss,\" Nagata said. She folded her hands again.\n\"Regarding my mandatory shore leave?\" Svenson asked.\n\"Partly ,\" Nagata explained. \"Y ou are being placed on shore leave, but that isn't the only reason you're here. What I'm about to tell you is something you cannot talk about unless it is to me or another ONI operative.\"\n\"I understand,\" Svenson nodded. This was already the second conversation that day that he couldn't tell anyone else about.\n\"ONI wants you as a consultant,\" Nagata continued. \"Y es, you'll get your break. But when we call for you, we're going to need you here.\"\n\"A consultant for what?\"\nNagata pressed a button on her desk, and the window behind her closed. The room darkened significantly , the only light above them was very dim. Svenson was being reminded of the interrogation room on the Tigershark .\"This planet isn't like the others,\" Nagata explained. \"The eggheads here can't explain exactly what it is yet, but according to them the planet is giving of f some strange readings. A group of civvie explorers also found this in the uncharted lands.\"\nNagata placed a datapad on the desk. The screen showed a video of people entering what looked like a cave, only to find it wasn't a cave at all. W alls of grey metal surrounded them, forming what looked like a tunnel that led deeper into the planet. The structures reminded Svenson of the weapons facility on Alpha Halo. There could be mor e of those monsters her e.\n\"Someone built that, and it definitely wasn't us,\" Nagata said. She paused the video and pulled the datapad back. \"The structure is reminiscent of what we've been told about by the other survivors from Alpha Halo. My guess is who or whatever it was that built that ring did something to this planet.\"\n\"So... Am I just supposed to confirm that these are the same structures?\" Svenson asked.\n\"Or... What do you want me to do?\"\n\"Your experience navigating the structures on Alpha Halo is what we need. And if we ever encounter more of those... Monsters from the reports, we'll need your experience fighting them as well. Y ou're the only one here who has.\"\nSvenson could feel his heart beginning to beat faster . Seeing and fighting more of those things was the absolute last thing that he wanted. He felt anger that he was brought here just for that reason. Can't they tell that I want to be as far away fr om this shit as possible?\nSvenson took a deep breath to stop himself from freaking out, he could see Nagata giving him a look of concern.\n\"I'll give you a few days to relax, and adjust to the life here,\" Nagata said, changing the subject away from the structures and the monsters. \"W e've got an apartment set up for you in the city , all your needs will be taken care of. Y ou have free access to the firebase as well, if you ever want to stop by .\"\n\"Sounds good,\" Svenson said with a nod.\n\"Your ride will be waiting outside the gate. Y ou're dismissed,\" Nagata said. \"Enjoy the city , mister Svenson.\"\nSvenson stood up from the chair and gave her a sharp salute before leaving. Though he wasn't exactly thrilled, at least now he knew what was really going on. He understood the strong military presence, and the abundance of ONI of ficers. He wondered if any of the people that actually lived on New T ampa knew any of the strange things about their planet. Svenson crossed the open area between the entrance of the firebase and the gate that locked the military district of f from the rest of the city . The troopers at the gate opened it when he approached, and on the other side was a civilian car with a fancily dressed driver standing outside. The driver waved him over , and Svenson took a seat at the back.\n\"Corporal Svenson,\" the driver sat as he took his seat. \"I heard you're new here.\"\"Corporal?\" Svenson asked, tilting his head in confusion. That isn't right...\n\"Ah, sorry ,\" the driver checked his tablet for a moment and set it down. \" Lance Corporal , my apologies.\"\nWas I pr omoted without being told?  It didn't surprise him that ONI didn't tell him about something like that, but he was still a little disappointed.\n\"No, it's alright,\" Svenson said. \"Ignore me.\"\nThe driver nodded, and put them on their way across the city . Svenson's view of Firebase Veles was soon cut of f as the car rounded the corner of a building. This wasn't Svenson's first time in a city , but the tall buildings and tight streets were something he hadn't gotten used to. The last city he was in was burning and falling apart around him as the Covenant were invading. But this city was nice.\n\"Welcome to Kujo City ,\" the driver said as they drove through the streets. Buildings of different heights and incredible designs moved past as Svenson looked out the window . \"It was the first settlement on New T ampa, and now it is the first and only city on the planet.\"\nSvenson watched the people on the sidewalks and the shops as they passed. Looking at the people there it was hard to tell that there even was a war going on. He wondered if the people even knew , and what would happen if the Covenant ever found them. He tried to push the thoughts down, now wasn't the time to think about death and destruction. The car eventually slowed down as it reached a parking lot outside a lar ge open plaza. Palm trees and fountains of water were placed ornately around to make it all that much of a better sight to look at. Crowds of civilians moved across the plaza, some joining into groups to sit down and talk, and others moving between the buildings. Svenson couldn't remember any time he had seen an active city like this. When he was young on Draco III he had lived on a farm, there wasn't much around his family's home other than wildlands. The place where he had enrolled in the Marines was only a small town, there were no skyscrapers or giant open plazas.\n\"This here is Bay Plaza, it has everything you will ever need,\" the driver said. \"Food, recreation, entertainment. The apartment complex is across from us.\"\nThe driver pointed to the building, it was the tallest of all the buildings in the plaza. When the car doors opened, both of them stepped out.\n\"Would you like me to accompany you, sir?\" the driver asked.\n\"No thank you,\" Svenson said, \"I can make it from here.\"\n\"Very well then,\" the driver said, \"enjoy your stay .\"\nThe driver nodded. He saluted Svenson in the way that a Private at boot camp would salute a drill instructor before getting back into his car . Svenson turned back to the plaza, and hemade his way across it. He noticed looks from the people there, but he couldn't tell the emotions behind them. Maybe they were just surprised to see a new face. Svenson entered the apartment building. The lobby was a lar ge space with a water fountain in the middle. Red carpets covered the floor , and windows in the ceiling let the sun shine down into the lobby . On the walls were screens showing advertisements, mostly recruitment ads for the UNSC Marines, and paintings from an artist Svenson didn't recognise. He found a receptionist and he made his way over . They were a cheerful looking young woman, she didn't seem like someone who knew there was a bloody war raging across the galaxy .\n\"Welcome to the Bay Plaza Apartments,\" the receptionist said, her voice as cheery as she looked. \"I don't believe I've seen you here before, are you new?\"\n\"Yeah, first day on New T ampa,\" Svenson sighed. \"I'm Matthew Svenson, I was told there was a room for me here.\"\n\"Just one sec.\"\nThe cheery woman typed into the monitor in front of her for a moment. She looked up at Svenson with a friendly smile that he couldn't tell whether it was genuine or not. \"Room 23, it is on the second floor ,\" she said.\n\"Got it, thanks,\" Svenson awkwardly returned the smile. He quickly found the elevators and made it to the second floor . Svenson stepped out into empty halls. The silence there was deafening. For the first time since leaving Alpha Halo, he was completely alone. He found his room, the number '23' was printed on the door , and he slowly pushed the door open. He for some reason expected someone to be there. Not just someone, but something. You're not on Halo anymor e. You don't need to worry . No matter what he told himself, he worried. He slowly entered the room and closed the door behind him, shutting it so carefully that it barely made a sound. Any sudden move and he could alert something. He didn't know what, but he knew it would kill him. Of course that wasn't true, but the silence and solitude made him think too much. The room was small, but it was nicely furnished. There was a bathroom by the door , a pair of chairs in one corner , and a bed against the right wall. Across from it was a screen he could use to access entertainment feeds. On the wall across from the door was a window that overlooked the beach. The shores against the planet's massive ocean were filled with bright sand, docks for ships, and people who were enjoying the sun and playing in the water . It was a peaceful sight, but it annoyed Svenson. Not because he hated when people had fun, but because he couldn't do it. Y es, he could go down to the beach, but he knew he wouldn't be able to enjoy it. Not with the things going through his mind. He took a long look at the view of the ocean. The water was the clearest he'd ever seen, and there were barely any clouds in the sky . The planet definitely was a paradise, one he was sure would be ruined by industrialisation if the Covenant didn't find them first. And if the Covenant did find them, it would be ruined by them instead.But the planet almost seemed a little too perfect. Like it was too good to be true. The planet was of course hiding a secret, which were the structures under ground. Svenson wondered if there was something about the structures with the potential to ruin the planet for good. Halo had perfect ecosystems built into the shape of a ring, would it be so crazy for the beings who built it to have also built an entire planet? The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to stop thinking. At first Svenson was a little excited to take a break, but now he was beginning to regret it. He kicked of f his shoes, laid down on the bed, and turned on the screen to get some noise in his apartment. He tuned into an entertainment feed from Earth to see what was happening there, and he turned the volume all the way up to drown out the sounds of his own thoughts. But turning on the feed would soon prove to be a mistake. He was expecting something to calm him down, instead the feed quickly switched to an emer gency broadcast. Earth was under attack. The Covenant had found humanity's home.Chapter 6: Fural Chapter 6: Fural\n\nNews spread quickly in High Charity . The Prophet of Regret had launched an attack on a planet known as Erde-T yrene; intercepted communications revealed that the humans called it Earth. The residents of the holy city gathered around screens in the streets to watch Regret's fleet go up against what seemed to be the lar gest human defence force the Covenant had ever seen. And Regret had barely brought any ships with him. What was Earth to the humans? Fural barely knew what was so important about the planet to the Covenant. Whatever Regret had found there, he only shared it with the T riumvirate and the high council. But what mattered to Fural was that the lar gest engagement in the war was happening very far away , and he couldn't take part in it. Fural was angry . Ever since he returned to High Charity he hadn't been given any orders. He hadn't been allowed to join any forces in any battles. Fural had fought tooth and blade, he even killed his own brother , just to receive the title of Blademaster . And now that he had it, it seemed like the Covenant didn't even want him anymore. Maybe this was punishment. If that was the case, then he couldn't ar gue against it. The release of the Flood on Alpha Halo had partly been his fault. He thought about returning to the cantina where he had scuf fled with the Jiralhanae, hoping that they were still there and willing to continue fighting. V iolence was the only thing he had left that made him feel anything. He didn't have a purpose in the greater Covenant anymore. All he could do now was live out the rest of his boring future, or end his life early in a blaze of glory . But he didn't want that. No matter how the Covenant treated him, he would never bring himself to turn against them. He still believed that the Forerunners would guide him to salvation. Maybe that was what Regret had found on Erde-T yrene or Earth or whatever it was called. Salvation. Something else that the Forerunners had left behind that would bring the Covenant back onto the path of the Great Journey . If that was true, then Fural needed to go there too. He wanted more than just the violence to satiate him. Fural trotted down the crowded streets of the holy city . It seemed like he was the only one who wasn't glued to the feeds, even when he entered the recruitment of fices. Regret's battlecruisers were destroyed left and right by defence platforms, too distant for Fural to make out on the screen. But he could tell by the amount of ships dropping that there were a lot of them. Fural had taken part in the invasion of the human fortress world of Reach, and even that planet didn't seem as well defended as Erde-T yrene. There must be something important ther e! I must find it.Fural searched around the lobby until he found a tall Sangheili clad in the maroon harness of a Field Marshall. Even though he was watching the screens, at least he seemed to be paying attention to his surroundings. The Marshall turned to Fural and stared him down with what seemed to be a look of judgement.\n\"I am Fural 'Nasamai,\" Fural said, unfazed by whatever look the Marshall could give him. The Marshall's expression changed, and suddenly he bowed before Fural for but a moment. Though the Field Marshall was one of the highest ranks in the Covenant military , they still showed respect to the Sangheili Blademasters. Though Fural didn't feel he deserved that respect, it was still nice to see.\n\"Field Marshall Sero 'V aloree,\" the Marshall said as he stood once more. \"What is it that you require?\"\n\"I need a ship,\" Fural spoke plainly . \"I don't care how big or small, it just needs to be slipspace capable. I will put together the crew myself.\"\n\"And what is the purpose of this ship?\" 'V aloree asked, seeming to take mental notes of Fural's request. Fural didn't know if he should tell the truth or not. He knew he wouldn't be able to just join Regret's fleet unannounced, if he could even join Regret's fleet at all. But he couldn't come up with a lie, at least one that would actually be convincing.\n\"I will be joining the Prophet of Regret in his assault on Erde-T yrene,\" Fural said.\n'Valoree turned away for a moment and glanced at the screen. The battle was happening very quickly . The two Syfon -pattern carriers in the fleet had blown straight through humanity's crumbling defences. 'V aloree turned back to Fural with a knowing look.\n\"You cannot join the Fleet of Sacr ed Consecration ,\" 'Valoree said, \"not without permission from the Prophets themselves. And I don't see you having any proof they gave you permission. Everyone wants to join the fight at Erde-T yrene, and the time will come for all of us soon.\"\n\"Then I will not use the ship until that time comes,\" Fural said. He knew that 'V aloree would give that answer , but it was still disappointing to hear .\n'Valoree paused for a moment before typing into a monitor on his forearm. \"I will take your word for it, Blademaster . The Blade of Ages  is yours, you may access it any time in docking bay D-24.\"\n\"Many thanks, Field Marshall,\" Fural said. They bowed to one another before Fural turned and left. Fural didn't plan on betraying his word, he didn't want 'V aloree to suf fer for it. Like the Field Marshall said, his time would come soon. He would hold onto the ship until then. But he alsoneeded a crew , and he figured he could spend his free time putting it together . He would start by looking for Jors 'Cinatee, but he wanted to see the ship first. He followed a map of High Charity to the docking bay 'V aloree directed him to; a transport tube took him there from the city . Though the transport tubes were the fastest method of transportation on High Charity , the immense size of the station still made trips long. He sat in the tube for a long time, alone with his thoughts. T wo intrusive voices that sounded the same as his own told him to take the ship and run. One told him to take it before the storm hit, the other told him to take it just to abandon the Covenant. He didn't listen to either . But he felt in his gut that something bad was coming. If the Jiralhanae rebelled, it could mean the end for the Covenant. Fural had heard the stories of the Unggoy rebellion, though he wasn't alive to see it. If creatures as small and unruly as the Unggoy were able to push even the Sangheili to their limits, Fural feared what the Jiralhanae would be able to do. He wished he could stop thinking about it, but he couldn't force himself to. If he wasn't alone then he was sure he wouldn't be having those thoughts, but it was far too late to stop the tube. He tried thinking of something dif ferent. Jors 'Cinatee was the only other Sangheili that he really knew on High Charity . Everyone else he had known either died on Alpha Halo, or was shipped out to some other front of the war . He hadn't talked with 'V aloree long enough to get to know him, and Thel 'V adamee was either dead or rotting away in a cell. Jors was Fural's only choice, but he was an obvious choice as well. Phantoms weren't the only thing Jors could fly , he was a very skilled pilot with any kind of ship. Fural figured the Blade of Ages  wouldn't be a very lar ge ship, so he was sure he could make do with one pilot. He hoped Jors was familiar with a lot more people than he was, or there was no way he would be able to put a crew together . The transport tube eventually made its stop outside of the docking bay , and Fural stepped of f of it. Through a window he could see the Blade of Ages  set against the backdrop of space. It was a Makar -pattern light corvette, one that would suit Fural's needs perfectly . Fural made his way to the docking tube connected to the corvette, and he walked across as it opened. An anxiety set in as he slowly made his way across the tube. He felt that it could snap at any moment, and leave him suf focating in space. He sprinted the rest of the way and impatiently waited for the door to cycle and let him in. Once it opened, he rushed through and closed it behind him. He flexed his fists, wanting to punch someone to let his feelings out. But he was alone on the ship as well. The interior of the Blade of Ages  was surprisingly lar ge and open for the small size of the ship. The control room sat one room away from the docking tube, and it was the first place Fural went. It was here where he would realise that he wasn't actually alone. A single Huragok floated in the open air of the command deck, and turned toward Fural as he entered with a startled expression.\n\"My apologies,\" Fural said. His voice was almost deafening in the quiet of the ship. \"I did not know you were here.\"The Huragok floated toward him, signing something with its tentacle-like appendages. But Fural didn't understand. He had never really studied the sign language of the Huragok. When it realised he didn't understand it, it gave him a defeated expression and turned away . Inter esting cr eatur e... Fural thought as it floated away from him. He understood that Huragok weren't just biological creatures, but some sort of automaton created by the Forerunners to take care of what they had left behind. Beyond that, he was bewildered by them. They were entirely passive creatures who swore no allegiances, but were enslaved by the Covenant. Though Fural didn't believe slavery was the best course of action to get a species under control, he knew it was for the greater good. The Covenant wouldn't be where they were without the Huragok.\n\"I will leave you alone for a moment,\" Fural said, raising his hands and backing out of the control room. The Huragok blinked three of its eyes at him and made a wheezing sound. It didn't attempt to communicate any further . Fural stepped back to the docking tube. He figured that Jors would be able to communicate with the Huragok, given how much time he had spent on ships. He gave Jors a call, and waited in the silent halls for his friend to pick up.\n\"What is it? \" Jors asked as he answered.\n\"Are you busy?\" Fural asked, wanting to make sure he wasn't interrupting anything.\n\"Not particularly . What do you need? \"\n\"I want you to look at something,\" Fural said. He began pacing through the halls of the Blade of Ages. \"Find a transport tube and come to docking bay D-24.\"\nJors didn't respond for a moment. Fural was about to ask if he was still there when he got an answer . \"Alright, \" Jors said, \" I'm on my way .\"\nThe connection dropped. Fural was left alone once more. He left the Blade of Ages  and made his way back to the docking bay to wait for Jors, sprinting through the docking tube to get across it before anything bad could happen. Jors showed up much faster than Fural was expecting, and that made him wonder if his trip on the transport tube only felt longer than it actually was. The pilot's eyes were immediately drawn to the corvette outside, and he casted a questioning glance at Fural.\n\"I requisitioned a ship,\" Fural said as he approached Jors. \"This is the Blade of Ages .\"\n\"I see,\" Jors responded, crossing his arms. His voice was full of thought. \"What do you need a stealth corvette for?\"\n\"I want to be ready to join the assault on Erde-T yrene,\" Fural said plainly . \"And... I want you as a pilot.\"\"Not surprised,\" Jors snorted. Fural could hear the ego in his voice. \"Do you have a crew ready?\"\n\"No, not yet,\" Fural sighed. \"I was actually wondering if you could help with that.\"\n\"I suppose I could... I want to see it up close first.\"\n\"Of course,\" Fural led Jors to the docking tube, and they made their way over . Fural felt just a little safer now that it wasn't just him on the tube. \"There's one other thing...\"\n\"Which is?\"\n\"There's a Huragok aboard the ship. I was wondering if you know how to communicate with them.\"\n\"I understand their signs, yes,\" Jors nodded. \"But you won't see me signing back to them.\"\n\"Well there's no need for that. I'm sure this one understands us just fine.\"\nThe ship's airlock cycled, and the two stepped aboard. Jors seemed to immediately go for the control room, and Fural followed him. The Huragok was still there, floating in front of a screen and typing something into it. When the door opened, it turned around and looked between the two Sangheili.\n\"Is this the only other being on the ship?\" Jors asked, not looking away from the Huragok.\n\"Well, I haven't fully explored it yet,\" Fural said, \"but I assume so. Communicating with this thing is the main reason I called you here so soon.\"\nThe Huragok floated closer to Jors and moved its tentacles, signing something to Jors that only he could understand. Once it finished it floated away , and looked at Fural.\n\"The Huragok says it wasn't aware that the ship had been commissioned,\" Jors said, translating the Huragok's signs. \"Y ou simply startled it when you arrived.\"\nThat much had been clear from its expression when it saw him. It started signing to Jors again, looking between the two Sangheili as it did. Fural had no idea how Jors was able to put the thing's movements into words.\n\"It says it's name is Easy to Drift,\" Jors translated. \"And it asks our names as well.\"\n\"Fural 'Nasamai,\" Fural said, bowing to the creature.\n\"And I am Jors 'Cinatee,\" Jors said afterward. Easy to Drift rubbed its tentacles together , and made an expression that seemed almost like excitement to Fural. He hadn't seen many Huragok up close, but this one seemed almost unusually expressive. He had always seen them as drones singularly devoted to the maintenance of machinery .\"Are they all this expressive?\" Fural asked.\n\"No, not really ,\" Jors said. \"This one must have been raised dif ferently . I'm surprised you care.\"\n\"I just don't want it bothering me,\" Fural said. He slowly stepped onto the command deck, it was raised above the rest of the room to signify its importance. He took a seat in the hovering chair at the front of the deck. Though he couldn't really describe the feeling, sitting in the seat just felt right. Easy to Drift went back to whatever it was doing at the screen, paying no mind to the Sangheili. Jors stood at the chair's side, and the two of them watched a screen in front of them as it displayed a view of the loading docks of High Charity . It was almost mesmerising to see hundreds of ships flying in and leaving, either deploying into battle or dropping of f goods. In the distance was the destroyed carcass of Alpha Halo, floating in the orbit of the gas giant behind it. Fural wished he couldn't see it, but he had no control over where High Charity went.\n\"So, about this crew...\" Jors said. \"And this ship... What good could we do with this against the human defences at Erde-T yrene? I've seen the feeds, I know what the humans have there.\"\n\"We're in a stealth ship,\" Fural explained. \"W e can go straight past their defences without being seen.\"\n\"There's more to this than wanting to fight,\" Jors said, seeing right through Fural. \"T ell me.\"\n\"I think there's something there,\" Fural said with a sigh. \"Something big, maybe even bigger than the discovery of Alpha Halo. Why else would Regret be so aggressive in his advances?\nThere must be something that can bring us back onto the path of the Great Journey . And whatever it is, I want to find it.\"\n\"Before the rest of the Covenant?\" Jors crossed his arms.\n\"It matters not when I find it,\" Fural slowly stood up from the chair . He looked Jors in the eyes for a moment before looking down at the floor . \"My life has lost its purpose, Jors. I have little more left to chase. Finding something, anything, that can bring us any more closer to Godhood is all I have left. The Covenant discarded you like a piece of garbage too.\"\nJors held his gaze for a moment, but eventually averted his eyes. Fural could tell he wanted to deny that, but they both knew it was true. Halo and its destruction took away their purpose, but whatever Regret was looking for could help them find it again.\n\"You're right,\" Jors sighed. He turned back to Fural, dropping his arms to his sides. The promise of flying a stealth corvette had already convinced him to begin with, and the mission only sold him further . \"I'll find that crew for you.\"Chapter 7: Kel Chapter 7: Kel\n\nKel descended into the mountain, his feet sliding against the smooth grey metal of the strange construction. The corridor spiralled down, and down, and down. Whoever had built it must have built it a long time ago, and Kel just couldn't wrap his head around the design. The halls never changed colour or shape, it was just the same thing again and again. Eventually the corridors led to a door . Kel was a little thankful that he would get to see something else. The door opened on approach, the same as the others, and he walked through. He entered a lar ge rocky chamber , empty aside from pillars of grey metal that seemed to be holding the place up. There were no signs anywhere that would suggest to Kel what this place could be. Several more doors lined the walls of the chamber , and Kel slowly looked between them to figure out which one he should go through. A ringing sound in the distance caught Kel's attention. He quickly turned toward the direction he heard it coming from, pointing the end of his hunting spear toward the sound. As far as he could see, there was nothing. But he hadn't heard the sound earlier , so there had to be something happening. Kel slowly stepped toward it, it seemed to be coming from behind one of the doors. As Kel got closer to the door , the sound stopped. The door opened on approach, leading to a large rectangular room. W alls on the sides of the door obscured anything in there from sight. The ringing sound came again, and Kel slowly stepped through. On one wall he saw what looked like a port that led deeper into the mountain. A bright light shone through it, making the ringing sound that Kel had been hearing. A sheet of metal then floated into the port to cover it, and the ringing stopped. What the hell have I stumbled upon?  Kel heard another sound behind him, a kind of mechanical whirring. He turned around at a speed that would make anyone else dizzy , and behind him was a machine. Some kind of automaton, floating in the air ahead of him. It wasn't like anything Kel had ever seen, and he was sure that the Covenant's technology hadn't advanced that much in the years of his solitude. The machine floated closer to him, extending out robotic appendages as it seemed to scan him. He held the sharpened edge of his hunting spear toward it, hoping to make it see that he was dangerous. He very well knew the spear wouldn't do much against it, but it was his only weapon. And he wasn't going to back down. As he stared the machine down he came to the realisation that he actually had seen something like it before. In the dream he'd experienced before descending into the mountain. The ships he had seen in the sky had been very reminiscent of the design of the machine. This is only getting mor e confusing.\"Ah, welcome, Sangheili! \" a voice suddenly said, coming from the walls around him. Kel frantically looked around, turning away from the machine to figure out where the voice was coming from.\n\"I assume this is still the tongue you speak? \" the voice asked. What is talking to me?  It couldn't be a Sangheili, if it was it wouldn't be referring to him as one. W as it a San'Shyuum? It almost sounded like one, but it had a mechanical flang to it. Whatever was talking to him, it wasn't going to give him an answer right away .\n\"Odd. I assumed your kind would have advanced mor e in the past millennia, \" the voice continued.\n\"Who are you?\" Kel finally asked, his voice rough from years of never saying a word.\n\"I am 4182 Bygone Era, the monitor of this installation. \"\nOr maybe it would give him an answer right away .\n\"Installation?\"\nThe port opened and the ringing noise sounded again. Kel turned toward it, and watched as another one of the machines flew out of it. W ell that answers that question. The two machines lined up in front of Kel and simply stared at him, unmoving. It almost creeped him out.\n\"Yes! Y ou must be new her e.\"\nKel had been there for longer than he'd been anywhere else, there was nothing 'new' about it. But the voice had said that it was there for millennia. By the sound of it, the place he was in predated the entire Covenant Empire. When Kel gave no response, the voice continued speaking.\n\"You ar e standing in a slipspace communications and telescoping facility ,\" the voice explained. \" I assume you stumbled her e by accident? What br ought you her e?\"\nKel figured the voice wasn't going to stop talking any time soon, and he wasn't sure whether or not it would even let him leave. The machines staring at him could be armed, and he wasn't exactly willing to find out if they were. He slightly lowered the hunting spear with a sigh, and answered the question honestly .\n\"I was climbing the mountain,\" Kel explained, \"I found a way inside near the top. I was curious, so I came down here.\"\n\"Inter esting, \" the voice responded so quickly that it didn't even seem like it was listening. \" I would r eport this to my masters, but they ar en't ar ound anymor e.\"\n\"Your masters?\" Kel squinted at the machines as if they were the ones speaking to him. \"Who are they?\"\"Oh, so it's been that long, \" the voice said with a disappointed tone. \" My masters ar e, or were, the For erunners. While this was an unmanned station, I still served them. \"\nKel could feel his hearts sink in his chest. W as he still dreaming? Or did he hear that correctly? The For erunners?\n\"Wait...\" Kel said slowly , almost dropping his spear . \"The Forerunners built this place?\"\n\"Well, of course! \" the voice said, it's tone cheerful. \" Who else could have constructed a facility like this? \"\nKel felt his mind descend into a crisis. The For erunners... So they'r e real... Kel shook his head. Part of him had always known that the Forerunners were indeed real, but throughout his life he had found nothing that proved their existence. There was no reason for him to believe they were real until this moment, he had always taken the Covenant's words as lies. And though the Forerunners existed, that didn't mean they were Gods.\n\"Are you a Forerunner?\" Kel asked slowly .\n\"Oh no, I'm an artificial intelligence designed to monitor and take car e of this facility ,\" the voice explained. Kel wondered if he should ask the question straight up. Are the For erunners Gods?  He decided not to. The thing he was talking to wasn't a Forerunner , and so he wasn't sure if it would answer honestly . The machines staring at Kel eventually turned and left back through the port they had entered the room through. They looked like they had just for gotten he was there. Kel didn't take his eyes away from them.\n\"I apologise for confr onting you with my sentinels, \" the voice said. \" I was unsur e of whether or not you wer e a thr eat.\"\nKel strapped his hunting spear to his back. If the Forerunner intelligence didn't see him as a threat then there was no need for it to attack him. The port opened again, and through it came another machine of dif ferent design. It was a spherical shell with a glowing point at its front that looked like an eye. The eye flashed with each word it spoke, and Kel realised that it was the voice he had been talking to. Bygone Era, it said its name was.\n\"See? Just a monitor ,\" Era said. Kel took a deep breath and nodded. Part of him thought he was still dreaming, nothing he was seeing made much sense to him. But he knew well enough that he was still awake, and that he was standing before a creation of the Forerunners.\n\"Are there any questions you wish to ask?\" Era asked, floating completely still. Kel thought for a moment. This was the first time he had spoken to anyone since he ran from the Covenant, and it didn't feel all that special. The fact that he was talking to something built by the Forerunners overshadowed everything else that Kel was feeling.\"I have a few questions to ask you myself, if you have the time,\" Era continued, awaiting a response from Kel.\n\"Ask me your questions first,\" Kel said. He backed up and took a seat against the wall behind him.\n\"Who are you? How exactly did you end up here?\" Era asked.\n\"My name is Kel 'Dauram,\" Kel said. \"I landed on this planet a long time ago, I was on the run from the Covenant.\"\n\"The Covenant?\" Era looked down at the floor . Kel figured it was thinking. \"I've heard of them. This facility has intercepted many communications from them, and we have seen their fleets around the galaxy . I figured that all Sangheili had joined this Covenant.\"\n\"They're all indoctrinated,\" Kel said. \"I didn't want to be one of their slaves, so I ran. This world is uncharted, so it made a good place to hide.\"\n\"Fascinating... Interspecies politics have changed very much over the previous millennia.\"\n\"You keep saying that. Millennia.\"\n\"Well it has been over a hundred thousand years since this facility was first established.\"\nKel scof fed. He didn't even know life in the galaxy had existed for that long. And I thought I've been her e for a long time...\n\"I ask again, is there anything you would like to know?\" Era asked.\n\"This facility... Y ou said it was a communications and telescoping facility?\" Kel asked, an idea forming in his mind.\n\"Correct! It uses slipstream space to send and receive signals at speeds much faster than light,\" Era explained.\n\"And the Covenant haven't found you yet. Y ou can intercept transmissions and spy on fleets without them knowing about it?\"\n\"That is also correct.\"\nKel stood up, stretching out his legs as he did. He had an idea, but he didn't want it to risk his isolation. His safety . For all his time in solitude he had wondered what the Covenant had been up to, he didn't even know whether or not they were still around. This was his chance to find out.\n\"Would you allow me to use your facility?\" Kel asked. \"I want to see how the galaxy has changed since I arrived here.\"\n\"I can allow you restricted access, yes,\" Era said. \"Just to have a look at the galaxy .\"\"That is enough for me.\"\n\"Splendid! Follow me.\"\nEra floated out of the room and back into the chamber , and Kel followed. Era had started talking about the facility and the others like it all across the galaxy , but Kel was only half listening. He cared about the history , but it wasn't something he wanted to learn about at that moment. He was still processing the fact that the Forerunners were real. Have I turned against the Covenant for nothing?  Kel didn't even want to know the answer to that question. The halls that Era led Kel through all looked the same, he could barely tell he was moving from one place to another . He passed by chambers filled with machines and devices that were incomprehensible to him, but he figured they were part of how the facility manipulated slipspace. Slipspace in general was already incomprehensible enough as it was. All he knew was that a ship could open a portal and go from one part of the galaxy to another .\n\"And that's why this facility has to be monitored at all times,\" Era said as they entered a lar ge circular chamber . Kel hadn't been listening to what the monitor was saying, but he didn't have the heart to ask for it to repeat itself. All across the walls of the chamber were screens, each one showing a dif ferent planet. In the centre of the room was a device that looked like a holoprojector , a circular table with four control panels at its sides. When Kel looked through everything in the room he immediately noticed one of the planets had Covenant ships hovering in its orbit.\n\"What world is this?\" Kel asked, looking at the screen. Era approached the screen and scanned it. The screen slowly detached from the wall, being pushed toward them by a mechanical arm hidden behind it. Kel could see that every one of the screens was held up by a similar arm.\n\"This planet is called Zezar ,\" Era explained as the screen retracted back into the wall. \"It is home to several stores of Lifeworker data. It seems that it has been visited by humanity , and now the Covenant are trying to push the humans away .\"\nKel had no idea what a Lifeworker was, but it sounded important enough for the Covenant to put everything into finding it. That was how it always went. The Covenant would find a world with some kind of important Forerunner device or data on it, there would be humans there, and then there would be a bloody battle for it. That was the one real battle Kel had remembered fighting. At the time he didn't even know what he was fighting for , and now he felt like it wasn't even worth it. It was an icy world with a heavy human presence, and there wasn't much he remembered beyond that. He wondered if half the Covenant even knew exactly what they were fighting for . That kind of blind faith was exactly what Kel stood against.\n\"So the Covenant is still out there fighting,\" Kel sighed. He had hoped that the Covenant would have somehow fallen, and that he would finally be free to leave.\"Very much so,\" Era said as it approached the holoprojector . It floated up to one of the control panels and produced a beam of light from its eye, using it to press the buttons on the panel. The sounds of voices began to fill the room. Several Sangheili spoke at once, they were all barking orders at each other . There were too many voices for Kel to pick out, but Era seemed to be listening to them and understanding them as if it were only one person speaking at a time.\n\"On no,\" Era said, its voice taking on the low tones of a whisper without changing in volume.\n\"It seems the Covenant have found Erde-T yrene.\"\n\"And that is?\" Kel asked, following the monitor around the room.\n\"It is there where the Forerunners had constructed a portal to the Ark,\" Era explained. \"It was left behind for the humans, not them.\"\n\"What is the Ark?\" Kel asked, disregarding the statement about the portal being left for humanity . Era turned around to face Kel. If it could express anything with its shell it would look bewildered. \"Are you serious?\"\n\"Before today I knew nothing of the Forerunners,\" Kel said. \"I didn't even know they were real. Why would I know what the Ark is?\"\n\"Hm, I suppose a hundred thousand years will do that. My apologies.\"\n\"I took no of fence.\"\nEra floated back to the holoprojector and activated it with the beam of light from its eye. A projection of hundreds of planets appeared and floated around the room. It almost looked like a field of stars as the lights in the room dimmed. The projected planets soon disappeared, and they were replaced with the projection of a massive construct. It was a disk with a hollow core, and eight curved arms extended out from its sides. It almost looked like a flower . Kel wondered where he had seen that shape before.\n\"This is the Ark,\" Era explained. \"It was the for ge of the Halo array , and the place where the entire array can be activated.\"\nKel had been told of the Halo array , it was almost all his higher ups had talked about. Learning it was a real thing was a surreal experience. Kel remembered the stories he had been told of Halo's power , how its activation would bring every member of the Covenant to Godhood. And now he was learning that there was something out there more powerful than a single Halo. A means to activate them all. Kel couldn't stop his mind from descending into another crisis. The For erunners ar e real. Halo is r eal. The Gr eat Journey... Is r eal. Everything Kel fought for , to show the Covenantthat he couldn't be controlled by blind faith, was for nothing. At least he could be glad that he found out for himself.\n\"Kel 'Dauram?\" Era asked. Kel hadn't realised how long he had been standing in silence. Kel didn't answer . He motionlessly stared at the Ark. All he could think of was that maybe the Forerunners were Gods. And that he had made a mistake.Chapter 8: Raku Chapter 8: Raku\n\nThe mountains of Zezar were perilous, but the Sangheili were more than strong enough to traverse them. Even the Jiralhanae's advances through the freezing rocks were surprising. They wouldn't need to travel much further , but Axus called for a break anyway .\n\"We're wasting time,\" Nos complained as the three Sangheili gathered around a fire. The Jiralhanae had made their own. There had always been tension between the Sangheili and the Jiralhanae, and it was still felt as they segregated themselves.\n\"We are not,\" Sen responded. He huddled next to Raku while Nos sat across from them. \"All of us must be ready to fight before the fight begins.\"\n\"I concur ,\" Raku said, keeping his voice low . \"Besides, the humans do not know we're coming.\"\n\"Which is why we should strike quickly ,\" Nos said. He wasn't keeping his voice low . \"We need to take them out before they can learn that we're here.\"\n\"They won't learn we're here if you keep your voice down,\" Sen said. Raku heard the edge of anger in his voice that no one else could've heard. Nos growled, but he stopped retorting. He had lost the ar gument. Ever since Nos joined the group there had been ar gument after ar gument. Raku and Sen always knew their duty , they never complained or challenged their superiors. They had never even verbally fought. Nos's addition to the group had changed things a lot for them. Raku and Sen called themselves the Hidden Blades. It wasn't the most inspired name of all time, but it was an accurate description of what they were. Nos was everything but hidden. He was only there because the Minister of Animosity wanted him there, and Raku would never go against his superiors. Raku had been able to build up enough trust with Nos to consider him a brother , but he doubted his abilities to listen and do things quietly . And the two fought as if they were true siblings.\n\"I am interested to see how the Jiralhanae fight,\" Sen said, making more conversation to help pass the time.\n\"As am I,\" Raku replied with a sigh. \"Though I doubt they will work well with us.\"\nSen nodded in agreement. Nos didn't join in the conversation, losing a pointless ar gument was enough to silence him for a while. Raku looked to the sky above them. It was obscuredby clouds the way it always was, but the growing darkness made it clear that the sun was setting.\n\"We've been here for a while,\" Sen said, joining Raku in watching the sky . \"But I don't think I've ever seen this planet's sky .\"\nRaku wished he could see through the clouds, to watch the glorious fleet sit above the planet as it sent more soldiers down. If Nos could see them he would only complain that the Song of Unity was not among them.\n\"We don't need to,\" Raku said plainly . He pushed himself to his feet and stretched his arms and legs. \"W e will move at nightfall.\"\nSen and Nos responded with a nod. Nos left to speak with the Jiralhanae, leaving Raku and Sen alone. The two Sangheili turned to look at the land below the mountains. Endless stretches of frozen plains extended out to the horizon, as far as they could see. The two Sangheili enjoyed the landscape in silence for a moment. No matter how harsh or frigid, it was always beautiful.\n\"When this war is over , do you think we will still be warriors?\" Raku eventually asked, breaking the silence.\n\"You ask that as if the war will ever end,\" Sen replied with a sigh. \"But there is nothing stopping us. The Sangheili have always been warriors, we do not need a great war to continue being that.\"\n\"I know ,\" Raku sighed. \"But this war has given me purpose. Every day I have fought for something, I do not know what will happen when it ends.\"\n\"If it does end, it won't happen in our lifetimes. Humanity may be on the edge of extinction, but we will never truly win until the only human left draws its final breath. A genocide is a very long process, and we don't even know how many of them are left.\"\n\"That is true.\"\nRaku sat down on the rocky floor . It was cold, but he felt like he needed to rest his legs. Sen sat beside him. Throughout their whole lives, the two of them had rarely been separated. Even if they didn't share the same blood, they were still brothers. Their bond could never be broken. But Raku began to feel that the Minister of Animosity was somehow trying to sabotage that bond. Though they were stronger with Nos 'Attrumai at their side, they ultimately didn't need him. Raku and Sen had accomplished incredible things just by themselves. And one day the Minister of Animosity decided to put the Blademaster on their team. And another day the Minister decided to have them lead a pack of Jiralhanae. That was far from what they did, and the Minister knew that. Nothing seemed right. But as usual, Raku wouldn't challenge his superiors. At least not until he knew more.\"What are you thinking about?\" Sen asked, breaking another moment of silence that had fallen between them.\n\"Nothing important,\" Raku lied. He knew Sen would be able to see right through it, but he didn't say anything. The silence fell once more. The two watched as the night fell over Zezar . Raku made his way to the Jiralhanae camp as it became too dark to see with naked eyes, Sen followed close behind. They used the night vision built into their helmets to navigate the rocks, and they deactivated it once they saw the light from a fire.\n\"Finally ,\" Axus said, standing up from the fire with a very exaggerated motion. He acted as if it wasn't him who called for the break.\n\"Can we get moving now?\" another of the Jiralhanae, V olus, asked.\n\"Yes, it's time to move,\" Raku said. \"Gather your weapons, and let the fire wither .\"\nWith how cold the weather became at night on Zezar , a small breeze was enough to put out a campfire. The Jiralhanae had actively been maintaining it as they waited, and the fire soon went out once they stopped. The pack of Jiralhanae eagerly moved to collect their weapons. Nos stood behind them with his arms crossed. The only weapon he needed was his blade, which never left his side. Raku wondered if Nos was still angry , but it didn't really matter whether or not he was.\n\"Come on,\" Raku called out to them. \"W e must be swift, but silent. The humans cannot know we are coming.\"\n\"Yeah yeah,\" Axus growled, \"I've heard that tons of times.\"\n\"Lead the way ,\" Nos said, turning to Raku. \"W e will be close behind.\"\nRaku nodded. He and Sen turned to the direction of the human base, and they made their way across the rocks. If they moved slowly they would be impossible to see from a distance, their black armour blended in with the dark rocks around them. The Jiralhanae weren't so stealthy in their appearance. Their pelts ranged from all dif ferent colours, the same as the pieces of armour they wore sparingly . Raku just had to hope that no one was watching them. The rocky terrain was surprisingly easy for the Sangheili to navigate, but the Jiralhanae regularly had trouble getting over the rocks. By the time Raku and Sen had reached the ridge that overlooked the human base, they had to wait for the Jiralhanae to catch up. Nos had stayed behind with them to keep them in check. The human base was an ugly primitive design. Blocky rooms protruded out from all of its sides. Open staircases and corridors gave Raku a view of the humans that moved around there. Most of them didn't even look like soldiers, and the base itself looked like some kind of hydroelectric plant that had been converted to host soldiers and munitions.It was through that makeshift human base where they would find what the Minister of Animosity had sent them after . The fight wasn't going to be tough, but Raku still hoped the Lifeworker data was worth the ef fort. He had formed a plan when the Jiralhanae finally arrived.\n\"So, how will we take this?\" Nos asked.\n\"Sen and I are going to sneak in and cause a distraction,\" Raku explained. \"Just like we did at the outpost earlier . An explosive should do the trick. When it goes of f and distracts the humans, you will launch your attack.\"\nRaku scanned the area around the base. There was a ramp carved out of the ice that would allow them to enter the base from the ridge on the side of the mountain. He pointed to it.\n\"That's where we will enter .\"\n\"Understood,\" Nos nodded. Raku was glad that Nos was now fully focused on the mission. That was the side of the Blademaster that he liked, the one who was ready for a fight but still listened, and followed the plan. Raku nodded back.\n\"Remember , the explosion is your signal to attack,\" Raku said. \"Nos, the Jiralhanae are yours to command.\"\nNos nodded again. When they were ready to move, Raku and Sen left them in their spot on the mountain. They cloaked before any humans had the chance to see them, and they quickly made their way down the ice ramp. There was nothing they could use there to mask the sounds of their footsteps, so they had to hope the humans wouldn't notice them too quickly . They didn't have the luxury of moving slowly . In front of the ramp was a door that led into the base, a human guard stood there gripping a rifle in its hands. It shivered from the cold weather , and Raku almost pitied it. There was no way around it, so Raku opted to kill it as quickly as he could. He sprinted the last few steps down the ramp, and the human made an expression signalling that it noticed him. But before it could do anything more, Raku jammed a wrist-mounted ener gy dagger into its face, killing it instantly in a violent motion. Sen and Raku split up, making their way across both sides of the facility . They would have little time before another human would find their dead comrade, so they made haste to the other side. Raku dodged several patrols of human soldiers, and navigated through tight spaces where he couldn't be seen. On the other side of the facility was the perfect tar get: a human transport sitting on a landing pad. Six human soldiers stood around it, all conversing between one another . Rather than risk blowing his cover early by trying to get past them, Raku opted to take the transport out quickly . He lifted a plasma grenade from his belt, and tossed it onto one of the transport's missile pods. The humans noticed immediately , and they attempted to scatter . The ensuing explosion engulfed them and the landing pad, and that was when the attack had begun.More human soldiers made their way over . One came dangerously close to Raku before its head got blown of f by a shot from a spike rifle. Another explosion went of f in the direction Sen had gone, and another in the direction they had come from. Raku sprinted from his cover as human soldiers rushed to the ramp. Unarmed humans ran past him, which he didn't even bother to kill. If they couldn't fight, then they weren't worth it. A line of three humans took cover behind a makeshift barricade as fire from a plasma rifle rained down on them. Raku de-cloaked behind them, making sure that the Jiralhanae who was shooting them didn't accidentally hit him. He drew his ener gy sword, and ignited the blades. The humans turned immediately , each one with an expression of horror that was short lived. All three of their lives ended with a single slash from Raku's blade. Raku felt the impacts of projectiles against his ener gy shield, and he dove for cover . He peeked out and got a look at two more human soldiers who were spraying his position down with bullets. Before he could do something about them, Nos came barreling in, knocking the two of them down with his shoulder . The Blademaster ignited his blade, and cut the two humans open before they could get up. Axus and V olus ran past Nos as they made their way further into the base, and Raku quickly left his cover to follow them. He caught a glimpse of another Jiralhanae tearing the arms of f one of the human noncombatants. Though Raku had killed several humans in gruesome ways, that was still not a sight he liked to see. The humans on the platforms outside the base made their way indoors, and they quickly barricaded the them. That wasn't enough to even slow them down. Raku slammed his blades into one of the doors and cut it open with ease, a Jiralhanae ran in before Raku could clear the room. It was the one who had mutilated the unarmed human, and he quickly got a face full of bullets from a human shotgun. The Jiralhanae fell lifeless onto the floor in a pool of blood. Raku almost felt like that death was deserved. Raku palmed another plasma grenade, and tossed it into the room before any more Jiralhanae could recklessly go in. He cloaked and sprinted inside just after it exploded. The human with the shotgun survived the explosion, and hid in a corner of the room, but its throat was swiftly open with Raku's ener gy dagger . Another behind it blasted him with bullets from a rifle, and it nearly took down his shields before Sen appeared behind it and stabbed it through its abdomen. The Sangheili and Jiralhanae navigated through the steel corridors until they came upon what seemed to be some sort of vehicle bay , but there were no vehicles in it. A group of five more human soldiers huddled in the middle of a lar ge elevator , and they began to take it down into the mountain. The data we'r e after must be down ther e. Axus pushed past Raku and grabbed a grenade from his belt, but Raku grabbed his arm and stopped him. It took a lot of strength to hold the Jiralhanae's arm back as he pushed against him.\n\"What are you doing?\" Axus snarled.\n\"Do not damage the elevator! W e need to use it,\" Raku said.A stream of bullets interrupted them, three of them impacted Axus's shoulder and caused him to drop the grenade. Sen drew a pistol from his hip and fired a burst of plasma at the humans, missing each shot as the elevator disappeared from sight. He never r eally was a good shot anyway .\n\"The humans are escaping!\" Nos exclaimed. He ran to the edge of the shaft, but stopped himself before he could slip and fall down.\n\"I doubt that,\" Raku said, approaching Nos with Sen at his back. \"If the Lifeworker archives are down there, then I believe they have only trapped themselves.\"\nAxus and his Jiralhanae joined the group, all of them eager to chase the humans and continue the fight except for Axus himself. His expression was one of extreme anger , one that Raku was sure would fade soon. It had to, or their mission would never be complete.\n\"Axus,\" Raku said. \"Have three of your Jiralhanae stay here. More humans will be on the way soon, and we need our exit covered.\"\nAxus's response was a low growl. Raku wondered if all Jiralhanae had tempers as short as his.\n\"Do it,\" Raku ordered. Axus growled again, and he turned to his pack. He barked orders to them, and three of the remaining five left the room to keep any human reinforcements from making their way in. Axus and V olus were left to join the three Sangheili on their chase. Raku approached the edge of the shaft once more. It was slanted at an angle that would allow him to slide the whole way down if he kept his balance, and that was something he was good at. He turned to the group behind him before making his move.\n\"This may be a rough ride. Follow me, and we will reach our objective,\" Raku said. He didn't wait for any responses before he jumped down the shaft, the layer of ener gy shielding made it easy for his feet to slide down the steel ramp. He heard the sound of Sen and Nos following him, but he didn't hear the Jiralhanae. It would be much tougher for them to make it all the way down, but they didn't have the time to wait for the elevator to come back up. The lights toward the bottom of the shaft had been turned of f, and it only got darker and darker the further they went down. It was much deeper than Raku had expected, but he knew it would lead them to their prize.Chapter 9: Fural Chapter 9: Fural\n\nJors led Fural through the streets of High Charity's residential district. There was someone Jors wanted him to meet, someone who might be interested in joining the crew of the Blade of Ages . Fural didn't know why he was nervous. He had never really cared much about how other people saw him, unless it was his brother . But he was gone now . Why must I think of him all the time?\nJors stopped between the apartment buildings and made his way down the back alleys. Fural wondered what kind of person they were going to meet if they had to go through these shady sections of the city . The pilot hadn't even explained to him who it was. \"I know a guy ,\" is all Jors had said. Fural didn't question him. They stopped at a door hidden at the back of one of the apartment buildings where a pair of Kig-Y ar sat outside, warming their hands around a barrel of trash that they lit on fire. The robes they wore were ragged, but shiny jewellery hung from their beaks. So much about them was contradictory , but to Fural that was the average Kig-Y ar. The two Kig-Y ar turned to the Sangheili, clasping their hands as if they were about to propose a shady business deal. One of them squawked at Jors, the other stayed silent with a judgemental glare.\n\"Is Rahg here?\" Jors asked.\n\"Hm, yes he is,\" the Kig-Y ar responded slowly . The Sangheili language almost seemed unnatural coming from a Kig-Y ar's beak.\n\"We're here to see him,\" Jors explained. The Kig-Y ar looked to his partner for a moment, who gave him a simple shrug. He turned back to Jors, clapping his hands once.\n\"We weren't aware you were invited,\" the Kig-Y ar said. The tone of his voice was slightly threatening. As if he could take on a Sangheili Blademaster .\n\"We weren't,\" Jors crossed his arms. \"But why don't you tell him that Jors 'Cinatee is here to talk, see what he says then.\"\nThe Kig-Y ar turned to his partner , and they nodded. He turned back to Jors as his partner disappeared through the door .\n\"We will wait here,\" the Kig-Y ar said.Jors rolled his eyes, and stood against the wall next to the door . Fural stayed in the middle of the alleyway with his hands at his sides. The Kig-Y ar stared at him with an unknown expression, if there even was an expression there. Fural admittedly wasn't good at reading the Kig-Y ar, but he was at least a little familiar with them. Pirates and scavengers were what most Kig-Y ar were. Fural had to guess that they were the only Covenant species with more members outside of the Covenant than in it. But even if most of the Kig-Y ar pirate gangs didn't bow to the Covenant, they still worked together from time to time. If who Fural was about to meet was a Kig-Y ar pirate, then he was more concerned about how Jors even knew them than anything else. The door eventually slid open, and the Kig-Y ar stepped out. It said something to the other Kig-Y ar in its native tongue, one that Fural poorly understood. The Kig-Y ar who was watching them turned to Jors and rubbed his hands together .\n\"Rahg will see you,\" he said.\n\"Great, thanks,\" Jors said. He beckoned for Fural to follow him, and the two entered the building. The rooms were hazy and stank of narcotics. Fural felt that simply breathing in the air would make him pass out, so he held his breath as much as he could. Groups of more Kig-Y ar huddled at the corners of the rooms, most of them doing some kind of drugs. They approached the door to another room and Jors pushed it open before one of the other Kig-Y ar could let them in. The room they entered was lar ge, and at the back of it was a very poorly put together throne built out of Ghost parts. A tall Kig-Y ar in a military combat harness sat in the throne, and quickly stood as the two Sangheili entered.\n\"Ah! 'Cinatee!\" the Kig-Y ar exclaimed, rushing over to them to shake Jors's hand. He didn't even seem to notice Fural.\n\"Rahg,\" Jors nodded to him, his voice much friendlier than what Fural had ever heard. \"It's been a while.\"\n\"Oh yes yes it has,\" Rahg said, taking a few steps back. He glanced at Fural and tilted his head. \"And you are?\"\n\"Fural 'Nasamai,\" Fural spoke plainly . \"Blademaster .\"\n\"Hmm, Blademaster?\" Rahg leaned forward and then back in a strange motion. \"In-n-n nteresting... I'm not sure you look the part.\"\n\"I'm of f duty ,\" Fural said, annoyance creeping up in his voice.\n\"Well, my apologies!\" Rahg said as he retreated to his makeshift throne. \"What brings you fine warriors here?\"\n\"Tell him,\" Jors stepped back to let Rahg focus on Fural.\"We are putting together a crew ,\" Fural explained, \"I have commissioned a ship, and we will be using it to join the fight at Erde-T yrene.\"\n\"It's a small ship,\" Jors explained further . \"I know your pirate days are over , but we were wondering if you would like to join us on this adventure.\"\nRahg rubbed the underside of his beak, and looked down as if he was thinking really hard about the proposition, though Fural could already tell that the Kig-Y ar had already made up his mind. He snapped his fingers and clasped his hands together the same way that the Kig Yar outside had.\n\"You see, I would love to,\" Rahg said, \"bu-u-u-ut... I've seen the fighting over Erde-T yrene. It's not my kind of fight. I'm sure you understand.\"\n\"By the time we get there I'm sure the fighting will have ended,\" Jors said. \"W e're more on the hunt for artefacts, anything of value left behind by the Forerunners.\"\nThat seemed to get Rahg's attention. The Kig-Y ar tilted his head, and seemed to be listening more intently now . Unbelievable... This is who Jors wants to bring along? He car es not for the Gr eat Journey .\n\"You said artefacts of value?\" Rahg asked.\n\"Nothing that will be for sale,\" Fural added.\n\"Oh I'm sure we can find something we could sell,\" Rahg said. \"W e can all benefit from this.\"\n\"I will not allow you to auction of f any holy artefacts,\" Fural growled.\n\"And I won't,\" Rahg raised his hands. It was clear the Kig-Y ar could hear Fural's anger . \"But if I find something I can sell, will you let me have it?\"\n\"Is that it? Is making profit all you want from this?\"\n\"Of course! That's how deals work, isn't it? Y ou get what you want, which is a loyal crewmate, and I get what I want: money .\"\n\"I can vouch that he will be valuable as a crewmate,\" Jors said. \"This is a good deal.\"\nA money hungry fiend was the last thing Fural wanted on his crew . But he didn't have much of a choice, he needed whatever crewmates he could find. Rahg said he would be loyal, and Jors trusted him enough to vouch for him. He figured the Kig-Y ar couldn't be all that bad. Fural just hoped that everyone else Jors had in mind wouldn't be like Rahg.\n\"Fine. I'll take the deal,\" Fural said with a sigh.\n\"Splendid!\" Rahg clapped his hands. \"When will we be shipping out?\"\n\"We have to put the rest of the crew together first,\" Jors said. \"But I will let you know when we can leave. Just keep your communicator on.\"\"Will do.\"\nJors turned to leave the building, and Fural followed him out. Neither of them spoke until they left the alleys and stepped back out onto the main streets. The screens on the sides of the buildings still showed the fighting on Erde-T yrene. Regret's forces had invaded a human city on the planet's surface, the battle in orbit was long over .\n\"That was easy ,\" Jors said as they walked along the sidewalk.\n\"I don't like this,\" Fural said.\n\"I know , but this guy is our best bet. He knows the ins and outs of every corvette, he's a good fighter , and he's loyal to whoever is commanding him.\"\n\"It seems to me that he's loyal to his paychecks.\"\n\"You'll see he's more than that once you get to know him,\" Jors said. \"T rust me.\"\nThe two made their way back to Fural's apartment complex, pushing past crowds of Unggoy and rowdy Jiralhanae that had gathered to watch the fighting. Something that Fural noticed was that there were barely any Sangheili in the crowds, all of them had continued doing their jobs as if nothing had changed, but the fight over Erde-T yrene seemed to be catching everyone else's attention. Evidently it had caught Fural's too. Fural made it back to his apartment with Jors at his side, and they entered. It was a place where they could talk much more freely . Jors closed the door behind him, and Fural took a seat on his bed. When he felt the hilt of his ener gy sword press against him realised that it had been a while since the last time he had a violent thought. The quest to build a crew was already enough to take his mind of f things, and they hadn't even begun their true mission yet.\n\"So, Rahg is onboard,\" Jors said as he sat in a chair across from Fural's bed. \"W e have Easy to Drift to maintain the ship, and there's us two. That's four .\"\n\"Drift doesn't count,\" Fural said. \"It can't fight.\"\n\"Right, so three. I don't know many other Sangheili who would join us on this kind of mission, but I could try a few friends. I know an Unggoy who would be more than willing to join us.\"\n\"An Unggoy? Seriously?\"\n\"His name is Zimling,\" Jors said. \"And you should not underestimate him. I actually think you two would get along quite well, as he is a very violent person.\"\n\"I guess he'll work,\" Fural sighed. Fural wished he knew more people. He already wasn't thrilled about Rahg, and this Zimling person didn't seem like a good fit for the crew either . He tried not to judge them before he knew them well enough, but he never really had much faith in any Unggoy that he met. And though he trusted Jors, he wasn't going to trust Rahg in the slightest.A Makar -pattern corvette could crew hundreds, but it could make do with a skeleton crew , especially if that skeleton crew had a Huragok on it. Fural knew he wouldn't even get close to fifty crew members without support from the actual Covenant military , and if he did get that support then he was sure he wouldn't even get to be the leader of the mission. And it was his mission. It mattered more to him than it would to anyone else. Fural wanted to have a crew of at least ten, and he wanted it to be mostly consisting of Sangheili. W arriors that he trusted. But everyone that he trusted other than Jors was dead. What would Dom do in this situation?  He wouldn't have impatiently commissioned a ship and rushed to fill it with a crew of random people, that's for sure. He would've been patient, and waited his turn to be called into battle. Maybe even considering this mission was a mistake. Fural convinced himself it wasn't a mistake. He had a reason for everything he did, and he was doing this because it gave him purpose. That had to count for something. It didn't matter who he brought with him, it didn't matter what the journey along the way was like. All that mattered was that he found what he wanted.\n\"Contact everyone you know ,\" Fural said to Jors. \"I would rather we have more Sangheili on our crew but I don't mind any Unggoy or Kig-Y ar.\"\n\"Understood,\" Jors nodded. \"I'll get everyone that's willing.\"\n\"Good. And make it quick. The fighting seems to be happening quickly , and I want to be there as soon as possible.\"\n\"As do I. Is that it then?\"\n\"That's it.\"\nJors stood up from his chair and turned to leave. He stopped as he stepped through the door and gave Fural a nod.\n\"I'll contact you when the crew is ready ,\" Jors said before he left, closing the door behind him. Fural longed for company immediately after Jors left, and he was surprised when the violent thoughts didn't come back right away . He felt that he definitely was improving, though it was a slow improvement. He turned on the feed and watched the battle that he wanted so desperately to take part in. A view from Regret's ship, the Solemn Penance, showed the battle in the human city . The thought of some random world that Regret had stumbled upon having the lar gest and strongest human defences the Covenant had ever seen was amusing. But that was what made Fural think. What is so important about Er de-Tyrene?  He had asked himself that question more times than he could count, and the fighting hadn't even been going on for that long. A full day on High Charity hadn't even passed.Fural was tired, but he didn't want to sleep. The past weeks taught him that he barely even could sleep. Every time he closed his eyes it was one nightmare after another . The threat he had faced on Alpha Halo was long over , but he didn't think he would ever be able to get over it. This is how it goes,  Fural thought. Every time I'm thinking about something else, it always comes back to Alpha Halo. T o the Flood. T o Dom. When will it end?\nEvery day on High Charity was just another day of waiting for something to happen. And whenever something did happen, it was something that Fural could take no part in. He wanted anything that would take his mind of f Alpha Halo to happen, but he knew nothing would. Hm... Maybe one thing might. Fural stood up from his bed and left his apartment. He made his way through the streets and back to the cantina where he had the altercation with the Jiralhanae, and he ordered a drink. When he finished it, he ordered another , and another , and another . Getting intoxicated was the only thing he had to take his mind of f things, and it was the easiest way for him to get to sleep as well. When the bartender warned Fural that he was drinking too much, he threatened them with his sword. He wasn't going to have it from anyone lesser than him. He was the Blademaster , so he got to tell anyone what to do. He continued drinking until he felt himself slipping away . Only when he slept drunk did he not have any nightmares of the Flood, so when sleep finally came, he embraced it. He dreamed about filling the Blade of Ages  to the brim with gold, and swimming through it alongside Rahg and Jors as if it were liquid, he saw the Huragok coating itself with the gold and happily buzzing around as if it even had any concept of money . If he wasn't drunk he would be appalled by it. He didn't know what he was dong to himself. The dream slowly changed to something more violent, more real. He saw riots in the streets of High Charity , fighting between the lesser species of the Covenant and the Jiralhanae. It's always the Jiralhanae... The screams and shouts of the people in the streets almost sounded real, so real that Fural still heard them when he opened his eyes. There were no riots happening, but the people around him were exclaiming about something. Fural turned to the screen in front of him, one which even the bartender was glued to. Whatever Regret was looking for on Erde-T yrene, he had found it. A slipspace portal opened at the bow of the Solemn Penance , and the ship jumped into the slipstream while it was still in the sky above the human city . Fural had heard that jumping into slipspace while in atmosphere was a bad idea, and could prove disastrous. But the view of the Solemn Penance  didn't show the aftermath of what had happened to the human city . Wherever Regret was headed now was the salvation that Fural had wanted to find, and here he was, wasted in a bar without a care left in the world.Chapter 10: Svenson Chapter 10: Svenson\n\nSvenson found it hard to leave his room, but every so often he made an attempt. Now was his chance for a break, and he knew he should make the most of it. But the Covenant had found Earth. Humanity's home and last bastion. He was sure that everyone else was scared shitless. The gatherings of civilians on the beach were long gone. Barely anybody was outside. Only then did it feel like the people of New T ampa knew there was a war going on. The battle of Earth wasn't being completely televised, but the people still knew it was happening. As a UNSC soldier , Svenson was regularly updated on the battle. The Covenant had breached Earth's defences, and were landing on the planet. Svenson managed to leave the apartment building, where he looked up to the sky . He couldn't see the fleet in orbit, but he knew they hadn't left. Could things be going dif ferent on Earth if they had a handful of extra ships? Probably not, but at least things might've been going better . Clouds began to obscure the sky , and soon rain began to pour down onto the city . It was as if the planet's weather knew what was happening lightyears away on Earth. As far as Svenson knew , he was the only person in the whole city outside their home. He relished in the solitude as the rain washed onto him, he didn't care that he was getting his clothes soaking wet. Svenson pulled his hand terminal from his pocket and continued to watch the feeds from Earth. He partly wished he was there, he wanted to feel like he was doing something for humanity . But he knew that if he was there then he would probably be long dead. Survive one horror and immediately get thr own into the next.  That was all it had been for humanity lately . One nightmare after another . Svenson waited outside for a long time. The rain only began to let up as the sky darkened, and night fell over them. By that time the fighting on Earth had died down significantly . The Covenant fleet left out of nowhere, in search of whatever it was they were after . But Covenant soldiers remained in New Mombasa where they had landed, and fights were going on all over the city . Everything Svenson was seeing had happened hours, or maybe even days ago. Earth was too far away to watch anything in real time, and it was a complicated mess of a setup to even get news from Earth to the outer colonies. When the rain stopped, Svenson walked back into the apartment building. He didn't care if he got the floors wet, that wasn't his problem. He was a UNSC Marine. He solved all his problems with bullets. He would deal with the fallout later if there even was any . It hadn't even been a full day since he landed on New T ampa, and he was already losing it. He didn't want to be alone, but he didn't want anyone to know that. He needed something todo, but there wasn't much he had done in the past months that wasn't shooting at something. He undressed as he entered his room, leaving his wet clothes in a pile in front of the door , and he jumped onto his bed. He so desperately wanted to sleep, but that sleep never came. Before he knew it, the sun was rising in the distance. Even if he never did get to sleep, the night still passed in the blink of an eye. He silently stepped into the shower after getting out of bed, the first time he'd used a private shower in ages. Doing everything alone was agonising. He changed into a fresh set of clothes and left the apartment complex. Life had already gone back to normal in New T ampa, as if everyone had just for gotten that humanity's homeworld was under attack. The days on New T ampa were similar in length to days on Earth, though the nights were slightly shorter . Though Svenson had never been to Earth, he knew that much. It hadn't yet been a full day on either planet since the attack started. Svenson made his way down a sidewalk that was damp from the previous night's rain. He didn't know where he was going, but he was moving with a purpose. Even with the crowds of people he moved past he still felt alone, but the feeling of loneliness wasn't quite as bad as the previous day . He eventually made it to the entrance of a restaurant that he didn't bother to read the name of. He hadn't fully realised how hungry he was until he stepped through the doors. The restaurant was nearly empty , only a few people sat scattered around at the tables and booths. A clean shaven man that couldn't be more than 20 years old approached him with a friendly smile.\n\"Hi, how may I help you today?\" the man asked, his voice just as cheerful as he looked.\n\"Booth for one, please,\" Svenson said. The man nodded and led Svenson to a booth in the corner of the restaurant. He sat next to a window with a view of the crowded streets outside. The restaurant's menu was a screen built into the table, which seemed awfully inconvenient. He couldn't even remember eating at a restaurant since he was just a kid, he couldn't even remember eating anything other than MREs since the day the Pillar of Autumn  found Alpha Halo. Svenson silently scrolled through the menu looking for something to eat. He wasn't hungry for anything in particular , yet at the same time he was a picky eater . The quietness of the restaurant made it easy for Svenson to hear the footsteps approaching his table. He looked up expecting to see a waiter , but it was just a man in a casual plain blue shirt.\n\"Hey , you're the new guy in town,\" the man said. Svenson couldn't help but feel a little annoyed. As much as he didn't want to be alone, he didn't want random people coming up to him just because he was well known for one thing or another . He put on his best friendly smile and nodded.\n\"Mind if I have a seat?\" the man asked.\n\"Go ahead,\" Svenson said, nodding to the booth across from him.The man sat down, not dropping his smile. He had tanned skin and dark hair , with a full beard covering his chin. His eyes were bright blue like Svenson's. He was very handsome, and in another life Svenson could see himself being attracted to him. He realised that the other life was before the battle of Alpha Halo.\n\"My name's Joseph Graves,\" he said. \"Y ou can call me Joe, or whatever else you'd like.\"\n\"I'm Matthew ,\" Svenson said, having to fight to introduce himself with his first name.\n\"Nice to meet you, Matthew ,\" Graves said with a smile. \"Just saw you around and wanted to introduce myself. I'm of f duty right now , but I'm a military police of ficer over at Firebase Veles. I have a feeling we'll be working together in the future, so I wanted to say hi.\"\nSvenson didn't entirely trust the man after hearing that. Firebase V eles belonged more to ONI than to the UNSC Army , and now Svenson figured Graves was actually some ONI of ficer sent to keep watch on him. T o make sure he didn't say anything he wasn't supposed to.\n\"I'm sure we will,\" Svenson said with a smile that only came across as nervous.\n\"Mind if I join you for your meal?\" Graves asked. \"Y ou don't have to worry about the check, Marines eat free here.\"\nMaybe this won't be so bad,  Svenson thought. Even if he didn't trust Graves, he really needed a friend. And this was his best shot.\n\"Go ahead, I don't mind,\" Svenson said.\n\"Thanks, friend,\" Graves said. He scrolled through the menu on his side of the table. Svenson eventually decided on ordering a steak, while Graves went for a moa bur ger. The thought of eating a bur ger from a now extinct species, on a planet he had personally seen be destroyed, made him sick. The meat was tank grown, but the thought was still upsetting.\n\"So, Matthew ,\" Graves started while they waited for their food to arrive. \"Where have you served?\"\nSvenson's service record wasn't very long, nor was it pretty . Before the battle of Alpha Halo, the only major engagements he took part in were tragic losses for humanity . He had seen friends die, and worlds glassed. Though he was proud to have fought for humanity , he wasn't proud of the conflicts he took part in.\n\"I was at Fumirole,\" Svenson said, recalling the first major battle he was in. It wasn't exactly something he wanted to remember , though that was the same with the rest of his service record. \"And I was there during the battle of Reach.\"\nSvenson stopped himself before he could bring up the battle of Alpha Halo, that was something he wasn't allowed to talk about. Even if Graves really was an ONI agent, he still couldn't bring it up.\"Damn, really?\" Graves's expression turned to concern. Even those who didn't fight during the battle of Reach knew almost everything about it. \"Y ou must have seen some shit.\"\nOh you have no idea . Even the endless tide of Covenant and the glassing of planets were nothing compared to what he saw on Alpha Halo. They wer en't just killed. They wer e turned into monsters . All Svenson could do was nod in response.\n\"Everyone at V eles talks about you like you're some kind of seasoned veteran,\" Graves said. Svenson could hear some admiration in his voice. \"Now I see that you are.\"\nThough the battles of Fumirole and Reach only sounded like two dif ferent battles, they were so much more than that. They were planetary invasions filled with several dif ferent conflicts, some lar ge and some small. Svenson recalled the siege of New Alexandria in particular , where he had seen Covenant Brutes ripping the limbs of f of civilians. Covenant corvettes dominated the skies, Banshees flew between buildings performing attack runs on UNSC positions. Even though Svenson didn't really feel like a veteran, he sure as hell was one. A waiter eventually brought them their food, and suddenly Svenson wasn't hungry anymore. He wanted to be in a trench with his fellow Marines holding of f squads of Covenant, at least that was familiar to him. Svenson slowly cut into the steak and ate it very unenthusiastically . Even if he was no longer hungry , he knew he still needed to eat. He eventually finished eating well after Graves, and he didn't even finish his meal. Graves wiped of f his hands and paid for his food.\n\"Thanks for the meal, Matthew ,\" Graves said as he stood up from the booth. \"I'll get out of your hair .\"\n\"No problem,\" Svenson said. He felt Graves clasp a hand on his shoulder .\n\"I'll see you around.\"\nYeah, he's definitely an ONI agent.  Graves left Svenson alone with his unfinished steak, and he eventually gave up on trying to finish it. He stood up from the booth and left the restaurant. Just as he walked through the doors, he felt a buzzing in his pocket. He pulled his hand terminal out and saw that he was getting a call, which he quickly answered.\n\"Svenson. It's Nagata, \" Ser geant Nagata's voice came through.\n\"I'm here,\" Svenson said as he walked down the sidewalk back to the apartments.\n\"I'm sorry to cut your br eak short, but ther e's been a pr etty big development. A transport is being sent to Bay plaza. Be ther e as soon as possible. \"\n\"Yes ma'am,\" Svenson said. Nagata dropped the connection on her end, and Svenson slid the terminal back into his pocket. Even though he had wanted the break at first, he realised more and more that it was only making things worse for him. He was thankful that Nagata had something for him to do soearly . He started jogging through the sidewalks, making sure he didn't bump into anyone along the way . By the time he made it back to the plaza, there was a transport already waiting for him. They hadn't bothered getting a civilian driver this time, what was waiting for him was an M12\nWarthog with a troop carriage on the back. A UNSC Army trooper stood next to the passenger seat and waved Svenson over when she spotted him. She climbed back into the passenger seat as he arrived. Svenson lifted himself into the carriage on the back and sat down behind the trooper in the passenger seat, and the driver immediately drove them away from the plaza. Though he was a little thankful that the troopers weren't as talkative as the last driver he had, the silence was a little uncomfortable. And he would much rather talk to military personnel than a civilian.\n\"Any idea what this is about?\" Svenson asked, making conversation.\n\"Sergeant didn't say ,\" the trooper in the passenger seat said. \"I take it it's some ONI bullshit.\"\nThere was hostility in her voice, but it wasn't toward him. She knew that he didn't have a choice in working with ONI, he would be on Earth fighting back the Covenant invasion if he did. The W arthog was let through the gate and the driver parked it next to the Pelican landing pads. Svenson and the troopers quickly hopped out.\n\"Sergeant's this way ,\" the driver said, pointing to a command tent toward the back of the firebase. Svenson and the two troopers made their way to the tent, but Svenson was the only one who was let inside. In the tent was Ser geant Nagata, and several other Army Ser geants gathered around a holotable.\n\"Just in time,\" Nagata said. \"I know you wanted a break, but we've lost that luxury .\"\n\"I don't mind,\" Svenson said. \"I'm a Marine, I serve where I'm needed.\"\n\"Good. There's two things.\"\nNagata pulled up a projection on the holotable. It showed the whole star system before zooming in at the edge of it. There he saw the projection of a Covenant Phantom, and it was approaching New T ampa rapidly .\n\"A single Phantom slipped into the system several hours ago,\" another of the Ser geants said. The nametag on her chestplate read 'Rosenfeld'.\n\"It's on a fast track toward us, but we don't know if it's an attack,\" Nagata said.\n\"If it is, then whoever's leading it has got some unorthodox tactics,\" Rosenfeld continued.\n\"Yeah, I've never seen an attack like this,\" Svenson said. The battle of Fumirole had started with a Covenant fleet entering the system, and the battle of Reach started with a stealthinsertion of Elites. Sending a single Phantom without any kind of stealth on an attack was suicide, even for them.\n\"We've got a few more hours before it gets close enough to land,\" said Nagata. \"W e've been attempting to hail it, but we've gotten no response.\"\n\"We are prepared to shoot it down,\" Rosenfeld said, \"but we've been thinking it might be some of our own there, and this is the closest place they could get to.\"\n\"And if it isn't, then we're more than prepared to handle whatever's gonna come out of it.\"\nSvenson really didn't like this. He didn't want to risk letting the Phantom land on the planet, but he knew that it was a suicide attack if it really was the Covenant who launched it at them. Either way , he didn't have a say in the matter . He knew he was just being warned. But that wasn't all they had for him.\n\"What was the other thing?\" Svenson asked.\n\"Several scientists have gone missing at the anomaly site,\" Nagata said. The display shifted from the view of the system to the under ground structures he had been shown earlier . \"If this is a Covenant attack, I want to find out what happened to them before it happens.\"\n\"You're our expert on this stuf f,\" Rosenfeld said. \"So I've heard anyway .\"\nRosenfield wore the uniform of an Army Ser geant, but she didn't have the ONI patches on the uniform that Nagata did, so Svenson was surprised to hear that she knew about his experiences. He didn't have time to dwell on it though. He was needed, and he would do whatever he was ordered.\n\"A Pelican is loaded up and ready to take you there,\" Nagata said. \"Y ou'll head in and find out what's happening as soon as possible. Clear?\"\n\"Clear ,\" Svenson said with a nod.\n\"Good. Head into the base and gear up, then head to V ictor-842 on landing pad seven,\"\nNagata ordered.\n\"Yes ma'am,\" Svenson said with a quick salute.\n\"You're dismissed.\"\nSvenson quickly left the tent, and made his way into the base. When he entered the armoury , he immediately saw a locker with his name on it. Inside it was his armour , the same as it was when he escaped Alpha Halo, but freshened up. It still had the camo paint that he wore during the mission to the weapons facility in the swamp. He tried not to think about the swamp as he slipped into the armour . He grabbed a rifle on his way out, and sprinted over to the seventh landing pad. The Pelican sitting on it was marked Victor-842, and Svenson felt a wave of relief when he saw who's it was.Cas stood outside the Pelican, conversing with an Army trooper . He saw Svenson and waved, and the trooper quickly entered the Pelican.\n\"Nice to see you geared up, Svenson,\" Cas said, his voice sounding excited.\n\"It's nice to be heading out,\" Svenson said.\n\"Indeed it is. Y ou ready?\"\n\"Ready as ever .\"\nCas smiled, and Svenson returned it. When he was alone and thought he needed a friend, he had for gotten that he had already made one that wasn't some kind of undercover agent. The two climbed into the Pelican, and Svenson got himself strapped in while Cas entered the cockpit.\n\"Alright fellas, we will be launching in five, \" Cas spoke over the intercom. \" Get r eady to enjoy the r odeo. \"Chapter 11: Raku Chapter 11: Raku\n\nRaku and Sen reached the bottom of the shaft at the same time, landing perfectly on their feet. The area was pitch black, it would be impossible for them to navigate the area were it not for the night vision built into their helmets. Clearly the humans were running out of ways to deter them. As the two began to step forward, Nos reached the bottom. He stumbled as he tried to land on his feet, and he fell onto the floor . The sound of his armour cracking against the metal floor rang out all along the shaft. If the humans hadn't already known they were coming after them, then their cover would have been blown. Raku would have scolded him if he had the time, and if the Jiralhanae's arrival hadn't been worse. Axus gracefully slid down the shaft on his back, and got onto his feet when he reached the bottom. But V olus tumbled down the shaft like an idiot, banging against the metal and exposed wiring. He shouted with each impact as if he was getting repeatedly shot by a needle launcher . It almost seemed like he was doing it on purpose. When V olus reached the bottom he rolled along the floor before finally getting back to his feet. When the two exchanged a glance, Raku wondered if Jiralhanae could even feel embarrassment. Without a word they continued. Ahead of them was a very long corridor lined with doors, behind any one of them could've been a human waiting to ambush them. Raku looked at Sen and signalled to him with his hands, telling him to watch their back. Sen nodded and moved to the back of the group. The group slowly moved along the corridor . Raku made sure his footsteps were silent, but Nos didn't care. Raku could tell the Blademaster was impatient, and he silently prayed to the Forerunners that he wouldn't step out of line and rush ahead. Raku was trained entirely in close quarters combat, as were Sen and Nos. But even then, human weapons were deadliest in tight spaces such as these. Raku admitted that he admired that humans could put even warriors like him to the test. It was truly unfortunate that they all had to die. Raku was surprised when they reached the end of the corridor . There was no human ambush, at least not yet anyway . If there were no humans around, that meant that they could at least speak quietly . Quiet enough that any recording devices nearby wouldn't be able to hear them. He doubted they had enough time to set any up, but he still didn't want to risk it.\n\"Nos, door ,\" Raku whispered. Nos nodded and crouched in front of the door . He placed the circular spoofer device on it, and used it to cut of f the power to the door's locking mechanism. After that he put the spoofer away , and the door automatically opened for them. Unfortunately for them, the door was veryloud. The shriek of metal grinding against metal echoed throughout the chamber that the door led to. And in that chamber was what they were looking for . Towers of what looked like Forerunner servers extended from the top to the bottom of the chamber , and from where they were it was a long way down. Makeshift human platforms were built between the towers, allowing them to move between them. It appeared that the humans had been studying them for a long time. There was still no sign of the humans that they had chased down the elevator . There was no way out of the chamber , so they had to be hiding in there somewhere. He signalled to V olus with his hands, telling him to watch the door . But the Jiralhanae clearly didn't understand.\n\"Volus, guard the door ,\" Raku whispered with a sigh. Volus's expression was one of clear disappointment. There was nothing that Jiralhanae hated more than abstaining from a fight. The Minister of Animosity put me in char ge, you will do as I say, Raku wanted to tell him, but he already gave Raku a reluctant nod.\n\"Sen, Nos, go right. Axus, you're with me. Stay close,\" Raku ordered. He trusted Sen to keep Nos in check, and he wanted to keep watch over Axus himself. Axus's acknowledgement came in the form of a snort. He followed Raku as they went down the platform to their left, Sen and Nos went to the right. The humans were hiding there, and they would find them before they completed their mission. The human soldiers were very well hidden. Even with the assistance of night vision, Raku couldn't see any of them. Then again, the chamber they were in was huge. It was completely silent aside from the sound of dripping water echoing in the distance, and also aside from the heavy breathing and footsteps of Axus. Then in one instant, the silence broke. A missile was fired from somewhere at the back of the room, and Raku didn't get the chance to see it before he felt something heavy push against his back and launch him forward. He landed hard on the ground as the missile exploded behind him. Axus had pushed him out of the way , and saved his life in doing so. Raku would have to thank him after they were out of there. So, that's what it takes for the humans to kill me, hm? An entir e missile?  Raku pushed himself back to his feet and looked to where it exploded. It made a hole in the platform, scorching and bending the metal around it. Axus had retreated in the other direction after pushing Raku, and the two were separated. And now that the humans knew they were there, there was no use in staying silent.\n\"Find where that came from!\" Raku shouted to Axus. The Jiralhanae nodded, and sprinted away in search of the human. Several booms sounded on the other side of the chamber , Raku recognised them as the sound of human sniper rifles firing. Sen and Nos had been spotted as well. Raku looked up and squinted. Closer to the top of the chamber he noticed a flash of light followed by another boom. He could see two humans there lit up with each flash of their rifles' muzzles.Attached to the Forerunner data stack was another platform that a pair of humans were using to rain fire down on them. When Raku saw a bright burst of plasma headed towards it he knew that Sen had seen them too. Raku cloaked and quickly sprinted down the platforms, weaving between the data stacks. He heard something crash in the distance, and he caught a glimpse of Axus throwing a human soldier into one of the data stacks. Fool, he'll compr omise the data!  There was no time to stop the raging Jiralhanae as he brutally killed the human, he had to take out the snipers. Raku eventually found a ladder that would bring him up to the human snipers. They had stopped firing, which Raku assumed was due to them running low on ammo. If he climbed up the ladder they would definitely notice him. It wasn't a very high climb, but the humans would have enough time to throw him of f if he tried. Rather than risking his own life, he took a plasma grenade from his belt and primed it, praying to the Forerunners that he wouldn't damage the data stack with it. He tossed the grenade up, and it stuck to the bottom of the platform. The humans had little time to react before the ensuing explosion ripped the platform apart and killed them. Three humans down, two left.  The sound of a spike rifle firing in the distance let him know that the last two humans tried to escape, and were cut down by V olus.\n\"Sen, Nos, sweep the area,\" Raku ordered, speaking into his communicator . \"Make sure we got all the humans.\"\nThey gave no acknowledgement, but he knew they would get it done. Raku looked up at the data stack. The side where the grenade went of f was scorched, but thankfully it didn't look like there was much actual damage to it. If he did compromise the Forerunner data, he would never be able to for give himself. He had been reckless, just like Nos and Axus. Raku searched through the area, looking for a terminal he could use to either access the data or communicate with the Minister of Animosity . His own communicator didn't have the range to reach High Charity , especially since it was several systems away . But before he could find that, he found Axus. And he had a few things to say to the Jiralhanae.\n\"You are reckless, Axus,\" Raku said to him, moving past him as he searched for a terminal.\n\"You may have compromised the data.\"\nThe Jiralhanae stood still as Raku approached, but he slowly turned to the Sangheili after he walked past. A low growl came from the beast's throat.\n\"I'm reckless? What about you?\" Axus challenged him. \"Y eah, I saw that. A grenade that you threw went of f right next to one.\"\n\"I made a choice,\" Raku stopped and turned. \"Needlessly risk my life, or kill the enemy . You let your rage blind you, risking both your life and the data. W e are not the same.\"\nIt was with those words that Raku realised he was being selfish. He saved his own life at the risk of the data the Minister of Animosity wanted, and the Minister didn't take kindly to anykind of failure. Raku would never admit that to Axus, but he would make sure to not make that kind of mistake again.\n\"I can't help my nature,\" Axus growled.\n\"Yes you can,\" Raku said. \"Y ou can always change who you are. Now return to V olus. I will finish here, and we will leave.\"\nAxus reluctantly obeyed his order . The Jiralhanae stormed of f to the entrance of the chamber with the others. Raku continued searching through the data stacks, and eventually he found what he was looking for . He accessed a terminal in the side of one of the stacks, human instruments lay scattered around it. It appeared the humans had been trying to access the data themselves, but they clearly had no idea what they were doing. Raku lifted a drive from a hidden pocket in his armour and connected it to the stack, and he used it to download the Forerunner data. He didn't know what the data actually was, that was for the Minister of Animosity to deal with. W ith the amount of stacks there it was clear that the transfer would take a while, and Raku didn't want to move for fear that there were more humans down there. He didn't have to worry about that for long. An ener gy sword ignited behind Raku, followed by the yelp of a dying human. Raku slowly turned around to see Sen with his blades through the abdomen of a human soldier . Sen tossed the human aside after the light faded from its eyes.\n\"That was the last one,\" Sen said.\n\"Good,\" Raku replied, turning back to the terminal. \"I will remain here. This data will take a while to transfer .\"\n\"Then I will stay with you,\" Sen said. Though they were sure all the humans were dead, Sen still watched Raku's back. Raku always welcomed Sen's presence. There was no one else he would rather have watching his back. As the time passed and the data continued transferring, Raku began to grow restless. There was nothing to do other than stand there and wait for the transfer to finish. T o pass the time, Raku accessed the terminal once more and began searching through its systems. He found that the data complex was connected to several other Forerunner facilities across the planet, such as the one where Chel 'Quraee had found the luminary that was worth enough for him to abandon his own siege. He found more data complexes in the area, and he discovered that there was more than just Lifeworker data hidden on the planet, such as a Builder archive. Did the Minister know about the other data? Raku wouldn't mention it during their next communication, unless the Minister already knew . If he had the time he would find the archive on his own. The transfer eventually completed, and Raku lifted the drive from the terminal. He exchanged a nod with Sen, and they retreated to Axus and the others. They all waited by the door , all justas restless as Raku had been. He slipped the drive back into his pocket as he approached them.\n\"We've got the data,\" Raku said. \"Let us go back to the camp.\"\n\"More humans have arrived,\" Axus informed them as they made it back to the elevator and began their slow ascent. \"My Jiralhanae are holding them of f as we speak, but we will have to fight our way back.\"\nAxus had a toothy grin across his face. Of course the Jiralhanae was excited for another fight.\n\"Good,\" Nos said, \"I'm itching for another fight.\"\n\"Let's make it quick,\" Raku said. He didn't want to be there for any longer than he needed to.\n\"Of course,\" Nos said with a sigh. \"It will be quick.\"\nThe group assembled on the elevator and took it up. It moved so slowly that Axus, V olus, and Nos began to grow restless again. It had been easy to slide down the shaft, but it was too steep to feasibly make it back up in a short time. The sounds of battle grew louder as the elevator reached the top of the shaft. Human projectile weapons popped with each shot, followed by the cracks of the Jiralhanae's spike rifles firing back. What surprised Raku was that he also heard the screeching of Banshees outside. Nice to know we have r einfor cements. The three Sangheili cloaked and rushed back through the base as Axus and V olus joined their Jiralhanae brothers. The human soldiers were very aggressively trying to push into the base, so much that they had blasted several holes into the walls. Raku rushed out one of them and saw a small human aerial transport landing on a still intact landing pad. He was about to throw a grenade at it before he realised he had used his last one on the human snipers. He wouldn't need to worry about it for long before one of the Banshees swooped towards it and destroyed it with a fuel rod. Dozens of human soldiers lay dead across the open platforms of the base, each of their bodies in various states of dismemberment. Not one more Jiralhanae had been lost. That was... respectable. The humans had stopped coming, and the Banshees that had joined them broke off and flew into the distance, back to wherever they had come from. Raku called the others back to him as he approached the ramp to the ridge.\n\"I guess we missed the fun,\" Nos said with a disappointed tone.\n\"There will be more 'fun' soon enough,\" Raku replied. \"Our mission is accomplished. Let us return to the camp at once.\"\nThe Jiralhanae weren't thrilled about another journey , but they had no choice. The group set off along the ridge, and back along the frozen plains that led them back to their camp.The sun had risen again on their journey back to their camp, and it was on the ver ge of setting once more. Something Raku had learned about Zezar during his extended stay there was that the nights were long, and the days short. He had gotten used to it, and the darkness of night was a place where an assassin like him thrived. When they made it back to the camp, it was just as they had left it, though some of their communication equipment had begun to freeze over . Nos turned on a heater in the middle of the cave, and they let the place thaw out for a moment. Raku then contacted the Minister of Animosity , who answered the call very quickly .\n\"I take it your mission is complete, \" the Minister said before his projection even appeared from the table.\n\"Correct,\" Raku said. \"The Lifeworker data is ours.\"\nHe reached into his pocket, and he presented the drive to the Minister . The San'Shyuum squinted, silently inspecting the drive in his hands. He eventually grunted, and sat back in his gravity throne once he was satisfied.\n\"It is too danger ous for you to transmit the data fr om your curr ent position, \" the Minister said, folding his hands across his chest. \" Give it to Nos, he will bring it to the  Fleet of Sanctity .\"\nRaku tilted his head in confusion. He was perfectly capable of doing that himself, why did it need to be Nos? I suppose it is because he is the Minister's pet.  He reached his hand to the side, and dropped the drive into Nos's palm without breaking the Minister's gaze.\n\"I have arranged for a Phantom to bring him to me, \" the Minister continued. \" But for now , the rest of you will r emain on the gr ound. \"\nSo Nos is leaving us...  Raku took a slow breath and nodded. He couldn't help but feel slightly relieved, but things still weren't adding up. The worst that could happen in Raku's mind was that the Minister was planning on using Nos to kill him for whatever reason, but that no longer made sense.\n\"Do you have another task for us?\" Raku asked.\n\"I do,\" the Minister said. His expression was unreadable. \" There is mor e than just Lifeworker data on this planet, as I'm sur e you'r e awar e.\"\nSo he knows about everything else.  Raku wondered why the Lifeworker data took precedence over something like a Builder archive, but he just had to assume that the San'Shyuum knew more than him. That was all the Sangheili had ever assumed since the W rit of Union was signed.\n\"I am indeed aware,\" Raku said, clasping his hands behind his back.\n\"There's mor e data that I need r ecover ed,\" the Minister began. \" On the other side of the planet is a Builder ar chive hidden underneath the gr ound. I do not know if ther e's a humanpresence ther e, or how lar ge it is if ther e is one, but you ar e to take the Jiralhanae with you. \"\n\"Of course,\" Raku said with a bow .\n\"A Phantom will be ther e to take you. Both should arrive in thr ee days. \"\n\"Three days?\" Axus suddenly shouted from behind Raku. \"W e've barely even done anything in one! Now we have to wait three?\"\n\"That is corr ect,\" the Minister's expression turned to one of annoyance. \" Now, Axus, is ther e a problem? \"\n\"No,\" Axus grunted. \"I suppose there is not.\"\nAxus was another of the Minister's pets. Of course they wouldn't ar gue for long. Raku was just thankful that the Jiralhanae hadn't brought up the incident in the Lifeworker archive.\n\"That is all. Once the Phantom arrives you ar e to carry your mission out at once. \"\nThe connection dropped before anyone could ask any further questions. The group turned to the heater in the middle of the cave and huddled around it for warmth. A three day wait was nothing for Raku, he had often spent longer just tracking a single tar get. But he feared for the sanity of the Jiralhanae; they were already insane enough as it was. Now that Nos was leaving, Raku didn't need to worry about him reporting anything back to the Minister . If the Jiralhanae took even one step out of line, he would deal with them. A Builder archive could possibly lead the Covenant to any major Forerunner installation in the galaxy; they couldn't af ford to have anyone stepping out of line. Their mission was just that important.Chapter 12: Kel Chapter 12: Kel\n\nThe air was cold, so cold that Kel and the others would have frozen to death if it weren't for their armour . Even then, he could still feel it. It still made him shiver . The land wasn't even visible, it was buried beneath high piles of hardened snow , packed so dense that it would barely be dented by a plasma mortar from a W raith. Their vision was completely obscured by a blizzard, even some instruments weren't able to see through it. This was Kel's first battle, and of course they sent him in under the harshest of conditions. Kars 'Chelamee was a no-nonsense type of leader . He cared not what conditions he fought in, and he didn't listen to the excuses of his underlings. He was the kind of leader that the Sangheili needed, if he didn't so blindly follow the Prophets. He was the kind of leader that Kel wanted to be. Explosions went of f around them. Unggoy char ged recklessly into the line of fire. One more human roadblock remained between them and their tar get, a human firebase. One of the most heavily defended fortresses they could go against. Normally for a force of their size it would be certain death. But not for a leader like Kars 'Chelamee. The only thing that would be able to take Kars down was a foe he never expected, and that's eventually would be his downfall. Kel 'Dauramee had been pulled aside by the General as they neared a safe location. His performance in the battle had been rather lacklustre, and that wasn't the kind of performance that Kars 'Chelamee stood for . The General was disappointed, but it was his job to make every Sangheili into a warrior he was proud of.\n\"Let go of yourself, 'Dauramee,\" Kars said, placing a rough hand against Kel's shoulder . \"Do not be a coward in the face of danger . Sometimes you must shed your own blood to achieve victory .\"\nKel's only response was a nod, which Kars returned. The General was right. Kel had been staying behind, worrying more about his own safety than anything else. Even Sangheili Minors could take many hits before going down. Kel knew that, but he didn't want to take unnecessary risks. Not when he had his own plan in mind. He wanted to send a message to the Covenant, and it was important that he stay alive long enough to do that. He would wait until the battle ended, and he would strike Kars 'Chelamee down. He respected the General, but there was no better tar get he could take down than him. Of course Kars didn't know Kel's true intentions, he would think Kel was just a dumb recruit who was reluctant to fight in the war . The General let go of Kel, and they rushed forward to a trench cut into the snow where Kars's forces were waiting for the attack on the human fortress.Kars crouched in front of the Sangheili and displayed a projection of the fortress from the monitor on his wrist. In each corner of the fortress was a tall gun tower , each of which could rotate 360 degrees to defend the base.\n\"A squadron of Banshees strafed the base earlier ,\" Kars said. One of the towers glowed red.\n\"This turret was heavily damaged before the squadron got shot down. In its current state it is susceptible to small arms fire, so we'll take it out and enter the base from that corner . Several squads of Unggoy will be used to distract the other turrets, so we'll have to move quickly before they're killed.\"\nThat was the one thing Kel didn't like about Kars, his disregard for life. The Unggoy weren't particularly bad fighters, especially when they were against the frail human soldiers, but Kars saw them as nothing more than cannon fodder . The Unggoy couldn't object, or the General would kill them himself. Each Sangheili confirmed that they were ready for the mission, all except for Kel. Kars gave him a look of disdain, but Kel didn't make any expression that would betray his feelings. Only an empty gaze that seemed to creep the General out. The thought of a Minor scaring a General was almost amusing, but Kel had never laughed at anything.\n\"Warriors! W ith me!\" Kars shouted, not wasting anymore time with Kel. He stood up and quickly climbed over the trench. Kel and the other Sangheili followed close behind, and the group char ged through the snowy hills toward the human fortification. Human soldiers crouched behind bags of sediment, and they blindly fired over them at the approaching Sangheili. Kel could feel the bullets bouncing of f his shields. Each impact caused him to stumble, but none of the bullets did any real damage to him or his armour . Bolts of plasma shot past Kel as the Sangheili behind him fired, wasting their weapons'\nbatteries on the bags the humans hid behind. Kel didn't plan on wasting anything, he needed as much as he could for his plan. He grabbed one of his four grenades attached to his belt, and tossed it over the bags. He had been trained extensively in throwing grenades, and he even practised throwing similar objects during downtime; he didn't plan on for getting any of his training. The humans barely had time to react before the grenade exploded, killing three of them. T wo more humans rose from their cover in an ef fort to retreat, but they were gunned down by another Sangheili at Kel's side. The shooting stopped, the humans were dead. Whatever human soldiers remained had to be inside the fortress, and now their path to it was clear .\n\"Good throw ,\" Kars said to Kel as he ran ahead. Kel said nothing in return. He and the others followed the General. Lights in the distance came into view as they passed over another hill. Due to the blizzard, none of them could actually see what it was, but they knew it was the human fortress.\n\"Remember ,\" Kars said, turning to the group, \"never pause for a second. Run as fast as you can to the gun tower and keep shooting at it, it will fall.\"Kars pointed toward the fortress, Kel could just barely make out the outline of the damaged gun tower . The ground shook as the towers began to open fire, the loud thumping drowning out the sound of the wind blowing into Kel's ears. The Unggoy had been sent in, and the attack had begun.\n\"Char ge!\" Kars shouted. He and the other Sangheili sprinted out into the open. The tower they were char ging toward turned towards them and opened fire. Explosive rounds slammed into the ground around them. Another Minor took two direct hits, and his body violently exploded. Ribbons of blood and or gans showered the attacking Sangheili, but even that wasn't enough to slow them down. Kars wielded a concussion rifle, and he blasted the tower with its explosive shots. The other Sangheili fired with plasma rifles, but Kel only had a needler . A weapon that was completely useless in this situation. The tower switched tar gets after blowing the Minor open, now it fired at Kars. Where the turret was able to take the Minor's shields down with one blast, Kars was able to survive two direct hits, each one knocking him to the side. But they didn't knock him down. The General sprinted even faster , he was at a speed that seemed comical with his bulky armour weighing him down. The tower missed the next two shots, which went straight past Kars and hit the ground in front of Kel. The explosion from the first shot knocked him down, and the second blasted him into the snow . The shock from getting hit stunned him. He couldn't see anything, nor could he feel anything. Every sound he heard was muf fled as if he was somehow in a different room.\n\"'Dauramee!\" He heard shouting, but he couldn't make out the voice. Am I dead?  He asked himself. The shouting came again.\n\"'Dauramee! Kel!\" the voice became clearer . It was high pitched, mechanical, there was no way it was a Sangheili.\n\"Kel 'Dauram?\" Bygone Era asked. Kel opened his eyes. The monitor was right in his face, its single blue eye was all he could see. He was back in the telescoping facility , facing the projections of the Halo rings, and the Ark. Why am I her e?\nEra floated away from Kel. There was no expression that the monitor could show , so Kel couldn't even begin to tell what it was thinking.\n\"It seems you are still awake,\" Era said, not taking its eye of f Kel. \"Are you alright?\"\nNo. No I am not.\n\"I'm fine,\" Kel said. \"Just... Thinking.\"\"About what, might I ask?\" the monitor asked, tilting to its side.\n\"About...\" What was I thinking about?  \"All of this. The Covenant, the Forerunners, everything.\"\n\"Right,\" Era said. The monitor finally floated away from him and examined a screen on the other side of the room. \"Based on the communications I've intercepted, the Covenant seems to revere the Forerunners. But you tell me you didn't even know they were real.\"\n\"I had always assumed the Covenant was using its faith just to get us to serve,\" Kel sighed.\n\"But now I see that they are real... And that they are glorious.\"\n\"But they are not Gods,\" Era turned back toward Kel. It was tilted in a way that made it seem almost disappointed. Maybe it can expr ess feelings. Kel looked back up at the projection of the Ark. If the Forerunners were not Gods, then how did they create such magnificent things? He was inclined to believe that Era was telling the truth, as the monitor itself was a direct creation of the Forerunners. But what if Era was lying? What if the millenia that the monitor had spent in solitude had corrupted it, and turned it against its masters?\nKel almost laughed at himself for thinking that was even a possibility . Whether or not the Forerunners were Gods, he could at least see now why the Covenant worshipped them. They were magnificent.\n\"How long will you be here?\" Kel asked the monitor .\n\"For as long as this facility must remain operational,\" Era replied, turning back to the screens and watching over the planets.\n\"Then I'm going to go back to my home,\" Kel said. \"But I will come back eventually .\"\n\"I understand,\" Era said. It turned back and floated up to Kel. \"W ould you like me to show you the way out?\"\nKel nodded. He preferred to not have to climb down the entire mountain. Era floated out of the room, and Kel followed. They moved through several identical corridors, so many that Kel would have easily gotten lost if he was alone, and eventually they entered another rocky chamber with no exit.\n\"Hm, it seems the exit has gotten blocked,\" Era said. \"I suppose that will happen after thousands of years. Please stand back, Kel 'Dauram.\"\nKel scof fed, but he did as he was told. Era was supposed to be the facility's caretaker , yet it didn't seem to be taking very good care of the facility . It was a small thing, but it was enough to make Kel question the monitor . He backed into the corridor behind him, and watched as the monitor cleared the debris. Era's soft blue eye slowly faded to an aggressive red, and a beam of light shot out of it. The beam cleanly cut through the rocks, creating an opening that Kel could use to leave. Throughthe hole Kel could see his little shack he had set up before he took on the mountain climb, he was right next to where he found the metal sticking out of the rocks.\n\"All clear!\" Era said, turning back to Kel. \"Y ou may leave now .\"\n\"Thank you,\" Kel said slowly . He stepped through the opening and took a breath of fresh air . Kel hadn't even been in the Forerunner facility for long, yet it still felt strange being outside again; like he was stepping onto a completely dif ferent world. He turned, expecting to see Era watching him, but the monitor already left. He understood that the monitor had far more important things to do. Thankfully Kel had an exceptional memory , especially when it came to the lay of the land, so he would be able to find his way back home easily , even when he wasn't entirely familiar with the area around the mountain. And because of what was inside the mountain, Kel would never for get the way to it. The sun was setting by the time Kel made it back to his Phantom. He had killed a few rodents along the way , and he had set them by a fire to cook. He began to shed his armour now that he was certain he was in a place of safety , and he left it against the log where he sat to eat. His life continued as normal at first, but he couldn't take his mind of f the facility while he was away from it. The Forerunners had hid a facility of vast importance right where he had decided to settle, and he didn't know about it until now . Until the war with the humans had reached its height, or at least Kel figured the war was reaching its height from what he saw . He never would have found the facility if he hadn't decided to climb the mountain the previous day , but it had been there the whole time. How convenient that Kel had lived next to it all along. Maybe that was a sign of something, a sign from the Gods. But Era said they wer en't Gods. That can't be right. No mortal could do what the For erunners have done. Maybe Era was like Kel. Maybe the monitor had rebelled against those higher than it the same way that he had. Any rebel would say anything to make their former masters look bad. There was too much to think about, and so little time to think about it. He finished eating his dinner in a few lar ge bites, and climbed back into his Phantom to sleep. His makeshift bed hadn't moved, not that there was any reason for it to. Nothing about his residence had changed, yet he felt like it had. Maybe it was him who had changed. He rested his head on the mossy growth as he laid down, and he closed his eyes.\n\"On your feet, 'Dauramee!\" came the gruf f voice of the field of ficer above him. Letho\n'Hiramee was his name. The of ficer aggressively grabbed Kel by his neck and lifted him to his feet. The human gun tower in the distance violently exploded, showering the area with shards of burning metal and wiring.All Kel could hear in his ears was the constant slamming of the other towers blasting the General's cannon fodder . If it wasn't for the blizzard, he was sure he would be able to see fields of dead Unggoy around them.\n\"Forward, warriors!\" Kars 'Chelamee shouted. \"Let us achieve victory!\"\nLetho gave Kel a disgusted look, which felt very unwarranted, and turned to enter the human fortress. Kel and the other Minors followed. Kars had set a char ge against a wall, and blew it to create an opening. A line of Kig-Y ar that Kel hadn't even realised were with them entered first, blocking the bullets fired by the human soldiers with their defence gauntlets. Kars entered second, blasting two humans onto the floor with a single shot from his concussion rifle. The humans hadn't even gotten into cover yet, clearly they weren't expecting to be breached from behind. Kel moved in right after Kars, and fired two bursts from his needler . Two more humans in front of them dropped, and the corridor they had entered into was now clear . Their mission specifically was to clear the base, and find any data they could on the locations of the other human worlds, so there was a lot of fighting ahead for them. Kars led his small army down another corridor , and they gunned down yet another squad of human soldiers. One human was able to get a grenade behind the line of Kig-Y ar. Kars ordered them to fall back, and Kel made it around a corner just as it exploded. The grenade took out all of the Kig-Y ar, leaving the Sangheili more vulnerable in the front. Kel noticed as he turned the corner that Kars's shields had been damaged as well. If his shields weren't able to fully rechar ge, that would make things significantly easier for Kel. Corridor after corridor , the Sangheili cleared the base of its human occupants. They had lost two Minors along the way as they had moved to the command centre, and each human squad they ran into did a little more damage to Kars's shields each time. When they did reach the command centre, Kars ordered Kel and another Minor named\n'Zeramee to enter with him, and he ordered 'Hiramee and the others to watch the door . Kel wondered why the General wanted to be alone with the lower ranking Sangheili, but he figured it was for combat experience. He wasn't going to complain, things were only getting easier and easier . The three Sangheili entered the command centre with a bang, each of them blasting the human occupants with burning plasma and crystal shards. Kel felt the impacts of bullets against his shields as a human soldier shot him from behind, when he turned to kill the human he saw 'Zeramee punching it in the side of its head. The other Minor fired a burst of plasma in its chest once it was on the ground, making sure it was dead. They were careful not to destroy anything, as the data the command centre held was vital to their mission. Kel only made a show of caring, but in truth, he didn't give a damn about the mission. Kars jumped over a terminal and slammed the butt of his concussion rifle into a human as it attempted to flee, and he drew a plasma pistol to shoot another fleeing human down.The two last human soldiers in the room hid in a corner , and they popped over the cover of a terminal to fire at the Sangheili. Kel raised his needler to shoot them, but they tar geted the General first. The two soldiers blasted Kars with their rifles, and he scrambled for cover as his shields finally dropped. Once Kel heard the pop of Kars's shields, he gunned the two humans down. Kars and 'Zeramee conver ged in the middle of the room once it was clear of human soldiers. Kel crouched behind one of the terminals, pretending to search through it while he slowly reached to one of the dead humans and slid its combat knife out of its sheath.\n\"Let me know what you find, I will put the gun towers of fline,\" Kars said as he accessed another terminal in the middle of the room. The General's back was turned now . It was the perfect time to strike.\n\"Turrets of fline, you may start your descent,\" Kars said, presumably to his other forces. Kel slowly rose back to his feet, approached 'Zeramee from behind, and jammed the knife into the Minor's neck. He was sorry that his fellow Minor would never get to experience the rest of the war , but he had no choice. Blood spilled onto Kel's hands, and 'Zeramee fell onto the floor . Kars turned immediately when he heard the sound, but Kel was already in the process of lunging at him. Kars grabbed Kel's hand as he attempted to stab the knife into his neck, and held him of f with his impressive strength. Kel grabbed the needler from his back with his free hand, and put a burst of its volatile crystals directly into the General's abdomen. The General slammed a fist into Kel's face before the crystals could pierce through his armour , and Kel fell back.\n\"What is wrong with you?\" Kars shouted, grabbing his concussion rifle and aiming it at Kel.\n\"What the hell do you think you're doing?\"\n\"Something that... Something...\" Kel choked. He did his best not to move, he didn't want Kars to anticipate any other moves. \"Something that we should all do. W e all need to stand up.\"\nKel sprang back up to his feet once he regained his strength, and hurled the human knife at Kars just as the General blasted him with his concussion rifle. Kel was thrown back into another human terminal as the shot hit him, and he felt his own shields break. His vision was blurred, and he shook his head so he could focus again. Once he could see, he saw the General on his knees. The knife stuck out from his neck, and his blood pooled on the floor beneath him. There was no time to celebrate, but it felt good to see that he had won. It felt even better to see how easy it actually was. Kel had fully expected to die rebelling against the General, but he still had planned for his success. He didn't waste a second more before rushing to Kars's body and stripping of f his harness. He quickly exchanged them, leaving his own combat harness on the floor and getting into the General's.Kel had practised for this moment many times, but the General harness took longer for him to get into than he expected. He felt his hearts racing, he expected the others to enter the room at any moment and catch him quite literally with his pants down. Luckily they gave him the time he needed to get the harness on before 'Hiramee knocked on the door .\n\"General!\" the of ficer shouted. \"Are you still in there?\"\nThe General's harness made Kel feel powerful just by being in it. He almost wanted to try and get out of there using nothing but his bare hands, but he knew that was stupid. Now wasn't the time to be stupid. He quickly reached for the General's concussion rifle, and the door opened. Kel rose, and saw 'Hiramee standing in the doorway . Kel hoped for 'Hiramee to think he was Kars, but that was just him being stupid again. 'Hiramee recognised him as the once useless Minor instantly .\n\"What have you done?\" 'Hiramee asked, bewildered. There was no answer Kel could give. He squeezed the trigger of the concussion rifle before the of ficer could compose himself, blasting him onto the floor . The other Minors outside glanced at Kel with a confused look before they realised what was happening. They fired on him with their plasma rifles, but the shields of the General harness shrugged the blasts of f. Kel put the concussion rifle on his back, and grabbed 'Zeramee's plasma rifle from the floor . He sprinted toward 'Hiramee as he tried to get back onto his feet, and he kicked him hard in his jaws. He stomped on the of ficer's neck to finish him of f, and he tackled one of the Minors. Three Minors surrounded him, but he was ready for them. He blasted one with his plasma rifle until it overheated, melting the Sangheili's body apart and burning his own hand. Another Minor grabbed him from behind, wrapping his arm tight around Kel's neck. Kel pushed himself back, knocking the Minor of f of him as they hit the floor . Kel noticed the General harness still had a few plasma grenades along its belt, and he formed a quick getaway plan in his head. He got back to his feet, and dropped all of the grenades on the floor before fleeing down the corridor . The remaining Minors had little time to react before they went of f. The explosion behind him shook the entire fortress, and almost threw Kel of f his feet. The original mission would have ended with the group leaving the fortress by boarding a Phantom that would land on the roof, so that was where Kel needed to go. Kel sprinted through the corridors, looking for whichever path would take him to the roof. He couldn't read the human language, but he was sure he could understand the signs on the walls. He spotted one next to a door that appeared to show a staircase, and he made his way through it. Sure enough, there was a staircase there. Kel ascended the stairs, and he exited on the roof. The Phantom was already waiting there for them, along with two Kig-Y ar and another Sangheili Minor . It seemed that word was already out that Kel was a traitor , as the two Kig-Y ar immediately opened fire on him. Luckily for him, neither of the Kig-Y ar wielded defence gauntlets, and the shots from their needle rifles wouldn't do much to his shields.Kel fired on the closest Kig-Y ar, taking it down with a single burst of plasma. The Sangheili fired on him with a plasma rifle, which would eventually burn through his shields with the distance they were at. Kel dropped the plasma rifle on the floor and grabbed the concussion rifle. He missed his first two shots on the Sangheili as it quickly manoeuvred around the rooftop, but he was able to land the third and knock him back. He fired another at the feet of the last Kig-Y ar, and knocked it away . He sprinted after the Phantom and reloaded the concussion rifle. The Phantom began to fly away from him as he got closer to it. No! I'm so close!  Kel rushed to the edge of the rooftop, stopping himself before he could slip of f and fall. The Sangheili and Kig-Y ar were already getting back on their feet. He wasn't about to lose everything he hoped to achieve just because he couldn't jump far enough. Without too much thought, Kel turned and aimed the concussion rifle at his own feet. He jumped and fired, using the force from the blast to propel himself toward the Phantom. He just barely managed to grab onto its doors as they were closing, and he slipped inside. Things were moving so fast, Kel couldn't waste any time. He pushed himself to his feet, and rushed into the Phantom's cockpit, where the Sangheili pilot was fighting with the controls. He dropped the concussion rifle so he wouldn't accidentally damage anything, and he grabbed the pilot by the shoulders. He forced him out of his chair and threw him into the Phantom's troop bay .\n\"You will pay for this!\" the pilot said as he attempted to get back onto his feet.\n\"You are the one who's paying!\" Kel shouted. He tackled the pilot, and punched him repeatedly in his head. He used his full strength with each swing, slamming his fists into the sides of the pilot's head over and over until his helmet broke apart. When he felt the pilot stop struggling, he got back up and took the Phantom's controls. Kel had only flown Phantoms in simulations, but he had done it so many times that he had memorised the controls. He turned the Phantom away from the human fortress, and flew away . Kel had disabled the Phantom's transponder as he flew through the skies of the human world that he hadn't even bothered to learn the name of. Everything he thought of up until that moment was how he would escape. Every single day since even before he was forced to join the Covenant military , he had practised for this very moment. And now that the moment had come and gone, he wasn't sure what to do. He couldn't live in the Phantom forever , he would eventually die and never be found in the emptiness of space. He searched through the Phantom's navigation databases, and he didn't find anywhere he could go. The Covenant would be everywhere, and he couldn't risk being found by anyone. He opted for a blind jump, but there was something he needed to do before that. He ascended into the space above the planet, far away from the Covenant fleets above. He closed andpressurised the cockpit, then opened the troop bay doors. The Phantom shifted, and he left the body of the pilot behind. The pilot would float on in space forever , orbiting the system's star alongside the planets until the day someone would bump into him, which likely would never even happen. He closed the doors and repressurised the ship, and then made the jump. It was several hours of journeying through the blackness of slipspace before Kel appeared above a habitable world. A single blind jump and I've alr eady found a place to live?  Kel scanned the planet, which returned basically nothing. An uninhabited and uncharted world at the edge of the Covenant's territory , all for himself. He didn't believe in the Forerunners, nor did he believe in any Gods. There was no one to thank but himself for this incredible find. He descended toward the planet's lar gest continent, where he planned to make his home. And that is where he would live forever .Please drop by the Archive and comment  to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!"
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "Homeward Bound:The Human-Covenant W ar Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own  at http://archiveofourown.or g/works/44763871 . Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive W arning: Graphic Depictions Of V iolence Categories: F/F, F/M Fandoms: SIGNALIS (V ideo Game) , Halo (V ideo Games) & Related Fandoms Relationships: Cortana/John-1 17 | Master Chief , Elster | LSTR-512/Ariane Y eong Characters: John-1 17 | Master Chief , Cortana (Halo) , Avery Johnson , Blue T eam\n(Halo) , Frederic-104 (Halo) , Kelly-087 (Halo) , Linda-058 (Halo) , Catherine Halsey , Terrence Hood , Margaret Parangosky , Star | ST AR Unit(s) , Eule | EULR Unit(s) , Falke | FKLR Unit(s) , Beo | MNHR S2301 , Isa Satou , Erika Satou , Chips Dubbo , The Covenant (Halo) , UNSC Marine Corps (Halo) , UNSC Army T rooper (Halo) , NOBLE Team Additional T ags: Human-Covenant W ar (Halo) , Eventual Happy Ending , Psychological Warfare , Nuclear W arfare , Nuclear W eapons , War Crimes , Fix-It of Sorts , Romance Language: English Stats: Published: 2023-02-03 Updated: 2023-12-23 Words: 99,893 Chapters:\n21/?Homeward Bound:The Human-Covenant War by Johnnieboy1 1\nSummary As the Human-Covenant W ar rages on in the year 2552, the UNSC gathers the best of its SPARTANs on the Planet Reach in a final bid to buy themselves time against the encroaching tide of the Alien monsters that have murdered many billions of their kin. In the meanwhile, a UNSC Patrol Ship orbiting the outer areas of the Epsilon Eridani system picks up an unknown vessel as it floats aimlessly through the void. What comes aboard said ship might be the very key to saving Mankind, second only to Master Chief himself.Prologue:Ein July 19th, 2552\nDistant orbit of Epsilon Eridani\n04:00 Hours The UNSC frigate Black Bar on, a Paris-Class Heavy , floated calmly on its designated patrol pattern. Captain Richards watched the darkness of space pass by the view-screens on his bridge with a cup of freshly-brewed cof fee in one hand and a bagel in the other . Routine patrols around Epsilon Eridani were incredibly bloody boring, considering half the buzz he was hearing over the com of a mass of new ships arriving in-system for retrofits and repairs after Sigma Octanus and a slew of other distant ops. He sipped his brew calmly , looking around at all stations. Manning sensors and coms were two green members he'd yet to bother learning the names of. Beside them was the Commander and his Executive Of ficer, Ava, however . The young woman was an eagle-eyed beauty that was a stickler for the goddamn rules, up to the point it pissed of f even some of the veteran staf f. The Captain didn' t care, so long as order was maintained aboard. Morale was screwed as it was Ava W eathers was a fair -skinned girl, with blue eyes and burnished gold hair . Her uniform was spotless, her rank pins were polished to the point that, if the rays of the sun hit'em the wrong way , they'd blind someone and the leather navy shoes she wore shined with polish. She tugged at her collar , sighed and arranged the holster for her sidearm on her hip. The M6G Magnum was an unwieldy pistol for a dainty girl like her , but she was still one of the better shots aboard, beat only by a pair of his own Marines and the single ODST that had hitched a ride with them so he could more quickly get to Reach. He didn' t care to ask the T rooper why he'd hauled ass aboard a ship when he could've joined with his company . He really didn' t give a shit about what a Jarhead was doing with his time. He hummed, bit down on his bagel, then sighed deeply and walked up to the edge of the viewing screen, looking at the bow of the ship. One of the two forward prongs of the ship, it contained the MAC, the UNSC' s force equalizer . God, he loved the fucking MAC. Every time it fired, the man had half a mind to ask it to marry him. A Magnetic Accelerator Cannon that fired a slug at speeds fast enough to bust a hole the size of a school bus through the hull of any ship unlucky enough to be caught with its pants down, both metaphorically and, in the Covenant' s shielded pieces of shit, literally . He asked, \"Status report?\" W ith the most uninterested voice in the world.\n\"Like the last couple of times you asked, sir , all clear . Scopes are clear , the view' s clear and the voids are clear ,\" Sighed the Commander as she joined him up front. She looked at himand asked, \"How many cof fees have you had today , captain?\" with her usual impassivity . The man shrugged.\n\"I'd say about three...?\" He replied absentmindedly , before taking a sip of the lukewarm drink. He arranged his uniform and patted it down, noting the semi-glare his XO was giving him, before sighing and stating, \"Listen, we've been on patrol for a little over three days at this point and found nothing. If they want us awake 24/7, I'll drink my goddamn cof fee...\"\n\"Understood, sir ,\" She replied with a degree of disregard, sighing and pinching her brow . Some of the crewmen chuckled at the antics of the two Reach locals, while others just simply chose to keep their laughter to themselves. The ship continued on its route this way for the better part of a few more hours, with the crew just killing time by chatting or doing their jobs. Shifts changed, the Captain was sitting in his room and the entire thing was just... Boring. So, when the alarms blared, the sensors sang like an out-of-tune choir of Catholic altar boys and the crew scrambled like a bunch of kids going toward the ice cream truck, the Captain took this opportunity and scrambled back to the bridge in full dress uniform. He walked onto the deck and asked, \"Status report? The hell did we find?\"\n\"Sir, unidentified small-sized contact 400,000 klicks out immediately to our two o'clock...\"\nReported the sensor station crewman. The Captain approached and looked at the Radar -like screen that pinged the tar get ahead of them.\n\"Anything from them? A ping, a signal, anything?\" The Captain gazed upon the comm. The crewman shook his head, \"Y es, sir . They're transmitting dead air , though. I'm detecting faint broadband radio transmissions from within the ship, as well as information packet receiver systems akin to our own single-beam communication systems.\"\n\"Huh...\" The man hummed, then ordered, \"Attempt a hail, then. But keep our weapons hot. Bring us to yellow alert. Helm, take us toward the object and be ready...\" and, before long, all his orders were completed, the ship blaring a singular , low-tone alarm as the lights aboard glowed gold. The W arship moved forward through the void, closing the distance between it and the unidentified object, all while the radio operator was attempting to ping it repeatedly . Despite that, the UNSC warship found itself closing distance with the strange contact. And as they came closer to the area, the crew' s eyes widened. They laid eyes upon a vessel, about the size of a corvette, floating amidst the ice rocks and frozen Oort Cloud. It was sitting there, motionless, although it was clearly powered, considering the fact the UNSC sensor crewman reported, \"W e're detecting an active nuclear reactor aboard, sir . Seems the ship' s powered and active... Though I can' t, for the fucking life of me, figure out why they aren' t answering... W ait a minute... Sir , rads detected aboard. They're mild right now , but the Reactor aboard seems to be failing.\"\n\"Well, shit...\" Sighed the Captain, then ordered, \"Safety procedures demand we prepare for any dangerous situation. Prepare a team of Marines and T echs to go aboard via a Pelican tosee what they can do to fix the Reactor . Is the reactor at risk of W ildcat destabilization, ensign?\" and gazed upon the Sensors crewman. The man shook his head and Richards then ordered, \"Then we bring the ship aboard.\"\n\"... W e're getting a radio ping-back, sir ,\" The Comm crewman reported. The Captain made one motion of his hand, ordering the man to play the signal. V arious tones and beeps started playing over the bridge' s PA... And the incoming stunned the crewmates of the warship. Numbers, spoken in German, bit by bit.\n\" 39486... 60170... 24326... 01064... \"\nThe Captain licked his lips, nervous, then barked, \"That might very well be their Mayday ... Get that ship aboard, now . Prep a decontamination and repair crew in the hangar alongside a medical team. Let' s get those people aboard. If ONI fucking has something to do with this, I expect an immediate explanation from them the moment we break for Reach' s orbit. Move it!\"\n\"Aye, captain!\" The crew chorused. Before long, the crew belonging to all shifts had immediately mobilized themselves to work. The shipboard company of Marines, clad in their own CBRN kits, marched alongside the ship physician, medical staf f and a team of engineers and decontamination specialists while the Black Bar on swung about to bring the unknown vessel aboard. Descending down to the rear hangar of the UNSC ship, the crews waited for the room to repressurize. From within the confines of the hangar 's large car go elevator , the group and the ship' s lead physician, Doctor Micah Stone, watched with muted awe as the unknown vessel, its hull marred by meteorite strikes and the marring cold of the uncaring void, was brought aboard and gently set down. Beside it sat the UNSC Pelicans that had brought it aboard, landed, crew checking the vessel out. The rear door of the hangar closed and the hiss of repressurization filled the ears of the crews aboard. The door to the elevator opened, the Marines marching out first, MA5B Assault Rifles cocked, safeties falling of f, as the doctors and crew walked up to the surprisingly-lar ge vessel. The infantry surrounded the ship while the Eggheads and Skunkworks group moved in to check it. One of the Engineers approached the side of the vessel, looking up at the cockpit to see that the lights had been turned of f, presumably to conserve power or not overstress the reactor further than it already had been. He then hummed, running a gloved hand over the surface of the vessel itself. He paused, feeling a seam. He ran his fingers up the seam, then noticed the German and, surprisingly , Chinese writing.\n\"Found the Airlock!\" The man reported. Before long, the doctor and a squad of Marines had gathered up ahead of it. The massive ship had a stripe design, it was triangular and it was weird, but the fact that the airlock remained on the side and that the languages they saw were from Earth' s many nations and nationalities told them this might just have been a lost exploratory vessel. Or ONI.Probably ONI. The Marines tensed up as the doctor called the captain, stating, \"Sir , this is doctor Stone. We've already found our way in. Shouldn' t be long before we're inside the ship...\" as she took a step back to let the engineering corps work their magic.\n\" Good to hear , doctor . Be car eful, though... W e don' t know the state our... German-speaking friends may be in... \" He seemed to hesitate in the reply .\n\"Don' t worry , sir. I'll have the major keep the Jarheads in check...\" She replied with half a mouth, garnering a few chuckles out of the Marines. The leader of the men hummed and readied his shotgun, preparing to lead the insertion team. A hiss filled the hangar and the entire group tensed, turning to the airlock. The engineer from before had managed to find the handles to the airlock. Pressures equalized between the two starships' hulls and the geiger counters of the crew had a minor spike come up. Calmly , however , the Doctor stated, \"Radiation levels are within acceptable parameters for exploration with CBRN Gear .\"\nThe group tensed, still. W eapons raised, they listened as the Doctor requested, \"Permission to go inside, captain. The door is open... W e have unsealed the hushed casket...\" and just about everyone paused. Doctor Stone was, to say the least, one of the more eccentric medical staf f of the UNSC. The Captain' s approval was a hum and an af firmative grunt over the radio. She nodded to the men and lifted a flashlight from her uniform' s rear pocket, turned it on and aimed it at the corridor . Darkness was pierced, revealing the insides of the ship' s airlock. Industrial, familiar , yet so dif ferent. The Marines also powered on the flashlights on their MA5Bs, heads-up displays updating as they proceeded inside. Pushing in, the group found themselves walking into what seemed to be the lower deck of the ship itself. Multiple doors, bulkheads, up-armored, were tried, but none opened, sans one in the cross-intersection. The one leading further to the rear . The Major took point with his shotgun, scanning the area tensely . Audible, though muf fled, were the sounds of their boots clanking against the grated floor of the ship and, for each Marine, the thumping of their heartbeat and their heavy breathing through the CBRN suits. Pushing forward into the next room, the Major came upon three more locked doors and a ladder .\n\"Looks like the only way is up,\" Commented doctor Stone. She nodded to the Major and let him climb first alongside a pair of Marines. The man simply followed what he had been indirectly ordered to do, climbing up the ladder with his pistol drawn. First on top, the man took a step to the right and let the other Marines march in, followed by the Doctor and engineers.\n\"Multiple doors...\" Reported the Major . \"Rads are coming from the door ahead of the ladder ,\" An Engineer with a scanner said,\n\"Through this door and to the left...\"\n\"We're splitting, then. A team takes the front and side doors. I, two Marines and a pair of engineers take the rear doors...\" The Doctor stated as she hefted her sealed, lead-lined container , in which her medical kit and supplies were. She paused, however , when a Marine lifted his hand. The air in the room grew heavy , each soldier and crewman tensing. The doctor looked to the Marine that raised his hand, then asked in a whisper , \"What is it, trooper...?\" just as she noted the faint outline of a gray dot on her heads-up display' s motion tracker . It winked of f, then appeared again. She blinked, then took a step back as the Major stepped up to the door , drawing his shotgun and tapping a button. The door split in two, opening with a hiss of depressurization, before the old Marine aimed his shotgun forward and into the darkness. He saw another trio of doors, one on their right, one dead ahead and one on the left.\n\"MT' s picking up movement dead ahead...\" Murmured the of ficer.\n\n\"... And Rads from the left on the scanner ,\" The Engineer reported. The Marines fanned on inside the hallway at the stern of the vessel, weapons at the ready , followed by the Engineers and the Doctor and her staf f.\n\"That' s the reactor , then...\" Murmured another Engineer .\n\"Benitez, Keller , Touma, you're taking guard duty...\" He ordered three of the twelve Marines in the room, \"Keep the engineers safe while they go down on this old bitch... Doc? W e're moving with you, on your mark. T orres, report to the Captain. T ell him we may have found the crew... Or what' s left of it.\n\"Sir,\" The soldiers chorused. The Doctor nodded, then stepped forward, toward the door to the rear . She paused at the door , turning to see the engineers seemingly having to force the door to the reactor open. She saw them put a specialized wedge in the airlocks thin seam, before sighing, turning away and putting a hand on the door . She felt the slight chill against her glove and murmured, \"This must be a cryogenics room...\"\nas she pressed a button. The Marines formed up with her , weapons at the ready , as the door slid apart, revealing the rearmost room of the ship. A massive area filled with technology , multiple computer towers in the back, glimmering with lights, green and red, against the rear wall, as well as a singular cryopod, a massive, bulky 'cof fin' with all the beauty of a brick. The Doctor and her escorting Marines paused, stunned... Beside the Cryopod, sitting down, was a young woman with dark-blue eyes and short, black hair. She had a seam running from one cheekbone, over the nose, to the other . Her skinseemed synthetic, almost porcelain-like, and the black suit she wore with a scarlet chestpiece resembled that of the SP ARTANs  to some degree. She gasped, looking upon the soldiers, then pushed herself to her feet from next to the cryopod. She seemed to be eyeing them all, suspicious, before the Doctor hummed and raised her hands. She greeted the girl, or Machine, whatever she was, with a wave, depolarizing her helmet' s visor . She pushed down the Marines' weapons and looked to the Major , who of fered her a mere nod. The other Marines also lowered their weapons. The humanoid machine took a moment to register a human face, then disbelief seemed to set in. Her eyes grew a hint wider , but her face remained eerily impassive. She blinked once, twice, then waved back to the Doctor , before letting out what the doctor could only surmise was a cough when she hunched over . The woman took one small step forward, before the Marine beside her put a hand on her shoulder . She looked back and said, \"It' s one of the two crew-members, Major . And she' s unarmed. Look at her .\"\n\"We don' t know what the hell she is, doc...\" Replied the Major through gritted teeth.\n\"She' s clearly made by humans, at the very least...\" Stone replied calmly , offering the Major a smile, then turning toward the seeming human machine and stating, \"Though I'd very much like to know what ONI was doing and if this was them...\"\nThe radiation counters spiked hard once, clicking rapidly in the ears of the explorers, before cutting of f. An Engineer breathed a sigh of relief and poked out from the Reactor room, stating, \"W e stabilized the damn thing! No thanks to the language barrier! Seriously , the German was hard enough to understand!\"\n\"Thank you, Chief Engineer...\" The doctor replied, then blinked. A migraine hit her like a truck, causing her to stumble. The Marines, who also seemed to have experienced this, caught her and lifted her back to her feet. She shook her head, took her helmet of f and murmured, \"Ow... That wasn' t good...\"\n\" Elster !\" A voice, muf fled, cried from the cryopod, more annoyed than afraid, \" Let me out\n!\"\nThe girl next to the cryopod hummed, then pointed to the keypad at the foot of the pod and asked, \"May I...?\" to which the Doctor nodded. The woman approached the pad and punched in its code. The Cryopod then peeled open, its many layers further moving away , revealing a young woman with bright white hair and dark-red eyes. She had a bandage on her cheek and wore a white sleeping gown. With wide eyes and a far more expressive face than 'Elster ', the young woman tried to stand to her feet, stunned by the new arrivals, then coughed and fell back into the pod. She swore to herself in German, then rubbed her behind. She and Elster were both stunned, however , to see the Doctor running up to her side. Giving her a scan, the doctor murmured, \"Just as I feared... Radiation poisoning and cancer cells... Hm... Should not be too hard to fix...\" and then looked to the girl, of fering a smile, \"Hello.\"\"Hi...\" The girl replied, still surprised, \"Y -You're...\"\n\"We're human,\" She nodded, \"I am Doctor Stone. The fine gentlemen with firearms at the door are the Marines that were escorting me aboard your vessel. W e received your distress call, or whatever that string of numbers was.\"\n\"... It... W as supposed to be a Status Report, back home...\" The girl stated. She coughed, then said, \"Who are you all... Y ou Eusan, like us?\"\n\"No,\" The Marine replied. The girl visibly paled, her skin bone-white, as opposed to the faint, pallid white it was before.\n\"... Empire...?\" The girl beside her asked, a sharp, focused and hostile undertone to her voice. Y et again, a negative answer via a shake of the head. Elster 's face relaxed, though she crossed her arms and asked, \"What are you, then...?\"\n\"We're the UNSC,\" Smiled the Doctor , \"We're your fellow humans.\"\nThe girl with white hair coughed again, a small droplet of blood staining her hand. The Doctor looked to her and said, \"W e shall deal with that. Stretcher -bearer , please...\" before motioning to one of her medical staf f. A man walked in with a folding stretcher , unfolded it and set it down, then moved to the other side. Elster put a hand on his shoulder and he looked back, \"What, y'wanna lift her?\"\nThe girl gave a nod, a hint of concern behind her eyes. The man lifted his hands in surrender , stating, \"Alright, big girl, she' s all yours...\"  as he backed of f. Elster nodded, probably in thanks, then walked up to the girl and gently lifted her out of the pod. The white-haired one offered her a soft smile. She then looked apologetically to the stretcher -bearer and said, \"Sorry... W e're... Both very attached to each-other .\"\n\"That' s fine...\" The Doctor chuckled. The Marines also let out a laugh as Elster , now under escort, carried the shy young woman out past them. The girl and Elster both looked to see the Engineers walking out of the reactor room, carrying their equipment. As the group descended out of the vessel, they were greeted by eager researchers and Marines that were uneased. They watched Elster descend with the injured woman she 'cared for', followed by the Doctor and the Engineers. Doctor Stone was fairly sure that their new arrivals were tantamount to a new 'First Contact scenario wherein Aliens were involved. Sure, they were human, or human-looking enough, when they came down to land, but that didn' t really mean much to her . She watched the young woman that had cancer , Miss Ariane Y eong, as per her own introduction, as she talked to Elster , a machine that acted, talked like and even seemed to be human enough to pass for one of their own. The Doctor had administered the medicine thatimmediately eliminated any risk of cancer from within the UNSC' s stocks, then simply let both Ariane and Elster talk.\n\"Where do you think we are?\" Elster inquired, looking around at the other people. Ariane shrugged, smiling, \"Don' t know , but... This is incredible, honestly . We were flying a Penrose mission and, now , we meet a bunch of alien humans... I mean, look at them. Their technology just let them cure my cancer like it was nothing!\"\n\"I agree, it is incredible...\" Elster said cautiously , \"However , we should be ready for anything...\"\n\"You're far too paranoid, Elster . C'mon, have some fun! W e literally just met aliens! And they saved our lives!\" Ariane replied, of fering her a smile. The Replika blushed, rolled her eyes, then sighed and leaned back into her own bed, looking at herself. She had been stripped of the armor in order for the doctors to be able to treat her for her own issues with cancer . How they figured the oxidant issue, however , was honestly surprisingly dumbfounding. They'd simply taken a sample of her blood, scanned it, ran tests and... W ell, they somehow reversed the over -oxidation by replacing the damaged oxidant cells within the stream. Such precision and technological capability told the girl they were a faction to be wary of, if they weren' t allied. Ariane then sighed, which caused Elster to look at her , worried. The girl shrugged and said,\n\"I almost for got we will probably have to call back home about this...\" before she paused, eyes widening, \"W ait, home!\"\n\"Now , you realize...?\" Elster hummed, allowing herself a small smile. She sighed, however , wiping it of f her face, before stating, \"Our people need us to find a new habitable world... What if running into these people might help us do just that?\"\n\"Let' s hope so,\" Ariane nodded. They heard the door to the medical bay open. A man and woman, both clad in bright white, clean-pressed uniforms stepped inside under the escort of a pair of Marines. The two girls looked at the pair , surprised, then Ariane waved and said,\n\"Hey...\"\n\"Evening, ladies. I'm captain T omas Richards, of the UNSC Frigate Black Bar on. \" Replied the man in uniform, \"Apologies, but we have some questions pertaining to you and your ship...\" and he eyed Elster . The Replika paused, unease, before nodding. Ariane also nodded, offering a more relaxed smile than her girlfriend. The man looked to his Executive Of ficer. She stepped up, \"I am Commander A va W eathers, UNSC Navy . We have a lot to talk about before we arrive within Reach, though I'm going to assume you also have some questions, ladies. W e will be doing as follows, for each question we ask and get an answer to, you will receive an answer back for a question of your own. Once we arrive in orbit above Reach, we'll talk about accommodations.\"\n\"That sounds good to us,\" Ariane replied, smiling softly . She paused, however , when she saw the stack of papers the woman pulled out of seeming thin air . Elster also blinked, looking toAriane as if to confirm that the stack of paper was real. The girl chuckled, worried, then nodded, before looking to the Commander . Ava hummed, eyeing the two suspiciously . She looked to the Captain who simply nodded, before beginning, \"So...\"Arrival\n\"... And the Eusan Nation, your country , broke free of the Empire through the Revolution, huh...?\" The Captain inquired while A va jotted everything down into her notebook. The two women gave nods. They'd told the full history of their people, of their worlds. From V ineta to Buyan, to Leng and Rotfront and the other multitude of small inhabited worlds within their solar system. It seemed like they'd never travelled out of it, weirdly enough, just that they'd fought a bloody Civil W ar there against an oppressive Empire. That bit matched the fact that their ship, the Penr ose-512 completely and utterly lacked any form of FTL System.\n\"That's about it, yeah...\" Ariane answered as she shifted into a seated position. The Captain hummed, looked to A va, who gave a nod, then back at the girls. Elster seemed tense, sneaking glances at the armed guards behind the man. They were holding their strange rifles by the straps, slung over their shoulders and pressed against their backs, instead of at the ready .\n\"Interesting,\" A va spoke, then asked, \"If we check the travel records aboard your ship...\"\n\"You'll find we are telling the truth. The ship has enough data on our home, too,\" Ariane replied, then scratched at a bandage on her arm. A va nodded, her momentary skepticism seemingly fading. The Captain himself sat there, pondering the fact that an entire new solar system was home to human soldiers and their machines of war , peace and construction like these Replikas. Elster spoke, \"If you wish to access the data, we can go to the ship now . Accessing the mainframe requires the permission of at least one of the two crewmembers of the Penrose project ship,\" as she turned and moved her stumpy legs of f her bed. She stood on them and was still a forehead taller than most of the people around. Calmly , she turned to Ariane and asked with the most heavy note of concern in her voice, \"W ill you be okay?\"\nThe white-haired beauty smiled at her Replika girlfriend and nodded, \"I'll be alright, Els. Doc said I'll be let out of here as soon as all checkups are done, after all.\"\nThe Captain stood up as well, nodding to Elster and saying, \"Don't worry . Both of you are safe here. The UNSC doesn't do harm to fellow humans unless absolutely necessary , especially nowadays ...\" murmuring the last part and noting the worry on Ariane's face. The girls had asked about where they were, who the UNSC was and what the hell was going on. He had tiptoed around the subject of the Human-Covenant W ar and simply assured her and Elster they were safe where they were, that their little W ar was far away . It wasn't. He knew that. Everyone did. The weight of the air on the ship told them both as much, even with all the friendly faux-smiles and the likes. It was just a matter of when  at this point. When would it come to Reach? And when would the Covenant decide to wipe them all out? He sighed, stated, \"W e'll tell you more when we are on Reach and you have your feet on solid ground, ladies. Just a day or two more at maximum speed...\" before motioning to Elster to lead the way .\"Thanks, captain...\" Ariane of fered him a kind-hearted smile. He smiled back, a bit melancholic, then nodded. Elster looked back to Ariane and smiled, too, before nodding and mouthing an 'I'll be right back' as she walked out with the UNSC forces. The young Bioresonant watched them depart and the door close behind them, before dropping back into her bed with a deep sigh, covering herself with a blanket. She murmured to herself with a smile, \" Gestalt aliens...  Wait till I tell Isa and Erika...\"\n... In the Hallways, Elster's feet clanged against the metal floor of the ship as she walked with the group. T ense as she was, the people around her were probably more surprised to learn about the fact that there were other humans stuck in a solar system. Elster had yet to wrap her head around the fact these people had managed to create Faster -Than-Light ships that could take them to new systems, new homes and new planets and resources in days, maybe weeks at most. It was nigh-incredible, considering what little the UNSC Captain had told them of their or ganization.\n'The Military and Exploratory Arm of the Unified Earth Government', he had called it. Science and army , mer ged into one all-powerful entity . Much like the People's Army and Navy got the good tech first, before the Civilian sector . PENROSE was a Military Project, so the ship had some of the best technological advances ever put on any sort of naval vessel, even exploratory . Going by the glimpses she was catching of the UNSC's technology , though, she felt the electronics on the Penrose were woefully underdeveloped. The UNSC technology seemed to heavily rely on 'touch-screen' technology , meaning a technology that did not require so many moving parts overall, just the ability to properly program the commands necessary on one of the screen's many 'touchable buttons' that flash on it. Less moving parts, but probably slightly more complicated, now that she thought about it. With a calm sigh, Elster continued to follow the crew all the way down to the Hangar elevator . Entering said elevator , the girl now saw the deck crews of the UNSC ship tending to the 512, several of them wearing full-on HAZMA T gear . Infantry guarded the place as well, lined up next to the ship, rifles drawn, just in case. They all stood at attention as the captain and his crew appeared. The man stopped one of the decontamination staf f and asked, \"What's the status of the ship?\"\n\"Sir, she's safe to enter now . Radiation levels have dropped down to acceptable,\" The woman reported, her voice sounding a hit robotic due to the microphone through which she spoke. Elster couldn't help but give the HAZMA T gear a once-over . Advanced, with a Heads-Up Display mounted in the oxygen mask that linked to a rear heavy-duty tank and definitely lead-lined, as well as armored and semi-powered. It was an exoskeleton lined with radiation resistant materials and with all the gear needed to calmly do one's job as if the Rads weren't even there. She sure wished they'd had some of those aboard. Maybe they could've greeted the Black Baron on communications if they had them. She sighed and squelched the thought. The UNSC had saved her and, more importantly , saved Ariane. Maybe they could help save the Eusan Nation from any threat, future or present, too, if they wished. Some of the looks she'd gotten when mentioning Eusan itself, though, were... W ell...The captain gave an approving nod to the decontamination crew , called out \"At ease,\" to the Marines after giving a lazy salute, then motioned to Elster to lead the way inside. The young Replika woman stepped into the hold of the ship that had been her and Ariane's home for several years at this time, then hummed. Snif fing the air , she felt no trace of any pathogens or dangers, nor did she feel the unnerving weight of the radiation she had felt before, when both her and Ariane were nearing their deaths. The Infantry flanked her as they moved forward into the ship's cockpit. Elster sat herself down, then noted the Marine beside her tensing. She raised her hands and said, \"Calm. I'm only doing what you asked me to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Not like the Penrose can do much more than maneuver with her thrusters...\" before she pulled out a key from her pocket. She leaned over toward the central command console as the Captain put a hand on the Marine's shoulder . The soldier looked back at the man, nodded and took a step back while Elster did her work. The woman popped open a panel on the console, which the gang now noticed eerily resembled the flight controls of 21st Century fighter aircraft, with both the LCD screens and everything. She slotted the key into a hole, tapped a few buttons as she hummed an old Soviet song, then pulled out a data drive from the panel after it popped out. It was a lar ge one, resembling something one would see in the early 21st Century computers. She lifted it up and extended it toward the captain. She spoke calmly , \"I've taken the liberty of removing any genuine State secrets... But this should give you a more detailed account of Eusan, AEON and us.\"\nThe Captain gingerly took the drive and handed it to one of their tech experts, then nodded,\n\"Thank you for your cooperation, miss Elster .\"\n\"Anything to keep Ariane safe...\" The girl murmured as she stood up. The Captain smiled at that comment, having been the sole person to overhear it. He let the troopers and docs lead Elster back to the medical bay , looking at the device in the hand of the T echs, then sighed and looked to A va. The Commander shrugged, saluted and excused herself to the bridge, leaving the man alone with a few of his staf f. He walked further into the ship, curious of the place's arrangements. He found the mess hall, the car go holds, even the topside airlock. It was an eerily familiar layout for an exploration ship, too. He even entered the reactor room, where techs were working on safely disassembling the device and removing the rods from within to dispose of them. It was an old fission 'reaktor', clearly . Stepping into the last room he hadn't checked, the man found the bedroom of the human officer. Ariane had lined the place with beautiful paintings, most of them resembling an eerily familiar one belonging to an old artist. An Island of the Dead, of sorts... Though the latest one, the one that seemed to have been painted just before the girls had come aboard, depicted something else entirely . A beautiful sea of stars above a red desert, a sole figure staring up at the sun beating down on the surface, while figures shaped like ships blotted some of the sky out. Huh... Curious, but alright.\"She's an artist, huh?\" Commented a Marine from behind him, lifting one of the paintings. She whistled and said, \"These are pretty fuckin' good, sir .\"\n\"Yeah,\" The man nodded, his mind thinking back to the repression of individuality within the Eusan Nation. He hummed, scratched his chin, then turned around and said, \"Let's move. Leave everything for ONI to deal with. T echs need to get onto decrypting and reading what's on the Drive Elster has given to us. From there, we'll figure out a course of action pertaining to Eusan.\"\n\"Yessir!\" Chorused the crew aboard. The Captain walked out and marched toward the elevator , aiming for the Bridge... Back in the medical bay , Elster entered the place and gasped. She watched as the doctor helped a certain someone stand to her feet, with Ariane's legs wobbling under her own weight. Ariane stumbled, hummed, then said, \"Guess the rads weakened my leg muscles a bit...\" before looking to the doctor and asking, \"Any magical treatment plans for this one, doctor Stone?\"\n\"Indeed,\" The doctor nodded, \"W e have medicine to help with this and other types of muscle atrophy . Please, sit back down...\" And she looked to elster , smiling, \"Y our girlfriend will probably want to talk to you.\" causing both girls to stammer and blush. W ith a short giggle representing her more teasing nature, the Doctor stepped away to the dispensary to retrieve the aforementioned medicine as Elster sat herself down on her bed.\n\"Hey ,\" She nodded to Ariane.\n\"Hey , Els,\" Ariane smiled, \"How are you holding up?\"\n\"Decently enough, I suppose...\" Elster sighed deeply , rubbed her face, then looked at her ,\n\"What about you? I saw you trying to stand up just now and...\"\n\"I'll be alright, Elster . Like I told ya, final checkups, then we're out and walking around together . I wanna see the rest of this ship,\" Ariane quipped, then leaned herself on her hands, against the bunk. She beamed at Elster , who sighed deeply , her shoulders sagging in relaxation. She smiled broadly , this time, before picking up the cup with water on it from the stand next to her bed and taking a sip. The doctor returned, lifted the medicine and showed it to the girls, then pulled out a sterile needle and a syringe. Ariane let out a shriek like a fucking monster and jumped into bed with Elster , holding onto her robo-lover like there was no tomorrow . Elster blinked, furrowed her brows and looked at Ariane like she was crazy . The trembling Bioresonant mess looked to Elster and said, \"I-I d don't like n-n-needles...\" with the shakiest voice in the world. Elster narrowed her lips, looking at the puppy-eyed girl in her arms with the most pure and wholesome thoughts in mind. She looked to the Doctor , who giggled, then shook her head and said, \"Let me get the pills, then...\" and walked back to the dispensary . Ariane visibly relaxed in Elster's arms and sighed,relieved. Elster looked to her with a raised brow . Ariane blushed, letting out a short, awkward giggle as she fully embraced the Replika. Elster rolled her eyes, then held the girl close as the doctor brought the pills. Come half a day later , Elster was walking hand-in-hand with Ariane(Who had gotten a uniform without any marks or colors so she doesn't get confused for staf f). Down the halls they treaded, passing by infantry and Naval Crewmen, some of whom smirked at the sight. Well, most actually smiled at them. The Marines were a bit more stoic, but otherwise friendly , too. They even gave the girls directions to reach the Mess Hall. Entering the place to grab a bite to eat for dinner before they'd go find their new accommodation aboard the UNSC warship, the girls were greeted with a room full of occupied or half-occupied tables, with a small buf fet and a few dispensers for food and drinks. Sat at one of the tables, alone was a middle-aged man with dark-brown hair , a strong jawline, pale skin and a black shirt, car go pants and military boots. His shirt had an emblem on the left side of his chest, displaying a burning comet that resembled a metallic egg, colored gold for the pod itself and red for the flames around it. On top of it, overlaid, were a scarlet skull with a knife through the top of the head and a banner below with four letters. The girls made them out as they approached the empty table.\n'O.D.S.T'\nThe man looked up and spoke, his voice smooth, calm, \"Hello, ladies? Can I help you?\"\n\"Hello,\" Elster greeted.\n\"Sorry for the bother , sir, but uh...\" Ariane chuckled awkwardly , \"Well, there's no other tables. Mind if we sit with?\" And the man furrowed his brows. He looked around. Noting that, in fact, yes, the entire area was occupied save for his table, he sighed and gave them a nod. Ariane smiled and sat herself down, before looking to Elster and saying, \"Bring me anything you're eating, Els.\"\n\"Sure,\" Elster nodded, then stepped of f, keeping an eye on the table. Ariane looked to the man ahead of her . He seemed to be in deep thought as he pushed his plastic fork through the mashed potatoes on his tray . \"Take it you're those newcomers from that alien ship I keep hearing the crew talk about, eh?\" The man inquired calmly , not taking his eyes of f his food until he filled the fork full of potatoes and looked up at Ariane, taking the full bite of food into his mouth.\n\"That'd be us, yeah. Hi... I'm Ariane Y eong, Gestalt of ficer of the Penr ose-512. That's my assistant Engineer Replika, Elster ,\" She jabbed a thumb toward the taller girl as she sat herself in line to get the food, holding a tray in each hand. The man hummed, eyed Elster and nodded, before going back to his own tray , eyes locked on the food. Ariane hummed, blinked and found the silence immediately awkward, considering everything. She chose to break it,\n\"What's your name?\"He hummed, then said nonchalantly , \"Buck. Gunnery Ser geant Edward Buck,\" and looked at her, \"I'm an ODST . Orbital Drop Shock T roopers.\"\n\"Ooh, nice,\" She said, slightly confused, \"What do ODST s do...?\"\n\"Well, to put it bluntly? It's in the name,\" Buck slightly smirked, \"W e drop from orbit in thinly-armored egg-shaped metal pods, right on top of the enemy .\" And he plucked up a slice of white bread, biting down into it and chewing it for a moment to let the girl's sudden expression of both awe and clear -cut, deep fear subside. He then added, further surprising stunned girl with his nonchalance, \"Feet First into Hell's our Motto.\"\n\"... That's far too hardcore for me, Sar ge,\" The girl quipped, then smiled brightly .\n\"Well, ya ain't wrong. W e got a lot of washouts in the first few weeks. T raining's no cakewalk either ...\" He quipped, then hummed and said, \"Hey , quick question, Y eong. It true, what I'm hearing about your pal, Elster? She a robot of some kind?\" pointing with his fork toward Elster as she asked for various types of foodstuf fs from the lady cook serving the food.\n\"Yeah. T echnically a biomechanical being, a Replika. They're meant to be nigh-similar copies to humans, but fulfill certain roles,\" She answered, interlocking her fingers on the table. Buck whistled, then snorted and looked over , watching as the being balanced on what looked like really weirdly-made stilts or peg legs march up to them with all the balance of a ballerina. She set Ariane's tray , which was chock full of meats and mashed potatoes, down, then sat herself with her own food in front of her . Hers was a bit more bland, some bread, a single type of meat and a single, lar ge spoonful of potatoes. Ariane hugged her and Elster , usually blank-faced, smiled. Buck smiled, too, a hint melancholic, \"Oh, I see, now ... Heh. My bad.\"\n\"Huh?\" Both girls looked to him, confused. He shrugged.\n\"Nothing, nothing...\" He sighed and picked up his tray , then stood up. \"I'll let you gals enjoy your time together . I got something to prep for the arrival back on Reach. See you.\" And he stepped of f, leaving his half-empty tray at the entrance. The two women looked to one another , then shrugged and went to eat their dinners. Come another twelve hours after finding their small-time bunk on the ship, the girls were awoken. The Commander was taking them to the bridge, now . Apparently , the UNSC wanted them to see the new planet they were going toward, courtesy of the data the captain had read pertaining to the Penrose Program's mission. Entering the bridge, the two girls were stunned to find it a hive of activity . Crewmen moved from station to station, shipboard data was playing across multiple holographic screens and the military chatter of the crews was audible across the deck. The captain sat in the middle of the room, staring from behind the Helmsman at what came ahead. The two girls had noticed only the man and his subordinates up to now . Looking forward, however , the girls peered through the glass that separated them from the void ahead and both stared, paling, at the image before them. Communications spoke, \"This is Black Baron, approaching Anchor Niner for docking procedures, requesting confirmation offollowing code V ictor Papa Niner Niner Fourteen T ango Dash Oscar November India dash Sierra Echo Charlie Three. Priority is immediate for delivery of assets acquired during out system patrol.\"\nThe confirmation came as the ship approached. Ahead, the two girls gazed upon the might of the UNSC Navy ... Hundreds, or perhaps over a thousand vessels of various sizes flew above the massive blue orb below them. Ranging from Frigates the same size as the Baron, to vessels damn near ten to twenty times the size, the fleet of black ships amassed at numerous staging areas and orbital dry-dock stations that were also armed to the teeth, Glimmering in the sun of this new system, the biggest ships of the fleet flew overhead, fighter -craft the size of the Penr ose flying in and out of their massive hangars. Orbital Platforms that resembled swords also hanged in high geosynchronous orbit above the planet, their cannons and defense pickets brightly shining in the sun of Epsilon Eridani. T wo large delta-wing-shaped fighters with long tails, black as the ships they came from, buzzed by the UNSC Frigate's bridge before banking left together and moving outward, just around the perimeter of the UNSC Station they were docking to.\n\"My God...\" Ariane murmured, awed. She wore a smile, though it was a mix of joy and fear . Meanwhile, Elster's mouth was agape, open wide as she stared at the vessels flying around them. She took Ariane's hand out of instinct and gently squeezed it, before the Captain and Commander turned to her . The man grinned and nodded, turning with his arms crossed to his chest.\n\"Welcome to Reach. Humanity's Fortress.\" He spoke proudly , looking straight at the two young women, \"Also my birth planet.\"\n\"And say hello to the might of the UNSC's Navy ...\" A va nodded, though she remained impassive. She spoke, \"Y ou will be briefed of the situation better by the handlers coming to retrieve you from the Starport in New Alexandria. W e will stay in orbit, rejoin the fleet. This is presumably going to be the last time we see each-other , ladies. Have a safe trip to the surface.\"\n\"Thanks, commander , captain...\" Ariane nodded, then smiled. She squeezed Elster's hand, looked at the distracted girl, chuckled, then turned back to the UNSC of ficers, speaking softly , \"I think you've saved our lives... And not just... When you pulled us out of that mess. I still can't figure out how we drifted to a whole new system, but I'll take it over a slow death due to radiation. Thank you all so much ...\"\n\"Don't mention it, miss Y eong,\" The Captain nodded, then added warmly , \"It's what we do. Farewell.\"\n\"Farewell,\" The two women gave them nods... And Ariane saluted. Elster followed suit out of courtesy for her girlfriend, only to be surprised by the two UNSC staf f members returning the gesture. The two women were led out by a pair of Marines, down the halls and toward the airlock. Marching through an umbilical that had windows as thick as the Penrose's innermost bulkheads, the girls stared with awe at the ships passing above and around them, then turnedback to look upon the UNSC Frigate that was their home for the past day or two. They also saw tugs gently removing the Penr ose from the Baron's hangar , before taking it toward one of the Station's hangars for checkup. In the busy station, four more guards met them. These ones wore black armors and face masks and carried suppressed firearms. They greeted the ladies, one of them taking of f her mask. A blonde-haired woman with a headset greeted them with a nod, stating, \"Hello, ladies. I am Captain Dare. I and my men are your escort for the trip down to Reach. If you'll follow me quickly to the hangar , please...\"\nThe girls followed, of course. Not a good point to piss of f the black-wearing Secret-Police Looking team...Halsey As the terrifyingly-beautiful technological marvel that was an orbital elevator of the three present near the city they were going to, Ariane could not help herself, staring around at the majestic views of the worlds around them, the great big system of Epsilon Eridani and the world of Reach below them, all teeming with human life, military and civilian alike. It was beautiful. Elster , meanwhile, remained on guard, eyeing the soldiers sat across from her . None of them exchanged a word or had so much as shifted their position once during the descent. It wasn't a non-recommended or forbidden thing to do aboard a Space Elevator , as it seemed. Movement while standing was prohibited during both descent and ascent, understandably . Who knew how a human body handled that many G-Forces?\nElster remained tense. She had left her toolset on the Penr ose, so she hoped she was gonna get her and Ariane's stuf f back ASAP . Personal ef fects of that type were nothing if not important to the two of them. That stuf f had been aboard with them since the earliest cycles of their deployment on board that rusty old hunk of junk that damn near killed them. She looked over to Ariane, who also gazed back at her . The Replika girl simply smiled at her girlfriend, who suddenly wore a healthy blush as she smiled back. The group felt the vehicle's descent begin to slow after a few minutes. Looking out of one of the many passenger windows, the two girls were awed to see it:The city below , the skyline filled to the brim with beautiful glass-and-steel skyscrapers resembling the very futuristic buildings one would find in old, banned comic books from the olden days. Ariane gasped, awed, then beamed, while Elster , despite her awe, focused more on the black-clad soldiers keeping an eye on the two of them. As the elevator reached the bottom, the crews detached their safety belts and harnesses and all stood up. Dare motioned to the girls to follow them of f and led them onto the tarmac of the place. A singular transport with four engines waited for them, painted military green. Guarding it was another soldier in black, who saluted Dare the moment she walked up to him. Saluting back, the woman hummed and climbed aboard. The two Eusan citizens followed suit, clambering onto the vehicle. The sight of the skyline vanished behind thickly-armored walls of the vehicle. They sat themselves face-to-face with Dare and her squad once again, while the pilot up front was doing the final checks for the vehicle, then sat down as the rear hatch closed. Elster kept staring at the soldiers, who stared right back without even flinching. She hummed, took Ariane's hand in hers, then leaned back into the padded crash seat of the aircraft. Ariane blushed heartily , garnering a few chuckles out of the soldiery in front of her , then hummed as a pit formed in her stomach. The aircraft took of f, direction:The city of New Alexandria. Ariane hummed, then looked to Dare and started, \"Hey , captain?\" as she tightened her grip around Elster's hand. The ONI of ficer turned toward her , brow raisedbehind the strange narrow-visored helmet she wore, before Ariane continued, \"Where're we going?\"\n\"Currently , ONI HQ in New Alexandria. Afterward? W ell, command decides, though one of our scientists has been incredibly vocal in getting both of you to another installation ASAP after reading the reports from your questioning,\" Dare replied professionally , causing both the girls a moment of distress. She hummed, looked toward the cockpit, then back at the two girls and added, \"Relax. Doctor Halsey just wants to talk. So do the rest of us. I get being suspicious, though.\"\n\"Appreciate the fact you understand, ma'am,\" Ariane nodded, before feeling the aircraft begin its deceleration. She looked through the rear door of the cockpit and gasped. She murmured,\n\"Wait, we're already in the city itself?! How fast did we just...?\" as she saw an approaching tower coming ever -closer to the transport aircraft. A few of the soldiers aboard smirked and the pilot and co-pilot both gave thumbs up to the awed Bioresonant Gestalt.\n\"Fast enough. The Space Elevators aren't far from NA...\" Dare noted, then hummed. She blinked, remembered something, then turned to ask, \"Did... Y ou two happen to see someone aboard the Black Bar on? ODST , brown hair , looks like an absolute dork...?\" her voice more subdued. Ariane and Elster both looked to her and the woman shook her head, \"Nevermind... No time. W e're landing. Pack your kit and let's move, ladies.\"\nAriane chuckled, murmuring, \"Oh, I could feel something when she started talking about Sergeant Buck...\" before undoing her Harness and standing up next to Elster . The Replika let out a short chuckle, then led the girl of f the transport as the rear hatch opened. The Marines providing them escort descended first, however , onto the retracting landing platform. The two women jumped of f the vehicle and onto the platform, then gasped as they looked out. Below them, there was a thick fog layer obstructing the view below . Around them, skyscrapers as tall as the one they were on rose, various aircraft moving to and fro. Police aircraft, civilian leisure stuf f and even some military like the one they'd come in with.\n\"Woah...\" Ariane murmured, tightening her grip on Elster's hand. The Replika hummed and looked at her girlfriend, then at Dare and her team. The intelligence of ficer was probably smiling behind her helmet, going by the wrinkles Elster barely noticed behind the golden slit visor on her strangely angular helmet. She hummed, squeezed Ariane's hand and smiled at her. The white-haired beauty beamed back, \"It's beautiful... Isn't it?\"\nElster gazed out toward the wider cityscape as she thought for a moment on how to best answer . While, yes, it was beautiful, it didn't beat a certain someone beside her . She decided to take a play out of the romances she saw in several of their old movies, stating, \"Not quite as beautiful as you...\" and that elicited the funniest possible response out of Ariane. The girl's pallid face grew a shade of red about as close to her eye color as it got and one could swear they could see steam coming out of the Bioresonant's ears, not to mention the screech like a squishy children's toy coming out of her mouth. Elster smiled at her adorable reaction, then nuzzled her and kissed her forehead.\"... That had to be the most adorable fucking thing I've ever seen...\" Commented a female soldier from next to Dare. The entire crew laughed, while Ariane buried her face in Elster's shoulder to hide her embarrassment, letting out several noises that were akin to words, but with a higher -pitched voice, muf fled by the frame of her Replika girlfriend. Elster wrapped an arm around the girl and hummed, smiling.\n\"Sister , I wish I had something like that,\" Another soldier quipped, shifting on his feet as the platform finally entered the tower's hangar . Dare waved to Elster and once more showed them to follow , with the Replika nodding calmly and nudging Ariane. The two women then followed their escorts of f the Platform, to the sight of several dozen employees staring at them from multiple levels of the tower . As they got of f and the pilots exited the aircraft, the vehicle was shifted with its platform onto a layered parking area of sorts. Entering a lobby and atrium area, the girls were once again gazed upon by the locals. Though, for a moment only , as most then turned back to their business. Dare showed the rest of the soldiers to scatter , pulled out a card as the troopers moved to the armory in a column, then slid said card on a door access panel. One of the three doors ahead opened, revealing a tubular elevator with a glass exterior and metal floors. The trio then walked inside, with Dare sighing and taking of f her helmet. The blonde-haired woman underneath the helmet revealed herself to be one with a strong-ish jawline, but still some features of beauty . She turned to the girls and said, \"Y ou'll get asked a few more in detail questions by the ONI agents present in the room I'm taking you two to. They've read the reports beamed over by the Captain of the Black Mark and have already decrypted the information copied from your ship's Data Drive, so they'll want it confirmed by the acting Gestalt of ficer aboard.\"\n\"Gotcha,\" Ariane nodded, while Elster seemed to slightly tense up. Ariane hummed, then asked, \"What about our ship?\"\n\"She's been sent of f to Mars for a verification in the Reyes-McLee shipyards. Y'know , proper patching-up and all...\" The woman shrugged, \"All your personal belongings will be returned to you once you are either transferred to Earth or ... Well, if you want, given positions within the UNSC. W e need all the help we can get, especially from fellow humans who can do what you do.\"\nAriane hummed, looked to Elster and said, \"W e were hoping to send a ping back to home about us being okay ...\"\n\"That's already being worked on, too. A transmit system to attempt to make contact with the Eusan Nation is being currently prepared here on Reach,\" The woman replied, shifting casually from one foot to the other to keep herself busy . The Bioresonant smiled at the news, then elbowed Elster gently in her shoulder . Replika girl nodded approvingly , moving her hands behind her back. Dare raised her hands and said, \"I can't promise it'll work, but...\"\n\"We get it,\" Ariane nodded, smiling, \"Thank you all for ... Doing so much.\"\n\"Hey , we're all humans,\" Dare replied as the elevator descended to the bottom-most floor of the place. The door slid open and Dare motioned to them to go, \"I'll be going back with myteam. W e're investigating something in another part of Reach. Y ou two ladies take care of yourselves.\"\n\"Thank you, captain,\" Ariane replied, smiling, even with the troubling weight of the place they were in pressing on her shoulders. She and Elster stepped out to the sight of another agent of ONI, this one clad in a black jumpsuit. She motioned for them to follow farther down the hallway ahead as the elevator dinged, the door closed and it began to climb back up to the top. The two Eusan nationals followed the ONI agent down the hall and to the right at a T-intersection. The woman pulled a card out of her pocket, slid it against a scanner and a door to the right slid open. The two entered the place, finding it to be a room with a couple of recessed LED lights, a table and a couch in the middle.\n\"Please, take a seat, ladies. Chief Hanlon will be here in a minute to talk to you both...\" The ONI agent stated. The two complied and, seeing that, she left, the door closing behind her . Ariane looked around, a bit surprised at the sight of the place, while Elster was seemingly already figuring out avenues of escape. Ariane couldn't exactly tell what was going on in the mind of her girlfriend. She just knew that the situation called for calm and cooperation with the UNSC for now .\n\"It's alright, Els,\" Ariane said, \"W e'll be fine.\"\n\"I know ,\" The Replika noted, then looked at the camera in the top-right corner . Considering the red light, it was on. Understandably . Ariane also noticed the cam. She smiled and waved, then leaned toward Elster and whispered as quietly as she could, \"Feels like the Protektors' of fice,\" which got Elster even more tense than prior . The worst part was that Ariane was not wrong by any metric. It was pretty much just like that. That was what worried the LSTR unit right now . What would this place, a supposedly 'free' state, need a secret police for?\nShe paused as the door opened, noting several clicks in rapid succession. Then, in walked a redhead with short hair . The man's piercing, ice-cold blue eyes locked onto Elster and Ariane and the jet-black pistol in the black leather holster on his belt was worrying. Still, the man hummed, gauged them for a moment and gave a calm nod, before greeting, \"Good afternoon, ladies,\" his voice smooth, friendly , \"I'm Chief Edward Hanlon, UNSC Of fice of Naval Intelligence, Section Three.\"\nHe pulled out a strange tablet from his pocket and thumbed it as he sat himself down across from them, \"I'm going to presume you two are miss Ariane Y eong and LSTR Unit 512, belonging to the newly-recovered scout ship of a same numbered designation. Having read the reports, as much of the decrypted database of your ship as I could and the questionnaire given unto you by the crew of the frigate that recovered you, I have to say ... A lot of this seems nigh-unbelievable.\"\n\"And yet it's the truth,\" Ariane replied calmly . The man shrugged and nodded, \"I'm well aware, miss Y eong. The simple fact of your presence here is a decent confirmation. Still, the fact that there's a human system as-of-yet undiscovered by the UNSC is both tantalizing and terrifying news. W e're not here to discussthis particular issue. I and my employers are more interested in the issues pertaining to what is called 'Bioresonance' in multiple of the shipboard logs and reports... Not to mention the data on the LSTR Unit is also fairly important.\"\nAriane frowned, then stated bluntly , \"Elster's not just a machine. Y ou know that, right...?\"\n\"We have sentient rights, miss Y eong, so, yes, we know miss 'Elster', as you call her , is more than just a machine,\" Hanlon replied impassively , his face a stone mask that was unreadable to either of the girls. He kept re-reading something on the tablet he held, before stating,\n\"However , that doesn't mean we can't be curious about her kind. Replikas, that is.\"\n\"... I guess that's fair ...\" Ariane nodded, uneasy . She took Elster's hand under the table and the Engineer Replika squeezed it gently , trying to calm her down. The man continued reading whatever he was reading, before setting the tablet down and grabbing one of the two carafes of water and a glass and pouring himself a drink. He hummed, took a sip to water his throat and looked forward once more.\n\"Similarly , we're interested in what little we could read about your powers, miss Y eong, though we won't do anything... Out of pocket to learn what we want.\" He stated, though that didn't inspire a lot of confidence in either girl, both feeling the oppressive air in the room weighing heavily down upon them. Swirling the water in the glass slowly , he continued, \"I do have a few more questions I'd like to ask you before you are both sent from here to another facility , if you don't mind answering. Provided you do, we can provide you good accommodations for the duration of your stay . Maybe even a fast-track to UEG Citizenship, if the Eusan don't mind the duality .\"\nAriane blinked, looked forward and was about to speak, but Elster cut her of f, stating, \"W e don't know the views of the Nation in regards to dual citizenship as you are proposing it, Chief Hanlon. W e can report back and ask our people once the relay we heard about is calibrated and linked,\" as she eyed the Secret Policeman. Best not to answer anything before they were sure they'd get what they needed.\n\"Understood,\" Hanlon didn't even flinch, \"If you don't mind the questionnaire, then? W e can offer asylum at the very least after it.\"\n\"Please,\" Ariane nodded, then squeezed Elster's hand. Elster felt her mind ping for a moment, before feeling some of the tension in her body leave. She sighed deeply , noting that Ariane had probably used a bit of her Bioresonant powers to relax her . A mild, easy and weird use of such powers, but it was good Ariane remembered she still had them. Hanlon seemed to have noted Elster relaxing, seeing as he hummed. Calmly , the man added, \"V ery well, let's begin...\" and he tapped a button on his tablet,\n\"SITREP-001, ONI SEC-3, Chief Hanlon, UNSC ID-551212-1-EH, communique Code Azure Encryption. Case PENROSE FIVE-ONE-TWO, recovered individuals, Exploration Ship Of ficer Ariane Y eong and LSTR-512 Maintenance Unit, called 'Elster' by of ficer Y eong, henceforth will be referred to as such during interview . Interview Number Oh-oh-T wo, date, late 20th of July 2552, standard Military Calendar . We may begin. Of ficer Ariane Y eong.\"\n\"Yes, sir ,\" The girl now tensed, looking at the man.\"First question is to be addressed to you.\" The man explained with a cold, calm voice as he looked over the questions on his tablet. He added, \"As of ficer of the Exploration Ship Penr ose-512, your answers will be taken most carefully under scrutiny and will be judged with utmost care by the UNSC, Of fice of Naval Intelligence and the UEG at lar ge. Please answer as truthfully as possible so that we may all go home with a better understanding of you, the people of Eusan and what we may confront when entering your Solar System, should we ever go there. Understood?\"\n\"Clear as day , sir.\" Ariane replied tersely , though she tried to remain friendly .\n\"Very good.\" Hanlon of fered a nod. He looked at his tablet, thumbed it and scrolled down to the first question. Looking up at Ariane and maintaining eye contact with the Gestalt Officer/Bioresonant, the man asked with as calm a voice as he could, \"Then, the database we were given by your Engineer , Elster , denotes the existence of a system-nation known as the Eusan Nation, is that correct?\"\nAriane replied, \"Y es, that's our home.\" As she tugged at the collar of her UNSC-given uniform. Elster herself seemed to grow tense once more as she scanned the room, part of her old instincts kicking in, as it seemed. She didn't even know she had the survival skills or training to look for a way out. She also noted the wall to their right was, in fact, a one-way mirror . There were more people listening to them than just Hanlon or the recording device on his strange tablet.\n\"I see. And the Eusan Nation, as per both the logs and the interview undertaken aboard the UNSC FFG-960 Black Bar on, the nation was born out of a revolutionary action against a supposed system-wide Empire that held many people, both Humans, or Gestalt, as they are referred in the Database, as well as Replikas such as Engineer Elster herself, under its thrall.\"\nThe man hummed, then chewed on his thoughts for a moment and asked, \"Is that correct?\"\n\"Yes.\" Ariane nodded. He continued, \"And the Empire and Eusan are still engaged in what can best be described as a Civil W ar over the System itself, yes?\"\n\"Yes.\" Ariane nodded again.\n\"Understood.\" The man hummed, then continued with a professional tone, \"Denoting the threat that war may pose to any possible arriving staf f that would attempt a diplomatic approach, ONI wishes to know if we should consider the Eusan People's Army , Navy and Air Force as possible threats. The AEON exploration ship you came here with is currently , as I am sure you are aware, under going assessment as it travels to Mars. Should we expect a hostile response from your people?\"\n\"I hope not, honestly .\" The Bioresonant stated meekly , before looking the man in the eyes,\n\"The Eusan Nation just wanted all of us Gestalts to be free, same for our comrades, the Replikas. Sure, their methods are a bit... Inhibiting, but... At least I'd hope they'd see the logic in allowing someone as strong as the UNSC and UEG, who seem to own multiple Solar Systems, to help us in being rid of the Empire. W e've made a lot of sacrifices for the W ar Effort...\"Inhibiting? The man made a mental note to rummage through the files on Eusan once more after they released these girls, continuing with the questionnaire by simply adding the clarification, \"Understood, but I was more asking if we should be worried about the armaments your people bear . They must be the same as the Empire's. If you could tell us anything you know ...?\"\n\"Oh, that? W ell...\" Ariane blushed, a little embarrassed. She chuckled awkwardly and scratched her cheek, then replied semi-confidently , \"I don't think you folks should be worried, honestly ...\" All while Elster was trying to figure out what they wanted from this. She hummed as Ariane added, \"From what I've seen aboard UNSC ships, you guys have the number advantage, though I haven't seen your guns and stuf f in play , so I can't make an accurate deduction.\"\n\"Mm...\" The man sighed deeply , seemingly a little disappointed in the reveal. He continued,\n\"I see. V ery well. Onto the next question...\" Then he squinted and read, \"Bioresonance. Bioresonance is a supposedly less-understood property various Gestalts such as yourself, plus various Replikas can manifest. A very powerful ability , one might even say something akin to the powers of a god. Is it real and can it do the listed items within the database, such as...\" He looked at the list, \"Klimaforming, world shaping and telekinesis, not to mention a few other abilities that seem out of the realm of fantasy?\"\n\"Oh, Bioresonance is real, yeah.\" Ariane grinned proudly , \"I mean, here, look...\" and she focused hard on the water carafe on their side of the table, gently lifting it up without touching it and pouring it into a glass. Elster narrowed her lips at the sight, wondering just how in-trouble this was gonna get them. Ariane, however , continued her work proudly . She smiled, set the carafe down and picked up the glass with her hands, taking a sip. The man looked back to make sure the Camera was still working and Elster finally spotted the small com bead in his ear . He hummed, then nodded and stated, \"I see...\" as he jotted down a few notes on Bioresonance. Ariane looked to the concerned Elster and used her Bioresonance to calm her down again. Elster sighed deeply , rubbed her temples and took Ariane's hand. This was gonna be a weird day . Ariane blinked, hummed, then smiled and remembered, adding, \"And yes, we use it to Klimaform new planets for human habitation. It's a draining process, but I've practiced a lot for the Penrose program to be able to do it. Still takes a few days...\" as she took another sip of water and sloshed it around in her mouth a bit, watering bits that were drying out due to the talking.\n\"Days .\" The man blanked for a moment, eyes shooting wide open before he corrected himself and put his mask back on, so to speak. He stated rather bluntly , \"Of ficer Y eong, we have Terraforming technology akin to this and for us it takes years  to get a planet to any acceptable level of habitability .\" Surprising both Ariane and Elster . They had technology to T erraform stuff? Huh, talk about useful...\n\"... Okay , maybe weeks...?\" Ariane replied meekly ... Elster squeezed her hand to reassure her .\n\"I see...\" He cast a sideways glance at the one-way mirror to the side, before looking both of them in the eye and replying with some professionalism, \"Duly noted. A couple morequestions for you before we move on to miss Elster . Do you understand the fact that the UNSC and UEG seek to of fer you and your compatriot asylum here until we can make contact with your people, but that this comes at a cost? Y ou do know we are currently at war , yes?\"\n\"Yeah. The ship crew told us a bit about your war , but said it was on some faraway worlds of yours...\" Ari nodded, while Elster tensed. Ariane asked hopefully , Right?\"\nElster noted the man's hesitation night immediately . Still, he answered them with the same thing the crew had said, \"... Y es...\" before switching subjects rather quickly . Something even Ariane picked up on, considering the fact she elbowed Elster . The man said, \"Moving on, do you also understand that the UNSC and ONI may seek to learn about your powers, to see if we cannot cultivate them for our own defense?\"\n\"Yeah...?\" The girl nodded, calm and understanding, while Elster remained tense as a fucking wire being tugged at on both sides. Continuous attempts by her beloved to soothe her worked every once in a while, but Ariane was more focused on answering questions that felt like violations of the State Secrets of Eusan. Still, Elster could only bite down on her worries for now and let Ariane speak. And speak, Ariane did. \"I mean, it'd probably bring you on even footing with the Empire and our Nation, at least... Oh, yeah, right, you guys seem far more advanced tech-wise than us, so...\"\n\"Mm. W ould you be okay with us allowing some of our doctors to do some tests? Non invasive, of course, so they can learn about it?\" The man questioned, calmly . It was good to know that they were probably more advanced technologically than both sides of a system side Civil W ar. Still, the uneasiness of the Replika grew noticeable to the ONI agent's trained eyes. She seemed to be casting continuous glances at her girlfriend. Ariane shrugged, though, careless, then replied unsurely , \"... If it gets us a place to stay until we can contact home, sure, I guess...?\"\n\"Ariane.\" Elster whispered, her voice stern, hard as stone, as she gently tugged at Ariane's hand. Ariane was surprised by the gesture, looking at her with wide eyes. Elster , however , seemed dead serious about this, enough so that Ariane soon realized that she had gone with the flow and calmly answered questions that could easily damn both of'em if Eusan ever learned about it. Not only that, but she agreed to be a guinea pig for them... Eh.\n\"It's fine, Els... They're talking about diplomatic missions, not a war .\" The girl whispered back, caressing Elster's shoulder with her free hand, then cupping her chin with said hand. The Replika paused for a moment, blinked and thought about the process ahead of them. Would Eusan accept that as an explanation? W ould they think the two of them traitors?\nWould their people besmirch them and hate them...? Or would they be hailed as heroes for bringing an army to the System to end the Civil W ar? Elster did not know the answer . Nobody truly knew the future. Alas...\n\"... Right...\" She relented, shoulders sagging as she loosened the tension in the joints and bowed her head, leaning into Ariane's hand. The Bioresonant beamed and pecked the girl on the cheek, which got a blush out of the Replika, both almost for getting they're still in the presence of someone, or a bunch of someones, going by the one-way mirror and the camera.The of ficer cleared his throat, taking their attention back to the matter at hand and getting both of them to go tomato-faced. He blinked, tapped his tablet to turn it back on, then continued, \"Onto you, then, Engineer Elster . You are a Replika, right?\" eyeing Elster . The girl paused for a second, to register the fact that she'd finally been addressed by him. A short hum escaped her lips as she decided to speak normally .\n\"Yes.\" She nodded, without hesitation.\n\"Anything you can tell us about yourself or any supposed fellow Replikas?\" He inquired, already jotting down notes on her behavior .\n\"Nothing you probably haven't learned from our logs already .\" She shook her head and crossed her arms. That was something they could've easily gleaned out of the database and both of them knew it. He was just testing her to see something, she assumed.\n\"I see...\" The man hummed and rubbed his eyes, before setting the tablet down and closing the window . There was just that question. W as he planning on winging it? It didn't matter . He added calmly , \"Then I suppose there's nothing we could ask you beside if you would be interested to earn a living alongside miss Y eong while you wait for a return trip home?\"\n\"... How?\" Elster blinked, surprised. That caught her of f-guard. The man opened his tablet and opened another window , then turned it toward Elster and Ariane. T wo documents to sign. A Non-Disclosure Agreement for Ariane that included all the info necessary on what work was gonna be done on her , as well as a 'binding work contract'\nfor Elster , stipulating even the amount of money she'd hearn. The man stated, \"Learning to repair UNSC equipment. Our W ar Ef fort is straining us, even with it being...\" And he hesitated again, as if the supposed lie tasted bitter . Yet, he still added, \"Distant... So we need capable hands for everything. Engineers and scientists especially .\"\n\"... Okay . If it means I can stay with Ariane while the tests are being done.\" Elster had taken a second to think. She thumbed her signature onto the tablet and was surprised to see that it... Actually confirmed it. Huh, colored impressed she was, the technology necessary for touchscreens being something beyond awe-inspiring to both her and Ariane for some reason.\n\"We'll do our best to keep you two together , miss Elster .\" The man replied. This one was with little hesitation. Rather quite direct and straightforward, in fact. Elster was glad they got that much, at least...\n\"That's all I'm asking...\" She stated, then pulled her lover close and said with steel in her gaze, \"I only care about her .\"\n\"Sweet, if a little selfish, but very well...\" The man sighed and stood up, \"That concludes our interview . We will provide asylum request forms within a few minutes of me departing to file my report, ladies. If you need anything, just wave to the camera and one of my staf f will come assist you. W e will also let you know within the allotted time to what facility you will be travelling for the work. Farewell.\"\nThe two girls looked at each-other ...Aboard the Pelican that headed the route to their new home, the girls, now asylum seekers within UEG Space, were sat together . Across from them was a pair of UNSC Marines that were also being transferred to this place, called 'CASTLE Base' by the UNSC. It was apparently an ONI Base deep within a mountain range on Reach. Menachite Mountain it was called, if Elster remembered correctly .\n\"Elster?\" Ariane started, whispering and taking the Replika out of her thoughts before she got any deeper into a sort of spiral. She looked to her lover , then raised a brow , to which Ariane spoke, \"Do you think I was a bit too forthcoming with information? Because I just... Realized when we were boarding the gunship, I talked like a parrot, just jabbering on about everything... Think we're in danger?\"\nThe fact that Ariane realized it on her own was not surprising. Dear miss Y eong was the smartest Gestalt Elster had met in her admittedly-short life since coming out of the factory . Alas, she could only admit that, \"Y es... Maybe a bit too much. But do you trust them? The UNSC, I mean? That they only want to interact with our people?\" because she knew that spouting that much stuf f was tantamount to treason. At the same time, if they brought forth Allies to help their Nation beat the Empire, then they'd be hailed as heroes. Eitherway , it was a gamble that was nowhere near close to 50/50\nodds in Elster's eyes. She was not a betting woman, though, so she could've been wrong. Ariane sighed, then looked to her and said, \"Sorry ... Maybe we should've just... Shut up...\"\n\"We'd probably be in one of their prisons right now .\" Elster replied, squeezing her hand. The girls hummed and looked toward the Marines. T wo of them had fallen asleep on the third's shoulders. And the poor woman was looking mighty tired of their shit. She tipped her cap at them, arranging her rosary around her neck. Oddly , she seemed to bear similar features to someone Ariane knew . The Marine woman spoke, \"Y ou been staring for a hot second, kids. Y ou good?\"\n\"Just wondering,\" Ariane, \"Who're you?\"\n\"Sergeant Zhao Heng Lopez. Call me Lopez or Sar ge,\" She stated bluntly , \"Not a lot to talk about with me, you two. I'm just here to get you to that weird old lady , Doctor Halsey ... Then I'm back aboard the Red Horse  with these two chucklenuts asleep on my shoulder ,\" and she shifted uneasily , before barking, \"Benti, Cranker , wake the hell up!\" which awoke the two other Marines, one of whom was wearing white armor . Ariane chuckled, while Elster shook her head. The vehicle touched down on the side of a mountain face, slowly drifting inside the maw of the mountain itself. The Marines disembarked, with Lopez giving one motion of the hand. The two other Marines held guard next to the vehicle as she marched inside. The woman murmured, \"Swear to Christ, I hate ONI shit...\"\n\"Take it you're not very fond of working with the Secret Police, Ser geant?\" Elster inquired. Lopez snorted.\"Girl, if these bastards were the Secret Police, half of the UNSC would be in chains by now and there'd be nobody fighting... Nah, I just hate the cloak and dagger shit. I'm a Marine after all. W e like stabbing people in the front, not the back,\" She looked back to Elster and flashed a grin. V isible now , were the scars of her injuries. The woman was middle-aged and quite a rough beauty . Elster sighed. Entering into the base through a multitude of security checkpoints where cameras, soldiers and ONI agents kept an eye on them all the way down to their intended target area, the girls finally reached the complex where the lab of the doctor they'd be working with was. It was so deep under ground, it might as well have been a bomb shelter . Lopez slid a security access card across a reader and the door opened, revealing a mess of a laboratory where a woman seemed to be working. Grey-haired and with her back turned away from them, the woman toiled away at something on the table there, next to a smoothed metallic wall, a lamp blaring a bright white light down on the work space. She spoke, her voice stern, \"Leave whatever it is on the table somewhere. I will get to it in due time,\" before murmuring, \"Damnable preparations are nearly done for RED FLAG...\"\n\"Doc,\" Lopez started, \"PENROSE case is here.\"\nShe paused, stopped whatever she was doing and turned around. The girls now noticed the various cups of cof fee, either empty or half-drunk and rotting away on the desks. She turned around, revealing a tired-looking old woman that resembled more a grandmother that aged really well than a mad scientist. She pushed her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose and arranged her turtleneck and labcoat, stating, \"Ser geant Lopez...\" with an impassivity that was nigh-mechanical.\n\"Yo,\" Lopez waved, \"Job done. W e got them here. I'll be going.\"\n\"Yes, yes. Farewell, Ser geant. T ake care...\" Halsey murmured, eyes focused on Elster and Ariane. Lopez hummed, smirked and looked at the two, before giving them a wink and stepping away . Ariane caught a faint red tint on her cheeks until Lopez left and the door hissed shut and locked behind them. Halsey , meanwhile, stared both of them down like someone scrutinizing their next piece of work, \"PENROSE Case. Miss Ariane Y eong and miss Elster . I read your files and the recent ONI interrogation. Quite an interesting pair , you two... My name is Doctor Catherine Elizabeth Halsey . Welcome to OMEGA Section, CASTLE BASE. If you'll make yourselves comfortable, I'll be right with you.\" She hummed, then called out, \"Kalmiya.\"\n\"Yes, doctor?\" A disembodied, soft voice spoke, scaring the two.\n\"Give me a tenth of your processing power for the following tasks:Prepare and send a series of manuals on various pieces of UNSC equipment to the tablet prepared for miss Elster and prepare the sterile room for me to check on of ficer Y eong, please...\" She requested as she plucked up the only cup of fresh cof fee the girls saw and took a sip. She nodded approvingly , while Elster and Ariane found somewhere to seat that wasn't dirty with discarded food trays and empty paper cups. Halsey added, \"Add in some classified documents as well. Project MJOLNIR's latest additions, the Mark-V and the still-prototype Mark-VI, shield generator and reactor specifics included. I fully intend to send our new friend out with the ability tofix everything ... Everything but the Kitchen sink, as the euphemism goes... Cortana can wait two minutes.\"\n\"Right away , doctor .\" The AI replied and the P A dinged.\n\"Who was...?\" Ariane blinked, surprised.\n\"An Artificial Intelligence I utilize for multitudes of tasks here,\" Doctor Halsey murmured as she sidestepped some trash on the floor and approached Ariane and Elster . She stopped in front of them, tidied up her hair a bit, then extended her hand, her face impassive, \"Excuse the hurry . A major ... Item of interest... Is set to occur within a few days. I have a lot of work I need to do still.\"\n\"We understand,\" Elster replied. She and Ariane both shook doctor Halsey's hand. Halsey nodded, hummed and walked back to her work station. Elster now noticed that there was an armored breastplate painted OD Green laying on said table. Ariane was still awed, looking around at all the tech just laying, strewn about. It was chaotic as all hell, but Doctor Halsey seemed to know where was what and when. Ariane's little look-around, however , was stopped by the audible groan of her stomach.\n\"Feel free to order any food you want from the terminal on desk three. And order me the same item that is saved on the top-left menu, please,\" Halsey jabbed a pointer finger without even looking away from her work. She stated, then she murmured to herself, \"It is lunch after all. Not a healthy idea to work on an empty stomach...\" as both Ariane and Elster stood up and walked to order . The two women looked at Doctor Halsey , then at the touch-screen terminal. Ariane tapped it and gasped as the screen moved smoothly . She smiled and looked to Elster , before pulling up a menu to order the items. She tapped Doctor Halsey's previous order once... Then two more times. The food, whatever it was, seemed appetizing enough. Halsey , meanwhile, switched to another desk and began working on that item of interest. Elster hummed and Ariane stared, surprised. Woman was a workaholic...Testing The two girls ate the lunch(really the Dinner) they'd ordered. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't the best, either , whatever was in the wrap. Ariane watched the doctor finish up the last bit of work, all while Elster had already begun reading the manuals from the tablet and eating. Ariane chuckled at the sight, looking at the focused young Replika as she gently thumbed the tablet's touch-screen, having gotten used to it surprisingly quickly . Meanwhile, she was still trying to properly operate the damn thing in her hands as she ate. Halsey sighed deeply , wiping the sweat of f her brow , set her tools aside, then turned to Ariane and said, \"I believe it's time for those examinations, miss Y eong. If you two would follow me...\" motioning to the door of another room. Both Elster and Ariane stood to their feet at that, finishing their food. Elster , however , kept on reading, only looking up when they walked so she didn't bump into something. Entering the medical room, a sterile, heavily-reinforced place with white tiles that were polished enough to partially reflect the light of the recessed and very powerful LEDs above. There was a holographic display to the left, a couple more specialized screens on the right, an operating table in the middle and several sets of tools on multiple tables. Although Elster tensed when she looked up and noticed them, she'd soon calmed down. They weren't invasive instruments. Seemed like various scanning devices and tools meant to help Halsey understand what Ariane's bioresonance was. She hummed and stepped inside, then took a seat of f to the side, continuing to read and peeking over the edge of the tablet every once in a while, all while Doctor Halsey strapped the several electrodes and sensors to Ariane's head. Doctor Halsey began explaining, \"This is a brainwave scanner . A device that combines a few different methods of examining the brain's activity in order to provide us an accurate picture of how Bioresonance works. W e will be performing various stress tests to see what kind of modifications your cortex has during usage. T o help with that, I have also prepared template screenings of normal human brains.\"\n\"In short, it'll read my brainwaves to see what makes bioresonance tick,\" Ariane clarified more for herself than anyone else. Doctor Halsey gave a simple nod, before moving to turn on the devices. Elster peeked over the tablet every so often to watch the experiments, while Halsey took her own tablet and prepared a series of tools. She hummed, lifted a foam ball and handed it to Ariane. The girl stood there, confused for a second, all while the device behind her whirred and beeped semi-audibly in the background, the screens playing both three-dimensional representations of Ariane's brain with all its various shapes, lobes and sub-or gans and two dimensional readings of the brainwaves in the form of lines determining spikes of brain activity that specifically related to Ariane's thinking.Doctor Halsey explained, \"I saw you lift a carafe full of water , miss Y eong. W ithout touching it. I want you to do the same with this ball,\" then positioned herself to see both the girl's movements and the screens, keeping her tablet close to write notes. The Bioresonant hummed, smiled, then nodded. She focused on the ball, opening her hand by spreading her fingers out and away from it. Before long, the girl's face grew impassive and her eyes seemed to glow  for the shortest amount of time in the same shade of red as her irises. The ball was slowly lifted up and of f of her hand, which she slowly pulled back to her side, simply focusing on her objective. The device behind her read various scarlet dots, pointing to exact activity on the three dimensional representation of the girl's brain. The occipital cortex and the amygdalae lit up like a a triangle of Christmas trees. As for the two-dimensional, line-based readings, there was a massive activity spike that now formed a plateau well above the average functionality of a normal human brain. Halsey was immediately jotting down notes as she saw the prefrontal cortex light up as well, the brightest mark of them all. Halsey was stunned by the sheer reverberations Ariane's brain activity had. The eagerness with which the doctor wrote everything down told both Eusan citizens that their newfound co-worker was actively excited by the prospect of forther studies. Halsey stopped writing, then said, \"Feel free to let it go, miss Y eong...\" as she noticed the girl getting slightly strained, a vein bulging on the side of her head. Ariane moved her hand below the ball and let it drop, before setting the ball aside and looking to her physician. The woman hummed, nodded and said, \"Up next, something I've presumed but I don't think I could get a better confirmation of outside of a laboratory like this... Miss Y eong, I need you to focus on me.\"\n\"Aaaaand...\" Ariane blinked, sure where this was going and not really sure she liked it.\n\"I want you to read my thoughts, of course...\" Halsey replied, which caused both Elster and Ariane to double-over . Halsey , meanwhile, spoke calmly , \"Please, take it at face value, I know the full risks of what may be ahead of us, but I also need to understand if what you said is true. The last test after this one will be what you call 'klimaforming'. I'll bring a small pot of sand over for it.\"\nAriane and Elster exchanged looks, both of them clearly worried. Despite that, though, Elster seemed to give an approving nod to the girl, before humming as she looked over the tablet. She ran a hand down the side of the item, stopping at the bottom and tugging at the corner . She blinked as she saw a cable with a connection port pop out and hummed, before looking at herself. Meanwhile, Ariane approved the Doctor's request with a wordless forward tilt of the head. Halsey took a moment to concentrate, before giving a nod back and starting to write and read the new data. Ariane focused heavily on the good doctor and began reading her thoughts. The girl covered her mouth and started to giggle, to which Halsey looked, slightly confused, while maintaining the same thought pattern. Ariane snorted and said, \"Sorry , doc. Thinking of Puppies is adorable, but I can tell it's a little strained.\"Halsey blinked, nodded and showed her to stop. Ariane complied nigh-instantly , shuddering and murmuring to herself about how she'd 'never do that again' as she watched the Doc tap away at her tablet, before walking back to another desk and picking up the pot of sand. The good doctor added, \"The pot also contains a small plant seed I had put in just before your arrival.\"\nAriane hummed at that, then nodded, \"Alright. Let's get to it, I guess...\" and looked down at the pot. Focusing her mind yet again, the girl grit her teeth. Before long, Halsey was both terrified and awed at the sight of sand becoming fertile dirt, the plant gently rising out of the soil. Elster hummed and smirked at the sight of the awed UNSC scientist, while Doctor Halsey stared on, shocked. Ariane sighed, settling down, then rubbed her head, \"Ow ... Too many tasks at once...\" She then murmured. Halsey , meanwhile, had gotten enough data from all three experiments to confirm her theory . And by jove, was she not sure what to make of this entire goddamn mess. She hummed, blinked and rubbed her eyes beneath the glasses, before sighing.\n\"There are sleeping quarters down the hall just outside of this room and to the left...\" She stated, \"If you wish to go to sleep while miss Elster finishes today's lectures-\"\n\"Already done,\" Elster stated, extending the tablet to Halsey . Her eyes shot wide open at that. Elster hummed, noting the confusion, then stating, \"I discovered my architecture is not so different from the tablet's. I also found this,\" she pulled at the corner , revealing the wire and the port again, then tapped the back of her head and said, \"And just slotted it in. Downloading the manuals was easy enough.\"\n\"... Uh-huh... Y ou downloaded approximately two thousand three hundred and seventeen pages of manuals into your mind without so much as flinching...\" Halsey hummed, then pointed toward a table and stated, \"Go to that table and retrieve the item on it, please.\"\nThe Replika complied, calmly strutting up to the table. Ariane grinned at Doctor Halsey , then watched Elster retrieve the item. The girls were both surprised to see the chrome-finished frame of a heavy-weight firearm with a strange trigger guard. Elster hummed and looked at the weapon, then looked to Doctor Halsey , who nodded and showed her to go on and say what it is. Elster said, \"An M6G Magnum with a smartscope and laser aiming module... Why do you have this?\"\n\"ONI brought it over to test out your capabilities, miss Elster . Now that you have the data pertaining to repairing the overall M6 personal defense weapon systems of the UNSC Military and Police, I'd very much like to see if you can figure out what ails this certain pistol,\" Halsey explained calmly , leaning against the table in the medical room. Elster nodded and, without a hint of hesitation, she began taking the weapon apart, bolt by bolt, while aligning the weapon's main components to her right. She had first made sure it was safe by dropping the empty magazine out of it and pulling the slide back into a locked position. Pulling of f the slide by unlocking it, the Smartscope and the trigger group being removed after, the girl hummed as she removed the bolt carrier group and... She lifted it and pointed at the filed-down pin. She had accomplished a full disassembly of the firearm within under a minute, a rather surprising thing for someone who was onlyfamiliar with firearms through the manuals they had read, or , better said, slotted into their brains, then immediately discovered the issue. Elster then replaced the pin and fit the weapon back together in about the same time frame, with the ef ficiency one would expect out of a supposed Engineer unit Replika. Elster then slid a fresh magazine in and surprised both Doc Halsey and Ariane, turning to them and asking, \"Is there a shooting range nearby?\"\nShe wanted to test her newly-repaired tool. Halsey hummed and said, \"There is one on this level, but I'm afraid it's restricted to security personnel. However , I'd trust the work, miss Elster . Well done...\" before murmuring something along the lines if, \"If only Cortana could so easily plug the necessary data into her Matrix just like that without having to learn too much...\"\n\"I still need to work. Manuals are fine, but hands-on work with these items will be the best determinant of my utility for the UNSC's ef forts...\" The girl sighed, then set the weapon down on the table and started, \"Speaking of, doctor ... I've been meaning to ask this and I'm sure Ariane has, too. What is your war? The only things we've been told by the captain when we were retrieved and by the ONI agents when we asked were that the war was far away from Reach and it isn't something we should worry about... Is it true?\"\nHalsey's shoulders sagged and a frown formed on her face. She sighed deeply , then murmured, \"And yet again, we lie, thinking we know what is best for mankind...\" as she slowly removed the sensors from Ariane's head. She set the items aside, looked to Elster and Ariane and told both, \"I'm afraid my countrymen thought themselves saints for lying to you two. Kalmiya?\"\n\"I and Cortana have already engaged a Dead Room protocol, doctor . All wire taps within are disabled and the cameras are playing looping footage, but I'd be fast about it,\" Kalmiya replied.\n\"Sorry it took us a hot sec. Had to study , y'know?\" Another voice, eerily the same tone and the likes as Doctor Halsey's, if only a bit more peppy , \"Hey , ladies. Nice to meet you.\"\n\"Hi...?\" Both Ariane and Elster said, dumbfound, then gazed upon Halsey . The doctor sighed deeply and sat herself down somewhere, before considering how to begin the saga of the damnation of humanity to a slow , painful death by the hands of an alien invader . One would normally think going with the beginning is the best option and, to be honest, that was Halsey's train of thought, too. So, she started with the beginning... By the time Halsey had gone through the Harvest campaign and the subsequent glassings and battles, Ariane had pretty much been ready to empty her stomach and Elster had to take a few moments to process the sheer destruction seen in the images Halsey had shown them. And apparently , according to the doctor , she was giving the brief rundown of the 27 years of genocide.Halsey hummed as she saw Ariane crying into Elster's shoulder , while the Replika was still stuck. The machine asked, \"How many dead... At least so far ...?\" as she wrapped her arms around Ariane to comfort her . Halsey sighed and opened a document on her tablet. The Replika's eyes shot wide open and she covered her mouth at the sheer size of the number . Thirty-three billion total deaths estimated... So far ... Elster had trouble wrapping her head around that number , because it felt so statistically and militarily impossible. She kept Ariane from seeing it, waving Halsey of f and swallowing her own spit, before stating, \"I... W e... W e're so sorry , doctor , we didn't...\" to which Halsey shook her head and gave a reassuring squeeze of both their shoulders, something she was seemingly not used to doing. Elster then asked, \"What about the Covenant's armada...? How close are they...?\"\n\"Their latest engagement puts them at, or near Sigma Octanus... I hate to sound incredibly depressing or scarring, but that is tantamount to a stone's throw away from Epsilon Eridani. From us,\" She replied softly . Elster let out a sigh that denoted her exact feelings on the matter . If Doctor Halsey were to probably attempt a translation from either her or miss Ariane, she'd need to censor quite a few words. So, she simply nodded, \"But we think we have a way of ending the war ... It is why I've been... Looking into understanding how both of you operate. Why I'm still awake and helping our two AI, as well.\"\n\"Do you want us to be part of whatever plan it is the UNSC has to end this?\" Elster asked, stunned that Halsey would be so brash to even admit it. The woman paused for a moment, hesitating, and that was enough for Elster to reply , \"... I won't risk Ariane's life for anything. And I won't let her risk it, either ... You can't ask us to fight your war , Doctor ...\"\n\"It is not a war , miss Elster ,\" Halsey sighed, \"It is the slow extinction of our own race. And no. I was not going to ask or demand that you fight in our damned little attempt at survival, or fight in this doomed operation to end the war . I intended just to learn if your skills could potentially be learned and used by us, but I cannot even begin  to comprehend Bioresonance without any detailed books written by your own people or without further delving into researching it myself. As for your repair training, miss Elster ...\"\n\"... Y ou wanted to see if it could be replicated if you ever got to make others of my kind as backups for the dwindling numbers of UNSC Engineers...?\" Elster presumed as she patted Ariane's head. \"But considering the shrinking time window you have...\" and she looked at herself for a moment. Halsey seemed to get what she was going for , simply sighing and leaning against the desk. Elster looked at her lover with worry , noting the girl clung onto her for dear life, terrified. It was all on both of them. They had asked to learn of humanity's war with the Covenant, just how bad it got and just how much mankind lost. Compared to it, their own conflicts and issues on Eusan seemed minuscule, almost incomparably so. T ruthfully , anything would seem minuscule when compared to the galactic scale of this war ... The Replika didn't care about it. She looked at Ariane, concerned. What would become of her if this war reached them? What could they do? Run? She was sure the Covenant would find the human world they were hiding on and destroy it. The UNSC of fered them a chance atsurvival, as minimal as it was. Survival against a threat the likes of which nobody in the Eusan Nation or the Empire ever thought they'd face.\n\"You can leave, if you wish, find safe harbor somewhere-\" Halsey started, well aware ONI would have her head if she so much as let them get out without finishing her testing. Elster , however , turned toward her and cut her of f with a motion of the hand. Halsey stared at the Replika with a hint of surprise, but chose to let her speak her mind on the matter .\n\"... If it means keeping Ariane safe... And only if you can guarantee to me that she will be safe... I'll do what must be done. Any vehicle that needs repairs, any weapon damaged or in need of servicing, I'll take care of it for any unit your commanders assign me to. If it means keeping her alive and well, I'll even fight...\" Elster spoke with a determination one would usually find in a human behind every word. Ariane looked at her , stunned, before preparing herself to protest. Elster put her index finger on the girl's lips and shook her head. \"I don't want to hear it, Ariane...\"\nHalsey hummed, allowing herself a small smile as she looked at the two. She spoke to Elster ,\n\"She will be safe. I will make sure she doesn't leave my side. And I do not much leave CASTLE Base, or OMEGA Level. It is one of the most well-defended and up-armored under ground facilities on the planet. It'd take a nuclear weapon whose yield is in the gigatons to destroy this place.\"\nElster nodded, \"Thank you, Doctor ...\"\n\"Those who are willing to put their lives on the line in defense of Mankind should at least have the lives of their loved ones be preserved. It's the least our people could and should do for you and anyone else who volunteers to fight,\" Halsey replied calmly , fiddling with her tablet. She noticed the terrified look in Ariane's eyes and reassured her , \"As for you, miss Ariane, calm down... I'm certain miss Elster is both a proficient fighter and knows how to keep herself alive. The poise with which she walks tells of at least a military background to her matrix.\"\n\"Hm,\" Elster nodded. She looked down at Ariane and pecked her on the forehead, garnering a blush. Halsey chuckled, then said, \"There are dormitories down the right side. If you two wish to rest, go ahead. I have much work to do, still, including examining your neural patterns, miss Ariane...\" to which Elster immediately lifted the girl in a bridal carry . Both AIs within the lab audibly chuckled at the sight, while Ariane blushed like she was a schoolgirl being asked to prom. Elster walked to the dorm, a proud grin on her face.\n\"They're a heartwarming pair ,\" Cortana commented as she appeared next to doctor Halsey . The AI, young as she may have been, gleamed in a purple-ish hue, her short hair straightened out and her arms crossed to her chest. She added, \"I kind of hope the Covenant never find Reach, because that means those two get to live relatively decent lives under ONI's employ , but uh... I know better .\"\n\"Indeed... Did you make your choice?\" Halsey inquired, turning to the AI. Cortana hummed and nodded, before smirking. Halsey quipped, \"I know I've asked you to make that choicedays ago, but I want you to be certain of it... If you are, we can proceed with the next phase. John and his team should already be here. It's time to start the preparations...\"\n\"Aye, doctor .\" Cortana saluted, then her avatar de-materialized of f the holographic display . It was about high-time humanity went on the of fensive for a change.Visegrad\n23rd of July , 2552\nStandard Military Calendar UNSC Forward Ops Base \"Charlie\"\nVisegrad Region, V ieri Dawn broke on the cloudy morning of the twenty-third of July , nearly four days since Elster and Ariane had arrived in the Epsilon Eridani system. Elster had already received her assignment pertaining to her job in the UNSC Military . Specifically , she would join a Marine Division stationed within the confines of Fort Charlie, somewhere near the V isegrad communications array . Apparently , ONI had that place locked down tight for some reason or other . Doctor Halsey had told her that one of her co-workers, Laszlo Sorvad, was working on something in the area. So, Elster stood there, feeling a bout of nostalgia hit her as she flew in aboard a UNSC Pelican transport. After getting a crash-course for two days on UNSC weapons handling, the young Replika prepared herself to begin work. She eyed the other soldiers aboard the Pelican, each of them calm. Some listened to music, others exchanged small-talk and others yet slept. The flight from the training point on the East Coast of V ieri back into the center of the place had been relatively uneventful, if long. The Replika held in her hands two things:Her new service rifle, the MA37, a bullpup design with an ammunition counter and display in her right hand and leaning against her thigh, and a duffel bag in her left. Not a lot of personal ef fects that had had to be picked up, sans for some items sent back from the Penr ose-512. Her and Ariane's toothbrushes, the latter of which was already at CASTLE, last the heard, her toolset, some repair sprays she still had with her , some adhesive tape and Ariane's paintings, the lattermost, again, sent straight to CASTLE Base.\n\"Hey , Private,\" A Soldier in front of her spoke. He was a young man in his mid-twenties, head clean shaven. A tattoo depicting an eagle had been drawn on his neck, only the head poking out from beneath his scarf. She hummed and arched a brow at him. He smirked and tilted his head, \"Check it out. Our new home for the next few months...\" before Elster turned and stopped, mouth agape. The UNSC Forward Ops Base was a sprawling complex of concrete buildings intermixed with rapidly-assembled vehicle bays, logistics vehicles milling about and armored hangars where UNSC Aircraft, tanks and other vehicles resided. UNSC HEMTT s, or Heavy Expanded Mobility T actical T rucks, the backbone of the Army's logistics, carried everything from pallets of boxes, to fuel, to Marines and Army T roops. The Pelican approached the Landing Pad and disgor ged the infantry platoon. The Soldier that'd talked to Elster smirked as he took her side, watching her gaze around at the world. T allmountains rose around the base, confining it to the wide valley between them. UNSC Falcon class transport twin-rotor helicopters flew overhead, ferrying infantry to and from specific areas and training ops zones. He elbowed her in the shoulder , taking her out of the short reverie of seeing the beauty of nature, then extended a hand toward her , \"I'm corporal T ravis. I think we'll be in the same squad, private... 3-Charlie.\"\nThe girl shook his hand with a firm, almost steel vice-like grip, then replied calmly , \"Elster Five-twelve. I'm a private and the mechanic and armorer here,\" before retracting her hand. She hefted her duf fel bag onto her shoulder and showed him to lead the way . As they walked through the base, there were various looks given by the soldiers present within the base. Worry, surprise, awe, fear ... Whatever the look that one female private and her male buddies gave her was? She could understand it, honestly . Not every day you saw a Replika outside of Eusan.\n\"Sorry for the stares,\" Commented T ravis. He cleared his throat and stated, \"Not everyday people see someone like you.\"\n\"My thoughts exactly . It's no problem,\" Elster replied calmly , choosing to ignore the stares for now . Her mind was focused on other things. Images flashed in her mind, blurred. Black uniforms, rifles, the mud and pain of training. She paused as the flashes intensified, grabbing onto her head, then stopped almost instantly . Sighing, the girl closed her eyes and shook her head to clear her mind.\n\"You okay?\" T ravis asked, turning to her . She nodded, then sighed deeply , relieved that that little moment had passed. She then followed the worried T rooper and the rest of the men to their barracks. Inside one of the habitation areas, Elster soon found her bunk. She'd left her rifle in the hands of the armory's crews, instead opting to set up her personal ef fects in her trunk. The familiarity of this place hit her way too hard for it to be normal. She focused on her work, choosing to ignore the gnawing feeling in the back of her mind that she had been somewhere similar before. She hummed, lifted up a picture of Ariane from her duf fel and smiled. Her beautiful lover , young as could be, with that bright white hair and those scarlet eyes filled with love. Elster had caught her at the flight console during a burn to adjust their apoapsis and she had the cutest face when she focused. Sighing, the girl stuf fed the photo into her newly-given helmet. The UNSC was issuing its troops helmets with goggles that displayed HUDs, which included Motion T rackers, bio readings on the troopers themselves and other various utilities such as knowing how much ammo one had in their weapon, the weapon they were wielding and the amount or extra rounds in their pouches. She had also been given a standard-issue OD-green military BDU, which included the extra chest and shoulder armor plates, the knee and elbow pads and the under garment of the uniform itself. The only thing she didn't get was boots, because of her legs. One T rooper commented, \"I'm not seein' boots there, private... Y a good with not havin'em?\" beforepausing as he saw the legs, \"Oh, shit... Y ou good? Those some new prosthetics NAVSPECW AR 3's testing out...?\"\n\"They're my legs...\" Elster replied calmly , sitting herself down on her bunk. At least the uniform pants reached almost all the way down without impeding movement. The soldier winced and was about to apologize, before Elster raised a hand and said, \"I'm a humanoid machine. This unit's new mechanic and armorer . Apologies for the confusion are unnecessary .\"\n\"Alright...\" The soldier said, \"Elster , right?\"\n\"Yeah,\" She nodded, standing up and donning the shirt, which held the attachment points for the armor plates. She clipped the armor pieces on, both to the chest and to the shoulders, put on her kneepads and helmet, then moved around a bit to test flexibility . The shoulders didn't impede movement up to 90 degrees due to the flexibility of the plates. She nodded approvingly .\n\"Where ya goin'?\" Another female T rooper asked, poking her head out from behind her bunk.\n\"The motor pool. I have work I need to do,\" Elster replied, \"Then, the Armory ...\"\n\"And the rest of us have a patrol to run, so... Y eah, fair enough,\" Stated T ravis as he hefted his kit to the side. He saluted Elster and said, \"Be seeing ya around, chief engineer ,\" with a smirk. A few of the soldiers let out short laughs as Elster stepped of f, donning the full kit, sans her rifle and pistol. She just needed some alone time to process a multitude of things, such as the flashes in her mind. That was not a normal occurrence for any Replika. None that she knew of, anyway . She walked across the base, stopping every once in a while to ask the local soldiers about directions. Finding her way to the motor -pool, the woman walked inside, to the sight of the UNSC's main battle tanks. The M808B MBT , called the 'Scorpion' due to its unusual shape, was a relatively lar ge battle tank armed with a 90mm smoothbore high-velocity cannon that fired tungsten-tipped penetrators and HE rounds. She hummed. ahead of the line of tanks was a smaller group of M12 Force Application Vehicles, nicknamed by the Marines and Army that used them as 'The W arthog'. She noticed one of the vehicles had a disassembled forward portion where the hydrogen-based engine lay , chunks of it missing. Probably the local mechanics giving it a once-over or something. She hummed, approached the F AV, then started looking into what was wrong, checking the multitude of parts spread out around it on the floor . She realized they were all arrayed in order of the requirement for the re-building. From left to right, from the smallest bolt to the biggest chunk of the engine. She crouched and looked the pieces over , noting one of them was broken. A small valve that probably controlled the outflow of hydrogen, or stopped it from burning too harshly . She knew it was broken because the engine's manual looped back into her mind as she looked it over . She hummed, pulled her tool set of f from her back and set it aside, before pulling out a repair spray . The broken piece relied on a specialized polyurethane mix that sealed its surroundingstightly . That seal was broken, but easily replaceable with the items she had on hand. Calmly , she undid the cover on the part, scraped of f the polyurethane mix, then added in the fresh one with the spray . Setting the piece aside, the girl then looked over any other chunk of the 'Hog that was broken as her mind flashed her images of something or other again. Armored fighting vehicles, gunfire, rounds pinging of f armor plate... She staggered again, inches short of dropping a sensitive piece of the W arthog as her mind scrambled. She set the engine part aside, sat herself down and took her helmet of f, blinking away a sudden blur that veiled her eyes. She sighed, cocked her jaw as she felt a faint stab of pain through her artificial nerves, then straightened back up to get to work. It wasn't a good moment for her to lose her shit. She began working on the reassembly , taking each piece, meticulously re-cleaning it and polishing it, then setting it into place. Slowly , from the inside out, the woman rebuilt the engine in the maw of the W arthog within the span of a little over four hours. She hummed and thumbed the last piece of the 'Hog's engine into place just as a figure ran inside and demanded, \"What the hell are you doing, T rooper?!\"\nElster took a hot second to register the newcomer . A man in his early twenties, clad in a UNSC uniform with a jumpsuit and his armor set somehow put on backwards, stained by oil, grease and the likes. The girl looked to the man, noting that he had the same rank as her , then said nonchalantly , \"I put it back together ...\" as she walked toward the left side of the vehicle and climbed aboard.\n\"I took it apart and found it'd blown a seal! The Marine company from New Alexandria brought the damn thing in for checkups when she started sputtering! It ain't safe to turn on right now!\" The man protested in any conceivable way he could think of. The ginger -haired, green-eyed man then froze as he saw the girl tap the button. The vehicle's engine sputtered for a second, then roared and revved. The girl hummed and turned it of f, then jumped of f and walked back to the front. She looked it over and said, \"It may still need some adjustments... Could you pass me that socket wrench?\" to which the dumbfound man simply stared at her for a second. She looked to him, not a hint of malice behind her gaze, just steely resolve to finish the repairs. At that, he nodded, walked over to her toolset and plucked up the item she asked for , before handing it over. She started her adjustments, then stated, \"Please turn it on when I say so...\"\nThe man nodded as he climbed into the driver's side. Elster hummed as she tightened the loose piece to the point she couldn't realistically anymore without breaking it. She then gave a thumbs up and the man pressed the button... The Engine purred to life like it would have in any other normal circumstance and the man stared, wide-eyed at Elster as she stood up and packed her kit.\n\"How'd you... Do that...?\" He asked, \"Y ou're that new engineer , the... What'd they call you,\n'unit'?\"\n\"Yeah. LSTR-512. Engineering and surveyor unit, now a mechanic and T rooper ,\" She replied calmly , before pausing as she heard boots crunching against the dirt outside the Motorpool.She looked up to see the Lieutenant of her squad and, snapping a crisp salute almost out of instinct, she also noticed that the outside had considerably darkened. How , god only knew . The man saluted back and nodded her at ease. She also noted the presence of T ravis.\n\"Sorry to interrupt tea-time, private. W e're moving out. Colonel Urban Holland, our CO, gave us and a few other squads a mission,\" The Lieutenant stated. He looked to the other mechanic behind Elster and asked, \"These 'Hogs good?\" to which he nodded. The Lieutenant hummed and said, \"Everyone mount up. Grab extra fuel and ammo. Private Elster , corporal T ravis brought your gun for you. Y ou're coming with us.\"\n\"Sir,\" She nodded. T ravis stepped up and handed her her MA37 and her pistol, as well as some extra ammo.\n\"Didn't think your first outing will be this quick, eh?\" He quipped, shouldering his DMR. Elster felt a pit in her gut, but nodded nonetheless, mounting up with the Marines as the mechanic set the armor plate over the engine back in place. T ravis took the gun of a Hog, while Elster rode shotgun. She checked her weapons almost compulsively , going from bolt, to ammo counter , to magazine for both at least three times before the lead W arthog lurched forward. By the time Elster had realized they were out of the FOB, the girl only had the sky above and the light of the W arthog's touch screen console displays and headlights as illumination. She gazed up at the sky of Reach, the beauty of the stars floating out in the dark filling her gaze. It was somehow even more beautiful than flying through the void. Somehow . She just wished Ariane was here to see it.\n\"Hey, El-T ee?\" A trooper radioed in on short-range. Elster could hear him thanks to her helmet's own built-in communication system.\n\"Go ahead, corporal,\" The man sounded sharp, focused, when he replied. Elster tensed up. She had a nagging feeling that something was abound to go down. The hairs on her neck stood on-end. The vehicles rolled on forward into the mountains as she waited to hear what the Corporal was about to ask, finding a road that climbed up to the upper areas of the range...\n\"What's the job...?\" The trooper warily asked, \" Cuz it ain't like the colonel to send our asses out on a milk run...\"\n\"Visegrad Relay went dark. W e're going in to investigate. Holland things it might be local Innies, but that's yet to be confirmed,\" The Lieutenant replied calmly . Audible was the rack of a few weapons' bolts as the Army troopers prepared for the worst. Meanwhile, Elster paused.\n'Innies'? Insurrectionists? The UNSC had issues with splinter groups in the middle of a war for survival? She heard several of the Army troopers voice their disgruntlement over the communication system. She'd have to ask more back at base. Shifting in her seat, the girl racked her weapons' bolts, feeding rounds into both their chambers and readying herself as they moved up the roadway . Travis spoke from behind her , \"Sir , this is T ravis, lead hog. W e just entered a dark zone. Can't get coms with command on any freq, even backups... Might be we're being jammed.\"\"Shit,\" Swore the driver from beside Elster , \"Sounds like we're in deep...\"\n\"Stay fr osty. Looks like we'll need to get the Relay back online befor e we got Coms. Cut the lights and turn on your VISRs. Let's get r ough, T roopers...\" The man ordered. The headlights of the vehicles. The VISR. Elster remembered the briefing and, for a moment, images flashed before her eyes. She shook them away quickly , feeling that pit in her stomach deepen. Tapping her helmet as the W arthog's lights went dark, the girl's eyes were soon enveloped by a fluorescent green, the HUD compensating by lowering its own brightness. She saw the outlines of allied troops, of their vehicles and of the surrounding area, more clearly defined now that they had them on as compared to the prior darkness. She tensed, the grip on her weapon tighter as the vehicles rolled past a multitude of local abodes, circular in design and strangely constructed from what looked to be cheap, but resistant materials. Some locals were staring at them from the windows from which light still protruded, but didn't dare come down to talk or stop them. The vehicles rolled on past with impunity , through open gates and a few miles further , toward one of the mountain peaks. The vehicles slowed as they reached an open 'field' of sorts in the mountainous area. T ravis reported over com, \"I'm seeing movement, sir . Hill at our twelve...\" and he squinted,\n\"Silhouette looks human. May need to dismount to check on him.\" before an af firmative response came from the Lieutenant. The squadron of three 'Hogs slowed to a halt, with Elster , Travis and their driver dismounted, marching up to the man. T ravis lifted a hand and showed the man to stop. He began speaking a foreign language at the group of infantrymen as the dog beside him barked at them. T ravis rolled his eyes and murmured, \"Fucking hell, it's a local. Hungarian... Someone get T omas up. W e need his ass translating this shit...\" before watching the Lieutenant approach with their resident Hungarian infantryman. Elster fidgeted, jumping from one peg foot to the other as she looked around, eyes scanning the horizon and the tops of the jagged rock faces around them like it was an instinct she didn't know she had. Multiple images flashed in front of her as she listened to the men speak, this time accompanied by the roar of sporadic gunfire, of screaming in one of the many languages of Eusan. The images were a blur , like they were muddled by the girl having submer ged herself in water , or her vision losing focus. She saw the muzzle flashes, heard the roar of artillery cannons... And only snapped out of it when T ravis tapped her on the shoulder . She looked toward him, her eyes wider , her behavior more alert as she felt the impossibility of her heart beating in her throat. Travis blinked, then murmured, \"Y ou okay , Elster?\"\nShe nodded awkwardly . The man hummed and said, \"Right... El-T ee ordered us to form a perimeter . We need you covering an angle...\" and he pointed to the left of the Lieutenant, about twenty meters, angling toward a narrow split, a pathway between the rocks that opened into a wider valley up on the top of the mountain range. She looked to T ravis, wordlessly nodded and took up position, taking a knee and shouldering her rifle. The crosshair moved with where she pointed the weapon, so it was easy enough to aim.In the meantime, she listened to the ranting young farmer , the Lieutenant and their translator . The T ranslator spoke warily , \"... And that something landed nearby that spooked his herd of Moa... God only knows what it was. Kid says he heard sounds from near by the crevice about four klicks due east of here, which is about a klick out from the Array , sir.\" and the Lieutenant nodded approvingly .\n\"Tell him we're only here to see what the disturbance is about, then, if he can't get we're here to restore coms... And that we're not here to harm his herd of weird ostriches,\" The Lieutenant ordered calmly , then looked at the defensive perimeter formed around them. Elster hummed, meanwhile, eyeing the strange crevice and the hilltop every once in a while. She blinked, then squinted, her visor polarizing and zooming in as she gazed at the hill. A blur appeared in her eyesight again, this time looking like distortion in the air from a flame. The dog barked incessantly now , turning back at the hill as his owner berated him, then turned back to the Army troopers... Her eyes shot wide open as something appeared instead of the distortion. Like a layer of blindness peeling back, a figure, taller than the average human, bow-legged and clad in scarlet armor , appeared. The alien with four jaws took aim with a strange, almost fish-like weapon in shape, pink crystals glimmering like jagged diamonds at the top. Elster only had time to open her mouth when she heard and saw the shot. A trail of crystalline fragments followed the sharpened projectile. It whistled like an arrow piercing the wind at the speed of sound, before slamming into the back of the unarmed young man and exploding. The boy collapsed as his back was blown wide open by the shot and a flurry of swearing and commands suddenly filtered into Elster's ears. She perked up and aimed toward the tar get, firing a burst of automatic fire toward the tar get. The third round was a bright tracer , bright enough for the squadron to follow where it went.\n\"FUCK!\"\n\"CONT ACT!\"\n\"JESUS FUCKING  CHRIST!\"\n\"Fall back!\" The Lieutenant bellowed, taking control of the situation, \"Get behind the fucking hogs! Move it!\" And he stopped as a second shot rang out from the left. T rooper T omas collapsed, his lungs exploding outward as what Elster soon recognized as an azure ball of ionized gas-plasma-struck him. He died on the spot, rifle clattering on the floor . Elster saw where the shot had come from and fired on the move, training she didn't even know she had kicking in. Leapfrogging from rock to rock to get back to the W arthogs, the girl now stood side-by-side with T ravis. The boy swore a flurry of swears to himself as he peered over and fired his DMR, before ducking back into cover and calling out, \"WHERE THE FUCK  IS EVER YBODY!?\" more directed at the enemy that engaged them. A plasma shot, this one green, hissed by their ears, right between them. It struck the ground, boiling away a topsoil layer and, with it, a patch of grass.Elster poked out from behind cover , low and fast. She fired a burst at the advancing enemies and saw her rounds connect. They flashed of f something blue that surrounded one of the enemies, which was clad in decorated orange armor , then ducked back and said, \"They have shields...\" immediately . She poked up again and fired a full magazine at said enemy . The bloom and slight recoil kicked hard, but Elster managed to lay down enough hate to kill it. It collapsed with a loud, guttural growl and died. Elster grabbed T ravis by the Collar and said,\n\"Move!\"\nShe and him ran all the way back to the W arthogs as more plasma rained down on them. Another of their teammates caught a bolt in the back and tumbled over , a corpse before he even hit the ground. Elster ducked in cover behind the W arthog and reloaded her rifle as Travis called out, \"Lieutenant, we gotta get the fuck outta here! Get back into range and call command!\"\n\"You're goddamn right we gotta move!\" The Lieutenant growled. He poked over the hood of the W arthog and fired, then ducked back as the reply of plasma and Needle fire struck the vehicle's front, superheating the titanium plate shielding the engine. One of the T roopers mounted up on the W arthog's rear machine gun and revved it up, firing. It spat point-fifty cal rounds downrange at around nine hundred rounds per minute. Red tracers filled their vision. Elster felt her mind go into overdrive, her comrades' deaths suddenly hitting her like a brick as she went on to ask the Lieutenant, \"Sir! Can't we hold them back?!\"\n\"No!\" T ravis barked, \"W e gotta call for backup, sir!\"\n\"Fucking hell, people, we've been engaged! Y ammer on later , get in the W arthogs now!\" The Lieutenant barked as the T rooper manning the W arthog's gun got sniped, his head popped like a zit. His corpse tumbled over the side of the vehicle, dead. Elster blinked, looked to Travis and felt her bionic heart start to race. T ravis looked over and fired another burst at the enemy , then nodded.\n\"Drive, I'll shoot!\" He told Elster and jumped on the 'Hog's gun, then opened up as a flurry of plasma and needles struck around them. She nodded and jumped into the vehicle, before looking back at the Lieutenant and the others do the same. The transport turned on and lurched forward as Elster pressed the acceleration pedal just in time. A boulder of green energy that made her in-built geiger counter flare slammed into the ground where they'd been, bubbling glass and a crater being the marks of the emerald weapon's strike. Another hit a rear W arthog in the front axle, disabling the vehicle. The crew aboard had to jump out of fear it'd explode. Elster saw it all in her rearview mirror . Her heart racing, breathing erratic and with new memories that were not her own flashing back into her mind, the girl demanded \"What the Hell just engaged us...!? Do your insurrectionists carry plasma weapons?! Do they have Shields?!\"\n\"Wasn't Innies!\" T ravis replied angrily , turning the gun, \"It was the goddamn Covenant !\nThey're here! FUCK! Lieutenant, what in Hell's name do we fucking do!?\"\n\"Get to the Station! W e'll split up and try and drag these shitheels away fr om you, Corporal!\nYou and private Elster r epair the station, warn Holland! T ell him to send goddamnreinfor cements if you get any sort of signal !\" The man ordered, sharp. Their vehicle veered to the right, the Covenant troops seemingly in hot pursuit. Elster soon realized what this meant. Humanity's mortal enemy was here, on the very Fortress of Mankind. Her heart sank as she felt a hint of despair pick at it. The roar of gunfire, the bursts of plasma, the whistle of the needle weapons, all awoke nasty memories from LSTR-512's memories, memories she should, by all accounts, not even bear . She shook her head, punched herself in the forehead to settle the issue, then gasped as another of those green projectiles struck in front of her . The hit melted the floor ahead and caused the vic to bounce up and down. She growled, drew the M6G Magnum from its holster and cocked it with one hand, then aimed up at the bastards that fired at them. Squeezing the trigger , she felt the surprisingly light kick of the fifty-caliber Semi-Armor -Piercing High-Explosive round. The shot whizzed past the alien bipedal that had fired at them with the handheld cannon and Elster damn near crashed. She veered a left through a narrower passage, trundling down and damn near hitting the edge. A scream took her attention to the rear . Blood seeped onto the rear tray of the vehicle as the man behind her collapsed on the gun. She called out, \"T ravis!\" with more anger than fear in her voice. The man groaned and held onto his hip, where a purple crystal had embedded itself. He grit his teeth and, with a loud groan, pulled it out before it shattered into a thousand micro-fragments that'd cause the wound to be infected.\n\"I'm good, I'm good... Shit...\" He grunted, then gasped as Elster veered to the left. He saw them on the Motion T racker . Golden dots... Switching the freq, he called out, \"W atch your twelve, watch your twelve! Friendlies coming in on a 'Hog! Enemy units in hot pursuit!\" just as a needle round punctured and detonated inside one of the rear tires, stopping the vehicle in its tracks. Another T rooper appeared in front of them out of a total of Six survivors, ur ging them out of the vehicle, \"C'mon! C'mon! It's safe here!\" just as Elster dismounted and grabbed T ravis of f the back of the 'Hog. She carried the wounded man over toward a house that had been built into the rock and dirt and into a garage. The W arthog behind them took another bolt of ener gy and detonated in a blinding flash.\n\"C'mon!\" A T rooper Medic helped Elster drag T ravis in, before another hit a door control button. The door shut behind them, allowing them respite and space to breathe, with Elster dry-heaving. She fell to her knees, taking her helmet of f and rubbing her face, before looking to Travis. The injured Marine was being treated with Bio-foam by the medic, who said, \"Y ou got fucking lucky ... Covvies hit us first... Shit...\"\n\"How many?\" Elster asked the Medic, worried.\n\"Thirty . There's six of us left. Do the math...\" She replied. Elster leaned back against the door , then was shown to be quiet by the surviving team leader , a Corporal Barklay as per the HUD's display . Covenant T roops around them moved on top of the roof, their hooved feet slamming against the corrugated metal panels and disappearing in the distance, away from the house...When the last noise vanished, the T roopers sighed in relief and Elster thanked God those creatures were stupid enough not to check this place... Maybe they must've thought they'd gotten us all, Elster thought to herself as she slowly crawled up to T ravis and checked him. The man grunted, face pale, but he seemed okay otherwise. \"That was a freaking shitshow and a half.\" He spoke with a grunt. A few of the T roopers let out distasted laughs of approval, while Elster sighed, relieved.\n... Then the existential dread hit... The Covenant wer e her e...\n... Ariane...NOBLE Actual Elster stirred. Her mind flashed images of death ahead of her . Bursts of weapons fir e rang in her ears again and again. The familiar rumbling thunder of an autocannon r oared in the backgr ound, intermixed with night-unintelligible cries fr om comrades in arms. Jet-black uniforms clashed with silver -grey in a blur ahead of her and her stomach felt warm. Like blood trickled down her uniform. A blurry figur e appear ed ahead of her , calling out a name she did not r ecognize and checking on her . The thunder clap of a main cannon's shockwave struck her chest, knocking the air out of her lungs. She saw the shell trace thr ough the odd darkness, only to set alight the world with a detonation. The enemy , whoever they wer e, replied and the machine next to her shatter ed into shar ds of steel that washed over her body , the warmth of the fir e too much to bear. Light flashed and the girl felt the familiar weight of an assault weapon in her hand. The snap of bullets whizzing past her ear . The rumble of that autocannon fr om below . Azur e water lay in the distance, a seaside r esort, torn asunder by whatever war this was. She blinked and turned, to see the blurr ed figur es, clad in combat uniforms. She could faintly distinguish smiles. They now sat ar ound what looked like a campfir e. A name rang out in her ears again, unr ecognizable, though familiar . The voice who spoke it was distorted, but audible. Female. W arm.\n\"Lilith.\"\nItou, another word rang in her mind. She felt a hand slam into her shoulder and jumped awake, fingers wrapping around her pistol's grip out of instinct. She looked up to see the Army medic looming over her . The woman took a knee and asked, semi-concerned, \"Y ou good? Y ou were moving 'round quite a lot...\" to which Elster nodded. She sighed and rubbed her eyes, then her gaze swept right. She noted some of the T roopers sat within the garage were keeping themselves occupied with maintaining their kit, that there was a vehicle that was taken apart in the middle, on a lift, and She blanked, eyes widening. Then, she looked up at the Medic and asked, \"Where's Corporal Travis...?\" as she noted that the young man was missing. Standing to her feet, Elster gazed down upon the spot where he had been sat and the Medic hummed. It was clear she knew where T ravis had gone. And Elster could hazard a guess as she picked up her Assault Rifle. She looked to the Medic and stated, \"Why wasn't I woken up?\"\n\"Corporal felt it'd be unnecessary to drag you outta bed,\" The medic replied, slowly shifting her rifle to better rest on the magnetic lock on the armor . Noting Elster's look of concern on an otherwise deadpan synth-skin face, the medic stated, \"He took half our squad with him to the Relay ... See if they can't get it back online with our radioman, who was apparently a Telecom engineer before shit went sideways on Harmony .\"Elster sighed deeply , rubbing her eyes, then murmured, \"Why do people do stupid things like that...?\" before shifting and pausing. The sound of heavy footfalls echoed from outside and every single man and woman in the garage tensed, grabbing their weapons of f the floor . Elster squinted, put her helmet on and looked at the Motion T racker . Grey dots for now . She leaned against the door as the T roopers found positions to hold the line, aiming their weapons. The Medic sat beside Elster , weapon ready , then whispered wishfully , almost like a prayer , \"Maybe they're friendlies and our IFFs are borked...?\" to which Elster rolled her eyes. Could just as easily have been civvies or local wildlife, but no point to take the risk. The Medic whispered again, slightly saddened, \"Fair ...\" as she looked over her rifle. The Replika prepared to pop the door open. The corrugated metal most definitely couldn't take any AP round hits, but she still wanted to identify the hostiles outside, not just empty a mag or two and find out she killed Civilians. She shifted her left foot and heard a sharp clink as she kicked away a spent casing. Looking down, her eyes shot wide open. She grit her teeth. The first Needle Rifle shard punched through the door , followed by a flurry of plasma weapon fire and more needles. The steel melted away , opening the door up as the T roopers took cover . One of them caught a blast to the face and tumbled over , head a fine scarlet mist. The others, however , managed to stick to cover . The Replika pulled out a grenade and tossed it past the door as more fire streamed in, before she heard several creatures squawk with surprise. The frag's explosion rocked the building, dust falling from the ceiling in lines. Elster had also picked up the birds squawking in pain, collapsing. She was the first to poke out of cover , pying the corner and opening fire. Bullets started flying as training the Replika didn't even know she had kicked in. Firing bursts at the enemy to determine where they were through the smoke, she soon caught sight of two rounded blue lights with cutouts on the left and right 'sides'. Green shined through the smoke, as well as the flashing of blue ener gy shields. As the smoke cleared, she could finally make out the Covenant troops' silhouettes. A pair of the tall bow-legged bastards and... Birds. Right, she'd just killed a few .\n\"Fucking hell, Jackals and Elites!\" Called out a T rooper , firing his rifle. The T roopers around her joined in, the Medic poking out and firing from a prone position that covered most of her body behind the concrete pillar Elster was hidden behind. Both of them fired on full-auto, while their designated marksman fired at the exposed hands of the avian-like predators hiding behind active shields that resembled old medieval ones, except made as if of magic. A round punched through one creature's four -fingered hand and disarmed it, its plasma pistol clattering to the floor in front of Elster . It squawked and cried in pain, exposing its mohawked head before another 7,62mm round from the DMR punched clean through its wide-open left eye and out the other side. The bird-brained creature collapsed, but the enemy Elites quickly seemed to reform the line. Advancing in a sort of phalanx, the surviving Covenant troops pushed, with the tallest ones at the rear , giving orders and firing their plasma rifles at them. One had fired for so long, Elsternow noticed, that he had to cool the weapon. T wo vents popped out of the side and dark-blue ionized gas, clearly superheated by the rapid-firing of the weapon, ejected out the sides. Elster poked out again and opened up on fully automatic. This Elite wore blue armor . The full magazine she emptied into him caused his shields to burst and two rounds punctured the chest plate it wore. It roared to the skies, its mandibles splitting wide open in pain, anger , or both, before it glared at Elster and aimed. The girl was quicker on the draw , pulling out her pistol and firing one round. The Elite's head was split in two by the .50 SAPHE bullet. It tumbled over , dead before it even hit the ground, with a thunk that was audible even through the gunfire. The group, however , could not celebrate. There came the audible noise of alien engines. Ahead of them a bifurcated dropship appeared, its rear -mounted plasma cannon firing toward them. The building shook under the barrage as the T roopers and Elster still fired their guns.\n\"Fucking hell! Spirit, dropping in reinforcements!\" The Medic called out as she ducked into cover and reloaded her rifle, slamming a fresh mag into place and racking the bolt. The ammo counter reset and she poked out again. She pulled a frag of f her belt and threw it between the Aliens, causing them all to scatter . The surviving Elite, however , pushed forward instead of jumping out of the way . It char ged Elster , grabbing her by the throat and slamming her against the ground, before powering on what looked to be an ener gy dagger in its left gauntlet. It lifted its hand up and was about to strike at the girl, before the Medic opened fire. The shots burst the creature's shields and distracted it, allowing Elster to punch it square in-between its split lips. She grit her teeth and watched it stagger , kicking it of f and aiming her pistol at it. She put three rounds into it. T wo in the chest, one in the head, just as the new enemy reinforcements waddled in. Another pair of fragmentation grenades flew out from the ranks, explosions shattering the bodies of diminutive aliens with rebreather masks and giant tanks on their backs. Beside them, more Elites marched in. Elster barely had time to scramble back to her feet and reload before they poured in, firing their plasma weaponry into the place. A burst of needles struck another of their T roopers, piercing the chest plate, ener gy arching of f each shard that was close together . The four shards detonated, splaying the man's chest wide open. That left them down to four Army troopers and Elster . She grit her teeth as another trooper took a green bolt to the arm, fell to the floor and still fired his weapon, only to get of fed by another bolt vaporizing his chest. The Medic swore to herself and said, \"It's fucking hard enough to treat patients, you assholes!\" then opened fire again. The Replika focused on taking out the short, stout little enemies that advanced on them. Bursts of fire to their heads seemed to do the trick, each collapsing, dripping a fluorescent azure blood from their wounds in contrast to the prune-purple of the other two alien groups. The Elites and the 'Jackals' as they were called. The girl grit her teeth and covered the Doc as she reloaded.The DMR rang out again and another creature's head was busted open by the round, but the enemy was closing in and overwhelming them. This wasn't good by a long shot. Elster wondered if she should try and take them to press the advantage, but that would get'em all killed. She assessed the tactical situation while opening fire to suppress the enemy's advance.\n\"Someone gotta call!\" A T rooper called out.\n\"I'll do it...\" Elster murmured, then called out, \"Cover me!\" as she switched on her radio, hoping that there was some reinforcements on short-range. She spoke, \"This is Three-Charlie, UNSC Army Fireteam under attack by Covenant forces, requesting backup!\" then ducked as a needle punctured through one of their troopers' shoulders and knocked him on his ass. The others provided covering fire for the Doc as she ran to help. The girl called out again,\n\"Repeat, Three-Charlie, UNSC Army Fireteam is under heavy attack! The Covenant are on Reach, I repeat, the Covenant ar e on Reach ! We have wounded!\"\nShe grit her teeth as a needler round exploded next to her , then poked out again, knelt and fired at the head of an Elite with her automatic weapon. The monster once again tried to rush her, slamming into her and slashing at her with its ener gy dagger . It clipped her face, a sliver of synth-skin burning of f. She grit her teeth, headbutted the bastard, kicked him and managed to puncture his chest with the sharpened heels of her legs. It collapsed, wounded, before she finished it of f with a burst from her assault rifle. Her own blood mixed with the purple blood of the Elite she'd just executed when a splatter hit her cheek. She wiped it of f and took cover , gritting her teeth... Before pausing as she heard a deluge of gunfire fill the air outside. She stood up, noting three more golden dots on her Motion T racker , before the Medic poked up and said, \"Holy fucking shit... SP ARTANs...\"\nElster was only familiar with the Human supersoldiers through reading up on their MJOLNIR Armor sets, courtesy of Doctor Halsey's manuals. When she saw the first of them walk in, clad in that dark-blue mix-and-match MJOLNIR set, even she had to admit she was awed to see it. The seven-foot-tall Supersoldiers walked inside and gazed around, pausing only upon sighting Elster , with their leader , the blue-wearing man, walking up to her . She noted the tag above his head said 'NOBLE', followed by his rank. He towered above her and he was one of the middle-height ones. There were two more behind, one clad in dirty white armor with blue accents and a tall guy who looked like he'd work with the Mynahs, carrying an LMG. The girl immediately snapped-to, saluting the Commander ahead of her , who shook his head and said, \"At ease. Y ou the one who sent the Distress Signal, trooper?\" as he looked around. The medic tended to the wounded, the few surviving T roopers rested now , cheering weakly for the SP ARTANs' arrival and there she was, in front of him. Upon receiving a confirming nod from Elster , the man asked, \"Good. What's your name?\"\n\"Sir, Corporal Lilith It-\"... Elster blanked, eyes widening. She wasn't Lilith Itou. No... She felt a slight migraine coming on, before she closed her eyes shut tightly and shook her head, \"N Nevermind, sir , sorry ... Private Elster , LSTR-512, callsign Three-Charlie-Six. Formerly of the Penr ose-512, currently working for the UNSC as a repair Replika for various items... I and 3-Charlie were on our way to the V isegrad Relay to repair it when we...\"\"... Those T roopers we found dead in the field,\" The big man spoke, \"They were your team?\"\n\"Sir,\" She nodded.\n\"Got it... Three,\" The Commander spoke over Radio, stern, sharp and focused, \"Get the Falcon T wo and Four took to V isegrad back to our position. It's being retasked to evacuate the surviving UNSC soldiers here,\" and, upon receivign a confirmation, he gazed upon Elster , asking, \"How familiar are you with our systems, Private? Colonel Holland told us we should expect to meet a 'newcomer' when we were tasked for V isegrad.\"\n\"I can repair anything you give me, sir ,\" She replied, straightforward, \"Including com equipment. I think it's why I and my team were going for V isegrad.\"\n\"Then T wo may find some place for you. Sorry to take you away from the T roopers, but we're going to need our own repairwoman,\" NOBLE Actual spoke factually , looking Elster right in the eye, despite the fact the girl couldn't tell that from his visor being polarized and completely opaque. He looked back to his teammates and ordered, \"Five, Six, on me. W e're taking the Private here and headed for V isegrad. Three, bring it down and pick us up.\"\nThe group exited out into open air , with Elster noting the dead Covenant. The Jackals she'd skewered with frags were still there, bleeding from the wounds caused by Shrapnel. Dead ahead, Elster soon saw the mountain range around her . With muted awe at the pure beauty of another , alien world, she shifted on her feet as the Commander stopped two T roopers and said, \"If you don't mind surrendering some extra ammo for her .\"\n\"Sir,\" The two soldiers nodded and removed magazines from their belts, handing them to Elster . Taken out of her fugue, the girl gladly received the extra mags, slotting them into her armor's pouches, before looking up as the clap of rotors against the wind and the faint whirr of four turbofan engines reached her . Looking up, she saw the UNSC Falcons touching down, with one of them carrying a SP ARTAN with a Sniper Rifle, green armor meant to match his surroundings, a ghillie hood and an SRS-99/99 AMR in hand.\n\"Take it this is the other Newbie we're picking up today?\" The Sniper quipped as Elster and Noble One, Five and Six ran up to the chopper . The first Falcon lifted of f on their left, flying off back toward FOB with the loaded injured. Elster hummed, watching their comrades depart, before looking at the SP ARTANs as the vehicle flew beside the mountain range, above a mountain road and next to a slew of ener gy farms in the form of wind turbines.\n\"Noble T wo, Sit-Rep?\" The Commander requested over Radio as everyone checked their guns. Jun looked at Elster and said, \"Freq 33,1. That's ours. Switch to it if you're gonna be working with us.\" and the girl complied, quickly thumbing through the channels in her helmet, seeing the changes displayed on the helmet's HUD. At the same time, she gave a thorough check of her rifle and mumbled something to herself. Why had she said the name of a person she knew nothing about? W as it the personality matrix of that person that she was seeing? She had heard rumors, but...No, she shook her head, then listened in. \" ... Dialed up my tor ch. Cut a way thr ough. may take some time...\" Oh, the door was stuck. Great. Elster suddenly felt a hell of a lot more tense about the oncoming fight. She felt the aircraft take a turn to the right and readied her weapon, tense, before looking at the SP ARTAN sat to her right. The man was cool as a cucumber , weapon gripped firmly in his hand. He was carrying an AR, too, and the wide visor of his EV A Helmet told the girl all she needed to know about him. As the aircraft swung in past one of the mountaintops, Elster laid eyes on the compound. A parking garage of some sort with a storage area lay to the left of the main building, while the outer 'greeting area' inside the gates was lined full of abandoned civilian trucks and bearing a rather lar ge centerpiece resembling an umbrella under which a few vehicles were parked. The main building itself was bulky , looked like it was built out of sturdy concrete and held the direct link to the massive four -prong Antenna Dish sat at the summit. Plasma fire struck the walls as an advance Covenant team was engaging a sole SP ARTAN sat by the main door . The Commander looked to her , then said, \"Gear up, T rooper . We're going in.\"\n\"Break's over , Six,\" Noble Five quipped jovially , lifting the .50cal LMG he carried with him while staring at the SP ARTAN next to her . As the aircraft swung in and touched down. The soldiers piled out of the vehicle, with Six motioning to her to follow . The SP ARTAN hefted his rifle and opened up on the first group of Covenant troops they met, wasting the bastards with shot and shell. Six and Elster had quickly cleared the area of a first wave, before the Commander called out,\n\"Private, up front,\" making Elster turn toward the door . She nodded and ran up to them, her toolkit still hanging of f her side. She saw Noble T wo crouched and working on the gate controls while the Commander started, \"This is Elster . The one Holland told us about.\"\nTwo cast a quick glance toward the girl, then hummed and said, \"If she can help me fix this mess, she's more than welcome to...\" dismissively . Actual gave the girl a nod and paused, before looking up. More Covenant Dropships were coming in, which meant Elster needed to move fast. She knelt beside T wo, then stuck her head in and looked into what she needed to do.\n\"Circuits aren't just flash-fused, two wires are completely fried and unable to take commands,\" Elster noted.\n\"I noticed,\" T wo replied, a bit aggravated.\n\"Let me fix it. Focus on defending the door ...\" She stated, sharply , focusing on the repair work. The SP ARTAN scof fed, but Elster was already working. She added bluntly , \"I have a Bypass method I used once before on board the Penr ose. Similar issue... Couldn't find spare parts, but it helped us in the long run...\" to which T wo nodded. Plasma and Needle rounds started flying in, slamming into the door as the SP ARTANs scrambled to defend the base. Gunfire echoed, the rattle of assault rifles, DMRs and the heavy machine gun carried by the biggest of them, not to mention the bark of a shotgun and the laughter of one of the SPARTANs. She eyed the fuses, squinting at the wiring as she pulled out another repair set with a spray . Calmly , she began applying it to the wiring itself. She ducked as a bolt ofPlasma struck just above her head, shards of molten concrete raining down around her and onto her armored frame. She turned around, quick-drew her pistol and put a round right between the eyes of the diminutive alien that shot at her .\n\"Someone keep her covered!\" The Commander ordered. Between her and the enemy , Noble Six stepped almost immediately . His assault rifle chattered as Elster quickly turned back to work, utilizing her VISR system to ensure she could properly see what she was hunting for in there. Coupling the supposedly-cut wires together , she used the spray to fix them, before hitting the button on the console. The top screen lit up green. Elster called out, \"It's fixed! Get inside!\" before drawing her Assault Rifle and going to provide cover fire. First one in was T wo, while Elster opened up in bursts to keep the enemy suppressed. Next came Six, then five, then Four and One. Five, however , held the door , continuously firing his MG toward them until it shut. Soon after , metallic thumps began to echo as the Covenant troops fired at the door , a thick vault-like door . The Replika sighed, relieved, as she lowered her rifle and looked back at NOBLE T eam. T wo looked to her and admitted with a hint of a grudge, \"Not bad...\" before the rear door popped open. One and Six gave the girl nods of approval, while Five patted her on the shoulder as they walked inside. She hummed, noting the darkness of the place, before turning on her VISR.\n\"Can't see a damn thing...\" One murmured, \"T urn your VISRs on...\"\nAs they took a left down a Hallway , Two said in a low voice, \"Control room... Go easy ...\"\nwhile something pinged on their Motion T rackers. The SP ARTANs pushed inside, clearing each corner , before taking another left to the sight of one of the only functioning lights in the place, a destroyed console filled with scars from the Covenant's ener gy weapons and a corpse laying on the floor , clad in a parka, with greying hair , a tac-pad on his left arm and two cauterized, precise holes through his back. T wo ordered, \"Six, check that body . Trooper , with me. If we're going to be fixing something...\"\nElster followed T wo up to the line and scanned to the right, noting a longer , darkened hallway and a wounded Army troo-... \"T ravis?\" The girl stared, dumbfound. The young Marine bled from the injury in his side, plus two more he had received to the arm and leg. She looked to Two for approval, before getting a nod. Following that, she marched up to the man and took a knee beside him. He flashed a weak smile at Elster , stating, \"Hey , Els.\"\n\"Why didn't you wake me up?\" She asked with half a mouth as she pulled a medical kit of f the wall and opened it. She slotted in a fresh biofoam can to the biggest of the wounds and squeezed, causing the man to grunt in pain, before pulling an autoinjector with morphine and sticking it in his neck. The man breathed in, grabbing onto Elster's hand, then relaxed, breath softening.\n\"Didn't wanna disturb ya... Not after your first mission with us starting out like such a clusterfuck...\" He replied calmly , patting her on the shoulder .Elster shook her head, \"It doesn't matter ...\"\nOne knelt beside her and asked, \"How bad is it?\"\n\"From what I can tell, sir? Fairly ...\" Elster replied bluntly . Travis laughed, then coughed and shook his head.\n\"Damn, not even gonna lie to make your friend feel better ...?\" He then quipped. Seeing as Elster didn't reply anything, he chose to wait to see what the Commander was gonna ask him. Calmly , she stood up and moved around to secure the area, turning back to see T wo yank something out of Six's hand with a degree of malice. She hummed, looked it over , then pocketed it, whatever it was, before Five spoke.\n\"Got a live one over here!\" He called out to his teammates, gently lifting a young woman with brown hair and dark-brown eyes, clad in a leather jacket, turtleneck and jeans. She got lifted to her feet as she punched at the SP ARTAN, yelling at him. Five spoke calmly , \"C'mon, out ya come!\" before setting her down and holding her with both hands and stating, \"W e're not going to hurt you.\"\n\"Jorge,\" One arched a brow behind the helmet, or so Elster figured.\n\"I got her ,\" He stated, then set aside his MG and held her as he stared at her , \"Keep still and I'll release you...\" while the girl still struggled. Elster blinked, feeling the hairs on her neck stand on-end for some reason. She held her rifle close, narrowing her lips. Six noticed her tense up and gave one small tilt of his head to the left, showing her to move in closer . The girl Jor ge held looked up at him and spoke in Hungarian, fear audible in her voice,\n\"Meg... Itt vannak. \" which caused the SP ARTAN-II to stif fen up nigh-immediately . Elster didn't understand what that meant-She gasped as three of those tall, hunchback xenos dropped in, one swinging its long ener gy blade toward Jor ge as he covered the young woman. Lifting her rifle, she opened fire as the Elites char ged forward. One of them pinned Noble Six down, while another swung his sword and aimed for Kat's head. The girl was quickly pushed out of the way by the Commander , who was firing away at the enemy with Elster's help as Four demanded, \" What's your status, over?!\"\n\"WE'VE BEEN ENGAGED!\" Carter called out as he fired. Six punched one of the monsters in the face, then deflected an ener gy dagger aimed for his face. Kat aimed and opened fire with her pistol at the Elite that had pinned Six down. It scrambled of f the SP ARTAN as soon as the Commander and Elster kicked it of f, before rushing forward and grabbing T ravis. Both the T rooper and the girl they'd found started screaming while Carter slid Six's weapon to him. Carter called out, \"Bad guy , coming out, Emile!\"\nThe SP ARTAN reloaded and aimed, with Elster right next to him, calling out, \"T ravis!\" as she saw the man being dragged away behind the door . Carter grit his teeth as the girl screamed on and on. Elster wanted to run after him, but the Commander put a hand in front of her face and looked around. He turned to the girl, who said, \"W e have to go, sir! Now!\"\nCarter grit his teeth as Emile called out, \" Tango blew past me! Permission to pursue!?\"\"Negative, Four , stay on the door! T wo! Handle her ! Five, Six, Private, clear the hole!\" The man ordered sharply , signaling them forward with one movement of his hand. Six reloaded, looked to Elster and nodded as Number Five rushed past them. The trio pushed inside, each taking an angle. Six and Elster each took an angle as Jor ge closed the door behind them. The dark corridors were only lit by the girl's VISR system as they pushed, firing away . They encountered squads of Grunts ahead, their weapons barking loudly as the enemy force fell back deeper into the hold of this place. Elster didn't care at this point. She advanced with the SP ARTANs to save one of the people she'd managed to befriend. She couldn't save the rest of her squad, but she could at least get to T ravis in time. She kicked down a Grunt, her\n'foot' piercing clean through the creature's face and staining with blood. Following that up, she lit the area ahead up with assault rifle fire, while, from Six's direction, a fragmentation grenade flew . She watched the SP ARTANs take blasts of plasma to their Energy Shields, which caused a flaring gold color to appear in her vision. The shields, however , withstood the hits very well, the SP ARTANs returning fire with MG and rifle fire. The girl pushed up to a corner and took cover as a flurry of plasma rounds flew through. Soon joined by the two SP ARTANs of Noble, though, the girl pushed in behind the cover of two shielded individuals, plasma striking shields and getting the return fire of actual\n7,62x51mm and 12,7mm rounds fired from rifles and a Machine Gun respectively . Several of the Grunts panicked, throwing their weapons away as the SP ARTANs char ged in. The Jackals, meanwhile, tried maintaining a defensive line. Tried. Their leading of ficer got stuck with a plasma grenade right on the exposed hand carrying the gun. The radioactive explosive tore the Phalanx into pieces, causing them to scramble all around. The birds that ran were shot in the back. The birds that held their line were shot in the front, their shields disabled by the electromagnetic pulse of the plasma grenade. Pushing deeper , the SP ARTANs soon found themselves in the midst of an open room where the server towers of the place resided. Below and on top of a platform across from them lay a dozen of them, cooled by what seemed to be either liquid nitrogen or some other substance that gave the room a misty hue. Jor ge showed the girl to hold up before she rushed headlong. He threw a flare toward the other size, long-arming it, before stating, \"This oughta drag'em out!\" as he lifted his LMG Indeed, a pair of Zealots popped out of cover , one of them already firing a heavy weapon at them. Boulders of scarlet-glimmering plasma struck the walls around the SP ARTANs, shaking the place, while Elster took cover . She drew her pistol and switched on the weapon's SmartScope, aiming via the two-times zoom toward the Elites, the camera at the top letting her shoot over cover . The gun thundered and she felt it in her wrist. She'd nailed a Grunt, then another , then another . These guys wore full face masks instead of just the normal gas mask, but that didn't help them. She emptied her magazine by sniping out the enemy's supporting elements with her pistol, reloaded, holstered the gun and took out her Assault Rifle again as she, Six and Jorge pushed forward through a narrow walkway on the right of the server room and into the other size.One of the Zealots was met by focused fire from all three soldiers. He aimed his concussive weapon at Elster , who dodged by combat-rolling of f to the side as the first blasts struck her position. She then watched as Six engaged the bastard up close, slamming into it and shoulder -checking it against the wall, causing it to drop its weapon. The SP ARTAN then pinned the barrel of his assault rifle to its chest and opened up, emptying a full magazine into the beast he held in place. Its shield and the SP ARTAN drew his knife, puncturing the hide that covered muscle and slitting its throat in one move. The monster gar gled blood and collapsed, dead, onto the floor . Six ducked as plasma shots came in reply , then drew his pistol and one-tapped the Grunt that was firing at him. Elster then pushed forward under cover from both Five and Six, rifle raised and with full intent of getting to T ravis. As she passed the last of the server towers, she gasped and fell backward, dodging the swing of the last Elite's ener gy sword. It narrowly missed Elster and cleaved through the tower on her right, before the Elite refocused on her and snarled, all four of its mandibles opening as it glared at her , mimicking an impossibly-lar ge human smile. She rolled to the side as it swung down, cutting into the steel floor , then jumped to her feet and grunted as the monster gave her a full-on close-fisted punch to the face, causing her to stagger . It then sliced upward with the blade and Elster felt the burning heat of the plasma blade searing the synth-skin on her chest. She gasped, staggered back and saw her armor plate had been cleaved, deep enough to leave a mark. Before she could even aim her rifle and before the Elite could strike again, though, Six pounced onto its back, clambered up in a flash and planted the tip of a massive combat knife into the back of its skull, twisting the blade and causing the monster to collapse, dead, in front of the girl. The SP ARTAN looked at her , flicked some of the blood of f his knife and sheathed it, before nodding. Jorge gave the girl a pat on the shoulder and said, \"Not bad for a rookie,\" before radioing in,\n\"Actual, this is Five. T argets neutralized.\"\n\"Copy . Kat needs you thr ee to r eset a junction. Should be close...\" The Commander replied as Elster already marched toward the rear room on the platform. She looked around, not for the junction or the obvious generator to her right, but for a certain someone. She scanned the room twice, then paused as she saw it in a dark corner . Laying in a pool of blood, a corpse. Her heart, robotic as it was, sank. She walked up to the corpse, sliding her rifle onto her back, then took a knee beside the man that had died with plasma blade injuries. He lay there, pale as bone, his armor torn asunder and burned by plasma weaponry and the gut wound, marked by still-glowing lilac needle crystals. She put a hand on his shoulder , closed her eyes and lamented leaving him alone, before sighing deeply and shaking her head. Solemnly , she leaned forward and retrieved his dog tags, sliding them into a pouch, before standing up just as Six reactivated the junction. He and Jor ge looked to her as she stood up, turning to face them, before Jor ge asked, \"Y ou doing alright?\" as he saw the injuries. The cut on her cheek and the blade strike on her breastplate. He then saw the tags hanging out of her pouch and the dead T rooper and whispered, \"Oh... I'm sorry ...\" with remorse behind his voice. She gave a simple, weak nod, before showing them to lead the way . Six and Jor ge looked to one-another , then to her and replied with nods.The trio walked back into the control room, with Elster walking up to see what Kat was doing so she could help. She sighed deeply , wanting more to keep her mind of f Travis's and her new unit's death than anything else. Replikas, despite appearances, were used to working in what was called 'Cadres'. Groups of their own kind, or some times mixed groups, wherein they would interact and live with others. Certainly , she loved Ariane and she had been the biggest part of her Cadre in a while, but... There was something... Her mind flashed yet again. A bloody puddle ar ound her . She lay ther e, wounds burning, all whilst being cradled by one of her own. Soothing wor ds, though unintelligible to her , wer e spoken, the blur of her mind blocking the face of the comrade that held her up. All she could hear now wer e her wor ds, spoken with r emorse, as the blue skies of V ineta gr ew dark above them, \"Y ou've done a lot... Y ou can r est now , my dear ... I'm so sorry ...\"\nShe felt robotic elbow knock into her own. W oken out of her stupor , she turned to Kat, who asked, \"Are you okay ...?\" with some degree of worry which was masked by impassivity . Elster nodded, blinking. She felt something warm trickling down her face, but ran a hand and saw it was nothing. She shook her head, to which Kat started pointing at various wires and spoke, \"I'm going to need your head in the game... Look, we're splicing the overland bundle here. Have to give Carter a direct line to colonel Holland back at HIGHCOM.\"\nWhatever that flash had been... She did not want to put Ariane through a similar pain as the person in it... Ever ...\n\"Got it...\" The LST Replika replied as she got to work, aiding Kat with her toolset. She checked how many polyurethane repair sprays she had and noted to herself she still had a plentiful supply . Sticking one such poly-spray into her chest cavity , onto the open injury she received and through the armor plate, she pressed the trigger , feeling the sting of the spray patching her injury up. Kat looked at her , unbetraying of any surprise she might've felt, and asked, \"That like... Biofoam for you?\"\n\"Repair spray ... Polyurethane...\" Elster replied calmly , setting the empty spray aside and continuing her work by utilizing specialized tools to splice into the thing. Kat hummed, nodded and helped her , all the while the others were talking in the background. The SPARTAN seemed to eye her every once in a while, calmly making sure the girl was doing proper work. She sighed, then looked past her , at Six. She shook her head and said to Elster , \"I'm Kat. Kat B312.\"\n\"Aye, ma'am. I saw your tag...\" Elster stated, then hummed as she worked on a section of the splicing, \"... Elster . LSTR Unit Five-T welve, of the ship with the same number . I am not UNSC, nor UEG.\"\n\"Obviously ,\" Kat stated bluntly as she clipped two wires and made sure they linked properly ,\n\"The UNSC hasn't built Androids yet... Still, you have a reason for serving with us? Didn't you just arrive...?\"\"Yeah...\" Elster hummed, \"How do you know that?\"\n\"I hear what I hear ,\" Kat whispered with a shrug, \"Hey , what're you-?\" She started, pointing at what Elster was doing. She coupled a junction of fiber wire with another and spliced them together utilizing a small welding torch. The console above whirred to life as the antennae reconnected with the transmit. T aking a moment, Kat hummed and gave an approving nod,\n\"Good work.\"\n\"Thanks...\" Elster replied. Kat looked back as she stood up and said, \"Sir . We have a link. It's patchy , but it's there... Can I ask something?\"\n\"Shoot,\" Carter nodded. She pointed at Elster and asked, \"Can we get her assigned to us? Should ease my workload a lot if we have more things to repair . She's smart enough.\"\n\"I'll talk it out with Holland. Go,\" He tilted his head to the right. The two women nodded, with Elster being surprised that Kat would even request such a thing, before they walked out. Carter cleared his throat as the line grew clearer bit-by-bit, wondering just what'd gotten into Kat to request that they transfer a Non-SP ARTAN to NOBLE. Sure, he could guess an easier workload, but it wasn't like \"... I'm barely getting you!\" Holland's voice took his mind out of its little fugue, the man clearly worried, \"What's the situation, over?\"\nCarter spoke aloud, \"Colonel, this is Noble One. There are no Rebels... The Covenant are on Reach.\"\n\"... Come again, Noble One? Did you say Covenant ?\" Holland demanded, his fear palpable even over the com line. Carter hated delivering bad news...\n\"Affirmative, sir . It's the WINTER CONTINGENCY ,\" He shot back. He didn't wanna believe it either ... Holland's words voiced Carter's own thoughts perfectly , \"God help us all.. .\"NOBLE SEVEN Ariane paced her room, worried sick. Barely a couple days passed and she was already worried about Elster not even doing so much as sending a message. Some part of Ariane told her that the situation was gonna get worse, but she wanted to be positive. Maybe she was just working on repairing the stuf f the UNSC Division she was assigned to asked her to repair . Maybe she was just overall busy running errands as she heard most Armies do to new Rookies. A light hazing of sorts. Hopefully nothing too bad. Ugh, it didn't make sense, though. She'd have, at the very least, sent a message via one of the UNSC's tablets. Ariane had gotten hers just before Elster departed for her new duty station at Camp Charlie and Halsey had told her Charlie had one of the most secure com networks in the V ieri territory . Elster would've called by now . Something didn't sit right with Ariane. And it seemed somebody could tell. She had long-ago noted the camera set up in her room to provide supervision of ONI's newest acquired asset. Hell, she knew from the forbidden books she read how ONI-like or ganizations behaved around new 'Assets' like herself or Elster , which just brought into question why in God's name did ONI approve Elster's transfer to a military unit? Y ou'd think they wanted to study her kind of like Halsey was doing the non invasive brain scans and stuf f on the resident Bioresonant. She sighed and plopped herself down onto the double bed, rubbing her face. The room was surprisingly comfortable for what was, in fact, the under ground section of a UNSC T op Secret Facility in a frickin' mountain. The absurdity of this entire situation struck the young woman, finally , and her heart began to race. They'd somehow arrived in a whole new Solar System, been rescued by a patrol vessel belonging to a highly-advanced, space-travel-capable Humanity that, however , lacked the ability to create Replikas or use Bioresonance, rather focusing on tech, and now she was stuck, being tested on, in these alien humans' base. Concern, however , immediately turned to excitement, an ear -to-ear smile forming on Ariane's face as she processed the matter at hand. This was fr eaking awesome. Oh, she couldn't wait to get back home, honestly , tell Isa and Erika about this entire mess! Maybe these guys would help them against the Empire, maybe even help induct Eusan into their rank and file as a free nation!\nShe hummed as her mind then wandered to the W ar at hand, remembering what Doctor Halsey had deemed fit to show them so they could more easily understand the context. She felt a lump in her throat as the images of the Covenant's relentless genocide of mankind played back in her mind. So many glassings, so many deaths. She knew Elster had seen the total numbers of casualties, but hadn't gotten to ask her about it, nor see them for herself, considering her Replika lover had shielded her eyes. The reveal that those books she read, the ones portraying Humanity's fight against the Alien, proved to be right sorta hurt. Because she'd honestly always hoped to see if there was other life beyond their little Solar System. That there was and it was both humans and aliens nowterrified the young woman. That those humans and aliens were at war , what was tantamount to a war of survival for her own kin, was heartbreaking. She sighed and squelched the thoughts, taking deep breaths to calm herself, before rubbing her face and murmuring to herself, \"Elster ... What's going on...?\"\n\"Seems like someone's having a bad day ,\" Spoke a familiar voice, though it was of slightly higher pitch and more jovial than that of the person that first came to mind. Ariane yelped and jumped, nearly falling of f her bed in the process. The figure spoke, \"W oah, woah, woah, relax...\" as she finally materialized. A holographic display on the desk ahead of Ariane lit up and the purple avatar of a female form appeared, hands on her hips and a soft smile on her face.\n\"... C-Cortana?\" Ariane paused. Halsey had warned her that her two AI companions, one of which was being prepared for a very important operation(AKA the one that was ahead of her), were quite capable of just roaming around the Base's systems on their own, some times popping in to do some stuf f here or there. It had still spooked the everloving life outta her , though. Opening her arms as a way of greeting, as if asking for a hug, the diminutive A vatar spoke to her, \"The one and only .\" With a slight air of smugness, before her face turned back to its previous smile. She dida quick diagnostic, her avatar glowing a faint green as she inquired,\n\"Ariane, right?\" now jovial. Of course, she probably had files on Ariane, as well. Anything Halsey wrote and received. She just wanted to do small-talk.\n\"Yeah... Hi...\" Ariane breathed a sigh of relief, clutching her chest. She breathed in, then out and said with a half-smile, \"Y ou scared me...\" as she pulled herself back to a proper seated position. She examined the strings of numbers running across Cortana's holographic body , noting several things:She was an interesting one. She resembled Doctor Halsey quite well. She was cute. That last bit caused a faint red tint in the Bioresonant's cheeks, but she quickly suppressed it, thinking back on Elster . The blush returned, while Cortana seemed to ponder the situation. Choosing to ignore the obvious joke she could make at Ariane's expense, Cortana simply said, \"Sorry .\" before materializing on another holographic display next to Ariane's bed, smiling and crossing her arms to her chest. She explained, \"Doctor Halsey says I need to deepen my interpersonal relationships for the upcoming op, so I decided to swing by and see what her newly-acquired study buddy-slash-subject is doing. Something on your mind?\"\nNoting the AI's incredible degree of friendliness, even compared to most other artificial beings she had met to date during her life in the Eusan Nation, the girl hummed and replied, slightly embarrassed, \"... Y eah.\" But that replacement quickly transformed into worry . Worry Cortana must've clearly noticed in Ariane's speech. \"It's Elster . She'd... Probably have called, or at least sent a message by now . After all, what's there to do beside fix broken vehicles and weapons, right?\"\n\"Ah, gotcha,\" Cortana replied, cupping her own chin and taking a moment to think. She added nonchalantly , \"You two did seem pretty close,\" while parsing through the questionnaires and the interview video herself. She had redirected a small portion of herprocessing power to learning whatever could be learned about the UEG's newest 'Citizens-to Be'.\n\"More than close.\" Ariane murmured her reply , face red.\n\"Oh?\" Cortana hummed, then smirked, \"Mind sharing a little for a girl who doesn't get out much?\"\n\"Heh, sure,\" Ariane giggled, rubbing the back of her head, \"W e were pretty much all we had aboard our ship, the Penr ose, during our exploration duty . We were stuck together , so we figured we might as well make the best of it. T urns out some documents say that you shouldn't befriend your Elster unit when on ships like that... Heh, I may've done a tad more than just befriend  Elster ...\"\n\"Ooh...\" Cortana realized. She'd seen this type of romance before in some of the stuf f she had been sneakily reading and/or watching whenever Halsey got some degree of sleep from her work. A short chuckle escaped her mouth, \"Heheh,\" as she sat herself down, shining a blue tint this time, seemingly relaxed, \"I see. That's cute. Explains how lovey-dovey you two looked.\"\n\"Ha...\" The girl let out what sounded more like a whine than a laugh, before requesting,\n\"Please, don't say that... I'm awkward enough around her as is.\" While Cortana could see her face glow all-the-more red. The sole reason for that was one only Ariane knew . She had pretty much gone head-over -heels with Elster because the girl proved herself to be a diligent worker and a shoulder to cry on, in a way . In the dark void of space, what more could a girl ask for?\n\"Hey , she's your girlfriend,\" Cortana quipped, grinning. Oh, Ariane was an easy one to tease. How cute. \"Own up to it, sister .\"\n\"I am, I am! I'm quite proud of it, actually!\" Ariane blubbered, a red-faced mess as she hid her face. Cortana chuckled at the sight and wondered for just a moment what that must've felt like. Having someone to love, she meant. Someone to care about so deeply as to call your own. Someone that calls you their own. It must've been heartwarming to some degree. W ell, not like Cortana had a 'Heart', or a physical manifestation of one. She still cared about her creators lives-...\n\"Good...\" She paused and showed her to be quiet, reading into an oncoming communique from a UNSC FOB nearby V isegrad. She blinked, eyes widening as she listened into the chat. Elster had called up Halsey from one of the com terminals. And going by the way she looked, it seemed as if the mission to the Relay got a little dicey . She'd heard through the Battle Net that the Army had deployed Fireteams to the downed Relay , but... Ariane noticed the faint switches in the AI's avatar color , denoting her emotional state. She shifted uneasily , her composure regained, then asked the girl, \"Y ou okay?\" as she felt a pit in her gut. The AI hummed, listening in still. Elster seemed fine, if a little distraught, unlike Doctor Halsey , who was actively freaking the hell out at the presence of Covenant forces.\n\"Yep. Good news, we did just get a ping from a UNSC FOB...\" The girl replied to Ariane.\"Oh! Can I go see her?!\" Ariane replied excitedly , jumping to her feet.\n\"Sure... Doctor Halsey's already there...\" Cortana nodded, wary . Ariane must've noticed.\n\"... I feel like there's something you ain't telling me...\"\n\"It's best if they tell you themselves...\" Cortana replied once more, then disappeared of f the holographic pedestal. That caused the pit in Ariane's gut to deepen. Something wasn't right at all. She marched toward the door , opening it and running out into the main lab, to see Doctor Halsey . She was a lot paler than before, gritting her teeth while images played on the screen ahead. Halsey sighed deeply , then said, \"Hello, miss Ariane...\" and waved her forward. Elster's face now materialized on the screen as Ariane ran toward her . The girl only paused as she saw the injuries sustained by her lover . Wide-eyed, Ariane leaned in to look closer at the girl, before Elster narrowed her lips and realized she must've seen it. Running a hand over the scratch, the Replika sighed.\n\"I'm okay , Ariane...\" The tired girl stated from across the screen. She looked up at her apologetically , then stated, \"Though I'm... Sorry . I thought we wouldn't be fighting...\" as she noticed the girl's concern. The Replika sighed once more, rubbing her face, before looking to Halsey . The woman nodded from behind Ariane and Elster took it as her confirmation. \"The Covenant are on Reach, Ariane. They're here...\"\nAriane's face dropped, fear visible in those scarlet eyes of hers. She tugged at the collar of her new uniform, feeling it too tight. Panic began to set in as her heart started thumping away in her chest. Noticing this, Elster started, \"Hey , listen. I'm okay ... I'm okay . I... Sort of knew what I signed up for the moment I volunteered to help Doctor Halsey's people.\"\n\"You didn't volunteer to be a soldier , Elster , you volunteered for repair work...\" Ariane replied softly , looking at her injured lover with tears welling in her eyes. She'd already gone through one combat mission without any sort of training. Ariane had, of course, read the manual pertaining Elster and her possible flaws, the one memo she thoroughly read to make sure she gave Elster as good a place to live as any . Her memory imprint was of a soldier from Vineta, but that couldn't... She blinked and her eyes widened.\n\"To avoid r esurfacing of Gestalt memories, do not show or give LSTR Unit photographs, especially of soldiers during the war . Do not show Elster unit movies or let it listen to Music. Do not try to befriend the Elster unit...\"\nThe words on that damned paper rang in her brain now . Had she done this to Elster? Had she awoken some godforsaken memories of hers by not letting her be? And now she thought herself a soldier? Elster called out, \"I did volunteer for military duty , not Civilian Engineering, Ariane...\" to wake her up. Blinking, the red-eyed girl looked upon her lover , who looked with sympathy at her , stating, \"Nobody expected them to be here this quick, did they?\"\n\"No,\" Halsey replied, marching up next to her , \"I had you assigned to the least dangerous base in the whole of V ieri, in the whole of UNSC space and as close as humanly possible toCASTLE itself. I'd pulled so many strings to make sure...\" The woman sighed deeply and shook her head, then gazed to Ariane and stated, \"I had called in a few favors... The 'talk of the town', as the expression goes, was that ONI Materials Group had petitioned the higher  ups to take Elster away within an hour of the report of you being found arriving on Reach.\"\n\"What...?\" Ariane blinked.\n\"They wanted to... T o put it as nicely as I can, miss Y eong, they wanted to see what made Elster 'tick'. An android with the supposed repair , construction and mending capabilities outlined in the many manuals and documents found aboard your ship during the short search undertaken painted a rather vivid picture of her capabilities...\" She stated somewhat apologetically , though her tone of voice remained the same. Ariane had understood what she meant from the get-go. T o say she was horrified... But Halsey clarified, \"I convinced ONI and HIGH-COM that it would be best to see those capabilities... Including the supposed\n'Soldierly' origin of our dear Replika... On the field.\"\n\"... And, again, I did say I'd volunteer to keep you safe. Y ou were there when I did,\" Elster stated from the com. Ariane paused, blinked and narrowed her lips, looking between the two of them. So, the choice had been between deploying Elster as a temporary part of a military unit, with the thought that the Covenant would invade maybe months later , rather than right now, or sending her to be disassembled... The white-haired girl hummed, her shoulders sagging, \"T wo evils and you picked the least worst, eh, Doctor ...?\"\n\"I'd like to think so,\" Halsey replied softly , then sighed and asked, \"W ith whose unit are you now, Elster?\"\n\"Ma'am. NOBLE T eam. SP ARTANs, apparently ,\" The girl replied. Both Ariane and Halsey took a pause and looked at her , before Elster clarified, \"They asked Colonel Holland to transfer me to them. Y ou'd have to ask Noble One and T wo why , considering T wo seemed more than capable with the technical items,\" and she looked back as someone called out, their voice muf fled, \"Seems they need me for a briefing, ma'am... Ariane. I'll see you as soon as I'm back, okay? W e'll make it through this... I love you... \"\n\"Okay ... Please, stay safe, Els... I love you, too.\" Ariane replied, pressing a hand against the screen. Elster put her own hand against it and smiled faintly , before the com line switched off. Ariane sighed and bowed her head. She murmured, \"This is awful...\" as her fingernails scratched into the table. W orry washed over her like a tsunami. She looked to Halsey , to see the same feelings represented in the cracking mask of the woman. She sighed deeply , however , seemingly pushing down those feelings right in front of Elster , before stepping up to her and placing a hand on her shoulder . She said, \"I only intended to keep Elster and you safe from the rest of the Of fice of Naval Intelligence... I swear to you, had I known the Covenant was coming this quickly , I would have kept her here.\"\n\"It's okay , doc...\" Ariane trembled, staring at the darkened blank screen, at her reflection,\n\"She's with SP ARTANs, right...? I read some of the battle reports ya gave me and... If she's with them, she'll be alright. SP ARTANs are your best troopers, after all...\" and she paused asshe felt Doctor Halsey's hand rest on her shoulder , followed by the doctor gently squeezing it. Looking at the woman, she could tell the steel-hearted Doctor Catherine E. Halsey was not used to having to do this. T o comfort someone. And yet, there she was, doing it for a dumb girl who got bullied and was dating a robot. She nodded, her voice cracking, \"T -Thanks...\"\nbefore she burst into tears, wrapping her arms around the Doctor . Stunned, though not unprepared for this kind of emotional outburst, the Doctor sighed, wrapping her left hand around Ariane, her right still gripping her tablet tightly . She let the girl cry her silent tears for a moment, feeling her hold on tight. She felt the hairs on her necks stand on-end, too. The air turned heavy , oppressive to some degree. She blanked, then realized that must've been the girl's Bioresonance kicking in. Halsey sighed, patting her on the head, then said, \"Miss Ariane... Please... She will be safe with NOBLE T eam. They are one of the best SP ARTAN units in our ranks. And their newest addition prior to Elster is on par with the best SP ARTAN we have.\"\nSuddenly , the weight in the air began to dissipate. Halsey sighed, relieved, as she patted the young woman on the back to comfort her . When all tears tried out, Cortana popped out and extended a compartment in which lay supplies. Halsey handed the girl a tissue from said compartment, then turned back to her work and stated, \"W e need to focus on our work here. I've nearly completed the last checks of the MJOLNIR MARK V sets I intend to give to the SPARTANs. Then, I can fully focus on understanding at least some fraction of your abilities...\"\n\"... W ill it help Elster?\" She asked. Doctor Halsey arched a brow at her companion, who clarified, \"If I learn how to use my Bioresonance properly . I can do menial stuf f like raise a potted plant from nothing or lift stuf f with telekinesis, but if I wanted to be of help to combat the Covvies, to keep Elster alive, safe, could I do it with your help, doc? If it meant understanding what I can and can't do...?\"\nHalsey hummed and looked at the girl, then nodded approvingly , \"Yes. W ith knowledge on how your powers work, I will be able to combat any ailments or side-ef fects that may come with its over -use and I may be able to provide a boost... Perhaps a mechanical one, if given enough time...\" as she lifted up her tablet and started writing out notes. Cortana chuckled, as did Kalmiya, while she worked.\n\"Okay . Let's do it...\" Ariane replied, her face filled with determination. Elster , meanwhile, sighed deeply as she took a step back from the coms console. She turned and marched up to the area where the Briefing was taking place. She saw the Nobles had formed a half-circle around One. Marching up to him, Elster joined the formation. Three gave her a welcoming nod, then listened in as Holland spoke, \"... Doctor Halsey pinged my com just a second ago. She r equested that Private Elster be tr eated with car e. She was never meant to go into combat. \"\n\"She can hold her own pretty well. For a droid, anyhow ,\" Commented Four in a whisper , looking at her . Five elbowed him in the shoulder .\"We understand, sir , however , Noble T wo feels like she could provide an essential backup, considering her abilities in the maintenance and repair of electronics and equipment. She also notes her desire to have a reinforcement on the technical side of things,\" One explained calmly to the Colonel. A quiet hum reverbed through the speakers of the terminal, while Elster waited patiently to see what the word was.\n\"She's no SP ARTAN, sir ,\" Kat started as she stepped up to the com, promptly surprising Holland and Carter . She spoke in defense of the girl, eerily so \"But technical expertise are necessary in our field of work, no matter where it is. And she's held her own next to Six and Five against the two Zealots that engaged them in the Server Room. Her fighting skills somehow match those of some of our V eteran Marines, sir , if not an ODST's.\"\nThat was dumb luck, Elster thought to herself. Though she did feel more and more reflexes kicking in with those strange flashes of memory . Whatever was resurfacing in her mind, it caused some degree of distress to the Replika. Holland, meanwhile, having listened to Kat's slightly-insubordinate questioning, replied, \" I've r eviewed your helmet camera footage fr om the mission and r ead the r eports, Noble T wo. The Private is still consider ed an HVI to ONI and the only r eason we agr eed to deploy her anywher e was because we thought the Covenant would not engage this early .\"\n\"If we promise we'll keep her safe?\" Kat asked with half-a-mouth and half-jokingly , looking back at the girl. Four snorted, then said, \"Damn, I've never seen Kat this focused on getting someone inducted. Whatever you did, kid, you sure as hell woke up something in her ...\" words which got a glare out of Kat. Elster hummed, looking at them all bantering. The only one not really talking was Six, who was sat far away , after Four and Five. She stood between three and Four in the row .\n\"... I have a confirmed or der fr om Doctor Halsey , signed by some of ONI's highest echelons, pertaining to testing LSTR-512's combat capabilities once again. Seems like or ders change a lot ar ound her e.\" The man sighed, then stated bluntly , but rather absentmindedly , \"Alright, Actual, I'm authorizing the transfer . You have your Number Seven for now , until either Doctor Halsey or ONI as a whole r equests that she be r eassigned somewher e else, or until your missions ar e complete, \" probably considering the situation.\n\"Sir, thank you, sir .\" One answered, looking back at Elster .\n\"We'll have new or ders for you soon, I feel, Actual. Holland out,\"  The man stated. The com line went silent, to which Carter and Kat both turned toward their newly-acquired teammate. Four gave Elster a pat on the shoulder and an approving nod, while the girl processed her nigh-instantaneous transfer . She looked at the datapad she had on hand as she heard it ping, before noticing the transfer notification. She thumbed it and sighed, signing, before looking at One and snapping a salute. One saluted back and said, \"At ease, Seven... Color me impressed command actually agreed to have you tag along with us. Hope we can rely on you for repairs to our armor and equipment.\"\"Sir, yessir ,\" Elster stated.\n\"Easing my workload by a lot...\" Kat commented with half a mouth, \"Do you have any idea how many times Emile's broken his weapon...?\" and that got a rouse and a snort from the shotgunner with the ghost face on his EV A helmet. Five also let out a laugh at that, while Six simply shifted his footing, looking at Elster and giving her a nod of approval.\n\"Let's start with introductions, then. I'm Carter , Noble One. Y ou already met Kat, Noble T wo. Then you have Nobles Three, Four and Five, Jun, Emile and Jor ge respectively ,\" Carter pointed out each member of the team starting with himself. Each SP ARTAN gave a greeting to the woman, which she returned with acknowledgement in the form of a slight tilt of her head, \"And Noble Six, our second newest.\"\nSix looked to Elster for a few seconds, then hummed, \"At least I'm not the only newbie. C'mon. I'll show you to the bunks and armory .\"\n\"Kat, order up a new armor set for her . Hers is damaged,\" Carter ordered as he craned his head toward her . Kat nodded, then looked to her .\n\"I'll see what I can sneak of f an order . ODST or SPI, which do you prefer?\" She quipped. The girl thought for a second. ODST armor was not that dif ferent from normal Marine armor , sans a few modifications made to ensure void-combat capabilities and survivability , including just slightly thicker plates of armor and cover over the whole body without impeding mobility . It would stop a needler round once. SPI, meanwhile, meant a Stealth suit of semi-powered armor designed and prototyped for Special Forces. Like SP ARTANs.\n\"Can you even get her SPI?\" Carter asked Kat, crossing his arms. Kat took her helmet of f and arched a brow at the Commander , who waved it of f and said, \"Nevermind,\" before turning toward Elster again and stating, \"I'd suggest that, then. Knowing Kat, she may even get you one of those fancy HEADHUNTER suits. I heard they're better than what we got in training.\"\n\"I'll take the SPI set, then. Mark II HEADHUNTER if you can make it happen,\" Elster looked to Kat. Anything to increase survivability . Aside from specialized motion sensors, the damn things had ener gy shielding. The girl recalled info on the HEADHUNTER set being included in the manuals she'd downloaded into her cortex. She had knowledge of how to maintain the photoreactive panels and the shielding within.\"\n\"Can't promise it'll be here by next mission, but alright. I'll help you mod it for your ...\" Kat looked down, \" Legs. \"\nElster nodded, thankful, then walked with Six to their temporary barracks within the base. The rest of the team scattered around the base, to work on other matters. Jor ge, however , walked with them, patting Elster on the back and stating, \"W elcome aboard, Seven,\" with a smile hidden behind his bulky Grenadier helmet. Elster nodded in thanks, of fering a half hearted smile back. She wasn't okay by any metric or sense of the word. Not right now . Not at all. Her entire first squad was... Just gone...\n... The images of T ravis laying dead on the floor looped in her mind, intermixed with those memory flashes...SWORD BASE part 1:Heavy Duty Wide. Elster could only describe the boots of the Semi-Powered Infiltration Suit MARK II as such. She gazed upon them under the light of makeshift lamps. Of course, they were made for humans with normal feet instead of... W ell, pegs? She didn't even really know how to describe her narrow , slim calves and lack of feet, sans for a few pads that helped her maintain balance at the base of said calves. She sighed deeply , looking over the SPI suit itself. The MARK II Headhunter variant was a beauty of a suit, designed specifically for what seemed to be pairs of SP ARTAN Elites, meant for deep reconnaissance and other high-value missions deep behind enemy lines. Special Operations were a fairly familiar concept to the LSTR unit, her memories of life in the military , though still blurry , returning over time. She had memories from a life that was not hers. This one was beaten, a bit, though. Apparently , the intent for this armor had been for it to be shipped as spare parts to one of the HEADHUNTER units out there. Some of its photoreactive panels were damaged and wouldn't work properly and some systems needed to be re-routed and reactivated. The shield emitters, HUD, Life Support and main micro-fusion reactor remained active and safe, however , so that was good. Less tenuous repairs. She probably wouldn't be using the camouflage all that much. She just needed the armor plating beneath it to not be smashed so, if her shields failed, she could at least take one or two Plasma or Needle rounds before collapsing. She hummed as she tried to figure out a way to stuff the heavy boots so that her leg would not move within them. It was a good distraction from the thoughts of her first team dying around her . She gazed back for a moment, looking from the open repair bay at NOBLE T eam as they sat together around one lamp, the sky above glimmering with the beauty of the stars and atmospheric anomalies of Reach. They were trying to induct Noble Six into something, it seemed. And her fellow newbie was taking it in stride for the moment, simply following along as NOBLE and him talked and engaged in some sort of team-building. Elster hummed and turned back to continue the repairs on the armor set. Again, she just wanted her set to work properly as armor . Stealth field could be repaired later . She made sure to patch up any possible damage to the undersuit she'd wear over her own unarmored frame, patching up a small tear here, a cut there and somesuch issues all around the bend, before standing up and looking at the helmet. The mirror sheen of the golden visor reflected her face perf-. Elster took two steps back, staggered by the sight of a young woman with emerald eyes and dark-red hair that had stared at her , mirrored in the visor as if it was her own face. She blinked, shook her head and walked back up to the visor , leaning in to see her face. Mirroring her movements, the Elster in the visor ran a hand over the seam that ran down the middle ofher face, through her cheekbones and over her nose, before sighing. Her face had returned to normal. She needed to get her brain checked before it got either her or one of her teammates killed because of spacing out. She blinked, rubbed her face and murmured to herself, \"Just relax, Elster ... It'll be fine...\" as she picked up the helmet and looked into the visor again, running a thumb over the glass gently . She flipped the helmet over and slotted it over her head, feeling the weight of the thin layers of T itanium interspersed with the shield generators and under the photoreactive panneling. She sighed, taking the helmet of f and setting it back next to the armor , before moving to the back and starting work on its reactor . She gently turned it of f through a series of maneuvers necessary for deactivating such a heavy piece of equipment safely , then hummed as she started working on a bit of a jailbreak upgrade she'd thought up. Maybe she could up the output of the armor's reactor to provide a more 'fully powered' exoskeleton. She sighed and stood up after finishing up repairs and slowly starting the boot-up sequence for the reactor . She then walked to join Six and the others as the first rays of the sun poked over the horizon. The SP ARTANs all turned to greet their new Number Seven, before Jor ge stated, \"It took you a hot minute, Elster . Take it you're really looking forward to putting that armor on, eh?\"\n\"I was making sure it was gonna be functioning properly ...\" She replied with half a mouth,\n\"I'm still surprised ONI had it 'in stock'...\" And she made the necessary air quotes, before sitting herself down. She gazed upon Kat. The girl had taken her helmet of f and, even under the stone mask of the slightly-tanned young woman with short hair , she could see the faintest smirk as the woman tapped away on her own datapad.\n\"Kat has her ways,\" Emile quipped, leaning his shotgun against his shoulder .\n\"Clearly , so does she, considering she's making it fit for her peg legs,\" The Sharpshooter , Jun, stated bluntly as he cleaned the barrel of his SRS-99/99. He was the more quippy type of person, it seemed, at least to Elster . He had probably been the most interesting to try and decipher in the last day since her addition to team NOBLE. She, however , didn't know what to make of him. Carter , however , sighed and stated rather dispassionately , \"Jun,\" as if to make a point. The Sniper paused, blanked out and came back again, lips narrowed as he scratched the three arrow tattoo on the left side of his face. He cast an almost-unnoticed and well-concealed apologetic glance at Elster , who didn't seem mif fed by any of the remarks, then looked back to Carter .\n\"Sorry , boss,\" The man stated. Carter shook his head...\n\"Anyways...\" He then started and gazed upon their newest recruit, as did everyone else. He stated directly , staring the girl down as if he was scrutinizing something specific about her ,\n\"Welcome aboard, Seven. Hope we didn't make a mistake,\" and then shifting to face her fully . The man was a SP ARTAN, alright, with all the bulk Elster could see in that armor of his.\"You didn't, sir . I'll do my damnedest to keep up with all of you,\" Elster replied calmly , saluting him. Carter gave a salute back as the girl hummed, her mind wandering to home while the others spoke. Six, beside her , noticed her enter a moment of pause, letting her be as he listened to his new team talking to each-other . Seemed as though they were starting to get along. Kat sighed deeply , then added, \"At least she's protected enough now . Marine armor didn't do much against plasma weapons...\" while performing maintenance on her prosthetic limb. The woman gazed at Elster for a moment, gave her a nod, then went back to working on ensuring her arm worked properly . Elster had seen prosthetics before, but nothing quite as skeletal. Carter crossed his arms to his chest, then told his Second-In-Command, \"Kat, I hope you know you're keeping watch over her . It was your idea to bring her in in the first place.\" in a deadpan. Elster took some of fense to that comment, but chose not to counteract it for now . Just to see what Kat would say and if she would step up for her 'newly-acquired buddy'.\n\"I know , I know ...\" The girl waved it of f. Elster narrowed her lips, a bit hurt. She butted in, crossing her arms to her chest, \"I'm not a SP ARTAN, but I can take care of myself, sir ...\" before shooting a glance toward a curious Six and Kat, then back to Carter and stating, \"No of fense.\" W ords which garnered a chuckle out of Emile and a hum of agreement out of Jor ge. The eldest of the SP ARTANs, the II, seemed at ease with the two new arrivals actually being talkative.\n\"None taken,\" The man replied, slightly pleasantly surprised at her gumption. He shot back to her, \"You're still part of my team until further notice, which means we take care of each other . Doesn't really matter what you are...\" before humming as he remembered and shooting a glance toward Noble T wo. Noting that she looked back at him, the man requested with an air of authority , \"Speaking of, Kat? File?\"\n\"Yeah. No black ink on her , surprisingly . File must be too fresh, even for ONI Censors,\" The girl stated, leaning back and setting aside the tools she used to make adjustments to her arm. She stood up and walked up to the group, which now formed a circle. She put her helmet on and let the suit re-seal itself, before craning her neck left and right to make sure mobility was alright. Carter gave a nod, \"Got it. I want the file ready . Have to see what we're getting into...\" then paused as the radio turned on audibly in his helmet. He hummed, then replied, \"Af firmative, sir. Yessir, we're ready to mobilize. W e restocked ammunition. Y essir. Northbound, aye. NOBLE Actual, out,\" and he sighed deeply . Another day , another mission, Elster soon realized.\n\"What? Something happen, Actual?\" Five asked more outta courtesy . He was aware a new job was on.\n\"... New mission's already incoming. Covenant warship emer ged out of camouflage and hit SWORD Base. Dot'll have our briefing as we move,\" He replied and grabbed his gear of f the floor , rifle included. A string of weapons being loaded and cocked reverbed throughout the entire base, surprising the UNSC T roops around them. Elster herself hummed.\"Sir. This means we're going in?\" She raised a brow .\n\"It does, trooper ,\" The man nodded firmly .\n\"I'll put my kit on, then,\" The girl gave a proud smirk of a sort, stepping of f to don her new armor set. Before long, the Replika had fully donned the armor she had gotten and modified with Kat's help, noting the surprisingly light weight. She hummed, descending from the podium with her helmet slung under her arm and her weapons on her back. Quietly , as she joined the formation, she hummed an old marching hymn, its writers lost to time, running with NOBLE toward the Falcon Helicopters that would transport them over . As the engines powered with mighty roars and the rotors began to chop through the air , the girl and her team-mates jumped aboard them, weapons at the ready . She boarded the bird with Kat, Six and Carter . The others took the other bird, with Jun taking a seat on the side to presumably provide overwatch as he had in the previous mission. Elster tensed again, memories of past battles a blur , flashing in her mind next to the few she's made on Reach. As the Helicopters flew , though, that tension eased, parts of it replaced with determination to survive, just to see Ariane again. She ran diagnostics on her armor as the helicopter flew along the mountains for the next couple of hours. The UNSC needed them to fight. They would fight. She would fight for Ariane's sake, if it meant getting the poor girl a better future than anything that awaited her back with the Eusan Nation. A few hours later Babd Catha Ice Shelf, Eposz, Northern Pole ONI SWORD Base\n26th of July , 2552\nFlying over the frigid waters of the northern ice cap of Reach, the two Falcons made headway toward the massively-important ONI Facility just ahead. T o their left was a singular mountain face, a clif f so steep, it'd take an act of god to save whoever fell of f it and to their right, the ice shelf's multitude of glaciers stood in the water , moving with the few currents. As pair of Falcons passed by an opening between two rock faces, Elster laid eyes first on the enemy's space-capable Corvette. The ship looked slim, or ganic, bulbous like a seamonster from old tales. Its plasma batteries, however , were technological and laying down Hell on Sword Base.\n\"Be advised, Kilo-33 and Kilo-34:Y our curr ent LZ is too hot! \" The of ficer belonging to SWORD Control stated, his voice rather panicky . Elster shifted in her seat, feeling the armor she wore adjusting itself to her body shape and form. It was getting tight, but she expected as much from something that was meant to be a one-size-fits-all Power Armor set.\n\"Roger . Dot, stand by to receive and respond,\" Carter ordered with the same calm he and his team had rescued Elster . Elster , meanwhile, noted Kat had slid that chip they'd acquired from Visegrad into her tablet... Huh.Elster listened in as a monotone female voice spoke, \"Y es, Commander ...\" A short pause, then, \"Coordinates received, initiate course correction,\" just as the two Falcon gunships turned to the right, past the island and toward SWORD Base itself. Auntie Dot, UNSC\n'Dumb' variation AI according to a briefing Carter had given Elster on the flight over to Babd Catha. The AI began briefing, \"The Of fice of Naval Intelligence SWORD Base is currently under siege by a Corvette-class Covenant vessel. Due to the sensitive nature of this facility , the use of orbital rounds has been, for the moment, prohibited. Regrettably , my ef forts to obtain relevant data on enemy forces have been unsuccessful.\"\n\"However ,\" Dot hummed, \"Current defensive forces are insuf ficient. ONI has requested Team NOBLE's direct intervention to help secure SWORD base.\"\n\"Alright, people,\" Carter now sounded a bit less than pleased with their tactical situation as they approached the massive, modern-brutalist tower that was ONI's SWORD. He continued,\n\"We're stuck with that ship for the time being, so let's focus on the hostile infantry . Give those troopers a hand...\" and Elster tensed, her helmet's visor instantly polarizing as she thumbed the safety of f her rifle. As the helicopters flew in low toward the courtyard, Carter ordered,\n\"Kat, Elster , Six, you're out here. Emile, Jor ge, you're next, get prepped.\"\nElster gently slid the bolt of her rifle back to make sure her weapon had ammo in the chamber . Six hummed, readying his DMR and removing the safety as well, while Kat cocked the slide of her Magnum back and looked to the two of them. She spoke, \"Let's move, you two!\" just as the bird hovered a few feet of f the ground. The SP ARTANs and Elster jumped off, weapons at the ready , with Elster jumping last out the same side as Six and Kat. Her teeth were rattled by the drop, courtesy of the heavier armor she wore now .\n\"Kat, you and your team push back the attack on Swor d and get us some intel on our hostiles... \" Carter ordered as the Falcon above flew of f and veered right, presumably to go support friendlies as its 30mm nose-mounted chain-gun roared. Elster didn't need to be told twice. She pushed up with Six and Kat toward a barricade, noting the ramp and everything around was filled with boxes bearing military markings, as well as the sight of specialized forklifts.\n\"Roger , Actual, we're your Strike T eam,\" Kat replied, then pushed forward as plasma bolts started to fly from the suspended walkway ahead. She called out, \"Let's knock some heads together!\" as they began their push, with Elster firing the first burst out of her Assault Rifle toward an Elite of ficer near the base of the walkway . Two rounds struck, causing the Covenant soldier's shields to flare. It let out a strange noise, lifted its plasma rifle and opened fire. A trio of bolts struck around Elster and one hit Six in the shields as the man poked out. Three shots left the barrel of his DMR in quick succession and the Elite's shields collapsed as Elster thundered up the ramp that led to the walkway . She skidded to a halt in front of the Elite as it threw its hands and head up, its jaws splaying like flower petals as it roared in anger . Once its gaze came back down, it was met with Elster pointing the barrel of her rifle right at its head. A short burst left the gun again and the monster was dead, head split open by 7,62mm ammo. She barely dodged a stream of lilac needles striking near her position. A grunt in front of her now focused its fire, bursts of projectiles that were semi-capable of tracking the intendedtarget trailing Elster while she found a pillar to hide behind. T wo needles struck and shattered off the shields of her armor as she ducked and rolled, before drawing her pistol. The SmartScope self-engaged and the girl had locked onto the Grunt's head. One audible crack  later and the little creature was dead. Following up, Noble Six stepped up the stairwell, his DMR rounds striking true an Elite\n'Minor', one of the lower -enlisted Elite soldiers, as he char ged up the stairs. Three shots burst his shield, a fourth struck his head and he went limp, falling onto the floor with a rumble and a thunk against the steel. Elster pushed up next to Six and the two advanced, covering each other's sectors while Kat pushed down below .\n\"Spartans! Over here!\" Called out one of the T roopers as the two crossed the walkway in a sprint. The trooper , a young female with Asian features and goggles, saluted and said,\n\"Lieutenant Sam Lee! Sixth Company , First Division, 'Big Red One'! Glad to have you folks backing us up here! Didn't think command was gonna actually spare the Spartans, considering the rumors floating around!\"\n\"What's the status, Lieutenant Lee?\" Six asked as a needle rifle snapped of f over his head, the round piercing through one of the thin walls next to the door at the end of the walkway . The SPARTAN then poked up and snapped of f a shot at the hairier of the Jackals' avian brethren, the Skirmishers. Grey-skinned, with more heavily-mottled, porcupine manes covering the backs of their heads, the yellow-eyed bastards were also more skittish, for when Elster tried to poke up and suppress them behind the boxes and barricades spread out around the concrete courtyard.\n\"It's getting fucking tough...\" Lee responded. She jabbed an accusatory finger toward the Covenant Corvette hanging over the lake and said, \"Because of that piece of shit spawning a squadron of Banshees outta thin air , we can't risk sending Longswords out. Even worse is that they have enough of a task force deployed around the base's outskirts which disabled certain vital defenses on the first wave. Then, they started landing here, Spirits and Phantoms! First wave took out Ninth Platoon!\"\nKat appeared up top as well, firing her pistol, then patted the two Lieutenants on the shoulder and said to Lee, \"W e'll deal with it. Y ou reor ganize your troopers and be ready to push. Six, Seven, let's move!\" as she vaulted over their cover . The two others followed close behind while the Lieutenant rallied her men via radio and hand signals. The group pushed, meeting resistance from about half-a-dozen more elites and a squadron of Jackals and grunts. Gratuitous use of frag grenades solved the problems with the phalanx of Jackals before it even came to be a problem, while the grunts, injured by the fragmentation, scrambled for cover or simply ran around in circles. Some braved the UNSC weapons fire, turning to return fire on their own. One such grunt was lucky enough to blast one of the Army T roopers with its overchar ged plasma pistol before his head was pierced by a DMR bullet that punched straight through and set of f the gas tank on its back. The Elites, among them a Major , knew better than to retreat. They pushed, firing plasma rifles and repeaters at the group of SP ARTANs and at Elster , forcing them to take cover . A Trooper that tried to switch positions was peppered by needles which coalesced anddetonated, tearing of f his right arm. Following that up, the Medic that tried to pull him into cover got his head sniped of f by a Needle Rifle that was in a Skirmisher's hand. Six returned fire and managed to snap the bird's neck with the bullet from his DMR, before aiming toward an Elite that char ged him. The Elite Minor pushed him against a steel-and concrete barricade, nearly knocking the tall segment of wall over and denting the metal. Six pushed against him, holding him at bay with his rifle. He used his weight, lifting both his legs and kicking the Elite in the chest. The bastard's shields flared. Elster joined in next, firing her weapon into the Elite until his shields collapsed and his purple blood stained the ground below . The alien collapsed, dead, while Six reloaded. The Replika followed up with her own push forward, more images flashing in her mind. An open block, ruined, artillery raining down ar ound them. Gunfir e rippling, close quarters combat. She grew more bold now , more fierce with her movements. Pulling her knife of f her breastplate, she stabbed another Elite that came from the left in the throat. She'd felt the resistance of the shields, followed by a slight electric zap as they gave way to the blade tearing through the flesh of the beast. It gar gled, clawing at is neck, while another of its siblings opened up on her with a Plasma repeater . The bursts of ener gy weapon fire burst her shield. She ducked behind cover as the armor plates heated, before reloading her weapon and throwing a fragmentation grenade at the Elite. It ducked. It was wearing white armor , more ornamental, but also stronger , it seemed, so its shield tanked the hit better as shrapnel pinged of f of it. Six and Kat, however , followed up on it by putting multiple rounds into it from both sides. DMR and Pistol fire shattered the shield and tore through the armor plating, brain turned to mush by accurate semi-auto fire. Six switched over to his assault rifle after reloading his DMR and the three of them pushed the last three Elites, Elster taking on her own tar get by combat-rolling out of the way of his shots, standing up and engaging him with her pistol. She aimed for the head again, each of the two shield-busting shots staggering the Elite before the third punched clean through its helmet. Kat hummed as they approached the sporadically-barricaded main entrance to SWORD Base, a lightly-angled 'ramp' leading up from the main vehicle gate at the lower base of some of the local rocky hills that surrounded the base, acting as a natural perimeter protecting from ground assaults. Noble T wo then called up, \"Noble T wo to SWORD CONTROL, Courtyard is clear .\"\n\"Proceed thr ough the main gate, NOBLE STRIKE, we'll call out priority tar gets for you...\" The man behind the radio replied as the SP ARTANs, Replika and a few Army Troopers descended down the ramp and through the angled gate of the place as it opened, revealing a small, reinforced under ground section which was presumably specifically designed as a security area of sorts. Even though it now lay empty , save for a pair of boxes to the left. Six marched up to one of the boxes and lifted up a strange pistol-shaped item. Kat's grin was audible behind her helmet as she spoke, \"SWORD CONTROL, we just found a T arget Locator . Any artillery available in the area?\" while Elster marched up to the boxes andplucked up a few grenades. Clipping them to her belt, she looked over to the SP ARTANs and gave them a nod. They replied with an approving nod back.\n\"Limited, but we'll prioritize what we can, ma'am, \" replied the radioman again.\n\"Got it,\" Kat replied as she marched up to a button and pressed it, opening the outer gate. The inner closed behind them, causing Elster to shift her gaze to the outside. Y ellowed grass, tundra, rocks and salt-laden, glassy ice greeted them as they stepped outside. The Covenant Corvette still loomed far in the distance, plasma batteries howling and bombarding what seemed to be an airbase below .\n\"... It's incredible...\" Elster murmured to herself.\n\"And terrifying to see up-close,\" Six said from beside her . The girl turned to him and of fered a quick nod, both their faces shielded by the armor's opaque visors. All three armored personnel paused as plasma bolts flew up ahead, striking ahead of what seemed to be a Warthog running at maximum engine speed, its wheels crunching the semi-frozen dirt beneath.\n\"Three Echo Five-Seven, heading back to base! W e got enemies on our six, how copy!?\" The driver of the W arthog replied as he veered the vehicle toward the gateway . Elster paused, stunned, as she saw the vehicles chasing it. T wo massive, bulky vehicles banked to follow it. They lacked wheels or tracks, instead seemingly hovering above the frozen ground. Their alloy armor shone an eerie blue in the sun, the stabilizing 'fins' on the front angling and dancing with the unevenness of the ground, while the rear shone an eerie blue. They were like whales, or sea creatures again, a motif seemingly common in anything Covenant. One of them lifted its massive plasma mortar , a trident-shaped weapon, angling it for a long distance shot. Before it could fire, however , Elster had noticed the scarlet rings around it, one large ring and one small, central one, concentric to the lar ge. She then heard a whistle from above and watched as the first explosive shell impacted the enemy's vehicles. One of them detonated in a blue-orange flame, set ablaze by the HE blast. The second soon followed suit as the W arthog braked in front of the SP ARTANs, detonating and washing the ground it was on in its debris and in blue, plasma-laden fire. The T rooper driving the W arthog seemingly loosened, his head falling against the W arthog's horn button. The vehicle let out a short honk, waking the man up and making him shake his head, \"Jesus fuck, that was close... Thanks, SP ARTANs...\"\nSix of fered him a nod. Elster , meanwhile, looked past the vehicle at the broken hulls and asked, \"What were those...?\"\n\"Wraiths. Covenant tanks,\" Kat stated as she motioned for the T roopers to disembark and head on inside, \"These troopers were lucky . And we're lucky , too, since we need a transport Hog... Hm...\" And she climbed on top of the vehicle, scanning the place. T wo paths, two different tar gets. She called up, \"SWORD CONTROL, you mentioned the enemy disabled external defenses and got inside. Anything we should be on the lookout for out here?\"\"The old Farragut Station has its own communications r elay. It's offline, but it should give us a link to command. Airview base, meanwhile, as a triple-A Battery that should help us clear the skies,\" Command replied just as a Pelican swung in to deliver another W arthog with a gatling gun in front of the gate. Kat hummed and looked to Elster and Six, before Elster marched up to said gun hog and boarded. As the T roopers boarded their respective Hogs, Kat stated, \"So, we're splitting up. One side takes Farragut, the other takes the gun battery?\"\n\"Sounds good to me,\" Six replied. Elster nodded, hands firmly on the wheel. Kat hummed, then sighed and jumped of f of Six's vehicle, stating, \"I'll go with her . Keep your eyes peeled, Six,\" before she mounted the gun on the back of the W arthog. She looked to Six and stated, \"Y ou take Farragut, Six. W e'll take the AA gun,\" before looking to Elster and asking, \"Y ou do know how to drive, ri-\" and being interrupted by Elster putting the pedal to the medal and... Damn near veering of f the road three times already . Lieutenant Lee hummed and said, \"W ell, I'm suddenly worried about them...\"\n\"They'll be fine. Let's move it,\" The SP ARTAN quipped as he took the driver's side seat of the T roop 'Hog. Lee and her platoon also hitched a ride on the vic... Elster , meanwhile, drove like an alcoholic bat out of hell. She tried to learn the controls, but she was just a technician, an engineer , not a freaking driver . The T rooper screaming in the seat next to her didn't help, either , as they rolled between a steep clif f-face and an even steeper descent. As the vehicle bounced along the beaten path, Kat murmured to herself, \"I'm driving on our way home...\" before stif fening up as the vehicle rolled just a little too close to the hillside for comfort. They could see the Airbase, parts of it aflame from the Covenant's relentless bombardment. The Corvette was only drawing closer , Elster noticed even as she drove... Past the Marine cowering in the side seat. They saw Airview up ahead, with the heavy gatling cannon battery resting in the midst of the reinforced concrete buildings. Plasma already began to fly as an Elite of ficer, stood atop the command building, fired at them. Kat shifted her gun and yelled at Elster with a hint of anger ,\n\"Keep her steady , Private!\" before opening up. She felt a bump as the machine gun started its spin-up and began to fire, before seeing the corpse of an Elite stuck to the hood of the car . Elster hit the handbrake hard, bringing the vehicle to a full stop in front of the base. She dismounted, as did the T rooper in the side seat, before both took cover behind it. Kat aimed for the Elite of ficer on top of the main building, suppressing it before it got a chance to fire whatever weapon it carried at them. Elster , meanwhile, pushed forward with the trooper , beside and past the AAA gun and into the building itself. The T rooper , meanwhile, kept other Enemy troops suppressed, with Kat laying down the hate. When Elster peered over the top of the cover , she saw the Elite, a 'General' going by armor config. He was carrying a heavy-duty Covenant weapon, a launcher of some kind... And he was standing up to aim it, his shields already taking bursts of automatic fire. As the weapon charged, Elster attacked the man, drawing her knife, clambering onto his back and stabbing downward exactly where she'd seen Six stab one before-hand.She was unlucky enough for it to feel her beforehand, swatting her away . It caused his plasma rounds to veer of f to parts unknown, though, so she'd at least saved Kat from taking hits. Skidding across the floor and into one of the railings, the girl hefted her Assault Rifle and opened up on the monster as it aimed to fire at her , bullets sparking of f its shield. One round left the 'chamber' of the plasma weapon, trailing the girl and sticking to a surface behind her as she ran, before detonating and liquefying a chunk of concrete. Elster noted now the fact the weapon had a lock-on system, meaning its plasma projectiles could easily track and stick to her . That worried her , so she engaged the Elite with full-auto fire to try and throw off his aim. Following up, two grenades came from the stairwell as the Elite dodged the girl's shots and tried to zero in on her . They were plasma grenades, neither of which stuck to the Elite. They , however , detonated with radioactive flashes of blue light which washed the Elite's shields, partially draining them to the point the blanket began to visibly shudder and shimmer underneath the prolonged assault. Kat appeared from the stairwell and fired, .50 SAPHE from her pistol striking the Elite's chest on both sides, then his head. Three shots, one kill. Before long, though, the two women heard the roar of antigravity engines overhead and saw a Phantom approaching to drop of f troops. Elster rushed toward the console on top of the roof and slammed her fist onto the activation button. The turret below soon began to track, craning upward as its barrels spun. The first heavy burst of rounds spat out of its mouth, rounds tearing through the underbelly of the Covenant transport and shredding anything inside as it caught flame. Before long, one side's antigrav engines failed and the ship careened into the rock face to the left of the base, shattering into a dozen pieces. Kat's shoulders sagged as she sighed in relief. She looked to Elster and stated tiredly , \"I'm driving...\" before vaulting over the side of the building and starting, \"CONTROL, T riple-A is back in action. Skies should be clearing up...\" and, as if to accentuate her point, bursts of anti air fire from the Gatling gun tore apart a bunch of enemy Banshees and another Dropship heading for the area.\n\"Roger that, NOBLE STRIKE. Seems like Farragut's com r elay is also back online. Y ou have our thanks-\" The radio cut of f and burst into static as the Corvette moved closer , its plasma batteries pounding the station. Kat looked up at the Corvette, gritting her teeth, then jumped aboard the W arthog as a squadron of Banshees flew in toward the AA gun to distract from the trio of Phantoms moving to SWORD with vehicles, including what looked to be Revenant class mortar skif fs.\n\"Noble Strike, this is Noble Leader . Get back to Swor d Base ASAP .\" Carter ordered calmly . The vehicle rolled Forward, Elster manning the rear machine gun as they trundled over the hills and uneven roads. The moment the first Covenant vehicle appeared, Elster already had the gun spun for the kill. The burst of automatic fire lit the vehicle up, bullets striking the front hull as the girl angled and aimed for the driver . Rounds sparked of f an Elite's shield, all while Kat rammed into a Ghost, a lighter Covenant hoverbike, knocking it of f the clif f.Plasma raked the front armor of their vehicle, too, while smaller scarlet plasma balls began to fall inaccurately around them. Kat ordered, \"Seven, focus on that Revenant! I got their infantry!\" and, as if to accentuate it, their wheels caught an enemy Grunt and a Jackal underneath, squashing them. Their bones cracked beneath the heavy wheels, while Elster focused exactly on what she'd been told to fire. The T rooper aboard also engaged the enemy vehicle. Thankfully , it seemed as if .50 caliber bullets from a machine gun were doing work. The spent casings clinked against the walls of the W arthog's bed as the vehicle braked and drifted to the left, narrowly avoiding the superheated scarlet ball of death, while one of the enemy vehicle's fins was torn of f and its gun seemed to lose a magnetic coil, the plasma for the second shot dissipating. A plasma grenade, lobbed from far away , landed right on the driver of the vehicle. W ashed by a wave of plasma, the alien died as its vehicle exploded, split in two at the weaker midsection where he and any other co-pilot would've stood. They saw Six's W arthog barreling forward toward the main gate. Rolling past the dead W raiths and enemy vehicles, past several rocks and deeper into the base's area, the two vehicles arrived at the Gate, which immediately opened to let them all in. Dismounting, Six noted, \"T ake it you didn't sleep so well,\" as he looked at Kat.\n\"No thanks to her driving,\" Kat shot back as Elster readied her weapon. The group of Troopers, SP ARTANs and Elster pushed inside, only to find a slew of Covenant T roops had just dropped in again. T oday , of all days, was going to be a busy day , considering they'd just cleared this place out not even thirty minutes ago. At least there hopefully wouldn't be more reinforcements... She hoped Ariane was okay back in CASTLE Base...SWORD BASE Part 2:Up the Tower of Babel Army T roopers held the line as NOBLE pushed in, guns roaring at midday in the courtyard. Two T roopers waved them all over , as well as their reinforcements, as the last of the Covenant's troops outside were cornered and killed, with one of the troopers calling out,\n\"Sammy! Fuck me, I'm glad to see ya!\" her smile hidden by a balaclava. The Lieutenant paused as she saw the Polish flag patch on the girl's shoulder .\n\"Hah! Hey , Katja!\" The young woman greeted, bumping fists with her , \"What's the sitch?\"\n\"Outer team was just the group designed to split us up. Most of my squad's holed up in the under ground parking lot... Pair of Hunters got their asses pinned, though,\" The Polak replied as she checked her kit. She called out, \" Na litosc boska ! Pavel, I'm low on fucking 40mikes!\"\nbefore pausing and grabbing four fragmentation rounds out of thin air . She nodded in thanks to the trooper as she dropped the spent casing of one from the underbarrel launcher of her MA5 and slid in a fresh grenade. Kat hummed, \"I thought Army only had MA37s.\"\n\"Put in the Requisition form for an MA5B with a UBGL myself,\" The girl quipped, grinning,\n\"Gotta up the firepower of the squad without having to switch between weapons like some other Grenadiers,\" before looking to Pavel. The man rolled his eyes and patted the single-tube handheld grenade launcher on his back. Kat gave an approving nod, then looked to Elster and motioned to her to open the door . To the sight of two hulking beasts of flesh and alloys. W ith one arm protected by a thick enough shield made of alien alloys and another mounting a strangely-shaped cannon with various emerald-shining tubes poking out from the top, with armor plates that covered most of their bodies, save for the exposed, fleshy , eel-like midsections and the antennae on the backs of their armors twitching, the Mkgalekgolo, or Hunters, thundered toward the UNSC troops in a pair , one of them char ging its cannon. A baleful projectile left the maw of the weapon and struck a chunk of concrete some of the Troopers had taken cover besides, taking a good chunk of the concrete and two of the dozen Troopers present in the parking lot with it. Elster took cover behind a forklift as the other troopers poured in with her and NOBLE. The second of the pair turned toward them, its cannon char ged. The ball of ener gy shot out of the cannon flew right by Elster , causing her Geiger counter to flare up and click like a mechanical keyboard during a report writing session, before the concrete floor behind her exploded into superhot, molten fragments. One hit Elster's armor shield and almost broke through before evaporating. She grit her teeth, then started moving and firing at them. Bullets sparked of f the shield as Six, Kat and Elster , plus the troopers, focused on killing the bastards. Their armored hides were too thick to pen from the front, though. Another aimed its cannon and char ged it, the radioactive particles making Elster's eyes 'water' with thegranulation and static. The bolt of ener gy flew too close for comfort again, this time hitting one of the multitudes of military equipment boxers in the room. It melted the pallet and its contents.\n\"Christ all-fucking-mighty , I hate these things...!\" Katja murmured as she aimed her grenade launcher and fired. She seemed to have caught one of the monsters by surprise, it being too focused on Elster . The grenade detonated of f the top plate of the monster , staggering it and washing the ground in orange blood. The monster roared in pain, slamming its armored shield arm into the ground hard enough to crack the ground. Its sibling, or bondmate, turned toward her . Katja's eyes shot wide open as she saw the arm cannon char ge... Before it could fire, though, Kat char ged the monster and kicked the cannon hard, deflecting the creature's aim into the ceiling. The emerald cannon shot slammed into the ceiling above, destroying one of the light fixtures and raining shards of concrete and molten steel reinforcements down onto them. Kat ducked under a swing from the monster's shield arm and rolled away , drawing her pistol and firing into its back. Six followed up by engaging the monsters from behind, pouring lead down onto their exposed orange eel midsections with his assault rifle. Kat, meanwhile, tossed Elster a plasma grenade as she took cover beside her and said, \"Stick them! T wo plasma grenades should do one in according to simulations!\" before she cocked her robotic arm back, thumbed the activator of the plasma grenade and threw it. Elster followed up by doing the same motions, just a hint slower . She threw her activated plasma grenade at the same monster as its feet thumped against the floor . It aimed its cannon at the SP ARTANs, but was met by both plasma grenades sticking to its body and the cannon itself. After a short hiss and a chirp of the bombs char ging, both grenades detonated only milliseconds apart from each-other , washing the monster in plasma and detonating its main cannon. It collapsed, its insides splayed out by the plasma detonation, the scent of burning sulfur filling the air . Its bondmate saw the death, before turning to face the SP ARTANs and Elster . It let out an angered roar , before char ging Kat and the Replika, closing the distance even as a dozen rifles and pistols poured lead into it. It backhanded Elster hard enough for the girl to feel the air knocked out of her artificial lungs as she flew and slammed through one of the windows of the security booth. Her head spun as memories played back of a similar encounter . A Mynah? No, a SAPR, the Schnapper or Sapper , depending on how a person wanted to call it. Bulky , tall, heavily armor ed and armed. The deadliest biomechanical beings in the arsenal of Eusan and the Empir e. She jumped to her feet as her shields flared back to life, watching as the monster swung its shield and aimed its cannon, firing wildly . The bigger they were,  the har der they'd fall. Jumping over the console and back into the parking lot, Elster pushed up behind it and opened fire, bullets piercing the rear armor and the flesh of the multitude of eels in the colony , spraying orange-red fluorescent blood on the floor . She skidded to a halt as themonster turned to intercept her , aiming its cannon. A beam of radioactivity lanced out at her , cutting through one of the support beams and melting a good chunk of it. She swore to herself in Eusan Standard, or German, as the UNSC called it, then combat rolled out of the way . She grabbed a plasma grenade of f the floor , armed it and cocked her hand back, before throwing it. The beast tried to swat it out of the way as the rest of the Army and SP ARTANS inside peppered its body with bullets. It staggered as Kat fired a full magazine of her pistol into its back and the grenade stuck itself right on its abdomen. The detonation split the monster in two, melting a bit of the stomach and chest armor and sending the upper body tumbling onto the floor . Surviving eels tried to scramble out of the corpse, but the T roopers stomped them down into fine, orange mush. Lieutenant Lee breathed a sigh of relief, then murmured, \"That was too close...\" before looking to Katja.\n\"Seven, you good?\" Kat asked as she reloaded her pistol. Elster looked to her , took her helmet of f and revealed that not much had changed. She gave an impassive nod, to which Kat replied, \"Good to know . Let's move it, people. Carter needs us in the Atrium ASAP ...\" before marching toward the booth. Six, Elster and a slew of the T roopers followed, with Six placing a hand on Elster's shoulder . The girl looked to him as she slid her helmet back on, before getting a nod of approval from the SP ARTAN. He then closed his fist and bumped her shoulder in a friendly manner , before putting his index and middle fingers up to his face plate and sketching a smile. Elster didn't know what it meant, but she replied the same, a hint happy at the sight. Kat let out a short chuckle at the sight, before marching onto the elevator . The T roopers joined them, a whole squad kindly cramping up a wide elevator with two exits. Elster hit the button for the Atrium and the elevator's doors closed, a single Platoon left behind to keep the courtyard secure. An explosion rocked the building and the elevator ground to a halt for the moment, lights flickering, before it started back up again.\n\"Corvette's hitting this place har d!\" Emile called out over the com, the audible roar of a rocket launcher firing echoing.\n\"What stupid directive said we can't use Orbital Support...?\" Kat murmured, \"Gotta be four guns in orbit that could take this thing out in a single shot...\"\nBoth Six and Elster kept quiet. ONI probably didn't want to lose whatever was in this place. Elster had learned not to rely on ONI that much, not after everything that was said to her about them. Halsey had been careful enough not to bring their wrath down upon her , though. She shifted on her feet, feeling a hint of creaking in her titanium bones. She hummed and gave herself a quick diagnostic, but found nothing wrong. It was likely that that Hunter's hit reset something in her skeleton. The elevator dinged and stopped and the infantry poured out first, forming a perimeter . Katja and Sammy looked to one-another , with Sam noting, \"The others should be backing NOBLE up. W e're all yours, Strike...\"\n\"Kat, Six, Elster , we'r e pinned down in the Atrium. W e're gonna need the Backup and someone to go help Emile upstairs... Clear the airways, \" Carter stated as the group steppedout into the greeting area. T wo wide corridors, one of which had a scanning system for contraband, greeted them. Between them, against the separating wall of glass and white steel, was the receptionist's desk. A corpse lay behind it, blood staining the wall.\n\"We're on our way , sir,\" Kat replied, \"Let's move it, T roopers...\"\n\"WELCOME T O THE OFFICE OF NA VAL INTELLIGENCE. AN ONI REPRESENT ATIVE WILL BE WITH YOU SHOR TLY.\" An automated machine voice greeted them. Kat snorted, then replied dryly , \"I doubt that very much , as she gazed upon the suit-wearing corpse that was bled dry behind the desk. She then watched Six take a squad of T roopers down the right corridor , through the scanner . She followed along with Elster , while the Dumb AI that must've been running the greeting op spoke something relating to Six. Right, ONI Reaper . They pushed forward and around the right, veering with the corridor and arriving at the wide open atrium. Ahead of them, taking cover behind some structures, Nobles One, Three and Five held position as bolts of plasma, needles and even beams of ener gy struck around them, cutting into the black marble floors and the steel walls behind them. Carter looked to them and Jor ge called out, \"Spartans! Over here!\" as the T roopers scattered to meet the Covenant and reinforce dwindling squads. Kat took a knee in front of Carter as the man reloaded his rifle, then told him, \"W e've made it, sir. Reinforcing T rooper units should be ready to help push..\" And she ducked under a plasma bolt, drawing her pistol and snapping of f a shot. It missed, but got the Jackal on one of the upper gangways to take cover as it pierced the glass under the railing. Carter gave her a nod and stood up.\n\"Six, we'll take care of the ground of the Atrium! T ake a strike team and go assist Emile!\nJorge, go with him! He'll need the backup!\"\n\"Bet on it!\" Jor ge nodded as he fired his LMG, pushing forward. He raked a Covenant Elite's cover , punching through the thin sculpture sat in the middle of a pool of water in the middle, before filling said Elite with lead. Six looked to Elster , who gave a nod and reloaded her rifle as if to accentuate the point that she was right behind him, then she rallied up Katja and a few other T roopers. The Polish soldier pushed up next to them, firing her rifle down at the Covenant below as she advanced. She joined up with Elster , telling her , \"I'm sticking next to the girl I'm almost at the same height with...\" as she watched Jor ge stomping by . Ahead of them, in one of the hallways, plasma rained against a platoon of Infantry that was returning fire from the bottom of a stairwell. One of them looked back and called out, \"SP ARTANS! Just in fucking time!\" as Jor ge pushed around the corner and lit up the top with Elster and Six's help. Elster pulled a fragmentation grenade of f her belt and threw it at the enemy . A loud thump from above and a Grunt's corpse tumbled down the stairs, while an Elite roared in anger from up above. Pressing the advantage, the two SP ARTANs and Replika pushed, with Katja close behind them.She looked to the trooper and called out, \"C'mon, V ictor! W e got asses to kick, brother!\"\n\"Coming up! Let's go, T roopers!\" The man barked as he lifted his DMR. The group pushed further up the stairs, using Jor ge as cover while he was laying down the hate with his .50\ncaliber MG. Elster pushed past him, bursts of fire escaping the barrel of her weapon. Grunts collapsed and the Elite that had been hit by the grenade had his shields fail again before he kicked Elster down and aimed his plasma rifle at her . He opened fire into the woman, her shields taking the brunt of the hits as she stood under -heel of the monster . Six came in clutch, though. Just as her shield broke, the SP ARTAN slammed the butt of his rifle into the Elite's face, causing it to stagger , before putting the barrel of his rifle into the alien's stomach and pressing the trigger . The bullets tore through the Elite's midsection while Six pushed it forward with each step. As the last round in his magazine was spent, he kicked it over the railing, sending it tumbling to the floor with a wet crunch. He then marched up to Elster and extended his hand. The girl took it, getting herself lifted to her feet(or stuf fed boots?) by her comrade. She gave him a nod of thanks, then the trio continued pushing alongside the T roopers, up the stairs and through Covenant attempts at making defensive positions. Jor ge maintained the frontline, pushing into the enemy while his comrades and the T roopers escorting them hosed anything that moved. From one of the upper catwalks, a Skirmisher snapped of f a shot with his needle rifle. The round pierced through the top of a T rooper's helmet and killed him on the spot, still travelling through his body before punching through the glass below . Katja saw the dead soldier and aimed up, firing a full-auto burst at the creature, forcing it into cover . With a growl, the girl reloaded and motioned to one of their designated marksmen. When the Skirmisher poked its spiky head out again, it lost an eye and its brain. Katja followed it up with a grenade launched from her underbarrel launcher toward the Covvie position higher up. The group continued their push, punching through crowds of Covenant and all the way up to the top, where Emile was. The scent of missile exhaust and the breeze outside filled the place. The marks of plasma damage were visible on the superstructure. A massive hole had been left by the Covenant ship's plasma bombardment, a gaping wound through which Covenant vessels seemed to try to assault. Covenant Banshees swooped in ahead of them, their twin plasma cannons raining a flurry of shots toward the T roops. Elster sidestepped the strafing run and looked to the left. She ran and plucked up a Jackhammer rocket launcher , tossing one of the twin-tube missile launcher systems to Six while Jor ge and the T roopers utilized their Firearms to shoot down the enemy aircraft above. Elster aimed and fired the first rocket of the game, nailing a Banshee flyer dead-on. The vehicle shattered as the tandem warheads of the missile struck true, parts falling over the edge. Six followed up with his own kill, then another , and reloaded, dropping the empty tube of f the weapon's frame and putting in a fresh one from one of the boxes below . The T roopers around them shot lead down-range as Covvies approached with Gunships from afar . Theycould see Phantoms coming in even through the smoke trails of their missiles. Meanwhile, in the distance loomed the very threat they were trying to destroy . Elster and Six fired a pair of missiles at the incoming Covenant dropship, but one of them connected with an escorting Banshee instead, as it flew ahead. The girl sighed and both she and Six dropped their launchers, drawing rifles as plasma rounds lanced toward them from the side-mounted turrets of the vehicle. Emile growled and fired at one of the platforms on the side of the Phantom, missile connecting with and destroying the plasma turret. It didn't matter , however . That side popped open and a squad of Elites in black armor dropped in, firing their plasma weapons and activating their camouflage as they landed. The girl, Jorge and Six all aimed up and fired at the Elites' supporting Grunt troops, filling'em full of lead before focusing on finding the enemy . Their motion trackers were useless, currently being jammed by what she presumed to be the enemy's active camouflage. Six and her went back-to-back, rifles at the ready as they looked around. Six told her ,\n\"Disturbances in the air . Look for them...\" as he aimed his weapon. He hummed while the Troopers around them also took steps back, covering each-other's angles and making sure to have their backs against something solid. Jor ge and Emile busied themselves with either keeping the enemy's few remaining Banshees away , or with destroying them. Elster hummed, watching as the air ahead began to ripple a little. Smoke plumes lifted to the sky, cinders still burning from Covenant plasma weapon shots. She hummed, glaring around as she waited for the enemy to make a move, before staggering as she saw one of the Troopers get grabbed. She heard his neck crack and saw the body go limp. It was thrown at her and she barely caught it mid flight, before feeling a hoof slam into her face. She grunted, falling onto her back and drawing her pistol. The T roopers opened up, bullets pinging of f the walls and hitting the less-protective shield of the Elite Special Operations member ahead. His bird-like mask appeared, translucent, as the bullets struck his general area. Enough for Elster to aim her pistol. She got it swatted out of her hand as the Elite grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the wall. The girl squared up, though. She grit her teeth and char ged the camouflaged Elite, adjusting her vision. She focused her eyes on the ripples in the enemy's camouflage, to tell where he was. She saw a plasma bolt reap a T rooper right next to Katja, before a second bolt struck next to her head. She char ged the Elite that'd fired at the T rooper and grabbed onto his hand just as his plasma weapon's barrel flashed with the launch. The round narrowly missed Katja this time, the T rooper watching with muted awe as someone that was not a SP ARTAN was fist-fighting an Elite. Elster threw hands, a punch connecting with the Elite's jaw . She felt her hand stop in the helmet's alien steel and felt a slight sur ge of pain. Reeling back her hand, she slammed the Elite with a headbutt, pushing him back. She was, however , definitely not a proficient Melee fighter like Six was. She watched the man duel the Elite, knife in one hand. The Elite grabbed the knife hand, pinning the SPARTAN against the wall before being kicked of f of him. Emile and Jor ge wanted tointervene, as did the T roopers, but most they could do was fire a few shots before the Spec Ops camouflaged again. Elster yelped as she received a gut punch which sent her staggering back. She grunted, then gasped and ducked under another camouflaged punch, but felt the brunt of a full hoof making contact with her abdomen. Following up, a punch hit hard enough to knock her helmet of f her head and cause her to bleed from her nostrils. She collapsed onto the floor , grunting and in pain. Six, however , seemed to have noticed this, because just as the Elite was decloaking to stab her with its ener gy dagger , a Knife flew into the side of its neck, stunning it. The girl, despite feeling like one of her artificial lungs had just collapsed, jumped to her feet and grabbed onto the knife and the Elite's breastplate. She roared a battle cry as she dug the Knife deeper into its flesh and sliced downward, ripping its throat out and spattering purple blood on her face and armor . She watched the monster collapse. Heaving and breathing heavily , the girl glared at the dead monster , a hatred bubbling up inside her that she never thought possible. Sighing deeply and taking three heavy , long breaths to calm down, the girl wiped the oxidant from her nose and mouth with her gauntlet and sighed, marching to grab her helmet. Emile whistled as he dropped his launcher , stating, \"That was a damn fine teamwork kill there, Six, Seven. That's how we get it done, Spartan!\" before jumping of f the box he'd used as high ground. He walked back to the T roopers, while Six and Seven both went up to look at the Corvette turning.\n\"Noble T eam, Longswor ds ar e inbound and r eady to push. Orbital defenses standing by to take the shot... Y ou saved our collective Bacon back ther e,\" SWORD Control came back over the radio. Elster hummed, then sighed, relieved that the man was still alive. She watched with muted awe as two UNSC aircraft about the size of the Penr ose, black and delta-wing shaped like she and Ariane had seen in space above the planet, banked toward the enemy ship. It powered its engines to full, fleeing up over the water . Elster watched, her face filled with awe, as a burning white streak came down from the heavens, piercing through the clouds first, before punching clean through amidships. The vessel banked and buckled under the impact, its engines and plasma conduits blowing outward across the hull. Its nose banked down hard and it entered a steep descent as its antigravity engines failed. Diving headlong into the cold waters below , the vessel sent shockwaves rippling into tidal waves across it, before breaching the surface and slowly , slowly disappearing beneath the waves themselves. Jor ge appeared behind them, stating, \"Beautiful, ain't it? Someone should take a picture...\" before placing congratulatory pats on their backs. Elster hummed and looked back at Jor ge, of fering a half-smile, before looking ahead as he said, \"Nice work, by the way . Both of you.\"\n\"We aim to please,\" The two of them said in unison, before gazing at one-another . Six hummed and crossed his arms to his chest, watching as the enemy vessel buried itself deeper in the sea, before humming as he listened in to the com. Elster quickly slid her helmet back onto her head and listened in while making sure all her systems were functional. She rananother quick diagnostic on herself and was thankful to find no permanent damage to be had, just a minor crack in her nasal synth-skin which somehow sealed itself.\n\"Five, Six , Seven, \" Carter began, his voice its usual stern self, though intermixed with a hint of surprise, \" Get down to the science wing. Doctor Halsey wants a Debrief and Command's saying we'r e all hers... \" Words which caused Elster to pause. All that came to her mind as she looked to her newfound teammates was:What was Halsey doing here? W asn't she supposed to be at CASTLE?\n\"Repeat?\" Jor ge sounded enthusiastic, \"Sounded like you said Halsey .\"\n\"I did.\"  Carter replied in a deadpan.\n\"Copy that, we're on our way ,\" The man replied as he and the two other NOBLE members marched forward. He spoke jovially , \"Don't need command to tell me;Been all hers half me life,\" as he led them toward SWORD Base's science wing. Several T roopers gave the group passing salutes, while Katja and Sammy both grinned at the SP ARTANs as they passed by and clapped for Elster . Entering the Science W ing, the least damaged section of SWORD Base, the trio was met by Doctor Halsey herself speaking, her voice coursing through a microphone and filled with an unusual(to Elster) snide sense of scientific superiority as she spoke, \"I requested your assistance, commander , and do not need a report of events right outside my doorstep. What I do require is a detailed account of your previous mission-\" and she paused as she saw Elster and Jor ge. A faint smile crossed her lips and Elster soon noticed Ariane right behind her . The white-haired beauty waved to them, beaming as she saw the SP ARTANs for the first time in her life. Elster took her helmet of f and smiled at seeing Ariane, then hummed as she heard Halsey continue, \"Jor ge...\" while gazing upon them. Her , Jorge and Six, to be exact. She then looked to Elster and gave a calming nod, before focusing on Jor ge again, \"What have you done with my armor ...?\"\n\"Just some...\" Jor ge looked at himself, \"Improvements I've made.\"\n\"Indeed,\" She replied kindly , then looked to Carter and continued, stern, \"V isegrad Relay . Its data center was home to one of my Xeno-archaeologists, professor Laszlo Sorvad,\" And she let the air in the room carry the words for a little longer , before adding, \"Perhaps you could shed some light on his demise...\" and looking back to Ariane. The girl was holding a tablet which she lifted to make notes.\n\"If he was a civilian male in his mid-sixties, he died with a Covenant Ener gy Sword through his abdomen,\" Carter replied calmly , stunning Ariane. Halsey's facade cracked for a moment, but soon reformed. Poor Ariane, meanwhile, frowned and wrote it down on the T ablet. Elster sighed deeply , disappointed that they couldn't get to the professor , or to T ravis, in time. Halsey spoke, \"Elites, then...?\"\n\"They engaged us as well.\" Jor ge butted in, then added rather sadly , \"It was just, uh, just after we found your scientist's daughter , ma'am. She was hiding in the-\"\"Irrelevant,\" Halsey sighed, surprising both Elster and Ariane, \"The Elites. T ell me more about them.\"\n\"Three, Zealot-class. One got by us,\" Jor ge explained as he gazed back at the others, \"The leader , from the looks of'im...\"\n\"Zealots, \" Halset pressed the word, \"Are you sure?\" and she leaned against the pedestal that sat as a 'bridge' between them and her , seeing as she was behind a thick layer of presumably bulletproof glass. Elster didn't know why that was important, but she felt like she was about to be told in this little debrief. Ariane, too, seemed very curious about the matter , waiting to write.\n\"Armor configuration matched,\" Jor ge replied certainly . Six added in, \"Shield strength, too.\" while Halsey took a minute to process this. The woman stroked her own chin, considering possibilities.\n\"Why's this important, ma'am...?\" Elster inquired, wanting to get to the bottom of things. Ariane was surprised by the fact that Elster had spoken out of turn for once in her life. Seemed much like the SP ARTANs in the room were in agreement as they looked at her . They must've read the manuals, too, or at least gotten them from ONI through some tomfoolery from Kat. Carter , however , stated, \"I gave the order not to pursue. Our primary objective was to get the station's relay back online.\"\nHalsey blanked, then hummed and replied derisively , \" \"Y our primary objective?\nCommander , are you a puppet  or a Spartan ?\" making sure to accentuate the words for the difference to be clear . Ariane covered her mouth and let out a short giggle, while Elster rolled her eyes and noticed Kat and Emile staring indignantly at Halsey . Jun, meanwhile, was just hanging out in a dark corner by himself.\n\"Ma'am?\" Carter looked more confused than annoyed, thankfully , both brows arched up in a fit of surprise. Halsey began to explain sharply , focused on Carter and on Elster , \"There are those at ONI, myself included, who believe the Covenant dispatch Elite advance teams to hunt down artifacts of value to their Religion. Survivor accounts suggest such teams are small, nimble, and almost always Zealot-class. No doubt they came to the station for the abundance of ONI excavation data stored there. And you let them get away .\"\nThe Commander shot back sharply , \"Data retrieval was not a command directive,\" Before locking eyes directly with Halsey . He was starting to reply to Halsey with the same coin, Even had we known, we had other , more ur gent matters to attend to.\" making this entire conversation a series of gut punches for both Elster and Ariane. The young woman wanted to butt in and say something, but Kat was the first...\n\"Like warning the planet...\"Halsey sighed and rubbed her eyes, before stating rather bluntly , \"Professor Sorvad's final entry in his field notes made reference to a \"latchkey discovery .\" Latchkey ... not a word he would use lightly .\" She accentuated the point, before glaring at Kat and adding a low , definitely irritated, \"So let's hope that the data module your Lieutenant Commander stole  contains it.\" while Kat pulled the drive out of one of her armor's multitude of pouches and dropped it in an extended transparent basket in the pedestal.\n\"Kat?\" Both Elster and Carter stated, watching as the girl dropped the drive in.\n\"Before you ask,\" Halsey hummed, pulling the container back toward her while Ariane looked on, surprised. Halsey added, \"I was warned the moment you attempted to access its contents, as I am with any unauthorized tap...\" then lifted the item, a small, thin strip of plastic, metal and crystalline fibers. She looked at Kat and growled, \"I could send you to the brig for interfering with my work.\"\nCarter didn't seem to take too kindly to that, following up with words that further stunned both Ariane and Elster , not to mention Halsey and his team. \"Maybe you'd like to join her .\"\n\"I'm sorry?\" She arched a brow at him.\n\"We're under emer gency planetary directive, 'WINTER CONTINGENCY'?\" He asked rhetorically , causing Ariane to give a short giggle, while Elster crossed her arms to her chest. Six hummed, Jor ge hid his grin behind his helmet, Jun snorted and Emile was inches short of laughing. Carter continued, \"I'm sure you know the punishment for civilian interference in a SPARTAN deployment.\"\n\"Are you thr eatening me, Commander ?\" She replied semi-venomously , but more-so clearly impressed. The man did have the spine to call himself a SP ARTAN, at least, Halsey thought. Ariane seemingly felt the woman's thoughts, flashing a smile at Elster , who gave a smile back. Six snorted at the sight, while Jor ge patted him on the back and simply of fered the brightest smile he could at the sight. He was still a SP ARTAN, so the self-control needed to remain professional was taught from the earliest days of training.\n\"Just making a reading suggestion, ma'am,\" Carter joked, his voice softening upon him noticing that the situation had been defused. Halsey rolled her eyes and gave him an approving nod as the SP ARTANs started departing. She pocketed the data storage device, looked to Jor ge and gave him a nod of understanding, before stepping of f. She stopped next to Ariane and whispered something which caused her to blush, before both she and Elster walked up to the window . Both put their hands against the glass in the same spot, facing each-other . Ariane's mirthful smile vanished for a second as she noticed the injuries the girl had sustained via the blue light around the glass, but Elster shook her head and pointed at the purple blood, stating, \"Not mine, don't worry . As for everything else, I got a few bumps and bruises from the fights, but I'll be alright.\"\n\"Okay ...\" Ariane nodded, her smile returning, \"I miss you... Stay safe.\"\"I will... I miss you, too...\" The Replika replied. Jor ge hummed as he saw Doctor Halsey walk out with a smile. Ariane nodded, then sighed deeply and turned to leave as well. After giving Elster a quick wave, she blew a kiss her way , causing her to blush a little, before scratching the back of her head, slightly embarrassed. She waved goodbye back and watched Elster disappear down a hall with Halsey , then turned to face Jor ge and Six. She blinked as she saw Jor ge's grin and Six with his arms crossed to his chest, asking them both, \"What? What's wrong...?\"Tip of the Spear Part 1:Load Up Ariane was fast asleep, she was pretty sure. She, however , did not feel the semi-comfortable bed in ONI's CASTLE Base dorm under her . She didn't even feel the possible slab of titanium that was used as an operating table on which Doctor Halsey had put her in order to check various parameters of her brain activity during further tests pertaining her Bioresonance. No, she was floating in an empty void. Her limbs were immobilized and she couldn't even look down to se herself. No, no, correction, the young woman could crane her head down. She just didn't see anything. Whatever was happening to her was not normal. Definitely and totally not normal. She should've had a body , at least, or been able to move. She felt her pulse, wherever her heart lay but below her , elevate. Wherever she was, it did not bode too well for her . This place felt empty , awkwardly dark. She tried to blink away the Darkness, to force herself to wake up. Anything she attempted to do at the moment failed, driving her further into a panic. She blanked, paused and started breathing in and out, or , at least, simulating breathing to try and slow her elevated heartrate and racing mind. She didn't know what ef fects Bioresonance would have due to an uneasy mind. She also didn't wanna test it out at this point. T oo many variables, especially with the Covenant on the planet. That might've been one of the stress factors. In fact, the Covenant's presence planetside, even in small numbers, made everything feel like it was ending for a good reason. She'd seen the footage of what they did to the planets they 'conquered'. And she dreaded for Elster ... More than anything... The girl blanked again, for but a moment. Blurry imagery resolved ahead of her , into a rusted-out nightmare. Concrete walls belied structural strength, a floor of steel grates sitting below her bare feet. Her long hair , no longer caught in its ponytail, flowed freely in a breeze that should not exist. On each side of her , rotting pews lay , lined with the shadows of humans and monsters. In the darkness past the grates on the wall in the rear of this strange hall, something pulsed. The steel grates below her also hid something, deep below the darkness. Umbral, dark, pulsing, a seeming continuation of what flowed behind the W alls. The air felt oppressive, heavy to her . Behind her , she saw a door framed by a cage. It, too, was old and rusting. Oddly , the room was lit just enough for Ariane to see everything. She gazed down at herself, noting the white cryosleep gown she had worn before being taken aboard the UNSC vessel, hanging loosely of f her frame. She looked at her pallid hands, noting minor injuries long-since treated by the UNSC's advanced medical technology . Before long, however , her gaze was attracted to the centerpiece of the room. A mural lay ahead, on the farthest wall in the back the way the pewswere facing. She took a step forward, hearing her footfall reverberate with a certain wetness against the concrete archways and walls around her . In her ears came another reverberation, of a choir . Deep and barely audible, voices sang around her as she took another step forward between the rows of pews. The mural grew clearer the closer to it she got. A lone figure with two hands poking out of the wall stood, clad in a bright white veil. The choir remained at the same volume as Ariane approached it. A golden halo outline surrounded the figure, the three stars of Eusan spread out at ten, twelve and two o'clock outside of it. The figure covered its face, a black, leaking mass with its right hand, while its left lay outstretched. Both arms resembled the desiccated remains of human ones, stuck in rigor mortis. The pulsing grew louder the closer she got to the wall, to examine the mural. The white veil that covered the feminine figure's face became all the more torn as it reached its ghostly , pale legs. Despite her self-preservation instincts telling her better than to mess with it, the young woman put a hand on the mural, between the hands. She yelped as both hands suddenly grasped around that with which she touched the monument, the pulsating thump of a heartbeat echoing even louder , mixing with the choir of dark voices in a rhythm. The figure leaned forward, her two-dimensional form in the frame of the monument pouring out into the distinct shape of a female frame. Her hands morphed, bloody , muscle and sinew visible through strips of flesh as it reformed. Her face was still shaded by the darkness within the veil, but the first to appear was her mouth and nose. She spoke to Ariane with an ethereal, beautiful voice, its words resounding in the deepest parts of Ariane's subconscious, \" On the First Day , I was Cr owned... And on this First Day , you shall A wake... \"\nPressure built up in Ariane's mind as the figure's mouth opened again, feeling the woman pull her closer toward the wall, trying to drag her within it. She screamed and jumped as she felt an electric shock, her eyes shooting open. She grabbed onto her shoulder , panting heavily as the veins in her head thumped, her heart firing of f like an assault rifle. She looked to Halsey , the woman holding what looked to be a small stun prod. The Doctor's shoulders sagged as she sighed in relief, before asking, \"How do you feel, miss Ariane? That must've been some  nightmare...\" as she set the prod to the side. Ariane's mind raced a thousand miles a minute as she got of f her bed, before following Halsey almost instinctively to the medical room. Halsey explained, \"That was a low setting, by the way .\"\n\"Still stinging, doc,\" Ariane quipped. Doctor Halsey hummed.\n\"What was your nightmare, miss Ariane?\" Halsey inquired as she tapped away on her tablet. Ariane hummed, then calmly explained the entire ordeal to doctor Halsey , from the strange place that felt eerily familiar , to the figure in the mural, to her becoming real and trying to grab at her . Halsey had taken note of everything Ariane had confessed just now , with Cortana popping in on the medical room. After finally jotting down the last note, Halsey stated, \"W e'll do a checkup of your neural activity now ...\" as Cortana began preparing the devices needed. Ariane hummed and nodded, letting the doctor set up the previously-used device to scan her patterns. She leaned against the table, letting the doctor do her thing while Cortana seeminglylooked through a series of programs for the device. As the last sensor was attached, Doctor Halsey turned it on and... She gasped. Cortana herself went wide-eyed at the readings, then said, \"What the hell...?\"\n\"These readings are of f the charts...\" Halsey murmured. She took a moment to remember what Ariane had said about the dream. \"'On the First Day , She W as Crowned... And on this First Day ...\" She looked at the girl and blinked. She kept up the scan for a few more minutes and made notes, before looking at Ariane and stating, \"Whatever happened to you in that dream world, miss Y eong, it...\"\n\"It enhanced your cognitive capabilities at least five-fold, not to mention the centers for Bioresonance are... Hyperactive,\" Cortana explained, turning to the girl and seeing her just as stunned as them. Cortana then murmured, \"It's almost like God decided to give you a pass today ... Or whoever that weird zombie lady in your dream was...\" while working to determine just what could've given such an awakening for a boost. If it was truly a dream, even. Ariane nodded, \"Y eah... Got it...\" and she looked at the readings, too. She couldn't understand some of the writings, but she knew , at the very least, that she felt more alert, at least. Her mind seemed to either be working overtime, or straight-up just working at a chunk of its intended power level now , compared to the earlier . She knew she was Bioresonant through reading some of her own medical data, but then why didn't she have the three stars so commonplace for Bioresonant beings?\nShe looked at her hand as Doctor Halsey brought out several necessary items for the next few experiments. Meanwhile, on another table in the room, there was a strange crown-like device being repaired by Doctor Halsey . Halsey also brought it over , before setting it down next to Ariane. The woman then hummed and handed her various items. She used her powers to lift them telekinetically , to move them around, to just casually do what she could easily do until now. Interesting was the fact that her powers seemingly manifested more openly , now . She lifted a pot filled with water , a heavy item all-in-all. She felt it, even through the use of telekinesis with her Bioresonance. She hummed and pushed her powers a bit more, glaring at the pot. She gasped as the pot jumped upward, some water spilling from the top after the sudden deceleration.\n\"Oops...\" Ariane murmured. Halsey , meanwhile, still kept her eyes on the neural responses from the use of her powers. She was also comparing them to the previous neurological activity from the girl during her 'first day' here on Reach. There had been a twelve-point-five percent raise in activity , of course, but it was also now a continuous stream of data instead of intermittent usage with pauses in-between, like her Bioresonant powers had been 'let loose'\nfor lack of a better term. She hummed and looked at the device she had set aside, next to Ariane, then she picked it up and looked it over . She hummed and asked, \"Cortana, what are we looking at for projected inhibition and focusing with the prototype so far?\" which stunned Ariane. They'd already got a working prototype to help with the Bioresonance issue? If there was something she could say about Doc Halsey and her AIs, it was that they moved fairly fast.The Doctor loomed over a table with the device, connecting it to a series of wires next to the device. She began to calibrate it as Cortana turned to the girl and said, \"Y our development feels like it's getting artificially sped-up. Honestly , as long as you get time to learn to control it, I don't think it's gonna be a problem, but you can't blame a girl for being worried.\" and she shrugged. Ariane chuckled, nodding understandingly . Halsey added onto the conversation, \"I do suppose it's only natural to be concerned about the supernatural... Or the misunderstood,\" before walking up to Ariane and slowly removing the wiring of f her head while the device began to calibrate itself nearby . To be quite fair , the device in and of itself was more of a 'crown of thorns' in design. It was obviously mechanical in some form, formed of wiring and various pieces of technology Ariane couldn't even name off the top of her head, despite hanging out with the doc and Cortana for a little over a couple weeks now . She watched them with interest as they worked, with Doctor Halsey asking her to do various tasks every once in a while to ensure that her Bioresonant activity was still going strong. Of course, Ariane complied. She thought that if she could help fight the Covenant with her powers, she might as well. Those monsters killed enough people already . If Elster was gonna... No, no time to focus on that. She also needed to figure out who that being in her dreams was... Elster herself, meanwhile, was tending to a UNSC W arthog in full armor . The ability to keep the exoskeleton on in case of anything was more than useful, honestly . It meant she had protection in case she made a mistake that got some shrapnel flung in her face. Right now , though, as she sat in the motor pool, she hummed and thought about the people back home. She wondered how they'd feel about her and Ariane forming up with the UNSC like this. She sighed. She was sure the Protektors would throw a shitfit the moment they managed to read their minds, considering Kolibri units were generally specifically used for mind-reading due to their Bioresonance capabilities. While they were still limited compared to Gestalts like Ariane, or FKLR units, AKA Falkes, which were Commanders for multiple installations, they were still terrifying little bundles of psychic prowess. Maybe they'd understand that this was about a bigger threat than the Empire, she thought to herself as she patched up the 'Hog's exhaust with duct tape. Maybe they wouldn't and she and Ariane would be gone all the same. Whatever the case, it was something to worry about if they survived the Covenant's deadly onslaught here on Reach and managed to escape. She sighed and began putting the vehicle's engine bay back together . Seemed like these things had a penchant to break one seal or another every once in a while. Though, to be fair , this one was also hit repeatedly by plasma fire. She saw the carbon scoring on the forward plate, not to mention a needle shard embedded in the gun shield. She climbed onto the vehicle and pulled the shard out, then dropped it to the floor and let it shatter . Jumping down from the vehicle, the girl walked out of the place and gazed up at the night sky. There was beauty in the stars as usual, but the fact that something else loomed above them, a small Covenant armada perhaps, made the stars all the more terrifying a sight. Which one of them could have been a Covenant ship, waiting, hanging above, ready to kill them.She sighed and pulled out her canteen, taking an (admittedly unneeded) sip of water , before setting it aside. Her helmet was clipped to her belt, so she had it ready to grab at a moment's notice, should they need to deploy . Her mind wandered of f in no particular direction now , as she strolled through this FOB on the V ieri territory , where NOBLE and their Army comrades had been stationed. Ariane was one of the most prevalent thoughts in her mind, unsurprisingly . She dearly missed holding the girl close, but knew she was better of f safe, underneath thick layers of rock, reinforced concrete and titanium plating. Better she be safe than in the middle of this war right next to her . As much as she loved her , Elster knew better than to even remotely question the circumstances. She just hoped Doctor Halsey would keep her safe, like she promised. She paused and turned as she heard metal boots crunching the dirt below . She turned to face the new arrival and immediately saluted. Carter hummed, gave a salute back and nodded to Elster , \"At ease...\" before walking up to her . He then asked, \"Everything in order , Private?\"\nwhile the girl fiddled with a piece of equipment in one of her pouches. She nodded rapidly , then hummed.\n\"All's fine, sir . I just completed repairs on the W arthog that got damaged during the battle for SWORD...\" She replied, then admitted with half-a-mouth \"It took me a while to source the parts, seeing as this place is remote as is...\" before noting that Jor ge and Emile were the only others present outside and were talking. Kat, meanwhile, was inside a command post. She hummed and asked, \"T ake it Six and Three are out on that Recce op?\"\n\"Yeah. Speaking of Six, he seems to have taken a liking to you.\" The man said as they started walking to the rest of the team. Upon noticing the arched brow of his mechanic, the man clarified, \"I don't know many SP ARTANs who'd give a SP ARTAN Smile to anyone but our own...\" and he looked back at her . She seemed to be processing the new information quiet well.\n\"That's sweet, sir , but I'm taken,\" Elster replied rather casually , prompting a snort out of the Commander . She hummed, \"Though, to be fair , he does seem like an older brother type in behavior . Been making sure I take care of myself...\" and she recalled the fact the man and her had even talked a little about the past. Friends and everything. And when both found they had nothing to really recall, they switched to talking about guns.\n\"Guess the Lone W olf stuf f with him was a bit of an overstatement... Mm, no, not likely ,\"\nCarter hummed. Six did always operate better as a Lone W olf, rather than part of a lar ger team during his own operations. Carter wasn't sure if Six wasn't some sort of special form of HEADHUNTER. Kat had given him files on potential recruits to replace Thom with and one of them was, in fact, a Headhunter . Jorge greeted them with a wave, stating, \"Commander , Seven.\"\n\"Nice of you two to join us,\" Emile quipped, sharpening his Kukri.\n\"Five, Four ,\" She nodded in greeting to them, then looked at Kat and said, \"I take it Six and Three need her for overwatch...?\" before noting that Kat was, in fact, talking to both of them. A little squint and she could even see their helmet cameras on the monitor of the computershe was using for the data streaming in from their suits. MJOLNIR was a fancy piece of kit from what she remembered of the specs from Halsey's manuals. She wondered, however , just for how long the good Doctor had worked on the Armor . It was supposedly like a second skin to all SP ARTANs, more than a piece of equipment. At least so she'd read in some of the reports. Halsey had been thorough in making sure it was as impenetrable a Fortress as Mankind could muster for their elite soldiers.\n\"Hey , Elster ,\" Emile started, \"W e never got to ask you, where're you and your girl from? W e read some of the interviews and somesuch, but we never got the point... Eusan Nation?\"\n\"A conglomerate of planets in our Solar System that has spawned out of a revolution against the oppressive Empire,\" Elster replied as she sat herself down, \"At least that's what they always tell us,\" and she looked around. All three men hummed and looked to one-another , before looking to the girl. She shrugged, \"The posters we had on our walls, the pictures of the Revolutionary and her Daughter on our walls... W e were the Eusan People's Nation. It was a decent place to live, from what little I remember of it. Of course, shortages happened due to the W ar and all that...\"\n\"Civil W ar that's still ongoing, I presume,\" Jor ge hummed. Elster gave a nod, to which the group collectively seemed interested. Elster hummed, then took a stick of f the floor and started drawing the Solar System and its multitude of inhabited planets and moons. She pointed at the closest planet to the sun and said, \"This is Buyan, the capital planet of the Eusan Empire and home of the Imperial Palace,\" then pointed at the next planet over , \"A bit farther from the sun is V ineta, the ocean world ravaged by our war . Next is Kitezh, the world of Red Deserts, occupied by the Imperial Navy who are cutting of f supplies for V ineta's rebuilding. Then there are the two gas giants around which Rotfront, one of our most populated moons, and Heimat, the center of AEON and the Revolution as a whole, orbit. Finally , Leng.\"\n\"Boss, doesn't this seem a little familiar?\" Whispered Emile. Carter shrugged, looking over the detailed drawing of the System itself. It did have a certain resemblance to a certain human system that was of even higher importance than Reach, but it missed a few planets and moons, unless they only tagged the colonized ones. Even Leng looked like it was in the same position as a certain planetoid.\n\"And... No FTL?\" Jor ge asked. \"No Slipspace, no nothing to explore the rest of the systems around you?\"\nElster shook her head, \"Penrose project ships get fired via a lar ge mass driver from Heimat toward the outer areas.\" She then replied, making the group pause. She continued, \"W e hit somewhere around ten percent the speed of light thanks to the Mass Driver and our ship's engines were mostly for direction changes and orbital burns to keep us steady when and if we ever found a planet... Of course, that never came to be...\"\n\"So, how'd you wind up over Reach, then...?\" Carter asked with half a mouth.\"Didn't have that much time to check the navigation computer . If I did, I might've gotten some info over how we skipped our way over to a whole new Solar System in one go...\"\nElster replied, putting the stick aside and looking down at the replica of their home she had drawn so calmly in front of a squad of people she barely knew . She sighed deeply , rubbing her eyes, then stated, \"Everything about me and Ariane clear now?\"\n\"In a way ,\" Jor ge nodded, \"Y our Nation. W as it open to your relationship?\"\n\"... I don't know . I never got to read the laws before I was deployed on the Five-T welve,\"\nElster shrugged, \"I know the basics and I know Ariane was told to interact with me sparingly , but more than that pertaining to the relationship between Gestalts and Replikas is a blank for me. Probably for good reason, too...\" and yet another memory flashed, this one her own, of how she and Ariane had spent their days aboard the ship. A faint smile appeared on her face,\n\"Yeah... Not like it mattered.\"\nJorge gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder , which the girl accepted calmly . Sure, Eusan was a mess of a place, but at least it was home to some degree. She knew Ariane wanted to go home with the UNSC ASAP , to introduce them to the Nation and its people and, if possible, to help the UNSC induct their people into their wider empire. Honestly , Elster couldn't see that happening. What was more likely was a W ar breaking out. Honestly , that was the last thing anyone ever needed, both here and back home. The UNSC was already dealing with a massed Covenant attack on Reach, presumably coming in hard and fast. She paused as she saw Kat stand up and walk up to them. The tech SP ARTAN spoke, \"W e have a situation, sir ...\" as she handed her tablet to Carter . The rest of the squad gathered 'round, to see footage from Six and Jun's perspective. A sea of purple lights filled their VISR displays. Images taken of a Covenant Strike Force. Carter murmured, \"An army deployed on V ieri... Y ou-\"\n\"Already sent it to command. Holland confirmed that all troops are to enter High Alert. W e're not sleeping tonight,\" Kat quipped. Carter hummed and nodded in agreement, looking to the rest of NOBLE. Elster tensed. That meant something big was coming up. A massive battle, presumably , if the Covenant were mass-deploying this lar ge a force. Kat hummed and said,\n\"We haven't figured out where they're deploying these units from.\"\n\"I feel like we'll find out early in the morning,\" Carter noted worriedly , \"Pack your gear and load up on ammunition. If you want to sleep, do it now . Soon as Six and Jun are back, we're heading to the staging area...\" to which the Group of SP ARTANs and Elster nodded, already re-packing their magazines. This was gonna be it. Perhaps, they'd be able to throw the Covenant of f Reach, buy themselves a little more time. Elster felt a pit in her stomach, though... Something was gonna go really wrong...Tip of the Spear Part 2:Shock and Awe Chapter Notes See the end of the chapter for notes Elster held on. Images played back from last night's Raid on her HUD, ranging from the army of Covenant forces that'd clandestinely landed on V ieri, to the image of mass mobilizations across the entire planet. She watched with a muted awe the mobilization of forces taking place from a directly-linked Satellite above Szurdok. Hundreds of UNSC V ehicles, transports and even two Frigates vectored from orbit to assist in the assault came down upon the enemy's position. She could see the faint purple of the Covenant's LZ past the hills whilst manning the MG on the W arthog she'd just repaired, with Kat driving and Six riding shotgun. Dot began her report to them, her voice dull as always, \" It appears that Noble T eam's discovery last night was not an anomaly . Lar ge Covenant deployments have occurr ed undetected, and we ar e now under attack acr oss the V iery territory , including orbital defenses. As per the W inter Contingency , we ar e countering on every fr ont. Noble's reconnaissance has also identified sophisticated Covenant army hiding canopies, and has been pinpointed what's believed to be a landing zone for additional Covenant for ces, the origin of which is yet to be determined. \"\n\"That landing zone has been tagged by UNSC Command as a Priority One tar get.\" Carter spoke over the radio. Elster tensed heavily , pressing herself into the MG's twin-stocks and making sure she was ready to take the recoil. She saw faint flickers in the distance, black and white clouds looming over the arid area of combat dead ahead, a place filled with mountains and wide canyons, resembling Kitezh. She heard Kat and Jun exchange words, then looked up at Carter's Helicopter , one among dozens of air assets which included W arthogs. She then gazed forward as an explosion rocked the area. Noting the plume, she saw the mushroom-shaped device that presumably acted as a hiding canopy collapse under the blast. She gasped and ducked as a plasma bolt struck the gun shield of the 'Hog, then looked ahead and saw them. Three squadrons of Banshee fliers swooped in, their antigrav generators hissing and droning audibly . Bursts of plasma raked the assaulting force of UNSC vehicles, catching two W arthogs in the strafing runs. One of the vehicles burst aflame and flipped forward as a plasma boulder struck it.\n\"Looks like we stirred the Hornet's nest!\" The girl commented as she shifted her weight to bring the gun around. She aimed up at the first Banshee, crosshair locking onto the thing, before she squeezed the trigger . Fifty-cal rounds left the barrels of the weapon at hundreds of rounds per minute, punching through the thinner plates of one of the canards and cutting it. The vehicle banked as one of its wing-tip antigravity generators failed, but the pilot regained composure just in time for Elster to rake the canopy . It veered of f and slammed into the ground ahead of them, causing Kat to steer left as shrapnel from the purple-white blast washed their vehicle and pinged of f the gun shield. Behind her , the thunder of a 90mm ECH gun echoed and a tungsten shell punched clean through the maw of another Banshee, opening it like a can of sardines and causing it to blow up mid-air .Kat veered left, then hard right toward a bridge upon which plasma mortars landed while Elster filled the air with machine gun fire. Kat looked to both of them, though, then called out, \"Y ou might want to hold on to something!\" causing Elster to brace as she finally registered the destroyed bridge. She gasped and ducked from the gun, grabbing onto the Warthog's roll cage frame in preparation to jump of f. Kat punched it, the vehicle's engine revving and roaring and making Elster pray she wouldn't have to fix it again. She felt the imponderability hit for half a second as the vehicle jumped the broken bridge, then braced as it started to tumble over and pushed herself of f of it. She felt herself hit the sandy ground hard, slamming into it and skidding to a halt across it, before hitting a rock with just enough force to wake her up. She grit her teeth and watched as Kat went to wake up Six, before noticing the Covenant armed forces on the ridge they were. Plasma already started to fly their way , alongside concussion rifle blasts. She ducked behind a rock and went to grab her rifle of f her back, only to feel nothing. She looked around in a panic, noticing it was on the floor , bent to hell due to the impact. She grit her teeth and drew her pistol, checking for dents and thanking the maker it still functioned. Kat ran up to her and asked, \"Y ou still with us, Elster?!\"\n\"Alive and kicking, no thanks to your driving! I need a bigger gun!\" The girl replied, even garnering a short laugh out of Kat. She poked up over her cover and scoped in a pair of Grunts with her pistol. T wo shots rang out of the barrel and struck both, causing the creatures to fall limply to the ground. This was gonna be a pain to deal with, she figured just as another Warthog crashed while trying to jump the bridge, the T roopers' screams audible from afar .\n\"Kat, Six, Elster , what's your status?\" Carter requested calmly over the com. Kat ducked behind cover as a bolt of plasma struck next to her . Six ran up to them and fired a grenade from his launcher . He had set it to remote-detonate, holding down the trigger to keep transmitting the 'stand-by' order . He let the grenade detonate in airburst, blasting apart a bunch of grunts and a lance of Jackals, before Kat replied to Carter , \"Pylon is down and we're advancing up the hill!\"\nA Fuel rod blast struck behind them, atomizing a rock, followed by another one detonating just above them against a tree branch that immediately vaporized. Their Geiger counters spiked for a second before settling down again. Six poked his head up over cover and stabilized his grenade launcher on the rock, before squinting and firing a fragmentation grenade as his visor polarized. Atop the hill, two green hover turrets, shielded and with glimmering emerald guns in their maws instead of the usual twin plasma blasters, aimed at them. The artillery turrets were being guarded by a platoon's worth of enemies, each in cover behind rocks or utilizing Jackals' shields as cover while firing needles and plasma their way . He ducked back down as the grenade exploded and said, \"T wo Fuel Rod Shades, plus about a platoon's worth of enemies.\"\"We gotta move before we get atomized,\" Kat noted, \"Lieutenant, Private, let's haul it!\" and she jumped out of cover , firing her assault rifle as she moved. Elster and Six both nodded to each-other and followed, Elster priming a fragmentation grenade and long-arming it toward a squad of Elites. Plasma rounds and a Concussion blast staggered the girl, but she pushed on as her shields rechar ged. Six himself was being peppered by plasma pistol shots and needler rounds, but he managed to shoot of f another 40mm grenade from the single-shot break-action launcher . It burst in the air, raining shrapnel down on the Elites. One of the monsters' shields broke and Kat was quick to draw her pistol and blast its head clean of f as the trio pushed. Another fuel rod bolt lanced past them, radiation spiking, then struck the hulk of the destroyed W arthog they'd jumped the gap over the river with. The team pushed forth, rifles ringing as they dodged Plasma Fire from all over the place. Kat cocked her right fist back and threw a punch with the momentum of her run behind it, snapping an Elite's neck with the hit. A second aimed its concussion rifle at her , but was pelted by rounds from both Six and Elster , the latter of which quickly shoulder -checked it, pinned it to the floor and filled it full of lead with her pistol. She ducked with a yelp as another shot from the fuel rod Shade turrets flew over her . Her skin felt like it was being pricked by a thousand needles, while her internals almost had a moment of failure because of the radiation spike. She ducked and crouch-ran to the next piece of cover as she heard the impact of that round. She followed up by throwing a frag right at the antigrav base of the turret. The explosion seemed to do it in alongside the Grunt manning it as its husk rolled back upon detonation. She looked to the ground and found a fallen Needler . Jumping, rolling forward and grabbing it off the floor , the girl took aim and opened fire. A full burst of needler fire filled the air between her and the enemy turret, several of the rounds making contact with the pilot and combining into a burning pink explosion which blew the turret's cannon clean of f. She hummed, looked at the now-empty Needler and tossed it aside. Kat gave her a nod and said, \"Not bad...\" before watching as a Pelican swung in for a landing. The two saw it drop off a W arthog with a pair of missile launchers as its mounted armament, all while Six was already moving toward it. He grabbed something of f the bed of the vehicle as he reached it, then threw said something to Elster . The girl grabbed it out of the air and looked to see it was a DMR. She checked the ammo in her pouches and nodded, before walking up to the W arthog. She paused, however , at the edge of the clif f, watching the battle going on across the river from them. On semi-open plains where the only cover was a piece of rock jutting out of the ground every few hundred feet, tanks and W arthogs clashed with Covenant Ghosts and W raiths, while Falcons flew in low and fast alongside other defensive elements, putting the hurt on the Covenant's air support. Six took the wheel of the W arthog, while Kat took the gun. Noticing this, Elster quickly marched up to the other seat and climbed aboard as Carter called out, \" Two, Six, Seven, b e advised:ONI has ID'd two hostile anti-air craft guns southwest of your location... \" while Six already hit the throttle to the max and began to drive. Kat replied to Carter , while Elster held on tightly to the vehicle's roll cage.They trundled down the beaten path, next to the clif fside, while the battle around them raged on. Distantly , the enemy cannon roared as it dischar ged plasma shells. Six veered to the right, then to the left, drifting down a hill, then forward and up another . The first gun came into view , a massive emplacement, its coil-filled maw already powering to send in a second salvo of plasma bolts.\n\"2-Lima-4 to Noble, those guns ar e pounding us with high-velocity plasma shells !\" Reported one of the pilots of the Falcon gunships. As the W arthog rolled forward, Elster could see the ongoing air battle, heavy gatling cannons meeting plasma from banshees. Elster was awed by the size of the Covenant's defensive emplacement, but hanged on tightly to the vehicle's roll cage still, holding her DMR close.\n\"That means support from the Frigate, Grafton , is also out of the question...\" Dot commented impassively .\n\"Nobles, all our bir ds ar e gonna be stuck out of range until you take out that first gun, \"\nCarter ordered. Kat swiveled the rocket launcher of the 'Hog about as their vehicle rolled down the road and into the Covenant's lines. She zeroed in on an enemy vehicle first. A Ghost hoverbike was rushing toward them, firing its twin plasma cannons, while, on the hilltop where the first AA gun was placed, Covenant infantry came out to greet them. Bolts of plasma struck around and over them, forcing Six to partake in some defensive driving. He drifted around a rock as a scarlet ball of plasma struck next to them. Elster caught sight of the enemy vehicle that fired it. A Revenant rolled up, aiming its gun at them. She grit her teeth and fired back at it with her DMR, feeling a slight prick of heat on her skin as bolts of plasma hit the W arthog and her from the right. She long-armed a grenade up the ledge where the T yrant AA gun was, before watching Kat fire of f a salvo of missiles from the launcher . All six missiles connected with the Ghost, shattering the vehicle in a blaze as Six drove toward the Revenant, weaving through its shots. One round hit close enough for the SPARTANs' shields to flare, but Six floored it toward the machine while Kat locked onto it. A burst of missiles lanced out from the barrels of the launcher , puncturing the forward armor and immediately killing the crew as the vehicle burst ablaze. The W arthog rolled around beside the ridgeline and climbed upward, meeting the first of the enemy's infantry head-on. A Covenant General Elite with a concussion rifle fired at them, hitting the W arthog and barely slowing it down as it plowed him through. Kat and Elster followed up by wasting a squadron of Covenant units that were reinforcing the man, missiles and bullets piercing flesh, bone and ener gy shielding.\n\"SPARTANs, new intel. The guns can't be damaged by normal weaponry .\" Carter spoke up.\n\"Which is why we suggest destr oying the fuel cells inside, \" Dot added while Six and Elster dismounted and marched on inside, sweeping the area clear with assault rifle and DMR fire. A dozen Grunts met their end to bullets from their weapons as they pushed in, with Elster noticing the massive central glass-and-alloy pillar that was housing a blue-burning ener gy ball behind a shield. Humming, she kicked the shield, causing it and her own to collapse dueto the similar frequencies interacting. She then threw a grenade inside it and motioned to Six to follow her out. Alarms began to blare from the gun's control systems as the two walked out and looked up. Elster watched with muted awe as several conduits sparked and detonated across the body of the weapon, moving all the way up to the maw of the gun. One of the two prongs that contained the magnetic containment coils meant to shape the plasma into superheated bolts outright launched of f the top, while the other bent to such a degree, it caused Elster to wince.\n\"That's one gun down,\" Kat commented. 2 Lima 4 called up air support as the SP ARTANs walked over to the edge to see the ongoing battle Three massive, four -legged platforms had been deployed by the Covenant, plasma cannons on top firing toward the aircraft while the strange beam weapons mounted in their mouths spewed emerald-burning beams which melted UNSC tanks. Explosions rocked the platforms, however , as the tanks and W arthogs returned fire. Kat hummed and said, \"W ell, fireworks are gonna be coming soon,\" as she motioned toward the two UNSC Frigates coming into play . The group ducked as the roar of fusion-powered engines came from above. T wo of the delta-wing Longsword bombers also flew in, diving toward the valley where the enemy Scarab platforms were. A multitude of explosions struck the enemy vehicles as the two aircraft dropped their payload, then banked away . Two of the Scarabs immediately got blown to pieces, followed up by the third's reactor going critical. Elster snorted and joked, \"How's that for a blast...?\"\nbefore turning toward the W arthog. Six and Kat gave each-other a look, then followed her to the transport. Six immediately took the spot of driver again, while Elster sighed and looked to Kat, disappointment somehow deducible from her body's motions. The girl shrugged and said,\n\"Six is a better driver than both of us. I'm not sticking my neck out in a place with clif fs to teach you how to drive...\" before she reloaded the launcher's tubes and manned it. Six snorted, but managed to contain the laugh, SP ARTAN discipline and all. Elster mounted up and rode shotgun again as Six began their drive over , with Kat stating,\n\"Six, I wanna get a better look at those Spires...\" as they rolled by the clif fside. The SPARTAN nodded and veered gently to the left, before straightening their drive on the road. In the distance, several tall spires surrounded by ener gy shielding stood as monuments to the Covenant's presence in the area. The vehicle ground to a halt for a moment as Six hit the brakes in front of a destroyed bridge. A Pelican was quick to fix it, however , as it flew in carrying a deployable bridge attached to the rear magnetic clamps. Upon arriving, the Pelican hovered and lowered the bridge as gently as possible, then lifted of f. Six didn't wait for anyone to tell him to, pushing the vehicle's throttle to maximum and driving over the makeshift bridge. They entered a canyon, travelling down one of the roads on the clif f face toward a group of industrial buildings built into the rock wall across from them. On a bridge dead ahead, Troopers exchanged fire with the enemy , using concrete barricades as cover . One of them noticed the SP ARTANs and their 'Hog approaching and waved them over , a smile on his face.Kat traversed the missile turret toward the Aliens on the other side of the bridge and squeezed off a salvo of missiles. A twin-plasma Shade T urret caught the brunt of the salvo, detonating and spraying shrapnel all around it. Several Jackals collapsed and two grunts died out of a squadron of twelve. The SPARTANs and Elster dismounted, rifles at the ready . The T rooper that'd waved them over spoke, \"It's damn  good to see you, SP ARTANs!\" as he and his comrades joined the team in its assault. Pushing forward, Six spoke, \"Keep it tight, T roopers,\" as he zeroed in on and shot an Elite whose shields were still rechar ging. Elster followed up with a few of her own DMR-based headshots against the Grunts and a disarming shot against a Jackal's hand, causing it to drop its Plasma pistol. She followed up by shooting it in the head as it exposed it. It dropped dead, its shield flaring and dissipating. Pushing up past barricades and cover , the group put down whatever was wounded, but still moving. Dot spoke up, \"New intelligence on an enemy High-V alue T arget being present in your area. An Elite Zealot, in fact,\" which caused the group to pause.\n\"Zealot? W e're onto something big here, commander ,\" Kat stated over the com, eager . Elster racked her rifle's bolt and readied herself. She remembered what the last Zealot nearly did to her . Carter spoke up, \" Eyes on the prize, Noble. T ake out that Zealot if you can, but keep moving towar d the Spir e,\" all while the group began to push up the side stairwell of the industrial building. Kat hummed, then approached a pipe that served as cover and showed the team to wait with a raised hand. Elster took a knee next to the troopers, while Six pushed forward and pied the corner . He took a step back and gave a confirmation nod as Elster saw it, too. Red dots on the Motion Tracker , marking a marching enemy unit. She shifted on her feet and pushed up next to them, before noticing a gas tank, painted red and with 'flammable' warnings plastered all over it. She pulled out her sidearm and aimed for the cap, watching as the Covenant's first soldiers came into view . She then put two rounds through the tank, one in the cap, flinging it clean of f, and another in the tank itself. The explosion rocked the platform and washed the Covenant troop in shrapnel. The UNSC forces marched past the metal-laden corpses and pushed further up the stairs, meeting the first true signs of resistance as Grunts with full-face gas masks opened fire on them. One of the T roopers behind the SP ARTANs caught a needle right in the mouth and tumbled over , falling down the stairwell with several loud, sickening crunches during each impact. Six put a grenade between that Grunt and his buddies, letting it detonate as an Elite Major turned the corner , hefting twin plasma rifles and opening fire on them. The entire fireteam lit him up, bullets pinging of f the shield and causing the monster to stagger back under the whittling barrage of bullets. Once its shield burst, bullets started piercing through the body armor . It died, corpse flung over a safety railing behind it.The SP ARTANs and T roopers pushed on forward through the compound and underneath an archway of pipes. Six showed them to halt again, though, before poking out. A burst of automatic plasma fire struck his shields, nearly collapsing them. He hummed, drew his grenade launcher and quickly fired, blasting the grunt manning the plasma gun mounted at the end of the catwalk. The group continued their push, meeting little resistance until the main courtyard. There, they caught sight of it. The Elite Zealot was present, carrying a Fuel Rod gun. Elster was really starting to hate those damn things at this point. Below it was a squadron of grunts and Elites, of course. The troop continued its assault, not even slowing down as they punched through the enemy , inflicting mass casualties. Elster was the first to climb up the stairwell. She grabbed a plasma pistol of f the floor and charged it up, aiming for the Zealot as it prepared to fire at her team. One ball from the Fuel Rod gun escaped and three T roopers were vaporized in a flash. Elster grit her teeth and let go of the overchar ged plasma bolt. It homed in on the Elite, but it sidestepped it, then turned toward the Replika. She boosted herself forward as the bastard started firing. Three bolts slammed around her , her Geiger counter kicking into high gear . She watched the bastard drop the spent artillery piece and grab a plasma repeater of f its back, before opening up with it. Dodging under the bolts and taking a few against her shields as the others came about, the girl shoulder -checked the Elite and headbutted it, feeling her metallic spine slightly compress. The monster replied with a hoofed kick square to her chest, sending her skidding back, before it char ged her . It fired the weapon continuously , despite taking bullets from her allies, until it overheated in its hand. It tossed it aside and grabbed Elster by the throat with one hand, slamming her against the floor and cocking back its other hand. It clenched its fist and an energy dagger powered on. Stabbing down, it felt its hand caught by Elster's. The blade stood mere inches from her helmet, held back only by the girl's left hand. She grit her teeth, then slammed her helmet's face-plate into the Elite's jaw while it roared, chipping a couple of teeth. She jumped back onto her feet and drew her rifle. She opened fire on it, combining her weapons fire with her allies'. She punched clean through the bastard's shields, sending it scrambling before Six finished it of f with a headshot. Six elbowed her in the shoulder and gave her a nod, before stating over the radio, \"Actual, STRIKE T eam, HVT neutralized and mining facility secured. W e're proceeding to the next gun and the Spire...\" and showing Elster to follow . Finding a hole in the floor , the SP ARTANs and Elster descended down it, finding a deeper part of the facility wherein a garage was. Several Grunts spotted them and tried to make it to the vehicles they'd stored there:A Revenant and a Ghost. Kat took the Revenant and told Elster , \"Hop on,\" as Six took the Ghost. The girl complied, mounting up and feeling the light wobble as the vehicle's anti-grav generators kicked on. The two Covenant-made vics rolled forward toward the second gun, whose wail echoed around them as it fired. Covenant T roops already came into view , Elites, Jackals and Grunts.Two of the Jackals lifted their shields and one of them char ged its plasma pistol. It let loose the shot just as Kat fired the mortar on the back of the light tank. The EM burst disabled the vehicle's electronics for a short while, causing it to fall to the floor and skid a couple of feet. Six, meanwhile, sped forward, ramming through the Covenant forces even as the Elite General commanding the defense, one with a concussion rifle, fired at him. The SP ARTAN drifted the vehicle and fired the twin plasma cannons at the Elite, forcing it into cover while the T yrant AA gun's maw boomed once more, plasma rounds lancing into the sky and striking one of the Falcons coming in to support them, vaporizing it in a blow . The Revenant soon regained its power , with Kat immediately lobbing a plasma shell the way of the Elite to force him out of cover . The round struck a rock, spraying molten material all over the place as the two crewmembers pushed the vic to its limit. The Elite aimed its concussion rifle at them and fired a burst as they got close. T wo of the three shots fired impacted the vehicle, sending it skidding into one of the three 'legs' holding the T yrant in place. Kat and Elster both grunted, slightly discombobulated by the blasts, before Elster dismounted and Kat brought the vehicle about. Thundering footfalls filled their ears and all of them looked to see a pair of Hunters striding out of the place. Elster swore to herself and ducked as the first of them fired its cannon. The heat and radiation made her feel sick, but she worked her way to dodging the hits, all while making sure the Elite wasn't gonna try and kill her . She saw the General as Six slammed into its back with the Ghost, before the SP ARTAN turned toward the Hunters and powered on the vehicle's boost. The headlong char ge toward the Hunters was punctuated by volleys of plasma cannon fire from the vehicle. One of the Hunters, annoyed at the pest, swiveled about and swung its shield-arm downward. Six saw the attack coming and jumped of f the Ghost just as the impact struck the vehicle and caved its engine bay in, before landing on the creature's arm and running. He pulled out a plasma grenade and slammed it into the beast's exposed head, then jumped. Just before the beast exploded, Kat filled the other with enough plasma hits to cause it to stagger next to its sibling. There, the Plasma grenade shredded the stuck one to pieces, while its sibling was washed with guts and blue fire. It roared, pained and angry , before a second blast from the Revenant's mortar blew it to smithereens. Elster sighed in relief, falling flat on her ass next to the rock and watching as Kat and Six coordinated the hit on the enemy AAA Cannon. The mortar shot that destroyed it lanced out from the smaller gun of the Revenant. A similar display to the previous gun filled Elster's visual sensors as she watched it detonate. She sighed deeply , stood to her feet and marched forward as radio calls came in and the two frigates approached their intended tar gets. A Falcon flew in with Jor ge aboard, while Kat marched toward her . The girl patted her on the shoulder and told her , \"They'll need a second gunner , Seven. Mount it up.\"\nElster nodded, then picked up the pace as Jor ge waved at her . She saw Six get on the right hand side of the Falcon and mount up on what looked to be an automatic grenade launcher . She went to the other side, sat down and took the other gun, to which Jor ge said, \"Need a ride, too, eh? W elcome aboard, Elster ...\" before the Helicopter began to lift of f. \"I'd beware,both of you. W e tagged a lot of tar gets when we were travelling near the canyon...\" Jor ge told both of them. Six and Elster looked to one-another , then nodded. Both tugged on the char ging handles of their grenade launchers and watched as the ammo display flared and switched to the guns themselves. The Helicopter ascended and began its travel down the canyon. Below them was a rushing stream of blue water and, around them, were rock canyon walls resembling pictures from Kitezh. Beyond, lay the field of battle and several spires.\n\"On the bridge!\" The Pilot called out as the aircraft flew in low . Dead ahead, between a series of other mining buildings and a wider open area, lay a bridge crossing over the crevice. It was being crossed by a squad of Aliens, so Elster and Six both tightly squeezed the triggers and let loose. T win thumps echoed repeatedly from the two grenade machine guns, explosions blossoming across the concrete as the rapid-fire weapons spat out grenade after grenade. The transport flew forth, exiting the canyon itself and banking right, to give the crew a clear line of sight on both the Spire and on a pair of W raiths bombing the hell out of their allies farther on the left. Elster immediately started hammering her W raith with the grenades from the launcher , hitting its rear multiple times and denting the armor . It blew apart at the seams, while Six's seemed to suf fer a similar catastrophic failure. The two continued firing as the Helo approached the tar get area, the main Spire, wasting several more platoons of enemies along the way . As the helicopter approached the tar get itself, the pilot seemed to hesitate for a moment. He spoke to the SP ARTANs, \"There's the spire...\" as he hovered above the pulsating blue shield. Elster leaned over to get a good look at the Spire and her eyes widened. The sleek, strangely biological-looking 'stalk' rose tall, mushrooming at the top into a main platform with a thin, hollow shaft and a heavy base at the bottom.\n\"Copy . Dot?\" Jor ge inquired as he looked over the side at it.\n\"Latest intel suggests the Spire is projecting an electromagnetic ener gy shield,\" Dot replied with that same monotoneness Elster had become slightly accustomed to.\n\"Copy that. Priority one, pilot. Gotta know what's inside,\" Jor ge stated. The Pilot hummed, hesitant, then gave his approval, gently nudging the helicopter inside. A wave of static washed over Elster's HUD and she felt the EM pulse prick at her internals, to the point she got slightly nauseous. She shifted uneasily in her seat and felt the vehicle begin to drop rather rapidly . Several callouts came from the pilot and the other T roopers aboard. Jor ge himself said, \"Lock your armors!\" And Elster wondered if she could actually do The vehicle hit the ground like a hammer blow , skidding, sliding and tearing itself apart as it dug a neat little canyon in the sand. Elster had been thrown out of it. She hit the face of a rock hard, to the point where she heard and felt one of her arms stop working. The world around her spun for a moment, memories playing back of a similar had landing. A sole figur e stood above her , checking her over , though she only had half her vision... All was blurry ... Then it cleared. Elster groaned and felt her left arm hanging loosely out of its socket. She looked over to the SP ARTANs, to see them slowly recovering from the impact. Her leftshoulder had, in fact, been pulled out of its socket by the force of impact, but no other diagnostics played over her visual sensors' HUD. She grit her teeth, grabbed onto the arm and pushed it back in with a sickening crunch of titanium bones and articulations locking back into place. She then pulled one of her three remaining repair sprays and shoved it in the wound, squeezing the trigger and letting the polyurethane foam form. She let it cure as she stood up, then she tested the movement of her arm, rotating, flexing and extending it. Finding the movement range to be just right, she stepped up to the other two and grabbed a rifle of f the floor , casting a quick glance of acknowledgement at the dead men that'd been with them on that bird. Jor ge looked over at her and asked, \"Second crash for the day. Doing alright?\" to which she shrugged. Jor ge hummed and nodded, then stated, \"W e gotta get upstairs, disable the shield. Six? Y ou good on that end?\"\nThe SP ARTAN pulled out his grenade launcher and thumbed the switch. The Grenades would henceforth have a slight EM Pulse when fired, meaning Six could disable anything the Covenant threw at them for a short time. And considering the fact there seemed to be a Covenant Banshee overhead, well, Six probably already had a plan. Jor ge gave a nod to them, then said, \"Already picking up a lot of enemy contacts. Let's start pushing.\"\nElster booked it with the boys, rifle in hand as she scanned the tops of rocks. She wasn't in the mood to be ambushed or shot, honestly . She kept up with the two SP ARTANs despite them being transhuman supersoldiers to some degree. Then again, she was as close and far to them as it got. Close in the sense of being tantamount to a superpowered human, but far in the sense of being who she was. The first Covenant units appeared. A needle rifle shot snapped by Elster's ear , followed by a second one slamming into and detonating of f her shields. A Skirmisher stood atop a rock, firing at them. In front, grunts and Jackals, as well as an Elite in blue armor . The SP ARTANs and Elster formed a wedge with Jor ge at the front. Bullets rang out as they met the enemy force. Plasma bolts began to fly , some hitting the SP ARTANs and blasting through their shields, others hitting Elster's own shields and armor . She dodged and weaved as best as she could between them. Some still hit and nearly punched through her armor , which she felt heating at points, but once they closed the distance, the first enemy was met with the butt of her rifle. Bones broke, necks snapped and bullets, boots, fists and rifles met alien skulls. The further up they pushed, the harder the resistance got. And the damn Banshee had noticed them. Elster called out, \"What the hell are they even defending!? W e caught their Banshee's attention!\"\n\"Apparently , it's a teleporter!\" Jor ge replied as he hefted his LMG. Six waved him of f from shooting at the Banshee, drawing his grenade launcher .\n\"What's it linked to!?\" She demanded as she took a knee and fired a burst at another Jackal that got on top of a rock. Three bullets, each hitting center mass at the sternum, throat and then head. The bird squawked and tumbled of f the rock with a series of sickening bone crunches. A plasma bolt washed over the shield on her head, forcing her to blink away the greenish-tinted light in her eyes.She grit her teeth and char ged the Grunt that fired at her , slamming the butt of her rifle down on its head and cracking it wide open. She staggered, surprised at her own strength as the blue blood of the little creature stained both her weapon and her armor . Shaking her head to clear the surprise, she moved to follow the SP ARTANs upward, then watched with muted awe as Six shot a grenade, let loose its EMP and disabled a Banshee before boarding it and kicking out the Elite. She shot the Elite dead as she watched the SP ARTAN take of f, with Jor ge noting, \"Actual, Six is en route up to the Spire! W e'll hold'em of f here!\" before motioning to Elster to follow him to the open area between the rocks and the platform. She and Jor ge went back to-back, firing their weapons at the advancing enemy teams that were trying to cut them of f.\n\"Copy that. I'll be in ther e with a Falcon as soon as the Shield's down. Pr ep for a hot extract, the Grafton's waiting to blow that thing to pieces...\" Carter replied. Jor ge and Elster nodded to one-another . Each turned to face the hostile tar gets pushing them, firing away in their respective 180-degree arc to keep them away . Elster herself was gunning at the Grunts trying to rush them from the Platform, keeping them suppressed with bursts of AR Fire.\n\"So, Elster ,\" Jor ge started as he swept the area ahead with his MG, pinning down a pair of Elites armed with plasma repeaters. He looked back while keeping the trigger squeezed down on the MG's trigger . He wanted to ask something, clearly , seeing as Ariane was clearly a fairly important person for Elster . He hummed and quipped, \"When's the wedding?\"\nElster snorted, \"Soon as we're done here...\" appreciating the light bit of humor as she attempted to keep the other enemies in the AO pinned as well. Of course, the battle wouldn't really last that long. Both of them looked up as the shield above began to dissipate. The Falcon came in, bursts of autocannon fire filling the place and wiping a slew of enemy forces as it touched down. The two rushed aboard and jumped in, with Carter hitting behind his seat. The Pilot took the hint and lifted of f, aiming to recover Noble Six first. The SP ARTAN ran, with Jor ge and Elster extending their hands out from the Chopper's side to catch him. The man jumped, pushing himself far , before both of them grabbed him and lifted him up onto the vehicle. He took a seat as Carter ordered, \"Get us outta here!\" before radioing in as the Chopper started flying away , \"Control, this is Noble One! Spire One is green and you're clear to engage. Have a nice day .\"\nElster removed her helmet, listening from afar to the radio, \" Copy , Noble One. Be Advised, All gr ound units:Frigate Thr ee-One-Eight Heavy is inbound and MAC Rounds have been authorized !\"\n\"MAC Rounds?! In atmosphere?!\" Jor ge seemed almost surprised.\n\"One way to get their attention,\" Carter quipped, \"Hand on to your teeth, people!\"\nElster smiled at the quip, then went quiet, her mouth slightly ajar as she saw one of the many UNSC ships she saw in orbit fly in. The gun-shaped vessel was beautifully utilitarian, reminding Elster of home, but the black armor plate with few white stripes gave it a sense of danger greater than what even the Eusan Navies could muster . It was eerily beautiful to watchit approach its tar get. Before long, however , Elster heard the ripple of char ging magnetic coils, followed by the sharp screech of the round leaving the barrel. A bright-white flash burnt itself into her robotic retinas for half-a-second and the blast reverberated through her titanium endoskeleton, before she saw the spire cored, collapsing. Jorge gave an approving nod while looking at the team, just as the sky above began to glow purple. Elster blanked, looked up and her gaze settled on the Grafton just in time to see a massive ener gy beam core her. The beam cut through the frontal 'prongs' of the vessel and into the bridge, a multitude of explosions rippling across the hull of the ship as the beam dissipated.\n\"New contact:High T onnage.\" Dot reported, annoyingly monotone... Elster gasped, looking up as Jor ge called out dismally , \"No, no! Somebody tell me this ain't happenin'!\" and saw it. At an incredible length, with a hooked prow and massive bulbous body linked by a long neck, with armor plating thicker than any conventional UNSC vessel and sitting at many times the size of the UNSC's lar gest ships. Its ener gy projector , located in the belly , began to cool. Elster's heart sank as her mind tuned out the conversation. She stared with not even awe, but an awful sense of dread at the massive Carrier ... What monster did the Covenant bring in from the pits of hell...?\nChapter End Notes AN:I will be taking a hopefully temporary break from this story to focus on others for now and I feel like this is a decent enough clif fhanger , hehe. Thanks for reading. I'll see you all later .Long Night of Solace Part 1:Skyward Team NOBLE had regrouped. Barely . Behind them, Covenant weapons platforms fired beams of hatred at their army comrades. Scarabs strolled past, feet thundering against the sands of the Szurdok region as the team climbed the side of a clif f face. Elster stared, mute, as the Covenant warship above had broken for orbit, while the Covenant's newly-deployed armies had begun their wider campaign in this area. She sighed deeply as they entered a strange cave, walking with Jor ge, Six, Emile and Jun all the way to the back. Sat at the mouth of the cave, Carter and Kat began talking. Dot, meanwhile, gave the report, \"It seems our enemy is far more cunning than we thought. The Teleportation Spires doubled as a Covenant Cloaking device that concealed the presence of a Supercarrier in low orbit above Reach. Command has already recalled most of the Epsilon Eridani defense fleet from existing deployments and their arrival is imminent..\"\nSitting herself down as Jor ge threw down an armored briefcase containing heavy equipment. She paused as she heard Dot add, \"The first Battle Groups should arrive within...\" She paused, then a hint of fear in her deadpan voice made itself known as she stated, \"Forty-eight hours...\" words which caused Elster to double over . She took her helmet of f, revealing fearful eyes.\n\"Forty-eight hours!\" Jun snapped, \" That's imminent?!\" and he looked to Emile. The shotgunner shrugged and sighed, back leaned against a rock behind him, while Elster went on to reload her magazines with extra bullets they had on hand. She sighed and looked up at Kat and Carter as the two talked at the mouth of the cave, with Jun humming, \"Uh-oh... Who's your money on this time?\"\n\"Her,\" Jor ge replied calmly .\n\"You always pick her ,\" Jun replied with a scof f, garnering a laugh out of Emile and a short chortle out of Six as the SP ARTAN started taking apart his firearm. Jorge chuckled, \"She's always had him dialed in.\" And that got a quick giggle out of Elster , too. The girl shook her head at the antics of the team, before looking forward at their two team leaders. It wasn't as much of a chat as it was an intense, focused conversation, it seemed. Pertaining their next course of action, Elster figured. Her enhanced auditive systems could tell faintly what was being spoken, though the surprising bout of tinnitus from fighting didn't help.\n... How the hell did Replikas even get tinnitus? She wordlessly wondered as she tried to clean her ears with her pinkie. Emile noticed and laughed, before tossing the girl an MRE. She caught it, nodding in thanks to their resident lunatic and popped it open to start eating. Shealso noticed the light beam beating down in the middle of the cave was coming from a hole in the roof. One she hoped the Covvies couldn't easily peek through. Popping open the food packet, the girl asked, \"I never got to ask you all what your relationship is with each-other ...\" before taking a bite of a cracker . She technically did not need to eat, but her familiarity at this point, plus the resurfacing memories of her Persona, meant she felt more comfortable with munching down on anything to keep the boredom and mind-breaking idea that she had been someone else away .\n\"Most of us are replacements,\" Jor ge noted as he hefted his LMG of f the floor . Jun pointed at Kat and Carter and stated, \"Just the two of'em are original members. W e had another guy , but he died a few weeks prior to us being assigned on Reach. Same company as me, Carter and Emile...\" before humming and laughing, \"Thom was a good guy ...\" before Jorge had noted Six was slightly uncomfortable with the discussion. They couldn't have been the only ones to read files, could they?\nHe got an elbow in the shoulder and shut up. Six stood there, awkwardly , before humming and turning toward their TLs. He tilted his head toward them and the rest of NOBLE nodded in reply , those that were seated standing up and marching up to their team leaders. They overheard Kat talking first, clearly indignant, \"... and we're waiting for backup? They'll be backing up a graveyard!\"\n\"All our nukes are out-system or went down with the ships that carried them,\" Carter replied annoyedly , noting the look on his XO's face, \"Y ou're preaching to the converted.\"\n\"How converted?\" She tilted her head questioningly . If Six and Elster had learned anything, it was that when Kat had a plan, that plan was gonna come to fruition one way or another . And they could also tell that Kat and Carter had gone through enough together that the man knew what he was about to get asked:Some insane plan that would probably lead to death if it failed. Desperation makes one do weird things.\n\"I know that look, Kat,\" He stated bluntly . Kat shrugged, \"Y ou can say no-\"\n\"No,\" He deadpanned.\n\"Don't even wanna hear it?\" She inquired, hopeful. He clicked his tongue and took a moment to think. If it was bad, Holland would throw it out the moment it came up. If it was good, well, there was only so much life left in SP ARTANs like them anyway , so why push death farther away than it should've been, right? He hummed and sighed, defeated, \"Okay , let's hear it...\" before leaning back and waiting to see what Kat's plan was. He saw the nigh-imperceptible catty smile on her face form and disappear in a split second. She began, \"Remember that accident a couple of years back? Colony ship en-route to Cygnus? Seven hundred dead?\"\"If I remember correctly , a slipspace drive malfunction, right?\" He inquired, well-aware there was some hidden gem here he wasn't catching on to.\n\"Actually , it worked fine,\" She smirked, leaning forward. Carter had seen lightbulbs pop up in Kat's brain before, but this one felt a little shadier than most. Listening to her explain confirmed his belief. She stated, \"The drive was mounted improperly after a service haul-out. When it fired, it...\" She paused and figured out a good way to explain it. She settled on,\n\"Teleported half the ship to oblivion...\"\n\"And this is relevant... How?\" Carter raised a brow at his XO, all while noting that his team was approaching them. He had a feeling he knew where Kat was going with this.\n\"Well, a certain Covenant supercarrier could, with some assistance, suf fer the same, unfortunate fate,\" She quipped, crossing her arms to her chest. She seemed to have struck a nerve there, seeing the faintest look of surprise form on Carter's face. She had to admit, it'd never get old, catching her old friend by surprise. Age dif ference or not, the two of them were still the SP ARTANs that built NOBLE, so they knew each-other well.\n\"Even for you, Kat, that's-\" Carter hummed.\n\"Inspired?\" She shot back.\n\"Not the word I'd use...\" He shook his head and leaned back. Noting the presence of his squad, he saw the confusion behind their eyes, despite the impassive stares of each. He looked to Kat and ordered, \"Go ahead. T ell them...\" as he straightened his spine a bit. He hummed and looked outward at the distant engagements up above as UNSC troops staved of f a Covenant counter -attack around Szurdok. Kat walked up to Emile, much to the man's surprise, and grabbed the hilt of his Kukri to try and remove it. Emile, defensive as ever with his toys, grabbed her right hand, that being her prosthetic, to stop it. She tilted her head with a grin and asked, \"May I?\" quite playfully . The SPARTAN looked back at his team-mates, including an amused Elster , then sighed.\n\"Don't cut yourself,\" He replied jokingly , letting go of her hand. She yanked the blade out of the magnetic lock sheath and kneeled in front of them, beginning to explain the plan. And Elster wasn't sure she liked the whole situation. So many things could easily go wrong with something like this. It was an improv plan wherein the training she was remembering demanded a strict adherence to doctrine.\n... Wow, that was an odd memory to come up at this time.\n\"Objective,\" Kat began drawing a rough diagram of their plan with the tip of Emile's knife,\n\"Destroy Covenant supercarrier in geosynchronous orbit above Reach.\"\n\"This sanctioned, sir?\" Both Elster and Jor ge whispered toward Carter , then looked to one another and gave approving nods. Guess it was a common worry . Carter snorted and replied with a half-hearted, \"What do you think?\"\"Oh,\" Jor ge sighed. Elster crossed her arms. Of course, it wasn't. It was an impromptu, Guerrilla W arfare-style plan.\n\"Method?\" Kat continued, looking at the team now that they were done talking, \"A Slipspace drive in lieu of the Nukes we don't have. Delivery system:Us. Solvable, getting us up there. That,\" She hummed and stood to her feet, \"and getting our hands on a Slipspace drive...\" she then lifted the knife, letting it slightly fly and grabbing it mid-flight by the flat side of the blade. She smiled at Emile and handed it back, stating, \"Thank you for sharing,\" as Four slotted the blade back in its specialized sheath.\n\"So...\" Carter took a moment to process the plan, then sighed and asked, \"All we need is orbit-capable transport and the single most expensive piece of equipment made by man... \"\nwith an unimpressed look. Elster snorted at the implausibility , which got a look from Carter and Six that shut her up immediately . The man hoped he wasn't too tough on the girl. Kat noticed and ignored it, too, grinning. She shrugged defensively , then spoke in the usual ONI denial-deflection way of, \"As a soldier in the field, I couldn't possibly have access to all of those assets. Though, I think a good place to look would be, oh, I don't know ...\" and her gaze slowly shifted to the left, \"The nearest non-existent launch site for the non-existent\n'SABRE Program', dismissed by three administrations as preposter ous rumor , and in which our second newest arrival,\" she locked gazes with Six, \"W as never a pilot.\"\nWhile Six avoided her gaze, Emile bluntly stated, \"Y ou're scary , you know that?\"\n\"She's fuckin' terrifying,\" Elster whispered absentmindedly . Jorge chortled at the comment, while Kat gave Elster a quick wink. The Replika took a moment to register that and her cheeks turned a tinge redder . She facepalmed and sighed, thinking of Ariane instead. Kat chuckled at the sight, then looked to Carter and hummed as she thought of the next step of the operation.\n\"All we need is a green light from Holland now ,\" She stated as she fished through her pockets. Carter scof fed and snorted, \"Good luck with that.\"\n\"You're the one asking him,\" Kat pulled a tacpad out of her pocket and wiggled it in front of their team-leader , who didn't seem too fond of the idea of asking to do a suicide op like this from their CO. Thankfully , Kat knew NOBLE Actual would find some way to make it happen. She wiggled the tablet in front of Carter again, causing the man to sigh. He stood up and grabbed it out of Kat's hand, then walked to the back of the cave. He sighed, \"Oh, there's no way in hell he's gonna go for this...\"\n... Colonel Holland did go for it, in fact. Elster held on to the seat of the falcon she was on as they flew toward Farkas Lake in the Eposz area. Another beautiful vista with a wide lake sprawling across multiple kilometers. There was a beach ahead of them, full of rocky outcroppings, as well as a massive UNSC Military installation located at the other end from where they were landing. There was a fierce gunfight going on around the facility , too, obviously .The bird dipped and performed a quick deployment of five of Noble's members. Jor ge quipped, \"Bit of a hike to the launch facility ,\" as he readied his MG.\n\"Any closer's too hot to land..\" Carter noted. Jor ge gave a nod and Carter made a forward hand motion, \"Move up the Beach, Noble!\"\nThe group began their sprint up, feet stomping against the black sand below as they moved on in. Ahead, they could hear the thunder of assault weapon fire and the wail of plasma weapons. They saw a Covenant dropship swing in, dropping its deadly car go of hostile Aliens while the UNSC troops inside fought. The Army T roopers behind the barricades fired away at the Covenant troops, forcing them into cover behind rocks. Elster was the first to push, picking up speed due to her enhanced robotic physiology . She hefted her assault rifle and let loose a stream of bullets at the first Covenant Elite that came into view . A Blue-armored basic Elite got filled full of rounds, shield collapsing quickly , only for the remaining rounds to rip into it like it was nothing. Purple blood stained the beach, flowing down-slope toward the lake like a small river . Kat followed up behind Six, her pistol knocking of f the heads of several Grunts while their Elite handlers turned around to engage them. Plasma rounds lanced through the air , hitting and melting sand into glass. She ducked behind a rock herself, then poked out and opened fire, suppressing the enemy with Jor ge beside her . Carter , Six and Elster pushed on forward, sallying through the line of Covenant troops. A pair of Grunts turned toward them and opened up with their plasma pistols and needlers, but none of them were lucky enough to score any decent hits before Six put a bullet through each of their skulls with a DMR. The group paused, however , as the whistle of engines flaring echoed from above. Jor ge jumped back, while Six and Carter combat-rolled of f to the right and left, respectively , as a dozen Covenant drop pods thundered down onto the beach. Elites spewed out of them. Minors, Majors and Ultras. One of the aforementioned Ultras zeroed in on Six, char ging the SP ARTAN and slamming into him by using its full body weight, throwing the man backward and slamming him against a rock hard enough to break chips and chunks of f of it. The Elite then drew its ener gy sword and swiped at the SP ARTAN, but was quickly kicked in the chest. It got staggered enough for Elster to push toward it. She slammed into it, feeling a sharp pain surge through her shoulder for a moment. She kicked it as it fell, then put the butt of her rifle in its face once, twice, thrice. The shield shattered and one of the Elite's teeth was chipped as the Replika hit it with the rifle. She then climbed onto its back, slinging her rifle on a mag lock, grabbed it by the mandibles and twisted. A crackle-pop filtered into her auditory sensors as the Elite's spine snapped. It fell, limp, to the floor . She stood up and, with her rifle now in hand, she opened up on another Elite Minor , putting several rounds into it before her gun clicked empty . She quickly reloaded it as Six joined her , DMR ringing. Bullets sparked of f the shield around the head of the Elite, before said shield flashed, sparked and died, the monster collapsing with a high-caliber rifle round through its skull.\"Really good at headshots, ain't'cha...?\" Quipped Elster as she slammed the fresh mag home, then racked the bolt. Six nodded and patted her on the shoulder , showing her to follow along with Jor ge and the others. She took cover behind Jor ge as plasma bolts halved her shield, then pushed up with the big man. Carter's rifle sang beside them, while Kat kicked away the Elite Major and put enough rounds into it to stagger and kill it. The T roopers at the doorway to the base waved the Spartans and Elster over , with them all turning around and opening up on another squad of Covenant coming in to land. A platoon of Army troopers quickly filed out of the building as a heavily-accented voice called to the SPARTANs, \"Get inside, SP ARTANS! W e'll hold the door!\" before a multitude of UBGL\n40mm rounds flew out and detonated. Carter nodded and motioned to his team to move inside. Above, air defense cannons lit up the sky as a Covenant fighter swooped down toward them. Its shields flared as multiple high caliber rounds and missiles struck it, before the shields died and the rounds tore at its hull. It careened of f to the right and slammed against the top of the building, shattering in a blinding explosion. The group moved down the Corridors, past squads of T roopers tending to the injured of the place. One of the T roopers pointed to their left. The group entered where they were directed and found a rather nasty hole in the roof, with remains from the Seraph fighter hanging from the roof. Jor ge murmured, \"Still can't believe Holland said yes to this...\" as they pushed further into the facility via the narrow corridors.\n\"When it's the best we got, I can't imagine why he'd complain,\" Elster replied, pushing up with him and Six. The building shook and shuddered as plasma rounds impacted the place. Elster had to register Kat's little glance, but continued on with the team eitherway . They needed to get to that fighter and get the hell upstairs in order to get that Slipspace drive bomb operational. She needed to be up there.\n\"Right this way , SPARTANs!\" W aved a T rooper toward them. Another blast shook the base and the T rooper , who was carrying a Jackhammer rocket launcher , stated, \"Oh, dammit!\nWraith on the lower platform!\"\nSix rushed up to the T roopers and grabbed a launcher from the side, hefting it onto his shoulder . He and the rocket team launched together . Six missiles streaked over toward the Wraith as it char ged its plasma mortar . Each struck, cratering the armor at a specific point and causing the vehicle's internal fuel lines to catch fire and detonate, the blast causing the tank to blossom into a burning flower of alien alloy . Dropping the Launcher , Six then followed the team deeper into the facility . An Elite appeared, throwing a trooper against a wall hard enough to snap her spine, before the SPARTANs all stopped and levelled their weapons on it. Elster could swear she saw the faintest twinge of fear appear in the Alien's eyes before five assault weapons lit it up like the lights on Heimat during the Anniversary of the Revolution. They walked past the corpse, with Elster going to check on the dead T rooper . With a sigh, she closed the man's eyes and stood to her feet, rejoining Noble. Her mind raced now , as she entered the control room. Corpses littered the place, both Covenant and Army T roops, as wellas another branch of the UNSC Military:Marines, clad in their olive drab uniforms and carrying MA5B Rifles. She guessed this'd be a joint Army-Navy-Marine op, honestly . They had a ship coming in that contained a squadron of Marines. W alking up to the center of the room and holstering her assault rifle, the girl leaned over the Holographic table displaying the form of a Covenant Corvette stationed in low orbit above them. Their exact tar get for Operation:UPPERCUT's first Phase. She watched blast doors split open ahead of her , revealing the frame of the four -engine heavy-duty Sabre-class fighter of the UNSC. An experimental design, it would be launched into orbit alongside the rest of its squadron with the aid of the specialized booster system attached at the tail-end, made up of four heavy-duty rocket engines and a central fuel cell. It was a two-crew bird. She hummed. The UNSC probably needed someone who could tend to their impromptu 'warhead' if it got damaged, so with one motion of her hand, she let Carter know she was going, much to his and Jor ge's surprise. She marched with Six up to the launch platform, before noticing Jor ge approaching, too. The man spoke, faint worry hidden behind his usually calm voice, \"Y ou gonna be alright, Seven? I can take your place. Reach's my home, after all, not yours,\" to which Elster nodded. She looked to Six, who was already climbing to the top of the Sabre and mounting up in the cockpit. She looked to Jor ge now , and replied, \"I have to go on this one, Jor ge. I'll make sure to keep our bomb in top shape... And that we'll wipe that Covvie carrier .\"\nJorge sighed deeply , then extended a hand to the girl, which she shook firmly . He told her firmly , \"Take care of yourself and Six up there. W e'll make it count down here.\"\n\"I'll do my best,\" She smiled, depolarizing her helmet's visor for Jor ge to see it. A sudden regretful expression formed, her smile dimming slightly , \"You... T ake care of Ariane if I don't-\"\n\"Don't start with that, Els. Go,\" He stopped her , then tilted his head to the aircraft, \"Y ou'll tell'er you blew up a Covvie ship yourself, ya hear?\"\nElster nodded and smiled, before rushing toward the aircraft. She strapped an M-SPEC Re entry pack to her armor , before clambering up onto the aircraft's side and then pulling herself into the co-pilot/gunner seat. She gave Six a thumbs up and made sure her suit had enough juice and oxygen to keep her alive. As Six started running diagnostics, the canopy of the aircraft closed above them, locking into place and sealing with a sharp hiss of pressurization. As the computer ran through diagnostics itself and the system, Elster started, \"Hey , Six,\"\nwhile strapping herself in. Six turned toward her , looking out from behind the console ahead and straight at her , though she couldn't make it out thanks to the visor . She continued, \"Y ou're gonna need to give me a brief rundown of what I'm supposed to do... This is a RIO position, right?\" She remembered that much from the old memories of encountering pilots during Vineta... Ugh, V ineta. Hell on the sea.\"WSO, but yeah,\" Six replied, turning back to his own console and running the final launch sequence. He explained as calmly as he could, \"The touch screens should tell you what weapons we have selected. I'll be running the 35mm autocannons on the side. Y ou have the missiles and gauge the fuel we have left for the flight. Keep me posted on the ship's status while I'm focused on flying, too... Oh, right. Radar as well.\"\n\"Got it,\" Elster braced herself as she heard the muf fled roar of engine ignition and began to feel the rattle of the bird's frame as the escape-velocity-capable boosters powered. She felt the craft launch forward on a rail system, her body compressed against the cushioned seat behind her . She held onto both her belt and the console as the aircraft lanced up, leaving a trail of smoke behind itself. In the corner of her eyes, despite her vision blurring, Elster could see half-a-dozen other Sabres launching from the facility's other ramps. The ascent was a G-force-heavy endeavor , forcing Elster to use techniques like focused breathing to keep her oxidant from flowing to the back of her skull and causing her to pass out. Sure, she was not human, so the G-Forces didn't af fect her nearly as badly as they probably af fected even Six, a SP ARTAN supersoldier , but it was still an annoyingly common problem, it seemed. She thanked the lord, Kat and UNSC Procurement for her armor , though. Piercing through the clouds and the upper atmosphere into the void above Reach, Elster once again saw the beauty of the planet below her . Scars now pockmarked V ieri, however , marks of the Covenant's deadly campaign on the planet below . The enemy Supercarrier had to go down if they wanted any hope of saving Reach as a whole. She hummed and thumbed her controls, feeling the vehicle's ascent begin to normalize. Beside them, the other strike fighters began to jettison their extra fuel and the boosters. Six tapped a few buttons on his console and gave a thumbs up to Elster , who nodded and touched the few flashing items on her screens. A muf fled thunk echoed from outside, followed by another , louder one. She checked the rear camera of the aircraft, watching as the orange tube containing liquid rocket fuel began its descent back into the atmosphere. Six tugged on the bird's stick and brought them facing 'up'. Admittedly , there was no real direction in space, just the variabilities of their rotation in the three-dimensional space, rotation provided by the RCS thrusters installed aboard the void-capable fighter . She saw the gusts of RCS thruster exhaust as the craft stabilized, nose pitched toward what looked to be a distant orbital facility . Six turned on their mainline engines, the craft rumbling slightly as its own rocket boosters engaged. He pushed the throttle to max and the bird lurched and launched forth, entering higher orbit in formation with the squadron. Six radioed in, \"Anchor Niner , this is Sabre Bravo Oh-T wo-Niner , en-route to your current position. All thruster systems green and engines hot. WSO, rear SYS and W eapons checks. Master Arm SAFE.\"\nElster nodded and ran through the list as the squadron moved toward Anchor 9. She spoke like a well-oiled machine, running the checks, \"Master Arm SAFE, aye. Missile systems operational, lock-on and helmet HUD display check,\" she tapped a few buttons and wirelessly linked her helmet's HUD to the tar geting display . It flashed, ran a quick diagnostic and gave a green light as the HUD-based crosshair for the missiles, a disconnected diamond-shape in a circle, flashed on. Elster reported, \"Lock-on and HUD systems are green. Shipboard AShMs are hot and ready for combat use. All nominal, subsystems green, green, green, guns green, shields and radar , green. Bravo Oh-T wo-Niner W izzo confirms SYSCHECK complete, systems nominal.\"\n\"Roger . Bravo Oh-T wo-Niner Pilot, confirming All Systems Green. On suborbital approach vector ,\" Six stated and powered on his own HUD. Elster grabbed onto the handle next to the console, eyes locked on their displays. The display flashed with a rough approximation of their trajectory toward the Station ahead. Elster watched with muted awe as a Paris-class Heavy Frigate flew toward Anchor -9, the station itself resembling a massive three-prong construct with various hangars, guns and airtight corridors going between each prong. There were also various repair 'drydocks' in orbit, structures made up of two massive boons filled with tools and magnetic locks meant to keep ships in place during repair and refit. Or disassembly .\n\"Broadswor d Bravo Oh-T wo-Niner , this is Noble Actual. Do you copy? \" Holland's voice surprised Elster . To the point the girl felt the need to double-check.\n\"... Bravo Oh-T wo-Niner here, copy you loud and clear , Actual... Colonel?\" She replied carefully , scanning the horizon for any enemy movement.\n\"Affirmative, Seven. Good to hear your voice, Ser geant, though I'd have expected Five to be the one to come with Six up top, \" Holland replied calmly , audible behind him being the noise of consoles beeping and AIs and personnel working. The man, meanwhile, spoke calmly ,\n\"Welcome to Operation:UPPERCUT . I'll be your contr ol from her e on out.\"\nShe blinked, \"Sir , I'm not a-\" And she paused as she received a data transmission. Holland's picture appeared on one of the consoles, the man grinning. Elster read the transmitted data aloud, \"... Per request of Commander T wo-Five-Niner , NOBLE One, field promotion required for NOBLE SEVEN, Private LSTR-512, to Ser geant for operational duty purposes and concentration of force... Sir?\"\n\"Carter needed an NCO, Seven. He wants you to be able to form your own impr omptu Fir e Team if the situation calls for it during battles. I and Doctor Halsey agr ee. W e'd have done a bigger cer emony if we had the time, but we've got mor e pressing matters to attend to. Good luck up ther e,\" Holland replied. Elster looked over to Six, who gave a simple thumbs up, before bringing the Sabre up next to Anchor -9 just as the UNSC Savannah docked at an\n'umbilical', a long, armored tube meant specifically to allow docking procedures.\n\"All Sabr es, this is Anchor A TC. W e've detected impulse drive signatur es. Multiple hostile contacts incoming. Our weapons systems our down and we need time to r eboot them. \" A male voice stated. Six and Elster both noted the marker pointing out the arrival point of the enemy force, with Six banking the craft right and utilizing their RCS thrusters in conjunction with their normal engines to bring the aircraft about. As alarms blared for contact in the fighter , Elster saw the first wave appear . A squadron of a dozen Space-capable Banshees, bearing extended plasma cannons in their mouths and seemingly-fixed canards. She held on tightly as Six banked right for them, ordering, \"Allfighters, break and engage,\" as he settled the crosshair of his 35mm cannons on the leading bird of the V -shaped formation. The twin cannons thundered in half-second intervals, high-caliber shells whizzing by the enemy light starfighter . It and its squadron broke formation, with it turning hard left and diving toward one of the nine station-based refit and repair drydocks. Its siblings spun about to meet the UNSC's fighters as they , too, dived on their prey alongside the SP ARTAN and his Sabre. Tracers lit the void, meeting twin plasma bolts and slamming into the bodies of the enemy's lightest space-capable fighters. One round tore a canard of f the tar geted Banshee, sending it careening into a piece of T itanium armor that was floating around Anchor -9. The vehicle shattered against it in a blazing purple-red explosion. Six, meanwhile, chased the fighter that had banked and was running away from them.\n35mm cannon rounds snapped by the enemy bird in bursts as it danced between the skeletal frames of ships under going maintenance. Elster prepped to fire missiles on Six's mark, locking the weapons onto the enemy Banshee. She braced and held on tightly as the voidcraft's RCS thrusters kicked in and it banked with the Covenant fighter . A round sparked off the Covenant fighter's canopy , followed by another that tore one of the rear engine fins off. The bird burned, but stabilized itself. It made an incredibly sharp turn as it flew between two of the drydocks. Six pushed past the frames and banked up next to Anchor -9. The station was under the belly of their Sabre, so Six and Elster could barely make it out. Not like they were focused on it. Elster yelped as two bolts of plasma washed over the canopy , dissipating of f the ener gy shields of the Sabre. The enemy craft popped up behind them. Elster noted it and focused on it. The four boons making up the diamond in her tar geting reticle realigned and blinked twice. She called out,\n\"Target lock with the missiles!\" words to which Six thumbed his stick. Four missiles left the side tubes under the wings of the aircraft, powered on their own maneuvering thrusters and engines and lanced of f toward the Covenant craft. Two missed and two struck, twin explosions flaring and dying due to the lack of oxygen. Six veered right and banked into the furball in the middle of the nine docks. He zeroed in on an enemy that was trailing one of their own. He opened fire, lighting the small-craft up with a four-second autocannon burst. The shells tore through the body of the Banshee, globes of drying purple blood floating out into space as the vehicle's engines died, leaving it a small, floating husk in the middle of nowhere. Elster gripped onto her seat, tracking tar gets in the small furball as best as she could and calling them out for missile launches. T wo of their Sabre squadron dived on a trio of Banshees trying to retreat. Another Banshee swept down on them while they were trying to kill its buddies, plasma washing over the wingman pair , with one of them taking a full burst of Plasma which burst his shields. High-cal rounds tore through the enemy Banshee, however , as Six veered to intercept. The aircraft tried to dodge, veering right and utilizing its own maneuvering capabilities to avoidthe UNSC bird. Six utilized his HUD's systems, allowing a lead indicator to appear in front of him. He lit up the enemy aircraft afterward, shells tearing it apart as it tried to flee.\n\"Good kills, but we'r e not out of the woods yet. Savannah Actual, r eporting new bogie signatur e. Lar ger impulse drives, fighter -class. Station defenses ar e at fifty-six per cent!\" The shipboard crewman of the Savannah reported. Indeed, a dozen Covenant fighters, the teardrop-like Seraphs, appeared. They immediately banked for the Sabres, each firing their twin plasma autocannons rapidly . The Sabres dodged, several taking bursts of fire that flared their shields. One of them had its shields burst and several plasma rounds melt the underbelly armor , but it still flew . The pilot aboard it swore and said, \" Took some damage, but I'm still flying !\" as she dived on another Seraph. Six used his RCS thrusters to push his bird down below a flurry of plasma shots, before using them to brake and get behind the enemy aircraft. He grit his teeth as the high Gee maneuvers he pulled in order to stay on the wavy bastard's rear got to him. Elster held onto her teeth metaphorically , as well, watching the SP ARTAN dive on the enemy . Autocannons lit up the Seraph's shields, a full ten-second burst blasting through the Covenant craft's own ener gy protection. Six called out, \"Lock it!\" as Elster settled the crosshair on it. The two aircraft entered a turn-fight against each-other , forcing Elster to quickly lock onto the bastard before its shields rechar ged. Her vision blurred due to the Gs for a moment, but she locked it on. Unable to speak, she slammed her console and Six gave a nod. Four missiles lanced out of the aircraft and turned hard to meet the oncoming Seraph. Three of the four struck, detonating on the hull of the ship. The blasts tore one of the rear stabilizers of f, sending it careening into the void, one of its plasma lines broken and venting. Six immediately veered for the next one as it char ged him in a head-on, all while his comrades worked on thinning the enemy's numbers. The SP ARTAN lit it up and was lit up in turn, plasma rounds splashing onto the shields of the Sabre. Luckily for Six, he'd started firing first. When he gave the go-ahead for Elster to send another burst of missiles, the enemy fighter was out of shields already . When all four missiles connected, there was little left but a cloud of debris through which Six and Elster flew . Plasma bolts raked the top of their craft as a Seraph dived on them. Six was quick to pull another blindingly-high-gee maneuver , shutting his engines down and cancelling forward momentum with RCS, before turning to face the enemy craft and lighting it up with both guns and missiles, courtesy of Elster . It was torn to pieces by the heavy fire, detonating in a white-hot flash. Multiple new contacts came in as the third wave. Anchor's guns, however , lit up. The 5cm coilguns in their rampart mounts lit the void as the last wave of Covenant craft emer ged, tracer and HE shells tearing through both Banshees and Seraphs, all while the UNSC's fighters mopped up whatever survived. Six and Elster put down another pair of fighters and four Banshees before the word came, \" Phantom Gunboats, detected on appr oach ! Those things have anti-ship weaponry aboar d!\" from the Anchor .As the four enemy gunboats warped in, Elster could immediately spot the dif ference. Whereas a normal Phantom was plain purple with some silver , these ones were darker , almost brownish in color and carried much, much bigger plasma cannons than their normal counterparts. One such cannon immediately tracked Six and Elster as they went in for the attack. Bursts of plasma lanced forward, forcing the SP ARTAN to roll their vehicle to the side to dodge the shot. He let loose multiple missiles after Elster locked onto it, the full burst setting the gunboat ablaze. The next one over was lit up by the cannons as it fired at them, with Six's squadron trailing close behind, missiles washing the ships that survived in hellfire. Before long, the Gunboats had been dealt with before they even arrived in range. Holland voiced, \" Well done, Bravo Oh-T wo Niner . Seven, I take it this is your stop... \" before Elster gave an af firmative hum. Six flew the ship toward one of the hangars and docked it, before punching in a code and pressurizing his suit. The cabin hissed with pressure equalization with the outside and Elster saw her tar get:A Pelican bearing the Savannah 's slipspace drive. She removed her harness and clambered out, making sure her M-SPEC Re-entry pack was still on just in case. She then gave a wave to Six and pushed herself of f the Sabre and toward the Pelican, where a pair of Marines were tending to the bomb. As she floated through the void, she gazed down at the planet below and whispered, \"I hope you're safe, Ariane...\"\nShe saw several detonations flash down below . SWORD Base had come under attack again, it seemed. She felt her heart begin to race, Dot inquiring something in her ear that she didn't bother to answer . They needed to destroy the damn carrier now , free Reach from this mess. She looked forward at the Pelican and stretched her hand forward, grabbing onto the rails by which the massive Slipspace Drive that would be their bomb was attached. She looked over the device, over the systems and over all necessary requirements as Holland gave a briefing about the situation. The Corvette they were aiming for had to be taken over , its com relay destroyed and it, brought in on a refueling track in order for the bomb to be close enough. Easier said than done, she thought to herself as she watched Six detach from Anchor -9. Boarding the Pelican, the girl strapped herself in alongside the Marines as the vehicle took of f and joined with the others. Their next tar get:The Long Night of Solace...Long Night of Solace Part 2:War Elster sat calmly aboard the Pelican, listening to the coms between the Frigate and the Sabre squadron. Uneasily , the woman lifted up her assault rifle and looked it over , before murmuring something to herself as more images of the old played in her mind. She swore, she needed to get herself checked the moment they arrived back anywhere near Eusan space. Her head hadn't been right since she first laid her fingers on a rifle here. She slid the weapon back onto its magnetic lock on her armor's back, then stood up and started rifling through the supplies on the nets above their seats. One of the Marines aboard(because these were apparently Marines) asked her , \"Something up, Sar ge? Y ou're lookin' awful uneasy , even behind that void-sealed suit...\" and he paused as he saw her retrieve a machete of f the top rack of the Pelican's storage. She hummed, clipped it to her belt and sighed as she saw a sudden switch of the troopers' expressions to fear .\n\"If we're going Close Quarters, I figure I need something bigger than a knife...\" Elster replied. She sat herself down and scanned the troop bay of the Pelican, uneasy still. Images of a similar dr op bay , filled with infantry clad in black uniforms, r esolved ahead of her . It was blurry , but less so than pr evious memories. The soldiers themselves looked back at her , their faces invisible behind the armor ed helmets bearing the thr ee stars of Eusan on their foreheads. She felt a light tap on her shoulder and turned to see what her HUD only tagged as 'Fwb. Seo, A. INR-SA52514'. Alina. The girl's two visor ports wer e opaque, but even behind them, Lilith could see the scarlet eyes of her beloved and the cr eases of a small smile. The two nodded to each-other , Lilith r emaining her usual stern self even as she was awar e the thunder of anti-air artillery could soon br eak the awkwar d silence aboar d the dr opship. She blinked. Elster did. Shaking her head, the girl looked again to the seat next to her to see a female technician working on making sure the data for the detonator was properly in place. Elster suddenly felt a pit in her stomach, however . She suddenly felt the entire place shudder , grabbing onto her crash seat. She looked to the pilot and yelled demandingly , \"What the hell was that?!\"\n\"Plasma char ges are hitting the Savannah ! The enemy's still got their main guns up!\" The pilot reported, clearly worried for their own well-being, \"W e should be getting the all-clear from Noble Six soon, though!\"\n\"Good...\" Elster nodded. She stood up from her seat again and walked up to the cockpit to regard the hangar of the Paris-class frigate as a slew of activity went on, with the deck crews moving supply crates left and right and securing them in place so that the sudden depressurization didn't suck them all out. The workers soon left through the main doors and elevators, allowing the hangar to depressurize. W ith the Pelican sealed, however , the Replika and her comrades needed to worry very little in that regard.She turned to the pilot and co-pilot and asked them, \"Maybe dip low when we come out. Less risk of getting hit, I think...\" to which the Pilot of fered a simple nod. Elster paused as she heard Noble Six and the Colonel give the green light, before she nodded back to the pilot and co-pilot before going to strap herself in. Sitting down and pulling the metallic harness down to hold herself in place, the girl felt a pit in her stomach as the Pelican dropped out of the bottom of the frigate's bay . She could see through the cockpit the two similarly-sized vessels exchanging cannon fire. The corvette's plasma batteries char ged and shot, three wisps of plasma slamming into the side of the warship and cutting through the layers of T itanium alloy like a hot knife through butter . The aircraft veered right, toward the amidships section of the Corvette, with Elster connecting to Six over com and telling him, \"Hope those shields are down, Six. W e're coming in with the package.\"\nA package that was several hundred megatons' worth of explosives, not to mention reality defying bullshit, strapped into a neat and terrifying package that tended to rip ships out of realspace, toss them through Hell and then return them to another point with sometimes weird adverse ef fects like early or late arrivals. Elster needed to remind herself these people had probably discovered the most terrifying way to go Faster -Than-Light so far . Sure, she'd seen speculative research during her early days at AEON, just prior to being sent to the 512, about producing an FTL drive based on the concept of W arp, but that damn thing would be more expensive than anyone thought and they probably wouldn't waste it on a Penrose ship. More likely to be strapped to a Generation Ship than a Scout V essel. She sighed as she felt the vehicle pass through the ener gy field of the central hangar . A prick of electricity coursed through the hull of the Gunship and through her own body , even through armor , followed by the sensation of equalizing pressures. The aircraft touched down and Elster stood up first, drawing her rifle of f her back and dismounting with the Marines. The UNSC forces formed a perimeter around the Pelican, with Elster stepping of f toward Six as the Spartan descended toward them, before the two bumped fists nigh-instinctively . Elster said, \"Thanks for the clear road. W as starting to think we'd get sunk with the Savannah ...\" as she depolarized her visor to of fer Noble Six a smirk. She was feeling a little more confident. So far , so good, she thought. Six shook his head, \"Nah. W e need our bombmaker alive. Plus, your girlfriend would've probably killed me if I let you die.\"\nElster snorted, then looked back to the bomb. She radioed, \"Colonel Holland, this is Seven. Package is aboard and we're green to go...\" as she walked over to the ener gy shield separating them from the void. She peered through it at the carrier hanging in low orbit several thousand kilometers away from them. The exchange of fire between the frigate continued, with more and more of the Savannah's armor being stripped away by the boiling hot plasma.\n\"Copy that, Ser geant. That means we'r e moving on to phase two... \" Holland said proudly . Audible was the noise of typing on a keyboard \" Six, take a fir eteam and move up to the bridge. Y ou'll have to manually initiate the r efueling sequence. Once you do that, we'r e on track for the delivery .\"\"Copy that, sir ,\" Six racked the bolt of his assault rifle after reloading, then motioned to a trio of Marines. The soldiers hefted their weapons and nodded approvingly , marching up to Six. Holland then continued, \" Seven, you and the r est of the Marines stay with the bomb... And discourage the curious... \"\nElster hefted a Jackhammer rocket launcher out of one of the supply boxes brought out by the Marines. She stated, \"They'll have a welcome party unlike any other waiting for'em, sir ...\" as she polarized and opacified her visor again. She turned to the Pelican, then paused and called out, \"Six...\" causing the Spartan to turn around. She of fered a concerned, warm \"Stay safe.\"\n\"You, too,\" The man nodded, then motioned for his Marines to follow him. Elster motioned to her Marines to form up and, once they did, she started making various hand signals, pointing out where each of them should move and take cover . Ranging from various outcroppings in the main LZ to the damaged remains of some specialized Covenant equipment and the hull of the Pelican, the Marines spread out evenly , ready to greet any oncoming Covenant troops. Elster hummed and hefted the launcher properly onto her shoulder , scanning the place as her motion tracker pinged the half-dozen Marines around her and the T echs working on the bomb to ensure the detonator worked on a proper timer . She swallowed empty , feeling her biomechanical heart start to race. She shifted on her feet, making sure her weight remained evenly distributed, before clicking her tongue and licking her lips. She felt as if she was sweating, but Replikas didn't have sweat glands. They only had the really important, major or gans like hearts, stomachs and lungs, plus a lar ge circulatory system meant to keep their Oxidant pumping through their bodies to allow them to operate properly . Still, that, too, felt like it was moving much faster . To the point a small warning displayed in her own eyes, the HUD of her OS telling her of various minor issues and overlapping with the UNSC suit's HUD... She blinked away her own body's warnings as she saw a scarlet dot appear . She hefted the launcher and aimed toward the door it was coming from and activated the weapon's SmartScope. She squinted and heard the Marines shift their aim. The door pinged, then slid apart in its own, alien way , revealing two Platoons of grunts, a squad of Jackal marksmen and a trio of Elite Ultras, the white-armored, well-trained menaces of the common Covenant armies. Elster wasted no time. The two rockets of the launcher left the tubes, trailing plumes of smoke as they danced through the air toward the formation of Aliens. T wo of the Elites and a good chunk of Grunts managed to dodge the hit, but the first strike was devastating. The Elite Ultra in the middle and his retinue of Grunts caught the brunt of the blast, the Elite itself vaporizing as its dwarf troops died to the shockwave. The Replika dropped the launcher , drew her assault rifle and sprinted toward the nearest point of cover as the first of the Jackals' shots rang out by her head, digging into the floor of the ship. Plasma rounds struck around them, hitting the same alien alloy they had as armor and heating, but not quite melting it. Elster poked out alongside a Marine and opened up on the Covvies as their DMR-wielding comrades focused on thinning out the Sniper Jackals.A bolt of green plasma struck Elster head-on, causing her shields to flare and dip. She slid back into cover and let them rechar ge, before poking only the slimmest of her visor out to scope out the Grunt that'd nailed her . A black-wearing Special-Ops grunt. She huf fed, drew her pistol and used the smartscope to pop the little bugger's head clean open, much to the surprise of two of its siblings that screamed aloud and threw their hands up in the air to run. One of the Ultras had noticed Elster poking out. It fired its concussion rifle toward her , sending her piece of cover flying of f the rails and slamming into the gunship. Elster rolled forward, then turned about and opened up on the Elite. Short, controlled bursts struck the creature's shields, causing the blue blanket of protection to flare twice. One of the Marines beside her got his body split in half by a bolt of plasma, while another with a DMR lost one of her eyes to the sharpened projectiles of a needle rifle. Elster scof fed, then gasped as the second Ultra, one armed with a launcher that fired self locking guided plasma char ges, appeared behind her in a flanking maneuver . The weapon itself had been char ged. She ducked as the Sangheili let go of the trigger , firing all four projectiles. Each banked to track Elster , with the girl being forced to move out of the way as the Elite itself chased her with the weapon. She swore to herself, rolled, then turned and banked hard right, shaking her internal stabilizers to the point she nearly felt dizzy . The plasma rounds banked, two of them hitting the ground and detonating in a flash. The Replika char ged toward the Elite, slamming with her shoulder into it as it tried to aim again, before pushing herself of f of him and letting the plasma balls stick to him. The two detonated, taking its shields out and enraging it. It growled and turned toward Elster , tossing the launcher aside and char ging her back, before slamming into her and lifting her up. It powered its ener gy dagger and stabbed at the girl's abdomen, but she kicked of f of him and nearly of f the goddamn ship with just how close she'd gotten to the shield. Its second char ge was interrupted by a Marine that sniped its hat clean of f its head, sending it crumpling to the floor like a stack of wet paper . He gave a thumbs up, but had his own head taken of f by the Jackal snipers. Elster glared at the monsters, before watching one of them take the head of f another Marine. She scof fed, grabbed a fragmentation grenade of f her belt and threw it. She then char ged the last remaining Elite as it drew its ener gy sword. Firing the entire remaining ammunition load of her rifle, Elster tossed the weapon aside once it clicked empty and drew her machete. She ducked under the swing of the Elite's ener gy sword. A slight shift in the gravity of the ship threw the blade of f just enough for it to luckily miss the intrepid Replika, who swung her own bladed weapon and cut across the Elite's belly , before spinning about, pouncing on its back and slamming the tip of her machete into the beast's head. It collapsed to the floor just as Six entered the place with what remained of his own unit of Marines. Bullets struck the Jackals and grunts from the flank, with Elster now noticing that her own team was dead, pretty much. The T echs themselves were dead and the Pelican also had a massive hole in one of the thruster gimbals. Sighing, Elster yanked the machete out of the beast's back, cleaned it and slung it back into its sheath, before running toward their makeshift bomb.She swore in clear -cut Eusan Basic and Advanced(Or German and Chinese, according to the UNSC's databanks?) as she undid the device's frame and started looking. T wo wires had fused and multiple important components had been damaged, but were still repairable. She swore to herself again and pulled out her repair kit, going to town on the device as Six approached. He said, \"Something wrong?\"\n\"Flash-fried components...\" She replied quietly , \"Working on bypass... Processing power focused.\"\n\"Right.\" He nodded. He sighed and turned around, letting the girl work her magic on the device. And work her magic, she was trying to. The fused wires were burnt and their tips probably wouldn't deliver the current necessary to ignite the bomb's makeshift detonation sequence. She sighed and cut them, then started looking for replacements in her tool set. Luckily for her , she did keep some. Spot-welding them together , the girl continued looking through and noting a set of components that she could... Easily ... Fix... She looked down at her tools and noted only one more polyurethane repair spray . She grit her teeth and sighed, shaking her head, before murmuring to herself \"... Going to have to find a way to make more...\" before sticking the spray up. She squeezed the trigger , letting the polyurethane foam build up and watching it immediately harden. She pulled out a device to test the voltage, then connected it parallel to the wires and thumbed the command.\n\"Thirty seconds to endpoint...\" Dot said.\n\"Dot... Quiet, please... Display timer on my HUD...\" Elster replied, slightly annoyed. The AI's confirmation came in the form of the ticking digital clock appearing below her shield and health counter . Biting her upper lip as the counter ticked down below twenty-five seconds, the girl hummed, lifted up the cover and looked at its insides, then at the damaged components as well. She hummed and quickly fixed up a jury-rig.\n\"Almost...\" She spoke as the counter ticked down to sub-twenty seconds. As something clicked and the voltmeter read the necessary power sur ge, the girl grinned and said, \"Got it...\"\nbefore sliding the cover back on. She called out to Six, \"Good news and bad news...\" before thumbing the activation and setting the counter to about fifteen seconds. She turned to Six and said, \"Bad news is the bird's taken fire. Her gimbals are toast and that means our only way of f this heap of junk is a nice dive...\"\n\"And the good news?\" Six quirked a brow . Elster nodded.\n\"I got the timer working... And it's down to ten seconds...\" She stated. The two paused, looked to their sole exit, that being the edge of the shield, then nodded to each-other . Elster's suit immediately went into a hermetic seal mode to keep the oxygen inside before she and Six charged toward the exit. Jumping, the two grabbed onto each-other as they initiated their dive toward Reach itself.The two looked back as they descended, watching the Covenant Corvette go into the maw of the Long Night of Solace . First, it was a flicker to them. A dark-blue bolt of lightning flashing in the dark. Then, it was the corona of a blue giant that suddenly expanded. Then, the detonation came as the slipspace portal ignited, a massive ball-shaped portal that tore through realspace splitting the void and engulfing the neck of the Supercarrier . Then, it collapsed in on itself with a flareout of electromagnetic ener gy, a shockwave rattling both the Spartan and the Replika and knocking out their communication systems save for close range. They watched with muted awe as the Covenant Supercarrier , a 29 kilometer long behemoth, missed a good portion of its body now as its two remaining hull sections entered atmosphere, burning up...\n... They'd done it...! Ariane ought to know they did it...!\nCASTLE Base Ariane was once again laying in bed, alone, with her thoughts. Castle was starting to feel more like a goddamn prison than anything. She sighed deeply , arranging her clothes, then stood to her feet and walked out of the room and into the lab. Cortana was sat there with Kalmiya, her seeming sibling AI, both of them running through various programs together . The two noticed her , with Kalmiya, who was a faint emerald instead of Cortana's azure purple combo, waving. She waved awkwardly , before a voice whispered in her ear , \"And yet again, machines... \"\nwhich caused her to look to her left. Cortana quirked a brow up at her and Ariane waved it off quickly . She walked past the two AI while they were working, then looked around the lab, trying to see where Doctor Halsey was. She turned to them, then hummed and wanted to ask.\n\"Doc's gone over to HQ. Some big meeting of the top brass,\" Cortana said, watching as Ariane took a seat ahead of them. She smiled and added, \"IF you wanna watch Kalmiya teach me a couple more infiltration programs, be my guest. W e've got a lot of work ahead of us. And I do mean a hell of a lot.\" And, as if to accentuate her point, she lifted a holographic screen out of nowhere and started parsing through its code.\n\"Eh, why not,\" Ariane shrugged and crossed her arms on the table, \"Might as well see how AIs do hacking, right?\"\nThe boredom that settled in moments later told Ariane that maybe she shouldn't have asked that stupid question. The girl was half-asleep as Cortana and Kalmiya talked about some boolean or other pertaining to one of the harder tar gets to hack. She sighed, craned her neck left and right to hear the muscles and articulations pop back into place, then stood up and walked toward the lab. The devices used to measure her bioresonance capabilities lay still on the table, next to a bunch of documentation written in Halsey's hand-writing. She picked up the notes and read some of the data, including the bits about making progress. The words on the progress were uplifting, at least, because it meant Ariane was doing something with her mind beside worrying about Elster .She sighed and looked at the devices, wondering just what Doctor Halsey had in mind. She also noticed an unfinished item on one of the tables. A crown of sorts, full of wiring and sensors and the likes. W alking up to it, the girl picked it up and looked at it, before pausing as she saw the three Eusan stars. She hummed, running a finger over the device, before gently putting it on her head. It seemed mostly all there, sans the cover she presumed would be a helmet of some kind. Thumbing the switch on the side to 'on', the girl paused as she felt a sur ge through her mind, an ener gy-based sur ge that shook her to her very core and seemed to awaken something within her . Deep within. That voice from before, the voice of that strange mural, spoke softly ,\n\"It is her e, but... Incomplete... \"\nShe blanked, then felt the device heat on top of her head. Letting out a scream, the girl turned it off and threw it back onto the table, staggering back. She breathed heavily , surprised as she saw some of the exposed wiring glow . She breathed a sigh of relief, then tried to wipe the sweat of f her forehead, then paused and screamed as she saw her hand was on fir e. Well, it wasn't on fire per se, but it was certainly holding a flame. The girl stared, bug-eyed, at the orange flame dancing in her palm, before slowly clenching her fist and watching it extinguish. All the while, she felt no pain from it, oddly enough. Clenching her fist, she saw the ener gy pulse back into her hand. Blinking, the red-eyed, white-haired beauty blanked for a moment as she tried to register what the hell she'd just done.\n\"Holy shit...\" Ariane murmured to herself.\n\"Impressive display of pyrokinesis, miss Y eong...\" Halsey spoke from the doorway , scaring Ariane enough to make her yelp. She turned to the Doctor and was about to speak, but paused as she saw the look in her eyes. Pure, unadulterated and complete fear emanated from Doctor Halsey's otherwise calm demeanor , her eyes wider than footballs as she approached.\n\"Doc... Y ou okay ...?\" She asked, the worry in her chest welling as she felt Halsey's uneasiness. The Doctor shook her head and opened her tablet. She thumbed it and showed Ariane to come closer , before pulling up an hour -old video from one of their orbital buoys. From the satellite, multiple Slipspace ruptures appeared... T ens. Hundr eds. Ariane's breath caught in her throat as she saw the familiar , organic-like shapes of Covenant warships The image cut as Halsey said, straight-laced and in a deadpan, \"W e are accelerating all programs and preparing for the worst... I will recall Elster to us whenever I can, miss Ariane, but we need to be prepared with the project. If you are going to become part of Humanity's hope for survival, Ariane, I'm afraid we will be intensifying our training...\" and she set her tablet aside. Determination seemed to fill Ariane as the girl gazed upon Doctor Halsey . She looked at the device on the table and at the still of a hundreds-strong Covenant fleet still emer ging out of Slipspace and decided. Giving a nod to the Doctor , she said, \"Whatever it takes, Doc. Even if I won't sleep in the next few days, I don't care... Let's get it working.\"\nFor mankind... And Elster ...New Alexandria Part 1:Not Quite a Murder Chapter Notes Because I for got to say:Credit for the Replika seen here, the Crow , goes to Lazy_Robot on both the Signalis Discord, the subreddit and T witter for his art.\n\"Lili?\"\nUgh... Just five mor e minutes...\n\"Lili, c'mon. Y ou know how the Commissar is about tar diness.\"\nA sigh. Lilith... No... Elster? No, no, Lilith stirr ed awake, rubbing her eyes and murmuring in her usual half-awake tone, \"Why now ...?\" to which Alina smiled. Extending a hand to her squadmate, Alina Seo helped Lilith Itou to her feet fr om her cot in the back of the dark-blue tent. The two girls waded out of the makeshift barracks wher e a dozen men and women slept in cramped conditions, then mar ched down the r emnants of an old r oad. Far away fr om them, they could see the destr oyed skeletons of ancient buildings, torn asunder by the war . Two artillery cannons sat out amidst the shallower waters, pointed upwar d as their cr ews did maintenance. High in the sky , past the blue and in the dark, star -spangled void, two fleets did battle, the flashes of explosions filling the void as well. Beside them was a staggeringly-long double tr ench line filled with infantrymen and Replikas fr om the Eusan Volksarmee.\n\"Seems like we'r e getting some new combat Replika types to help us in the fighting. So's the word, anyhow ...\" Alina explained, turning to her grumpy sleeper of a girlfriend and asking her, \"Ar e you okay , Lili? Y ou look a little worse for wear . Bad dr eam?\" and she slowed her step to match Lilith's. The tir ed-looking girl shot her a glance that pr etty much told everything that needed to be said. Alina chuckled awkwar dly, then nodded. They mar ched past another tr ench and towar d the Commissar's, only for both of them to be surprised as they saw a slew of new-model Replikas. Two... Mark that thr ee models. Only one inter ested them for this run, however . Sly smirks that hid sharpened teeth, heavy-duty assault weapons and steel alloy bodyarmors. One of them arranged her garrison cap on her head and flashed the two girls a grin filled with those shark-like teeth., an evil gaze in her eyes Elster jumped awake. Her feet didn't feel like they were on the ground, instead dangling. She blinked as her eyes opened and she found herself a couple feet of f the ground instead of standing. She saw hands wrapped around her legs and felt herself leaned against armor , thefaint, indistinct scratching of T itanium alloy against itself filling her helmet's auditory sensors. She looked ahead, to see she was being carried. She spoke, \"Six...\" a hint groggy . The Spartan hummed, then turned back and nodded. She stated, \"I'm awake... Y ou can put me down...\" to which the soldier complied, allowing her to settle down on her own two feet. She stretched and yawned, before adding, \"Guess I got knocked out by the re-entry ... You okay?\"\n\"Dislocated my shoulder , but I set it back into place when I landed...\" The Spartan answered. He turned toward her and extended an M6 her way , grip first. She took the pistol and nodded in thanks, then pulled back the slide a little and checked the chamber . One round in, a couple mags at the ready . She nodded to Six and then turned back, to see the mountains in the distance. She went bug-eyed as she saw the remains of the Covenant Supercarrier laying in rest, still burning, atop a mountain range that almost seemed split at the seams by the impact. Removing her helmet, she revealed that her jaw had, in fact, dropped. Blinking, she smiled and sighed, relieved, before nodding to Six and showing him to lead the way . The two were stumbling up a hill. The audible sound of gunfire from a distance didn't feel the girl with confidence. She scrambled up the dirt mound and clambered to the top... Only for her heart to drop as her helmet fell out of her hand and clattered on the floor , all color draining from her half-machine face. Six stepped up, too, stating, \"I picked up Maydays when I got my com system working...\"\nNew Alexandria, the Crown Jewel of Reach, burned. Above the city's skyline, three Covenant Corvettes just like the one they'd used to destroy the Long Night of Solace , brought about their plasma batteries, raining hell down upon the city as Covenant dropships deployed troops. She whispered, deflated, \"W e failed...\" to which Six shook his head. T urning to the Spartan, she raised a brow .\n\"... Deep down, I think we all knew it was done the moment the Covvies came about,\" Six stated nihilistically , taking his own helmet of f to reveal a young, average-looking guy with black hair and eyes more blue than the sea. His face was laced in a multitude of scars from bayonet to bullet wounds, but he seemed calm. Determined, even. He told her , \"But Reach is Reach. W e aren't going to go down without taking a good chunk of'em with us.\"\n\"What's the point...?\" The girl replied with a tired voice as memories of their W ar flashed in her mind. He shot back, calm, \"Now? Saving as many as we can, if for nothing else than to spite these alien pieces of shit.\" And he walked up to Elster . Patting her on the shoulder , he said, \"Our people still need us, Elster . Ariane's fine for now ... She'll get out with Doctor Halsey , I'm sure. So, let's focus on helping as best as we can in the city , aye?\" and looking to her for confirmation. She narrowed her lips, then sighed deeply and picked up her helmet. Dusting it of f, she slid it back onto her head and let the seal kick in, before drawing her pistol and stating, \"Let's moveit out, Spartan...\" which got Six to ready up his own pistol. The two ran forward and into the city, entering one of the many promenades and moving via the rooftop of one of the buildings. Six stopped next to a door , then looked over a railing, before giving a hand signal pointing the way down. She nodded and the two of them jumped down a floor . Pushing up with the wall on their left, the two arrived at a Plaza and Elster stood, mortified, for a moment. Civilians lay , slumped against the walls or dead on the floor in pools of their own blood. Men, women... Elster averted her gaze from one corpse. She walked up to one of the Civilians and took a knee, then felt for a pulse. She sighed and shook her head. When V ineta burned, when hellfir e rained down fr om the Imperials' ships, all she could see was the destruction of her home. All she saw was the deaths of loved ones, of friends, of family . It was why she'd even stayed on V ineta to fight... She grit her teeth and stood up, before giving a quick motion of the hand to Six. The Spartan nodded and the two went into full sprint, choosing to outright avoid the bodies if they could help it. They'd stack enough Covenant bodies for it to even the hell out, she thought as they pushed on through into a building, only to be met by a trio of Jackals. W ith little hesitation, however , the two soldiers domed each enemy , letting their splattered brains and blood be the mark that told the world they'd been killed. Elster , however , kicked one's head in on the way out. The duet of Spartan and Replika pushed through into another building, descending to the basement and sweeping the place like a pair of Special Ops. Elster's survival instincts had kicked into high gear to the point she was checking every corner of the bowels of this place slowly . They only had their high-caliber pistols and that was about it until they ran into friendlies. Various radio signals played across their com, including one of a trooper requesting Fire Support as the pair slowly pushed through the city's underbelly , pushing past markings, trash and various machines used to keep the place in working condition. The two met a group of Grunts in this 'sewer' so to speak. Bullets made short work of the little creatures. They left behind diminutive corpses and fluorescent blue blood splatters on the floor as they climbed back up to street level. The two covered each-other's rears, Six noticing a hint more tactical ability in Elster now . She was checking her corners more, pying every single one of them, her pistol pointed forward and at the ready in case a first tar get appeared. As they exited onto another promenade, Six bobbed his head right as a needle round slammed into the white wall behind him. He lifted his pistol and popped of f two shots at the Skirmisher with a needle rifle, before sliding into cover behind one of the promenade's handrails. Below them, down a ramp and a level lower , UNSC Marines duked it out with massive, hair -covered beasts with thick helmets and the looks of gorillas.\n\"What...?\" The girl blanked. Six growled, then stood up and advanced toward the Marines, firing his pistol one-handed. Elster blanked and joined him, providing covering fire. She ran toward a railing, jumped onto it and used it as a boost-of f point. She saw one of the massive brutes pin down a civilian and prepare to rip her spine out, before she brought down her heelin a low kick that cracked the beast's helmet. She drew her machete as she landed, rolled and slashed the beast's throat with high-enough speed to pierce its thick hide. It collapsed, gushing blood from its throat, but Elster saw that the machete had dulled ever so slightly . She grit her teeth, aimed her pistol and shot at the other Brutes that were char ging them, before living the Civilian with her left hand and dragging her out of harms way as she was screaming bloody murder . She joined Six and the Army T roopers and Marines in the rear, before looking around and taking the place in. Terraced, with multiple vantage points. This side of the strange food court-style Plaza was owned by the UNSC, with DMR-toting soldiers holding the high ground and sniping away at the advancing army of massive gorillas. Elster , meanwhile, was on the 'ground' level with Six and a mixed platoon of Marine and Army troopers, plus about a dozen Civvies that were being hunted for sport. That made her blood boil...\n... But the horrid laughter she heard from up ahead filled her ears and sent her down a path of remembrance she didn't want to undertake. She watched as a Replika with violet markings instead of her own scarlet stepped out into view , firing bursts from a rifle with a polymer handguard and folding stock. Spent mid-caliber casings dropped to the floor as the short haired machine moved back and fired. She brandished her knife and Lilith caught a glimpes of her teeth . Sharp as sawblade teeth, but human-looking otherwise, the sadistic Replika's mouth was lined by the damned teeth. She rolled back, pulled a frag grenade of f her belt and threw it, before staggering as one of the Brutes char ged her , the thump of the detonation filling the air . Elster saw the beast charging the under -equipped Combat Specialist Replika, to which the girl brandished her knife. Elster stepped up first and put about half her remaining magazine of the M6G into the Brute's head, sending it tumbling to the floor . The Machine turned her head toward her unknown savior , then asked with a heavy-handed accent, \"I see rescue is prompt here, then. Who are you?\" only to pause as she saw Elster remove her helmet, revealing herself. The girl's grin grew wide and she burst into a bellowing laugh, \"An LSTR UNIT! Now , that's rich! Got lost, Magpie!?\"\n\"You're the one who's lost, Krahe ... What are you doing here?\" Elster demanded. She noticed a dead Marine to her right and marched up to him, whispering an apology and taking his ammunition and his DMR. She saw Six grab an assault rifle and ammo, before she turned to the Crow , the Volksarmee's new favorite toys from V ineta. A Fifth-Generation Combat Specialist. The Crow quipped, \"Just taking in the sights of a city ablaze... Didn't know we're dealing with genuine apes now , though.\"\n\"Because you're not on V ineta...\" Elster sighed and slid her helmet back on.Six walked up to her with the Marines and T roopers and asked, \"Y ou know this thing, Elster?\"\n\"She's a Crow . Unconventional warfare specialist, including PsyW ar...\" The AI replied, before looking over her DMR. She racked the bolt of the weapon, feeding a round and checking the damaged ammo counter . She sighed, relieved to see that it read full on the mag, even with the crack in the windshield. She checked the scope and nodded approvingly , seeing it wasn't busted, before walking up to the Marine she took it from and retrieving the tags.\n\"Huh...\" Six looked to the Crow , who was grinning menacingly , Assault Rifle leaning on her shoulder . Some of the Marines and the Civvies also noted the gaze she was giving, with Six murmuring, \"So, ONI's gonna love her ... Noted...\" before turning to Elster and adding, \"W e gotta move. Civvies will need Evac out of T raxus T ower . We're their escort 'till Noble finds us or we run into them.\" And he pointed to one of the massive High-Rises just up ahead, bearing the TRAXUS markings.\n\"Fine by me...\" She replied and shouldered the DMR. She walked up to the Crow and said,\n\"If you want to live, you tag along with us. If not, I don't mind one less of you out there.\"\nThe Combat Specced Replika snorted derisively , then held her rifle with both hands as she stared Elster down straight in the visor , \"Oh, I'm coming along... Simply to understand who the hell these people you threw your lot in with are... And how you got here...\" then she looked to Six. The Superhuman soldier was somehow shorter than her by about a foot. It was confusing for both Six and Elster , to have to look up at the killer . She hummed, however , then noted the blood stains on their armor . With a grin, she asked,\n\"We going? I wanna have some actual fun without her ...\" She jabbed her index against Elster's chest plate, \"Interrupting me...\" before she turned toward the upcoming wave of enemies. Elster's shoulders sagged, before she shook her head and showed Six to keep the Civvies close. The two pushed up next to the Crow as she aimed her weapon and opened fire toward the ranks of the Covenant brutes char ging them. Crow , however , hummed and told them, \"T ake a step back~...\" before dropping a mine at her feet and taking a couple herself, right behind cover . The trick was she had dropped the mine just as the Brutes were coming into range... And one of the dumb beasts stepped on it... The explosive yield removed the Brute's leg below the knee, sending the massive monster staggering forward on one wounded leg that was embedded with a ton of shrapnel. It also caught both of the Brute's packmates as they char ged, severely wounding one and disorienting the other . The Crow calmly walked up to the stumpy-legged Brute, pulling out her combat knife... Before sticking the blade through the thinnest part of the skin on its neck and slicing down. She kicked the brute down as blood gushed from its wound, right in front of a squad of Grunts and Jackals. The Grunts screamed and the Jackals staggered. With the knife still bloody , the girl drew her Assault Rifle of f her back and opened fire. Spent casings fell to the floor , the fussilade joined by the Spartan's and the LSTR unit's weapons. The two surviving Brutes dropped dead to the floor , their weapons clattering next to them.Elster grabbed the Crow by the collar of her armor and dragged her into cover , before poking out and shooting at the retreating Grunts with her DMR. Six said, \"She's nuts...\"\n\"She did just try and flay one of those monkeys alive, so, I agree...\" Said Elster . She looked back to the Civvies and Marines they were escorting, most of which seemed frightened by the new Replika. Said Replika cleaned the blood of f her blade and sheathed it, then looked to Elster and Six and smirked. The Spartan and Elster looked to one-another as the Marines advanced, with Elster stating, \"I'm not sure we can take care of her . From what I remember , they respect strength, so our best bet would be to show her that... Or smarts.\"\n\"You met one before?\" Six asked.\n\"Prior life, yes,\" Elster nodded. Notably confusing the Spartan with that reply , the girl sighed and added, \"Listen, long story , let's just...\" And she paused, \"She's gone already , isn't she?\"\nthen got a nod from Six. The girl looked ahead, watching as the Crow moved around the targets on a flanking route, Knife and rifle at the ready . She rolled her eyes, then said to Six,\n\"Go after her . We'll distract the tar gets here.\"\nSix nodded. Elster waved to the Marines, then balled her fist, pointed it toward the fortified Covenant position ahead and moved her balled fist back and forth. The T roops nodded and joined her up front, all while leaving two Marines to guard the Civvies. Scattering around cover as bolts of plasma and Needle rounds snapped past them, the Army and Marines engaged in the firefight.\n... Six, meanwhile, trailed behind the Crow . He caught up with her about midway through the flank and she whistled, clearly impressed, \"Pretty fast for a Gestalt! Unless you're also a Replika under there!\" and she flashed him a grin. The Spartan rolled his eyes at that. Y eah, she was going to be a pain to deal with, but Elster did just tell her how to solve this issue.\n\"Classified...\" He replied snidely , \"But close enough to Human.\"\nShe snorted, \" Jawohl, jawohl. What's your rank then, 'near -Human'?\"\n\"Lieutenant,\" He shot back, which caused her smugness to evaporate for a moment. It returned moments after as she was about to mouth of f a comment, but Six grabbed her arm and dragged her into cover as a plasma cannon caught sight of them. The grunt manning it let loose a full burst of plasma fire toward them, striking the ground and boiling away concrete and the topsoil of a decorative plant display . Six looked to the Crow and told her , \"Since you took us on a flanking route that just got us shot at, you'll listen to me. We'll both walk out of this and then you and Elster can do whatever the hell it is you Replikas do, but we need to work together to get out of this...\" all while the Crow watched him, a little awed that he wasn't flinching even as plasma struck their own cover , melting chunks of it. She hummed and replied, \"W e'll see how good a lead you are, then. All yours, Kamerad Leutnant. \" as she racked the bolt of her rifle. Six started counting the magazines she had forthe weird weapon, which took box steel mags like old ST ANAG M4 rifles. She only had one magazine left, which caused a slight degree of annoyance to the professional Spartan. He hummed and looked over to his right, to see a dead T rooper . He positioned himself and rolled toward him, letting the Covvie track him with bursts of plasma fire, before grabbing his assault rifle and some ammo. Jumping back into cover , the man extended the weapon and ammo to her , then said, \"T ake these. Interchangeable ammunition with the rest of us...\"\nbefore he drew his pistol, aimed from behind cover even as plasma struck his shield, then snapped of f a shot. A scream of pain and a thump. He nodded to the girl and motioned for her to take the left, before jumping to his feet and char ging forward, assault rifle drawn and chattering of f already . He left a trail of spent casings as he fired at the reinforcing Grunts and the two Brutes dead ahead. The girl seemed to adapt to her new bullpup rifle well, too, firing bursts toward the enemy , bullets taking chunks of flesh of f the Brutes. Six grit his teeth, slinging his AR on his back as the Brute ahead aimed for him with its one handed pistol. W ith two thick blades poking out of the front, a bent, leather -bound handle that had a sharp pommel and two barrels lined with coils, the Brute Spiker spat out the massive, jagged crystal-like metal projectiles left the barrel, pinning against the floor below and damn near hitting the Spartan. Had he not dodged to the right, he might've gotten skewered even through the shield. Closing the distance as he filled the Brute ahead with Lead, the Spartan slung his rifle onto his back, drew his combat knife and ducked under a swing from the growling monkey , then under another , rolled of f to the side and clambered onto the beast's back, surprising it. Before it could grab him and throw him of f, the man slammed the tip of his blade against the back of the monster's head, straight into the cerebral cortex. It let out a sharp scream, collapsing. He saw that the Replika had kept up, too. She was agile, dodging under the beast's attacks, before drawing her knife and stabbing it in the eye. She twisted the blade with a deranged laugh, before pulling it out with a whole half of an eye still hanging of f of it. She then shouldered the rifle and emptied a whole magazine into the squad of Grunts that was backing the enemy up.\n\"Not bad...\" Six remarked as he sheathed his knife. The Replika let out a short laugh, before stomping a Grunt's head in with her sharp foot pad. She replied, \"Maybe this'll be fun after all...\" before pausing as she saw the Spartan listen in via Radio. He sighed and gave a quick, quiet reply , before motioning to the Crow to follow him. She rolled her eyes and did as asked, the two of them sprintign all the way to the base of the T ower . They found Elster past the entrance to an Atrium, nearby one of the upper sections of the local Car go area. The Marines and T roopers carried wounded Civilians and their own soldiers inside, with the Survey Replika telling them, \"Corvette did a number on this place after both FPF systems failed to bring it down... The Lieutenant here told me we have to clear them a path so they can get the civvies out...\"\"Damn...\" Six sighed, annoyed...\n\"Good news, though?\" Elster added, Six now realizing she was relaxed. She said, \"W e have backup. Orbital Drop Shock T roopers... Some 'Bullfrog' unit...\" before showing the two to follow . The Crow huf fed as she walked along with them, looking to the injured civilians and the T roops. She murmured something about them being 'weak' before pausing as she saw Elster shoot a glare her way . She knew it was a glare because of the movement of her body .\n\"Good thing we took the alternate route the Spartans found...\" A Marine murmured,\n\"Would've had to go through the lower sections of Car go...\"\n\"We still ain't got shit in the way of transport until we find a way across to T raxus from here, though...\" Another stated, then groaned as their Corpsman gave him medical care. He grunted and said, \"Why'd these bastards have to hit now of all fucking times...? I was having a nice, easy Shore Leave back home and they had to fucking shoot at us...\"\nEntering the area, the group laid eyes on a platoon of ODST Bullfrogs. Equipped with jetpacks and armed to the teeth, the Marines' Special Forces turned to the girl and the Spartan and their TL said, \"W ell, if it isn't the people the Radio's buzzing about...\" before shifting his assault rifle onto his back, \"I'm Ser geant Danvers. W e're about to take a little trip through this clusterfuck,\" and he motioned to the broken platforms of the place, \"T o give our Civvies a clear way through to TRAXUS. Y ou three up for a little leapfrogging? W e got the room for you.\"\nThe two Replikas and the Spartan seemed dumbfound until they noticed the extra jetpacks...New Alexandria Part 2:Definitely Attempted Murder The Crow loomed over the edge, staring down at the drop, then shook her head, \"I'll take the long way up. I'm not a Fallschirmjaeger member ...\" turning to Elster . The hotheaded Engineer Replika snorted and took her helmet of f, offering a small smile and a nod. She watched Six walk up to them with only two Jetpacks, before tossing Elster one. The girl mounted it onto her armor's back, letting it link systems. She looked to the Crow and said, \"Then take care of the Civvies with the Marines.\"\n\"And play nice,\" Six ordered her , before elbowing Elster in the shoulder gently . The girl nodded and turned to the Crow , who hummed and sighed, shoulders sagging. She replied with an af firmative nod back, before checking her rifle as the sound of packs' thrusters powering on came out, a roar of fuel being spent. Crow looked up, watching the Spartan, Elster and the Bullfrogs leaping across chasms with courage and gusto. She sighed, then turned toward the Marines in the room and said, \"I'm with you, I guess...\"\nflashing them a toothy grin. The men, though wary , nodded to her and showed her to follow along toward the Civilians. Entering the lobby , the young Crow found herself facing dozens of people who seemed very much afraid. Above them, the Corvette of the Covenant armadas kept pouring plasma down on various UNSC positions across the city . Feeling the ground beneath her feet shake, she sighed and looked around at the Civvies again. A family caught her eye, three children and their mother . The father , it seemed, was the Marine comforting them. His wife wept as she caressed his cheek while the children, two girls and a boy , held onto the father for dear life. She hummed, clicked her tongue and marched up to the Marines at the front of the lobby , taking cover behind a rather lar ge plant pot. One of the few Army T roopers present in the place crouched beside her and shouldered his DMR, murmuring, \"Can't believe the rumors about fembots were real...\" as he scoped in one of the entryways. Crow hummed and chose not to answer to him, simply casting a sideways glance at the man. He hummed, shook his head and waited as the ground below them shook again, nearly throwing of f her aim. A few of the civvies yelped in surprise at the hits, but most stayed calm. The T rooper looked to Crow and asked her , \"Aren't you and that other one, Elster , from the same country?\"\nCrow huf fed and flipped up the iron sights of the rifle, stating, \"Y es, we are...\" annoyed. Why'd she even have to answer a Gestalt soldier anyhow? W eren't they usually the ones who died first in this entire mess of a war? And what the hell was the Lieutenant as far as people went? Honestly , the amount of shit that Crow had to deal with right now was not pleasant. Hell, she didn't even have a nickname yet. The Marine also seemed to have taken the hint and gone quiet. The Army troopers hummed, with one of them tossing an earpiece to the girl. She clipped it to her ear and turned it on,listening to Elster and the Lieutenant as they advanced, rifles chugging away as they fought and killed aliens. She should've taken the goddamn Jetpack and joined them, honestly . This was gonna be boring. Just as that thought finished airing itself out of her brain, a needle round snapped by her ear , shaking her to her core. It slammed into the wall, embedded itself there and detonated, showering the ground with micro-fragments of purple crystalline material. W ith eyes still wide, the Crow stared down the monster that had fired. An Elite decloaked in front of her , followed by a squadron of Grunts and several more of its siblings. She shook her head, clearing her block, before grinning with sharp teeth. She called out to her newfound comrades, \"T argets! KILL'EM ALL!\" before opening fire. The first ape to charge her seemed to be aiming dead for her ass. Easy kill, she thought as she stood to her foot pads and lit it up. She started moving, drawing her knife and making sure it was still sharp by slitting the throat of one of the stout chittering creatures escorting the Brutes. The fluorescent blue blood stained the warmachine female's face as she sur ged forward, meeting the first Brute head-on as the infantrymen of gestalt origin around her gained some degree of confidence to join. The Civilians themselves cowered behind cover , as they should. They'd just be in the way of the trained killers keeping them alive in this clusterfuck. She eyed another Brute. The beast eyed her as well. She stood up. It prepared its strange pistol with the two shanks at the front. She slung her MA37 onto her back, drew her pistol and knife and grinned, before the two manic creatures char ged headlong at each-other . The girl fired the high-caliber pistol under the cover of her Marine 'comrades', before sliding under a swing from the beast's fist, sidestepping a slam-down with the blades of the weapon and putting the barrel of the pistol to its chin. She shot twice, its strange helmet flung of f its head as it collapsed to the floor . Crow , however , didn't expect what came next. A heavy-duty hammer swung from her left. She could barely dodge it in time, but it did ring her bell by striking the plant pot right next to her , not to mention sending bits and pieces of marble, metal and dirt all around as if a concussive blast paired with grenade shrapnel. It pinged of f her T itanium chest-plate and a chunk embedded into her hip, though not deep enough to cause any lasting damage. She grunted, however , then char ged at the beast, slamming into its belly and feeling as if she'd hit an electric fence, considering the electric shock coursing through her body . Before long, she swept the leg of the beast, but found herself taking the brunt of the massive hammer's pommel to the face. It damn near broke a couple of her teeth and did succeed in sending her back, staggered. Two soldiers beside her took bolts from another beast's Spiker , one of them pinned to the wall with a spike clean through his throat. The other lay on the floor , writhing, only able to watch the beast that shot him approaching. She shifted her aim, drawing her pistol despite her own dizziness, then she shot. T wo bullets hit the thick hide of the monster , causing it to turn toward her . She looked up and watched the hammer come down for her head. Rolling out of the way , she felt the air knocked out of her artificial lungs, her biomech heart starting to pum erratically .She quickly doubled over , standing to her feet and skidding to a halt as she aimed the pistol, then emptied the magazine into the Brute that'd char ged her with the hammer . Another Brute flanked her , meanwhile. The hammer brute was still alive and char ging headlong at her , its armor glimmering gold under the blasts of Covenant plasma cannons. She grit her teeth, drew her assault rifle and took a knee, turning to the flanking Brute and running from the hammer main. Casings clattered to the floor as the rifle chattered, bullets piercing the hide. One lucky shot nailed the flanking Brute in the eye, sending it toppling over . A glowing spike flew by her cheek from one of its siblings The hammer -wielding Brute char ging her suddenly dropped dead, only for a shot to ring out. She looked over to the right to see Elster and the Lieutenant, the latter carrying a DMR as they advanced to join the defense. The Lieutenant called out, \"Civilians and wounded in the elevator first. Elster , keep them safe. Crow , up front!\" and turned to her . The riflewoman grinned and rushed up to their side.\n\"Took your sweet time, Herr Leutnant !\" She then quipped as the surviving Marines and Troopers formed a perimeter around the elevator , Civilians filing in behind them, carrying their wounded and the wounded Marines. Those who could still walk entered the elevator and provided cover from there, until the last man boarded. The Spartan gave a tap on Elster and Crow's shoulders and pulled out a grenade, thumbing the pin out and priming it. He threw it toward the leading Brute, letting the grenade do the rest of the work as they entered the elevator . Elster hit the button for the top floor , the ovoid elevator's doors closing shut behind them. Elster sighed and seemingly wiped sweat of f her brow on instinct. She looked to Crow and said, \"Not bad, for one of your types...\" which garnered a grin out of her once more. The Crow , however , looked out of habit to the Lieutenant, who gave a nod of approval as well.\n\"She can listen to orders and shoot well, sir ,\" A Marine Ser geant quipped, \"I think she'll do fine... Just keep the creepy fucking smiles to yourself...\"\n\"No promises,\" She grinned. She then turned toward the other side of the elevator , back to the doors, and watched them go up higher and higher . New Alexandria was a massive city , even if most of it was walkable. The buildings rose high into the sky , high enough for some to be\n'tapped' by the Corvettes up above as they flew , scraping their sides and breaking multiple windows while their plasma batteries continued to rain hell down on the city . Six hummed as he listened to the radio calls, then looked to Elster and Crow and told them,\n\"We'll have a Falcon waiting for us next to the Pelicans. Local com's redirecting us to the Starport to protect an outbound flight of civvie craft heading out of the city . Afterward, they'll help us R V with Noble... Hell, we made record time by sheer luck, courtesy of splitting up.\"\n\"And that right there's why I'll never take a fucking jetpack...\" Murmured the Crow as she checked her rifle. She hummed, then walked over to the window and stared down at the river , where UNSC PT Boats and drones ran interference between the massive Civilian Spaceport and advancing enemy units, gatling cannons lighting up the sky with tracers to keepBanshees away . She could barely make out the Civvies being loaded beside the massive T  shaped transport ships. A Marine commented, \"Fuckers are hitting my home... Hope command don't expect me to run away ...\" as he scratched the top of his left arm. The Spartan and girls saw the man had a prosthetic limb and several burn scars. He looked to them and said, \"Spartan, sir . I'm... A Reach Native,\" his accent obviously Hungarian, local. Six nodded, slinging his rifle onto his back as the elevator reached the top.\n\"You got one helluva fight ahead of you,\" Crow smirked, \"Y a really not planning to ditch, Gestalt?\"\n\"The fuck would I ditch for?\" He shot back, glaring at Crow as they walked of f through the rooftop atrium, which was lined with wounded Civilians and Marines being tended to and awaiting Evac. A few Marines guided the wounded to the sides as Pelican dropships landed in the open-air landing pad up a flight of stairs and dead ahead. The plants in the dozens of pots were burned and shattered glass littered the corners of the atrium, alongside hundreds of body bags.\n\"Just sayin',\" She shrugged, \"I, the Leutnant and maybe that LSTR unit can handle the heat. You normal Gestalts are squishy enough as is.\"\nHe growled, \"Shut it. Even if I'm squishy , I'll go down swinging at these Covvie bastards fur even remotely trying to burn my home...\"\nShe nodded, then hit him in the shoulder and said, \"If only more of you Gestalt types were like this fucker in my world, the Imps might've had one helluva run for their money while trying to take V ineta from us.\" Which, well, the Marine felt was a bit of a backhanded compliment. He nodded to her and didn't add anything to it. Elster , meanwhile, shook her head and sighed.\n\"Excuse her , corporal,\" She said, taking her helmet of f, \"Crows aren't particularly the brightest bulb in the chandelier ...\"\n\"Heh. It's fine, ma'am. I heard worse from of f-planet Refugees, to be honest,\" He replied, slinging his rifle, a DMR, onto his back, \"Got into a couple scuf fles about it myself...\" And he motioned to a scar on his neck, \"Cut me with a switchblade, one of the fuckers did...\"\nwhich made Elster wince as they walked up the stairwell. A pair of other Marines trailed behind them, one of them carrying a missile launcher despite her size. The group made it up to the Landing Pad, where three Pelicans were being loaded while several more approached from the distance. One Falcon, as promised, with a nose-mounted\n40mm autocannon and side-mounted grenade launchers, waited for them. The pilot had kept the bird's engines hot. Six looked to Elster and gave her a pat on the back, then motioned to the vehicle. The Spartan, Replikas and the Marine Designated Marksman boarded the vehicle, Elster manning the left-side grenade launcher while Six took the right. The Marine and Crow were on the seats, with a fifth joining them aboard being a Corpsman. Said corpsman gave a spinof her hand to the pilot and the VT OL's engines roared, flames jutting out of the nozzles behind the turboprops as it lifted of f, then turned and dipped its nose down for a fast descent. The Marine and Corpsman held on tightly , while Elster and Six gripped onto the side mounted guns as Six patched the radio through and said, \"Lieutenant Grey , this is Noble Six. I'm en-route with a Fireteam to your position near by the Docks to provide aid in reactivating Air Defenses. Be advised, we'll be coming in hot...\" as he swung his Grenade Launcher right about thirty degrees and aimed at the enemy Banshee closing in for the kill. He let of f three grenades, two of which directly impacted the Banshee's canopy and detonated, shattering the flyer.\n\"Copy that, Noble. God bless you. W e need every ounce of help we can get her e... T o all evacuation craft off of NA Starport, we've got incoming r einfor cements and will r eactivate the Air Defense Net momentarily . Stand-by for confirmation of the all-clear .\" The UNSC Army officer in char ge of AirDef nearby the Port called out. Elster swept the grenade launcher over twelve degrees to the left and angled it three down as the helicopter flew parallel with the river, then fired a grenade, keeping the button pressed. An EM blast splayed out from the grenade's detonation, spraying the Banshee she tar geted with shrapnel. One of its engines coughed, before both died to the EM blast. It careened left and crashed into the river as the Marine and Crow opened up with their rifles toward any other enemy craft. Plasma rounds shot past the pilot's cockpit, some striking the top of the bird's fuselage as it flew by the Port, giving them a clear view of the crowds evacuating aboard the UNSC's few remaining transports. More grenades and rounds flew as the aircraft swung around a rocky beach, where Covenant troops had landed in droves, nearby a terraced area with a building at the rear which presumably served as the UNSC's command area before the Covvies took it over . Swinging the bird around just as a T ransport radioed in, \" UNSC Air Defense Command, this is Transport Thr ee-Charlie, I can't wait any longer ! We are full and have to leave now !\" the group watched...\n\"Negative, Thr ee-Charlie, stand by for a bit longer !\" The man replied. The group watched the ship's engines power on. The first of three transports lifted of f, turning to its left to try and leave... Before one of the plasma turrets of one of the three ships above tracked it. T wo boulders of plasma smacked into its rear , sending the aircraft on a doomed course down to the bottom of the sea floor , even as the captain of the civvie ship called Mayday .\n\"... Fuck,\" The Marine swore, \"Bastards...\"\n\"We'll make'em pay , Corporal...\" Six noted as the helicopter swung in for landing by the beach. He climbed to Elster's side and took a knee, waving to the of ficer on the deck. The man nodded in greeting, saluted and watched as the small fire-team descended from the Falcon, with the Corpsman immediately heading to tend to the wounded Army troopers and help their medic. Elster looked forward as Six talked to the Lieutenant in char ge of the unit, Grey . A more light shade of dark skin, an of ficer's cap and a shotgun. The man sat in the middle of Covenant plasma fire like it was nothing as he talked to the Spartan, who was much the same. T akingcover behind the rocks, Elster and the Crow stared forward at the position they were supposed to take. Three missile batteries, each located on higher ground. Anti-ship missiles, obviously , going by the size. Beside them, the Corpsman tended to an Army soldier , whispering to him. Crow hummed, \"It'll be Uphill, every way ... Fuckin' A to the Army for losing the High Ground...\"\n\"Not like you haven't dealt with worse on V ineta,\" Elster quipped, shouldering her rifle while the Designated Marksman that'd come with them was taking potshots at Jackal Skirmishers, who were, in turn, firing back with their own needle rifles. Crow snorted and gave Elster a slap on the back to confirm. Elster , meanwhile, turned to Six and waved him over . The Spartan joined them behind the rock, taking cover and aiming his DMR before firing and nailing a Jackal. He leaned back forward and said, \"W e'll have to re-sync the tubes to the central controls...\" before pointing toward the central building, \"Up in there. Sole door open's gonna be the one with the overwatch pos. Elster , you take the Army and the Marine and start activating the sync in the missiles. I and Crow will punch down the middle.\"\n\"You got it,\" Elster nodded.\n\"Sure thing!\" Crow af firmed jovially . Six nodded, then rallied the Army and Marines up, checked his ammo and gave the signal. Elster burst out of cover , rallying the Platoon behind her as they pushed forward in a blitz toward the first ASM Battery . Her gun roared first, nailing a Brute and a pair of Grunts with a full burst. The Brute doubled over from the hit, giving ample time for the Reach Native Marine to snipe its hat clean of f. The other UNSC troops followed closely , taking cover behind wrecked and overturned W arthogs, behind rocks, behind railings and metal damaged by the battle, to provide cover for Elster as she went to the first missile pod. Jumping over an in-built flowerbed and landing with her feet on the metal floor of the promenade, the girl ran toward the gun and hit the sync button, taking cover as plasma and needles flew her way . Her shields flashed, flared and died as a burst of plasma from an Elite's repeater washed over her , forcing her back into cover . One of her SPI suit's plates was hit and damaged, while another tanked a Needle, causing it to shatter on impact.\n\"Fucking hell...\" Elster swore to herself. She pulled two grenades of f her belt, primed and threw both with one hand, causing the Covvies to scatter . She motioned for her team to move forward, putting lead into heads as they did so. Several Grunts tried to counter them, alongside a Phalanx of Jackals with shields, but the Reach-born Marine was quick to throw a Frag at them after cooking it for a few seconds. The frag shattered the phalanx, providing ample opportunity that the understrength fireteam soon exploited, taking them and their Grunt escorts out with flashes of gunfire and, some times, stomping their heads in. They all focused fire on a pair of Elites next, hosing the bastards down and filling them with enough lead to replace a good chunk of their bone structure.Elster finally noted the name of the Reach Native on her HUD. 'Nemeth'. It lacked a diacritic on the rearmost letter , but the young man was bearing the rank of Corporal, obviously . And, upon quickly pulling up a short service profile, Elster found him to be quite a developed soldier . She gave him a nod as they pushed onto and activated the second anti-air piece. Elster radioed in to Six, \"W e have two pieces up! Moving onto the last!\"\n\"Copy . We've almost clear ed the place out her e, though the Cr ow took a hit... \" Six replied over Radio, \" See you downstairs once the missiles ar e hot. \"\n\"Rog. Seven, out,\" She replied as they pushed together . The Marines all threw Grenades at the next enemy position, which included a Shade T urret. The flashes and rumbles of grenade detonations shook the ground, shrapnel tearing through Grunts and even stripping an elite of its shields. Bullets flew , a needle round caught an Army trooper in the chest and sent him tumbling forward, while another wounded the Hungarian. He grunted and kept on going, even as the small needle exploded in his hip. They blitzed the enemy position, emptying entire magazines and taking the lives of the dozen remaining aliens in the area. As the gunfire died down on all sides of the battlefield, Elster approached the last missile tube and patched it into the correct freq, then sighed deeply and radioed, \"Six. W e're green here... Fire at will...\" only to receive a humm of confirmation and the click of several buttons. The missile systems all turned toward the enemy ships, each tracking one, before firing their volleys, covering a good chunk of the promenade and beach in the smoke of exhaust. Each missile arched, dodging enemy defensive fire, only to slam into the maws of the Corvettes. Six shots each tore plating and caused azure and scarlet fires to burst from the hulls of the enemy's ships.\n\"This is Charlie T ransport Unit... W e're taking off. Thanks for the cover , Spartan, T roopers... Godspeed, \" The captain of one of the surviving ships spoke as they took of f and flew toward the horizon, past the massive stalks of orbital freight elevators, the same type of which had brought Elster and Ariane down to the planet so many weeks ago. Elster hummed and watched as Pelicans came in to evacuate the wounded, before hearing the radio crackle to life as Six walked up to her .\n\"... Six, Seven, this is Noble Five ! Do you hear me? \" Jorge's voice resolved as the com unscrambled. Six nodded to Elster , who smiled briefly , then listened in. The male Spartan answered, \"Five, this is Six and Seven. W e're alive... Good to hear your voice,\" as he slid his rifle onto his back. Elster shot a glance back toward Nemeth and gave him a salute, to which the Hungarian corporal replied with a smile and a nod. He boarded the Pelican for the wounded.\n\"Good to hear you two alive, as well ! Hah, we'd half thought you went up with the Super carrier ...\" Jorge was obviously happy to hear them, but the bitter aftertaste of disappointment could be felt behind each word. \" ... I'm sorry , you two. W e should pr obably have figur ed the Covenant would send a bigger Fleet the moment they r ealized how important Reach is... \"\"It's fine, Jor ge... W e're sorry about this, too...\" Elster sighed.\n\"It's alright, Els.\"  He replied, obviously worried, but hiding it very well, being a Spartan and all. He relayed to them,  \"We're sending a bir d to pick you up at those coor ds. You stand by there. Boss is gonna want to talk to you about some upcoming op while we'r e still in the city . See you up her e. Five, out, \" And the radio cut just as Six pulled out a flare and activated it, tossing it in front of them. Oh, boy ...New Alexandria Part 3:Fly High New Alexandria sadly burned. Above the cover of the clouds, UNSC Aircraft provided evacuation for the few remaining areas occupied by either military or civilian survivors. Buildings that would otherwise have had lights on now burned, some of their superstructure exposed by the Covenant's relentless plasma bombardment from earlier . In the far distance, a Covenant Corvette's husk lay , burning and, farther yet, Covenant Cruisers' excavation beams burned the ground below , the rising stalks of the three orbital elevators that Elster and Ariane rode down now waning, about to melt. Fires burned in the distance, as well, the ocean boiling away , too. Elster had taken her helmet off, regarding the sight from the back of a Pelican, sat down next to Six. Ahead of them, the Crow had fallen asleep, cradling her newfound MA37 rifle. It was standard for the cruelest of the lot to be able to sleep things of f just like that. The LSTR let out a hum, staring out at the Cruisers in the distance, then murmured, \"I hear Orbital's not going much better ...\"\n\"Covenant came in with a full force,\" Six sighed, \"Obviously , things are not going to be particularly pretty ...\"\nElster gave a nod, watching as the Pelican swung by several towers interconnected by long walkways, only to touch down at a nearby landing pad. The Spartan and Land-Survey Replika stood to their feet, with the latter kicking Crow awake and causing her to stagger and jump. W ith a growl, the combat Replika descended from the Pelican with them, to the sight of Carter on the deck and two Falcons on the landing pad behind him. Both Six and her saluted the man. He saluted them back and said, \"Good to see you both back. Jor ge was worried sick when you winked of f the radars...\" before pausing as he saw the Crow , \"And this must be that other Replika you told us about.\" and turning to examine her . The Crow's sharpened teeth greeted him as she bore a standard grin. It made Carter , a Spartan, uneasy to see something like her . She gave a nod, \"Evenin', Commander . Need some heads knocked together?\"\nHe hummed, then said, \"I'll take it under consideration,\" before looking to Elster and Six and stating, \"Sorry to cut the visit short, but Kat's going to need you. W e're facing a disor ganized evacuation and Covenant Jammers in a multitude of buildings, making reinforcements and consolidation impossible. Y our job's to take three of the jammers out and rally up whatever survivors you can.\"\n\"Sir,\" Six nodded, \"Consider it done.\"\nElster racked the bolt of her assault rifle to emphasize her own support. He nodded to them and told them, \"Don't die on us now . We'll need all hands on deck when we get out of here,\"\nbefore he walked back toward the other Falcon on the deck and boarded it. The Spartan-Replika T rio stepped of f toward the other Falcon as the faint pit-patter of rain started to filter in.\n\"Yo, LSTR Unit,\" Crow demanded, \"When am I gonna get cool armor like that?\"\n\"Ask requisition and the Logi units, if there's any still alive on this planet,\" Elster shot back coolly as she climbed aboard, then plopped herself down. T aking her helmet of f, the young woman shook the artificial hair on her head to straighten it out, then examined the helmet itself as Six took the pilot's seat. She then manned one of the machine guns on the side and slid her helmet back on, wordless. Crow followed suit, manning the opposite machine gun and linking it to her own systems, only for her HUD to receive a quick update. She pulled back on the bolt handle of the MG, then hummed and smirked as she saw it feed a fifty-cal round. Happy with it, she swiveled it on its mount to test its arc of fire, finding the 180 degrees left-right traverse and about 160\ndepression and raising capabilities satisfactory . She activated her com and said, \"Not bad! I like this thing!\"\n\"Wait 'till you see its nose-mounted cannon,\" Six replied as he pushed forward on the thrust lever . The turboprop of the VT OL hissed, then roared as the jet-wash kicked dust up around the helicopter . It lifted of f the pad and banked right, with Elster holding onto her machine gun so as not to fall out. She sighed, clipped a safety harness to her armor and tapped her com transmit twice. Six replied, \"Had to get us moving, Els. Nothing much I can do.\"\n\"Rog,\" She replied, then turned to the Crow and told her , \"There's a safety harness system next to you. Clip it to your belt or armor so you don't fall out on sharper turns...\"\nThe Crow did as instructed, only leaning forward to see the nose-mounted high-caliber chain gun as the Spartan revved its motor . She whistled, impressed, grin still on her face. As the helicopter began to fly between the high-rises of the place and Six radioed in to Kat for directions to the nearest jammer , Elster hummed, gazing at the Pelicans still doing their best to evacuate. She turned back toward Crow and said to her , \"Elster .\"\n\"Huh?\" The Crow turned back toward her , \"What?\"\n\"I have a name. Elster . Use it,\" She replied, \"Y ou need a name, too.\"\n\"Do I, though?\" The Crow inquired, grinning, \"And can't I just use Crow?\"\n\"No...\" Elster shot back rather defensively , \"Bad memories... From V ineta,\" She then murmured as she turned back to her gun, ensuring her crosshairs were properly aligned with the weapon's own sensors. She zeroed it as they flew , the helicopter banking gently around an office building that burned, a fire scarring the side, windows blown out by the pressure wave of a plasma blast. Crow snorted, \"Riiight. I for got your Replika class was made from a V inetan veteran that died...\" before she hummed, her grin slowly dissipating, \"I think I met you before. OutpostMainz, right on the Front Line. Itou or something, right?\" a strange sight to behold being a seeming show of calmness from the otherwise-murderous war machine. Still, she must've attempted something... Elster's mind flashed with memories of Lilith Itou once more. She sighed, squelching and letting them dissipate, \"Y eah... Long time ago...\" before telling her , \"I'm not her anymore, though it sure feels like I'm back to those old habits some times...\"\nThe Crow snorted, \"I'll be fucked if I don't know that feeling...\"\n\"So... Rita?\" She asked.\n\"Ew, what the fuck, no,\" The Crow frowned, \"T oo 'normal'.\"\nElster snorted and shook her head, \"Exactly why I chose it...\" before humming. She paused as she saw the silhouette of a possible enemy flyer in the clouds below . It dipped up. She swiveled her MG and said, over com, \"Six, contact. Engaging Banshee!\" before her thumbs pressed against the paddle-shaped trigger of the MG. It chattered, the burst of fifty-cal rounds striking the forward canopy of the Banshee Flyer as it dipped up to engage. T win plasma cannons heated white hot and spat globs of azure, a burst of plasma narrowly missing their Falcon as the Spartan dipped and swiveled the bird about. Elster kept up the pressure, bullets piercing the canopy , tearing into the canards and causing the antigrav units to puf f dark-blue smoke. The nose-mounted cannon finally found purchase as Six settled his own crosshair on the tar get. A burst of fire rattled the light gunship's hull. The high-caliber rounds left the barrel of the gun and struck the Banshee dead center , punching three holes into the canopy and destroying the line feeding the char ging fuel rod gun in its maw . An emerald explosion enveloped the enemy flyer . It shattered to pieces, shrapnel pinging of f the hull of the Falcon. More plasma bolts arced up toward them, with Crow ducking as one hit the roof above her . She swiveled her MG about and let out a slurry of insults directed at the pilot of the Banshee, before lighting it up. The Banshee dipped, its engine coughed and it banked to the left to rearrange for another attack run it would never get to make. Armor  piercing fifties tore through the inside of its canopy and spatters of purple blood seeped through one of the ship's wounds as it dipped down and disappeared below the clouds, aflame.\n\"Good kill...\" Six told them, \"First tar get's the hospital. Be ready to haul it the moment we land...\" and he turned the Pelican toward the NA Hospital, which lay dead ahead of them now. The helicopter's engines puf fed as Six began the descent toward the landing pad. The Spartan dismounted first, with Elster and Crow jumping out of their seats, folding the guns aside. He motioned to them to rally up, staring at the high-rise hospital, then told them,\n\"We're taking this a floor at a time. Covvies dug themselves in.\"\n\"Sir,\" The two nodded, before they began their push. The entry through the main door brought them to the top floor of the lobby , a spiral design of modern architecture tinged with some older cues, including wood floors. On the lowest floor was a small garden of sorts,square in the center of the concentric rings that made up the floors and descending pathways of this section of the hospital. And in-between them and the bottom floor lay multiple squads of Covenant, of which the Grunts seemed to notice them first. Crystalline shards lanced up from below as two grunts armed with needlers fired. The shards broke upon the glass separating the Spartan and Replikas from them, shattering it and sending micron-sharpened shrapnel into its structure, ever weakening it. Following up, a platoon of Grunts engaged them from down below , green bolts of plasma tracing the air where all three had stood. Six had taken cover beside a pillar , opening fire down the slope with his rifle. Elster , meanwhile, pulled a pair of grenades of f her belt and rolled them down the pathway after priming them. The Elite supporting the grunts noticed the frags coming down and only had a split second to react, jumping out of the way as thunder roared and shrapnel pinged of f of his shields. With more than half the grunt platoon having died to the fragmentation grenades, the suppressing fire that had pinned both Replikas and Spartan down subsided, giving the trio a chance to return fire on their own terms. First to pop up was Crow , her gun roaring with the same fury she had in her eyes. Bullets hit and chipped the floor , embedded themselves in concrete surfaces and struck and pierced the armor of the remaining grunts, spewing fluorescent azure blood onto the floor . Elster came in next, advancing by one of the railings and opening up on the Elite, rifle chattering as the ammo counter ticked down rapidly , both on her HUD and on the weapon itself. The shots flared the monster's shield, cut through the plate and pierced flesh, spewing its purple lifeblood onto the floor . Once the rifle's counter turned red, displaying the double zero of an empty mag, Elster quickly drew her sidearm and put one round into the Elite's maw , spattering blood and brain matter on the wall support behind it. She gasped as she caught two blue bolts of plasma in reply . Her shields flared and drained to half, forcing her to take cover behind an overturned bench. Ahead of her , a pair of Elites with enclosed helmets, jump packs, white armors and plasma repeater rifles advanced, firing in staggered bursts to ensure the lar ger, more dangerous plasma machine gun did not overheat in either of their hands. She eyed a plasma grenade on the floor , just beyond her cover . Leaning forward and attempting to reach it, the girl felt a lar ger needle round skip of f her gauntlet, shattering into the floor next to her and forcing her to pull her hand back. She grit her teeth and eyed a Skirmisher with a Needle Rifle behind the Elites. W ith four quick moves, the woman slapped in a fresh magazine for her rifle and reset the counter . She watched a primed plasma grenade arc over her head, only to land square between the Elites. It flashed, the air boiled and both Elites lost their legs and a good chunk of their armor , their shields overloaded by the plasma. T wo cracks echoed as Six advanced next to her , his DMRs' barrel still evacuating smoke. She motioned to Crow to move up, which the crazier Replika did joyfully , hefting her AR and opening up on the Skirmisher ahead. Multiple shots punctured the beast's greyish hide, but it managed to let loose one extra Needle round before collapsing.Said needle round struck the Crow square in the breast-plate of her titanium armor plate, sending her tumbling back as it pierced, then exploded. Elster growled, ran forward and grabbed the girl by the scruf f of her armor's neck, pulling her into cover before firing bursts at an advancing Elite Major . He took cover and then swiveled about, taking a knee to lower his height and sending bursts of plasma from his twin plasma rifles. Several bolts struck Six's shields, draining them as the Spartan took cover . One splashed across his unprotected armor and heated the T itanium slightly , but it immediately cooled when he took cover . The bolts struck and pounded his cover , melting the plastics and metals that made up the decorative panels on the walls and glass railings. Elster looked to Crow and asked, \"How bad?\"\n\"I'll fucking live,\" The machine replied with a growl, patting her pierced plate down and pushing of f some of the microshrapnel. She murmured, \"Now I'm really gonna need new armor ...\"\n\"We'll get you some, Rita,\" Elster smirked behind her helmet. A flurry of swears in German, Chinese and Russian struck Elster's auditory sensors, making her chuckle, before she ducked back under cover as a bolt of plasma struck the glass above her , superheating and shattering a chunk of it, sprays of molten glass and broken shards raining down below . Two more platoons of Grunts waddled up the stairwell. Six called out, \"Grenades! W e can't af ford to stay here!\" Before priming another plasma one. Elster nodded and grabbed two of f the floor , holstering her rifle. She primed them and threw them at the same time with Six. Three distinct hissing thumps filled the room and their radiation counters clicked for a moment. A dozen Grunts flash-vaporized in the blasts. She and Six pushed forward, with Six sprinting forward at an incredible speed. Fast enough that when he cocked his right fist back to slam down on an Elite, the first connected and snapped the bastard's neck, folding the spine and sending the Elite stumbling back, dead on the floor . A pool of purple blood flowed below it. Elster followed up with two rounds that connected with another Elite's shields. She picked up a plasma pistol, overchar ged it and let loose the massive bolt. It struck the Elite, frying its shield and scarring its armor . With that, Elster tossed the spent pistol aside, letting it simmer due to overheat, and put another two rounds from her pistol into its face. She dropped the half-empty magazine into a pouch and slammed in a fresh one, before she slid the gun back onto the thigh mount and pressed the advance alongside Six and Crow . Several floors further , the trio made it to the central area of the lobby , taking cover behind massive flower pots containing dying plants. Plasma and crystals criss-crossed above them and hit their cover , boiling away faux-wood, the plants and the soil in the pots themselves. The trio hummed, popped up as soon as they heard the first plasma rifle overheat and laid into the enemy . Two grunts were filled full of lead. A third stumbled and his shots went wide. The elites leading the pack crumpled under the whittling firepower as the Spartan and his escorting biomechanical comrades pushed forward. Crow stepped up toward an Elite, dodging anattempt to bludgeon her head in and drawing her combat knife. W ith a roar worthy of a berserker , she slammed the tip of the blade int othe side of the Elite's neck, piercing through the bodysuit and ballistic layering and cutting into its artery . Swiping down, the woman seemed to bathe in the purple blood for a moment, staining her face and armor . She pushed forward and rejoined Six on his right side, noting, \"Bit of payback...\"\n\"Don't go committing suicide by Elite,\" Six quipped darkly . Elster added, \"W ould save us a headache...\" jokingly . Crow lifted one digit in an ancient, but easily recognizable gesture, causing both Elster and Six to snort. The group pushed further , toward one of the bridges that linked the towers that made up the Hospital. There, they found three things:V arious high and low points, the roaring gunfire of Army T roopers pinned down by Covenant and the jammer itself at the farthest point in the back, covered by Elites and energy shields. Elster huf fed, while the Crow growled and Six simply stared. The trio joined up with the Army T roopers, Six stating, \"Sixteen Charlie, you and your platoon are with us. Cover to cover , leapfrog and engage. Look out for the Elite Rangers... And someone get me a sniper ...\"\njust as one of the T roopers, a girl, stepped up and nodded to Six. The girl, a mixed Asian European who wore some extra equipment for sniping on her helmet, hefted her SRS-99 and nodded. Six gave one hand motion, an open-palm point toward one of the upper areas where flower pots were, so she could use them for cover . She nodded and scrambled of f toward it. The rest of the Army T roopers formed up loosely with the Spartan and his comrades. Bolts of plasma slammed into their cover while Jetpacks hissed, their users soaring forward and landing on elevated platforms. One of the Elite Rangers' closed helmets cracked open, spraying blood and bone and brain matter on one of its brethren. The Alien collapsed in a heap. Another thundercrack echoed and a second elite with a Needle Rifle had its armor punctured by a 14,5mm round. Up above, two contrails dissipated as the Sniper aimed her next shot. T wo needle rounds flew by her, but she didn't even flinch. With a single motion of the hand, Six ordered the assault to begin. The surviving Army troopers long-armed grenades over the ener gy barricades, each landing in a cluster of Covenant units. The detonations either killed or disoriented the enemy enough, allowing the platoon and the Spartan to advance. Gunfire once more filled the hall as grunts and their comrades were put down. A flurry of rounds left the Army T roopers' rifles as they cut down the remaining survivors, with Six, Elster and Crow finally able to advance on the pulsating Covenant jammer unabated. Electricity arced of f its body , the central radiator pulsing rapidly with various non lethal radiation bursts per second. Their helmets and systems overall seemed to be enduring the brunt of the damage, with the Crow finding herself in the need to slam herself in the head to reset her ocular sensors.Six put a hand on the device, then tapped in a few commands on the holographic display , courtesy of his systems' translation component. Three hand signals and everyone backed away as the plasma coil containing the power of the device overloaded and it detonated in a bright blue flash. Elster coughed, shaking her head, then murmured, \"I hate these things...\"\nSix nodded, then radioed, \"Command, this is Noble Six. Sixteen Charlie survivors at the hospital require EV AC. Objective One complete...\" before humming.\n\"... To anyone on this net, \" A familiar voice played over Elster's restored com, \" This is Gunnery Ser geant Edwar d Buck, 1 1th ODST , requesting support on the South Side of the city . A few of my men who wer e helping get left-over Civvies out ar e under attack by Covenant. Need someone who can back me up and eliminate the Covenant support while I get them outta ther e...\" before Kat's reply quickly came over the radio.\n\"...\" Elster smiled, then radioed, \"Gunny , this is Elster . I'm on my way over now . Kat, I'm gonna need a Falcon at the Hospital. Let Six and Crow deal with the rest of the com jammers...\"\n\"... Roger that. If you'r e sur e,\" Kat replied.\n\"Sure as can be,\" Elster quipped.\n\"Heh. I'll welcome the help any time, Elster . Watch your flying, air's thick with these covvie bastar ds,\" Buck replied over the radio. The platoon all rushed outside, to the top of the tower and toward the evacuation vehicles. A Pelican and another Falcon landed on the pad, with two Marines manning the latter . Elster looked to Six, gave the man and Crow a nod, then climbed aboard the helicopter . The two said their quick goodbyes before Elster powered on the Falcon's engines. The two Marines beside her jumped on the machine guns as she lifted of f and banked down, turning toward where her HUD had updated the NA V Point. Behind her , she saw Six and the Pelican evacuating Sixteen Charlie moving toward an area thick with buildings. She gazed forward once more, then radioed Buck and said, \"Gunny . I'm on approach vector .\"\n\"Check your thr ee o'clock, \" The man replied. She gazed to the right, to the sight of a second Falcon manned by ODST s, the soldiers clad in black, tactical, fully-sealed armors. Buck, at the controls of the Falcon, gave her a thumbs up, though she didn't know if he was looking at her or not due to the polarized visor of his helmet. She replied in kind, however , before the two Falcons formed up. \" I'm surprised ,\" Buck commented, \" Wher e's your girl ?\"\n\"She's safe in CASTLE Base,\" Elster replied, her mind flashing to her beautiful girlfriend. With all the hell she'd been going through, she had had little time to think about her , though she knew in the back of her mind that she was the one she was even fighting as hard as she was for . Buck hummed, before humming an af firmative as he maintained an echelon formation with the Replika. The two watched the first Banshees emer ge in their path and aligned the guns on their Falcons, letting loose volleys of autocannon fire. The two banked to opposite directions, clearing the path and trying to destroy as many enemy flyers as they could, while, aroundthem, Covenant dropships headed for the evacuation site. Elster hummed, radioing in, \"Noble Seven to allied assets, retreat into the building. W e'll clear the air and bring in a Pelican for EVAC...\" before squinting. Her visor polarized, increasing magnification and allowing her to see the other ODST s. They pulled back to within the confines of the building's stairwell. T racers still flew through the doorway , but now the Covenant were bottlenecked when they had to deploy and engage them. It was still an uphill battle for the Shock T roopers, which was the reason Elster now zeroed in on the leading enemy Phantom and lit it up. The rounds of the Autocannon tore through the purple-hued hull of the enemy dropship, sending it careening into a building as one of its engines detonated, leaving it without stability . They had a job still. Evacuating the ODST s and the Civilians, followed by getting the hell out of here as well. She felt a ping in her neural network, however , followed by a set of flashing coordinates. Her HUD blurred and seemed to flicker for a second, only to return to normal moments later , which made her worry the Covvies had dropped another jammer nearby ...\n... No time to worry about it now . Civvies needed rescue.New Alexandria Part 4:Goodbye The autocannons of the two Falcons thundered, raking the Covenant forces and their transports and digging holes through purple-hued armor plating. The ODST s below appeared out of cover , two carrying Jackhammers. The missiles lanced out of the tubes, tracking Covenant Banshees as they attempted to turn and welcome the Air Support themselves. One missile detonated like a flak burst, spraying shrapnel all across a Banshee's belly and causing one of its engines to sputter and die. The antigrav system, now unbalanced, sent it careening into a brother . The other struck dead center , vaporizing the bird. Elster banked and broke formation from the Gunny , sweeping in and letting loose a torrent of explosive rounds toward the Covenant nearby the LZ. She then swept over and fired bursts at another pair of Banshees while her side-gunners let loose concurrent streams of rounds from their own guns. Buck radioed, \" Two, left !\" before both Falcons swung about and engaged, their autocannons thundering rapidly like lightning during a summer storm. Another pair of Banshees exploded as the Pelican the pair had escorted swung in to recover the ODST s. A sniper shot rang out and another Banshee banked surprisingly hard left, then slammed into the side of a building and clean through a window . Elster eyes the sniper below , a man with a custom set of ODST Armor , as he and the others boarded the aircraft. Buck called, \" Thanks for the cover , Elster . See you Earthside .\"\n\"No problem, Gunny . God be with you,\" She replied, which garnered a snort from the man and a murmur about 'God being on vacation', then swung about, \"This is Noble Seven, departing of f Grid 219-222, am currently Northbound, heading back into the city ... Kat, if you can hear me, I'm gonna need approximate coordinates for where Six and his unit are...\"\n\"Roger , patching the coor dinates into your NA V now ,\" Kat replied, overly cautious. She was probably making sure the Covvies weren't tracking the com as the Replika dipped down and flew in lower , near the cloud cover below them, keeping an eye out in the mist of the towers below for any other possible hostiles. She radioed to her gunners, requesting that they keep an eye out as well, before taking a short left around one of the towers belonging to the Hospital. Her HUD picked up a new tar get approaching. She zeroed in on it and shifted her aim, before a burst of plasma washed over her canopy . The glass crackled and popped, but didn't shatter as the hot plasma bolts struck. She swiveled her bird, showing the armor as she aimed the cannon. One burst left the barrel and the Banshee's bulbous forward hull blossomed and exploded outward, its sensor suite inoperative as it dived. Not dead, but out of action. Elster kept her eyes peeled and heard the chatter of her gunners'\nMGs as well, watching as scarlet tracers dotted the night sky and lit the clouds around them, passing through. Bullets pinged of f the hull of a Banshee, AP rounds piercing the belly again as it lanced upward, breaching through said clouds. A plasma conduit caught fire and the bird's engines failed.The TEAMBIO of one of the gunners flatlined and Elster saw plasma in the corner of her eyes. A second Banshee appeared on the right side, its cannons still shimmering scarlet after firing. She gasped as she saw the corpse of the right gunner slumped over onto his weapon. She grit her teeth and said, \"Stand by , Private. I'm gonna bring us in for landing as soon as I find them...\"\nHer HUD's NA V pointed toward Club Errera, at the top of one of the high-rises. She pulled up on the stick and brought herself and the Falcon up. More plasma bolts struck the top of the aircraft and warnings began to blare in the cockpit. The Falcon's engines sputtered, its rotors slowing for just a sec and causing them to dip in altitude. Elster countered this as best she could, the aircraft regaining altitude control and lifting up toward the club. She eyed the enemy flyer as it passed above her , just out of the firing arc of her cannon. It swept in for another strike, plasma rounds piercing the heated upper hull and causing one of the thrusters to pop and explode. The Helicopter dipped again, but they were close. She tried to bring it about and fired a burst next to the Banshee to deter it while her sole remaining machine gunner tried firing back as well. The Covenant air asset veered hard left, dodging the burst that went wide, before bringing its nose about again and char ging its fuel rod cannon. Elster gasped, watching the burning emerald glow form at the barrel, then called out,\n\"CORPORAL! JUMP!\" just as the weapon fired. Thankfully , the two were level and next to Errera's landing pad. The T rooper jumped first, grabbing onto the side of the pad and hanging there for a good minute, trying to avoid the blades of the chopper . Elster popped open her canopy ... Then felt the heat prickling at her bio-components, her outer polyethylene layer boiling with the armor as an emerald blast boiled and melted the chopper . Her shields overloaded and broke as she landed on the platform, rolling like a barrel to the left. She drew her pistol and aimed it at the banshee, before firing once, twice, three times and proceeding to empty her entire magazine into it. She must've hit one of the antigrav pods, because the aircraft dipped, turned and boosted away at maximum speed. She grit her teeth, felt her back and saw that, no, thankfully her SPI Armor hadn't melted. She then scrambled to her feet as she saw the trooper still hanging there, then ran up to him and grabbed him by the wrist, calling out to him, \"I gotcha!\" and dragging him up. The man panted, breathing a sigh of relief and wiping the sweat of f his brow . She told him, \"Good legs...\" before scanning the skies as she racked the slide on her pistol. A round fed from the fresh magazine she had slapped in mid-run. She also noticed Six's chopper to the right, damaged and scarred by plasma... But flyable.\n\"Thanks,\" The boy replied, his voice tinged with a light accent and the heavy breathing. He was olive-skinned, probably of another ethnic group.\n\"Corporal Asher , right?\" She asked him as she helped him to his feet and handed him his assault rifle of f the floor . He nodded, to which Elster patted him on the shoulder and said,\n\"C'mon, Jim. I'm thinking I'm gonna need the backup...\" before depolarizing her visor andoffering the young man a smile. He nodded to her , racked the bolt of his AR and followed along, seemingly eager for action. Elster radioed, \"Six, this is Seven. I'm on Errera's landing pad... Y ou good?\"\nStatic and white noise played over her com. She swore to herself. They must've been pinned down by something. She radioed to Kat, boosting to maximum, and stated, \"T wo, this is Seven, Errera Jammer is not down yet. I think Six got held up by something...\" and Kat's reply came in scrambled as well. Though it was an af firmative. W ith a sigh, she radioed,\n\"Proceeding to assist... Out.\"\n\"Take it we're alone?\" The rifleman asked. She nodded.\n\"For now ... Hoping a Spartan and a fellow Replika are inside...\" She shot back, then murmured to herself, \"Can't believe I called her that, but, oh well...\" as they pushed forward, rifles up and scanning their sectors. Errera was strangely 'orange', considering the doors with LEDs that slid apart and revealed a two-prong hallway . Both of them took the right-hand door, entering into a massive, multi-level dance floor area with a bar in the far back. And gunfire intermixed with the beats, obviously . The DJ was dead on the controls. The green fire of a plasma pistol's shots still burned on his back. Down below , at the base of the illuminated dance floor above which a holographic chandelier with a massive disco ball hanged, she saw Six taking cover as a Fuel Rod shot slammed into said floor , boiling away glass and the lights below that illuminated the Spartan and the Troopers in emerald. The Crow was beside him, firing up at the enemy with a 7,62 LMG she'd acquired from somewhere. Up top, the lumbering forms of a Hunter pair hid in the darkness, illuminated only by the bursts of plasma from the Covenant Elites around them and their own rare shots with the Fuel Rod cannons. The jammer pulsed behind the beasts and Elster's com shrilled with static, her visor and senses temporarily in chaos. She shook of f the ef fects, showed the corporal to follow along and quickly descended toward the Army T roops, Six and Crow . Crow took cover as she reloaded the LMG with a box magazine, just in time to see her descending. She yelled, \"T ook your sweet fucking time!\" before a yelp escaped her mouth as another emerald blast boiled the air , their rad counters spiking, then calming. Jim marched up to a pair of troopers and patted them on the shoulder , then opened fire with his AR toward the Elites.\n\"Good to know you missed me,\" Elster clapped back sardonically , grinning behind her helmet. \"Status,\" she then asked the two of them as she grabbed a grenade launcher of f the floor . Beside crow , a Medic tended to a wounded Soldier , the grenadier . She reloaded one grenade into the tube, then looked to Six as he shouldered an SRS-99/99 Sniper Rifle.\n\"Elites came out of camouflage just as we wiped out a platoon of Grunts and the Brutes guarding the top floors. They funneled us in and pushed us back down here, away from the jammer and the pair of Hunters... Jammer's next to the bar if you feel like grabbing a drink,\"\nHe quipped rather calmly as he scoped in an Elite with a Sniper . The rifle rang out and oneElite's hat flew clean of f its head. He turned to her as he dropped the empty magazine to the floor , next to two others and a bunch of spent casings, before slamming in a fresh one, racking the bolt and stating, \"Rita nearly got domed, too.\"\n\"Needle rifle round pinged of f my fucking skull,\" She stated, pointing at the scratch on her synth-skin, right on the temple, then called back, to Six \"And don't call me that shit, L T.\"\nannoyed.\n\"I like the name,\" He shot back. Elster snorted, while the Crow ... Pouted? Elster ignored that for her own sanity and Six's. She asked, \"What's the plan, then?\"\n\"Well, if we can take out the Elites...\" And he motioned to the figures slinking around in the Dark, probably trying to flank them, \"W e can advance, though that leaves the Hunters... Any idea on how to deal with'em? Cuz 40-mike-mike won't do much unless you plant it center  mass into that eel colony ,\" before he scoped in an Elite and knocked its hat of f as well, alongside a good half of its face. Elster hummed, then said, \"I take right, you take left, then we pincer the Hunters?\"\n\"Sounds good,\" Six replied, then slung his sniper onto his back, grabbing the MA37 and checking it over . Elster gave a hand signal to the Crow and a couple of T roopers, Jim included... Then did something she remembered she could do. She winked her status light red for one second. As a Fuel Rod shot over their heads and hit the pedestal and console where the DJ's corpse was, vaporizing both in a bright flash, she winked it gold, then, as the first Elite appeared on top of one of the pillars, she flashed it green. The Spartans and their escorting comrades burst out of cover in full-on sprints, Elster emptying an entire magazine into the Elite with the Needle Rifle at the top. She wanted to draw her pistol, but the T rooper beside her snapped of f a DMR shot mid-run that sent the hinge-jaw tumbling over onto the ground, its neck cracking as it impacted the glass floor head-first. The smaller T rooper cheered, her Russian accent preposterous, \"Fuck yes! Eat shit, Suka!\"\nShe ducked as a bolt of plasma hit just inches short of her head, then turned around and threw a pair of plasma grenades of f the floor toward the tar get. One actually stuck to the Elite and detonated, taking its leg clean of f and washing it in radiation. Elster char ged up the stairs, rifle forward. She reloaded the weapon and fired bursts at Elite Minor -ranked troops, before body-slamming one into a wall, which shattered its shields. She planted the barrel of her rifle into its stomach and let loose a flurry of rounds that tore through its gut, muscles, intestines and the spine spattering the wall behind in a purple hue, masked by the shadows in the club. She turned to the right and lifted her pistol, watching as Jim stepped up and fired an overchar ged plasma pistol at the Elite. Its shields flared and died, with Elster following up with a headshot from the pistol. She grabbed the grenade launcher of f her belt next and lobbed a frag the way of the lumbering monstrosity ahead. The detonation sent shrapnel into the eel colony and made theemerald bolt of hatred shoot wide from its cannon, hitting one of the holographic emitters on the vaulted ceiling. As Crow char ged up the stairs and opened fire to distract the beast, Elster called out to her , \"Bounding assault! Cover each-other as we move! That means you, too, Rita!\"\n\"Fuck you, Elster!\" The girl replied, though with a hearty laugh, \"Y a got it!\"\nThe Spartan, meanwhile, danced around the enemy's shots with his half of the platoon. Plasma bolts struck where he'd been moments ago while he pushed forward. Grabbing a shotgun of f the floor from next to a dead Army T rooper , the man started pumping the remaining shells into a pair of Elites ahead. Once the weapon clicked empty , Six had closed distance and drowned the enemy's shields. One of the Elites brought its overheated plasma rifle down on him, but the Spartan blocked it with the shotgun and pushed it aside, before pumping outward and tossing both weapons aside. The Elite tried to activate his ener gy dagger and slash at the Spartan, but Six pumped both legs and pushed himself back, before slamming an elbow into the Elite's buddy and stabbing it in the throat with his knife. The troopers with him pelted the other Elite with rounds, his shields flashing azure and deactivating. Bullets pierced the thick hide of the reptile-like hunchback. Purple blood pooled at his feet as he collapsed to the floor in a heap. The Spartan twisted his blade in the other Elite's throat, brought it downward and split his airway open, before yanking the blade out. He looked over to Elster and her troop, then over to his own tar get. He balled a fist and motioned for the Army T roopers to take cover , then char ged the hulking titan of alien steel and eels, sliding underneath its legs as it swung at him with its massive shield arm, before stopping against a wall with his feet and drawing the pistol. He aimed the gun and put several fifty-caliber pistol rounds into the monster's back, sending it into a furious rage. It swiveled about and swung the shield in a low sweep, digging into the floor with it and damn near taking the Spartan's head of f. Six, however , rolled out of the way , pounced to his feet and char ged the tank once again. He sidestepped another downward slash from the beast's shield arm, grabbed onto one of the sensory spines poking out of the back armor and found purchase hanging onto it. It started bucking like an angry bull at a rodeo, forcing Six to dig his boots into its alloy legs and pelvis to hold on as it wildly swung. A bullet ricocheted close to his head, the Spartan turning to see Elster , the Crow and their Army T roopers engaging the beast's pair with their rifles. She gave one hand signal to the Crow and both girls hefted plasma grenades, throwing them onto the beast's midsection before pulling back. Six pulled a frag of f his belt, primed it and slammed it into the beast's exposed abdomen, before jumping of f, skidding back and murmuring something to himself. It turned, aimed and charged its fuel rod gun, then orange eels exploded outward, splitting the beast in half and spraying fluorescent orange blood onto the floor . Synchronized with it, the two plasma grenades washed its mate in radiation and boiling-hot plasma before it could so much as roar .With both beasts dead, orange blood and dying eels spilling from their insides, the Spartan, Replikas and Army T roopers met in the middle, with Elster panting and stating,\n\"I really  fucking hate these things...\" before stomping an Eel out as it crawled toward her . Six snorted and gave an approving nod, before stepping of f toward the jammer . Rita, the Crow , snorted as she watched him insert the commands and take a step back. Several pulses came in increasingly-rapid succession before the device detonated in a bright blue flash, causing the T roopers to close their eyes, Elster to polarize her visor and the Crow to turn away . The static that rang in the background of their coms cleared, with Six tapping the side of his helmet, holstering his rifle and stating, \"T wo, this is Six. I and Seven rendezvoused. Last Jammer is down.\"\nElster looked to the T roopers and paused. She waved to one of them, a Lieutenant, and asked her, \"Did we fight together?\"\n\"I think so, ma'am. Back in SWORD maybe? I know Katja was there alongside a couple other people,\" The young woman gave a nod. She had Asian traits, but seemed like a combo between Caucasian and SEA. The name of her IFF read 'LEE'. She was a Lieutenant, so Elster kind of snapped a salute, to which she replied in kind and shook her head, \"No need. Thanks for saving our collective Bacon.\"\n\"No kidding,\" Jim snorted, \"I think I'd still be falling if she didn't grab me of f the side of the landing pad.\"\n\"Christ, Jim, always getting into trouble...\" Quipped the woman. She sighed, \"Now , to find a way of f this roof and to an Evac site-\" She paused, then put her hand to her ear . She replied,\n\"Copy , command. T ango Platoon's active. W e're down to fifty-three percent combat effectiveness, however we're ready to answer any call to arms... The Generators? Roger . Will we be meeting other Platoons?\" and she smiled, \"Copy . Copy that, sir . We're waiting for evac on at Club Errera. Spartans just helped us bust the Com Jammer . Roger .\"\n\"Take it you got new orders, as well?\" Six asked.\n\"Yessir,\" She replied, \"They'll be evaccing us out of NA and moving us to help defend the planetside generators for the orbital MAC Platforms. Command doesn't want those falling any time soon, so it'll be our job to keep them secure... Afterward, we'll see. Space is thick with the bastards, though,\" And she gave a sad smile. Almost as if she was aware this remained a one-way job. \"At least, I'll be seeing my friends one last time before we all inevitably die.\"\nHe nodded, \"T ake care, Lieutenant. And chin up... Maybe we'll make it.\"\n\"Heh... Y eah,\" She sighed. The Spartan and Replikas led the way out of Club Errera just as a Pelican touched down at the landing pad. They took the Falcon, while the Army T roopers boarded the Pelican and left for other , more distant and untouched parts of New Alexandria. Elster sighed, meanwhile, leaning back against the seat while holding onto the Machine Gun.\n\"Helluva night, huh?\" Rita turned toward her , \"You look like you've seen some shit.\"\"Got singed by a Banshee's Fuel Rod Gun...\" She replied, \"It was fucking close.\"\nCrow snorted, \"Ouch. Lucky fuck.\"\n\"Wouldn't call getting washed in green shit radiation lucky , Rita,\" She shot back, causing the woman to frown, before her odd grin returned. The girl shook her head and chuckled, before sighing and tuning into the radio. Dead ahead of them, among smaller burning towers, lay what was left of ONI's Headquarters. Their tar get and a surprisingly untouched building. The Falcon moved toward the landing pad that slid out, with Kat noting to them, \" Whatever you did out ther e, Six and Seven, it sur e knocked the air out of the enemy's lungs. The assets putting pr essur e on us her e wer e removed... W elcome home... \" just as they touched down. Moments later , the pad itself retracted into the wide, elevated hangar , which contained a multitude of other vehicles, still packing for evacuation for the last remaining ONI Assets in town... Sans the Spartans. Six jumped out of the Falcon's pilot seat just as his comrades dismounted, then took his helmet of f and shook his head. He ran his hand over his buzzcut hair , then looked over to Elster and a seemingly-stunned Crow . Elster took her own helmet of f, revealing minor burns on her facial structure, plus a couple of missing patches of skin that revealed the inner workings of her face. Her armor had the scars of battle, as well. Her back was singed and a bit darkened by the blasts of Fuel Rod guns, while the front bore a multitude of pockmarks and wounds from plasma and needle weapons that hit while her shield was thin. Six looked to the Crow , blinked, then asked, \"What's with her?\"\nElster had to take a moment to see it. The usual boisterous attitude, crafty smile and evil gaze were replaced with a look of surprise and Elster swore she could see a twinge of a blush on the face of the Replika. She blinked and shrugged, choosing, yet again, to ignore the possibilities. Six sighed and said, \"Right. C'mon...\" then led the two of f the landing pad and into the building... An elevator ride up to an upper floor later , the Spartan walked to the sight of a damaged atrium area. T o their left was a handrail over which they could see the other floors and offices. Around them were doors to top floor of fices, some of which were open, the of fices themselves ransacked and destroyed, presumably by ONI, so as to leave no intel to the Covenant. From the ceiling hanged a Banshee flyer that Elster recognized, considering the dozen holes in its belly . It had careened into and broken the top-most window , then caught itself in the wiring above. It now hanged, lifeless, a spatter of purple blood dripping from its hull onto the floor below , in a pool of f to the side. Sat in the wider Atrium, behind one of the lar ger windows of the place, was all of Noble. Emile was the first they saw , the man sitting next to Jor ge and cleaning his knife. Jor ge himself sat, staring at his helmet with an impassive gaze. Afterward came Carter , the man gazing out the window while sat next to Kat, who was working on splicing into a console to get some comms going, going by the headsets resting around her , each meticulously taken apart so that they may provide spare parts for the makeshift relay .Finally , Jun was sat on the railing near the massive window , gazing down a pair of binoculars. He murmured, \"Look at this place. Used to be the crown jewel...\" before hearing the crackle of glass under heel of MJOLNIR boots and turning to see who had arrived. He smiled, his three-arrows tattoo wrinkling with his cheek as he called out jovially , \"Hey! Y ou made it!\"\n\"Not for a lack of the Covvies trying to murder us,\" Elster replied, rubbing the back of her neck.\n\"Heh, ain't that how it usually is,\" Jor ge commented. The trio turned to see him actually smiling at them, having set his helmet aside. He stood up and walked to them, adding, \"Glad to see you two made it. W e were starting to get worried after we hadn't had contact those last couple days. Y ou kids nearly gave us all a bit of a heart attack...\" before putting hand son both their shoulders and squeezing them in his usual friendly manner .\n\"Took us a while to trek into an area that had signal,\" Six replied, of fering a smile back,\n\"Sorry .\"\nCarter shot back, \"All that matters is that Noble's not understrength, Six. Glad to have you both back...\" before eyeing the Crow , \"As for you...\"\nShe gave another mock salute, grinning wildly . Elster told them, \"That's Rita. Our Crow .\"\nwhile grinning.\n\"Hey , I didn't-!\"\nThe Crow wanted to protest, but Six said, \"Rita's been mighty useful, sir ... For one hell of a crazy shock trooper , she's helped us a bunch when we were out in the morning in NA...\"\nwhich caused the girl to shrink, cheeks a twinge red again. Elster blinked, looked over to Rita again. She fiddled with her thumbs and Elster's eyes shot wide, to the point she tapped Six on the shoulder and showed him to follow . Stepping of f to the side, Elster asked awkwardly , \"What did you do to her?\"\n\"Nothing...?\" Six shrugged, looking at the Crow as she seemed to take a moment and snap out of her stupor . She sat herself down next to Emile, bragging about something or other . He told her , \"She seems the same old lunatic we met in the morning to me...\" and the unconvinced Elster walked back with him to the group. Emile looked to Elster expectantly , to which she told him, \"She gutted a bunch of Brutes with her knife on the way here, so I think she's right up your alley ...\"\nEmile snorted, \"Sure sounds like it, Seven. She's a gal after our own taste.\"\n\"Yeah. And once she learned to take orders,\" Six looked to her , \"She actually was quite good at the job.\"\nAnother blush from the Crow and some unusual shyness cinched it. Elster scof fed, grabbed Six by the collar much to the surprise of the gang and dragged him out of earshot, before telling him, \"Y ou poor , poor fuck...\" and pointing at Rita, only to clarify to a confused-looking Noble Six, \"She imprinted on you, you idiot!\" and let out a short giggle, \"She must've seen the stunts you pulled a couple times too many . It's how Geiers take command of them, by showing surprising strength and capacity of command...\"\n\"And...?\" Six quirked a brow up at her , \"What do you mean, imprinted ...?\"\nShe chuckled, \"Brother , you're in for a world of fun... She likes you,\" then patted him on the shoulder and sidestepped him, walking to Carter . Six blinked, confused, then turned to watch her leave. T urning back to the Crow as she got into a bragging match with Emile, he blinked again, totally confused, scratched the top of his head again, then sighed and marched up to Jun.\n\"Hell of a sight...\" The LST Replika stated as she walked up to Carter , all while looking around at the damage sustained by ONI's HQ. Carter nodded, \"ONI HQ being a ghost town... Y eah,\" then he turned to her , \"You doing good, Elster?\"\nShe shrugged, \"... W orried, sir ...\" before looking to him, visible concern in those blue eyes, which looked more human than when Carter had first seen them. Almost too human for a machine like her , he thought, only to remember this was the same girl who had fallen in love with her crewmate and made sure their ship made it all the way here. He gave an understanding nod.\n\"All of us are, Ser geant,\" He told her , \"Best we can do is keep pushing forward...\"\n\"Can we talk to HighCom? Get her of f this rock with doctor Halsey ...?\"\n\"Don't know ... It's not in our prerogative to put requests out to ONI...\" He replied, scratched the back of his neck, then calmly added, \"If we get proper coms back, you can try and put in a req for it, but I doubt they'll listen. CASTLE is too important to abandon for the moment and there's rumors of a meet nearby UNSC HighCom for all available Spartan teams going on a major operation. That doesn't include us.\"\n\"Doesn't include Gauntlet, Red and Echo teams either , sir... Rumors true?\" Jun looked back,\n\"That they put them on civilian evac duties?\"\n\"Those are senior level communiques,\" Carter replied annoyedly , turning a glare toward Kat. Jun snorted and looked back through the binocs. She shrugged, \"I hear what I hear ...\" as she worked on the console with a pair of plyers, removing shrapnel, \"Point is why put Spartans on defensive deployments...?\" before the entire room broke into an unspoken quiet, Elster and Rita noticing this immediately . They tensed, wondering the same. Why put teams of elite killers out into combat duties they had no business attending when they could be sabotaging enemy supply lines, or destroying staging points, or ... Anything? Anything to slow this down even more?\nTo slow down Armaggedon?Carter inquired, \"Y ou asking me if we're losing...?\"\nKat's reply was grim, sending Elster's mechanical heart sinking. \"I know we're losing...\" She stated, turning to Jor ge, who, despite trying his best to maintain professionalism and his usual calm, had to look away . She looked back to Carter and demanded, \"I want to know if we've lost...\" as she turned back to working. Carter blinked, letting out a deep, defeated sigh.\n\"I need that link to SA TCOM, Kat,\" He switched the subject. She shot back, \"Chasing it... This console's got more shrapnel in it than transceivers...\"\nElster sighed and approached Six and Jun. The two gave her apologetic looks as she leaned against the railing Jun was sat atop, simply staring out into the wider city . The distant flashes of Covenant Cruisers' excavation beams lit the area beyond the mountains, the void and thunder of artillery thumping even through the walls, muf fled by them. The death throes of a world and here Elster was, witnessing them from Ground Zero. She asked in a murmur ,\n\"How'd Cruisers get through if Orbit's still fighting...?\" really not wanting to know the answer ...\n\"Some ships slip through,\" Jun replied, however , \"Ain't the first time it's happened.\"\n\"Ain't that a pain...?\" She murmured, a rhetorical question. Six nodded, \"A ye...\" Before humming and looking to Elster , \"It'll be fine. Doctor Halsey's one tough nut... And Ariane? W ell, if she's anything like you describe her , she'll be alright.\"\nElster gave a half-hearted smile to Six, then nodded. All of them turned around as Kat called out, \"I got signal!\" and turned to the Commander . A faint trickle of static echoed over , with Kat stating, \"It's patchy , but it's there...\" before blinking, \"W ait. Colonel Holland, hailing us!\nWhat's he doing on an open channel...?\" as the entire group tensed and turned their attention toward her . All save for Jun.\n\"Let's hear it,\" Carter ordered.\n\"... Along the southwest quadrant of the City . Sierra 259, if you'r e receiving this, I'm authorizing override of radio security pr otocols to link with this channel... \" Holland's voice sounded worried. The entire Spartan team exchanged glances, with Carter stepping up toward Kat. The girl lifted an earpiece and looked at her commander .\n\"How long for a secure channel?\" He demanded She shrugged, \"Can't guarantee secure anymore.\"\n\"Could Covenant trace it to us?\"\n\"I could...\"\nA moment of hesitation could cost them either their lives or next mission. He nodded to her , to which she handed him the headset and told him, \"Keep it brief...\" before grabbing her datapad and activating sensors, just in case. ONI had a bunch of security protocols, camerasand the likes installed all across the place, so the paranoid bastards gave them ample warning with this stuf f. As the Commander went to talk, Elster tensed, feeling prickles in her synthetic skin, her eyesight blurring. She rubbed her eyes, then turned to the Crow to see a similar reaction. Rita stood to her feet and a chill shot up both girls' spines. Jun leaned forward, peering through his binoculars, \"Movement... Covenant vehicles vacating the area. And they're in a hurry .\"\n\"How often you see Covenant retreat for no reason...?\" Emile asked, an edge to his voice. Jorge slid his helmet on as well... Elster did, too, trying to activate her armor's shields. Six put his helmet back on, before a collective chill hit the group, Kat yelling out, \"Radiation flare! Big! Forty million Roentgen!\" as she tapped her device. She tossed it aside and stood to her feet, looking to Carter . The man turned to his technician with a question, before calling out, \"Atomic excitement scrambled the signal! Ninety million now!\" as she read out the data.\n\"Source?\" Carter demanded as Rita stood up, too, drawing her rifle.\n\"Airborne!\" Kat shot back, then her eyes widened, \"CLOSE!\"\n\"How close?!\" Elster barked. Her entire world seemed to shatter , her vision going dark for a moment as a char ging ener gy weapon whirred. A great gust of wind shattered the window behind the young woman, spraying the place with glass and shrapnel. She turned back as her vision slowly returned, only to see the flare of a Covenant Cruiser's excavation beam as it lanced down at the Earth below . The beam glared red, washing the room in its evil light...\n\"THAT CLOSE!\" Kat replied, fear palpable. She and the other Spartans scrambled, with Six and Elster helping Kat up to her feet as she grabbed her helmet and slid it on her head. The eight-person group ran toward the elevators in the back as radiation continued to prick at them. They entered them, with Kat looking to see she was with a worried Six and Elster in the same glass elevator . She asked them, \"First glassing...?\" before getting a nod. She replied weakly , \"Yeah, me too... Don't worry , though, I got it,\" as she hit the button to activate the elevator , nearly missing the second time, and put her helmet on. She activated her datapad again and said, \"Our best bet is a fallout bunker on sublevel two, ninety-six meters east of our current pos... W e get orders from Holland, sir?\"\n\"Two orders, one being for Elster ,\" Carter replied over com, surprising the Replika. He told them, \"She's taking the next Pelican out to HIGHCOM. Doctor Halsey's requested her presence for the big op we all know is coming. RED FLAG...\" before sighing deeply . He looked to the four members of his team on the same elevator as him, then told the group,\n\"NOBLE's going to SWORD.\"\n\"SWORD?!\" Jun demanded, \"Covenant own it now!\"\n\"Which is why they want us for a T orch And Burn op,\" He replied as the elevator reached the sublevel, doors opening, \"Keep doctor Halsey's data from falling into enemy hands...\"\"If the data hasn't fallen already ...\" Kat sighed deeply . Carter shrugged, watching as their elevator arrived, too, \"Maybe! But word is the Covenant's still looking for something!\"\nKat, Six, Elster and Crowe pushed of f, beginning their sprint as Kat complained, \"Where does he get of f calling a demolition a priority o-\"\nTime seemed to slow for Rita, the newly-named Crow . She heard the distant whirr of antigravity engines get closer , even through the hubbub and rattle of the plasma beam coming down on the city . She craned her head left as time around her did slow to a crawl. Through the hole in the wall above, through which azure light streamed, a nose came first, blotting said light out. Then, it resolved into a Covenant Phantom, the manta-like drop-ship's side door opening to reveal an Elite in gold armor . He aimed a Needle Rifle toward Kat and Six. Rita's heart skipped a single beat, before she charged forward, time regaining its usual speed around her as she called out to them, \"LOOK OUT!\" just as the needle rifle hissed. A needle punched through her shoulder , sending her tumbling to the floor . Though where her shoulder was when she took the hit, would've been Kat's head. The two Spartans stumbled forward alongside Elster , all three stopping as they saw Rita drop to her stomach, holding onto her shoulder . The other Replika of the group scowled, drawing her pistol and firing up blindly at the elites as she char ged to grab her . Six gave one hand signal to his team and five assault rifles and an MG let loose toward the Covenant dropship as it waved of f, the Elite general scowling at them. Elster picked up Crow and demanded, \"Y ou alive!?\"\n\"Yeah!\" Rita growled, \"Fuck me, that smarts , though!\"\n\"C'mon! C'mon! Get in!\" Carter barked, waving them forward. All members of NOBLE entered the bunker , the thick bulkhead doors closing behind them. Adrenaline that coursed through the veins of the Spartans began to dissipate, while Elster set the Crow down and pulled her repair pack out. Rita still had one repair spray and a bunch of plasters on her . She used a pair of self-sealing plasters on the shoulder and gave an approving nod, before slumping down beside her and taking her helmet of f. Rita heaved, then smirked, \"Thanks, Elster .\"\n\"Don't mention it...\" She replied, then gave a smile and a nod. She nudged the Crow's shoulder with her elbow , before she slowly and steadily went on to laugh. At first, it was a slow, simple, weirdly tense laugh. Only moments later , over half a minute of laughter , did it become a boisterous, joyous laugh of disbelief. A laugh in which Rita joined, while the Spartans simply smiled at them and the Civilians stared with muted awe. Six took his helmet off and shook his head, chuckling, too... Three days later , SAR arrived as the Spartans and Replikas exited out into the world once more, to see a river of molten glass. Elster stared out at it, not filled with fear , but withdetermination. Three days in the darkness allowed her to think things through. She would get Ariane of f this rock as soon as she could, get her to Earth... And keep her safe that way . As she boarded the Pelican heading for FLEETCOM, she turned to Noble T eam and called out, \"Commander , sir!\" causing him and the others to turn toward her . She of fered him a kind smile, then snapped a crisp salute, \"I'll see you soon! T ake care of yourselves, Noble! It's been a bloody honor!\" which got salutes and smiles back out of several of them. She then called out, \"And Rita!\" which made the Crow turn, before telling her , \"Take care of the El Tee, big girl.\"\nShe gave a faint smile, her lips shielding her teeth this time, then saluted, \"Y ou fuck'em up out there, too, Itou!\"\n\"It's Elster ... But yeah, see you...\" She smirked, then waved goodbye, boarding the Pelican and nodding to the Marine staf f aboard. It lifted of f, taking of f toward FLEETCOM and boosting forward. Sat down in the rearmost seat, Elster stared outward at the skeletons of the city's buildings, boiling and bending still under the stress and heat of the burned soil, plasma scarring a still-fresh reminder ...\n... They'd make it. They had to. All of them...Pillar of Autumn Elster clenched and unclenched her armored fists. She hadn't had time to be briefed before the Pelican had brought her to the ship she needed to board. The UNSC Pillar of Autumn waited in low orbit above Reach. Past the canopy , the girl could see the orbital engagement still ongoing, the husks of UNSC ships hanging amidst their still-fighting brethren, MACs roaring, missiles flying, plasma countering. Tracers and plasma bolts filled the void, the Replika bracing as bursts of ener gy weapons fire shook the dropship nearly of f-course. They'd broken through the atmosphere, but being set ablaze by plasma cannons was more worrying than burning up mid-flight. She stumbled over toward the cockpit, eyeing the warship they were gonna be landing on. The Autumn, a massive, chiseled form of T itanium with a rapid-fire MAC and enough weapons strapped to it during its refit to outdo a UNSC V aliant's standard configuration, engaged the Covenant vessels from afar with its main and secondaries, tracers from its Ramparts lighting the void as it aimed for Covenant dropships and fighters. The Pelican's engines roared as the pilot, a woman, called out, \"Coming in for a rough landing!\"\nDeceleration kicked in as artificial gravity seemed to suddenly turn on, Elster's stomach doing flips. The Pelican landed on the deck, its engines smoothing the touch-down. The Pilot listened in on a radio transmission, then looked back to Elster and told her , \"Of f you go, Sarge. They're gonna need you on the deck. I gotta deliver a few Spartans on the deck...\" only to watch as the squadron of a dozen or so Spartans stepped inside and started preparing their equipment. Elster nodded to the pilot, then turned to the Spartans' of ficer and gave him a salute. He saluted back, before turning back to work. Elster exited the Pelican and marched up the deck, only to catch sight of the man she was supposed to meet dead ahead. Clad in dark-green MJOLNIR Mark V , with the number 1 17 written on his breastplate and the rank denoted above his head, Master Chief Petty Of ficer 1 17 stood on the deck with a pair of other Spartans. She had heard of the Chief's exploits. Even read some of the reports regarding his most recent mission on Cote D'Azur courtesy of Doctor Halsey wanting her to know who she would be working with. She approached, took her helmet of f and snapped a salute, stating, \"Master Chief. LSTR Unit 512, here as per Order from the Of fice of Naval Intelligence. I'll be your maintenance assistant and fourth gun for the upcoming mission.\"\nChief looked over Elster and nodded, saluting back, \"At ease, Ser geant. W e don't salute fellow NCOs,\" before turning fully to face her , \"I presume you've been briefed, but in case you haven't, parameters have changed. Spartan RED T eam is deploying planetside to assist with the defense of the generators powering our ODPs. W ithout the ODPs, Reach is lost.\"\n\"Sir,\" She replied, \"And Blue T eam?\"\"We're going to Orbital Station Gamma. Main objective is to destroy the navigation data of ONI Prowler Circumfer ence, since its crew couldn't get to it in time,\" The Chief replied, then motioned forward and said, \"Follow us. Y our new callsign's Blue Four for the duration of the op...\" as he took the lead down the busy halls of the UNSC warship. Red alert sirens blared overhead.\n\"Sir,\" She nodded as they began their march toward the closest armory . There, while Marines were gathering their own gear , the Spartans also went to pick up stuf f. The two other Spartans, identified as 058 and 005 by their IFFs, grabbed MA5B rifles, the UNSC's sixty round-firing high-caliber assault rifle, plus M6D Magnums. Similar to the Gs employed by the Army , if with a little more kick and hard-hitting potential. Spartan 058 also plucked up an SRS-99 from the racks, sliding it onto her back just in case. Elster , meanwhile, went on to retrieve a standard assault rifle and pistol loadout, plus extra ammunition for it. The male Spartan, 005, commented, \"Strange armor they have you, Elster . Looks almost like MJOLNIR... I'm seeing slight light refraction coming of f of the panels.\"\n\"Semi-Powered Infiltration, sir ,\" She nodded, racking the slide of the M6D. She peered inside, examining the weapon from the rifling to the slide and bolt, before letting go of the slide and sliding a magazine in. She thumbed the slide release and felt the heavyweight pistol slide slam forward, feeding a round into the chamber . She thumbed the safety of the pistol on, sliding it onto the maglock. She then started checking the rifle as she explained, \"T urns out command had a need for more Spartans, as far as rumors go.\"\n\"What team were you assigned to before this, Elster?\" Chief inquired, turning to her . She nodded, \"Noble T eam, sir . Spartan unit, too.\"\n\"Never heard of'em,\" 058 hummed as she finished checks on her weapons, \"All green.\"\n\"Same here,\" 005 added. Elster replied, \"Good to go as well, sir ...\"\nChief nodded, then radioed, \"Captain, this is Blue T eam. W e're commandeering a Pelican for the trip out. Advise doctor Halsey:the Ser geant has joined our rank...\" before he motioned for the team to follow . The titan clad in MJOLNIR Mark V stepped out and marched back toward the Hangar with his team in tow . Elster hummed, checked her weapons again, then slid her helmet back on and let the seal kick into place. Boarding the Pelican, the Spartans and Replika prepared themselves for the worst, with Chief handing Elster some spare ammunition and telling her , \"Keep it loaded. The MA5B isn't accurate beyond five hundred meters...\" as he sat himself down in one of the crash seats. The Pelican lifted of f toward the station, dancing through the fire of enemy weaponry as it boosted forward at maximum speed. Gamma Station was in orbit over Reach, thankfully , meaning that their arrival was quick. Chief pulled up a holographic display of the station, noting some of the damage it sustained.In the distance, there was an ongoing battle between a Corvette and a Frigate, while the Pillar of Autumn was coming in from the rear as well, though they were lagging behind. Elster noted a chunk was missing out of the ring structure, murmuring, \"Hope everything's pressurized,\" as she activated her suit's oxygen system to test things out. Just in case, she thought. Even as a Replika, depressurization might pose an issue to her biomechanical components. She stood to her feet and sat herself back down closer to the hatch, checking her rifle even more thoroughly\n005 told her , \"Important sections probably sealed of f, 512. Keep it steady ,\" as he readied his AR. He looked to the Chief and stated, \"She's a bit twitchy .\"\n\"If she worked with Spartans before, she'll be fine,\" Chief replied, though he was wary about this 'Noble T eam'. He'd ask Cortana when they got back to the Autumn . Looking over to the pilots as the Pelican flew , he saw the flashes of MAC Rounds flying over the Pelican. They struck two Covenant Frigates that had just dropped out of Slipspace and started deploying their own troops. Elster donned a jump pack and walked over to 005. She quickly gave his a check, tugged at a fuel line and found it too lose. She then rapidly re-threaded it into place, pulled on it and found it didn't go taut as easily . Patting 005 on the shoulder , she said, \"Pack's fine now ,\"\nbefore she checked her own. Chief and the others looked to her , a bit surprised, before 058\ngave her an approving nod.\n058 stated, \"I'm Linda, Elster .\"\n\"James,\" 005 stated, \"Thanks.\"\n\"Don't mention it. Don't wanna lose a Spartan out there,\" She replied, her tone low , but friendly . The Spartans and Replika soon went quiet as the vehicle powered its main thrusters, allowing them to touch down in the base's hangar . The back hatch popped open, with James and Elster popping out first, both sweeping in 90 degree arcs with their rifles, until they locked onto the same wall. Linda and Chief jumped out next, with James giving Elster a tap on the shoulder . They started going along the edges of the station, toward where their NA V was pointing. Chief reported, \"On board. proceeding to the Circumfer ence... \" as he swept each corner they passed by with his rifle and pied each doorway . Covenant were already on the station, so that meant they would encounter hostiles soon enough. Elster was tense enough about that, but the professionalism of the Blues kept her grounded and somewhat calm. She was also thankful to find that the Station was, in fact, somewhat pressurized. The Spartans and her continued their push past several rooms they had little time to clear , before the hairs on Elster's neck stood on-end and a voice whispered to her , \"Right... \" causing her to dive low . Flames exploded from the wall, the metal melting under the impact of a micron sharpened plasma blade. She swiveled up and aimed her rifle at where she thought his gut would be, then opened fire.Bullets pierced a weaker shield and purple blood sprayed across the wall. The hunchback shape of an Elite resolved, its optical camouflage dying. It collapsed onto the floor in a heap, energy sword hilt clattering to the floor . The Spartans all swiveled about and, as soon as the first Elite was noticed, they opened up. Bullets clinked against the metal floor , some falling through the grating as the fireteam opened up on a platoon of stealthed Elites. The Spartans didn't even give the bastard commandoes enough time to reply , volleys of bullets puncturing through the weakened shields of stealth Elites. Several did get plasma rounds out, bursts landing near Elster , one round boiling through the grating. Another struck and sprayed itself across Elster's chest, staggering her . She thanked the lord for her shields, which were drained almost completely from the burst. The surviving Elites moved away from the engagement, camouflages reactivating as they dipped into a side hallway . Elster grit her teeth as she stood to her feet, glaring at the bastards and keeping her assault rifle trained. Chief and the other Spartans formed up with her , each watching a dif ferent direction. James commented, \"Good instincts, Elster ... A nanosecond slower and...\"\n\"Thanks...\" She growled back, on alert. She didn't mean to be hostile to the Spartan, but the release, combined with whatever voice she heard, caused her to turn extremely cautious about her surroundings, even to the point of being more tense regarding even interacting with her new teammates. Chief nodded to her , however , then gave a chop of the hand forward, ordering the team to move out. The team advanced in a diamond formation, Linda bringing up the rear to keep watch while James and Elster sat on each of John's flanks. All reloaded their weapons, putting the magazines they'd expended rounds from into distant pouches, before slamming in fresh ones and locking them in. They did this on the run, with each keeping eyes open for Elites. Linda hummed as distant pops, repeating in a familiar pattern, echoed. She called out,\n\"Friendlies in the next bay . Engaging Covenant units, from the sound,\" words to which Chief gave a nod. He staggered the teams, threw a fragmentation grenade ahead the first sight of air distortions. The grenade landed square in the midst of a pair of the Elites, shrapnel tearing through the two and even distorting others' camo. Elster ducked under the blade swipe of the first, drew the knife attached to her armor and, whilst sliding, slit the tendons at the second joint of one of the legs, causing the creature to crumple. Cancelling her forward momentum, the girl threw herself toward the Elite and slammed the tip of her blade into its throat, tearing flesh and sinew before twisting and pulling out. She drew her sidearm as they ran forward and sniped the first Jackal in a space suit she saw . A slew of the beasts surrounded a fireteam of Marines, probably out here for the same reason as them. And farther ahead was their objective. The station shook as it was hit by plasma fire, but the Spartans kept steady on their feet. One of the Marines cried out, \"SARGE! W e got Spartans incoming!\" his voice full of joy . He ducked behind the box he was using as cover as a corner of it was melted by plasma.The leading man, a dark-skinned male with an of ficer's cap and a shotgun, peeked out of cover and grinned, the cigar between his lips flaring at the tip as he took a puf f, then pushed it out of his nostrils. He called out, \"Good eye, Bisenti! Marines, the Cavalry is coming!\nJenkins, I want our asses in gear toward the Circumfer ence the moment they get here! Ain't got time to waste!\"\n\"Aye, sar ge!\" Jenkins called out, wary , as he poked out and fired his rifle. Chief and the others joined them, firing their weapons at the advancing Covenant units. These ones weren't cloaked. The Elites had better shields, while the Jackals carried gauntlet shields and somewhat heavier armor thanks to the space suits. Elster found that annoying and wondered if a Grenade was a good idea amidst this entire mess. Plasma and needle rounds quickly answered whatever killer thoughts the Replika might've had, forcing her behind cover . Chief took a knee beside the Ser geant and asked him,\n\"Prowler?\" as he fired back at the Covenant.\n\"Just down that-a-way , on the docking ring!\" Johnson shot his open hand out in the direction of their objective, \"Bastards got us cornered before we had a chance to get to it and wipe it clean! Y ou'd think ONI spooks were more careful with secrets like where Earth is...\" before he pumped his shotgun's pump and put two shells of buckshot into an Elite that got too close for comfort. Chief gave him a nod and told him, \"Prepare your men for exfil, Ser geant. Spartans, let's move it,\" as he began firing suppressively toward the Covenant, nailing a couple of Jackals with well-placed close quarters bursts. The Spartans and Replika all stood to their feet, the Marines tagging along with them as per the Ser geant's own wishes. Chief wasn't about to tell the man 'no' if he wanted to provide support. The Elites and Jackals focused on the Spartans, to the point Elster was almost going non-hit by plasma rounds. Thankfully , that made her far more capable of laying down her own hate. Bullets struck shields from the assault weapons as the Marines, Spartans and Replika made a mad dash toward the tar get. Bolts of plasma did strike shielding, finally , causing the Spartans and Replika to stagger for a moment. However , Chief and the others continued unabated, with the Covenant needing to focus on multiple tar gets at once. They entered the Prowler , with the Chief immediately heading for the computer with Elster . The Marines, James and Linda covered the rear , weapons barking as each Covenant member that attempted to advance was turned into Swiss Cheese. Elster tapped away at the holographic display , hearing another murmur of a female voice that was so familiar , \"... Per haps you'll make it in time, but I would move faster ...\" with the Replika freezing for a moment. She shook her head as Chief cast a concerned glance her way , then refocused and redoubled her ef forts, initiating the automated COLE PROT OCOL systems and making sure that they worked properly . With one final press of a button, the computers flashed scarlet with warnings, to which the girl told the Chief, \"I set the sole shipboard Havoc to detonate in ten mikes! Should shake the Covenant up plenty . EMP will wipe out the remaining traces of corrupted data!\"The leader of Blue team gave a nod, then radioed, \"Objective accomplished. Exfil,\" and motioned for Elster to follow along. These Spartan-IIs were a tad more professional than Jorge, as it seemed. Or , well, Jor ge was plenty professional when it mattered. They just seemed more machine than man at the very moment. The group began their sprint back toward the Pelican...\n\"Right! Linda! \" The voice barked in her head again. Elster moved almost automatically , slamming into Linda as bursts of plasma fire melted the wall to their left. They would have hit Linda. The volley was so thick, Elster could feel her synth-skin prickling at the heat and radiation. Linda looked over to Elster , a bit surprised, then gave the girl a nod, to which the Spartans watched Elster pop two frags out. Damned be the damage to the station, it was already lost. She simply held onto the Marines in case of depressurization, the twin thump of grenades temporarily silencing the plasma volley . Just enough for the Spartans and Marines to pop out and engage. The still-dazed Covenant soldiers swiveled around to try and engage, but the bursts of speed with which the Spartans and even the Marines ran out stunned them. Two Jackals were gunned down by Linda's deadly precision bursts, while another trio and an Elite died to Chief's automatic fire. He dropped a spent magazine and looked over the end of the barrel to make sure he wasn't warping it. A plasma round struck his shoulder , causing shields to flare, then another , a green bolt from an overchar ged pistol, partially charred his armor's chest. James replied in kind, throwing two more grenades toward the Jackals and Elites that had fired. The concussive blasts and shrapnel shredded three more Jackals and dazed two Elites enough, their shields flaring. Linda drew her pistol and snapped of f two shots, the bullets piercing the shields and punching clean through the Elites' open maws, killing both. Immediately after that display of cold, calculated precision, she turned her head to her Replika compatriot and said, \"Thanks.\"\n\"Don't mention it,\" Elster replied.\n\"... Blues, if you can hear me, get yourselves aboar d ASAP . We have one last thing to r etrieve, per Doctor Halsey's r equest, and the evacuation is handled by the others, \" Cortana's voice played over the radio, \" We'll be moving in to r etrieve you now . New Covenant fleet just jumped in-system as well. Seems like the final wave... \" and the Chief and others wordlessly quickened their pace. Elster felt a pang of hope, that maybe Halsey and Ariane would tag along with them, then... Linda, Chief and the Marines quickly pounced onto the Pelican, while Elster fired another quick burst at the pursuing Covenant forces. She then jumped in next, leaving James as last. He called out over radio, \"T ake of f! I'll be right behind you!\" as the Spartans and Marines opened fire to cover him. Bursts of plasma struck around and on the plates of the Pelican's armor . As the vehicle lifted of f, the rear hatch close to sealing, James turned toward them. In a mad dash, the Spartan dodged bolts of plasma and powered on his thrust pack, utilizing it atmaximum power to throw himself into the Pelican. A momentary warning flashed onto his HUD, but his hand outstretched toward those of his fellow Blues adn of Elster , all of whom caught and pulled him into the ship as it lifted of f. The back hatch closed, with every single Marine breathing a sigh of relief. Johnson told them, \"Saved our asses just in time, Spartans. Thanks...\"\nChief gave Johnson a nod, while James removed his pack and told Elster , \"Thanks for the fix... Got a warning about pipe damage. Thing might've sent me careening into outer space if you didn't fix it,\" to which Elster gave a nod, stunned at herself. She'd managed to save two Spartans from potentially losing their lives and winding up on the Missing-In-Action list.\n\"How did you do that?\" Linda asked, sitting herself down. Elster shrugged, then partially lied, \"Gut instinct...\" as she stood up. A short chuckle, ethereal and distant, echoed in her noggin as the Pelican touched down. Amidst firing its guns, the Pillar of Autumn prepared to descend down to the planet's surface. However the hell a Cruiser of this size and tonnage was going to land safely onto a planetside drydock, only they knew . It would probably have to under go a quick rearm and refit, too. She hummed, then looked to Chief as they dismounted and asked him, \"Sir , we really going to try and nab enemy leadership...?\"\n\"Yes,\" The Spartan nodded, \"That was the mission. Missions change, though...\" before motioning for her to follow . Johnson and the other Marines and Spartans dismounted from the Pelican as it was getting refueled, the Hangar doors closing in behind them as the ship began adjusting its systems for the upcoming descent. The group marched over toward the ship's ice box, with Linda and James having decided to follow along.\n\"We going into Cryo?\" Elster asked. Chief nodded, to which she said \"... I'm staying for now , sir. maybe they'll need help getting whatever it is aboard.\"\nChief replied with a nod and said, \"W e'll see you soon, then, Elster .\"\nThe girl nodded, then turned around and marched back toward the Hangar , watching as the crews prepared and steadied themselves and the vehicles. The vessel began to vibrate as they descended into the atmosphere. Some minutes later , a reverberating metallic thunk echoed as the vessel touched down amidst the Aszod Break Y ards, with Elster already attending to repairing and/or keeping the Pelicans in working order . It would only be thirty minutes before the Hangar doors opened, Captain Keyes walking onto the deck. Elster and every other man and woman present stood at attention, snapping salutes. The Captain saluted and nodded back, before telling them, \"Three Pelicans, one gunship. Sergeant Elster , with me. W e're going downstairs personally to retrieve the Package.\"\n\"Yessir,\" Elster nodded as she and a few Marines packed into the Pelican with Keyes. Keyes hummed and arranged his uniform, then said, \"Catherine told me about you. W elcome to my crew for the foreseeable future, Elster ...\" and he quickly checked his sidearm. Elsternodded in thanks as the Pelicans lifted of f and headed down toward the clif f face. Around them, Banshee flyers and Dropships were destroyed by accurate fire from a mounted MAC Gun. The man told her , \"Noble T eam's present already , I see.\"\n\"Noble, sir?\" She smiled, \"They have Halsey and Ariane with them...?\"\nCaptain Keyes seemed to know that Elster would ask this. His features, like chiseled out of stone, formed into a frown. He sighed and said, \"Catherine also warned me you'd ask that... I'm afraid not...\" as he stood up. Elster's heart sank in her chest when he told her , \"Miss Yeong and her are back at CASTLE, according to her own message to me. W e're to retrieve the Package and bug out.\"\n\"Sir, we can't just-!\" She stood to her feet, heart starting to race. The Captain shot her a calm, knowing glance, \"I know , Sergeant... I know ... The good doctor told me of the bond between you and Ariane. As much as I hate to tell you this, we'll just hope they hold under ground until ONI can put together a search and rescue party ...\" which caused Elster's heart to sink further . She fell back into her seat as the Pelican moved in to land. The girl sighed deeply , almost wishing to jump out and join Noble on the deck. Standing to her feet and drawing her MA5, the girl took a knee beside the captain as the hatch propped open, with half of Noble present on the deck. She noted their IFF tags flare up, including Kat's, Jor ges and Six's here and Emile's and Carter's near the mounted MAC Gun. And she also saw another certain someone, her body scarred by burn marks, but her rifle still held up and at the ready . Six, whose armor had been stained by carbon scoring, stepped up and said, \"Captain Keyes, sir,\" as he pulled the package, a glowing blue cylindrical container , off of his back. Rita stepped up to the line and noted Elster , then flashed the girl a grin. Elster gave her a nod, before looking to Six as Captain Keyes descended onto the landing pad beside the shipbreaking yard's drydock. The Spartan also saw Elster take her helmet of f. She of fered a kind, but wary smile at him, her Synth-skin damaged, but visibly still attached. He gave a nod and said, \"Elster ...\"\n\"Good to see you are all still well, Nobles,\" She told them, \"Doc Halsey probably knew she could count on you all.\"\n\"You ain't without thanks, Els,\" Jor ge noted, jovial and clearly smiling behind his helmet. Keyes nodded to Six as he was handed the package, telling them, \"Noble should pack up and be ready to Exfil with the rest of us. W e'll need every Spartan we can get in this fight...\" all while gazing at the gathered force. Above, on a dif ferent platform next to the Aszod facility , the Onager MAC cannon, a planetside mass driver , fired one of its ferromagnetic slugs through the coil-hoops. A flash and a crack of thunder later and a Covenant dropship vanished.\n\"Sir, can't do, sir ,\" Six noted, \"W e got orders from V ice Admiral Whitcomb to redirect and try to defend the planetside generators, too. W ord of mouth is a Company of Army , two ofMarines and a few Spartans have been redirected there, as well.\"\n\"Red T eam,\" The man nodded, \"W e can lend you a Pelican. Fly it safe.\"\n\"We'll try not to slam it into a Scarab, sir ,\" Chortled Rita. Though concern washed over both the Captain and Elster , neither commented on it, while Kat gave the girl a slap upside the head. Rita pouted, then sighed and shook her head as she took up defensive positions, before gasping. As the air around them electrified to the point of discomfort, she called out, \"Emile!\nCruiser comin' in of f our ten o'clock!\"\nKeyes blanked, then noted the massive frame of the warship punching bow-first through the clouds of smoke and ashes. He radioed, \"Noble Four , I'm gonna need fire on that cruiser or we're not getting of f this planet!\"\n\"You'll have your window , sir!\" Emile replied proudly .\n\"Six, Rita, move up to us, we'r e gonna need the backup in a second ! Jorge, Kat, keep the Pad open for our ride ! And Elster , get moving, they'll need you up ther e.\" Carter's voice echoed over com as the Pelican Keyes had ordered forward touched down. The Spartan and W ar Replika turned toward Elster , who gave them an approving nod. They both gave her a quick salute, before rushing of f to assist as a Covenant Dropship flew in overhead.\n\"Jorge! Kat!\" Elster called out as Keyes boarded the Pelican. The two turned toward her , which allowed her to tell them, \"Stay safe! And get to Menachite if all else fails! Please!\"\nThey knew why she wanted them to go to Menachite if the Generators fell. Both gave her silent nods, with Jor ge hefting his LMG and telling her , \"We'll get her of f this rock safe, Els...\" garnering a weak smile from the girl as her and Keyes's Pelican maxed out its engines. Overhead, the Covenant Cruiser's excavation beam char ged, causing her synthetic hairs to stand on-end.\n\"Hey, Elster !\" Emile called over a staticky radio, courtesy of the MAC char ging. Elster tapped her com to signal she was listening as the Pelican was halfway to the Autumn's hangar . Emile chuckled and said, \" Give'em hell out ther e!\" before the MAC roared, burning white trailing a line in Elster's vision, before the belly of the Cruiser exploded in a flaming flash. The Autumn's takeof f assistance engines roared below . Elster felt tears welling in her eyes as the Pelican touched down, Keyes calling out, \"All stations, brace for castof f...\" over radio. He turned to Elster and put a hand on her shoulder , telling her , \"We'll get them back, Ser geant...\" to which she nodded. W ordlessly , she stepped off the Pelican and toward a window as the Autumn accelerated out of orbit. Breaking through the atmosphere allowed Elster to see the extent of the damage. Down below , Reach burned. The Covenant fleet's plasma beams boiled away her oceans, her mountains being flattened by beams from the poles to the ecuatorial line. Around them, the debris of dozens of UNSC vessels littered the void, destroyed and gutted. A vessel's name came into view , a Frigate. The Black Bar on. Her hull boiled, split in half amidships...And below , fire flashed over the Menachite mountains, Elster's heart stuck in her throat. No, no, no, please no!\n... She collapsed to her knees as fire seemed to burn over Menachite, over CASTLE Base, over Reach. The sole human world she and Ariane had known in this place burned away below her . And she was all the more helpless to stop it. Her mind raced as rivers of tears flowed down her cheeks. She prayed at that had been an explosion above Menachite, not on it... Though, how could she know? All she saw now was ashes and the trail of Covenant plasma fire as they chased the Autumn. Half-a-dozen Covenant Cruisers gave chase to them. She could see them in the corners of her blurred vision as the voice spoke to her in her mind once more, a derogatory , vile tone, \" You failed her ... You br oke your pr omise, you worthless little robot... But, maybe, you'll be capable enough to make these bastards pay for it !\"\n... Elster felt fury well in her chest... This was it, then, wasn't it? She had failed Ariane... Standing to her feet, the Replika glared at the Covenant vessels trailing them as they prepared to enter Slipspace, plasma bolts and beams lancing past the hull. T urning away from it, fists clenched. Whatever it was these bastards were hoping to achieve, they weren't going to get it. She marched toward the deck once more, knowing her time moping was better spent working...\n\"Good,  you insufferable little copy . You took my place in this r eality , so make yourself useful. I couldn't pr otect my Alina and you couldn't pr otect your Ariane... W e are alike... But, through you, we get a chance to right the wr ongs, because you'r e still alive. Now , work ! Work yourself until the synthetic skin and armor on your hands peels away ...\"\nThe visage of a soldier of the Eusan Volksarmee came to Elster , her right eye bandaged and a rifle in hand. Lilith Itou stared back at LSTR-512 within the confines of her biomechanical mind. She spoke to Elster , her face a scowl, \" And when all the W ork is done and your blades are sharpened... Kill them all for what they've done to you ! ALL of them!  For our loves... And for ourselves !\"\nShe cracked a grin. One Elster copied beneath her helmet.\n... No more tears. Only work. Only payback .Travelling Circus Elster worked on maintaining the UNSC's vehicles. From Pelicans to W arthogs to tanks, the girl hadn't rested a bloody day as they travelled Slipspace for their unknown destination. Random jumps were apparently fairly monotone. Who knew? She thought to herself as she gently pulled the control panels of the Scorpion she was now working on of f. She pulled out a few tools from her belt and started working on the vehicle's wiring, parts of which seemed fried by overuse. Or plasma. She didn't really know if the Autumn's tank battalion had been deployed, but, at least, the mental exercise kept the unwanted 'guest' she'd found herself with after Reach's Fall tuned out. She scof fed as a small electrical current coursed through her finger . She checked the wire to see that the rubber had partially melted, revealing a chunk of the inner conductor . She clipped it with one tool and started quickly replacing the rubber sleeve in the af fected area as best she could. Moments later , she was done. In truth, she was mostly doing this to really keep her mind of f of... Everything. Not just Lilith. Everything. Climbing out of the tank with a huf f, the girl took her helmet from the left and jumped of f the vehicle from its back-right track, before looking around at the hangar she was in, watching the crews do final checks on the vehicles. An engineer approached and extended to Elster a datapad. She took it, clipped her helmet to her belt and started writing out the report at about three words every second. T wo minutes was all it took for her to properly compile everything that was wrong with the tank, simply handing it back to the man. She walked of f, sliding her helmet onto her head and entering one of the armories. A Marine quartermaster greeted her , \"Sar ge. Came for the daily?\" to which she nodded. The man pulled an MA5 assault rifle of f one of the racks and slid it underneath the glass window , then did the same for an M6 Magnum pistol. Alongside them, he handed her about a dozen mags of AR ammo and four mags of pistol ammo. Sliding each into a pouch, Elster stepped of f toward the Range, rifle in hand. The chatter of Marine rifle fire echoed all around her as half a platoon of men trained at the various booths. She ignored the stares for now , shouldering the AR. She slid a fresh quad-stack magazine into the back of the weapon and hefted it, aiming through the SmartScope system toward the target at about average engagement range. She squeezed for barely a quarter of a second before three rounds burped out of the weapon, each striking a fairly centralized area in the alien silhouette tar get's body . Impressive ROF for something with sixty rounds in a magazine. Made sense, too... W ith a sigh, the girl took a more capable stance. Left foot forward, right back and perpendicular to the left's axis, a slight slouch forward and the rifle properly pressed into her armored shoulder .She squeezed again, for a second. A burst of nineteen rounds left the barrel in a tight grouping. A few Marines whistled, with one of the men commenting, \"Damn. That's the new bot we got? She's got a helluva good aim,\" his thickly Australian accent fairly obvious. Elster tried to ignore the gawking and comments for now , though she kept steady on the range.\n\"Was with Spartans beforehand, amigo\" Another , with a strange accent, commented, \"Hey , Bisenti, you saw her in action.\"\n\"Yeah. She's good,\" The guy replied, watching as she aimed and fired again, then stated,\n\"She's something else entirely , though. Scary shit, apparently . Whisper is ONI, maybe, but I'm not sure,\" as he slung his own rifle onto his shoulder . The woman fired another burst, trying to ignore the stares and the rounds once again landed dead onto where she'd aimed them. With a sigh, she lowered her rifle, dropped the half-empty magazine and pulled the bolt back to retrieve the bullet inside. A familiar voice spoke to her , \"Getting stage fright, T in Can?\"\nwith the most smug tone of a voice ever . Elster almost jumped out of her synth-skin, her eyes shifting to see Lilith there, leaned against the booth in her combat uniform, a grin on her face. She mocked, \"Oh, sorry . Did I scare you?\"\nThe Replika took a moment, scof fed, then swiveled around and marched out toward the door . A blink later and Lilith was waiting right there, a grin on her face. \"Can't get away from me~,\" she declared, \"I'm in your head, after all. Or are you in mine?\" then she paused as she watched Elster walk of f. With a roll of her eyes, Lilith's form disappeared from next to the door, but her disembodied voice continued to mock, \"C'mon, bot. It's no fun if you don't answer . Might even make me think I'm crazy .\"\nElster did the smart thing as she walked to surrender her weapons, surprising the quartermaster at the lack of expended ammo. She shut of f her armor's external speakers and replied to Lilith, \"I'm not in the mood. Can you just do me a favor and erase yourself like the errant bit of code you are...?\" only to stagger as she turned around to see the Itou woman standing about a foot from her . Lilith almost sang, \"No can do, kiddo~! W e're together come hell or high water and you won't get rid of me that easily~!\"\n\"Does putting a bullet in my skull shut you up, I wonder?\" Elster murmured a rhetorical question as she walked out of the armory and down one of the many walls through which the honeycomb braces of the Autumn's armor and superstructure passed through, marching by deck crew , Marines and even one of the janitors. A short laugh from Lilith told her that it would, in fact, only kill them both. And she couldn't do that while the Covenant still existed. She couldn't let them go for  \"Ooh,\" Lilith joked as she started walking by Elster , \"I can feel that fury . Good . A little bit of me is still in that copycat head of yours.\"\n\"Obviously ,\" Elster shot back derisively , \"You're still talking to me,\" And she looked forward to see a pair of Marines armed with MA5s marching by . They gave Elster a quick nod as she walked. She simply nodded back too them, watching one of the Marines walkclean through the apparition of Lilith. She thought for a moment if she was in the final stages of her Persona Degradation. Lilith answered the unasked question rather openly . Though the tone grew a bit more... Respectful, low , tired, \"I'd say we are at that stage...\"\n\"Don't speak like you're me,\" Elster hissed, \"Y ou're just a Ghost... A leftover that they should've deleted with the rest of this template. Replaced with a proper LSTR Persona Template instead,\" only to almost double over as Lilith appeared ahead of her , a burning glare marked by one good eye of two meeting Elster's own stunned one. The figure took a step back, a bloody gash marking where her right eye used to be. Elster felt a stinging in her own eye, to the point she put a hand against the cold, polarized glass of her SPI suit's visor .\n\"Without me, you wouldn't have been able to bond with your Ariane as well as you did,\"\nLilith shot back, walking around the Replika within the now-empty hallway . Her voice was cold and focused, \"W ithout me, you would not have seen the resemblance between her and Alina Seo. My Alina,\" then she stopped in front of Elster again, growling, \" You wouldn't be you without me, you deranged, br oken little machine ! Be grateful I died so you can live, because, without me, you're NOTHING !\"\nElster was about to reply , though the words caught in her throat, mouth open, face morphed into an expression of anger . She grit her teeth, biting back the remark. Because she knew Lilith was right? Because she didn't want to seem crazy for ar guing with herself? The AI bit of Cortana Six and NOBLE had delivered was probably following her around through the cameras, so it was best not to give her a reason to eighty-six her . So, Elster put on a poker face and replied, \"Maybe... I was nothing before Ariane. I am nothing again,\" in a deadpan, \"And you're the same kind of Nothing as me since we are stuck together ...\" then she walked through Lilith's apparition. Why was she ar guing with her own mind? She thought to herself that maybe, just maybe, she would have been better of f putting a bullet in her own head now . She'd failed Ariane, finally broke and now had this piece of shit soldier girl screaming into her brain about it.\n\"No,\" Lilith replied, once again walking by Elster's side, both eyes back, a deadpan look on her face and her garrison cap sat on her head. The same cap Elster had worn aboard the Penrose-512. She spoke, \"Y ou aren't nothing, you moron. You can still get revenge. I died before I knew if I had to avenge my Alina, bleeding in a hole in her arms. I died when the Imps let hell rain down on our heads. Y ou? Y ou still have some time to do what has to be done. And I'm here to guide you into doing that. Maybe we'll both get some damned closure afterward.\"\n\"Hm...\" Elster thought for a moment, \"Keep quiet while we're fighting. I don't like distractions.\"\n\"You sure?\" Snorted the girl, though that wasn't derisive, more amused. She told her , \"I saved your and that Sniper's asses on board the Station just before we departed.\"\nElster paused, \"That callout... That was you?\"Lilith nodded, her grin returning, \"See? I'm useful . So, how about you through that high-and mighty queen bitch attitude out of the airlock and let me help you get some payback on these hinge-jawed freaks and their stout little suicide units?\" only to pause as Elster turned to face her. They were outside the range of any camera and in an empty hall. Elster crossed her arms and answered, \"Fine. Only callouts.\"\n\"Aww, no girl talk?\" Chuckled Lilith, \"Y ou hurt me so, Elster ,\" and she smirked. She extended her hand, but then paused and realized Elster couldn't exactly shake it. Instead, she gave a slight nod of her head that only Elster would pick up and be able to replicate. And replicate it, she did. Lilith's grin grew into an actual smile, her crazy eyes fading for a second,\n\"... It's nice to have a second chance. Give'em hell out there, T in Can.\"\n\"Will do, Schizophrenic Hallucination,\" Elster murmured, which got a laugh out of her .\n\"I like that! Haha!\" She snorted, \"Just call me Lilith, though.\"\n\"No,\" Elster said monotonely , garnering another laugh out of Lilith. She could hear Lilith think, 'This is gonna be a great friendship' as she laughed. The two only paused, however , when her HUD flashed and a message text box appeared on the left. Cortana's message. It said, 'The Captain wants to talk to you on the Bridge'. She sighed and turned around, then marched over toward the bridge, with Lilith quieting down for now and retreating to the back of her consciousness. Walking into the bridge, Elster was surprised to see the deck crew active as ever . She marched up to the front, watching the Captain and Cortana debate something from afar against the holographic screen that separated him from the forward gunners of the Pillar of Autumn, men on chairs that hanged above a perceived void, though separated from said void by the windows of the ship. Cortana, though a hue more purple than prior , turned to face her . She smiled and waved her over, to which Elster took a step forward, reactivating her external speakers as Lilith said,\n\"Y'know , if I was an AI...\" but then cut herself of f with, \"Nah, nevermind...\" even though Elster had heard the thoughts she was about to speak and shuddered a little. W ith a light sigh, she stopped in front of captain Keyes and Cortana, snapping a salute.\n\"Captain, sir . Sergeant Five-One-T wo, reporting as ordered, sir ...\"\n\"At ease,\" Keyes nodded, \"Good to finally meet you properly , Elster . Cortana was just telling me everything I needed to know about you, but I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth, if you'll pardon the euphemism...\" And he took a puf f from his strange pipe. She nodded, waiting to be asked anything and Keyes obliged, asking, \"Look, I know things are tough, Sergeant... And I know what you think you lost, but trust me. If there's anyone who's going to survive what happened at Reach, it's doctor Halsey and anyone who's with her .\"\n\"... Thank you, sir ...\" She spoke, slightly reassured by her words. He gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder , then nodded.Then, he turned and continued, \"I should ask, though, what is a Replika? Reports haven't been forthcoming.\"\n\"Sir. A Replika is a worker automaton built out of T itanium, polyethylene and synthetic skin, as well as biocomponents meant to replicate human functions to a degree,\" She replied calmly , \"Each of us is specialized in one role, though there is the rare multirole Replika out there. I am... Was an Engineer meant to support a colony and exploration ship, but, as you can see...\"\n\"Necessity is the mother of invention,\" The man nodded, \"Glad to see you've adapted.\"\n\"Mostly due to my Persona T emplate, sir ,\" The girl replied. A slight confusion crossed Keyes's face, but Elster answered the question ahead, \"Each Replika also has a Persona Template implanted into their artificial brains. Mine's apparently from some soldier that fought on one of the fronts our homeland had opened during their rebellion with the Empire...\" And she was a mouthy bitch, Elster thought, but didn't add. Lilith laughed a little at that. Keyes nodded, \"Then your skillset's welcome any time. I have one more question and something to tell you. First things first, why'd you tag in with us?\"\n\"No other options, plus your people healing Ariane,\" She replied, \"Her cancer ...\"\n\"Right,\" The man nodded, \"Got it... Now , onto what I wanted to tell you,\" and he looked to Cortana. She approved him telling her , which gave him the chance to say , \"We have a destination.\"\nConfusion streaked across Elster's eyes, though it wasn't visible. She spoke, \"Sir , aren't we on COLE PROT OCOL? Random jumps?\"\n\"This is technically a 'Random Jump',\" Cortana chuckled, \"A destination I found in an artifact buried under SWORD. W e'll be hitting that spot now ... Maybe we'll be able to find something to turn the tide of this damn war already . Captain figured it'd be a good idea to tell you about it, for you to be ready for when we deploy . BLUE's gonna need their new tech bot.\"\n... Despite it taking a moment for Elster to adjust to this new info and Lilith speaking some comment that the girl ignored, the Replika simply nodded and said, \"Alright... I got it. Let the Chief know I'll be ready for anything they need me for ,\" then took a moment to think. This was gonna be one hell of an operation if it was some form of ancient alien super -weapon. Maybe they'd find their payback there, after all...Autumn Blues\n\"Cortana, all I want to know is, did we lose them?\"\n\"I think we both know the answer to that...\"\nAs soon as the Pillar of Autumn had exited Slipspace, two things had become apparent. One:The Covenant fleet had chased them all the way over here and they arrived first, with an entire force of Covenant Cruisers and one capital ship on their tail. T wo:Whatever lay in front of them was possibly the most incredible thing that anyone had laid eyes upon. Floating neatly in geosynch orbit above a massive gas giant was a ring-shaped artificial construct. Elster had seen it when they came in and the first signs of a pit in her stomach formed. Now , on the lower floor of the Autumn's main hangar , the Replika had finally managed to fully fix and modify her armor . Alarms began to blare over their heads as she started donning it, sliding her helmet on her head. The deck, already a hive of activity , seemed to engage double time as Marines, maintenance crews and military personnel moved up to their rallying points. She didn't know , nor care if they were going in. Lilith spoke to her in a suddenly uncharacteristic calm, \"Keep your eyes open, T in Can... I have a nagging feeling we're about to see the worst few days of our lives down on that thing,\" to which the Replika simply hummed. She checked the systems of her HUD, watching them all boot up one by one, including her stealth coating panels activating and reflecting light. She looked at herself as she vanished in the dim, flashing lights of the deck, then gave an approving nod. She took her helmet of f. Sliding her MA5B onto her back and an M6 pistol on her hip, she ran over toward the Marine gathering point as Cortana reported, \" ... All combat cr ews, r eport to action stations. Internal and External contacts ar e expected, \" in an eerily calm voice. She looked over to see Ser geant Johnson coralling his Platoon and decided she'd tag in with them for the fight. Joining the lineup of Marines on the deck, she stopped beside Bisenti, who looked up at her . With one quick glance, she gave the man a reassuring nod. He nodded back, then straightened up as Johnson began to speak. The Ser geant-Major's voice was proud, fierce and belligerent as he called, \"Men, we led these dumb bugs out to the middle of nowhere to stop'em from getting their filthy claws on Earth, but we stumbled onto something they're so hot for , they're scrambling over each-other to get it!\" whilst marching in front of the crew . He grinned and continued, \"Now , I don't care if it's God's own anti sonofabitch machine, or a giant Hula-hoop, we're not gonna let'em have it! What we will let'em have is a belly full'a'lead and a pool of their own blood to drown in!\"\nStopping at the head of the two columns of Marines, he turned about with his MA5 leaned against his chest and that smug, know-it-all grin one would expect out of someone with Johnson's experience. He demanded, \" Am I right, Marines!? \" in a booming, proud voice once more. Elster couldn't help but grin at that. Despite their predicament and all else... So, she chorused with the Marines, \" Sir, yessir! \"\"Mhm, damn right I am!\" Johnson declared proudly , \"Now , move it out! Double time!\"\nThe Marines displaced from the formations and marched with the other platoons to the deck. Johnson bumped Elster's shoulder with his fist and gave her a nod, then yelled at some of the younger Marines, \"All you greenhorns who wanted to see Covenant up-close, this is your lucky day! Ser geant, you're supporting me and my boys. Extra gun is appreciated in the grand scheme of this cluster ...\"\n\"Aye, Sar ge,\" She nodded, then slid her helmet on her head. The pair of Ser geants marched through the hangar and into the hallways, taking one of the routes closest toward their tar get bulkhead. Elster drew her rifle, thumbed the safety of f and racked the bolt, watching as the bullet locked into the chamber . Marching down the wide halls, Elster saw the Ser geant looking at her . She inquired, \"Something the matter , sir?\"\n\"Just wonderin' when in God's name I wound up working with both Spartans and an Android or whatever ...\" The Ser geant replied, giving the woman in SPI armor a once-over with nothing but a hint of concern behind his gaze. He added a quick, \"No of fense,\" probably to try and dissuade Elster from doing anything dumb. She wasn't planning to, anyhow , but it was nice.\n\"None taken, Sar ge,\" She replied softly , then added, \"It wasn't exactly in the cards for me to be here anyhow ...\" while checking her gear again. She hummed, then told him, \"Since I am, though?\" lifting her MA5B as if to make a point, \"I'm not letting the Covvies take an inch without a gallon of their blood to paint it.\" which made several of the Marines around whoop and cheer .\n\"Heh,\" Johnson flashed a bright, pearly-white grin at Elster , then told her , \"Oorah, kid. Oo goddamn-rah,\" before sliding a cigar between his lips and using a trench lighter to light it. He told her , \"Saw what you did aboard the Station. Saved our asses and a couple Spartans, too,\"\nas they marched past several Marine platoons heading to their respective bulkheads.\n\"Rather have everyone around me live, Sar ge...\" She whispered, pulling out something she'd kept with her since the beginning:Their photo. \"Reach took too much.\"\n\"... Oh, right. Captain did tell us you had a loved one dirtside,\" Johnson looked upon her with both pity and an apologetic gaze. He took a moment to consider his words, then remembered that Keyes had told them Elster needed reinforcement and that Ariane was with someone he trusted. So, he told her , \"Eh, take it from me, she'll be fine. Hell, if she's with someone Keyes trusts, I've got zero doubt in my mind she'll be right as rain, even under ground.\"\n\"I know ... Thanks, though. I trust doctor Halsey and NOBLE T eam,\" She nodded.\n\"Worked with Spartans before BLUE?\" Johnson quirked a brow .\n\"Aye. On Reach, during its defense. Five-and-a-half weeks together . I knew them all by name.\"\n\"Well, damn,\" He snorted, \"If we do swing back around, maybe we'll get'em all of f.\"\"Aye. When we swing back...\" And she paused as the ship hook. The ship had been shaking for a while from Covenant blasts.\n\"Mm. That's the spirit,\" He gave hera pat on the shoulder as they reached their designated Bulkhead, then turned to the group, \"Now , eyes and ears open. W e're about to get some unwanted company . Marines! Asses in gear! Bisenti, O'Brien, I want combat pattern bravo!\nJenkins, you Mendoza and Fitzgerald keep your eyes open for anything coming from the front and rear in case Alpha and Bravo squads get shot to hell and we have to pull back! Y ou got a name?\"\n\"Elster , sarge.\"\n\"Elster , you tag in with me. W e'll keep tabs on the main bulkhead.\"\nThe Replika nodded and shifted herself behind cover . One of the reinforcements poked through the midst of the hallway here, giving just enough cover for the girl. The Marines also set up, some going prone, others pressing their rifles and peering between the other braces in the hallway . Some took cover a door down from the bulkhead itself. Before long, hard metallic clangs echoed, with Johnson stating, \"Easy , Marines. W ait for the doors to pop...\"\nbefore doing a quick press-check on his rifle. The hiss of plasma cutting through metal filtered in. Up ahead, the bulkhead began to melt. In the distance, the ringing of gunfire echoed, met with the snap-pops of plasma and needle rounds. Elster watched as the bulkhead ahead was cut in several more places, before the quiet swish of a plasma grenade activating came next. Then another . Then a dozen more. Her eyes shot wide open as she called out, \"T AKE COVER!\"\nThe blast that followed washed the hallway ahead with plasma. Elster could just barely make out the silhouettes of f the Covenant's troops behind the flash-boiling blast as her eyes adjusted and visor polarized. She was the first to open fire, standing up and firing a burst from her AR into the closest grunt. A plasma bolt snapped out and hit right beside her , heating the T itanium reinforcement she was taking cover behind. The hallway was then lit up by tracers. As the Marines regained their footing from the blast's shockwave and their ears were ceasing their tinnitus-infused ringing, they opened fire. Bullets sparked of f the walls and struck Covenant units, with one of the leading Elites being caught by so many rounds, his shields overloaded within the span of a second and he collapsed, sprawled out across the floor in a pool of his own purple blood. Johnson snorted at that as he dipped back into cover . Two needle bolts struck where he had been as he checked his ammo count, noting he was at half-a-mag. He poked out and fired again, nailing the Grunt that'd shot at him in the head, before standing up and calling out,\n\"Marines, suppressing fire! Elster , on me!\" before the replies of their troop came in the form of Oorahs and gunfire. Johnson tossed a fragmentation grenade to Elster and nodded to her , before both primed and rolled them forward. T wo thumps shook the ground. The Marines then formed up and pushed out toward the Covvies, one of the supporting elements catching a plasma bolt to the chest and dying on the spot. Elster pushed past the corpse, having seen him flatline on the TEAMBIO. She ran forward toward the leading Elite,cocked her fist back and slammed the gauntlet right into the side of the hinge-jaw's neck, deep enough into the muscled bodypart to hear his vertebrae snap. Lilith called out, \"Left.\"\nElster dodged as a burst of plasma fire struck the spot she was in. She drew her pistol and snapped of f three shots, each nailing the Elite in the head and with the last completely sending its helmet flying. T wo bolts struck her armor's shields, almost overloading them as Lilith called out rapidly , \"Check rear!\" causing Elster to elbow the Elite char ging her straight in the gut. She heard it groan, before doing a 180 and planting the barrel of her rifle into its belly , then squeezing of f what was left of her mag. Cortana's voice spoke over the P A, \"All hands, abandon ship. I r epeat, all hands, abandon ship. W e will evacuate ASAP and r egroup on the Ring ahead. \"\nShe dropped the spent mag of her AR as she watched Johnson and his Marines suppress the remaining enemies, before Johnson called out, \"Y ou heard the Lady! Move it out, Marines!\nWe're heading to reinforce Alpha and then going for the nearest Lifeboats! Sar ge, take point!\"\nand turned to Elster . The girl nodded, peering past the man for a moment and into the Covenant boarding ship, to see their usual purple motif, holograms and the likes. She sighed and showed them to follow . Advancing to the next Bulkhead over as the ship shook from the impact of plasma char ges, Elster watched another Marine ahead suddenly lose his head, corpse falling in a sprawl. His buddies and the Navy personnel they were escorting, most of which armed with only pistols, gasped as they saw Charlie pushing up, with Jenkins calling out, \"Check your six, Friendlies coming in!\"\nElster fired a burst at a Grunt, then at another , plasma striking around and onto her , while Johnson and the others spread out around the bulkheads. Johnson asked a crewman clad in an orange jumpsuit, \"Where are the nearest lifeboats?! W e'll get your asses there in one piece and get of f the old girl with you!\"\n\"Next intersection and up the stairs! Bulkhead 13!\" The crewman, one 'Freeman', as per his name tag, replied as he drew his pistol. A crowbar was clipped to his belt, meaning he was probably maintenance. Elster felt an eerie kinship with the man, but said nothing as she watched Johnson lift his hand up, showing the Marines and her to follow . Plasma bolts and gunfire were being exchanged up ahead. Tracers sparked of f the walls as Johnson barked over the com, \"Alpha, check your fire, allies coming into the intersection!\"\nHe pushed through the door frame, firing at and suppressing a squad of Grunts that let out yelps as they moved up. Up above, thundering footsteps echoed through the floor . Elster commented, \"Sounds like Chief and Blue T eam are on the move...\" as she pushed forward with the men. She primed two grenades and threw them, then watched as a plasma bolt trailed forward and struck a Marine defending the intersection up ahead in the chest. T wo more shots followed and the man's torso was gone.The intersection was a two-level area with a stairwell attached to the honeycomb structural reinforcements. It led up a floor , rather unsurprisingly , and the upper terrace gave the Marines a good line of sight on the Bulkhead as they engaged. The man in char ge of Alpha moved up to Johnson with a trio of other Marines and provided covering fire, though the Elites in charge of the attack spearheaded the assault now . Bullets sparked of f shields and azure bolts retaliated, two Marines and a group of unarmored crewmen dying in the volley . Elster took cover and, the moment the first Elite stepped into her LOS, she lit him up like he was a Christmas tree. All sixty 7,62x51 rounds spat out of the barrel of the AR at close range, causing the creature's shields to flash, fail and die in a bright blue display . She unclipped the pistol from the magnetic lock, aimed it and executed the Elite, only to feel the heat of a plasma volley hit her . She ducked back into cover as her shields flared, then yelped as a bolt hit her shoulder . It didn't melt, but it did heat up the plate. She shifted, kneeling as she pressed herself against the wall and dropped the spent magazine from her rifle, only to slap in a fresh one and rack the bolt. She looked to Johnson as he took cover beside the other edge of the entry , only for both to gasp as two grenades launched forward. Chief and James jumped in from the top, the former taking a knee and firing bursts from his AR. Bisenti cheered, \"W oohoo! W e're fucking saved!\"\nElster watched James floor an Elite with his fist, before pinning said Elite down and pumping it full of lead in front of its Grunt subordinates. He looked at the terrified diminutive aliens, rifle barrel still smoking, pointed at the head of the Elite. The glare he had could be felt from behind his visor as he snapped his rifle up at them and all three screamed bloody murder . A sniper shot rang out and blue blood painted the wall. Linda called out, \"T ook you a moment, James...\" over the radio, her voice cold. Chief pulled the bloodied blade of his knife from the other Elite's neck, then, with a chop of his hand, ordered the fireteams to move out. He looked to Elster , who nodded, before all of them stood to their feet and fast-marched up the stairs. The ship shook and Elster nearly fell, but James caught her . The two exchanged a quick nod as they continued the climb. A row of pods sat ahead in an open hallway , guarded by a fireteam of Marines. It would've been a platoon, but going by the corpses littering the area, both of Marines and of Jackals, Grunts and Elites, the fight here was tough. The lead Marine gave a quick salute to the Chief before hitting the button to open all four pods. Chief spoke, \"Each Spartan takes a pod. Elster , you take the fourth with the Ser geant-Major . See you planetside.\"\nShe nodded, \"T ake care, Chief. Blues,\" then climbed aboard with the Ser geant-Major . She sat down at the end of the left row of seats as they entered, with the others following inside. The pilot climbed aboard last and took the cockpit seat of the Bumblebee lifepod. Johnson took the seat opposite Elster , with the girl saying, \"Never been in a lifeboat before...\"\n\"Well, brace yourself. Damn things kick like a mu-!\" Johnson got cut of f mid-warning and had almost bit his tongue as the decoupling char ges kicked the ovoid lifepod out from its hatch. Through the rear , Elster could see the Autumn getting pounded by plasma from the Covenant's distant naval assets. Sparse was the return fire of the 5cm CIWS batteries, norwas there any answer from the missiles. The bow of the ship had armor plate that'd been boiled away , revealing the twisted internals of the MAC, its rails destroyed and many other marks and fires permeated the heavy cruiser as it barreled toward the planet. Elster radioed, \"Cortana! What the hell is going on!?\"\n\"The Captain's going in for manual landing!\" The AI replied, part annoyed, part wary . She then told \"I've sent reentry vectors to your pilot, Elster . You, Johnson and your Marines wait for pickup! W e'll find the rest of the Blues, then we'll come pick you up. Did you copy my last?!\" as slight static began to play over the com. The Autumn flew overhead, angling for a hard entry into the atmosphere of the ringworld ahead.\n\"Rog!\" Elster shot back, then gasped as she watched the teardrop-shaped Seraph fighters sweep in. T wo trailed a pair of more distant pods, their plasma cannons flashing. The pods exploded in twin, sunlike blazes, but the Seraphs were immediately chased of f by two surviving Longswords that banked in. Elster could also see other pods, Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Entry V ehicles. ODST Pods. She asked, \"W e had ODST s aboard?!\"\n\"A Battalion!\" Johnson replied, cocked his jaw and said, \"Damn, that blast caught me of f guard!\"\n\"Sorry , Sarge, but you knew the ride was gonna be bumpy!\" The pilot reported, then warned,\n\"We're vectoring in for Atmospheric Insertion! Brace!\" which caused several Marines to tighten their straps. Mendoza put his hands together in some form of archaic motion and began whispering what seemed to be a prayer to himself in Latin, which Johnson mouthed in synch, his Cigar in one hand and rifle clipped into a hold by his seat. Elster wondered what the hell Religion had to do with making it. Lilith, meanwhile, spoke to her and her alone, \"Give'em a break. There's never atheists in a foxhole... Or the lifepod of a Starship in this case...\" with a slight tone. The woman's apparition was leaned against the back door of the pod, arms crossed. She wore her standard black armor , her face surprisingly impassive except for furrowed brows, \"Y ou strapped in tight?\"\nElster gave ever the slightest nod to Lilith, only noticeable to her , who was in Elster's mind. She said, \"Good... Gonna be a rough landing. Brace when I tell you to,\" and Elster immediately registered why she had changed in personality . Her soldierly instincts had kicked in, much like during those flashbacks. Lilith noted this little addition in Elster's mind and actually cracked a genuine smile, \"I'm not an ass 90% of the time. Figured I should give you a couple of stern talking-tos so we make sure we both make it through this... If there's even an inkling of Ariane being alive in that brain of yours, I want you to focus on it so we can stay alive. W e're two peas in one pod.\"\nElster thought of a reply to test it out. \" ... I won't die... Not as long as I know she's still on Reach... \" Which contrasted fairly strongly to what Elster had been like only a day or so ago. Lilith nodded approvingly , before patting her own chest with her fist and disappearing the next moment. Still, Elster could feel her presence in her mind, like a second, splintered part of her .She felt a momentary heat increase, then a light twitch as the Pilot adjusted the pod for re entry , belly down. The surface of the ring below grew in the rear hatch's window and Elster could make out greens, continents, oceans, an entire ecosystem. W as this the Forerunners'\ndoing? What had they even built this strange ring installation for? A feeling in the back of her mind was that not all answers to that would be pretty .\n\"Now . Brace,\" Lilith's calm voice rang in Elster's head. She leaned forward, pressing against the straps. The Marines, seeing this, did the same, bowing their heads and covering them with their hands. Johnson gave a thumbs-up to Elster as the girl put her hands behind her head, with the Pilot calling out, \"W e're going in hot!\" as the pod began to shake. W isps of fire grew around them, turning into a full-fledged dancing flame as the atmosphere caught them. She made out the peaks of mountains. An emerald valley sat below , covered in forests and various alien structures of a silver alloy that popped out amidst the green and rocky greys. She grit her teeth as the Pod adjusted again, entering its set course as the fires of re-entry dulled and died. Sudden deceleration caused her to slam back into her seat, denting it slightly and nearly ripping the straps as she got sent forward again. The landing flaps of the pod had deployed, with the roar of the burning deceleration engines following. Parachutes deployed as the Pod slowed even further ... Then, came the flop. The pod landed on its belly , dead into wet grass and probable mud, skidding across it and burying its maw and belly further into the muck. A deck crewman that was with them had his straps break. He went flying across the pod's entire length, slamming into the back doors with enough force to break them and his spine. The corpse dropped onto the floor as the vehicle finally slowed. Elster undid her straps first, then moved up to the door and pried it open with both hands, pushing it aside and turning to call out, \"Move it out, Marines! Sar ge, structure on our twelve!\" while pointing. A two-prong alien structure that resembled a claw spat out a ball of blue ener gy into the sky , a contrast to the dozens of lifeboats falling all around them. The structure sat at the middle of the valley , amidst trees and a few steps from a creek with water as clear as crystal. Johnson coughed, hit himself in his chest armor once and said, \"All Marines, sound of f and follow the lady!\" then waited as every single man aboard, sans the dead one, cried out their reply . The pilot swiveled in her chair and climbed out of it, a bit wobbly , then grabbed an MA5 out of a hidden compartment and tossed her helmet aside. The Ser geant-Major undid his own strap, grabbed his gun and put his cap on, telling Elster , \"We're going for the structure! It's the only visible piece of shelter we got in this open killbox! Move!\"\n\"Oorah!\" Heartily replied the Marines as they grabbed their gear from underneath or beside their seats. Elster jumped out of the pod and scanned the area with her rifle...Halo The building that they had managed to secure was an ener gy projector of some kind, continuously firing blasts of ener gy high into the Ring's atmosphere. That, however , was not the most concerning of things right now . It was the fact they were on a ring and a Covenant Armada was bearing down on their locations as they spoke. Kneeling beside one of the pallisades of the place, Elster peered down the massive, green canyon they were in. Creeks through which water flowed, random alien Flora and Fauna and a massive drop at the end that led to the most extraterrestrial, yet beautiful view . The ring arched up high into the sky , the widest point on the inverse horizon closest to them being a wider section of the ring that Elster could swear she could see into if she squinted hard enough, followed by an ever -narrowing structure the farther away it got, that looped all the way over their heads and behind them, hidden by a rocky clif f wall. She murmured to herself, \"This entire place is impossible...\" as she shouldered her MA5. She looked back at the Marines as Ser geant Johnson arrayed them into defensive positions. The distant hum of antigravity engines echoed across the valleys, from all directions. T wo Banshees flew overhead, diving toward where another Pod had crashlanded. Elster had managed to see a green figure moving stealthily from the crash, but couldn't make out if it was the Chief or any of the other Spartans. Johnson approached and knelt beside her , then said, \"Can't get radio contact with anyone else. Everything's scrambled,\" before shouldering his MA5. The cigar between his lips glowed for a moment, a strand of smoke rising up and vanishing. He puf fed out the smoke in his mouth and took the cigar out from between his teeth, stating, \"That pod got any movement?\"\n\"Saw one green figure,\" Elster replied, \"Might've been a Spartan. IFF can't pick him up from this far ...\" and she turned to watch the sky as the hiss of antigrav engines seemed to be inching closer . She told Johnson, \"I'd get the men ready . I'm hearing possible contacts...\"\nbefore casting a sideways glance at Lilith, who was sat beside her with a Eusan-made rifle in hand. She smirked and said, \"What?\" upon feeling Elster's thoughts, \"A little morale boost. Y ou know I'm here to help, right?\"\nElster didn't deign to answer , simply watching Johnson wave his hand to his men, sending them into cover with a couple of hand signals as a Spirit Dropship, the bifurcated type of transport the Covvies loved to use so, flew in from amidst the canyons. Lilith's smile disappeared as she, too, vanished, with Elster hefting her AR and watching the drop-ship land. It'd probably seen the Life Pod. Indeed, it landed fairly close to the Pod. The one corpse was still there. They hadn't managed to bury him before the roar of more enemy forces came. Elster twitched as distant gunfire echoed, then watched a Banshee careen to the floor , its antigrav pods smoldering, thenflaming. She smiled, realizing that the friendly in that pod, whoever they were, was engaging the enemy . She, however , didn't quite smile when the first plasma bolt washed over her cover . Johnson called out, \"Contact! Asses in gear , Marines!\" as he raised his rifle over the edge of polished silver alien alloy and opened fire. A suppressing burst landed around the Elites, Grunts and Jackals advancing on them, with the Jackals returning fire from behind their portable cover with plasma pistols and needlers. A pair of Marines and a Corpsman moved up to join the fighting force, the latter with a Magnum she was using to pop at the enemy . Elster poked out from behind cover and let loose a half-second burst from her rifle, too. The rounds struck the shields of an Elite who was quick to shoot back, blue blots of plasma hitting. One struck Elster's helmet, causing her shields to flare as she huf fed and ducked into cover . Tossing a grenade over the edge, she checked her ammo counter . Lilith said, \"T wo, coming up the ramp. Grunt. Elite,\" and Elster's gaze moved down over her cover and at one of the ramps. She dropped another grenade and popped out to fire after the thump. The Grunt got a round clean through its skull, collapsing with a chitter and a hiss of his methane tank, while the Elite jumped of f the platform and returned fire. His shields flared once, twice, three times. At the third, a round pierced and struck it right between the eyes, killing it on the spot. Elster looked over to the Corpsman as she tended to a Marine that'd taken a Needler round, then looked at Johnson and nodded. The Marine Sergeant flashed a pearly grin, the cigar between his teeth as he poked out and opened fire on another advancing unit. The Jackals were pinned down, but a second Spirit swooped in, its rear -mounted plasma cannon letting loose one trifecta-shaped lilac plasma volley after another . The shots struck and superheated the alloy of the building, but it didn't melt. One Marine was struck as he was running with his rifle, only to be vaporized on the spot, turned to red mist. Elster swore to herself, while Lilith asked, \"Y ou think we can take out the turret?! It's chewing us up!\"\n\"No heavy weapons!\" Elster replied after muting her speakers. She stood up and fired. Bullets pinged of f the turret, but one struck the gimbal it was on, causing it to go wide for two shots. It disgor ged its troops, an Elite with a jump pack launching itself straight toward them. When it landed, it hefted its plasma repeater and swiveled about toward Elster , opening fire. The Replika rolled out of the way , sprang to her feet and char ged it, emptying her magazine into it before she shoulder -checked it onto the ground, drew her knife and planted it straight through the tinted glass visor of the alien, where she instinctually knew its eye was. She dug the blade in even deeper through the cracking glass, then twisted and puled it out. She staggered as a pair of needle rounds struck her in the back, exploding of f the shield. Johnson's rifle rang again and the cries of a Grunt and Jackal followed. Elster turned back and watched the Ser geant kick down a third alien, plant the barrel of his weapon in its face and squeeze, spraying blood and methane. He jumped back as the punctured methane tank detonated, then watched one of his Marines get turned to mulch.Jenkins swore to himself and dragged the Ser geant to his feet as Elster rejoined them, then said, \"This is nuts!\"\n\"Mayday , mayday ,\" Johnson activated his radio, \"This is Fireteam Charlie, requesting aid from any UNSC troops nearby . We've got a lot of covvies bearing down on our heads!\"\n\"Sergeant, this is Blue Actual. Stand by , we'r e on our way ,\" Cortana's voice replied over the radio, calm. The distant chatter of another AR echoed, Elster standing to her feet and watching Chief appear from amidst the trees, slam an Elite down and kick its head in, snapping its spine and crushing its skull. Purple caked the dark-green boot of the Spartan's armor as he stepped forward, wading through a small creek and lighting up Jackals whose backs were turned to him, shields facing the Marines. He was quick on his feet as an Elite swung for his head, dodging the hit and striking the Alien's chest with an open palm. The hit staggered the Elite enough for the Spartan to blunt its second, messier swing, grab its weapon hand and twist it. The Elite's jaws splayed out as it screamed in pain, then let out a guttural roar of anger . Chief swept its legs and kicked its ribcage in. He then turned around and fired a full burst of assault rifle fire at a squad of Grunts that were charging him. The diminutive creatures collapsed, their fluorescent blue blood painting the greenery of the valley . Another pair of Elites char ged the Chief, but the Spartan was quick enough. His assault weapon's inaccuracy was nullified at the range the aliens were at, each round striking one's or the other's shields. When the counter went red and the gun clicked empty , Chief quickly drew his pistol and put two rounds into one Elite's chest and a third into his comrade's head. Both collapsed, the first gargling blood as the Chief marched up to it and shot it in the head. Cortana voiced, \"Dirty , but ef ficient. W e still have ammo for any other distress signals... T o all Marines of Charlie, this is Cortana. Area's clear .\"\nThe Spartan turned and watched as Elster descended first with the Ser geant and his troops. She snapped a salute and spoke jovially , \"Glad to see you're alive and kicking, sir . Any word from anyone else in Blue?\"\n\"Sparse comms,\" Chief replied, \"They're alive, but will land in other parts of this V alley . We need to go find them.\"\n\"Roger , sir,\" Elster replied, \"If you need the extra gun, I'm green...\" And she patted her gun.\n\"Welcome back, Blue Four ,\" Chief replied, then asked, \"Cortana, status on that EV AC for the Marines?\" as he started checking his gear . His armor was scorched in places by the plasma blasts. Elster also noticed denting from needles probably breaking on the plate amidst other things, with even Lilith chiming in with a sound of awe or two in there. The Replika sighed and gave a final once-over of her weapon. Cortana had replied, \"Contacting... Echo Four -Nineteen, this is Cortana. Foehammer , you still on station?\"As Elster tuned into the Radio, she heard a heavy southern accent kick in, the female pilot replying, \"Here and copying you Five-by-five, Cortana. I'm on my way to your location with a little ride, gift from the boys and girls. Should just be a minute,\" and, indeed, it was less than that. The Spartan, Marines and Elster looked upon the beauty of a Pelican as it swung in for touch-down, carrying a W arthog F AV in its magnetic clamps. It dropped the vehicle, with Elster noting, \"I'm taking the gun,\" as she moved toward the landing site. The Marines followed, with Johnson right beside her . The dark-skinned man bounced up onto the side seat as Chief took the wheel, with Foe Hammer reporting her takeof f with the surviving crew and Marines. Chief pressed on the acceleration and the vehicle's engine roared in a higher pitch. He swiveled the wheel right and the wheels spun, kicking up mud and dirt. The vehicle then rolled forward, Elster manning the fifty-caliber gatling on the back. She looked around at the scenery as they drove forward, up and down bumpy roads and around hills, while Johnson commented, \"I'll be damned if whatever aliens made this Hula-Hoop didn't make it pretty ... Almost reminds me of Illinois a little,\" as he shifted his rifle and set its buttstock on the floor , leaning the rest of it against the chair as he held on.\n\"Looks picture-perfect,\" Elster murmured. She saw some of the weird alien wildlife around them scramble out of the way as the Chief drove and she also felt the weight of the suspension as they made the jumps. She spun the gun around while keeping an eye on the sky, only to pause as she saw escape pods incoming. She told the Chief, \"Several more pods, incoming. They're landing in the valley like you said, Chief.\"\nThe crew rolled down into a deeper canyon via some dirt and rock ramps, only to see the massive maw of what at first looked like a cave, only to resolve into a silver alien structure not to dif ferent from the ener gy projector they'd just defended. It was massive, big enough to fit an entire frigate through, and lit by recessed blue lights. Cortana commented, \"This cave is not a natural formation...\" almost ironically .\n\"Yeah, no shit...\" Lilith whispered in Elster's brain, causing the Replika to snort. Johnson commented, \"Don't matter to me. None of this damn ring is natural,\" as he slid a cigar between his lips again, \"Shit, doubt God would've made something like this...\"\n\"You a man of the Church, Ser geant?\" Joked Cortana. Johnson snorted and shook his head.\n\"Grew up in Chicago and went to Church, aye. Auntie Marcille raised me right, I'd say ,\" He replied rather jovially as they took a sharp left up a ramp, the wheels of the W arthog barely gaining traction against the glowing alien metal. As they crested the top of the bump, a bulkhead that seemed almost like a wall opened, its seams barely visible at first, before it slid wide open. A massive hall revealed itself, a chasm stretching down the middle. T wo triangular support like structures acted as the ends of the platforms that faced each-other and the ceiling was tall, almost obscured by the darkness. The walls curved in on themselves, each bearing pillars from which faint light emanated. Both the Replika and the Ser geant stared with muted awe at the sight, while Chief scanned the area, his motion tracker picking up various tar gets.Cortana said, \"W e've got company . Around those pillars...\" which got the Replika's attention. Several box-like pillars stood to the left and right of the 'road' leading toward the pyramid shaped support on their side. The faint hum of char ged plasma weapons and the heavy breaths of Grunts echoed, though the latter were muf fled by the rebreather masks. Elster could just barely make out a ramp to the right and some sort of control system that was being guarded. The shadows of Jackals moved to her right. She swiveled the turret toward it and hit one of the two triggers, starting the weapon's spin cycle. Johnson clicked the safety of his rifle to of f as he lifted and shouldered it, murmuring,\n\"C'mon, you alien bastards. Like to see you try takin' us on...\" as he scanned his sector . Chief drew his own pistol and scanned the surrounding area as he held onto the wheel, ready to bring the vehicle around. It was strange to him that the Covenant was waiting, but he and Cortana didn't complain.\n\"... They have troops concentrated to the right and I'm detecting an ener gy source below us, linked to a console there,\" The AI spoke. She put up a W aypoint on the Spartan's and Replika's HUDs. She then told all three, \"Don't like how they're waiting for us to make the first move... Maybe they know something we don't about this place? I'm trying to look into their BattleNet now .\"\n\"They're trying to keep the good cover ...\" Chief shot back, the sight of an Elite bounding to another piece of cover registering in his peripheral vision. He switched his speakers of f and sent a single-beam communication to Elster , which the girl accepted. He asked, \"Y our suit at one hundred percent, Elster?\" to which she gave a nigh-imperceptible nod. He replied, \"I know about it. Cortana gave me a blueprint. Dismount... Use it.\"\n\"Sir, all due respect, wouldn't it be better for me to stay on the MG?\" She asked, warily peering through the sights of the weapon. Chief shook his head. His right hand's fingers moved, forming a signal. 'Stealth. Advance. Flank.' She nodded. Chief looked to Johnson, tapped him on the shoulder gently and tilted his head to the MG, then lifted three fingers for both him and Elster to see. At two, the Ser geant thumbed the safety of his AR and put it on his back, while Elster tensed. At two, Johnson slowly lifted his ass of f the seat and Elster cycled the command for the armor's camouflage panels to kick in. And at one, the Replika jumped of f the bed of the truck just as the first bolt of plasma struck overhead. The photoreactive camouflage panels engaged, her form melding with her surroundings like a smidge of paint at first, then resolving properly as she moved into the darkness. The gatling cannon spat out its first burst at a Jackal to Elster's immediate left, punching through the shield and etching the Alien's body in bloody marks. Elster slinked into the shadows, moving over to flank the pair of Elites as Johnson and the Chief engaged. The Elites roared orders to their subordinate alien comrades, with Jackals pushing forward and Grunts right behind them. One Elite, a major from the looks of his scarlet armor , stood and barked orders, aiming his plasma rifle and firing bursts at them. It ducked in cover as Johnson swiveled the MG toward it, the Ser geant calling out, \"Come on! I got plenty'a'lead for all of you!\"Elster pushed forward, drawing her machete quietly and crouch-walking toward the Elite. She looked over to her right to see two Elites in blue armor moving forward as well. She pulled a plasma grenade of f her belt and, as she approached the Elite commander , she primed, activated and tossed it onto one of the passing blues. It stuck almost magnetically to the Elite's breastplate, stunning it and causing it to roar . The blast vaporized it and seared the other Elite, taking its shield of fline. Chief finished it of f with a moving headshot from his pistol. The Replika's cloak deactivated as she brought her Machete toward the alien commander's neck. She felt it hit shields, felt the slight drag and resistance, then felt it piercing sinew and muscle. She slit to the left, blood pouring from the Elite's throat. Gar gles of purple foamed in its open throat as it collapsed, with the Replika reactivating her camouflage as a pair of Grunts and another blue-armored Elite Minor char ged her . Plasma bolts struck where she'd been as she rolled out of the way . She pulled a UNSC Frag off her belt, primed it and rolled it toward the Elite and his escorting troops as she dodged their rounds. The thump of a detonation echoed amidst gunfire and hissing plasma as she turned a corner , drew her machete again and slammed it through the Elite's shield, clean into the back of its neck and through its spine. She brought it down again. And again. And again. With almost brutal fervor . Blood spatters marred her camouflage. She deactivated the armor's cloaking, wiped the blood off her machete and the plates, then slid the blade back into its sheath. She radioed, \"AO Clear ... I'll go activate that terminal,\" only to receive af firmative replies from the Ser geant and Chief. She climbed the ramp and marched up the side corridor . She only took a moment to stare at the view of the cavernous room before feeling her heart sink. Part thought that the depth and size of this place was terrifying. Another part wondered what Ariane would've thought. Both those thoughts made room for Lilith telling her , \"If you wanna make it out of here and see Reach again for yourself, focus. W e've got a job...\" as she appeared beside her . She cast a short sideways glance at her possible schizophrenic, persona degradation-induced companion, then turned and marched to the terminal. It was a flurry of holographic buttons and geometric shapes and designs that made her head partially spin. She sighed, noting the central hexagon as it flickered up and down, blue and orange, before her hand hovered over it and she pressed down. What surprised her at first was that the damn thing felt physical. More of an actual button than a light trick hologram. She blinked as Cortana said, \"Whatever you just did, Elster , I'm detecting a power increase between the pylons ahead...\"\nThe Replika slid her rifle onto her back and watched as twin prongs extended from below the pyramid-shaped pylons, visible emitters powering on with a distant, reverberating hum that shook the girl to her core. Before long, what looked to be a platform of some kind flickered into existence. A blue bridge, shimmering azure in the mild darkness. The Replika stood there, staring for a moment with awe. She snapped out of it when her com clicked twice, a check from the Chief. She tapped it two times as well, then ran back down the ramp and past the Covvie bodies. She grabbed aplasma rifle of f the floor as a backup, allowing her armor to check it for ammo count. 87%. Respectable. She stowed it on the mag lock on her other thigh as she ran, with Johnson demanding, \"What're you doing, Elster?!\"\n\"Testing it!\" She replied, \"Making sure before we roll the 'Hog over!\"\nShe stopped in front of the supposed bridge, right at the edge of the pylon. She leaned forward uneasily , her biomech heart suddenly starting to race. Gently , she put one foot forward until the heel first touched the light. A slight hiss echoed as the boot made contact. As she set the sole down properly , she quietly prayed to herself... And pressed down hard. The bridge shimmered around her foot, but it was solid. She gave a thumbs up to the Chief, who revved the W arthog's engine and rolled the vehicle forward. Johnson, who was back in his seat, said, \"T aking a wild guess you're as crazy as the Chief, Ser geant,\" with a smirk when they stopped beside her . She shrugged, neither confirming nor denying it before climbing back aboard the 'Hog and manning the MG. The vehicle rolled forward across the bridge, Johnson casually casting a glance down at the chasm past their sole, shimmering path over it, before immediately leaning back inside the Warthog and murmuring, \"Damn...\" as he looked back to Elster . The woman seemed to be unfazed by the fact they were crossing a bridge made of light. He inquired, \"Y ou good?\"\n\"Scared shitless, Sar ge,\" She replied, part jokingly , part genuine. Johnson snorted jovially while she added, \"It's not every day we get to roll over a bridge made of hardened photons...\"\n\"Not a bad deduction,\" Cortana replied as the vehicle rolled on through further tunnels. She told Elster , \"That was a bridge made of hard light. It's a rather old concept in terms of our science, but we've never gotten it past any form of theory . The people that built this place certainly had a better understanding of it than we did, if they can just make bridges out of it.\"\n\"Shield barriers employed by the Covenant seem similar ,\" Elster replied, \"Dealt with a couple of them on Reach.\"\n\"The Szurdok Ridge battle,\" Chief cast a glance toward Elster . She nodded, with the Spartan commenting, \"All Spartans wanted to be there, but preparation for another op you were supposed to participate in with us took priority ...\" while Johnson hummed a tune to himself. As they exited out into the second V alley , their radios crackled to life. W ithout a word, Cortana put three more waypoints. Chief hummed and said, \"Elster , take the closest. W e'll head for the other two and evacuate after the last distress signal has been cleared.\"\n\"Roger ,\" She nodded, looking over to the nearest area. After Chief drove her close, she jumped out, her main concern now being R Ving with the Marines and possible Blue T eam Member that was still alive. She checked her gear , reloaded her rifle and pistol and ensured that the plasma rifle still held a char ge, before marching forward beside a creek, her camouflage system active.Please drop by the Archive and comment  to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!"
-    },
-    {
-        "text": "Red Vs Blue: Out In The Fields Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own  at http://archiveofourown.or g/works/51708358 . Rating: Mature Archive W arnings: Graphic Depictions Of V iolence , Major Character Death Categories: F/F, F/M, M/M Fandoms: Red vs. Blue , Halo (V ideo Games) & Related Fandoms Characters: Dick Simmons , Dexter Grif , Michael J. Caboose , Sarge (Red vs. Blue) , Lavernius T ucker , Kaikaina Grif | Sister , Leonard L. Church | AI Program Alpha , Agent Carolina (Red vs. Blue) , Agent Connecticut (Red vs. Blue) , Agent Y ork (Red vs. Blue) , Agent T exas | AI Program Beta , Agent W ashington (Red vs. Blue) , Original Freelancer Character(s) (Red vs. Blue) , Sarah Palmer (Halo) , Carter -A259 | Noble One , Noble Six |\nSPARTAN-B312 , Locus | Samuel Ortez , Original SP ARTAN Character(s) (Halo) , UNSC Army T rooper (Halo) , UNSC Marine Corps\n(Halo) , UNSC Infinity Crew (Halo) , Agent W yoming | Reginald , Franklin Delano Donut , Agent North Dakota (Red vs. Blue) , Agent South Dakota (Red vs. Blue) , John-1 17 | Master Chief , SPARTANS\n(Halo) , Thomas Lasky , AI Program Delta (Red vs. Blue) , AI Program Theta (Red vs. Blue) , The Covenant (Halo) , United Nations Space Command (Halo)\nAdditional T ags: Human-Covenant W ar (Halo) , Project Freelancer , Post-Project Freelancer , War, Depression , Spartans Have Feelings (Halo) , Eventual Romance , UNSC Navy (Halo) , Heavy Angst , Angst , Bittersweet Ending , Military , Military Jar gon, Military Ranks , SPARTAN-III , SPARTAN-IV , SPARTAN-II , SPARTAN Program , Noble Six | SP ARTAN-B312 Lives , Female Noble Six | SP ARTAN-B312 , Male Noble Six | SP ARTAN-B312 , Trench W arfare , Urban warfare , Post-T raumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD , Infantry , Tanks, Guns , Gunshot W ounds , Death , Inferno (La Divina Commedia | The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri) , Inferno References\n(La Divina Commedia | The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri) , Psychological Horror , Psychological T rauma , Emotional/Psychological Abuse , Physical Abuse , War Crimes , Body Horror , Bisexuality , Bisexual Character , Pansexual Character , Asexual Character Language: English Series: Part 1 of Red Vs Blue: Ramifications Stats: Published: 2023-1 1-20 Updated: 2023-12-17 Words: 16,395 Chapters:\n5/100Red Vs Blue: Out In The Fields by Fredders Summary In the late stages of the Human-Covenant W ar, the UNSC finds Spartans in unlikely places..You're In The Army Now The hangar , even the entirety of the 40-story trapezoidal \"Chevalier Base\" as it was now called, was devoid of any of the usual Chorusan Armed Forces uniforms. Now , it was all UNSC marines, ground crew , scattered Spartans, and the like. The only thing not changed were the countless forklifts, trucks, missile racks, and pelicans.\n\"I know this looks a little confusing.\" The UNSC of ficer said, crossing his arms after brushing his short blonde curls to the side \"but since Chorus hasn' t been able to manage on its own for some time since random towns have gone of f the grid and the economy' s started nose-diving. So President Kimball' s seen no choice but to have Chorus made a member world of the United Earth Government.\"\n\"Don' t care, so long as we don' t get caught in any more civil wars.\" Dexter Grif groaned from the back of the group.\n\"GRIF!\" Sar ge flashed a death glare. Y et even if Sar ge's mesomorphic build and scary resemblance to some kind of younger Slyvester Stallone without the mouth deformity would have startled some, Grif paid no attention.\n\"I'm only gonna summarize what you've heard in the briefing room. Y ou'll be investigating one of the towns, finding clues as to what' s happening lately . And as we really have no idea what' s going on, you'll just have to figure things out as you go along. Other teams have tried with other settlements, but have gone dark. And virtually all of our best forces are of f-planet. That leaves you.\"\n\"And what next?\" The voice belonged to a cyan-armored woman with the default GEN3\narmor set and GEN3 Recon helmet. Unmistakably the infamous Carolina Church.\n\"You'll be comparing results with a fireteam of Spartans who, once the Sim T roopers get their augmentations and are ready for active service, will be assigned to the two fireteams we've split you up in.\"\n\"And who are these spartans on this fireteam?\" W ashington inquired.\n\"I'm not at liberty to say . This fireteam carries out too classified work. And another reason is our present company .\"\n\"Meaning?\" W ash asked.\n\"I'm not at liberty to share that, either . Now , get on the pelican. Sim T roopers, you've been recommended for the Spartan Program by some very influential people, so don't make them regret it!\"\nThe Pelican' s doors close as the ten of them board and strap themselves in their seats and its four wing engines ignite as it lifts from the pad and flies out of the hangar . Immediately itturns ninety degrees to the west and enters into a stable cruise while the pilot and WSO kept vigilant for any opposition.\n\"I figured it out!\" Caboose exclaimed.\n\"Figured what out?\" Simmons asked in a what the fuck? tone.\n\"The others are spies! A-are they?\"\n\"Spartans aren' t spies, Caboose.\" T ucker laughed \"you know Master Chief, right? All spartans do what that guy has to do on a normal wednesday .\"\n\"But it' s friday .\" Caboose 'corrected'\n\"You get the point.\"\nSo the reds and blues were left to their own devices, T ucker 's got something blasting in his helmet' s headphones, Caboose hums, Kaikaina whistles, everyone is bored for five long minutes until the Pelican touches down and the engines come to a quiet halt. The door opens and eight of the ten, in their regular Marine armor with their respective colors, hurried out the ramp while W ash and Carolina exit last. The pelican closed its doors and all ten waited for a second before Carolina got a call, to which she told the others to wait a little.\n\"Is this Carolina?\" A video feed appears on Carolina' s HUD. The woman looked to be asian, she wore a MARP AT BDU and kept her brown hair neatly parted with a short ponytail.\n\"Yeah, who'm I talkin' to?\"\n\"Sarah Palmer , Commander of all Spartan operations on the UNSC Infinity . I'm talking to you on a secure link.\"\n\"Okay , Commander . If you have any orders, we can follow them.\"\nPalmer sighed for a moment then said \"that' s good. No concrete plan right now , but I'll be on station while you keep the others in line. I'm patched into all your helmet feeds. Happy hunting, Palmer out.\"\n\"One last thing, Commander . Are-\"\n\"No. Palmer out\"\nCarolina gives a long groan/sigh and gets out a tablet on her legpiece and pulls up a GPS map. She scrolls, following an arrow on the screen until the main objective appears on the map. Carolina copies the coordinate information to each of the others' HUDS.\n\"You see those coordinates? W e're all heading there. Once there, split up to cover more ground. Use the buddy system.\" She says, gesturing for the others to follow .There' s no strict formation when they run along the wide clif fside. W ash knows this will be rectified in due time. God, he thinks, what the hell is going on, and will we come out of it?\nHowever , Wash has been in the military long enough to disregard most of his fear and push on. He, like the others, watched coordinate numbers dwindle until they reached zero.\n\"We're here, someone' s about to get a-\"\n\"Tucker , shut the hell up.\" Grif snapped, his sentence laced with frustration, anticipation, and maybe even fear .\n\"Alright folks, welcome to..V elychenko, it looks like. Now split up and patch me in when you've found something.\"\nIn some weird way , everyone gravitates toward someone that they may even be remotely amicable to. T ucker sprints over to W ash, Caboose and Donut tackle one area of town, Grif and Simmons make the predictable decision of heading straight to the city center , seeing Carolina scan the park with Sar ge, Kaikaina opts to search alone. Velychenko is devoid of inhabitants and littered with concrete on the ground. Paint has fallen off of buildings and the metal used in balconies and fences is twisted and broken of f. Charred pieces of cars litter the streets along with toppled road signs and traf fic lights and paper . In the buildings entire chunks of stairs have fallen of f. Remnants of furniture are skewed across rooms, rooms that have started to become over grown. Apartments and other buildings as tall as nine floors have had entire sections blown of f. This town has been destroyed for a while. This is the same chilling conclusion Simmons comes to and he wonders who caused it. Cause it sure as hell can' t be the Covenant or the Banished, can it?\n\"Snap back to reality!\" Grif hisses. He knows Simmons is staring into space and slaps him.\n\"Guys-\" W ash interjects, running up and joining the two.\n\"You're the one who doesn' t give a damn about anything, why are you telling me to-\"\nTucker enters the room and says \"can the pot not call the kettle black for five se-\"\nGrif fires a shot when T ucker arrives. Both of the reds thought that someone was coming to kill them from behind so when T ucker was midway through his sentence, Grif wasn' t aware and reflexedly fired a shot into the wall.\n\"What the fuck was that, Grif?\" Simmons yelled.\n[PHT OOM]\nThey hear a dif ferent shot hit W ash's shields, a magenta laser streak and everyone ducks for cover .\n\"You could have gotten us all killed!\" W ash scolds the three in sheer concentrated anger as he moves to the window and scans the area, his shields rechar ging.Wash spots a figure on the other side of the town square. A light brown skinned avian creature with a purple battle harness. He presses the trigger on his Battle Rifle once and, followed by a bloody explosion of purple, the thing drops dead.\n\"What are the Covenant doing here?\" W ash hisses, anticipating what' s to come. \"Nevermind that, let' s get outta the building.\" He then points at the empty window frame. All four of them consider jumping out of the window but since three of them are not Spartans, only W ash jumps down while the others take what' s left of the stairs. And just like that, after they exit the building, green, magenta, and blue bolts descend upon them as they scramble for cover . Immediately , the other five run towards the source of the firefight. By the time they are there, the four have done a surprisingly adequate job at confronting the Covenant. Carolina suspects it is due to both dumb luck and the fact that W ash is there. Surely another Spartan or two can even the odds.\n\"WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY?!\" Kaikaina yelled, randomly shooting.\n\"Listen sis, I know you don' t know what color is, so just fuckin' hide until I call you out!\"\nGrif yelled as she ran into the building to sit.\n\"Carolina to Palmer . Situation FUBAR! The cove-the Covenant' s on Chorus! Heavy fighting in Velychenko!\"\nPalmer comes in on the intercom \"we see you, folks. Hang tight, I'll scramble a gunship.\"\nBullets and bolts fire across the town center as the Covenant doubles down. Plasma cannons are set at the front with Jackal snipers and Sangheili a little further back. Grunts fire desperately into the Reds and Blues' general direction. The Reds and Blues' attack is disor ganized, even as their defense is above average. Grif keeps suppressive fire with his LMG, T ucker takes potshots at the Covenant with his DMR alongside W ash and his BR55 Battle Rifle, Caboose and Donut make some use of their MA5C assault rifles, and Sar ge stupidly char ges in with his shotgun.\n\"Sarge!\" Simmons shouts. Sarge doesn' t listen, he blasts a grunt with his shotgun, shouting \"My heroic sacrifice is at hand!\" While throwing a grenade at a pair of Sangheili which seemed to have taken them out.\n\"I'll go after him..\" Carolina groans as she gets a call from Commander Palmer .\n\"Hello?\"\n\"Carolina. ET A 5 minutes. Palmer out.\"\nCarolina continues running as she fires her Battle Rifle into the Covenant soldiers. Her augmented reflexes give her the advantage here as she fires accurately into the windows andwalls. She gets to a Sar ge and yells at him angrily .\n\"Get back with your team, dammit!\"\n\"They'll come here, they'll see their leader and follow him! CHARGE!!\"\n\"To drag your ass back to the line, probably!\"\nSarge is out of ammo, so he whacks the incoming Covenant with his shotgun. A few grunts fall dead, but before he can attempt anything even more moronic, Carolina picks him up and chucks him out the window with such force that he crashes into T ucker and Grif. Carolina' s work retrieving the man is done. She clambers out the window to the ground and runs towards the Reds and Blues, but something knocks her away , crashing into a bush as Wash yells her name. The figures, from a distance, almost look like bipedal turtles in blue battle harnesses. Except they have no mouths, Hunters are a collection of worms shaped to walk bipedally as they use their hexagonal shields to knock someone away or fire a piercing green blast with their lar ge arm-cannons. The Reds and Blues instinctively fire at the cracks in the armor , covering Carolina as she kicks one out. Tucker , by stroke of pure chance, delivers the killing blow by firing at the back of the next one. And all that' s left now is a couple dozen more Covenant. Caboose fires from the grenade launcher in his rifle with abysmal aim, almost as if panicking under the endless streams of gunfire. The first one he fires bounces of f a tree and explodes above the reds and blues' heads.\n\"Idiot!\" Grif yells. Caboose gives a \"HUH?!\" Before firing another which just hits the grass in the park. He puts another in the canister before firing again. And somehow , this one hits one of the plasma cannon crews on the first floor of the building in front of them. The gun explodes and is left in flame as ammunition continues to cook of f.\n\"Hey guys, I pushed a button on my helmet and now along with the gray stuf f, there are white silhouettes. What do I do?\"\nGrif hears Kaikaina from the building next to them. He replies in an irritated tone of voice\n\"that' s your thermal vision. Y ou see those silhouettes shooting at you? Shoot THEM.\"\nAnother source of fire on the reds and blues' side makes herself known as Kaikaina fires into the windows of the building the Covenant soldiers are in. After a few missed shots she' s able to kill a Jackal and the grunt manning the plasma cannon facing her . She ducks when the next one gets on the gun and then she peeks out of her cover and then throws a grenade aimlessly , hoping that would do something, anything at all. The grenade doesn' t hit anything except a tree.Carolina, after getting interrupted by a Sangheili Elite on her fight back to cover , jumps over a pile of concrete and ducks at the incoming plasma fire. T urning to T ucker who happened to be next to her , she gets a recap.\n\"What'd I miss?\"\n\"We're fucking morons is what we are! How we've survived this long is beyond me!\"\nCarolina reloads her Battle Rifle and fires at an Elite about four times before he drops dead and blue blood flies around him. Another one, in an ornate yellow armor set, fires at her to which she ducks and shoots him dead as well. That must be their general or something. She thinks as she reloads. Suddenly missiles fly overhead. The five of them do no damage to the building but annihilate the remaining three plasma cannons. The familiar shape of the Pelican gunship circles overhead before touching down and opening its ramp. Immediately , about four Marines exit the gunship. They set up a half-perimeter to face the Covenant and lay down cover fire. The Reds and Blues then receive a call from the pilot.\n\"Attention, this is UNSC Pelican Echo Four Seven Niner . Any of you who can hear me, sprint towards the Pelican now . We are here to extract you.\"\nCarolina and W ash give each other a glare that, even under their helmets, they know is an expression of disbelief.\n\"Four Seven Ni-\" Carolina begins to ask before she' s cut of f by W ash, who char ges toward the Pelican.\n\"No time! W e gotta get outta here!\"\nAll eight of the other Reds and Blues follow suit and step on board the ramp. The Marines break formation and head inside the Pelican. Everyone buckles their harnesses as the ramp closes and the Pelican lifts amidst a still ferocious torrent of plasma fire.\n\"Four Seven Niner to Infinity Sierra Actual. I have the package, how copy?\"\n\"Solid Copy . You are cleared to land at Hangar Four -Charlie. Fly safe..\"\nFour Seven Niner turns her head to the passengers. She waves at them in an inviting gesture.\n\"Nice to see ya.\"\n\"Ash?\" W ash asks \"wh- what' s going on?\"\n\"A lot of things, to be honest. A whole lot of things. But let' s take it one step at a time.\" She shrugs. \"The first step is to get the remainder of your folks their augmentations, then whatever happens, happens.\"\nCarolina walks over to Ash \"I don' t much like the sound of that.\" She crosses her arms and talks rather irritated.\"That' s because no one knows what to do next. W e don' t know the enemy' s size, logistics, arsenal, concentration, nothing. All we need to worry about is getting the others into the program and getting them ready .\"\n\"And how long will that take?\"\n\"A month, maybe.\"\n\"We never used to have a month..\"\n\"The UNSC does now , and you'll see why .\"\nAs if on cue, the giant, rectangular UNSC Infinity battlecarrier shows up. T en Strident class cruisers surround it with even more Pelicans and Fighters going in and out of the scene.\n\"This is the UNSC' s ace up its sleeve. Armed like no other warship and able to sustain the longest of of fensives. The Infinity has a crew of well over 35k and is protected by highly advanced forerunner shielding.\"\nThe Pelican backs into the hangar and carefully descends into the lar ge hangar . Dozens of platforms hosting Pelicans and Condors are raised and some lowered. Ground crew runs from place to place and carts are driven every which way . The Pelican touches down and Ash lowers the ramp. Immediately the reds and blues un harness and scramble out alongside the Marines who dissipate to god knows where. Immediately , a short-brown haired, middle aged of ficer walks over to them and is accompanied by Commander Palmer . His uniform is a dark gray primary cloth with light gray kevlar and armored shoulder pauldrons.\n\"I'm Thomas Lasky , the Captain of the Infinity . You've already met Commander Palmer here, but after you've gotten your augmentation and training, you'll be back here and report to me, understood?\"\nThe reds and blues nodded, only W ash and Carolina stood at attention and gave him a \"yes sir.\"\nCommander Palmer turned to Lasky and said \"well, they're not exactly proper servicemembers yet, but I'd say we give them a shot.\"\n\"As do I, hopefully they bring something new like those other folks from that program have.\"\nLasky focused on the reds and blues again and said \"follow me.\" As he turned around and walked. Lasky wasn' t like other of ficers. He was relatively younger and understanding. He was inviting, even. But any of ficer is firm. Firm as someone like him could be, he also took responsibility for those under his supervision in matters like their lives and their responsibilities. Commander Palmer echoed many of these same traits yet she was known tobe very protective of her subordinates and distrusted the Of fice of Naval Intelligence. In fact, she distrusted quite a few things. They walked down the halls, avoiding passerby marines and spartans. Doors and signs filled the gray , metal corridors with more layers of metal covering circuitry and piping. Lasky stops at an elevator and punches the 14th floor in the keypad. An elevator appears shortly afterward and they all fit through the doors into the elevator . Two long minutes is all it takes for the elevator to reach the 14th floor .\n\"We're here.\" Palmer says as she gives a slight yawn. Lasky walks and the others follow him along more of the same hallways. It doesn' t take that long to reach the ops room, and the door opens automatically . The reds and blues disperse across the area with the holotable and Lasky leans on one of the computer walls in front of the holotable.\n\"What do ya make of this?\" Kaikaina asks Simmons and Grif. Grif answers \"honestly? I can' t predict jack shit. W e were all in the UNSC before. But that was all when we were losing against the covenant, so I honestly can' t tell ya.\"\n\"Well, except for me. I would say , though, I...think I'm more easygoing? I don' t know if I can make the most of...this, though.\"\n\"Ugh, great.\"\n\"Hey , I can carry my own weight too!\"\n\"Barely\"\nSimmons interjects. \"Guys, cut it out, alright? Palmer 's gone. If I had to guess, she' s getting those guys we were told about.\"\nGrif asks in sheer confusion \"what guys?\"\n\"Ya know , this other team who' s supposed to stick with us?\"\n\"Never heard of them\"\n\"You weren' t paying attention, dumbass.\"\nThey were there for a while. It was a good dozen minutes of speculation, questions, and small talk. The ops room was arranged from wall to wall with of ficers at their terminals next to each other . Along these terminals were maps, data, and messages. The room was a place where missions were planned, airstrikes and artillery were called in, warnings were sent out, and re-supplies were ordered. It was a long, rectangular room with several half-walls separating sections and the holotable was in the middle.Palmer opens the door and arrives inside the room. She takes a deep breath and walks over to the holotable.\n\"The team' s ready to see 'em. Should I bring 'em in?\"\nLasky replies with a shrug \"Sure. Gather the folks. W e're gonna take our next courses of action here.\"\n\"Yes sir .\" Palmer replies and exits the room for a brief moment before coming back out with the ten-member team, lined in a wedge formation. As soon as the ten step into the room, both Washington and Carolina turn numb, riddled with goosebumps and tense muscles as they barely manage to compose themselves in their terrified state.\n\"Well,\" the leader of the team scans the room \"let' s get this show on the road.\"Down Here Chapter Notes See the end of the chapter for notes All ten of them are Spartans. They stand at attention yet with a less stif f aura. Almost all wear Mark VI armor except for the one in the EOD helmet, yet brandish dif ferent colors. One is dark blue and vivid yellow , the taller man next to her is some kind of khaki and white, then there' s purple and neon green, almost magenta and neon green, plain cobalt, black, white, silver and crimson, crimson and white, and then dark brown and white for the one in the EOD helmet. One could never see it under their helmets but they're definitely frustrated there. Neither Wash and Carolina nor the ten facing them had expected to see the other again. And some of them would have preferred to keep it that way . Carolina storms up to the Khaki armored man and, with one swing of her fist, socks him in the visor which causes him to stumble before regaining his composure as he gives an irritated sigh. Carolina takes more steps toward the exit before Palmer grabs her arm from the door and flatly tells her \"stay at the holotable.\"\nCarolina only nods and walks back in, her head down so as to not look at any of the people that were supposed to have been gone years ago. Wash's body is locked in a stif f tensing from head to toe. No matter how hard he tried he couldn' t convince himself it was some sick nightmare. Some of these people were those who' s armor he disposed of, people who he' s left out of mind for far too long. And they come back as the feeling in his everywhere leaves him and his ener gy depletes. And he can tell the same thing is wrong with Carolina, with her sitting in a chair at the corner of the holotable area. The man in the dark purple and green armor steps forward first and clears his throat under his helmet, letting the radio-crackled sound out of his airway and into the room. \"Hello. My name' s Nathan-H350. These are the other Spartans with me. However , I'm conducting the debriefing and will do the vast majority of the talking. Are there any questions?\"\nSimmons raises his hand almost immediately , rapidly asking \"Are you those Freelancers?\"\nImmediately , everyone in the room, from the security to the sonar specialists, snaps their heads to Simmons and looks at him as if he had just said I slept with your wife. North takes a deep breath, and cocks his head \"What do you know about 'em?\"\n\"E- Everything, we're the ones who-\"\n\"Who shut down the project, yes, I've read the reports.\"The Khaki man, with his helmet now of f to reveal a defined face of a well-formed mouth and angular jaw , his broad forehead exposed by short, straight hair raised to fold over . Among his scruf f and done-with-everything demeanor , his most glaring feature was the upside-down-Y shaped scar that ran through where his colorless eye was.\n\"Hey , North, North, man.\" He said \"W e have to get this done, none of.. whatever this is. Back to the war .\"\n\"It's alright, NY . We're not exactly in a rush.\"\n\"Alright. Y ou go on ahead and get them oriented, then.\" He shrugged. \"Just know , whoever that was that asked about Freelancers, that' s one F word you don' t wanna say these days.\"\n\"Why- Why' s that?\" Simmons shuf fled his feet as he blinked rapidly .\n\"Now' s not the best time.\" the lady in black armor said.\n\"Tex?!\" T ucker shouted with a level of confusion rivaling that of when he was told he was\n'pregnant.'\n\"People, please. W e have wars to win. Shut it down.\" Palmer stepped forward and addressed everyone with a snap. \"All of you over there, get back to your consoles.\"\nImmediately , the operators got back to their terminals and then she went on. \"If this squad can't get the sim troopers under control, then I'll do the briefing myself.\"\nNorth sighed and lowered his head, defeated. \"Y es, Ma'am. It might actually be better if you do it anyways, you are HIGHCOM here after all.\"\n\"Alright then, you all take a seat.\"\nThe collection sat down on the stairs behind them. Sarah watched as the Reds-and-Blues all kind of gravitated toward each other in the same area with T exas and Church following them. The Freelancers did the same and kept to each other , opting to swerve way out of Carolina' s, and out of W ashington' s general direction. [W ell, I don' t blame them.. ] She whispered under her breath. She stood at an at-ease position and began. \"Alright, Y ou 'Sim T roopers' are here today upon the orders of Captain Thomas Lasky and myself. As far as the Spartan Program goes, you're going to under go invasive sur gical operations designed for a myriad of enhancements. Then, you'll get your MJOLNIR armor , assigned roles within a given squad, and sent to Advanced Individual Indoctrination. Am I clear?\"\nThe sim troopers erupted into a unified \"YES MA'AM!\"\n\"Alright, so that means you at least know how to act around your CO, I hope..\"\n\"Ma'am..\" Simmons piped up. \"Are we to be augmented today?\"\n\"Did I ask for questions, Spartan?!\"\"No Ma'am.\"\n\"Then don't run your mouth.\" Sarah finished. She began again. \"So, Now that you all have the general overview .. There's a Pelican there that's grabbed everything from your homes, and after it's loaded into the Condor , we'll go to the select orbital station on earth.. Leonidas Station is UNSC's Spartan HQ. It's where Spartans are made and trained.\" She paced back and forth her audience. \"It's where the entire MOS' doctrine is determined.\"\n\"You will be taken to as many weeks of Advanced Individual Indoctrination as this war allows. Then, based on the UNSC's priorities, you'll be deployed to wherever we need you to be.\"\n\"I can tell you for a fact that AII will consist of firefight doctrine on the platoon level, learning how the UNSC' s weapons and related ordinance are used, armor maintenance, the right techniques for vehicle utilization..\" She looked at Caboose with that last one. \"Y ou'll also learn what to do on-base and how . Now' s where you can ask questions, any questions?\"\nImmediately T ucker raises his hand. \"Y ou make it sound like there' s a dif ference between Spartans and, like, the others on the ground. Is there?\"\nSarah snaps a finger and nods with an approving grin. \"Spartans are a rapid deployment force trained to carry out a variety of things both conventional and unconventional. Essentially , you're both a Cavalry Scout, a Medic, a Paratrooper , a Joint Fire Support Specialist, a JT AC, an Infantryman, and only on rare ocassions, an Armor Crewman.\"\n\"..Okay , that answers that.\"\n\"And what' s the deal with those motherfuckers?\" Grif asks.\n\"The Freelancers?\" Sarah replied. \"They've been brought back into the Spartan Program after desertion. Project Freelancer was, in fact, a section of ONI with the intent of having their own contingent of Spartan-II/IIIs. So they've already had their augmentations, from back when they signed into the Project.\"\nWell.. that shatters everything the Sim T roopers knew to be true. Immediately , more questions formulate in their heads. They should have known, There were several huge members of the Reds and Blues. The freelancers fought at an almost inhuman level, and they were far more collected than the Reds and Blues. They should have picked up on it, but then again, what would they even do with that? Immediately , it becomes apparent to the more learned of the Sim T roopers take a millisecond to realize that that' s probably why they never brought it up. Leaving the Sim T roopers to fall under the notion that they were just naturally huge.The Sim T roopers, save for Caboose and Donut, begin murmuring amongst themselves after their quiet gasps and Grif 's loud WHA?!\n\"Yeah.\" Kaikaina muses. \"That tracks.\"\n\"So is that why W ashington, T exas, and Carolina are-were a hell of a lot lar ger than us?\" Grif pipes up, his face contorted into a slightly exaggerated open mouth of confusion. Palmer nods. \"Along with 'Caboose' and 'Donut.'\"\n\"FUCKING WHA T?!\"\n\"I.. don' t know how this is news to you....\"\n\"YOU TWO DIDN'T TELL US?!\"\nCaboose scratches his head \"I kept for getting..\"\n\"It was never important to anything.\" Donut shrugs with a sheepish grin. Tucker whacks Donut upside the head and snaps \"W ell now it' s important!\"\nPalmer sighs deeply , an annoyed scowl growing under her helmet. She asks herself how they're going to win this war with such an immature, squabbling platoon. She takes a moment to remember Fireteam Majestic and how they were something almost similar to this.\n[Nah.. Majestic used to be a bunch of frat boys, but at least they know how to act when needed. W ell, now they do, but.. Oh, fuck it, just get back to the briefing. ]She punches something in on the Holotable and brings up a hologram of the Infinity . She observes it for a second to make sure that it' s working correctly , that it won' t flicker or crap out. And then she begins another exposition.\n\"The UNSC Infinity is the UNSC' s largest ship at around 29k meters long*, 10000 meters wide, with an armament contingent of 10000 Point Defense cannons, 50 long-range MAC cannons complemented by 1000 short-range ones, 8500 M85 AA cannons, 10000 Howler launchers, 20000 Rapier launchers, and 40000 Archer launchers, all Anti-Ship ordinance. Lastly we have 25000 M97 general-purpose Missile Launchers.\"\nGrif looks at the silver -and-crimson armored man \"Hey , why do we gotta know this?\"\n\"This is what everyone gets when stationed here.\" The man says. \"Even the line cooks.\"\n\"Just trying to be realistic here. Do we even need this?\" Grif replies in a confused whisper .\n\"Kinda do, it helps to know every detail in a high-stakes situation. I see where you're coming from, though.\"\n\"Cut the side conversations!\" Palmer snaps \"Anyway . The main engine' s a XR2 Boglin Fields Maneuvering Drive with smaller side variants, with a Mark-X MACEDON/Z Shaw Fujikawa Slipspace Drive. The Infinity is protected by a T itanium-A3 plating system and an MG-44 Dispersal Generator .\"\"That' s a good thing, by the way .\" the man leaned over to Grif before listening further .\n\"Alright, that settles what I can tell you in the CIC, Think it' s best I tell you the rest on the march to the hangar . Single file!\"\nAfter everyone structured themselves a single-file line, Palmer steps in the front and raises her voice to say \"Follow!\" and begins walking out the door . She decides she can for give the rather sloppy formation as they don' t have anything else going for them at the moment. She turns out towards the lar ge corridor with everyone in tow . Immediately , everyone' s eyes dart toward the Marines, the maintenance crew , the A viators, and whoever else. Their eyes dart toward them too. The vast majority hold confused expressions as to why a hodgepodge of humans are wearing plastic imitations of MJOLNIR armor led by very real Spartans.\n\"Hey , is it T ake Y our Kid T o Work day?!\"\n\"What' s she doing here?\"\n\"My roommate was killed when that tower fell!\"\n\"Who are these clowns?\"\n\"Daddy not love you enough?!\"\n\"I didn' t know it was Halloween..\"\n\"Hey , lady in the light-blue. Fuck of f, whore!\"\n\"Mona! Thanks for the save back on Cernanville!\"\n\"Hey , I'm talking to you! Fuck you!\"\n\"Palmer , you gone of f your rocker?!\"\nNone of them paid any mind, however . Palmer continued leading them as she gestured around \"This vessel holds around 150k personnel which can be deployed through a total of\n1000 mass-deployment hangar bays, and 36 horizontal sub-vessel bays, which carry 36\nStrident-Class Heavy Frigates in total.\"\n\"You're telling me..\" Simmons asked, with his voice an octave higher than normal. \"That this ship deploys other ships?\"\n\"This is a Supercarrier , after all. That' s not all. The Infinity boasts 1000 massive Material Deployment Bays that can send down Forward Operating Bases down like clockwork.\"\n\"Wow..\"\n\"They don' t call it a supercarrier for nothing.\"\"I'll say! Y ou seen anything like this, Sar ge?\"\n\"Back in my day , it was just a bunch 'a Halcyon cruisers. But this..\"\n\"Back in my day my ass, Sar ge.\" T ucker laughed. \"Y ou're the same fucking age as us!\"\n\"Shut yer -\"\n\"You'll also find..\" Palmer smiled under her helmet. \"A significant amount of of f-duty facilities. Park dome, bars, lounges, all for the weekends when you have fuck-all to do.\"\n\"Believe me. I was shocked when I first heard that too.\" The blue-and-yellow woman laughed. Y et Carolina knew her laugh wasn' t genuine. The laugh was humorless, a fake. Likely to mask something burrowing deep in there. Amidst the glaring faces and busy hallways, and even the crackles of panels being looked into by maintenance staf f, Palmer walked them down the corridor still. She approached a large blast door and looked into the Facial Recognition Panel. The door slid open and they were greeted by a massive hangar bay .\n\"Welcome to one of the Loading Bays. This is where you'll find columns of lifts, Pelicans, and Condors. The columns are arranged five-by-five by platoon, separated by walls which have those little A TC stations inside them, and personnel lifts for easy transportation to the requisitioned Pelican.\"\nThe Reds and Blues took a while to look at the ground crew and soldiers rushing to-and-fro. There were folks bringing ammo to one Pelican, a crane swinging overhead with a damaged Pelican, a support specialist driving a forklift somewhere, Soldiers of f in the distance shooting-the-shit, and a heralder waving the clearance sticks towards an incoming Pelican. And then there was a Spartan squad in a double-file cutting across Palmer . Everywhere, there was something going on. Palmer had them stop at the Condor . \"The Condor is a stretched Pelican with the normal Pelican carrying capacity of 18 personnel, yet an elongated aft end designed for rapid mass resupply in besieged areas. Y ou'll be using this because all our Pelicans are busy sending soldiers to the new FOBs.\"\nShe cleared her throat. \"Alright, I have a last-minute change. I'm going to get you into your squads now . Your squads are Bravo and Romeo.\"\n\"Romeo's lineup is as follows. Scott-H012' s your Squad Lead, Fryderyk-H250' s the squad Radio-T elephone Operator , Richard Simmons..Y ou're the Designated Marksman, Dexter Grif..Autorifleman, A very-H990: Sniper , I'm making Sar ge Merwick the Sapper out of all of you, Y ou'll have Franklin-100 as a Grenadier , Connie-H1 13 as a Rifleman, Alexandra-H510\nas a Rifleman, and to round it all out, Samuel-B918' s the other Sniper -\"\nShe looked around and did a double take, turning to a Spartan who happened to be close by , she grabbed his focus \"Dalton, hey , where' s Samuel-B918?\"\"Er..He' s-\"\n\"Right here.\" A man in regular , black-and-red colored MK-VII Mjolnir armor , with a GEN3\nScanner helmet, said as he walked in.\n\"Samuel, Y ou're with Romeo Squad. Romeo, fall in, double file!\"\n\"Locus?!\" T ucker exclaimed.\n\"Hi..\"\n\"Cut it out, Samuel, fall in line behind Grif.\"\n\"Yes Ma'am.\"\nThe eleven that Palmer had named gathered themselves in two columns with their hands at their sides. Glancing at each other nervously , Donut, Simmons, and Grif sighed and eyed the crowd of marines that were silently laughing, and some, not so silently . Those that weren' t likely wanted to, however , they were in their respective formations headed for god knows where.\n\"Alright.\" Palmer read of f from the list again. \"Bravo Squad.. Leonard-A787, you're the Squad Lead. Y our R TO is Allison-H630, with a Designated Marksman out of S-4 Lavernius Tucker , the two Snipers on your team, aside from you, are Reginald-120 and Nathan-H350. And I've got two Grenadiers for ya. David-H102 and Carolina-H213. Michael-088' s Bravo' s Sapper . Lastly , I've got two riflemen here by the names of S-4 Kaikaina Grif, and Mona H130.\"\n\"Ma'am, you don' t have an Autorifleman for Bravo.\" Dalton piped up.\n\"Have Michael double, then. Until we can find one.\"\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\"I'm sure. He looks strong enough. Not Chief strong, but strong.\"\n\"Yes Ma'am.\"\nPalmer stood to face the two squads again \"Alright, now that that' s taken care of, I'm gonna introduce you to another guy . Roland, get over here.\"\n\"Hey!\" A small, three-dimensional yellow AI materialized on Palmer 's tablet. An AI dressed in W orld-W ar-Two aviator garb, not dressed in the literal sense, but in the sense that this is Roland' s chosen physical form.\n\"Roland, got some new folks to go along with the ex-Freelancers.\"\n\"Right, those Sim T roopers. Not hard to notice.\"\n\"Ha!\" Palmer gave a small laugh.\"Anyways, I'm Roland, the UNSC Infinity' s Smart AI. I'm the guy that oversees all shipboard functions of the Infinity , E.G the slipdrive and tar geting. Along with providing Strike Group One the information and ordinance they need to fight.\"\nThe small yellow avatar continued. \"So that means authorizing resupplies, indicating where you need to go during an op, telling you when the enemy' s sending in reinforcements, telling you what something does, like a weird fucking forerunner object.\"\n\"Alright, thanks for the introduction.\" Palmer nodded as Roland dematerialized. \"Sorry to make those of you already active Infinity Spartans listen to that same introductory spiel, had to get the Sim T roopers up to speed somehow .\"\n\"No worries!\" North mused.\n\"Alrighty , load into the Condor behind me, if you have any questions, ask me once I reach the station. Dismissed!\"\nThe two new teams broke formation and walked inside the Condor . Everyone took a seat and strapped themselves to the seat harnesses. The engines were heard cranking to full RPM and the landing struts lifted upwards. The Condor rattled a little as it banked to the left and right ever so slightly . The Condor lifted out of the floor and exited the hangar . The two fireteams watched as the Infinity became gradually smaller once clear of the hangar 's shielding. They'd be going to the other side of Earth, the Sim T roopers were to under go extensive sur gical enhancement and likely a month or two of covering every last detail of how they're going to fight, with a contingent of dysfunctional existing Spartans assigned to them throughout their service. It'll be a miracle if they win this war . Chapter End Notes\n*I deliberately upscaled the Infinity to make it able to broadside a CSO Class Supercarrier without getting asskicked to the 10th dimension\n(Mona and A very are two OCs from a friend of mine, CraneRosalia)\n In order of appearance, Michigan, New Y ork, North Dakota, South Dakota, Church, Texas, W yoming, Ohio, ConneticutBe All You Can [Probably] Be Chapter Summary The Reds and Blues are formally inducted into the UNSC, and two legends amongst the Spartan Program are in char ge of them. Chapter Notes See the end of the chapter for notes\n\"Alright you ass-backwards motherfucker . I just have to say what everyone' s thinking. How the fuck are you still alive?\"\nReginald raised an eyebrow through his visor at response to T ucker 's question. Of course this would be asked sooner or later , it was obvious this would happen now . There wasn' t any chance to do so at the briefing so why not humor the little fucker now? Surely he can' t be that stupid. Well, maybe he could, they were all stupid when he was at Blood Gulch.\n\"You see, lad. I am a [Spartan.] I have the most resistant armor systems known to man thanks to its regenerative personal shielding. So if I were to, say , get shot in the head by one round and one round only from a SSR99 Sniper Rifle, it wouldn' t kill me, it'll just cause me to lose my balance and get concussed from falling into my helmet long enough for me to go god knows-where while you all have since moved on.\"\n\"And you were concussed how long?\"\n\"Thirty minutes? Knocked me out quite good, it did.\"\n\"Shut the fuck up!\"\n\"Fine, fine. Fucking hell..\"\nWash then broke his thousand-yard stare to utter two words, two words he had to muster every last bit of strength in him to say and even then it was like his vocal cords had been incinerated. \"And you?\"\nThe ten waywards had turned to him in the blink of an eye, wearing expressions that said is that a tumor on your face? In a whole spectrum from pity to disappointment in him.\n\"Eh.. Mine wasn' t about the shields, it was the armor itself. When I was shot in the chest it didn' t even do a thing to my armor .\" Scott said. \"I landed wrong, got the wind knocked outta me.\"Allison added onto that with \"And once W yoming left, I had to wring him outta the suit and drive us outta there. I never knew where he went after that until we were assigned to the same unit again.\"\nWell. Now there' s a shocker . Wash should have known better . When all of them were augmented, all fifty of them, and inducted into the 'Project Freelancer\" wing of the Spartan Program, they were given MJOLNIR armor . MJOLNIR armor , for heaven' s sake! That shit' s the most protective collection of metal humanity' s ever created! So why didn' t he nor Carolina retain even a sliver of conviction that they were still out there?\nWhy?\nwhy?!\nWHY?!\n\"Hey W ash, remember when you tried to blow me up with fusion coils?\" Alexandra spat.\n\"God, do I ever , Alexandra..\"\n\"Looks like you didn' t remember the fact that a Spartan can take three Mkaekgolo Assault Cannon blasts and still live! HAH!\" Alexandria then immediately grumbled \"Albeit, you'd be sorta fucked afterwards, but still alive.\"\nWash sighed. Maybe he [could] humor the woman. \"And the explosion was equivalent to how many?\"\nAlexandria, with the most shit-eating grin ever , laughed. \"112. However , you did manage to make enough of an explosion that alerted nearby Fire engines that had the time to spare to take a lady to the nearest E.R, so good job!\"\nBut that wasn' t gonna be the end for Alexandra' s rant. Oh no, it was only just beginning.\n\"I've got stretch marks from how much I had to be debrided and grafted, ya hear? Like, 40%\nof my body is littered with pale stretchmarks. DO YOU KNOW WHA T IT'S LIKE T O LOOK IN THE MIRROR NOW?!\"\n\"Sis, please..\" Nathan sighed. \"Y ou- you need help..\"\n\"SHUT THE FUCK UP!\"\n\"DAMMIT WE'LL HA VE THIS DISCUSSION LA TER! Anyway , me and my sister received the worst of the injuries while we were out. Me? W ell, after getting stabbed up the chest by The Meta, I had to go and drive myself over to the nearest hospital and get an entirely new heart. Bleeding out while driving, can you imagine that?\"\n\"That' s not actually far -fetched..\" W ash mused.\"Mhm. And since we're sur gically enhanced, we got on our feet faster than normal folks. After being dischar ged, uh, one of the UNSC' s MRAPs picked us up and we kinda got back to Spartan-ing.\"\n\"Wait what?\"\n\"I mean, we were still Recovery Agents, remember? Y ou, me, and South?\"\n\"Call me Alexandria, you FUCKING-.\"\n\"PLEASE, Simmer down! Y ou can' t keep doing this!\"\n\"And Connie?\"\nConnie poked her head out from her sulking. \"Like what Scott said, the undersuit' s resilient, but not invincible. Remember when I had that axe thrown into my stomach? It only penetrated because it had enough force to. Even then I was able to get my armor of f once crash-landing and then I was good to laser -bind my abdominal wall back together .\"\nFryderyk jutted in after clearing his throat, tapping his foot against the steel floor of the Condor . \"S.A.R teams were dispatched immediately after the MOI' s signal went dark. They caught a glimpse of me in the halls, with shrapnel sticking outta my everywhere, and airlifted me back to where I could carry on regular service.\"\n\"Me? Guess I just drifted for a while.\" Mona shrugged, if the expression on her face were any more dead, she'd be a skeleton. \"I managed to walk out of the smoldering wreck and drove to a nearby Sim T rooper outpost where they were receiving an airlift. One stolen Pelican later , and the rest might as well be history .\"\n\"I came along with her!\" A very let out a faint smile. Wash just had one more question to beg. \"So where did you all go, then? If North and So Nathan and Alexandra immediately went back into the service after their injuries, Where'd the rest of you go?\"\n\"Oh. W ell, see..\" Allison began. \"I'd gotten myself a house down on some remote corner of UNSC space, one of the fringe colonies. It' s not like I was gonna use it in the near future so I just gave Scott, Alexandra, Nathan, Fryderyk, A very, Reggie, and Mona the address and by some miracle they managed to not kill each other while I had myself busy with Blood Gulch.\"\nCarolina sunk her head, unable to give Allison a steely look like she used to. She was just floating in her thoughts as her reality slowly crumbled in on itself. \"And.. That begs the question of how you and Leonard survived. Y ou know , your deletion.\"\n\"Ah.\" Leonard nodded, fiddling with the power button for his Sniper Rifle' s scope. \"That' s rather above your security clearance at the moment. Don' t worry , you should have an answer within the coming days.\"\n\"That' s.. A relief?\"\"Better be..\" Allison sighed. Grif yawned, slamming his head against his headrest as he was forced to listen to the fucked up band reunion. \"Don' t think for a second, W yoming, that we're your friends now . You tried to kill us ya selfish cockbite.\"\n\"Ahaha..\" Reginald silently laughed awkwardly . \"I'm not expecting anything. Anything, except for the day an Elite' s Ener gy Sword grants me perfect release from existence.\"\n\"Sweet Jesus, Reggie..\" W as all Allison could react with. Immediately one thing became clear to W ashington and to Carolina. They'd lied to themselves. Maybe to each other but more importantly to themselves. The fact that Spartans could take the most severe physical punishments imaginable and still stay standing was common knowledge. Of course, they weren' t unkillable, but they were still sheer forces of nature. So why didn' t they remain convinced that these former colleagues of theirs were still alive?\nHad they convinced themselves that these ten were dead because searching for them would be just too hard?\n\n\"Lavernius T ucker , Dexter Grif, Kaikaina Grif, Sar ge Merwick, Richard Simmons. Fall in next to each other on those yellow markers! Rest of you, keep within ten meters of your Pelicans!\"\nThe five that were called lined in next to each other as Palmer had instructed. She scanned the awkward nature of her audience carefully . She knew at that moment she would be needing to choose her next words very carefully in order to retain their commitment to the UNSC. If they had any , that is. Amidst the confused glares of various people in the hangar , she clicked her tongue and sighed.\n\"I need you five to understand something. Y ou are no strangers to extreme physical punishment. Which I can guarantee will happen after these operations are over . I've read your files, you were extremely ef fective in the Chorus Civil W ar, and the Meta Crisis, right?\"\nSimmons raised his hand. \"Permission to speak, Ma'am?\"\n\"Go ahead, Candidate.\"\n\"We're not soldiers. The reports are [bullshit.]\"\n\"Yeah!\" T ucker added onto Simmons. \"W e're a bunch of fucking retards, what do we have that you want?\"\nPalmer snapped her fingers and smiled under her helmet, a smile coated with that Sarah Palmer -Smugness that draws respect and admiration from those she works with. \"The reports\n[aren' t] bullshit. Even with your rather .. unstructured nature, everyone says that you'reundeniably creative when situations get desperate. Not only that, but you fall back on each other in seamless cohesion too. Y ou have the perfect foundation for soldiers.\"\n\"But..\" Kaikaina groaned. \"This isn' t our war! Ma'am, we were just dragged in here!\"\nSarah locked eyes, rather visors, with Kaikaina in an intent and knowingly intimidating fashion. \"This is your war .\"\n\"How the fuck you figure that?\"\n\"I want you to know something.\" Palmer crossed her arms. \"This is the Covenant you're fighting. A collective nation of several species that have called for humanity' s extinction on the grounds that doing so is holy and will elevate them to divine ascendance.\"\n\"The fuck?\"\n\"Make no mistake, this is your war . They will raze your cities, annihilate your homes, and massacre you and those you love for the sake of their gods. Are you scared? Good, you should be. Y ou've seen the destruction they can bring, and they will bring it. They did it once and they're poised and ready to do it again.\"\n\"`s why we moved so many times when I was a kid. Every time those fuckers came within the next system over , we high-tailed it outta there.\" T ucker laughed as he reflected on the times he and his parents changed homes.\n\"I mean.\" Kaikaina shrugged. \"Y ou're at least somewhat heroic. Y ou're cut out for this.\"\n\"Well, you all are my fucking family now , now that my mom and dad are fucking ashes. So I'm not doing any wrong by any of you.\" T ucker mused. He figured that if there' s anything he can do with his billet, it' s making sure that the Reds and Blues he sees as his siblings stay close to him. The desolation at V elychenko was reason enough for T ucker to go ahead with the life of a Spartan. Everywhere he looked back then there were Covenant bastards running around with genocidal intent. Through the small opening in the Pelican' s cargo door T ucker saw nothing left of green, or blue, or red, or any color that wasn' t black and gray and brown from the scorching the Covenant wrought on a race that hadn' t done [anything] to them.\n\"It's worse out there, isn' t it? It' s worse than what we saw at V aly..Valen..wherever , and the glimpses we got outside the Pelican, right?\"\nPalmer nodded. \"It is, It' s a hell of a lot worse. And the Covenant has every intent on making it worse, not just where you went, but across Chorus, across all of the UEG' s colonies and they'll even try to take a round two at Earth itself.\"\nShe took of f her helmet to reveal her focused, soul-piercing gaze comprised of light freckles, a narrow and long mouth, and obviously asian blue eyes that she had swept her A-line bangs away from earlier , making it so that her bangs parted to the left of her forehead enough to not block her left eye.\"I want you to think about your own why . I know each of you has been af fected by the Covenant directly in one way or another . So if you have any repressed griefs or memories, now is the time and the chance to get your closure.\" She tapped her foot. \"\"Don' t let the new alliance with the Arbiter fool you, the Covenant is still at lar ge.\"\nGrif sighed as he looked backwards on his time in the Army before he was caught up in all this red-and-blue shit.\n\"Alright, I'm in. T ucker?\"\n\"Fuck yeah!\"\n\"Kaikaina?\"\n\"You're not getting rid of me again, I'm tagging along.\"\n\"I missed killing aliens..\" Sar ge smiled under his helmet. Simmons didn' t hesitate to shout \"YES MA 'AM!\"\nThe thing is, after the fiasco with T emple and his whole schtick, life had become rather stagnant for the Reds and Blues. And, well, every attempt at doing something new had gone horrifically awry . [So maybe altruism actually sounds kind of like a sweet deal.] The entirety of their lives had thrown something completely dif ferent every day up until returning back to their valley on Iris, it was a fact they'd grown to like, more or less. So if being heroes was what could get them out of the miserable state they found themselves in. Then sign them the hell up.\n\"Good. I'm gonna call the rest over here and then get your Platoon leads in here too.\"\n[Oh, great, more mystery people.] W as their collective thought.\n\"SQUADS ROMEO AND BRA VO, F ALL IN!\" Sarah barked. The 22 of them fell in line at a hurried pace, quickly straightening themselves out into the foot-markers. Their hands moved to their sides straight and stif f. And Sarah thought the five un-augmenteds professionalism was weirdly dead-on. Maybe they'd make great Spartans after all.\n\"You will have one Platoon lead and its R TO. The two you are about to meet are behind this door behind me.\"\nShe continued on.\n\"The man and woman you are about to be introduced to are two of some of the UNSC' s most dignified Spartans. Their exploits at Reach, Earth, and Requiem are nothing short of remarkable. And that' s only together . He' s been everywhere, from New Constantinople, Leonis Minoris, Miridium, Actium, Arcadia, Reach, T ribute, Earth, you name it. He' s even won the Medal of Honor and been made a Major .\"Sarah cleared her throat. \"She' s the work of another one of ONI' s kooky ideas, a Spartan kept out of sight and out of mind for most of the Spartan-III program. Y et once she was made known she has become more than exemplary as a soldier in her own right. I'm talking about a woman who, despite never having graced massive frontal assaults until Reach, has adjusted as well as anyone can want her to.\"\nShe turned around to dial the door 's keypad and the blast doors flung open. Revealed to the scene were two Spartans. The man was clad in a GEN3 armor set with a COMMANDO helmet that was added with an AIR WOLF helmet brim and COURIER ear attachment, CQC shoulders, and a handheld radio apparatus on his chest. He had an unmistakable dark blue center with gray on the limb armor . The lady also had the standard issue GEN3. She wore an all-red plating that sported a MK V(B) helmet, GUNGNIR shoulders, UNICOM' s standard T AC/RECON rig, and a leg carrier for spare grenades.\n\"Their names.\" Sarah started. \"Are Carter and Antonia. Carter -A259 and Antonia-B312. These are the two who you will answer to from now on as a cohesive unit in the UNSC' s Unified Ground Command. Carter , Antonia, fall in behind me.\"\nThe two walked over to the foot-markers behind Sarah, and kept their hands at their sides, sizing up the crowd. They'd already met the vast majority before.. Reginald, Michael, Franklin, Scott, Mona, Fryderyk, A very, Allison, and Leonard. But Lavernius, Dexter , Kaikaina, Sar ge, and Richard were strangers to them. They'd have to see how it all played out.\n\"AT EASE!\"\nThe formation had their hands behind their backs within the half-minute.\n\"Welcome to day one of the rest of your lives.\"\nChapter End Notes\n(Author 's note: Antonia' s another one of Crane's OCs)Ow, the front of my head! Ow, the front and back of my everywhere!\nAnd so it was, the consent forms had been signed on the un-augmented folks' part. No sooner than they were wheeled of f to their augmentation sur geries were the rest of Bravo and Romeo assigned to a stint of shore leave. They'd need to be integrated back into the platoon for the final stages of Advanced Individual Coursework, but respite was something that was sorely needed from the tumultuous day that was handed to them. The lockers on the station were only temporary , and they were to pack up once they were to be deployed back to Chorus, but it was better than, well, nothing. Carolina gave a deep sigh upon looking at the pictures in her locker . She had put a few clothes there, some rather important mementos, and the DataT ablet she used for reading. And as for the pictures, was one of all 50 of the Freelancers, one of her and New Y ork, several of the Reds and Blues, and some family photos. She slammed the locker shut with her head low and her eyes closed in deep recollection. She blinked them open and turned to her right.\n[WHAM]\nMona' s knee had graced her face in a nanosecond. The impact rattled her brain and sent drops of blood trickling down onto the floor as the rest of the platoon looked in confusion.\n\"That was for my Brother .\"\n[WHAM]\n\"That' s for my [friends].\" A fist had rammed into her cheek at breakneck speed.\n[WHAM]\n\"That' s for North!\" An uppercut to the chin.\n[WHAM]\n\"And that' s for me.\" Mona finished with a backhand that sent Carolina launching of f her feet only to pummel back down onto the ground head-first. The entirety of her face was now purple, red, and yellow . Her mouth and nose were leaking blood like bats outta hell and all she could do was watch as the ten started holding Mona back and yammering about what just happened. Church and W ash hoisted her back on her feet as the rest had been loudly conversing, almost arguing, about whether Mona' s actions just now were justifiable. It didn' t sound like anyone thought they weren' t, moreso trying to find out if there was any scenario in which it wasn' t. The only outliers seemed to be W ash, Antonia, Church, Caboose, Donut, Locus, and Carter .\"Hey , uh, we'll take ya to the Medbay ..\"\n\"Thanks, W ash....\" W as all the battered woman could muster , even if only weakly . She scanned the crowd, with her eyes locked in on one man in particular , Scott. The man looked her dead in the eye with a blank expression that hid agitation around the corners, and shook his head slowly . Shaking his head in disapproval with his head held low and arms crossed. Why would he of all people not take the chance to have hoisted her up along with W ash and Church? She could have sworn he loved her to bits. Carolina was walked to the Medbay and the rest continued catching up as normal. The locker room was more long than it was wide, with a patterned gray and silver carpet, wall mounted standard-issue drab lockers that had stripes in the middle to signify everyone' s colors, and silver steel walls that sported a digital clock in the middle along with a screen.\n\"Alright.\" Antonia put her hands on her kneeguards as she sat down. \"If I ever see any of that happening again, I'm filing a D.A.R. Am I understood?\"\n\"YES MA 'AM!\"\n\"Good. Dismissed.\"\nThe air in the room of emotional downward spiral wasn' t limited to Carolina. Everyone had been looking at pictures from before this day . Inside the room were secrets best kept hidden, memories best for gotten, but the thing about memories is that one can' t manually for get something. One can' t even try to because all that does is burn it further into the mind. Inside every locker was a photo of a pet, friends, family , loves, pictures that told more to the holders than they'd ever physically show to someone who wasn' t there. Ohio took out a pack of Cigarillos and lit one up, filling the area with haze as he inhaled it and let the milk-chocolate flavoring hit his tongue and stayed there, drawing in a big inhale to shove more of it in there for longer . He blew its haze back into the air and sat on the metal bench, tapping his foot as if waiting for something. Even if that something would never come, he still kept checking his wristwatch anyway . One could tell if things were bad if even Pennsylvania was sulking. The other 50 Freelancers had regarded her as a positive gal who tried to make friends with everyone and straighten out any dif ferences but here she was just a shell. She was just looking, looking at the locker door as she laid fetal position on the bench with a hundred-yard stare, eyes wide as the galaxy itself and a pursed mouth. Well. It was safe to say that none of them knew how to spend their leave. It was a room so silent you could swear nobody was actually in there.\n\"Did I just see Carolina get beat up..?\" Donut whispered under his breath. And then, South started snickering.\"Heh.. heh heh heh heh heh....\"\n\"Alexandra?\" North asked.\n\"That bitch.. Finally got what was coming to her! Little fuckmunch actually got told 'no' for once!\"\nOnly Fryderyk started laughing with her .\n\"Don' t you see? The little bitch that constantly reminded us that she was too good for us finally got put in her place! Good on Mona for shutting her the hell up!\" South continued.\n\"Shut the fuck up.\" Mona snapped. Alexandra took no heed and only continued laughing along with Ohio while the rest of the former Freelancers, New Y ork, T exas, North Dakota, Caboose, and Donut, along with Antonia, Samuel, and Carter , looked on in confusion or sulked as with Pennsylvania, Michigan, and W yoming.\n\"C-come on..\" Caboose began. \"She' s a really good pers-\"\n\"NO.\" was the collective reaction by the former Freelancers.\n\"Why?!\" Caboose pleaded.\n\"Listen, man.\" Ohio nodded. \"A lot' s happened since you 'disappeared' from the program.\"\n\"Wait, hang on, what?\"\n\"I'll link you the records after you get your Myelin Sheath repairs.\"\n\"...The what?\"\n\"Don' t worry about it.\"\n\"Yeah.\" South smirked. \"Guy' s right, you should shut the fuck up!\"\n\"THA T'S ENOUGH!\" Carter barked. He stood up and put his hands on his hips. Immediately the room turned to look at his stern, angled face with a soft stubble, lar ge eyebrows, and black T ommy-Shelby hair . \"Everyone. Back to your bunks. Now .\"\n\"YES SIR!\"\nSomewhere in the distance, Fryderyk could be heard telling Alexandra \"Hey , you know Iowa, er, Caboose.. He' s just a kid..\"\nAntonia got up from her seat and Carter soon followed her . She kept her head focused on the ceiling trying to find some way not to look at the sulking crowd. No one told her that being human relied on not just feeling things, but reacting to when other people feel things. It wassomething she was actively trying to work on, but just this once she'd allow herself to indulge in ignorance. So she did what she did best, change the subject.\n\"You been hearing the reports coming in already?\"\n\"Uh..\" Carter scratched the back of his ear . \"The After -Actions? Y eah. But which ones?\"\n\"The ones from the Spartans, there's a lot of them, too.\"\n\"Wait.\" Carter mused. \"Why would there be 'a lot' of A.A.Rs from Spartans when this campaign's only less than a week in?\"\nAntonia raised an eyebrow , not sure she was following. \"I'm sorry?\"\n\"There's just no precedent for this. Not even-\"\n\"Don't say it.\"\n\"You know what I mean, though. It was all more protracted than this. The reason there were so few After -Action Reports was because barely anything was left finished.\" Carter was about to continue until Antonia cleared her throat, slowly shaking her head with a Really?\nFace.\n\"You alright?\" He decided to ask as his brow furrowed in creeping worry . Antonia sighed. \"Y ou know what Reach was for me..\"\nCarter found himself unable to blame her , not like he ever could, Reach had been a life altering experience for him too. It had only been a year since then, and he was yet to find out if the alteration was one for the better or one for the worse. He could almost swear he and Antonia had gone through the same clusterfuck of explosions and mental instability , if not for the fact that he wasn' t the one who had been worked to the bone by the spooks at ONI since he was 8. He made a mental note to himself to read up on Project: Splinter and how the test subjects there were instructed compared to what UNICOM did. Having tabled that thought, Carter then went back to his trying to figure out why The Covenant were acting so dif ferent from what' s been documented for half a century . They'd always either Plasma the planet, throw massive amounts of cannon-fodder at the UNSC until there was a slight change in the casualty count, or both if they weren' t on a time crunch. Never was there a fourth option. Oh.\n\"Antonia, we're being fucking toyed with is what we are.\"\n[Why?!\nWhy am I subject to this?!\nNo, I can't say I didn't expect this.. Palmer told us all how much it'd hurt. The scars we'd have.. W e gave our consent, we willingly did this to ourselves And, why can't I move? That was.. What was it? They called it \"Musculoligamental Reconnection.\" The Sur geons would rearrange our joints for whatever reason. Oh, I remember now .. This is to make our joints stronger , our tissue denser . We can lift cars with minimal strain, or at least we should. It also says our lactase recovery time is shorter , whatever that means. They tell us we're set to be significantly taller , having been subject to what' s called a\n\"Catalytic Thyroid Growth Horomonal Implant\" that drastically increases our height and athletic constitution. we're significantly more athletically built with no ability to grow overweight. Estimated height should be at around 7'0 with muscle weight in the 300-pound range. And the.. \"Carbide Ceramic Ossification..\" That' s what injects our bones with T itanium that binds to the bones and makes them nigh-unbreakable. So that' s why my bones feel like they're currently shattered and scorched.. What' s also neat is the presence of an infused \"Superconducting Nervous Fibrication\"\nmaterial that binds to our nerves' dendrites and increases the limit to how fast bioelectrical signals can travel to and from the brain. This serves many purposes, to enhance our reflexes, creativity , intelligence, and memory all by 300% each.. and give you a searing headache post op. The \"Occiptical Capillary Implantation\" is performed via grafting new blood vessels to the eyes. Thus, we have better night vision, color perception, and shade dif ferentiation by a dozen magnitudes. Who knows? This might come in handy one day , as soon as my eyes stop scorching into my brain. The docs weaved this \"Synthetic Cardiac polythread W eave\" that makes our hearts pump more blood at a faster rate than we could ever dream of. W e can run faster , run longer , lift faster , lift more.. And also suf fer from a crushing, oh so crushing chestache. Our or gans have been directly implanted with the same, too. Our digestive system can absorb more nutrients from things, our lungs can intake more oxygen, we can filter far more toxins from the blood in our liver thus increasing the amount it takes for us to even get tipsy .. They've also done the same for our reproductive and urologic systems. Like our Kidneys. The threading in the Kidneys makes them accurately and tirelessly keep up with the sheer amount of waste we Spartans produce. To top all this of f we're implanted with replacement Neural Interfaces that sit at the base of our skull. These little portholes allow us to insert an AI chip into there and interface with it. I guess the only thing flashy about it right now is how stif f my neck feels at the moment, fucks sake..And then there' s the Genetic reworking. The \"Adrenal Thermal Metabolase\" increases adrenal hormone response under physiological distress.. This is supposed to give us clearer reaction time and ground ourselves to our original intent in a given situation and then lets us hit faster and harder because our biological safety thresholds have been scaled up. Apparently , this kind of thing underwent a lot of reworking before being approved.. And even though we have higher intelligence, the \"Cyclo-Synthetic Neural T ransmission Gene\" is intended to give us exponentially faster learning speeds, so maybe this coursework won' t be as long as we thought. I'm a details person, this might work out in my favor .\n\"Microfibrin Spindlase\" dramatically boosts our clotting factor . The wound-suppression and clotting of vascular breaches is said to be nigh-instant. I doubt I'll have to be worrying about bandaids anymore..\n\"Telomerase Encasement\" Is the infusion that gives us cell immortality , allowing for perfect copies of our cells to occur without incident. Normally , the T elomerase gets shorter and shorter and shorter with each copy , but ours doesn' t. Now our cells can replicate without incident. They say this adds around 200 years to our lifespan as well.\n\nThere' s anti-rejection gene therapy too, but that was a given, who needs to even be explained that?\nI.. I feel so tired.. But how? All I did was sleep for the week-long procedure. Is it the strain on my body? How excruciating this is? What is going on, where am I?\nThe room' s bright.. T oo bright. I don' t know if that' s due to my jacked-up eyes or the fact that I only just now opened them. It looks like I'm in some kind of recovery ward, although I can't tell.. It's not like I can swivel my head and see all the machines prodding at my body . I can certainly feel them, though. And it feels awful. I feel helpless.. I gotta see what I look like!\nI'm gonna swivel my eyes to the sides to see what scars I can.... Oh, fuck. That stings. I can' t do that, that' s fucking agonizing. No.. No I have to, cause if I don' t move now , I might not move again, or something, I don' t know . All I know is I gotta take that first step. I'm an adult! I can turn my eyes!\nSo turn..TURN!\nTURN!!\nFUCK IT HUR TS!!\nTURN!!\nOW!!\nOh, wow . I must really be battered.. There' s the edge of some scar on the side of my chest, and some lines sticking outta my arm. That' s fucking terrifying. And that' s only for lack of a better word, because I'm not sure if there' s a word in the English language to convey what this looks like. SWIVEL BACK SWIVEL BACK!\nSWIVEL BACK!!\nSWIVEL BACK, DAMN YOU!!\nGOD FUCKING DAMMIT!!\nEyes are centered again, good. I think I'm just gonna close them again. That feels more comfortable. I'd like that a lot.. FUCK Even closing my eyes hurts.. Man, this is depressing. This really hurts my feelings. Did I expect anything else, though?\nDid I?\nOh, of course I did. I wasn' t paying as much attention as I should have. Why did I think I'd be dif ferent? That I'd stake it out and not feel anything?\nBecause that' s who I am. I'd grown so complacent over the years that I, I.. I thought I could handle anything. Everything. And I guess this is that attitude biting me in the ass, huh?\nWell, biting me everywhere. But I digress.I can' t let myself become like this again. I can' t let myself think I'm special by default. Because that attitude is what lands you in situations you might never be able to get out of. I realize that this is something I can and will get out of.. But I still have to do better . I've grown so much, and I'm yet to grow so much more. I have to, I have to grow . We grow or die. Grow , or die.. Everything I thought had meaning back then is insignificant now . Insignificant compared to this, to the fact that they'll send me and my friends into the gates of hell itself where havoc is all that surrounds. Insignificant to the fact that this is the most pain I have ever been in.. It gets easier after this, though. Right?\nRight?!\nGod I hope so.. Well, haven' t I always pulled through? Even when I didn' t want to? Let' s see. What have I been through?\nWyoming.. The Meta.. Chorus.. Uh.... Um.. OH! T emple! Y eah!\nAnd now we're fighting The Covenant. A hyper -advanced theocracy of several species that all want us dead. They'll incinerate us and our friends and our homes for their gods. They'll turn forests into dust and dirt. They'll turn landscapes into battlegrounds.. Our colonies will drop of f the map, millions, no, billions will be lost and they won' t stop until we're all dust and echoes. What the fuck. We have to go through with this. We currently are.. There' s no time to whine, or grouch about what we have to do. This is our obligation. This is our job.So.. There' s only one thing we can do. We get ourselves together . We're gonna get ourselves in order and win this thing. But right now it fucking smarts. Oh.. Oh god does it sting.. My fucking god.. I.. I.... How much more of this can I take? How much longer do I have to put up with this? A day?\nA week? A month? When will this fucking end? It has to end sometime, yeah?!\nI guess I shouldn' t care, and yet I do. I care a lot, even though I wish I was strong enough not to. Cause look at me. I can' t speak, I can't move, I can' t blink.. I'm crippled for the time being. This was supposed to make us stronger yet I'm not seeing a noticeable improvement. All I see is searing fire in every fiber of my being. Did.. Did the Freelancers have to go through this? Did the other ones? What were their names.. Carter , Antonia, Locus, Palmer , you know .. Those guys. Mother . Fucker . Well, just stake it out for now . Let it run its course. T rying to fight it'll do no good.. In fact, it'll only make things worse. And I wanna get outta this shit as soon as possible. So I just gotta.. Sit around and do absolutely fucking nothing! That' s, admittedly , what I'm best at. It'll go away in a matter of days, they'll see!\nHeh.. Heheheheheheheheh.... Sweet Jesus.. I might be writing checks my body can' t cash here. Well, I really can' t do anything else, can I? No, I can' t. I'm an adult. I'm not a kid. I'm not helpless at all. I'm not helpless or clueless anymore. I'm in my mid-twenties, I can roll with the flow . I already have been all my life, and I like doing it. But this is where I really have to put it into practice.The pros outweigh the cons, don' t they? Because now I'm one of the UNSC' s most capable soldiers. I can lift more, run faster , go farther than the rest. I'll have a suit of steel that grants me everything I'll need to change the tide of the war . I'm a goddamn killing machine!\nYa know .. I think I might be more cut out for this than I thought....]Cry havoc, let slip the dogs of war Chapter Summary The newly christened Spartan squads' baptism by fire.\n\"Victor Actual, Return to base immediately . We are under heavy assault from Covenant armor and infantry .\"\n\"Victor Actual. Return to base immediately . We are under heavy assault from Covenant armor and infantry .\"\nEveryone in the Oryx suddenly jerked themselves alert. Carter understood the of ficer's words perfectly , but that' s not why he asked him \"Say again, Lieutenant?\"\n\"Victor Actual. Return to base immediately . We are under heavy assault from Covenant armor and infantry .\"\n\"Alright, Lieutenant. W e're on our way .\" Carter shut the portable radio of f and looked at the two Oryx Infantry Fighting V ehicles behind him. He then alerted the drivers to reroute back to the main gate of Fort Musashi and they immediately began swiveling back around in that direction. The guns along with the chassiss swiveled ninety degrees back to where they came from with Romeo and Bravo squad in the passenger seats. Romeo and Bravo together made up V ictor Platoon, with Carter -A259 as their lead and Antonia-B312 as his XO. The individual leads of Romeo and Bravo were, respectively , Scott H012 and Leonard-A787. Romeo and Bravo had gone through four weeks of around-the clock indoctrination to integrate the five previously un-augmenteds into the Spartan service. They were now under UNICOM' s joint command, able to be assigned to any unit that needed them be they Marine or Army . For now , though, they were detatched to the UNSC Army' s\n10th Mountain Division. Carter hit the Push-T o-Talk on his station' s radio. \"Romeo Actual, Bravo Actual, call out any OPFOR you see. I want their bearing and approximate number .\"\n\"SIR!\"\n\"Good. Let' s keep heading onto Musashi. W e can ill af ford another wrench in our plans to wrestle back control of the southern direction.\"\n\"Church.\" Scott stared out of the observation window . \"You look out the left, I'll watch the right.\"\n\"Great.\"The two swiveled the turrets around to opposite directions and began regularly swinging them from their respective direction to the front and behind of the formation. Regular looks at the FLIR screen was key to finding something any of them missed. They could miss anything, be it a Cannon nest, a Mortar formation, an A T squad, or even something like a Jackal sniper .\n\"Sir, I know I'm supposed to call out any Covenant I see, but at what range does that become a moot point?\" Church sighed. Carter cleared his throat and hit the Push-T o-Talk. He'd admittedly been waiting for this question. \"Anything you can' t reach, mark with the T arget Designator . The Savage W ind Carrier 's right above us and good to provide Bombardment support.\"\n\"[YES] SIR!\"\n\"Romeo Actual, what do you have?\"\n\"On the, uh, northeast we've got a wall of Mobile Lookouts bearing 35 degrees. Looks like around six of them. No vehicles, just Infantry and MG.\"\n\"Oh.\" Carter blinked in surprise.\n\"Hm?\"\n\"They're picking of f our forces below . I want that outpost destroyed immediately . Park here and get it done.\"\nImmediately the two Oryxes halted their drive and out came Connie and Mich with SPNKR launchers in hand. The two darted in front of the vehicles to run to the edge of the clif f and kneel in front of the rocks all the while setting the spare rounds down.\n\"Bravo 1-4, good visual on OPFOR.\"\n\"Romeo 1-2, good visual on OPFOR.\"\n\"Roger , fire for ef fect.\" Carter 's voice came into their ears.\n\"BACKBLAST CLEAR?\"\n\"BACKBLAST CLEAR?\"\n\"Clear!\" Carter yelled.\n\"FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!. FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!\"\nImmediately the rockets shot of f into the horizon and spiraled toward two of the six platforms. The Covenant had little time to notice before the platforms went up in balls of purple and blue flame, sending the remains flying in every direction.\n\"Romeo 7 to Romeo Actual, we have incoming fire on the Northeast, over .\"\"Solid copy , 7.\" Scott turned the channel over to Carter . \"Romeo Actual to V ictor Actual.. We've got hostile activity in the AO, over .\"\nCarter acknowledged and watched the firefight from the front. The fact that there weren' t any Shade T urrets perched was kind of out-of-the-norm. That' s never been the case with The Covenant before. When they construct their \"walls\" of firepower , they always bring Shade Turrets. Any sensible army would bring their version too. It'd make sense if they were just trying to overwhelm the UNSC with sheer numbers, but there weren' t that many of them to begin with. So what were they trying to do with these platforms if not use them as concentrations of manpower?\nShit.\n\"EVER YBODY OUT OF THE VEHICLES NOW!!\"\nWithout question, the contingent swiftly stepped out of their respective Oryxes early enough so that when the plasma shells hit, they weren' t incinerated alive and only knocked back in the wave of the carpet shelling that span all the way from the formation to The bridge.\n\"Sir.\" Church panted. \"I think they baited us.\"\nCarter nodded. \"Correct as ever , Church. Our easiest escape is cut.\"\n\"So then we have to go through contested area here.\" Church couldn' t help but look at the route ahead of them that was sure to be teeming with Covenant forces.\n\"Well what can we expect?\" Scott asked. \"How light or heavy' s the armor?\"\nChurch had to think about that one. They hadn' t seen anything heavy thus far , but there wasn' t any way to know that they wouldn' t. The only opposition they'd gotten was the platforms and Connie and Mich had all but decimated those. Based of f of that, maybe they were being baited all the way through. That is if they were to just wander the hell around.\n\"Hang on, I've got an idea.\"\nChurch cleared his throat and pushed the Push-T o-Talk on his helmet. \"Musashi control, this is Bravo Actual, I've got V ictor Platoon with me here and we're essentially severed from the frontline after a round of shelling. Is there anywhere you need a gaggle of 20-ish Spartans?\"\n\"Bravo Actual, this is Musashi Control. Head for the Northwestern garrison complex. W e need the AA online, or those Seraphs are gonna tear this joint to dust.\"\n\"Roger , any replacement vehicles you could send?\"\n\"We don' t want to risk any more armor where you are. Over .\"\nChurch sighed. Of course they were going on foot. Of course they only had eight launchers to spare with a majority of the ammo having been detonated while still inside the vehicles. Fan fucking-tastic.\"Man.. That ammo' s still cooking of f?\" T ucker looked at the smoldering wrecks in bewilderment. He thought the vehicles would last a lot longer . Is this what war is usually like? Do cars just drop like flies? He expected destruction everywhere but not so soon. In the minutes that Mich and Connie were shooting at those platforms, the skies had swarmed with aerial dogfighting and the landscape had been littered with billowing smoke as far as he could see. Every few seconds volleys of missiles and plasma artillery would streak the sky . Grif shuf fled his feet before he hauled his M73 LMG on his back. So the commander wasn' t kidding.. The Covenant really could set anything and everything on fire. Everything around them is just death incarnate. Who knows how many of 'us' and 'them' have died in the seconds it took to see if he himself was okay? Who knows how far ''we've' ' advanced or retreated?\nIt made him wonder why he was here.\n\"I'll give you three minutes to get your gear in order .\" Everyone heard Carter say . Tucker scraped the dirt of f his Chestrig and Shoulderplates. Gulping down a scream, he scraped all the grime of f his DMR and turned to face the valley where they'd be heading.\n\"Hey , look on the bright side.\" He said. \"At least we don' t have to waste anymore cars\"\nGrif laughed. \"I mean. W e get to blow up more of their shit than they do ours that way .\"\n\"EXACTL Y! That' s war!\"\nCarter let out a knowing sigh from his vocal chords. He wished that the UNSC back in the earliest days of the Human-Covanant W ar had the luxury to act like what Grif and T ucker were doing right now . Unfortunately , colonies then were getting firebombed by the day , resistance snuf fed out in mere hours. But this was dif ferent. Now the UNSC had enormous vessels, several thousand Spartans, ammunition designed to easily pierce Covenant steel and shielding on an unprecedented level, and the training to back it up. The scarcity of humanity' s victories was growing less and less each battle. What Carter knew would happen, though, is that heavy casualties would ever remain a certainty . There'd be no time to mourn it, though. Nor did he think there was time to find a reason to reflect. Carter cleared his throat and sent his orders across the platoon.\n\"We head for the Northwestern garrison complex. AA batteries there are deactivated and since all the Combat Engineers are either dead or busy , we have to get them back online.. Else they continue ferrying personnel through the skie-\"\n{KKRRRRASHHHH}\n\"OH SHIT!\"\"ELITES! ELITES! ELITES!\"\n\"FIVE O'CLOCK! ON MY FIVE!\"\nDrop pods had rained from the sky carrying a fresh horde of Covenant manpower . Romeo and Bravo fell back to a position of fragile cover behind the jagged clif fs of the dry riverbed. The rocky terrain sported a long, winding, set of ridges made of blasted stone and scarce trees along the valley . The security checkpoint and scattered sharp boulders made for meager but better -than-nothing cover for sticking a rifle out and killing an alien or two.\n\"C- crap..\" Caboose grumbled. \"MY BIPOD JOINT'S STUCK!\"\nAn Elite would have gotten him if T ucker hadn' t darted down the trail and stabbed him with his Ener gy sword. The rest of the platoon watched T ucker dart around the Covenant line going toe-to-toe with even the Elites. There was no doubt among the platoon that T ucker had been extensively outdoing himself every time he rehearsed his swordsman techniques, but CQC skirmishes in confined areas was strongly discouraged by the UNSC, and for good reason too. So by the time Caboose had gotten his bipod fixed, a Jackal sniper had killed T ucker 's shields which allowed an Elite to punt T ucker square into Caboose, snapping the bipod' s legs in half. The two had gotten of f each other leaving T ucker to take cover behind a rock and pick of f the remains with his DMR, and Caboose to run over to Carter waving his LMG in the air .\n\"I- I don' t think we trained for this, sir!\"\n\"Calm down.\" Carter gestured by lowering his hand and speaking. \"What happened to your M73?\"\n\"It's- I-\" Caboose stammered. \"I don' t have a bipod anymore, T ucker landed on me and- I- it snapped in half.\"\n\"Okay , that thing' s not gonna be of much use without proper stabilization, just use your MA40 for now , but keep the '73 on ya.\"\n\"Yes sir!\"\nElsewhere, T ucker had been busy fetching a new magazine for his DMR, midway through, Antonia had darted over to him and taken cover by an adjacent boulder . After firing a few rounds into a group of grunts and tossing a grenade into an Elite' s cover , she turned to T ucker with a Are you kidding me? Look on her face.\n\"Yo!\"\n\"Tucker .\" Antonia hissed. \"What was- What were you THINKING?\"\nTucker scof fed at her comment. \"Ma'am, Caboose was going to be dead meat if I didn' t-\"Antonia was forced to peek behind cover to fire at another batch of Grunts, and when she finished, she scolded T ucker further .\n\"You could have gotten yourself KILLED!\"\n\"I-\"\n\"Tucker .\" Antonia scof fed. \"Y ou have a VER Y specific role in your squad. The Designated Marksman is supposed to pick of f hostiles at a farther vicinity than those you are around. This is how entire frontlines crumble! Y ou're supposed to be thinning out Covenant reinforcements, not being thinned out yourself.\"\nTucker only had a second to look at her face before gathering all the relevant knowledge he needed out of it. He couldn' t put his finger on it but he could swear she was speaking from personal, more personal than she'd like, experience. He'd have to ask her about it later . More pressing matters had his concern, however . He had to assist the rest of the platoon in clearing the last of the Covenant ambush. He gripped his DMR by the barrel and scampered over to the left flank where Sar ge was. The latter had been busying himself with the Suicide Grunts trying to flank the platoon which were now reduced to lar ge splatters of blue and scattered shell craters thanks to his MA5K.\n\"Any more of 'em?\"\nSarge shook his head and peered his head over the other side of the clif f wall. \"That might as well be it for the Grunts..\" he grumbled. \"W oulda taken longer if we-\"\n\"Had the warthog, I know! Now just get back to shooting!\" T ucker finished of f a Jackal the second it raised its shield from an injury to the hand, a crack-shot delivered by Simmons.\n\"Okay ..\" Carter slung his DMR over his back and turned on his platoon-scale radio. \"Great cleanup. T actical situation' s warranted a FRAGORD. W e're sticking to the original plan of finding the Northwest complex but we're going to double-time it. The intent is to be always running so as not to get boxed in like we did just now . No unit-specific tasks are needed, however the current overlay of 'those who are on the edges of the formation provide aft cover ' is being discarded for expediency purposes. No changes to the OPORD on Service Support or Command-And-Signal. Understood?\"\n\"Yes SIR.\"\nThe platoon had assembled into a squad-separated double-column with Carter and Antonia at the forefront. They were running at speeds of 56 kilometers an hour darting along the narrow valley and would arrive at the complex within an estimated window of 10 minutes, assuming no Covenant tried to ambush them again. The narrow valleys were a series of four in each cardinal direction drilled into the hills to transport materiel that was decreed confidential so as to keep it out of passerby eyes. At themidway point of these were a connecting valley for each which would form a diamond shape surrounding the towering, wedge-shape-toward-the-sky Musashi Base that ONI had been given. The platoon cut through one of these valleys in a sharp turn and continued westward among the paved roads, shell craters, and bodies. Church figured once they reached the intersection they'd be at their greatest risk of an ambush, so he opened a private channel with Carter and alerted him of his gut feeling. Carter nodded, and then faced westward again. He then sent out a be-advised on the platoon channel and waited for the intersection, where they'd check their corners before heading out, an idea that wouldn' t hinder them at all in terms of timing. But the smoldering Banshee jammed in between the further -westward valley' s clif fs would. The entire platoon stopped dead in their tracks in the middle of the four -way intersection paved with gravel and left for scattered patches of leafy , blue-gray grass to grow .\n\"We.. huh....\" Kaikaina stared at the charred remains of the pilot. \"Man, they sure like going down with their ship..\"\n\"It's customary , K.\" T ucker prodded at its stomach with the Ener gy Bayonet on his DMR.\n\"Dying in battle' s a huge deal in Sangheili society .\"\nWHEET A whistling sound was heard from Church as he looked over his shoulder to the two. \"T ucker . Lady-Grif. Quit jacking of f, I need you around the perimeter . We're gonna see if we have any charges to clear this wreck.\"\nSamuel looked at Church as if his face were slowly breaking out into necrosis. \"Why not just go around?\"\n\"Because, asshole. This is the most direct route.\"\n\"Fair .\"\n\"Hey , Carolina.\" Church called out.\n\"Sir?\"\n\"See if you can lob a 'nade at this Banshee. W e might be able to-\"\nAntonia shoved Carolina out of the way and stood in between the two of them, her hands on her sides and her head cocked in a disappointed-mom manner . \"That' s not happening at all. Those grenades are for enemy suppression and formation disruption only . Am I clear?\"\n\"Yes ma'am.\" Church nodded.\n\"Caboose!\" Antonia yelled.\"Yo!\"\n\"No, no, it' s 'yes ma'am' not- anyway . Do you have any detonator char ges?\" She ran over to him and asked.\n\"Uh- well- since I'm both a Sapper and an Autorifleman.. anyway , no ma'am. I only brought extra mags for the M73..\"\n\"Okay .\" Antonia shrugged it of f. \"W e can work with Sar ge.. Bravo 2-1, I'm gonna need an RT-EX on that Banshee bearing 22.5 , over .\"\n\"Acknowledged, Ma'am. One Remote-Explosive RDE-5 approved to mount.\" Sar ge's southern drawl blared through Antonia' s helmet which caused her to lose her balance a little. Sarge wasted no time on the RDE-5. He hooked the char ge on the Banshee' s wing and entered the authorization code. As Antonia directed everyone away , Sarge had entered a countdown of 15 seconds and before he hit ENTER, he radioed Antonia again.\n\"Victor 2, this is Bravo 4. Permission to detonate times-one RDP-5 bearing 22.5 ? Over .\"\n\"Granted.\"Antonia was still studying the area where the Banshee was. W ere there any more incidents like this? W ere the Covenant trying to box the entire base in? If Covenant pilots had special directives to crash in the canyons, well, then the entire formation' s broken. The ORBA T falls apart and entire battalions lose track of each other . And Sar ge had already taken cover behind the rest of them when he turned on his mic.\n\"Times-one RDP detonation bearing 22.5  in 5..4..3..2..1.. FIRE IN THE HOLE! FIRE IN THE HOLE! FIRE IN THE HOLE!\"\nWithin the second the Banshee had been shrouded in a ball of blue-pink flame and in its wake were strewn unrecognizable metal chunks, leaving indents in the canyon and a crater on the ground. The platoon moved a dozen paces more through the smoke before they saw something truly humbling. It was the biggest firefight most of them had ever seen. The Northwest Complex was strewn with wreckage, barriers, and small-arms fire. The UNSC had set up a wall of fire between the north and south of the Complex to try and keep the Covenant-infested northern side at bay while carcasses mounted on either side. The Reds and Blues, save for Church, Locus, A very, and Reginald, dashed down the road into the southern gates of the base with little resistance save for Covenant mortar fire.\n\"Alright, people.\" Carter could swear he saw the whites in the Covenant' s eyes. \"Remember the objective. W e're here to secure the frontal AA guns so the 'Covies don' t send any more transports in. Once that' s outta the way , we'll assist in recapture ef forts.\"\n\"YES SIR!\"\n\"Romeo' s taking the left, Bravo' s taking the right. Break.\"The two squads split up, running in opposite directions while Antonia and Carter stayed in the middle to assist with the fortification ef forts. Both of them could see that the main infantry line wore a split between the eagle-globe-anchor of the Marines and the square-and star of the Army . Screams toward superiors were heard as soldiers were scurrying behind the fortifications to try and reor ganize with their units. Not that reor ganizing would have made them anything other than bigger tar gets, but to be in the same place was a matter of doctrine, a question of whether one had their wits about them enough to know that the basic rules of firefights still applied even when the current tactical objective is to just not die. Carter took cover behind a W arthog firing on incoming Grunts streaming through the breaches. He quickly set his transponder to broadcast to only Church, A very, Locus, and Reginald. \"There' s mortar fire at an unknown distance out. Y ou see 'em, you shoot 'em.\"\n\"SIR W AS THA T YOU THA T JUST BLEW UP THA T BANSHEE ON THE CLIFFS?!\" A Marine found himself squawking an octave higher than normal human tone. He'd lost his helmet and had a boyish stare about him, like he was trying to salvage his childhood innocence.\n\"That was one of the others, but yes. The canyon is clear .\" Carter responded with a calculating, unfazed expression on his face.\n\"Alright, alright..\" The Marine seemed a little calmer now . \"I'll tell the Scorpions they can move on out.\"\n\"Scorpions?\"\n\"Yeah, they're gonna cut of f the 'Covies at their T ransport line. There' s a smaller landing zone due a little more west of here. Cav Scouts are already conducting a Call-For -Fire to soften the base before the Scorpies roll in.\"\n\"And..\" Carter raised an eyebrow and cocked his head. \"This is important for ..?\"\n\"We're gonna lob every bit of explosive firepower at the 'Covies to make sure they only hit us.\"\nCarter 's stare turned into one of a thousand yards. They were going to let themselves be massacred for a small chance at victory . He forced a smile at knowing they were nothing close to Spartans yet willing to throw themselves away for scraps of hope. He turned to the Marine and nodded. \"Give your heart.\"\nThe Scorpions had announced their presence with the sound of tracks grating against gravel and steel while inching down the hill. They wouldn' t fire their smoothbores at the Covenant swarm because those were needed elsewhere, so the gunners on the top were forced to add to the already overwhelming wall of MG fire until they went behind the walls. This left the defending forces with only their rocket launchers of various sizes to hurl against the Covenant. By the time the launchers were set up, a volley of unguided fire like a sheet offlame blotting out the sun had been released onto the Covenant formation. Their lines were engulfed in inferno that rose higher than the watchtowers before them. The new barrier of smoke and fire meant that the Covenant could advance little more. But this also meant\n\"Shit.\" Antonia had come to the same realization as Carter . The two had sprinted of f into the fire and smoke with their thermals turned on, picking apart the stragglers as they went, Antonia scampered to the left while Carter rushed toward the right.\n\"-And, ya know , we WOULD have gotten those AA cannons online had we actually figured out who should do the honors beforehand!\" T ucker yelled.\n\"So now ..\" Mona grumbled. \"W e're stuck in no-visibility smoke with little in the way of getting out of here!\"\nCarter found himself baf fled. \"Y ou didn' t get the launchers online?\"\n\"Sir.\" Tucker snapped. \"None of us know HOW . We'd assumed the panel was already configured and-\"\nCarter hoped Antonia had better luck. She didn' t.\n\"I mean, I know how .\" Simmons panted. \"W e just had so many of them on us that I couldn' t get to work!\"\nAntonia sighed. \"No one covered you?\"\n\"The age-old dichotomy of either throw yourselves at the bastards or hunker down and drown them out.\" Fryderyk' s voice rang out. A feeling of disappointment sur ged in her sternum. \"I swear .. Okay , just head on back to the line. W e'll have W olverines act as placeholders for now ..\"\nThe respective squads had gotten bunched together in loose bundles instead of formations. Everyone had their NVGs switched on as they tiptoed through the bodies and the rubble that littered every meter of the scene. Fire scraped some of the color of f their armor and left scattered scorch marks on the plating. As the visibility gradually cleared, T ucker , Kaikaina, Grif, Sar ge, and Simmons were heard nervously laughing at each other , acknowledging that they were now battle-worn Spartans today .\n\"Anyone wounded?\" A very asked from the hill.\n\"Nope..\" Scott answered. \"Everyone' s still got their plating on.\"\nAvery laughed. \"That' s good to hear . See ya at the of fice.\"\n\"Mhm.\"Church opened a secure channel with Carter . \"Be advised that all mortar emplacements within a 9km radius have been neutralized.\"\n\"Yes, that helps a lot, Ser geant.\" Carter responded curtly .\n\"No problem, sir .\" Church cleared his throat loudly . The Reds and blues thought they'd be returning from the smoke to find a secure AO where the trek back to the main area of BLUFOR concentration was waiting with hollers and cheers from Marines and T roopers unaware they had spectacularly failed, but it was only a second after they had wandered into visible territory that they heard a deafening howl.\n\"SHITFUCK!\" Kaikaina yelled. A Green plasma round from what could only be a Seraph was hurtling towards them at terminal velocity . The platoon watched as the teardrop-shaped fighter circled back in for a strafing run in the span of a second. Once the next few hit the ground, the world went intrinsic-gray for all but the few who managed to run out of the way enough to keep awake. The Reds and Blues' chances of survival were now at the mercy of the medics.Please drop by the Archive and comment  to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!"
-    }
-]
\ No newline at end of file
+version https://git-lfs.github.com/spec/v1
+oid sha256:69bf7df4dd26fcce786174c58a3592bd8b0818e1d02d2774a9325b39ddf40427
+size 66211998